Chapter 260: The Blood Pact
’Lv400?! Did I reach Lv400 because I absorb half of its spirit energy? Wait!! Isn’t this a huge cheat!!’ She thought, her mind reeling at the mathematical absurdity of the System. A single use of the Sun Family Absorption Technique had violently catapulted her past weeks of necessary grinding. She turned her head from the massive, trembling Cobra to Adira, her blue eyes wide with the realization of her own broken potential.
"Create the bond." She ordered, snapping her expression back to an icy mask, turning her head back to the Cobra. It was time to leash this force.
"Yes, Master!!" The dual voices of the beast echoed, laced with deep subservience and residual terror.
The colossal creature moved with surprising grace. The first and second heads reached back towards their single, massive tail, and bit down on it together, forming a perfect, terrifying circle of scales and fangs. As the Ouroboros loop completed, the ambient energy violently surged. The intertwined heads then moved towards Mirabella, their massive fangs parting. Two concentrated, glowing drops of pure heart-blood floated out, hovering in the scorching air before Mirabella like rubies.
"Touch it, Master." The gigantic Cobra said respectfully, its dual voices dropping to a solemn whisper.
Mirabella raised one hand, not a tremble in her fingers, and touched the levitating blood with two fingers. She watched as the ancient blood instantly transformed into blinding crimson light. It shot towards her hand, searing into her flesh without pain, permanently etching two glowing red eyes onto the back of her palm.
She stared at her tattooed hand, feeling the immense, dormant vitality now pulsing within her own veins, then looked down at the two eyes fading into her skin: "Ok then." She nodded her head in satisfaction.
The massive shadow eclipsing her suddenly vanished. She paused, blinking in surprise, and found herself staring at a mere three-foot-long red Cobra coiled harmlessly before her.
"Hey! Why did you reduce in size?" She asked in confusion. In this form, the apocalyptic beast was just an ordinary red king cobra with one head, and peering through the System interface, even its level was only suppressed to Lv250. It was a perfect disguise.
"This is my non-combat form..." The snake said, staring up at Mirabella, its crimson scales shimmering subtly. Conserving such a massive amount of divine energy required a heavily compressed physical vessel.
"Hmm... Ok, I will call you..." Mirabella held her jaw, lost in thought. A creature of this caliber needed a name that carried the weight of its ancient lineage.
"Shesha."
"This servant accepts his name." Shesha bowed its single, sleek head.
’So it’s a male, but the second head has the voice of a female...’ She exhaled, shaking her head slightly at the bizarre biological anomalies of the hybrid: ’I shouldn’t overthink about its anatomy.’
Pushing the thought aside, she turned her attention to a more pressing, dangerous theory.
"Adira, Is your Spirit energy truly infinite?" Mirabella asked, staring intensely at Adira. If absorbing Shesha yielded such explosive results, the Divine Fairy was essentially a walking infinity stone.
"As long there is Spirit energy in heaven and Earth, I have unlimited spirit energy." Adira answered, her tiny voice clear and innocent, entirely unaware of the predatory calculations running through her master’s mind.
"So if I absorb all your spirit energy, it will affect the world?" Mirabella pressed, needing to map out the exact boundaries of Galaxy Fall’s elemental laws.
"Correct, if I ran out of energy, it means heaven and earth has been drained completely, and I will also shatter into light and disappear for good." Adira explained, stating the cosmic truth of her existence as if it were a simple fact.
"This?!" Mirabella was genuinely stunned. Her breath caught in her throat. She had actually planned to absorb the spirit energy from Adira to boost her level, treating the fairy like a limitless battery. But if it had such a severe, apocalyptic disadvantage—the death of her companion and the draining of the world—she would rather take the normal way and not follow lethal shortcuts.
Her calculating demeanor softened. She stepped closer, moving towards Adira, and gently tapped her tiny, glowing head with one finger.
