The crack of Balthazar’s second kneecap echoed through the grand foundry like the dull snap of stone crushed in an iron mortar.
The giant couldn't even scream this time. Air caught in his windpipe in a dry, heaving choke; bloodshot eyes bulged from their sockets as his skull thrashed against the stone flagstones, slick with machine oil and his own urine.
His hands calloused and scarred from twenty years of brutal campaigns clawed blindly at the floor, leaving wet streaks across the masonry as he made a pathetic, futile attempt to drag his shattered legs beyond my reach.
I lifted my bare foot from his throat, allowing a ragged gasp of air to re-inflate his wheezing lungs.
"Agh... Gah! M-mercy...!" Balthazar’s plea was a bloody, bubbling wheeze.
"Alan... I beg of you... for old times' sake... on the northern front... I watched your back against the orcs... Remember? Alan, my friend..."
I crouched before him.
Behind me, my two silver tails swayed languidly, shedding wisps of white smoke that parted the stifling heat radiating from the furnaces.
At the base of my spine, the root of my fourth tail throbbed with a heavy, ravenous pulse.
I felt a blind thirst deep within my marrow an ontological pull demanding the life force of the man who had crippled me in the third loop.
"Do not speak to me of the north, Balthazar," I said, my Kitsune voice slipping into his ears like lethal poison.
"In the north, you used me as bait to draw away enemy scouts while you lingered in the rearguard, making certain not a speck of mud soiled your polished armor."
Carmilla sank to her knees at the left of the general’s head.
The Progenitor drove a long nail straight beneath his jaw, piercing flesh until it struck bone.
With deliberate, wicked cruelty, she wrenched his head upward, forcing his gaze into my golden eyes ringed with wheels of fire.
"Do not weary my Queen with a dead man's nostalgia, you pile of dung," Carmilla purred.
A drop of her glacial saliva fell onto the general’s sweaty brow, searing his skin like pure acid.
Balthazar shrieked in agony.
"She asked you a question your pathetic blubbering has yet to answer," the vampire hissed.
Behind us, Ignis’s colossal shadow swept across the raised platform.
The dragonewt strode over the corpses of the fallen officers with brutal indifference.
Halting two paces back, she rested her magma halberd against the stones and folded her arms across her armored chest.
Her molten gold eyes swept over the three gargantuan Runic Siege Cannons positioned before the bastion's embrasures.
"The chambers are loaded," Ignis growled in disdain.
"Starstone shells inscribed with concentrated light seals.
If loosed against the outer walls, they could punch a thirty foot breach through sanctified stone, clearing an escape route.
The coward wasn't garrisoning the city he was preparing an internal artillery battery in case his men failed."
Driving my talons into Balthazar’s bare chest, I shredded his padded leather shirt.
Around his thick, grease smeared neck hung a heavy iron chain.
Dangling at its end, nestled between saintly talismans and beast teeth, rested a battered silver medallion: Alan’s scout tag, its guild registration number filed away to a dull blur.
The trophy he had ripped from my throat before hurling me into the void.
I pinched the chain between two fingers and gave a sharp tug.
The links snapped with a crisp metallic ring. Cradling the tag between porcelain fingers, the cold touch of mortal silver stirred an echo in my mind a faint memory from a time when I still believed a soldier's honor was enough to earn the world's respect.
How foolish I was.
"You wore my tag as a trophy," I whispered, holding the metal inches from his bulging eyes.
"Did it bring you that much pride to shove an unarmed boy off a cliff?"
"It was Lucas...!" Balthazar wept, every scrap of dignity stripped away as tears carved pale tracks through the grime on his bearded cheeks.
"Lucas and Vane! They planned everything from the very beginning! Lucas needed the title of Lord Protector to gain access to the relics inside the cathedral's sealed vault... and Elena... Elena was the one giving orders from the shadows!"
"Tell me about Vane," I commanded, pressing the needle point of a claw against his left eye until he shook with primal dread.
"Where is the Archmage? What is his role in the Solstice?"
"In the Tower of Saint Gabriel!" the giant shrieked, not daring to blink as my talon grazed his cornea.
"Vane has barricaded himself in the highest spire of the Sacred District! He hasn't left in three days! He's synchronizing the Great Barrier of Light!"
"To shield the city against an invasion?" Carmilla asked, arching an eyebrow in cold skepticism.
"No!" Balthazar barked in a hysterical laugh that choked into a wet, bloody cough.
