“For our lord of souls and for his knight!”

The monsters trying to push into the city.

The knights of the Karshtein Bloodline.

{Stop them!}

{We cannot allow them to interfere with the Grand Duke’s great work!}

And moving to block them—

the knights of the Melchiorn Bloodline.

Kwaang!

Between them,

the full-scale battle... no.

The war had begun.

I hid in a safe place, watching the scene unfold as I thought,

‘The Grand Duke is strong.’

That was an undeniable fact.

But.

I recalled something I had experienced myself not long ago.

‘There’s always... a limit to individual strength.’

Even after pulling together nearly every bit of strength I could muster,

I still hadn’t been able to overcome the Grand Duke’s thralls guarding Ariella’s side.

I had held out for a while and managed to take a few steps toward Ariella,

but that was all.

Compared to their numbers, the damage I had dealt those forces had been negligible.

If Ariella hadn’t changed its mind, I would have done nothing but stall for time before suffering a miserable defeat.

‘That’s the same reason I couldn’t resist the Grand Duke when I came here last time.’

It was a somewhat wasteful method, but

if the enemy had been only the Grand Duke alone,

I did have a means that might have let me resist him.

Even so, when I first met the Grand Duke, I hadn’t been able to choose that option.

The reason was simple.

‘There were too many monsters in this city.’

If the enemy were only the Grand Duke, that would be one thing.

But there was no way I could deal with all those thralls too.

But...

‘Now it’s different.’

After all,

no matter how strong those countless monsters in the city had been,

the city itself was already half a ruin.

There weren’t even many tall buildings left that could cast proper shadows to hide in.

Thanks to that,

the moment that sun rose,

it was able to wipe out the overwhelming majority of those forces.

On the other hand—

{Hup...!}

from behind a knight that looked like a giant turtle,

a massive stone began to gleam.

Paaaaaaaaaaang!!!

The moment its mouth opened,

an enormous burst of light poured out and crushed the enemies in front of it.

{Good!}

{Keep pressing them, brothers!}

No matter how strong the monsters occupying this capital were,

the knights on our side were also quite impressive in quality.

{Khk, you bastards...!}

The enemy might still have the edge in individual strength,

but even so—

{There are... too many of them...!}

Unlike them, who had been nearly annihilated by that sun,

we had brought every last knight from Qingdao.

The disparity in troop numbers was overwhelmingly in our favor.

Ordinarily, moving this many forces all the way to the capital would never have been easy.

But not now.

‘When he used the red clouds to take Jinlei away, sunlight poured down over the area.’

That alone

must have carved a major gap into the enemy forces filling the region.

‘And because I kept our position and the survivors’ position hidden until the very end, their forces must have spread out in every direction to find us.’

And lastly—

‘This is... the capital.’

They must never have imagined

that this place, where all those monsters were gathered, would come under attack and be put in danger.

As a result,

a major hole had opened up in the surrounding forces.

And if that was the case—

‘We’ve got people who specialize in reconnaissance and infiltration.’

Once the unit identified that gap,

leading troops in for an invasion wasn’t impossible.

Their soldiers might be slightly superior one for one,

but in total numbers, we held an overwhelming advantage.

And...

this part I hadn’t expected, but—

Pang!

An enemy knight drove forward a punch carrying the full force of its power.

A fist packed with terrifying strength, fitting for a bloodline that specialized in brute force.

But—

Whoosh...!

{What...?!}

Just before that punch landed,

our knight’s body turned to mist, letting the attack pass uselessly through.

Kwach!

Then, using the large opening that created,

it sank its fangs into the enemy’s neck.

‘The Melchiorn Bloodline’s ability... brute strength is definitely formidable.’

In an all-out clash against ordinary monsters,

that simple but overwhelming power would probably be more useful than the abilities of any other bloodline.

But—

‘In terms of compatibility, we have the advantage.’

The Karshtein Bloodline’s tactics weren’t about trading simple force head-on.

They fought irregularly, using mistform and shadows.

If the enemy had known how to counter mistform, that would have been another matter.

But to them, the Karshtein Bloodline was a people that had perished in some distant ancient age.

There was no way they would know how to deal with it.

{No...!}

KWAaaaaaaANG...!

In the end,

the enemy’s defensive line broke, and our knights poured through it like a flood, filling the city.

***

Kaang, kang...

Once our knights charged into the city,

the battlefield widened, and the fighting spread throughout the capital.

And then,

I turned my gaze toward one part of that battlefield.

The place where the most violent fighting in the city had begun.

{Grand Duke!!!}

A knight in the shape of some enormous monster

shouted, tears of blood streaming from its eyes.

{Because of you, we lost our freedom!}

“......”

{Your bloodline hunted us, turned us into thralls... and then cast us aside and abandoned us!}

The knights under Ariella now—

aside from the ones who had come with us from Korea, most had originally been in Qingdao.

They were people who had suddenly been hunted one day and turned into ghouls,

then abandoned in that city.

{Now we have found a new lord of souls!}

Ghouls were the lowest stratum of vampire society.

For all practical purposes, they were slaves.

Because of the gulf in power, they had never even been able to voice their resentment.

But they must have carried bitterness and grief over that life as ghouls.

