"Leave the rest to me."
Mikhail gently rested a hand on his daughter's shoulder, a touch of tenderness softening his dark eyes before he turned back, gazing toward his distant foe, the Tenth Progenitor Ulysses, with profound calm.
This Blood Clan enemy was strong.
Yet not impossibly so.
"Father..."
Hyperion choked back a sob, slowly releasing her unconscious grip on the hem of Mikhail's robe as tears flooded down her cheeks.
She knew it was time for Mikhail to fight.
"Night Cardinal Mikhail, die together with your half-breed daughter!"
Ulysses granted them no reprieve. Telekinetic force surged violently around him, condensing into a spinning crescent scimitar that tore across the void toward father and daughter.
He knew the Night Cardinal had been specially recruited by the Resurrection Church's Pope as a researcher. Among the original ten cardinals, he was supposedly the weakest of all, even less suited for combat than the Cardinal of Dimensions, Toliado.
There was nothing to fear.
"..."
Mikhail gave a gentle wave of his hand. A dark curtain of light unfurled before him, catching Ulysses's devastating blow.
Inky undercurrents swirled around Mikhail, layering into defensive barriers. Tiny starlike glimmers pulsed within the dark stream, reminiscent of constellations in the night sky.
The barrier was not indestructible; it trembled noticeably upon absorbing Ulysses's strike. Yet it was as if Mikhail had gauged Ulysses's magical potency with absolute precision, deploying only the exact spell necessary to hold the line without squandering a single drop of excess mana on his adversary.
"Ulysses, I will not trade harsh words with you. But that does not mean I can stand idly by while someone bullies my daughter."
Mikhail's tone remained as tranquil as still water, his gaze fixed only upon his own spellcraft.
In the void before the dark barrier, creeping outward like sprawling rose vines, an ornate and sprawling epic narrative unfolded. The floating ruins and boundless void began to fill with darkness, gradually transformed into a dark, fairy-tale forest.
Above the Crimson Abyss, Mikhail and Ulysses faced each other across the divide.
Mikhail cocooned the weakened Hyperion in a gentle shroud of black mist, drifting her away to a safe vantage point far behind the battlefield.
At the same time, he summoned beside his daughter a colossal plush bear wrought of dark magic.
The plush bear was pitch-black from ears to paw, standing well over three meters tall. An eerie red light flickered in its eye sockets; it looked both utterly adorable and, with its patched and stitched exterior, distinctly ominous.
"Little Bear!"
Hyperion cried softly in surprise, looking at her father's summoned beast.
It was the very stuffed animal that had kept her company in the ducal estate throughout her childhood.
Only after growing stronger herself did she realize just how formidable this seemingly ordinary childhood toy truly was.
"You still have the leisure to look after your baby, I see."
Before Ulysses's voice could settle, his crimson telekinesis transformed into a sky full of blood-colored birds that blotted out the firmament of Blood Moon City, swooping toward Mikhail and Hyperion behind him.
"No need to rush. The curtain has only just risen..."
Faced with this terrifying strike, Mikhail showed not the slightest trepidation.
"There are still plenty of puppet plays prepared for the guests invited into the Forest of Puppets."
With a flick of a single hand, a crescent blade of dark violet mana materialized over the dark forest, slashing out toward the flock of birds.
*Bang!*
The birds collided with the crescent shadow, resounding like thunder claps just above the Hall of the Abyss.
The next second, both the flock and the crescent shadow vanished, dissolving into faint specks of bloody froth that dispersed into the air.
A flicker of doubt rose in Ulysses's eyes.
This was no illusion. Mikhail's spell was just like the previous one—it didn't seem exceptionally strong, yet it perfectly neutralized Ulysses's magic down to the last trace.
"The essence of summons lies in raw power! Can those frivolous little spells of yours ever create summons capable of surpassing mine?"
Ulysses stomped his right foot. A crimson magic array expanded abruptly across the ground, reeking with the pungent stench of fresh blood.
Instantly, silhouettes of demons outlined in blood surged from the array one after another, forming an army of summons condensed purely from blood.
Some of these blood puppets were humanoid yet inhuman, bristling with fangs and claws; others were bestial yet unnatural, sporting grotesque limbs and bony spikes.
