Multiple vines rushed toward Lucian. He activated Phantom Walk and light steps together, his body flickering between positions with supernatural fluidity. The vines crashed into empty stone, cracking the floor where he’d been standing. He reappeared three meters to the left, drawing the creature’s attention with a Light Blade slash across its nearest tendril.

The blade bit into the vine but barely cut halfway through. The plant’s body was dense — far tougher than the scorpion’s shell. The wound oozed red sap but healed within seconds.

Ryan seized the opening. He thrust both palms forward, firing a concentrated blast of ice directly at the creature’s central body. The ice struck the mass of intertwined vines and froze the outer layer white.

For one second, the plant seemed to slow.

Then the ice cracked and shattered. The vines beneath were completely unharmed. The creature’s body was simply too dense, too reinforced by years of blood feeding, for a standard ice blast to penetrate.

"It’s tanking everything!" Ryan shouted.

Lucian launched three Blood Spears in quick succession — each one sharp, crystallized, and aimed at the creature’s maw. The spears hit the outer vines and stuck. One penetrated an inch. Another bounced off. The third snapped in half.

The creature didn’t even flinch.

Its mouth opened wide. A gurgling, retching sound came from deep within its body — like something building pressure in a pipe.

"Ryan! Move!"

A jet stream of poison erupted from the creature’s mouth. A concentrated, high-pressure stream of dark purple liquid that hissed and steamed as it hit the air. It arced toward Ryan with terrifying speed.

Ryan raised an ice wall. The poison struck it.

SSSSSS.

The wall melted. The stone beneath the wall bubbled and dissolved.

Ryan raised a second wall. It melted faster.

A third wall. Gone in a second.

The poison stream was relentless. Ryan backpedaled, his face white. Lucian’s body blurred. He crossed the distance in a flash of speed, grabbed Ryan by the back of his collar, and yanked him sideways. The poison stream sliced through the air where Ryan’s torso had been, splashing against the cavern wall and boring a hole the size of a basketball into solid stone.

Ryan’s breathing was ragged. "That would have dissolved me."

"Then consider yourself lucky."

The creature retracted its mouth, the gurgling sound building again for another attack. But in that brief moment when its maw had been fully open, Ryan had seen something.

"Lucian!" Ryan’s voice cut through the chaos. "There’s an eye. Inside its mouth. That’s its weakness!"

Lucian’s eyes narrowed. A small, luminescent green organ deep inside the maw, surrounded by teeth. The creature’s core. Its brain. Its heart. Everything.

"And it can’t move," Ryan added, his tactical mind already working. "It’s rooted. The vines have reach, but the body itself is stationary. It can’t chase us. It can’t reposition."

Both of them went quiet for a fraction of a second. Their eyes met.

No words were needed.

They flanked the plant beast from both sides forcing it to split its attention so that they could find the opening.

Lucian broke left. Ryan broke right.

The creature’s vines surged in both directions simultaneously — half toward Lucian, half toward Ryan. The cavern erupted into chaos.

Vines whipped toward Lucian from every angle. He ducked, weaved, and pivoted with Phantom Walk, but the sheer volume was overwhelming. A tendril caught his shoulder. Another grazed his ribs. A third wrapped around his ankle before he severed it with a Light Blade.

On the other side, Ryan raised his hands and fired a continuous stream of iceat the vines themselves. The ice coated each tendril, freezing the surface. It didn’t stop them. The vines were too sturdy, too dense. But it slowed them. And slowing them was enough.

Ryan danced between the sluggish vines, his Critical Mind processing their trajectories in real time, predicting each strike before it landed. An ice spike here to deflect. An ice wall there to block. A frozen patch on the ground to trip a vine mid-lunge.

Meanwhile, Lucian pressed the attack. He channeled Light Blade energy into the Sword of Aikis, the starsteel edge glowing white-hot as light mana and the sword’s natural amplification overlapped. The combined cutting power was significantly greater than either alone.

SLASH.

He severed a vine clean through. Two halves fell to the ground, twitching. The cut cauterized instantly — the light energy burning the wound shut.

Three more vines rushed him. He cut through the first. Sidestepped the second. The third caught him across the back, thorns tearing through his uniform and into his flesh. He felt blood — his blood — drawn toward the creature’s body.

It was feeding. Even through its vines, it was drinking his blood.

"Fuck off," Lucian growled, severing the vine with a backhand slash.

The creature shifted. The vines attacking Ryan retracted. All of them. Every single tendril redirected toward Lucian.

"It’s focusing on you now!" Ryan shouted.

"Because I’m a vampire! My blood has more energy than yours!" Lucian ducked under a vine sweep. "It’s drawn to higher-quality blood!"

"Flattered for you! What’s the plan?!"

Ryan didn’t wait for an answer. He planted his feet, raised both hands, and began chanting.

"’Frost of the eternal winter, blade of the frozen abyss — descend upon mine enemy and shatter all warmth from its bones.’"

The temperature in the cavern plummeted. Ice crystals formed in the air. Ryan’s mana surged with a full incantation. Three to five seconds of concentrated, maximum-power spellcasting.

The vines surged toward Ryan, sensing the threat. Lucian intercepted, cutting through two, binding three more with Scarlet Threads. His threads snapped under the strain. He cut through two more vines, his blade a blur of white light.

Ryan’s eyes snapped open.

"ICE SLASH!"

A massive arc of frozen energy erupted from his palms — a crescent wave of absolute cold that screamed across the cavern and struck the Blood Lily dead center.

