Blood Awakening: The Strongest Hybrid and His Vampire Bride-Chapter 356: The Tower’s top floors...

Nikolai didn't understand how tall the towers could soar.

He staggered, his exposed muscles bloody, covered in lacerations that seemed impossible to heal with special medicine. The monsters became twisted, bizarre and deadly once he defeated himself and started to climb beyond the 60th floor.

"Damn it..."

Undead goblins that shambled without life until the moment they sensed a living creature...

Then they rushed at them, swelling up like popcorn before exploding like bombs. Bone, flesh and sinew tearing through the air, ripping his body apart with their unholy and poisonous blood and flesh.

Nikolai staggered as the portal after the door behind him slammed shut, sealing off the blood-slick steps from the 62nd floor.

His breath rasped from his throat, shallow and metallic. His body burned, and his side still hadn't closed—deep gouges through flesh and sinew, crusted with dried gore. The potion he'd taken two floors ago didn't work anymore. It just sat in his gut like lead.

He leaned against the wall.

The corridor was wrong.

Because the air wasn't hot or cold, just thick.

Thick like syrup. Like the dungeon itself was breathing around Nikolai, a soft, squishy wrapping coiling around his chest.

No torches lit the walls.

Instead, the stone glistened—wet, almost pulsing.

The softest hum vibrated through the floor, and beneath that, something else. A wet slapping. A squish. A noise that might've been chewing.

He reached for his claws out of reflex.

But nothing moved.

He took one step forward.

Then another.

No mobs attacked. No alarms triggered.

Just the same soft, sickening squelch echoing faintly from beyond the next bend.

As he passed one archway, he noticed the wall wasn't made of stone anymore.

It was made of bodies.

They weren't alive. Or dead. Just still. Limbs fused into the rock like plaster. Skulls bulged under thin flesh like unfinished sculptures. One hand twitched as he passed.

Nikolai stopped.

The smell hit him late — copper, bile, wet thread.

A workshop. A butcher's table that had been used for too long.

Even so, nothing attacked.

He pressed deeper into the floor's belly, step by step, as the corridor widened. The glow from the archway ahead pulsed faintly. No firelight. No aura, or electricity.

Something internal.

He paused at the final threshold.

Beyond it, a massive chamber stretched wide and domed.

The centre was empty, clean, and polished like surgical steel. No rot, no blood, no damage.

Just a single high platform near the back, veiled in gauze-like curtain sheets.

And shadowed figures moving behind it.

Slow.

Deliberate.

Crafting.

Nikolai didn't step inside.

Not yet.

Because for the first time in hours, he realised...

This floor wasn't trying to kill him.

It was waiting for him to come closer.

And someone—something was watching.

Not with hate.

But with interest.

—

Meanwhile, back in the Volkov mansion...

The scent of tea lingered in the room.

Morning sun poured through the tall windows, casting soft golden lines over the cushions and blankets scattered across the floor. Someone had cracked a window earlier — maybe Leona — and now a faint breeze filtered in, brushing across the girls' sleeping forms.

Selene stirred first.

Her fingers twitched around the folds of her robe, long lashes fluttering open.

She blinked once.

Twice.

Then slowly sat up.

The warmth beside her was gone.

She looked around.

Risa was curled at the foot of the bed, tails coiled like two black ribbons, one leg lazily kicked off the blanket. Nikita was sprawled on her back, mouth slightly open, mumbling something about "meat skewers."

Amphitrite lay face down, hair like pink sea foam spilling across the pillow, arms tucked beneath her head.

Kumiko...

Selene's brows pulled together.

Kumiko still slept in the far corner, undisturbed, chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm.

But—

There was someone else in the room.

Standing near the window.

Dressed in a soft version of the maid uniform, with golden eyes behind thin-rimmed glasses.

A new clone.

"Good morning Kumiko."

However, that's when Selene noticed that this wasn't a clone, but the real Kumiko, as there was no one in the corner of the bed—it was just pillows.

"Morning, Selene... you seem a little refreshed today."

"R-Really?"

The two women chuckled as the sunlight leaked into the room.

"You felt it too," Selene said.

Kumiko, in a maid outfit, nodded. "A jolt. Like I was struck by lightning."

"Is he alive?"

"Barely," the clone said quietly. "He's suppressing everything — but pain leaks through."

Selene rose fully, brushing her hair behind her ear.

Risa groaned at the noise and cracked one eye open. "Mmnnh... tea?"

Kumiko gave a gentle smile. "Already steeping. You'll have your cup in three minutes, just how you like it. Strong, no sugar."

"Bless you," Risa mumbled, flopping her tail over her face.

Selene didn't laugh this time. She turned back to the window, eyes narrowing just slightly.

"The connection felt... strange."

Kumiko's smile faded. "It's thinning."

"Why?" Selene asked.