"It isn't meant to protect anyone from the outside! The barrier isn't facing the valleys... it's facing inward! Vane inverted the magical polarity seals of the central spire! The moment the High Priest places the bridal crown upon Lucas's head at noon on the Solstice, the barrier will trigger... and seal the entire capital inside a hermetic dome!" You are reading on novelping . com, the official source.
The air in the foundry went dead.
Ignis uncrossed her arms in slow, deliberate motion. Her slit pupils contracted into two black slits of unadulterated fury.
"A mass sacrifice cage..." the dragon rumbled, her voice vibrating the iron of the anvils.
"The exact same methods from the First Crusade. Seal the perimeter so none can flee, then siphon the crowd's mana to fuel an artificial ascension."
"That's it...!" Balthazar gasped. "Lucas doesn't just want to be a general or a king! Elena discovered that beneath the altar of the Great Cathedral slumbers the Heart of the Primordial Phoenix the divine wellspring the founding fathers used to consecrate the realm's lands! But the Heart will only awaken if fed the faith and blood of ten thousand believers in a single instant of collective ecstasy! The nobles, the foreign envoys, the priesthood... they are all cattle for the slaughter! Lucas intends to gorge on that power to cross the threshold into Semi-Divine Rank... and rule this realm and the world!"
I gazed down at the silver tag resting in my palm.
Everything fell into place with macabre, surgical precision.
Lucas and Elena were not merely opportunistic traitors grasping for noble titles; they were methodical parasites who had spent years engineering the greatest slaughter in continental history.
My murder at Weeping Peak had merely been the sacrifice of an inconvenient pawn to clear the board.
"And what was your prize in this carrion feast, Balthazar?" I asked, my voice hushed and lethal.
The general swallowed with immense difficulty.
"S-supreme military command of the outer provinces... They promised me the southern valleys and half the lands seized from the independent guilds... Alan, please... I've told you everything! I gave you the truth! Let me slip out through the drainage tunnels... I'll flee beyond the mountains... I'll never set foot in this kingdom again... I swear it!"
I rose to my feet upon the grease stained flagstones.
Tucking Alan’s silver tag into the bodice of my black silk gown, directly over the steady beat of my Kitsune heart, I looked down upon the broken wretch begging at my feet.
"You claimed my life wasn't worth more than two mugs of sour ale, Balthazar."
His eyes dilated in absolute terror as the realization struck him: no plea, no truth, and no confession would buy him another heartbeat of existence.
"M-MERCY!" the giant shrieked.
"Mercy was left behind on the mountain," I replied.
At the base of my spine, the root of my fourth tail surged with unhinged ferocity.
I did not stifle the instinct.
Yielding to the hunger of my mystic core, I stepped forward.
I used no weapon.
I drove my bare right hand directly into the center of Balthazar’s chest.
Porcelain talons punched through his sternum as effortlessly as a heated blade slicing through soft tallow, plunging straight into the martial mana core anchored within his solar plexus a condensed B-Rank warrior's core, tempered by decades of bloodshed.
"Aaaagggghhhh!"
The Vanguard General's shriek shook the fortress walls.
The siphoning was brutal, feral, and unyielding.
The dense, golden mana of his life force surged through my claws like a river of liquid radiance, coursing up my arm and channeling directly into my lower back.
Balthazar convulsed against the stones as his hulking physique withered before our eyes.
His skin turned a lifeless ashen gray, the vitality draining from his eyes, his veins shriveling like brittle twigs beneath the Kitsune's absolute consumption.
And then, at the core of my spinal marrow, the breakthrough occurred.
Crack!
The cauterized flesh at the base of my lower back split wide open.
Nourished by the concentrated essence of the first traitor, the bony protrusion that had taken root through Carmilla’s blood and Ignis’s flame tore free with overwhelming violence.
A dense maelstrom of violet spectral flame and pitch-black ash erupted in a deafening gale, unfurling into the air with the lethal splendor of a drawn blade:
The Fourth Tail.
Long, majestic, coated in celestial silver fur flecked with motes of living obsidian, and crowned at its tip by a dark flame that radiated not ordinary heat, but the insatiable, sub-zero chill of karmic retribution absolute vengeance made manifest.
[CRITICAL RANK ASCENSION!]