The creature’s entire body froze. Every vine. Every thorn. The outer surface of its maw. Solid ice. The temperature was so extreme that frost crept across the stone floor in expanding rings.

For one perfect second, the Blood Lily was a frozen sculpture.

Then it shattered the ice.

CRACK.

Vines burst free. The maw opened. But the freeze had done its job — it had delayed the creature’s response by exactly the amount of time Lucian needed.

He was already there.

The ice shattered around him as he launched himself into the creature’s open maw. The teeth — jagged, bone-white, each one the size of a dagger — closed around him. He felt them scrape against his skin. One pierced his side. Another caught his thigh. Pain screamed through his nervous system.

But the mouth wasn’t closing fast enough.

Lucian’s system pulsed. The Blood Clone cooldown — one hour. He’d used the clone over two hours ago against the beast horde above. It was ready.

Blood Clone.

A sphere of blood erupted from his chest inside the maw. It expanded, forcing the creature’s mouth open. The clone materialized inside the gap — arms braced against the upper and lower jaws, its blood sword wedged crosswise like a lever. The clone’s feet dug into the creature’s lower teeth, its hands gripping the upper jaw.

The mouth strained to close. The clone held.

Lucian drove the Sword of Aikis — reinforced with Light Blade, the edge blazing white — straight into the green eye at the back of the creature’s throat.

SHLK.

The blade pierced the eye. Purple fluid sprayed. The creature shrieked — a sound so piercing that the cavern walls vibrated. But the sword stopped. It hit something beneath the eye — a dense, fibrous core that the blade couldn’t cut through.

Lucian frowned. Not deep enough.

The eye’s surface bled. Purple blood — the plant’s blood — pooled around the wound. And Lucian felt it.

Lucian placed his palm over the wound. Blood Manipulation activated. The plant’s own purple blood — already spilled from the sword wound — responded to his will. It hardened, crystallized, and wrapped around the blade of the Sword of Aikis like a second edge. A sheath of weaponized blood that reinforced the starsteel and extended its cutting power.

He drove the sword deeper.

The creature shrieked again. Louder. The vines outside thrashed wildly, smashing into walls, cracking stone, destroying everything they could reach. The maw began to close with tremendous force.

CRUNCH.

The Blood Clone burst. The compressed jaws slammed shut around Lucian’s body with the force of a hydraulic press. Teeth pierced his shoulders. His ribs. His forearm. He felt bones creak.

But the sword was already through.

He drove it to the hilt.

The green eye split apart. The dense core beneath it cracked. And then — silence.

The vines went limp. They hung in the air for a moment, trembling, before collapsing to the cavern floor like severed puppet strings. The maw slowly loosened. The teeth retracted. The creature’s massive body sagged, its structure losing all integrity, the vines beginning to rot and darken in real time.

Lucian crawled out of the mouth.

He was soaked. Head to toe in purple blood. It dripped from his silver hair, ran down his face, stained his torn uniform, and pooled beneath his boots. His wounds were already closing — Eternal Regeneration knitting flesh back together as his Blood Energy worked overtime.

Ryan rushed over, grabbing Lucian’s arm and helping him stay upright. His eyes were wide as he took in Lucian’s appearance — purple from head to toe, bleeding from a dozen puncture wounds that were sealing themselves shut.

"You look like shit," Ryan breathed.

Lucian spat purple blood onto the ground. "That was one crazy plan you made."

Ryan blinked. "My plan? You’re the one who jumped inside a plant’s mouth!"

"You found the eye. You froze it so I could get inside. That was the plan."

Ryan opened his mouth. "I... okay. That was the plan. But you didn’t have to agree to it so fast."

Lucian leaned against the cavern wall, breathing slowly. His Blood Energy was low. His mana was at thirty percent. But he was alive.

The creature’s body continued to decompose. Within minutes, the massive vine structure had collapsed into a heap of rotting organic matter. The sweet fragrance was gone, replaced by the sharp, acrid smell of decay.

And there, in the center of the rotting remains, something glowed.

A core. Not a beast core. Something different.

Lucian pushed himself off the wall and walked toward it. Ryan followed.

Embedded in the remains was a crystalline structure — small, about the size of a fist, pulsing with a deep crimson light. It was warm to the touch. Alive. And it hummed with a frequency that made Lucian’s blood sing.

His system pulsed.

╔═══════════════════╗

║ ITEM IDENTIFIED ║

║ ◀ BLOOD LILY HEART CORE ▶ ║

║ Rank: E-Rank (Rare Variant) ║

║ Type: Plant / Blood Hybrid Core ║

║ The crystallized core of a mutated Blood Lily Flower.║

║Contains concentrated blood mana and rare plant essences. ║

║ Uses: ║

║ — Alchemy ingredient (high-tier) ║

║ — Blood Palace cultivation fuel ║

║ — Trade value: Extremely high ║

╚═════════════════════╝

Lucian picked it up. The warmth spread through his fingers, up his arm, and settled in his chest — right where the Crimson Origin Palace burned.

Ryan stared at it. "Is that what I think it is?"

"Probably not. But it’s valuable."

"How valuable?"

"Enough to fund your research for a while."

Ryan’s eyes lit up. Then he looked past Lucian, deeper into the cavern, where the passage continued descending into darkness.

"There’s more down there, isn’t there?"

Lucian followed his gaze. His Blood Sense still picked up that massive heartbeat — farther now. Deeper. Still pulsing.

"Yeah," Lucian said quietly. "There is."