{At last, the time for revenge has come...!}

They had been remade as Ariella’s thralls,

and were no longer part of the Grand Duke’s bloodline.

Now they attacked, carrying all the resentment of their past.

Srrrk.

But—

{... ?}

The Grand Duke looked at the monster charging him,

and without even bothering to answer,

simply gave a casual flick of his hand.

...That was enough.

Pshhk...

The knight that had been charging him so fiercely

vanished in an instant.

‘He didn’t even aim for a vital point. He ground its entire body to powder.’

A vampire with monstrous vitality.

And that monster in particular had even looked specialized in physical ability.

Yet with that light flick of his hand, the Grand Duke erased it without leaving so much as a trace.

{Brother!}

{Avenge the bloodline!!!}

Even after seeing ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) that,

Ariella’s knights charged the Grand Duke without hesitation.

Pshhhhk...

Some were dealt fatal wounds with a single casual motion of hand or foot.

Many endured one strike through [Mistform],

but the moment their mistform gave out, death met them in his grasp.

The difference in power was overwhelming.

...But.

That didn’t mean their deaths were meaningless.

KWAaaaaaaANG!

“...Hmph.”

After fighting for some time,

the Grand Duke frowned and looked down at his arm.

That hand was very slightly heated.

“A noble’s strength lies in its thralls.”

Vampires were a race specialized in increasing their thralls,

and compared to their rank, their individual combat power tended to fall a little short.

...The same was true even for a Grand Duke.

“Please do not call it cowardly, just in case...!”

“I wasn’t thinking that, so don’t worry.”

Countless thralls had attacked the Grand Duke, heedless of their own lives.

The Grand Duke had destroyed them with nothing more than casual motions of hand and foot,

but what mattered was that he had needed to move hand and foot to destroy them.

KWAaaaaaaANG!!!

Unlike the previous fight, where Ariella had been forced to focus only on defense,

huge pillars erupted from its body and rushed at the Grand Duke.

If the battle before had been Ariella getting beaten one-sidedly,

then now, while the situation was still heavily against it,

at least a real exchange of attacks had become possible.

‘That should buy us some time.’

We had somehow managed to narrow the gap,

but even so,

that alone wouldn’t be enough to defeat the Grand Duke.

So—

‘We need something more certain.’

And then—

Sssup...

To find that something certain,

I slowly closed my eyes,

opened my mouth,

and stuck out my tongue.

Srrr...

[Taste Bud Enhancement]

The surrounding air touched my tongue,

and I could taste and smell this entire area.

Carrying that sun around.

The fight in front of Ariella.

Through that entire sequence of events, I had already exhausted most of my strength.

It was only because Luca had treated me and improved my condition that I could still do even this much.

Otherwise, I would have needed to rely on Victimia long ago.

Anyway.

I wasn’t in any state to join that battle and bring down the Grand Duke.

So what I had to do wasn’t fight, but something else.

‘This taste and smell...’

I searched for a taste and scent that would be extremely rare in this city.

One was the taste coming from my own side.

And... far away somewhere, I sensed something similar.

‘Found it.’

Pak!

I ran toward the place that scent was coming from.

Before long, a huge building came into view in the distance.

‘A castle.’

A castle that looked strangely familiar.

I recalled what General Kaio had told me.

That the survivors of this land had made one of the capital’s facilities their base.

{Sir Knight!?}

There were monsters inside it too, apparently.

The battle between bloodlines was raging there as well.

But—

{Please wait just a moment!}

One of the monsters that spotted me moved quickly,

then blew out a stream of pure white frost-breath, freezing a gigantic enemy in place.

{This finishes it!}

“Thanks.”

That meant the enemies springing out from deeper inside had already been dealt with.

Passing by the corpses of the fallen monsters,

I headed farther in.

‘Underground.’

The scent continued downward.

The structure was fairly complex, with stairways leading down in twists,

but I followed the taste on my tongue without hesitation.

-Ding.

And as a result—

[You have discovered a gate!]

[Melchiorn Main Castle]

Deep underground,

I saw a huge, dark opening.

From within it poured a blood-scent so dense it could twist your nose sideways.

That hole the Grand Duke had crawled out of—

the one created through that “invitation”—

this had to be it.

But.

That wasn’t what I had been looking for.

Rather... it was the exact opposite.

“Found you.”

This city was already overflowing with the smell of blood.

If I’d tried to find my way by following blood-scent alone, even I would’ve gotten lost halfway.

There was another reason I’d been able to find this place so easily.

‘The smell of a human.’

A scent shared by only two people in this city, counting me.

That was why I’d been able to find it.

[Ingredient Identification (Enhanced)]

[Awakened: Jinlei]

Not long ago,

I had nearly managed to subdue him completely,

only for him to be taken from me by the Grand Duke’s cloud.

And.

The reason I’d wanted to secure him wasn’t just because he looked useful.

‘If I use him...!’

One of the ingredients my operation required.

With that thought,

I looked at him and slipped a hand into my coat.

And then—

just as I was about to take the item out—

“I was wondering what exactly you intended to do, so I stayed and watched for a bit.”

KWAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaANG!!!

That hidden facility deep underground.

In its ceiling—

“So this friend was your target after all.”

“......”

a massive hole was torn open.