Chapter 744: I miss my husband…
rcedes leaned closer, bending down to get a better look.
“…Strax… she’s so small…” she whispered, still incredulous. “I an… very small. Compared to the size of the egg, it doesn’t make sense! The egg was gigantic, it looked like a huge monster was going to hatch, a creature the size of a horse—and—”
She gestured, lost in the comparison.
Strax leaned in calmly, watching the hatchling sleeping soundly, her breath condensing the air into small, crystalline sighs.
“Small, yes,” he agreed, but there was conviction in his voice. “But not out of weakness.”
rcedes blinked. “Then why? This seems… wrong.”
Strax lightly ran a claw over the second shell, now just glistening fragnts.
“Probably,” he began, “the egg was less a cradle… and more a reservoir.”
“Reservoir?” rcedes repeated, frowning.
“Of energy.” He touched his chest, where his mana still vibrated erratically, as if his body were readjusting after having given away so much power.
“When I infused my mana, it absorbed everything. Not a single spark escaped. That ans her body didn’t grow during gestation…”
rcedes’ eyes widened.
“Because she was… storing it?”
Strax nodded slowly.
“Exactly. All that internal space wasn’t for her body. It was for what she needed to store.”
He looked at the hatchling—so serene, so still, so deeply asleep that it seed part of the ice.
“When it absorbed everything I gave and everything this nest offered, it did what any newborn ice dragon would do: it went into hibernation.”
rcedes opened her mouth in surprise.
“Hibernation? Just like that… imdiately?”
“To get used to it,” Strax finished. “With new energy. With power she doesn’t even know how to use yet.”
He reached out and, with a gesture so careful it seed to belong to another creature, touched the top of the tiny pup’s head.
The baby let out a tiny sound—a gasp, almost a cold purr—but didn’t wake up.
“She’s reorganizing her own body from the inside. Consolidating the mana. Molding herself to what she’s absorbed.”
rcedes breathed deeply, slowly.
“…so she’s not really small,” she murmured. “She’s just…holding back growth.”
Strax looked at her, and for the first ti since he’d t her, he sketched sothing that could—could—be a real smile.
“Exactly. Don’t be fooled by the size, rcedes. When she wakes up…”
His eyes glead, red as embers behind ice.
“…she’ll be anything but small.”
Strax carefully pulled his hand away—more carefully than rcedes had ever seen him show for anything—and exhaled slowly, as if he needed to stabilize his own body after so much energy had been poured out.
“She needs to rest,” he murmured, his deep voice echoing softly in the nest. “And I need to keep my distance.”
rcedes blinked. “Distance? Why? You’re her father, aren’t you? Or… sothing like that.”
Strax glanced at his own palm—still trembling, still radiating remnants of draconic mana like invisible bluish smoke.
“I infused more power than a newborn should touch. My energy is still chaotic. Unstable.”
He closed his fingers, feeling the flow vibrate within him.
“If I touch her now…”
rcedes held her breath.
“…there could be mana diversion.”
Her eyes widened. “Diversion… like, you’d drain her?!”
Strax shook his head. “No. Not exactly.”
He looked at the puppy again, and the usual hardness gave way to sothing quieter… almost vulnerable.
“It would be much worse.”
rcedes took an instinctive step back. “Worse… how worse?”
“Her energy is still stabilizing. If it cos into contact with mine in this state…”
He searched for words—sothing rare.
“She could assimilate a part of . Or reject it. Or… reverse the flow.”
rcedes paled.
“Reverse? That… that would kill her?”
Strax took a deep breath, his jaw tense.
“I’m not going to take that risk.”
A heavy silence fell between them.
The puppy slept, unaware of the emotional chaos she was causing—each of her breaths created tiny crystals in the air, which slowly dissolved before touching the ground.
Then Strax looked up at rcedes—a firm, determined, but not aggressive look.
“rcedes.”
She swallowed hard.
“Yes?”
“Pick her up.”
rcedes blinked—once, twice—as if the sentence had taken a while to make sense.
“H-WHAT?! ?! MYSELF?!”
She pointed at herself, almost stumbling backward.
“But I’m… human! Small! Fragile! I don’t even know how to hold a dragon! What if I drop her? What if I freeze? WHAT IF SHE—”
“rcedes,” Strax repeated, in a tone that was almost patient—almost.
She froze in place.
“She’s safe for you.”
His eyes softened.
“Not with .”
rcedes looked at the small creature—curled up like a living crystal, so delicate, breathing slowly like a baby dreaming of snow.
She swallowed hard.
“…y-you want to beco her temporary mother?!”
Strax tilted his head, considering.
“Temporary? Maybe.”
Then he added:
“But she already likes you.”
rcedes blushed deeply.
“M-?! Why?! I didn’t even do anything!”
“The egg reacted to your presence. Now she does too.”
rcedes opened and closed her mouth like a fish out of water.
Strax stepped aside, making way.
“Take her.”
“…what if I break?”
“You won’t.”
“…what if she freezes ?”
“She won’t.”
