Chapter 786: Alexa realizes she has lost control.

High atop the devastated hill, while the entire kingdom burned in different places and distant screams still echoed among the colossal trees of Sankaria, Vergil remained motionless with his usual uneasy serenity. The dark energy that bound Alexa’s surviving siblings by the neck remained firm, lifting their bodies a few inches off the ground. They struggled less now. Not because they had accepted the situation, but because they finally understood the futility of resistance.

Below them, the earth trembled at irregular intervals whenever Alexa collided with a fortress, tore through a wall, or cut through an entire battalion like a living blade. Columns of smoke rose on the horizon. Black lightning cut through the red sky. The smell of blood and burnt wood dominated the air.

Vergil observed the battlefield in the distance for a few seconds, then turned his gaze to the werewolves suspended before him.

"One question."

His voice came out low, almost bored. Still, the three stiffened instantly.

"Why did you torture her?"

The largest of them, a brown-furred warrior with half an ear torn off, tried to speak first. The pressure on his neck lessened just enough to allow broken words.

"She... she betrayed the race..."

Vergil didn’t react.

The second, thinner, covered in ritual markings on his arms, tried to finish quickly, as if speed could save him.

"She abandoned the clans. Fled with a vampire. Joined the enemy. Dishonored the blood. We needed... we needed to punish her."

The third, clearly the youngest, trembled so much that his teeth chattered.

"It was the old law... everyone agreed... we couldn’t allow..."

Vergil tilted his head slightly. His expression didn’t change, but something in the air grew colder.

"A vampire."

He repeated the words as if testing the taste of something stupid.

"Is that the justification?"

None of them answered. The silence became worse than any accusation.

Vergil took a few slow steps forward. The bodies of the three followed the movement in the air, dragged by dark telekinesis like animals bound by invisible chains. Behind him, another explosion illuminated the distant forest. The flash revealed hundreds of werewolves fleeing among the gigantic roots.

"Do you even know what she was doing?"

The brothers exchanged quick glances. The one with ritual marks tried to answer.

"She was... hiding with that creature."

Vergil stared at him for two seconds.

"Wrong."

The word came out dryly.

"She joined a vampire who was hunting Alucard."

The three froze.

Even among monsters, that name carried weight. Not because of childish legend, but because of brutal statistics. Alucard was synonymous with disappearances, massacres, and dynasties brought down in a single night. The mere fact that someone would willingly confront him bordered on insanity.

Vergil continued, in the same calm tone.

"She must have killed more than twenty thousand vampires in the last six months."

This time, the pallor was immediate. The larger warrior’s eyes widened. The younger one lost focus completely. The one with ritual markings opened his mouth and found nothing to say.

Vergil observed them as one analyzes insects.

"Twenty thousand."

He repeated, just to make sure they understood.

"While you were beating drums about tribal honor, she was cleansing nations where vampires were hiding, hunting them across continents, crossing borders and ripping off heads without mercy."

Another tremor swept through Sankaria. In the distance, an entire tower collapsed. A black-gold flash rose into the sky.

Alexa continued working. The larger warrior tried to regain some pride.

"We... didn’t know."

Vergil raised an eyebrow.

"Exactly."

The energy around their necks tightened a little more. Veins bulged in their temples.

"You knew nothing."

He began to slowly circle around the three, each word precise, measured, and cruel.

"You didn’t know where she had been. You didn’t know who she fought. You didn’t know what she endured. You didn’t know how many monsters she killed. You didn’t know what she became through her own strength."

He stopped before the youngest.

"Even so, you judged."

He turned to the scarred one.

"You condemned."

He looked at the larger one.

"You tortured."

None of them could hold his gaze.

Vergil looked back at the burning horizon.

"I honestly don’t know what they did to incapacitate her."

The comment was almost casual.

"Drugs, seals, ambush, group cowardice... probably a mixture of all three."

The one with the ritual marks murmured, desperately.

"We used the lunar chains... and the seal of the elders... she was weakened..."

Vergil let out a small nasal sound, something between disdain and confirmation.

"Of course."

He looked at them again.

"Because in fair combat, she was clearly stronger than all of you combined."

The words struck deeper than any physical blow.

For werewolves raised in a hierarchy of strength, hearing that was like being publicly dismembered.

The larger one growled, trying to react.

"Lies..."

Vergil moved two fingers.

The warrior’s left knee buckled backward with a horrible crack. The scream echoed across the hill.

"Don’t interrupt me."

Silence returned immediately.