Condition Met: Somatic Vengeance Initiated (1/4 Traitors Executed)
Evolution: Awakening of the Fourth Tail (Ash and Retribution)
Elina's Current Rank: E+ Rank → C+ Rank (Consolidated)
Passive Trait Unlocked: Ash Authority (Total immunity to human runic barriers below Semi-Divine rank) This chapter is updated first at g.com.
Balthazar’s desiccated husk slumped lifeless onto the flagstones with a hollow thud.
He was completely hollowed out a barren husk of dry skin and brittle bone that housed neither life nor mana.
The first name on Alan’s list had been struck from existence forever.
I drew a deep breath of the foundry air.
The surge of power roaring through my mana channels was intoxicating.
Behind me, four tails celestial silver, spectral violet, and dark ash fanned out in lethal symmetry, rippling through the gloom with an authority that set the cavern air humming.
The lingering frailty that had haunted me since the amputation on the abyssal pedestal vanished completely.
My porcelain body radiated a presence so dense that the flagstones beneath my bare soles hairline fractured under the gravity of my aura.
Carmilla rose slowly.
Her crimson eyes fixated upon my four tails with worshipful awe.
Gliding forward, the vampire sank to her knees before me, wrapping pale arms around my thighs and pressing her cool cheek against my hip in devout submission, her lips trembling with dark ecstasy.
"Breathtaking... merciless... my absolute Sovereign..." Carmilla whispered, inhaling the scent of ash and sovereign power trailing from my new tail.
"You slaughter with the elegance of a dancer. Grant me leave to drink in the fragrance of your triumphs forever..."
At my other side, Ignis let out a triumphant roar that smothered the dying embers of the blast furnaces.
The dragonewt strode forward, planting heavy hands upon my shoulders and tilting my face up to meet hers.
Her magma bright eyes burned with savage, boundless pride.
"Now that is the flesh of a Queen," Ignis growled.
Her clawed fingers traced the nape of my neck with possessive roughness that drew a sharp shiver from my lips.
"Four tails forged in the blood of your enemies.
Not a single soul in this city of cowards will stand in your path when you kick open the cathedral doors."
I turned my gaze toward the raised platform where the three colossal Runic Siege Cannons stood in silent vigil.
"Ignis," I commanded, slipping smoothly from their grasp while retaining my regal bearing.
"Those cannons are primed with starstone shells. Can you calibrate their ignition runes?"
The dragon surveyed the engraved bronze barrels, a cruel smirk parting her fiery lips.
"I can fuse the recoil locks and sync all three firing pins to a single spark of my breath," the Calamity answered, crossing her arms. "What's the target, vixen?"
I walked to the embrasures and looked out through the stone battlements.
Night blanketed the Holy City of Althea beneath an oppressive shroud of silence. Two leagues away, at the heart of the Sacred District, the colossal spire of the Tower of Saint Gabriel pierced the clouds like a spear of pure crystal.
It pulsed with an eerie azure luminescence, signaling Archmage Vane's synchronization of the great barrier.
"Zero all three cannons directly onto the foundation of that crystal spire," I declared, my words slicing through the gloom with mathematical precision.
"We hold fire for now. Let Vane believe this bastion remains under the drunken watch of his general.
But when we breach the inner walls tomorrow night... I want those three shells to detonate the bedrock beneath his tower while he is still inside."
Ignis barked a wild laugh that echoed through the foundry.
"It'll be the finest fireworks display this rotten kingdom has ever seen."
The dragonewt mounted the wooden platform with heavy strides, her clawed hands already recalibrating the siege engines' elevation gears with precise bursts of heat.
Carmilla rose beside me, trailing gloved fingertips across my bare shoulder, gazing toward the distant spire with murderous anticipation.
"One less hound in the pack," the vampire purred, her fangs lightly grazing the curve of my fox ear.
"What is our next move, my sweet Elina?"
I clenched my porcelain fists. Behind me, the dark flame atop my newly awakened fourth tail pulsed in rhythm with the night.
"We lock this bastion from the inside, leaving the garrison's corpses to rot in the dark," I said, turning back toward the lower drainage shafts.
"Dawn brings Day Three.
We cross the Lower District and take Vane in his lair."
I looked once more toward the distant silhouette of the Great Cathedral, where Lucas and Elena slept beneath sheets of consecrated silk, foolishly trusting the quiet night as a promise of their impending triumph.
"Balthazar has paid his debt of bone," I whispered into the foundry's shadows.
"Tomorrow, we tear the magic from the Archmage... and the day after that, the bride will wear mourning alongside her champion."