Chapter 475: The Final Boss? (2)

The heavy iron-bound gates of the Blood Moon Fortress did not open with a grinding, mechanical screech, nor did they shatter under an explosive assault. As the four of them stepped onto the vast expanse of the white marble plaza, the two six-story slabs of dark, vein-laced blood-stone simply dissolved—melting away like ink in water, leaving a cavernous, yawning archway that led directly into the heart of the central keep.

The wind on the High Plateau died down instantly the moment they crossed the threshold, replaced by an unsettling, absolute silence.

The Great Hall was vast enough to accommodate an entire army battalion, yet it contained no guards, no constructs, and no hidden cultists in the high vaulted archways. Towering pillars carved from solid obsidian stretched up into the shadowy heights, supporting a ceiling that appeared to be made of churning, liquid space—a swirling cosmos of dark crimson and violet nebula clouds through which faint, distant stars flickered.

At the far end of the long hall, elevated upon a nine-stepped dais of solid bone ash, sat the **Throne of Marrow**.

And seated upon that throne was **Lord Cassian, First Patriarch of the Blood Moon Clan**.

He was a pureblood vampire of ancient lineage, radiating a suffocating aura of regal cruelty that made the air feel as thick as coagulated blood. Cassian was draped in long, flowing robes of high-grade silk the color of dried gore, trimmed with intricate gold thread that shimmered like liquid fire. His hair was black as jet, falling straight down his back, framing a pale, angular face with razor-sharp features and luminous eyes that burned like twin pools of molten crimson. Two elongated, ivory fangs rested against his lower lip, glistening faintly in the dim violet light.

In his right hand, Cassian held a long, slender glass goblet filled with a dark, viscous liquid; his left hand rested casually on the armrest of his bone throne, long crimson claws tapping rhythmically against the armrest.

His gaze drifted down the long hall, settling upon Kyle with a cold, predatory amusement.

"So," Cassian spoke, his voice smooth, velvety, yet carrying a terrifying, echoing weight that resonated directly inside their skulls. "The shadow-bearer finally stumbles into my sanctum. I must admit, Kyle Conner, I expected you to bleed out long before you reached my plateau."

Cassian took a slow, deliberate sip from his glass, his crimson eyes narrowing slightly as he inspected the four companions standing at the threshold.

"You have systematically dismantled my outer sectors," Cassian continued softly, setting his goblet down on a small obsidian table beside the throne. "You broke my blood-crystal cores, slaughtered my elites, and turned Malakor to dust. Impressive work for a lower-realm mongrel and his motley crew."

Kyle didn’t answer immediately. He stopped sixty paces from the foot of the dais, his boots coming to a rest against the cold marble floor. His dark shadow blade remained drawn at his side, its dark steel quiet, catching the faint violet glow emanating from the swirling spatial ceiling above.

Beside him, Falcon took a slight, guarded step forward, her brown skin glistening under the strange light, her four dark brown tails swishing restlessly behind her back. She kept her golden eyes fixed on the vampire on the throne, her fingers flexing near her waist, ready to ignite her emerald poison fire at the slightest shift in his posture.

Seraphina held her ocean trident in a low, defensive guard, her blue eyes narrowed as she continuously swept her elemental perception across the Great Hall. "Kyle... his blood-mana isn’t just inside his body," she whispered softly, her voice barely carrying to Kyle’s ear. "It’s fused into the entire room. The throne, the pillars, the floor—he’s maintaining a blood-domain that covers every inch of this hall."

’Scans confirm,’ Snow’s calm, analytical voice echoed inside Kyle’s mind. ’Lord Cassian’s vampiric core is ninety-four percent integrated with the Spire’s primary spatial key. Striking his physical body will achieve nothing unless the spatial-blood binding to the throne is severed first.’

"He’s using the throne as a reservoir," Kyle thought back silently.

Kyle looked up at the vampire patriarch, his slitted dark eyes emotionless. "You didn’t leave guards in this hall because you didn’t think they were necessary, Cassian?"

Cassian let out a soft, mocking laugh that echoed off the high vaulting. He slowly stood up from the Throne of Marrow.

The moment his boots touched the top step of the dais, the entire Great Hall shuddered. The swirling liquid space on the ceiling churned violently, sending long, thick tendrils of dark crimson blood-energy shooting downward like living nerve cables, connecting directly into the back of his robes.

"Guards?" Cassian sneered, stepping down the first two steps of the dais with fluid, predatory grace. "Why would a lion surround himself with sheep when four fat lambs walk right into his den? Look at you, Kyle. You stand there thinking this journey was a crusade of your own making. You think you broke through my sectors by sheer grit and strategy."

Cassian stopped on the third step, his red eyes blazing with ancient arrogance.