Vergil continued.

"Even before I touched her, even before this new form, even before I healed a single wound... she was already above you."

He glanced briefly at the destroyed city in the distance.

"Now the difference is just more visible."

On the horizon, Alexa crashed through an entire wall with her body, emerging on the other side carrying three captains by the faces before smashing them against the ground. The impact opened another crater.

The brothers saw it.

And trembled.

Vergil noticed.

"You made a very common mistake."

His voice was almost didactic now, which made it all the more disturbing.

"You confused capture with superiority."

He approached until he was inches from the larger warrior’s face.

"If ten hunters poison a sleeping tiger, chain its paws and pull out its teeth, that doesn’t make them stronger than the tiger."

He took a step back.

"It only makes them stupid enough to stay near it when it wakes up."

In the distance, another roar from Alexa echoed through Sankaria, followed by hundreds of screams.

The younger one began to cry silently.

"Please... we follow orders..."

Vergil didn’t even look at him.

"All cowards say that."

The one with ritual markings desperately tried to bargain.

"If we release her... if we ask for forgiveness... if we rebuild—"

Vergil interrupted him.

"You still don’t understand."

The dark energy increased in density, darkening around the suspended bodies.

"This isn’t about forgiveness anymore."

He pointed to the field of ruins below.

"Nor about politics."

He pointed to the red sky.

"Nor about Sankaria."

Finally, he pointed to the black-gold flash that moved, destroying battalions in the distance.

"It’s about her finally being able to answer."

The larger warrior, breathing heavily, gathered the last of his courage.

"So... you’re going to let her exterminate our race?"

Vergil thought for a real second. "No."

The three stared at him with miserable hope.

He finished:

"I’ll let her decide how much is left."

The hope died instantly.

Closer now, Alexa could be heard laughing as she crossed another line of defense. The sound arrived carried by the wind like an insane song.

Vergil closed his eyes for a moment, almost savoring it.

"Listen to this."

The three remained motionless.

"This sound is the direct result of your choices."

He opened his eyes again, cold and empty.

"You took someone who already knew how to kill monsters... and gave her a personal motive."

The scarred one began to plead, words jumbled, meaningless. The youngest sobbed. The tallest just stared at the ground, finally broken.

Vergil lost interest.

With a simple gesture of his hand, the three were thrown forward and pinned to the ground up to their necks, lined up side by side before the hill, forced to watch the destruction of the entire kingdom.

"Stay alive." He put his hands in his pockets. "I want you to see it to the end." And, in the distance, Alexa spread her wings again before swooping down on yet another city.

Alexa tore through the sky of Sankaria like a cursed star. Her hybrid body cut through the red clouds in black and gold lines, diving from one fortress to another without any pause between one massacre and the next. The entire kingdom had already lost any sense of battlefront, command, or organized resistance. What existed now were isolated pockets of despair trying to survive for a few more minutes.

She fell upon a circular wall built between colossal roots and pierced stone, iron, and flesh in the same impact. The entire structure collapsed inward. Hundreds of soldiers waiting behind the gates were crushed by tons of rubble before they could even draw their weapons. The few who escaped tried to run through the inner streets, but Alexa was already among them.

Her claws moved in short, precise, almost elegant arcs. Bodies tumbled, split in two. Arms still holding swords spun in the air. Heads rolled down stone steps as blood rained down the alleyways. She laughed as she walked, as if rediscovering the pleasure of breathing.

Further on, a company of archers climbed onto the rooftops and fired together. Black arrows covered the sky towards her chest. Alexa merely opened one wing.

The pressure generated launched all the arrows back with absurd violence. The archers were pinned to walls, roofs, and towers behind them. Some didn’t even have time to scream. She landed on the central tower and crushed it with her heel, sinking the entire structure into the ground.

In the valley to the north, thousands of warriors were trying to reorganize a retreat. Flags of different clans had been hastily gathered into a last defensive formation. Shields raised, spears lowered, war beasts chained ahead. The general bellowed orders, his voice broken by fear.

Alexa landed hundreds of meters from them and began to walk.

Each step left luminous cracks in the earth. Each wingbeat dragged dust, blood, and corpses. When the first soldiers threw spears, she suddenly accelerated and cut through the entire line like a living projectile.

The soldiers behind the first row only realized what had happened when their comrades were torn to pieces. Alexa emerged from behind the formation, spun in the air, and unleashed five energy blasts that cut through dozens of meters of troops. Shields shattered, armor ripped open, torsos torn apart.

