After a grueling battle .. cut short by an unexpected intervention ..
Snow Lionheart was defeated by a strange, terrifyingly powerful man.
That power far surpassed the Thirteenth High Rank demon, leaving Snow wondering how a monster like that could be under someone like Geppetto. That thought vanished at once as the masked man overwhelmed him completely, finishing him with a blistering chain of strikes.
The onslaught tore Snow out of The Anointed War State, forcing an immediate loss and dropping him unconscious before the enemy. The Thirteenth High Rank demon didn’t kill him ..orders from above forbade it ..so he left Snow alive and departed with the masked man.
There, on the barren desert floor, Snow lay unconscious with nothing to protect him in the enemy’s domain. Though the demon had spared his life, Snow was far from safe. The Ultras wastes crawled with every kind of blight; even the weakest would be a threat to him in that state ..mutated humans that wandered aimlessly, nightmare beasts, even Ultras themselves, who would rejoice at slaying an imperial hero.
Normally, nightmare creatures wouldn’t dare approach, not with Snow’s power. But now... he was prey.
Soon, hideous creatures began to gather at the site of the battle, slowly encircling him. Mutated humans with black ichor and blood drooling from their mouths, as if they had finally found a meal to sate their hunger.
Snow, still unconscious, had no idea what was about to befall him.
As the monsters reached for him, their limbs simply fell away severed ..and they were cut down one after another at terrifying speed. Within seconds, all of them lay ruined and dead around Snow.
Then, as the bodies stilled, something began to drag Snow’s limp form. A strange force curled around him, hauling him away into one of the Ultras’ dark, forgotten hollows.
A full day passed. Frey and the others had already begun searching—but it was in vain. All trace of him was gone.
At first Snow remained unconscious, but his extraordinary body soon began to recover on its own, feeding on the abundance of sacred power within him. Normally, he would have recovered mid-battle the moment he was injured, yet the masked man’s blows had been so destructive that the Aura of the Star kept ravaging his body for hours.
The sacred power had to wrestle it constantly, expelling it at last .. only then could the healing begin. That was why his recovery took so long.
In the end, Snow opened his golden eyes.
The first things to reach him were the stench of thick blood and the sight of bizarre torture implements surrounding him on all sides.
Realizing where he was, Snow tried to move—only for the slightest attempt to send a savage wave of pain through him. Something was paralyzing him completely.
He looked down at himself. He was suspended, both arms and legs bound. He was utterly naked. What seized his attention most were clusters of crimson spikes driven deep into various points across his body. Those nails were the source of the pain; they had completely numbed him and sealed his power.
"Where the hell am I?" Snow asked, scanning the chamber.
Beside him lay a scatter of mutilated corpses, long dead, desecrated in bizarre ways .. mouths sewn shut, eyes stitched over. Others had their limbs severed and reattached in the wrong places, leaving them like grotesque, misshapen chimeras.
It all drew a hard scowl from Snow. Given how thoroughly he’d been restrained and suppressed, the one who dragged him here was no trivial foe.
"Looks like I’ve wandered into a monster’s den," he muttered, taking stock.
The last thing he remembered was the battle with Geppetto and his underlings .. how that man had finished him.
"I need to get out of here and return to Imperial forces. The demons have a roaring beast among them ..one that might rival the Ten High Ranks."
A man like that under Geppetto’s control was a catastrophe .. one that had to be prioritized.
Since he’d failed to fight him off even after invoking his strongest war form, Snow knew he couldn’t win at his current level. His only option was to join forces with Frey and hope the two of them together could deal with that man.
And with Geppetto ever at his side, it would at best be two against two .. never mind the other fighters and the army of dead that Geppetto commanded.
Thinking it through, Snow finally grasped the dreadfulness of the Thirteenth High Rank. That demon hadn’t reached his seat by personal might alone, but through that terrifying ability to weaponize the dead—an entire army hidden beneath the shadow of a single demon.
The fact that such a demon stood against them now...
The odds weren’t in their favor at all.
"I need to do something about that... but first—"
Pulling his focus back to the present, Snow realized his immediate situation took absolute priority.
