Blood of the Abyss

Crack! Edward's hands suddenly swelled, sharp red talons protruding from his fingertips, and his frame surged upward in rapid spurts, revealing his true vampire form. In truth, from beginning to end, only he had been suppressed by the gravity; the Demon Cross had not been affected in the slightest. His body had originally only been capable of enduring 10 points of combat strength, leaving him pinned prone to the ground, unable to budge. Now that he had unveiled his true vampire form, his body could accommodate 20 points of combat strength, and the reinforcing effect was instantaneous! Rising from the ground, his true vampire form stood roughly six meters tall—lofty and emaciated. Enormous bat wings unfurled from his back. His body was entirely composed of red, ashen-gray, and black hues, while a long mane sprouted around his neck, draping all the way over his chest. "Heh heh. Peter, no matter what dragon's lair or tiger's den you've laid out..." "You will all die!" Edward had never been the type to charge deliberately into the tiger's maw when danger was plain to see. Upon sensing the danger, he immediately abandoned his original plan, choosing instead to strike Luosha's capital from a distance rather than risk crossing paths with another enemy like Ivan. Had Ivan known that his sacrifice ended up having the opposite effect, he probably would have turned in his grave. In truth, the primary reason Ivan had confronted him alone was that his ability did not distinguish friend from foe; having teammates by his side would only have resulted in crushing them into meat paste under the gravitational force. He had marched out determined to die alongside Edward, but he had drastically underestimated Edward's might. Edward bent his legs slightly and kicked off with immense force. Even while shouldering the tremendous gravity Ivan had generated, he shot straight into the sky. Looking down into the far distance, he fixed his gaze toward the capital of Luosha. "Blood Lance Technique!" He raised a hand, rapidly gathering his own power alongside the power of the Demon Cross into his palm. This was, in fact, the same technique Yu Xian had previously used to attack him with the spiral lance—both derived from blood magic inherent to the vampire bloodline. However, Yu Xian's mastery over the vampire lineage was far superior; he could forgo standard incantations entirely and even mold the energy at will, altering the Blood Lance Technique into the form of a spiral lance. Edward, on the other hand, lagged far behind Yu Xian in both bloodline mastery and energy control. Thus, he could only execute the move in the orthodox vampiric manner. His sole advantage was that his energy vastly eclipsed what Yu Xian had possessed at the time, enabling even ordinary moves to unleash devastating might in his hands. In an instant, an enormous crimson lance materialized in his grasp. It was a Western knight's lance composed entirely of energy and radiating brilliant red light—the standard form of the Blood Lance Technique. "Every last one of you, die!" Edward pushed his energy output to its limit, then hurled the lance with all his might toward Luosha's capital. Rumble! The mere act of throwing it gouged a distinct scratch across the sky, while the earth below caved inward along the trajectory of its flight. *** Luosha Capital. A female military officer beside Tsar Peter suddenly turned pale with terror and gasped, "Your Majesty, an energy signature at the Super-God rank is rapidly approaching!" "It seems Plan One and Plan Two have both failed. Then let us initiate Plan Three," Tsar Peter said gravely, his fists clenching tight. As his command was relayed downward, a crowd of men and women clad in crimson robes dashed out from the battlements. One after another, they injected themselves with serums, their bodies rapidly swelling and mutating into living human trees. One white tree after another erupted from the earth before the city walls, forming a formidable barrier. Ten seconds later, the lance Edward had hurled flashed through the air, striking one of the great trees in a split second. Suddenly, the entire world fell dead silent. A wave of relief and joy washed over the soldiers on the walls; after all, the Trees of Sacrifice had halted Edward's attack. Yet before they could voice their relief, the tree struck by the lance violently warped and swelled, and a terrifying blast of crimson energy erupted without warning. Tsar Peter's pupils contracted. Nikolayevich instantly stepped in front of him, but amidst the crimson glow, everything in their surroundings rapidly dissolved, fractured, and disintegrated. Boom! The battlements were erased in an instant, taking with them the soldiers poised for battle atop the walls and countless elite Transcendents. Then the explosion surged onward in an uncontrolled, frantic expansion. The city behind the walls was swept away in a flash: a monumental cathedral reduced to ash within the glare, and towering mage spires crumbling into ruins in the blink of an eye. A minute later, the entire metropolis had been razed flat, radiating scorching heat. Tsar Peter stood on the barren earth, white smoke wafting from his body. He was completely motionless. Everything had happened too fast—frighteningly, appallingly fast. The people around him had vanished in an instant, as if they had been nothing more than phantoms. At last, after a full ten minutes, Edward descended from the sky. Gazing down at Tsar Peter on the ground from his lofty vantage, he chuckled, "Peter VI, who would have thought... we would meet again?" Tsar Peter paid Edward no heed whatsoever, remaining rooted to the spot as though lost in a trance. Edward's brow furrowed slightly. Not wishing to invite trouble through delay, he promptly condensed a crimson greatsword and hurled it toward Tsar Peter. In an instant, the blood sword pierced clean through Tsar Peter's head. Yet in the next second, Tsar Peter's head healed on its own, and the blood sword simply vanished into nothingness. "Huh?" Edward looked at Tsar Peter, a look of surprise crossing his face. Raising his hand once more, Edward gathered a massive sphere of energy and slammed it into Tsar Peter. In an instant, Tsar Peter was swallowed by the blast. When the smoke and dust cleared, a crater over ten meters wide was left in the earth—and Tsar Peter stood inside it, still entirely unscathed. "I was wrong." "I should never have clung to wishful thinking." "From the very beginning, I should have... done it that way." Tsar Peter murmured under his breath. Edward frowned, vigilance creeping into his heart. At that moment, the Tsar looked up at Edward and spoke, "I should have killed you back then. It seems none of these so-called Progenitors should ever have been allowed to exist." "Isn't it a bit late for regrets now?" Edward sneered. Back then, he had been a Forbidden Fruit hunter—merely an ordinary human who fanatically tracked where Forbidden Fruits might appear. Over five hundred years ago, rumors spread that a Forbidden Fruit had appeared in Luosha. Hundreds of Forbidden Fruit hunters flooded into the country, and in the end, he was the lucky one who consumed the fruit and became the Vampire Progenitor. At that time, Tsar Peter already ruled over all of Luosha, and when Edward crossed the border to leave, Peter had possessed every opportunity and means to kill him. "Even so... it is not too late now." Tsar Peter produced two autoinjectors with his hands and drove them straight into his neck, immediately plunging two completely distinct fluids into his body. Alarm bells blared in Edward's mind. "What is that?" "Heh heh, not that it matters if I tell you. These are two serums derived from the analysis of the Blood of the Abyss. We lost countless warriors just to harvest a single ak," Tsar Peter said, staring at Edward. At the same time, the veins on both sides of his neck bulged, glowing red on one side and green on the other. That single ak had been developed into several products, and what Tsar Peter held was the primal source—the most terrifying of them all. "Blood of the Abyss actually has something like this..." Edward said, his expression darkening with gravity. A grimace of agony suddenly swept across Tsar Peter's face, yet he looked at Edward with mocking eyes and said, "Goodbye, Edward!" Not good! Edward realized the truth: Tsar Peter had told him all of this merely to stall him and keep him here. He never should have lingered; he should have fled far away from here immediately!