"These are demons I defeated in the past. Impressive, aren't they? Just like that hideous wife of yours, all vile monsters."
Ulysses commanded the blood specters. Terrifying crimson gleams pulsed within their hollow eye sockets as they advanced step by step toward Mikhail and Hyperion further behind, intent on tearing them apart and devouring them alive.
Mikhail's lips didn't even twitch; he seemed entirely unmoved by the overwhelming display.
"What a shallow Blood Clan progenitor."
He opened his fingers slightly, and a cluster of black radiance gradually coalesced in his palm. The dark light shot into the sky and scattered into a deluge of shadow arrows, melting into the trees of the dark forest.
"Forest of Puppets, awaken."
At Mikhail's command, every tree throughout the forest transformed into wild bears and treants. The quiet fairy-tale woodland of a moment ago instantly became a bizarre forest of demonic puppets.
These magical puppets clashed head-on with Ulysses's summons.
"Just how many dark spells do you know?!"
Ulysses counted intently. Seeing these summons thoroughly bolstered by the Original Slate - Darkness, his unease deepened.
On the surface, Mikhail appeared to use only dark magic. In reality, he had adapted and stolen all manner of magic types into custom-made dark spells of his own design. Ulysses had never imagined the Original Slate could be exploited to such an extent.
In just this brief exchange, Ulysses had already caught glimpses of several other human magic systems in Mikhail's casting.
"Enough to handle you," Mikhail replied, directing his summoned army to trade blows and extinguish Ulysses's blood paintings one by one.
"Impossible! You are inferior to me in every aspect! You cannot possibly defeat an all-rounder like me!"
Ulysses clenched his fists against his chest. He refused to admit it—even though he was certain Mikhail was broadly weaker than him, and the fight appeared evenly matched on the surface, he inexplicably felt strained, while Mikhail fought with effortless ease.
"An all-rounder?"
Hearing this, Mikhail let out a rare, quiet chuckle.
"Whenever people call me an all-rounder, I feel nothing but embarrassment. It simply means they've never had the chance to spar against a truly all-around powerhouse. That is an answer-sheet style of fighting where one cannot see the slightest hope of victory. No matter how strong you are, you can never pierce through the sheer depth of their technique."
He chuckled self-deprecatingly and shook his head, as if reminiscing about his good friend, the High Priest back in Ikerite.
That was why the High Priest always looked like he was struggling in every fight, yet inevitably won in the end.
"Quit talking in riddles! If I'm not an all-rounder, then you certainly aren't one either!"
Ulysses had no idea what Mikhail was rambling about, nor did he know what kind of person Mikhail considered a true powerhouse.
He only knew that Mikhail's subtext painted him as weak!
"Of course I'm weak. I usually only do research, after all."
While directing his summons, Mikhail wove thorny vines to fashion a colossal birdcage, trapping Ulysses's summons inside one by one.
As if to showcase his fondness for his prey, Mikhail put them on display.
"Spells don't become more useful just because they're fancy! Let's see what you do once you run out of tricks!"
Ulysses was thoroughly annoyed by Mikhail's bizarre, novel magic.
Yet until he witnessed them in action, he couldn't deduce the original prototypes behind these custom spells or predict what effects they would produce.
"In that case, how about I drop to my knees and beg you for mercy?" Mikhail asked with a radiant smile.
Once the exhibition concluded, the birdcage contracted toward the center. Yet the imprisoned Blood Clan summons did not perish; instead, vines entangled them, converting them into Mikhail's brand-new cloth puppet summons.
"..."
Seeing this, Ulysses's complexion shifted drastically.
The serene, gentle words of his opponent sent his blood pressure surging wildly.
...
At the western assault team's camp, Abigail hugged Boss Cat and let out a sigh of relief.
She watched the steadily improving situation on the light screen projected by her mechanical assistant.
From the moment Duke Mikhail broke free and reunited with Hyperion, the tide had officially begun to turn.
"Duke Mikhail actually has quite a good temper. No matter how his opponent taunts him, he doesn't get angry at all."
Abigail shifted her gaze toward the other battlefields.
"Don't you think his personality is pretty wicked too, meow?"
Boss Cat spoke out of pure experience and instinct.