"I have to get out of here."
He tried to gather his strength, to coax his aura into motion .. but every time he did, the crimson spikes driven into different points of his body shut it down at once. Whoever had hammered them in had targeted critical, precise nodes that left his body refusing to respond.
"What are these damned spikes, exactly?"
They were strange implements indeed. They didn’t just block his internal aura flow; they even tampered with his blood itself. He could feel something circulating within him—as if it had mingled with his blood and seized control.
Piece by piece, the signs pointed Snow toward the identity of whoever had done this to him. He didn’t have to wait long for confirmation: the clicking of heels rang from somewhere down the corridor.
High heels, sharp and unhurried, drew closer... until she appeared.
"Ah! You’re finally awake!"
Beaming at him, the strange girl hurried over. She wore a simple black dress, its hem dappled with flecks of blood. Her skin was pale as chalk, her hair jet-black, and there was a small spider-shaped tattoo at her throat.
She was, admittedly, stunning. But Snow didn’t fall for the surface. She carried the same scent .. the stench of blood.
"You slept for such a long time! I thought you might never wake up," she chirped. Snow’s face hardened.
Given the way he’d been bound and displayed before her, he had already guessed.
"If I’m not mistaken, you’re a Hollow .. the Blood Queen, Evelyn. Aren’t you?" he said, voice edged with doubt. The girl blinked, then lit up.
"Marvelous! You sussed me out just by reading the room. As expected of the Empire’s hero! Ahahaha!"
Exactly so: Evelyn, the Hollow .. one of the strangest, most brutal among them, always hiding her true nature behind that innocent mask.
Snow’s predator’s gaze stayed locked on her as he ran the numbers. Under normal circumstances, dealing with her would be easy; she was SS-class, a level he had surpassed long ago. But as he was ..wounded, fully suppressed .. he was little more than an ordinary man. His options were scant.
Evelyn’s smile deepened.
"Look at those eyes... the eyes of a beast who’ll kill me the moment he gets the chance. I do love eyes like that."
She reached out and laid her hand over his bare chest.
"Unfortunately for you, you can’t do a thing to me. Your body already belongs to me."
At her touch, a wave of pain roared through him .. as if every cell in his body were reacting to her. Snow clenched his teeth and rode it out.
"What do you want? Why leave me alive?"
"If it’s torture for information you’re after, you’re wasting your time," he added, steadying his breath.
"Information? Whatever are you talking about?" she laughed lightly.
With a sadist’s smile, her fingers traced slowly across his bare torso.
"I don’t care about this silly war. I only care about finding a partner to play with..."
Her hand clamped down hard around him below.
"...a partner who can last a very, very long time~"
Snow’s body went taut, a chill running through him at her intent.
"At first, I wanted Frey Starlight. I waited for him to fall... but he’s a real monster. He scared me." Her voice dropped, honest and almost breathless. "He defeated one of the High Rank demons himself. It was the first time I’d ever felt something like that... fear."
Even collapsed and unconscious, Frey had been an unknown—his body all wrong to her senses. If she tried to shackle him, he would break free and kill her.
"That’s when I found you, dear Snow Lionheart."
Snow was powerful, but unlike Frey, his body obeyed sane rules. If she drained him completely, her bloodcraft could restrain him.
"From now on, we’ll always be together, Snow Lionheart. You’ll be my eternal partner, so do try to endure..."
She leaned in closer and closer.
"...I get a bit rough sometimes."
She lunged, kissing him with violent hunger, her free hand still gripping below. Snow’s body was fettered; he couldn’t move. She thought her net was already tight around him.
But at the very moment she believed that, Snow answered .. and she realized just how grave a mistake she’d made.
Mid-kiss, he struck .. mouth opening, he bit down, savaging her lips and tearing away a mouthful of flesh and skin.
Blood burst and spattered. Evelyn jerked back with a strangled sound, clutching at her ruined mouth.
Snow chewed once, twice .. then spat the blood onto the floor and looked at her with a feral smile.
"You taste foul, Blood Queen Evelyn."
At that, Evelyn finally understood: her "partner" this time was no ordinary man at all.