"Every core you shattered was an overflow valve," Cassian revealed, spreading his hands wide. "A valve holding back the raw, volatile spatial pressure of the Spire’s gate. I needed a dark core—someone whose elemental density could absorb and discharge those spatial shockwaves without collapsing my castle before the convergence was ready. You did my dirty work for me, boy."

Yua’s eyes flashed a dangerous, feral crimson. "What is this ancient leech rambling about?" she growled low in her throat, her claws extending as dark blood-mana crackled around her forearms. "He’s just mad he had to sit on a chair made of old bones while we wrecked his house."

"Let him talk," Kyle said quietly, his gaze locked on Cassian.

"You don’t understand your own value, Kyle," Cassian said softly, taking another step down the dais. His pureblood vampiric pressure expanded outward, causing the air in the room to turn ice-cold and smell of thick, fresh copper. "You carry a void element that can bridge the lower realms and the upper Spire. Hand over your dark gauntlet’s core, yield your companions as blood-tributes to my clan, and I might just grant you the honor of becoming my high thrall."

The silence returned to the Great Hall, heavy and suffocating.

Falcon, Seraphina, and Yua didn’t speak. They didn’t offer frantic pleas or pull at Kyle’s coat. They stood beside him in a tight, unbroken arc, their elemental domains lingering at the ready, putting their complete, quiet trust in his answer.

Kyle stood still for a long moment. He looked at the pale, arrogant face of the vampire who had ordered the slaughter of thousands across the Crimson Ridge to feed his gate. He thought about the endless Chapters of blood, pain, and loss he and his team had walked through to reach this marble floor.

Slowly, Kyle raised his left hand.

The pitch-black metal of his demon gauntlet caught the crimson light of the spatial ceiling. A faint, quiet wisp of black smoke began to curl from the fingertips, not in a violent explosion, but in a slow, steady, concentrated hum.

"You talk a lot about blood and value, Cassian," Kyle said, his voice quiet, flat, and colder than the subterranean abyss beneath the Bone Church. "But you missed the one thing that matters."

Kyle raised his head, his dark brown eyes shifting into narrow, razor-sharp slitted pupils that burned with a pure, unyielding black flame.

"You aren’t the hunter here," Kyle continued, raising his dark shadow blade until the tip pointed directly at Cassian’s throat. "You’re just the last core in my way."

Cassian’s mocking smile vanished completely. His sharp features contorted into a mask of pure, vicious fury, his crimson eyes flashing with lethal intent.

"Insolent worm!" Cassian roared, his voice splitting into a dual-toned vampiric screech. "I will drink every drop of vital essence from your veins!"

Cassian raised his right hand, snapping his long, clawed fingers once.

*THUUUUUUM!*

The Great Hall exploded into a tempest of spatial distortion and blood-fire. The tendrils of crimson energy connected to Cassian’s back flared violently, generating a massive wave of gravimetric and blood-pressure that slammed downward across the entire marble floor.

The marble floor shattered into millions of floating, anti-gravity stone fragments that hovered in mid-air.

"Seraphina! Falcon! Yua!" Kyle shouted, his dark coat whipping wildly as he drove his heels into a floating stone block to anchor himself. "Formation Zero! We cut his blood cables first!"

"On it!" Falcon yelled, her four dark brown tails bursting into a blinding, roaring inferno of emerald poison fire that pushed back the localized blood-domain around them.

"Ocean Domain: Tidal Sanctuary!" Seraphina commanded, creating a massive, rotating sphere of pressurized sea water that wrapped around the three women, shielding them from the crushing gravimetric pressure.

Yua leaped off the water sphere, her crimson claws blazing with condensed blood-mana as she shot straight toward the left crimson tendril connected to Cassian’s back. "Let’s see how strong your blood is when I drain it dry, old leech!"

Cassian didn’t even turn his head. He simply flicked his left hand, and a localized wall of compressed, blood-stained spatial force materialized in front of her, absorbing her claw strike harmlessly and throwing her backward with three times her own kinetic force.

Before Cassian could lower his hand, a shadow erased the light above his head.

Kyle had bypassed the ground entirely, jumping across three floating marble fragments in a fraction of a millisecond. His dark shadow blade was wrapped in a dense, thirty-foot pillar of pitch-black demon fire—not fueled by desperation or erratic system overload, but by a calm, absolute mastery of his core element.

"Demon Art: Void Divider!" Kyle roared, bringing his blade down in a brutal, vertical strike meant to cleave Cassian and the Throne of Marrow clean in half.

Cassian raised his slender, clawed hand, his palm glowing with a dense, blood-red spatial barrier.

*KA-RACK-BOOOOOOM!*

The collision of pitch-black demon fire and crimson vampiric barrier created a blinding shockwave that blew out every single obsidian pillar in the Great Hall, sending a roar of thunder echoing across the High Plateau as the final battle against Lord Cassian truly began.