Chapter 277: When The Night... Falls (6)

At that moment, as Amber’s form finally dissolved into nothing above the shattered canopy, not a single face among them showed the faintest hint of relief.

"The Emperor..."

They all murmured the name under their breath, yet for each of them, it carried its own weight—a different debt, a different reckoning bound to those words.

At that moment, Melvin gazed up at the blood-red sky, his hands resting loosely at his sides.

The last of the illusory swords thinned and dematerialized, dissolving into the red light until the forest was no longer filled with countless swords.

As he stared up at the sky, the blood-red hue above him barely registered.

What filled his vision instead were flashes of all he had missed—everything he had lost and, in the end, destroyed with his own hands.

His sister’s laughter echoed in rooms now vacant; his father’s dignity, once worn like armor, stood as a memory too heavy to carry; and the gentle warmth of his mother’s hands lingered only until the cold taught him a harsher meaning for winter.

’Only one... remains,’ he thought as the visions slowly faded.

The only solid truth was that the Emperor was alive and well—and in the end, he too would have to die.

Liliana stood slightly apart from those emotions and, truth be told, she couldn’t quite name what she was feeling in that moment.

’Wh...what have I done?’ she wondered, thinking that maybe she should feel triumph, or perhaps even a flicker of happiness at being one step closer to finding her mother.

Or maybe a sense of loss, knowing her mother was still not found...

But it wasn’t any of those.

It felt instead as though something had been torn from the very center of her chest the instant Milan’s body faded—some large, vital part of her—and the emptiness it left behind sat there, pulsing, silent, and wrong.

The female vampire among Salvatore’s companions broke the hush first, awe still raw in her voice.

"How can you all be that powerful?"

She wasn’t the only one with such thoughts—Salvatore’s other companion seemed to share the same unsettling feeling.

They were all seasoned Cosmic Union experts, yet what they had just witnessed was far beyond anything they could have imagined achieving.

It wasn’t merely the sheer display of power that stunned them, but the crushing sense of devastation it radiated.

Melvin, in particular, stood out; with his total output at Tier 97, he could have ended any of their lives in an instant.

And yet, as he had mentioned before, he chose to grant them grace.

At her words, Salvatore shook himself from his daze, the red dots in his pale eyes sharpening with sudden focus.

"That’s the least of our problems," he said, glancing at his companions.

"Search the whole world. Track down the Emperor. Follow any lead that might take you to him."

The command left no doubt about the task’s scale.

Then he turned toward Liliana, stepping across the shattered ground, and drew her into his arms until her bloody hat rested against his chest.

"Lily, take a little rest," he said, noticing in her eyes that something wasn’t right.

He guessed it was because her mother was still missing, and seeing her like that only strengthened his determination to find his wife.

"I’ll handle the rest from here."

[Blood Affinity]

In the next instant, he and his companions dissolved into a mist of blood, vanishing as one, leaving the forest hollow and still beneath the crimson sky, with only two figures left behind.

Melvin and Liliana lingered in their separate silences until at last she turned to him, her voice softer than it had been when they were bound.

"We weren’t trying to stop you," she said, not wanting to stir trouble within Akasha’s faction over a minor misunderstanding.

"We only needed answers."

With that, she dissolved into a single drop of blood and vanished.

Melvin exhaled, his breath fogging and freezing at once. Rising higher into the sky, he left Loreua behind, leaving the rest to those who still had a wife and mother to find.

----

After he was gone, Liliana and her father remained in search of the Emperor.

The search dragged on far longer than the attack itself.

In just a few hours, they had wiped out not only the capital but every corner of the world, with most of the devastation coming from Melvin’s Sword Domain and Liliana’s Dark Hold.

Yet, even after a month of hunting, they hadn’t found a single clue that could honestly be called a lead.

They stood now in the open skies above a much quieter Loreua.

The Dark Hold’s castle had already been drawn back into Liliana’s divine ring.

Yet, she still carried that vacant, faraway expression, her focus fixed on her inner void instead of anything going on in the present.

Seeing her so withdrawn, Salvatore’s expression dimmed, a subtle heaviness settling over him as he studied her.

"Lily... Everything’s going to be fine," he said, his gaze drifting toward the Dreamer’s Rift suspended high above.

"With a starship like that, tracking down that damn... Emperor will be no trouble at all."

"No," Liliana said as her focus gradually returned. She shook her head, realizing she was done with waiting, done with running in pointless circles.

"We’re not wasting any more time chasing random leads..."

She already knew the perfect place to go—and exactly who could help her right away.

Liliana had tried to avoid involving Dream Land or even Akasha in her personal affairs, but now it was clear she didn’t have nearly enough Divinity to get the answers on her own.

And with Akasha already assisting her father, it seemed he didn’t mind being pulled into the matter from the start.

HUMMM!

So, with that in mind, she waved both hands, and the two starships folded in on themselves before disappearing into her divine ring.

In the next motion, she summoned her Dream Land token, and without explanation, she crushed it.

A swirling portal of purple and white ripped open in the sky, its edges crackling with energy. In her palm, the token shimmered back into existence, as though breaking it had merely unlocked its true purpose.

She glanced over her shoulder with a look that held no warmth.

"Come on," she urged.