Chapter 281: The Crimson Trail Across The Night

CRACK-BOOM!!!

The concrete street outside the ruined warehouse exploded into a spiderweb of jagged craters as Woolie’s hooves hit the ground at full speed.

Violet and crimson lightning surged around his pitch-black coat, turning the five-meter Storm Ram into a roaring comet of thunder that tore through the dark docklands at over two hundred meters per second. Every time his hooves touched the asphalt, the road shattered and melted from the sheer heat of his hellfire, leaving a trail of burning hoofprints stretching across the industrial district.

Sitting on Woolie’s back, Raiden leaned low against the rushing wind, his blood-soaked shirt flapping wildly around his torn ribs. Half of his long, curly hair gleamed a stark, unnatural silver under the moonlight, while his deep violet eyes burned with a terrifying, singular focus.

"Rose!! Which way?!" Raiden shouted over the deafening roar of the wind.

Coiled tightly around his neck and shoulders, Rose lifted her crowned head into the cold night air. The faint ashen-gold veins running along her crimson scales pulsed like a radar, her Forked tongue flicking out rapidly as she tasted the wind.

"Hiss Hiss!!" Straight ahead, Rai Rai!! Turn left at the big rusted crane! That bad man is super fast; he’s already three kilometres away!!

"Woolie, left at the crane! Don’t slow down for anything, go straight through the buildings if you have to!!"

"Woolie Woo!!" Hold on tight, human!! Emperor Woolie is going into maximum overdrive!!

BANG!!

Instead of slowing down to take the street corner, Woolie lowered his curved golden horns and rammed straight through the brick wall of an abandoned shipping depot!

Bricks, steel beams, and shattered glass rained down around them as they burst out the other side without losing a fraction of a second. Perched on top of Raiden’s shoulder, Neva conjured angled shields of golden light in front of Raiden’s face, deflecting the flying debris and steel girders so he didn’t even have to blink.

"Sha Sha!!" Faster, Big Brother!! Don’t let that ugly thief get away with Sister Sylvi!!

As they tore out of the docklands and into the outer streets of Verdant Hollow, Raiden’s jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached.

The streets were completely deserted.

Twenty minutes ago, this entire sector had been swarming with Alliance patrols, Solaris Clan guards, and Stormwind forces. But because Bai Zheng had threatened Sylvia’s life over the phone, Raiden had personally messaged Isadora and Maple to pull everyone back and clear the area.

He had cleared the path himself. And that bastard had used the empty streets to bring in a second team and snatch his sister right out from under his nose!

’My fault... It’s my fault again,’ Raiden thought, his fingernails digging into Woolie’s thick black wool until his knuckles turned white. ’First I let Woolie get pushed to the brink, then Aunt Ruby had to sacrifice herself, and now I walked right into their distraction while they took Sylvia. If I lose her tonight... I’ll never forgive myself, even if I die a thousand times!!’

"Hiss!!~" Rai Rai, don’t be sad! Look down on the ground!!

Rose’s urgent voice snapped Raiden out of his dark thoughts.

He looked down at the cracked pavement blurring beneath Woolie’s hooves.

Activate Blood Sight.

Instantly, the dark street faded into shades of grey and black in Raiden’s vision, except for a series of tiny, glowing red specks spaced roughly fifty meters apart along the rooftops and roads leading north toward the broken city wall.

One drop.

Two drops.

Three drops.

They were fresh, and carried the exact same bloodline resonance that was currently beating inside Raiden’s own heart.

"That’s... Sylvia’s blood," Raiden whispered, his breath catching in his throat.

Two kilometres ahead, high above the outer city wall where the boundary met the untamed wilderness, a figure dressed in pitch-black tactical gear was moving across the treetops like a phantom.

Every time the masked man’s boots touched a branch, space itself seemed to ripple and fold beneath his feet, propelling him fifty meters forward in a single silent blink.

Slung over his right shoulder like a sack of grain was Sylvia.

Her silver hair was matted with dried blood and dirt. Her school uniform was torn in a dozen places, and a long, ugly cut ran across her pale cheek from where Lola had slashed her earlier to stage the hostage room. Her wrists were still bruised purple from the iron chains that had suspended her from the warehouse ceiling.

By all rights, an unawakened fifteen-year-old girl who had gone through that kind of torture should have been dead to the world.

Yet as the freezing night wind whipped against her scarred face, Sylvia’s eyelashes trembled, and her heavy eyelids forced themselves open a tiny crack.

Her vision was swimming in darkness.

Every breath felt like a knife stabbing into her chest, and the sheer speed at which this terrifying stranger was moving made her stomach churn with nausea.

’Where... Where am I...?’

She remembered the warehouse. She remembered hearing the door get kicked off its hinges. And right before she had blacked out, she had heard the one voice she had been praying to hear from the moment those four black SUVs surrounded her outside the ice cream parlour.

Raiden.

Her stupid, shameless, narcissistic big brother had actually come for her all by himself.

’He came... Raiden really came for me...’

A weak, blurry smile tugged at the corner of her bruised lips, only to vanish instantly as she realised she was no longer in the warehouse. The dark trees of the wilderness were blurring past below her, and the masked man carrying her was heading straight toward an eerie blue glow rising from a ruined stone valley in the distance.

He was taking her away.

If she let this man take her out of Verdant Hollow, how would Raiden ever find her?!

Sylvia tried to scream, to thrash, to kick her legs, but a heavy spatial lock had been pressed onto her spine, leaving her limbs completely paralysed and her throat unable to make a sound louder than a faint whimper.

She couldn’t move her arms. She couldn’t use magic. She didn’t have a Terra Beast of her own.

All she had was her teeth.

With a fierce, stubborn glare that looked exactly like her brother’s when he refused to back down, Sylvia clamped her jaws down onto her own lower lip and bit down as hard as she possibly could.

Crunch.

The sharp, metallic taste of blood filled her mouth instantly. Ignoring the sting of pain, she angled her head slightly over the masked operative’s black shoulder pad and let the warm droplets of blood roll off her chin, falling one by one into the night air below.

’Follow it, big brother... You have Aunt Ruby’s little Rose with you, right? You always brag about how smart you are... So hurry up and find me, you idiot...’

"Hmph. Persistent little rat."

The masked operative didn’t even slow down, but his cold voice rumbled from beneath his half-face mask as he noticed the faint droplets of blood trailing behind his cloak.

"Drip all the blood you want, girl. In less than a minute, we will cross through a black-grade Spatial Gate straight to The True Capital. Even if your brother had wings, a mere Gold-Tier insect from the countryside could never cross half a continent to reach you."

Without breaking stride, the man flicked a finger against the back of Sylvia’s neck, sending a dull shock through her nerves that forced her eyes shut, plunging her back into unconsciousness.

Back on the trail, less than a kilometre behind them, Raiden felt that exact sting of pain echo faintly through the blood drops on the ground.

She had been awake.

Her sister was awake and suffering right now!!

"WOOLIE!! HE’S JUST AHEAD IN THOSE RUINS!! FULL SPEED!!"

"WOOLIE WOO!!"

CRACK-BOOOOOOM!!!

Woolie’s roar shook the entire forest edge as he kicked off the top of the crumbling outer wall, turning into a blinding streak of purple-and-red lightning that shot straight toward the glowing blue valley ahead!