The smoke from the combined assault swallowed the center of the chamber completely. No one moved, nor were any words exchanged. They stood in their positions at the edge of the explosion radius, every single one of them panting, their eyes fixed on the settling smoke. Blood Explosion's residual heat still scorched the air. The Impact's redirected force had driven cracks across the entire chamber floor in a spiderweb pattern that covered the stone from wall to wall. Erwin's Maximum Density Gravity-Induced spears had punched craters so deep into the ground around the impact zone that the black stone beneath had cratered. The smoke thinned, then thinned further, and then it was gone. And Haemagogi was standing! Everyone gulped in terror, one thought simultaneously running through their minds. 'How is it still alive?!' He had risen from the ground at some point during the smoke, his grey-scaled skin showing more scratch lines than before, a number of shallow marks crossing his che

The Sanguine Noctis did not begin as a weapon. That much is worth understanding before anything else. In the early centuries of the vampire world, when Haemagogi was still sovereign of the first castle and the godhood ascension ritual was still only a myth passed between the castle walls, there existed the vampire scholars. A sovereign grows strong by taking. By consuming essence, by winning battles, by accumulating strength and will. This was the accepted truth of the vampire world since its creation. But the scholars of the era understood something the sovereigns refused to accept: every act of taking creates a debt. Those scholars believed the path to transcendence was not destruction, but containment. And a being that takes enough, long enough becomes a vessel with no room left for more. In short, they cease to grow. Haemagogi had been sovereign for four hundred years, and just like Vance and Xed had already reached their peak, Haemagogi had stopped growing at two hundred ye

*"Special Trial Complete"* The words echoed with the usual Realm X voice. Erwin was on his knees on the chamber floor with the altar's residual light and strong presence fading away. His hand was bleeding from where the Sanguine Noctis had detonated. His palm was crossed with thin slashes that ran from the base of his fingers to his wrist, and the blood that came out was black. For fleeting moments of silence, he stared at it. They all stared quietly. [HP: 3/150] 'I survived... barely.' Erwin sat back on his heels and tried to breathe properly and found that it took more effort than it should have. His ribs had taken Haemagogi's four-arm impact through the gravity barrier. They had not broken, but the damage it had done was impossible to ignore. Turning his gaze from his hands to look at the center of the chamber, Haemagogi was on the floor. All four arms spread, grey-scaled skin crossed with the dark vein-like lines of the drain's completion. His eyes were open and empty an

The Ascendant Lobby was not one space. It was many spaces, all held inside one impossibly large structure the way a campus held many buildings without becoming one. The moment Erwin stepped off the transfer point and his feet found the floor, that difference was obvious. The Mortal bracket's rest chamber had been silence, sealed walls for one person in one room with one bed. Whatever sounds existed outside that room had not come in. This place, however, had the kind of noise that belonged to somewhere people actually lived. Footsteps all around, voices in languages he didn't recognize yet understood, the distant sound of someone striking a surface repeatedly in a pattern that most likely meant training. Above all else, the smell of something being cooked, which had startled him more than any of it because he hadn't smelled food being cooked since Earth. 'This reminds me.' Erwin's eyes widened slightly. 'I've been so carried away in this Arcane Tower that I had completely forgotte

**Celestial Chamber — Governor's Clone Domain** The projection died before anyone asked it to. It had been running on a loop until now—the ritual chamber, Haemagogi falling, the Sanguine Noctis detonating, Erwin at critical condition with black blood on his palm. The chamber was silent. On their thrones, the seven sat. Xyrros had all four arms folded across his chest. His silver skin, usually calm to look at, had developed something tense around the jaw. He'd been staring at the space where the projection had been for a while now. Auros was the first to say something. "He killed a partial transcendent." "Not sealed it or contained it." He paused. "He killed the vampire monstrosity while rated Ascendant E." Nobody responded. "I want to be clear about what we are looking at," Auros continued. "Because I don't think any of us has said it plainly yet." "We know what we're looking at," Argent responded. "You don't need to say it out loud." "A mortal-bracket climber ended a being