Chapter 68: The Spoils of the Purists

The thick white steam venting from my Vanguard Arm began to dissipate, mixing with the foul smell of corrupted blood and shattered glass.

The underground laboratory was completely silent, save for the pathetic, wet coughing coming from the raised stone platform.

Lord Therion lay on the floor, his pristine white armor stained crimson.

His severed arm rested a few feet away, the glowing rapier finally dimming into cold steel.

"Secure the perimeter," I ordered, my voice echoing in the cavernous room.

"Make sure none of those Chimeras are playing dead."

Rolf did not hesitate.

The towering werewolf stomped over to the nearest ruined Chimera and drove his heavy iron battleaxe straight through its skull just to be absolutely certain.

CRUNCH!

"They are dead, Boss," Rolf growled, pulling his weapon free.

He then turned his golden amber eyes toward the bleeding High Elf on the platform.

He walked over and planted a heavy, leather booted foot squarely on Therion’s chest, pinning the arrogant noble to the stone.

"Don’t move, pointy ears," Rolf rumbled.

"Or I will take the other arm."

Therion squeezed his pale eyes shut, letting out a high pitched whimper of pain.

All his grand illusions of genetic superiority had been completely dismantled.

’Oh! It is all over? I lost? I still cannot believe I lost to these inferior creatures!’ he raged mentally, clinging onto his measly life.

I turned my attention to the center of the platform.

Behind Therion’s ruined command console stood a massive, heavy brass safe built directly into the cavern wall.

It was entirely covered in glowing red runes that pulsed with a sinister, rhythmic heartbeat.

"This is a Blood Seal. I am not really adept at unlocking this kind of seal. Hey Rolf! You wanna take a dig?" I called to him.

"Stop joking Boss! If I try to break it with brute force, this whole place will blow up," he retorted.

"Of course, I know!" I turned to Nyssa.

"Nyssa, can you crack a blood magic seal?"

The High Hobgoblin stepped gracefully onto the platform, her emerald eyes reflecting the red glow of the runes.

She pushed her silver rimmed glasses up the bridge of her nose, a look of profound academic disgust washing over her beautiful features.

"Blood magic is a crude, archaic substitute for actual arcane engineering," Nyssa stated coldly.

"They use genetic signatures as a physical lock because their mathematical frameworks are too weak to sustain a proper encryption."

She raised her organic hand.

A brilliant, emerald green light flared from her palm, activating her Reality Weaver trait.

She did not try to overpower the red runes.

Instead, she placed her hand inches from the brass surface and began to meticulously unspool the magical threads, isolating the fundamental physics binding the lock.

HMMMMMMM.

The red runes began to vibrate violently, resisting her intrusion. But Nyssa was an Apex Variant now.

Her C Grade core easily overwhelmed the stagnant Elven magic.

With a sharp twist of her wrist, she inverted the mana flow.

CLICK!

The heavy internal tumblers of the brass safe disengaged.

The thick iron door groaned loudly as it swung open on its heavy hinges.

"Hmph! Amateurs," Nyssa whispered with a satisfied smirk.

I stepped up beside her and looked inside. The safe was packed with neat, perfectly preserved stacks of thick parchment.

Each bundle was bound in leather and sealed with the official wax falcon crest of House Vane. I pulled the top ledger out and flipped it open.

My [Sharp Eye] scanned the columns of numbers and encrypted notes in a fraction of a second.

It detailed massive gold transfers from the royal treasury, illegal purchases of monster larvae from the black market, and explicit orders signed by Therion himself to dump toxic alchemical runoff directly into the city’s lower drinking reservoirs.

"We have them," I said, a slow, predatory smile spreading across my face.

"This is exactly what the Prime Minister needs. We just secured the complete political annihilation of House Vane."

I turned to Nyssa.

"Keep it in the Enchanted Satchel. We’ll present it to the Prime Minister... and when we do, House Vane will finally fall."

Rolf let out a sharp scoff.

"About time. The amount of filth we had to dig through just to get this..."

BAAM!

His fist slammed into the wall. The impact echoed through the room as dust trembled loose from the stone. His jaw tightened, his anger barely contained.