"You are very important to me, Adira... You and Cupcake are the only ones I truly trust, I will never let anyone hurt you two." She gave a genuine smile, a rare, unguarded expression of warmth that thawed her usual Empress-like persona. Her words carried the absolute weight of a vow, completely freezing Adira in place.
’Master... Actually... Actually care about me?’ Adira thought in sheer surprise, her tiny heart swelling with absolute devotion, completely unaware that Mirabella’s newly maxed Mental Overlord passive allowed her to clearly hear the fairy’s touching thoughts.
’So bad... I wasn’t mentioned? Why? Aren’t I good enough?’ Shesha froze on the ground, feeling a sudden chill despite the magma, seeing Mirabella staring at him over her shoulder with a knowing glint in her blue eyes.
’Huh? Can the Master hear thoughts? Isn’t that too terrifying?’ He thought again, a wave of profound dread washing over him as he quickly lowered his gaze to the volcanic ash.
"Okay... Go and rest, we have a competition tomorrow, and maybe Shesha can show us what he can do... Shesha, from on onwards, the fire zone is your home, and you’ll be the guardian here... Serve me well, and you’ll be rewarded."
With that final decree, securing her domain and her forces, Mirabella and Adira vanished in a flash of spatial light, leaving the red-scaled snake behind to guard the heart of the Golden Palace’s inferno.
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[Abyssal]
Far away from the radiant sanctuary of the Golden Palace, the world was painted in suffocating darkness. The Abyssal was a scar on reality, a festering wound of concentrated demonic energy where the laws of Galaxy Fall fractured and die out.
"Leader, It’s done." The Devil Cult Third Lord said with a deep, reverent bow, her dark robes shifting like liquid shadow.
Dracula nodded her head, her pale features illuminated by the ghastly light of a dead realm. She turned around to survey the sprawling, crystallized city. The once-thriving Abyssal city was now a frozen monument of agonizing death, trapped perfectly in jagged, iridescent crystal.
"This ability belongs to the crystal emperor, to imagine Mirabella could use this. How terrifying." She muttered, tracing a gloved finger over a crystalline statue of a frozen demon.
"The aura of death around this place is so dense, and couple with the demonic Energy, we can power the formation to its highest stage." Sagittarius said. The fearsome Lord stood like a grim reaper, his muscular arms crossed on his chest, the interior of his heavy hood filled with impenetrable, swirling darkness.
Dracula turned around, her crimson eyes gleaming with fanatic anticipation. She stared at the massive, intricate summoning formation carved deep into the blackened earth behind her First and Second Lords, and licked her lips in dark satisfaction.
She walked slowly towards it, passing right between the two imposing figures, and stood at the bloody edge of the runic circle. She stared with unblinking obsession at the Duke’s daughter’s heart, which was hovering above the exact center of the formation, pulsing with a sick, corrupted light.
"With the heart, we can draw the dead aura and demonic energy, which will help us power up the formation! Then, we will use it to summon a very powerful spirit creature from the Third World!!" She raised her hands, her voice echoing with maniacal glee as she moved her gaze across the horrific perimeter. The outer rings were littered with human body parts all over the formation—a grotesque mosaic of severed limbs, heads, harvested organs, and even brains. It was a ritual of pure, unforgivable slaughter.
"With this much sacrifice, the Creature will have all its strength, it won’t be held back by Galaxy Fall’s rules!! Hehehe, I can’t wait to welcome such a powerful being." She said, a vicious, bloodthirsty smirk spreading across her face. Bypassing the System’s level suppression meant unleashing an entity of pure, unadulterated annihilation upon the world.
The air grew heavy with necrotic energy, the ritual nearing its violent climax.
"Oh. Oh. Oh... Didn’t know Dracula already set up such a formation in the abyss."
A casual voice suddenly sounded from the distance, slicing through the heavy demonic tension like a blade. The sudden intrusion caused everyone’s blood to run cold. Dracula, Sagittarius, and the Third Lord whipped around towards the sound. Seeing the people casually walking towards them through the deadly, crystallized ruins, the rulers of the Devil Cult were completely dumbfounded.