Had he never met Lanqi before, he too would have assumed Duke Mikhail was a dignified, gentle gentleman without an ill bone in his body.
In reality, Duke Mikhail's attitude was already playing mind games with Ulysses.
"Why do you say 'too'?"
Abigail caught the implication behind Boss Cat's words.
Yet she didn't probe further.
In Lanqi's household, completing missions seemed to be an everyday trend.
"I just think that if his magic were used by a woman, it wouldn't feel out of place at all," Abigail remarked, refocusing on the communications before her.
After watching Duke Mikhail in action, she couldn't shake the feeling that he resembled a witch devoted to the dark arts.
...
In the Hall of Souls to the northwest.
Iphatia gritted her teeth. Curse magic that shook the ground welled around her, staining the entire hall a shadowy black.
Bottomless fissures spread in all directions like cobwebs, and the earth groaned in agony.
Black cursed flames billowed across the ground and danced wild in the air, searing the Ninth Progenitor, Marquis Bernhard.
Yet no matter how Bernhard was cursed, his overwhelming regenerative power restored him almost instantaneously.
Tongues of fire clawed like fiends at the grotesque corpses scattered across the hall, filling the air with a foul, acrid stench of burning flesh.
"To think you could last this long."
Marquis Bernhard's eyeball-studded body shifted slowly through the black flames, every single eye emitting a radiance that sent chills down Iphatia's spine.
Those eyes stared greedily at the black flames, absorbing their power.
Gradually, the dark fire grew weak and feeble. Its fierce offensive withered as if drained of life, dimming until the eyeballs devoured it whole.
"Too naive, demon girl."
Marquis Bernhard's deep, raspy, mutated voice echoed through the hall.
"Did you really expect your half-baked status ailments to leave a single scratch on me?"
Before his words had died down, violet corrosive gas erupted from his body, slamming into the lingering black flames and dispersing them in an instant.
The toxic fog surged straight through the fiery wreckage toward Iphatia.
The malicious curses woven into the vapor sent a shiver through Iphatia.
She hurriedly channeled dark magic, erecting a black barrier before her.
Yet the moment the purple mist struck the shield, the impact nearly knocked her off her feet.
Her boots dragged across the floor as she braced against the heavy blow, but sharp pain wracked her body, and several fractures spread across the barrier until it shattered with a roar.
Marquis Bernhard advanced with heavy, relentless steps. The ground shuddered beneath him, rattling the Hall of Souls.
Iphatia backed away repeatedly, only to find she had run out of room—her back hit the cold stone wall.
Her mana was draining rapidly, the wounds across her body refused to heal under the curses, and her movements grew sluggish, as though weighed down by lead.
Fear began to creep into her heart.
She truly couldn't defeat him, and she had no idea how much longer she could hold out.
*Don't be afraid. You can't be afraid!*
Iphatia screamed inwardly, sweat drenching her medium-short hair and clothes.
[Iphatia, just hold your ground. Hyperion is safe on her end.]
Abigail's voice reached her without delay.
"Really?!"
Iphatia's eyes lit up.
The moment the Marquis lunged again, she suddenly dropped low, slipping past his flank with lightning speed. With pinpoint precision, she cast a spell that formed a pair of frozen shackles around the Marquis's legs.
Before her feet even touched the ground again, Iphatia hurled another pair of glacial shackles at Marquis Bernhard, dropped into a desperate scramble, and bolted.
The shackles traced an arc through the air, snapping tightly around the Marquis's wrists with a crisp *clack*.
Having heard that the crisis elsewhere had eased, she no longer felt compelled to risk her life seeking a breakthrough in combat. If she couldn't beat him, she'd simply kite him!
It might look undignified, but stalling him was all that mattered.
"Are you truly a demon princess?!"
Marquis Bernhard roared in fury.
He flailed his bound arms, trying to break the shackles, but the icy seal temporarily restricted his movements.
"Only a living demon princess is a good demon princess! Being a vagrant isn't shameful either!"
Iphatia mocked him over her shoulder as she sprinted, pulling down an eyelid with a finger to make a face.
The two things a demon princess had to master in life were, first, freeloading, and second, running away!
Iphatia resolved to engrave this motto into the family code.