The war beasts roared and charged.

She grabbed one by the upper jaw, another by the lower jaw, and ripped its skull in half with her bare hands. The second received a kick to the neck that ripped its head from its body. The third tried to bite her wing and exploded when she discharged energy through the bony membrane.

In less than two minutes, the valley had become a fresh graveyard.

Vergil watched everything from the top of the hill, hands in his pockets, his face as neutral as before. Ahead of her, Alexa’s brothers remained rooted to the spot up to their necks, forced to watch each sector of the kingdom fall. The reflection of the fires danced in their wide eyes.

"She’s adapting quickly," Vergil commented, almost to himself.

In southern Sankaria, Alexa found an underground complex used as a shelter. Hundreds of werewolves, many unarmed, had hidden beneath stone gates marked with ancient runes. The smell of fear rose from the cracks. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

She landed before the entrance and touched the rock with the tip of a finger.

The entire mountain trembled.

The runes shattered. The gate imploded inward. Tunnels collapsed in succession. Screams echoed for several seconds before being muffled by tons of earth.

Alexa closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

"Much better."

She returned to the sky.

Hours seemed to fit into minutes. Wherever she went, towers fell, forests burned, armies vanished. Her name was no longer spoken as that of a traitor, but as that of a calamity. Entire clans abandoned ancestral symbols to flee aimlessly among gigantic roots. Some knelt. Others tried to fight out of belated pride.

None made a difference.

She landed in the center of a square occupied by fifty elite warriors. They surrounded her in silence, all veterans marked by scars and war runes. For a moment, no one moved.

Alexa smiled.

"You took your time."

When the first one advanced, she ripped his spine out through his mouth. She used his still-struggling body as a club against the other two. She spun, cut legs, pierced chests, crushed skulls on the pavement. When she finished, she stood alone in the middle of a growing pool of blood and pieces.

She began to breathe faster.

Not from exhaustion. Out of excitement.

Power coursed through her like liquid fire. Each death seemed to feed some broken part of her mind that now only wanted more. More ruin. More punishment. More silence after the screams.

Then she heard a different sound.

It wasn’t war. It wasn’t order. It wasn’t a threat.

It was crying.

Alexa slowly turned her face.

Behind the wreckage of a broken statue, hidden among red-stained stones, a werewolf child watched her. Too small to fight, too small to understand what that winged creature covered in blood was. Its enormous eyes trembled. Its whole body hunched over. Its hands clutched a cracked wooden toy.

For a moment, Alexa didn’t move.

The black and gold claws still vibrated in her fingers.

The child sobbed.

Something inside her broke.

The energy around her body oscillated violently. Her wings trembled. Her horns began to recede. Her claws dissolved into luminous particles. The gleam in her eyes faded until only her face remained, gasping, bloodied, and suddenly horrified.

Alexa fell to her knees.

"Wh... what..."

She looked at her own hands.

They were covered up to her wrists.

She turned her head slowly from side to side. The entire square was a slaughterhouse. Destroyed houses. Scattered bodies. Limbs trapped in stones. Blood running through the gutters like narrow rivers.

Her gaze rose to the horizon.

All of Sankaria was smoking.

Burned forests. Broken fortresses. Fallen towers. Trails littered with corpses. The air heavy with ash and iron.

"...What happened?"

The voice came out weak, unrecognizable even to her.

From the top of the distant hill, Vergil answered without raising his tone, and yet the voice reached her ears clearly.

"You need to control this force."

Alexa slowly raised her head toward him.

Vergil remained motionless against the red sky.

"You’ve already killed more than half the army~"

The comment came out almost casually, as if describing the weather.

Alexa’s eyes widened.

"Half...?"

She stood up unsteadily, turning slowly as her mind tried to grasp the reality around her. There were no more battle lines. There was no more coordinated resistance. The werewolf kingdom was broken into dozens of zones of fire and panic.

Sankaria had become a sea of ​​blood.

The child still stared at her from behind the statue.

Alexa took a step back.

Then another.

Her hands trembled.

"I..."

She couldn’t finish.

Vergil continued in the distance.

"If you’re going to wield power like that, learn not to lose yourself within it."

The wind swept through the rubble. For the first time since it all began, Alexa felt cold.

The child dropped the wooden toy and ran.

Alexa didn’t chase after her.

She stood in the center of the carnage she had created, listening to distant screams, smelling the scent of thousands of dead bodies, while the red sky of Sankaria finally began to look less like victory and more like a mirror.