"I think he's in the tower, so it's suppressed... too much." Kumiko's voice softened, her fingers curling lightly around the rim of the silver tray she held. "He doesn't want us to feel it. But that only makes it worse."

"You're worried." Selene didn't ask. She already knew.

Kumiko gave a small nod.

"Should we... try to enter?" Selene asked.

"You know we can't." Kumiko's eyes dimmed. "We've not been past floor forty-five. Never mind floor sixty. The system won't allow it. Not even my shadows can pierce the upper zones. It's like the tower's watching him now, not us."

Selene's hands curled into small fists at her sides.

"…Damn it."

Risa's ears perked up, even under her pillow. "Is he in danger again?"

"Danger? No... but he's fighting non-stop... as if possessed."

From the far side of the room, Nikita stirred at last, yawning as she sat up and scratched the back of her head. "Hmmmn... what's with all the tension? Did Nikolai go off again?"

Kumiko turned, still calm. "He's on floor sixty-nine now."

"Haha, nice." Nikita's amused expression caused the other women to look away, covering their faces at how she acted like a man sometimes.

"How is Lunaria?"

"She's out like a light, look..." Nikita ripped off the quilt on the second bed and revealed the naked Lunaria in the most bizarre sleeping position, causing the women to chuckle.

Even Risa stopped moving.

Then, Kumiko turned toward the hallway, setting the tray down gently as she passed.

"I'll prepare food," she said softly. "He's going to need something warm when he comes back."

Selene watched her go, her chest tight.

"...If he comes back," she whispered.

Risa sat up at last, rubbing her arms. "He will."

Nikita stood, eyes flashing.

"And if he doesn't—"

Selene didn't let her finish.

"—Then we go in after him, and scold our stupid husband."

——

Back in the dungeon, Nikolai could feel a tingle in his skin and a slight cold down his spine as if someone were speaking about him. "Hmm..."

Nikolai stepped forward, each stride quiet, measured. The soles of his boots tapped against the cold, metal-like floor — a surface too smooth for stone, too polished for ruin. It reminded him of a surgical table, the kind found in ancient texts describing war-era operations where pain wasn't sedated, just endured.

The gauze curtains ahead hung in layers, still and soft. But the air around them felt wrong—heavy, with the faint shimmer of something living just beneath the surface. The room wasn't silent. Not exactly. Beneath the quiet, a low hum vibrated up through the floor, like an organ playing a single, endless note.

Then—

A snip.

Sharp. Metallic.

Followed by a sickening, wet peel.

The curtain parted slowly as two pale hands emerged, wearing flawless white gloves without a trace of blood. The figure stepped into view gracefully, tall and narrow-shouldered, dressed in a long, high-collared coat stitched from something too smooth to be leather. The fabric shifted strangely under the light, as if it were still alive.

A mask covered most of his face, leaving only his eyes exposed: gold, vertical-slitted, reptilian.

"You're smaller than I expected," the man said, voice flat and smooth. His words weren't mocking, but clinical, like he was diagnosing a sample under glass.

Nikolai said nothing.

The man circled him once, steps slow, precise. His gaze wandered over Nikolai's form like he was reading a blueprint.

"You've done well to make it this far. The Mirror, the bursting goblins, the blood storm on floor sixty-two… You're damaged and fractured. But not broken. Not yet."

He stopped just behind Nikolai, close enough that the air between them tightened.

"That makes you valuable."

Nikolai turned his head slightly. "You always talk this much?"

A faint smile touched the Architect's eyes.

"So I've been told."

With a small gesture, he raised one hand, then snapped his fingers.

The wall to Nikolai's left shifted, not with a grind or slam, but with a soft, fleshy stretch. The stone peeled back like muscle tissue, revealing a long row of figures... no, bodies.

They dragged themselves forward in silence, grotesque and malformed.

Each one twisted in its way — arms with too many elbows, faces built from half-remembered symmetry.

One of them resembled a woman stitched from at least three others. Another had no eyes, but mouths sewn across its spine.

"I tried to understand you," the Architect continued, holding up a fragment of black glass that shimmered like onyx wrapped in fire. "But your blood... It resisted dissection. It burns out my samples before I can even record the nerve map. Your blood is... hostile."

Nikolai's claws flexed again, slow and ready.

"Then stop touching it."

The Architect ignored the warning. His eyes gleamed, not with fury, but something worse — curiosity.

"You're still in denial. You haven't realised it yet."

"Realised what?"

The Architect stepped backwards toward the gauze. "That you don't belong to yourself anymore."

Then everything changed.

The lights dimmed — the sigils across the chamber floor sparked to life, a pale reddish glow spreading like veins through metal.

The malformed creatures on the walls spasmed, twitching into motion. Joints cracked, teeth gnashed, and a low, keening sound began to rise from deep in their throats.

It wasn't a scream.

It was breath.

Their first breath.

Nikolai didn't wait.

He lunged.