Gradually, she sensed a faint, familiar magic from the south—a presence she had missed for so long, yet had remained out of reach.
"Mikhail, you're back!"
Tears drifted from the corners of her eyes, her joyful expression touched with lingering sorrow as she sprinted desperately across the Hall of Souls.
She could see her handsome husband again; she could hug her gorgeous husband again!
Warmth and joy were about to spill across her face, but Iphatia quickly tightened her relaxed cheeks. A battle was still underway; she couldn't afford to slack off now.
So making a wish to her elder brother really did make dreams come true!
Wait.
Does that make Mikhail Lanqi's father-in-law or uncle-in-law?
Why did she feel like the family hierarchy had gotten even more chaotic?
In truth, Iphatia had thought it through carefully: at its core, it was all the fault of her sworn elder sister, Talia. Talia was the root of the tangled generational mess.
If her elder sister would just call her "Mom," every problem would be solved in one stroke.
Then again, that felt a little too treasonous.
Never mind, stalling Marquis Bernhard here in the Hall of Souls took priority!
...
In the Hall of Piercing Cold to the east.
Countless phantoms of Heriteer manifested around Sigrid, each causing the starlight of the Piercing Cold Labyrinth to gleam.
Sigrid ignored Heriteer's attacks entirely. Raising both fists, she slammed them viciously into the ground.
The earth trembled, the ice shattered, and the already teetering Hall of Piercing Cold suffered another catastrophic blow.
Innumerable icicles plummeted, smashing against the ground and sending shards flying.
Heriteer's illusory copies shattered in kind, forcing her to reveal her true form. Her face was pale, cold sweat beading on her forehead.
She hadn't anticipated that Sigrid would simply ignore her assaults and set about demolishing the Hall of Piercing Cold itself, nor that her attacks posed virtually no real threat to Sigrid.
"You lunatic, stop! This isn't something you can tear down!"
Heriteer barked furiously, yet a sliver of dread crept into her heart.
Not only did Sigrid possess horrifying passive regeneration, but she also wielded an enormous, short-cooldown heal that made her look slightly younger while instantly restoring her vitality to full.
Even though Sigrid clearly hadn't needed to use that spell just now, she seemed to have flaunted it deliberately to mock Heriteer, demonstrating that all her attacks were pointless.
All Heriteer could do was continually push Sigrid back with magic to hinder her demolition of the hall.
Yet this time, as though seizing the exact opening, Sigrid charged at Heriteer like a streak of lightning. Her fists carried the weight of a mountain. Heriteer hurriedly invoked her star chart, weaving several rays of starlight into a shield before her.
Sigrid's fists crashed heavily against the star shield. The barrier shattered instantly into sparkling stardust, but it bought Heriteer precious moments.
She hadn't expected Sigrid to unpredictably turn her attacks back onto her.
Dodging rapidly, Heriteer leveled her staff at Sigrid. Starlight converged once more, forming a repulsive force field to drive Sigrid back.
Sigrid neither dodged nor parried, allowing the astral blades of the force field to carve gashes across her flesh.
Blood splattered, yet she seemed completely numb to it. Her eyes were dominated by silver radiance, and her fists brimmed with destructive force, intent on burying Heriteer beneath these ruins for all eternity.
"You've shown your flaw."
The silver glow in Sigrid's eyes reached its peak. Her figure moved faster than Marquis Heriteer could track. This time, she caught Heriteer's true physical form.
Overcome with shock, Heriteer prepared to shift into an intangible state to flee, but Sigrid beat her to it, driving a savage fist into her chest!
*Boom!*
Heriteer flew backward like a kite with a severed string, slamming into an ice wall with a dull thud.
Her body slid down, slumping limply to the floor as blood poured uncontrollably from her lips.
A single direct, full-powered strike from Sigrid had shattered all her internal organs.
Sigrid strolled slowly up to Heriteer, the silver light around her blazing steadily.
"It's over."
Sigrid lifted a boot and planted it heavily upon Heriteer's chest, causing the latter to cough up another mouthful of blood.
"To lose to a brutal barbarian like you... is a disgrace..."
Heriteer forced her head up, her expression indistinguishable beneath the blood caking her face.
"Did you really think a cardinal like me was a saint?"
Sigrid let out a cold snort and stomped down hard.
