Chapter 1381: The Guard’s Covenant
Inside the Capital of the of the Ancestral Blood Empire — The Royal Hall
Drip... drip...
At the center of a towering hall gilded in gold and crimson banners, a silence heavy with disdain settled over the crowd—thousands in attendance, yet no one dared breathe too loudly. There, under the judgmental eyes of nobles and highborn warriors, knelt a bloodied young man. Naked, humiliated, and broken.
Blood trickled steadily from his nose and lips, pooling beneath him like an offering to the marble floor. His left arm was gone—ripped clean from the shoulder—and his right hand had been severed, leaving only a raw, cauterized stump. Even with his face half-buried in the ground, the agony etched into every trembling muscle of his body made one thing clear:
He had endured a nightmare few could imagine... and survived.
"Hmmm..."
Seated atop the grand obsidian throne was a figure whose skin shimmered with a reddish hue, as if perpetually bathed in the glow of freshly spilled blood. His garments bore the mark of ancient royalty—adorned with soul-thread embroidery and divine sigils—and his thick hair flowed in dark, sinuous tendrils that seemed almost... alive.
His attention, however, was not on the pitiful figure groveling before him, but on the item encased in crystal beside him: a full-body set of black armor. Sleek, brutal, elegant. It radiated an aura of silence, like a hunter that never missed.
The only blemish: a shallow dent at the chest, barely noticeable—but to those who knew what it meant, it told an entire story.
"Truly extraordinary," the Emperor on his thrown muttered, admiring the armor’s craftsmanship.
"That set withstood a strike from me—a strike fueled by a Nexus State level of power—and it didn’t shatter. That alone is worth a legend."
He gestured lazily toward the mangled prisoner.