Chapter 200: First Princess of Korvath

The moment they turned around both of them went completely still.

A woman stood in the corridor looking back at them.

"Your presence was so weak I almost lost my way through the teleportation."

The resemblance to Seris was immediate and undeniable. Same long silver-white hair. Same crimson eyes. Same bone structure in the face. But she was slightly older and there was a small mole sitting just beneath her left eye.

"E-Elder Sister?!" Seris immediately released Alden’s arm and straightened. "What are you doing here?"

Alden wasn’t listening.

His gaze had already locked onto those crimson eyes, pale skin, and pointy ears. In a fraction of a second, his mind registered it: A vampire. An enemy.

His palm opened.

[Soul Weapon: The Living Gazer — Summoned!]

Dark smoke gathered above his hand and the blade materialized in his grip. Dozens of crimson eyes along its surface opened at once and began to pulse. Alden was already moving before the weapon had fully formed.

"No! Alden, stop—!" Seris reached out to grab him. She was too slow.

"Sorry, but you’re too slow."

The woman’s voice was completely calm.

One moment she was standing in front of them. The next she was beside him. Her knee drove into his chest with force.

BOOOOOOM.

Alden’s body left the ground and hit the far wall of the corridor. The wall cracked in a spiderweb pattern outward from the impact point and dust and chunks of stone burst into the air. He hit hard enough that the sound of it carried down the entire corridor.

For half a second everything went quiet.

Then the noise came all at once.

"What was that?!"

"An attack?!"

"Over there!"

Warriors rushed toward the source of the noise from every direction. When they spotted Alden crumpled near the cracked wall several of them broke into a run toward him.

"Commander Alden!"

"What happened?!"

"Who did this?!"

Their eyes swept the corridor for the threat. They found her standing exactly where she had been. Alone. No soldiers behind her. No army. No backup of any kind.

Only one woman with silver-white hair and crimson eyes standing in the middle of the corridor.

One of the warriors finally understood what he was looking at.

"VAMPIRE!"

He pointed at her. "ENEMY! IT’S AN ENEMY!"

A nearby soldier sprinted to the alarm panel and slammed his palm against the emergency switch.

WEEEEEEEEE!

The siren tore through the air and the whole corridor transformed instantly. Warriors dropped what they were carrying and grabbed weapons. Injured soldiers tried to push themselves away from the noise. Everyone who had been still a second ago was moving and everyone who had been moving was running.

The woman at the center of all of it did not react to any of it. She turned toward Seris.

"Nivara..." Seris said quietly.

Nivara looked at her younger sister with an expression that gave nothing away. "Where is the Helion Core?"

Seris hesitated. Her eyes moved briefly to the spot where Alden had hit the wall. Then she looked back at her sister.

"It’s in the lower chambers of the academy. Just like before."

Nivara nodded. "Good."

That was it. She turned and walked past Seris without looking back.

Seris stood there and watched her go.

Her crimson eyes went slightly dim.

Some things never change.

Across the corridor Alden was pulling himself free from the damaged wall. He dropped into a crouch and pressed one hand against his chest and coughed. The pain was sharp and deep. That had felt like a regular physical strike from the outside but the force behind it had been something else entirely.

’Damn it. What was that?’

He worked through the possibilities. The speed. The power without any visible mana flare. He had barely been able to register her moving before he was already airborne.

Rai.

It had to be. If she had Rai then the output of something as simple as a knee strike could produce exactly that kind of force. Nothing else explained it.

’I can’t underestimate her.’

He slowly straightened and winced as his chest protested the movement.

By then five warriors had already moved on Nivara together. Weapons drawn. Mana flooding their bodies. All five charging her from different angles simultaneously.

Nivara didn’t turn around.

A single flash passed through the corridor.

All five of them went down before any of them had crossed half the distance to her. Blood hit the floor. Bodies crumpled. She hadn’t broken stride.

The people near enough to see it went silent.

One warrior stood completely frozen staring at what was left of his five colleagues. "Monster..." The word came out as barely a breath.

Nivara was already past them. Her gaze had shifted ahead toward the distant outline of the Astral Academy visible through the structure. It was far from where she stood but that didn’t matter. She could feel it even from here. That specific dense unmistakable weight of the Helion Core sitting somewhere beneath the academy.

’There it is.’

A small smile moved across her lips. She shifted her weight forward and positioned herself to launch.

SHHHRRKK.

Thick vines erupted from the ground beneath her feet. They coiled around her ankles fast and tight and locked her in place with the specific grip of something that had been designed to hold.

A voice came from above.

"Stop right there."

Nivara raised her head.

Isabella floated above her, green mana churning around her body in dense steady waves. Vines extended from both her arms with their tips aimed directly at the woman below. Her expression was cold and completely focused and she was looking at Nivara the same way someone looks at something they have already decided needs to be stopped.

Silence sat between them for a moment.

Then Nivara’s lips curved into a smile.

"Well, well." She tilted her head slightly. Her crimson eyes caught the light. "If it isn’t Spire Lady Isabella."

Her smile widened.

"It’s been a long time since we last met."