*Crack!* The sickening crunch of Heriteer's bones splintering echoed through the Hall of Piercing Cold, all but announcing the end of this fierce battle.
"Abigail, I'm done on my end," Sigrid said as she raised a hand, letting the mechanical messenger alight on her fingertip.
[Wonderful, Miss Sigrid! Hurry to the Hall of Annihilation to help Antanas and the others, and capture the Eighth Progenitor, Marquis Somerset, along the way!] Abigail's elated voice came through.
"No problem."
Sigrid pulled back her foot, picked up the half-dead Marquis Heriteer, and transformed into a silver comet streaking across the sky toward the west.
...
In the square before the Blood King Palace.
[Lanqi, the Hall of Piercing Cold is clear! Rasheal's invulnerability will drop shortly, and you'll be able to wear down his condition!]
Abigail immediately shared the assault team's latest update with Lanqi.
The breach of any hall guarded by a marquis meant that the protection granted by Blood Moon City to Rasheal in the palace would temporarily lapse, making him vulnerable to damage!
"Understood."
Lanqi acknowledged the transmission.
As he spoke, he watched the third progenitor Rasheal's figure blur into a long afterimage, his hands sweeping down with a sky full of illusory palms!
Yet Lanqi had no intention of enduring or dodging this blow.
The crimson in Rasheal's frenzied eyes ran so deep it seemed capable of swallowing all light.
He had long lost himself to bloodlust, battling Lanqi as though venting boundless rage.
"Rasheal, it's time to end this."
Light began surging from a dark singularity.
Lanqi's palm seemed to birth a miniature cosmos, swirling and condensing in the void. In an instant, the blinding brilliance of a midday sun flooded the entire square of the Blood King Palace, banishing the dark night and turning the realm into a world of pure white light!
The scorching radiance seemed powerful enough to shatter glass, bursting through the Blood King Palace's rose windows and bathing the castle in an iridescent glow.
The moment the sun unleashed its dazzling brilliance above the palace square, all of Blood Moon City was tinted by its rays.
Even across dozens of kilometers at the Hall of Annihilation, the Hall of Piercing Cold, the Hall of Souls, the Hall of Stagnant Ice, and the Faded Hall, one could sense the faint gleam of the sun.
To the south of Blood Moon City.
Above the Crimson Abyss and the dark forest, the battle between the Tenth Progenitor, Marquis Ulysses, and Mikhail also paused due to this abrupt light.
Marquis Ulysses stared at that radiance, dread bubbling up amidst his suspicion and disbelief.
Although the light posed no danger to him at such a distance, he could feel it.
Within this light lay a power he knew all too well!
It was the very power that had sealed him without warning in the Demon King's Palace's Throne Room all those millennia ago.
"No, impossible... Why is he back? Is he in this era?!"
To Ulysses, something so incomprehensible bordered on madness.
Lancrosse should have been dead for tens of thousands of years.
How could a similar brilliance bloom once more at this very moment?
"Would you like me to use dark magic to shield you from the sunlight?"
Mikhail looked at Marquis Ulysses's shaken state, hesitated slightly, and asked.
That gentle demeanor caused Ulysses to turn his head stiffly.
"...What did you say?"
In this moment, Ulysses felt there were simply too many things beyond his comprehension.
His brows contorted, his lips trembling. After a brief, choked silence, an uncontrollable torrent of emotion erupted.
"Isn't shielding your Blood Clan with dark magic exactly what you wanted from me?"
Mikhail spread his arms with motherly warmth, offering to embrace and care for the Blood Clan.
"Did you go through all the trouble of fighting me just to humiliate me?!"
Clutching his chest, the sweet taste of blood rising in his throat, Ulysses demanded in fury.
Having fought for so long, he could no longer deceive himself: Mikhail's relaxed demeanor was no bluff. He genuinely felt no pressure fighting him at all.
"Haha, I didn't feel it was any trouble at all."
Mikhail finally burst into hearty laughter, as if he simply couldn't bear to pity Ulysses any longer.
"Mikhail...!"
The laughter tore at Ulysses's very insides.
"Mikhail!!!"
Like a madman, Ulysses charged forward, desperate to interrogate this damned cardinal.
Chapter 841