Kaelith exhaled slowly, her voice quieter but no less strained.

"Running for our lives... day after day. I couldn’t even sleep without seeing it all again. Those nights in the Forge... they weren’t rest. They were just pauses between nightmares."

Nyssa stepped closer and placed a steady hand on his shoulder.

"We didn’t endure all that for nothing," she said softly, though there was steel beneath her tone.

"House Vane will answer for it."

Her eyes lifted, resolute.

"Soon enough."

Nyssa quickly began packing the ledgers into her enchanted satchel.

As she worked, my enhanced Perception suddenly spiked.

I froze, closing my eyes and tuning out the dripping fluids and the hissing steam of the ruined laboratory.

My C Grade senses reached out, filtering the ambient noise.

Thump. Thump.

It was incredibly faint. It was erratic and weak, but it was unmistakably there.

Thump. Thump.

"Do you hear that?" I asked, opening my eyes and looking toward the back wall of the sanctum, entirely hidden behind the shattered remains of the giant glass vats.

It was the exact wall that Rolf had just punched.

"Hear what?" Kaelith asked, materializing from the shadows near the stairs.

"A heartbeat," I muttered.

I walked past the ruined command console and stepped over the pools of crimson fluid. I reached the solid stone wall at the very back of the cavern.

To a normal eye, it looked like a seamless sheet of carved granite, but it was now slightly fractured from Rolf’s punch.

"Let us see what is hiding behind here. HAAAA!"

I drove my fist directly into the damaged stone. The facade crumbled away, revealing the cold metal of a hidden door behind the masonry.

My [Sharp Eye] immediately highlighted the microscopic, perfectly straight hairline fractures running floor to ceiling along its iron frame.

It was a concealed, heavily reinforced containment door.

"There is no keyhole," Nyssa noted, coming up behind me with her satchel full of evidence.

"It must be sealed from the other side."

"I don’t need a key," I replied flatly.

I jammed the thick brass fingers of my Vanguard Arm directly into the microscopic seam between the stone and the hidden iron frame.

I dug my boots into the wet floor and engaged the internal boiler on my back.

HSSSSSSSS!

The pneumatic pistons in my shoulder shrieked as extreme steam pressure flooded the mechanical limb. The Arcanium plating glowed bright orange.

"Open," I growled.

I twisted my hips and ripped my arm backward with the full, devastating force of my C Grade Strength.

KRA-KOOM!

The stone cracked entirely. The heavy, concealed iron door buckled under the immense kinetic pressure and was torn completely off its hidden hinges.

I tossed the massive slab of metal aside like a discarded toy.

CRASH!

A wave of freezing, stale air rolled out of the pitch black cell.

Kaelith held up a glowing mana crystal, casting a pale light into the hidden vault.

Suspended in the center of the freezing, stone walled room was a sight that made the breath catch in my throat.

Heavy, glowing anti magic chains hung from the ceiling, securing the wrists and ankles of an unconscious woman.

She was severely beaten, her clothes torn into rags. She possessed the elegant, flawless pale features and pointed ears of a High Elf.

But folded tightly and painfully behind her back were sweeping, dark maroon wings. A spade tipped tail rested limply on the freezing floor.

It was an impossible fusion. A High Elf and a Succubus.

And she was barely clinging to life.

"This is terrible!" Nyssa gasped.

The freezing air of the hidden cell spilled out into the humid laboratory.

I stepped inside, my glowing eyes fixed entirely on the chained, unconscious hybrid.

She looked incredibly fragile suspended by the thick, glowing anti magic chains.

Her dark maroon wings twitched weakly, a subconscious reaction to the sudden intrusion of light.

The bruises on her pale, Elven skin painted a horrific picture of long term, systemic abuse.

"What in the Ancestors’ name is that?" Rolf asked, his heavy boots echoing as he dragged the bleeding Therion closer to the doorway to see. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"A mistake," Therion gasped.

The crippled High Elf coughed up a splatter of dark blood onto the stone floor, but a bitter, hateful laugh bubbled up from his throat.

He looked at the chained woman with absolute, unadulterated disgust.

"A filthy, half breed mistake," Therion hissed, his voice trembling with pain and purist arrogance.

I turned my head slowly, locking my glowing eyes onto the broken noble.

"Explain."

Therion leaned his head back against Rolf’s boot, a twisted, delirious smile on his pale face.

"My esteemed uncle, the Head of House Vane, possesses certain... degenerate tastes," Therion confessed weakly.

"He took a Succubus concubine from the lower rings. When the whore died giving birth, she left him with that abomination."

Therion spat toward the open cell door.

"She is Lysandra Vane," he continued, his voice dripping with venom.

"The illegitimate stain on our pristine bloodline. If the High Council ever discovered her existence, our House would be stripped of its titles and burned to the ground for impurity."

"So you locked her in a freezing box in the sewers," Kaelith murmured. The Dark Elf’s voice was dangerously low, her own traumatic history with purist Elves clearly resonating with the captive’s plight.

"We were being merciful!" Therion shrieked defensively.

"We kept her alive. Barely alive, yes, but alive. We were simply waiting for her demonic core to fully mature."

Nyssa pushed her glasses up, her emerald eyes narrowing as she connected the arcane dots.

"You were going to harvest her. You were going to rip out a Succubus core to use as an infinite, self regenerating battery for your next generation of Chimeras."

"It is the only thing a half breed is good for," Therion sneered.

My jaw clenched tightly. The sheer, calculating cruelty of the purist nobility never failed to disgust me. I turned my attention back to the unconscious woman hanging in the chains.

’System,’ I commanded silently. ’Scan her.’

The golden interface flooded my vision, overlaying a highly detailed biological and magical readout directly over Lysandra’s suspended form.

{

[Target Scanned: Lysandra Vane (Enslaved)]

[Species: High Succubus / Royal Elf Hybrid]

[Core: B-Grade (Dormant/Suppressed)]

[Potential Ascension Path: Succubus Queen]

[System Note: Target possesses a catastrophic level of latent Charm and Domination magic. The heavy anti magic chains are currently inducing an artificial coma to suppress her biological output. Removing these suppressors will trigger a profound, life binding loyalty to the savior.]

}

My eyes widened by a fraction of a millimeter.

A dormant B Grade core. The potential to ascend to a literal Succubus Queen.

She possessed an innate Charm stat that could likely bring entire armies to their knees with a single glance.

House Vane thought they had hidden a shameful secret in the dark. They had no idea they were sitting on a dormant weapon of mass destruction.

I looked from the dying, arrogant High Elf to the chained girl. The political board of the Kingdom of Iron and Steam was about to violently flip.

’If I brought the illegitimate daughter of House Vane to the Prime Minister, the purists would not just lose their wealth. They would lose their entire standing in society forever.’

And beyond the politics, she was a rare, incredibly powerful asset that perfectly fit the Sovereign’s path.

A slow, predatory smile spread across my face. I stepped fully into the freezing cell.

"You purists truly are idiots," I said, my baritone voice echoing off the stone walls.

"You find a diamond, and you lock it in the dirt because you do not like the cut."

I reached out and grabbed the thick, glowing anti magic chains binding her right wrist.

The magic flared, trying to burn my skin.

But the dense, C Grade Martial Aura of my Goblin Lord bloodline effortlessly smothered the hostile enchantment.

"But I know exactly how to polish a rough gem," I whispered.

I clamped my brass Vanguard hand over the left chain and my organic hand over the right.

I flexed my back muscles and pulled.

SNAP!

The heavy, enchanted iron links shattered like cheap glass under my raw strength. The anti magic glow instantly died.

Without the chains to support her, Lysandra’s body went completely limp, falling forward toward the hard stone floor.

I stepped in seamlessly, catching her fragile form in my arms. She was incredibly light, her cold skin pressing against my dark coat.

Her maroon wings twitched, folding protectively around my arm as the magical suppression faded from her biology.

I looked down at her pale, beautiful face, officially welcoming the ultimate political weapon into my growing Kingdom.

"Let us go home," I commanded my pack.

"Our Revenge is a Breath away."