“…what if she wakes up and thinks I’m—”
“rcedes.”
She stopped talking.
Strax looked directly at her, firm, confident—as if he were placing his life in her hands.
“I trust you more than I trust myself right now.”
rcedes was completely speechless.
She took a deep breath, trembling slightly, then approached the nest with tiny, almost reverent steps.
The little one slept soundly, a soft glow pulsing beneath its translucent skin.
rcedes slowly reached out her hands.
“It’s… alright, little one… I—I’ll take good care of you, okay…?”
And she touched it.
The cold was gentle like freshly fallen snow. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t burn. It just… comforted.
rcedes smiled, without realizing it.
Strax watched in silence—as if witnessing sothing sacred.
And for the first ti, the imnse weight of the tomb seed… light.
…
The chamber trembled.
Black stones fell from the ceiling like boiling tears, cracking as they touched the floor. The walls pulsed with an irregular crimson light—alive, as if the cave itself breathed hatred. The sll was a nauseating mixture of iron, sulfur, and rotting flesh.
And in the center of that subterranean hell… Kali.
Kali didn’t fight.
She hunted.
Her expression was that of soone who had long since crossed the line of rage and now navigated an entire ocean of fury—a thick, red sea bubbling beneath her skin, ready to explode again and again.
“YOU—” she crushed a ghoul’s skull with her bare hands, scattering bony fragnts everywhere. “—YOU HAD—” she kicked another in the chest, sending the creature crashing against the wall and turning into a black blotch. “—WHAT TO BE—” she brought down her knee on a third’s face, opening a hole in his head. “—DEAD!”
The demonic claws on her arms glowed, pulsing with purple energy. Each movent left trails of light in the air, as if her rage were burning the very space around her.
And Beatrice?
Beatrice simply watched.
Leaning against a twisted column of living stone, her hands clasped behind her back, the vampire observed with half-closed eyes, so calm that it contrasted violently with the storm that was Kali.
“She’s… really pissed off,” Beatrice murmured, raising an eyebrow as she watched Kali rip off a ghoul’s arm and use it to stab another.
Not pissed off.
FUCKED UP.
Completely, absolutely, insanely FUCKED UP.
The cave was an ancient corridor—one of the many tunnels that stretched beneath the magical faults near Asgard. Normally, this kind of disturbance generated raw demonic energy, small fissures, imps at most. But ghouls?
Ghouls were a new problem.
And Kali dealt with new problems in the most… Kali way possible.
A group of five undead advanced at once, roaring with those mouths wide open, skin stretched over broken bones. They advanced animalistically, moving too fast for soulless creatures.
Kali didn’t back down.
She advanced.
With a roar of pure rage, she spun her body in the air, her demonic tail cracking like a whip, slicing two ghouls in half. The other three tried to grab her. One had its hand ripped off. Another had its jaw dislocated with a single punch. The last had its chest pierced by Kali’s hand, which lifted it off the ground with ease.
“YOU PICKED A BAD DAY,” she growled, crushing the creature’s necrotic heart with her fingers. “I WAS ALREADY IN A BAD MOOD BEFORE I GOT HERE!”
She tossed the undead body aside as if it were trash.
Beatrice shifted her weight from one leg to the other, calmly dodging a ghoul’s head that rolled past on the ground.
“At least she’s not taking it out on ,” she murmured, almost disappointed.
A roar echoed through the cave. Not a natural roar. It was as if the demonic energy was concentrating, summoning more creatures from the dark cracks in the stone.
More ghouls erged, dozens of them, climbing the walls, erging from the cracked floor, crawling from the ceiling like hungry insects.
Kali spat on the ground, her eyes glowing a deep purple.
“GREAT.”
She snapped her neck from side to side.
“More things to destroy.”
The creatures advanced like swarms.
Kali stomped her feet on the ground—and a wave of demonic energy exploded around her, pulverizing those closest to her. The wave left a perfect circle of molten stone around her feet, as if the earth itself had lted under the impact of her frustration.
“YOU STINKY! UGLY! AND STUPID!”
She grabbed two ghouls by the head, smashed them together, and they both shattered like eggshells.
“AND YOU GUYS WON’T SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
Beatrice sighed.
“Yeah… definitely bad mood.”
A ghoul tried to approach from behind.
Kali noticed.
Without even turning around, she punched it backward.
The punch exploded the creature into a cloud of pieces.
“I had plans!” Kali yelled as she punched another one in the face repeatedly, smashing its skull against the ground. “A bath! A day off! HOT FOOD!”
She crushed another one with her heel.
“AND THEN YOU SHOW UP!”
Beatrice wiped a shard of skull that landed on her shoulder.
“Kali, technically they didn’t show up. They were created by—”
“SHUT UP, BEA!”
Beatrice raised her hands in silent surrender.
The demonic energy continued to surge from the walls, like an invisible waterfall. The ancient runes burned blood red, releasing more abominations.
The ghouls began to change.
So grew larger. Others developed exposed bones forming blades. One erged with four arms and a triple mouth.
Kali simply smiled.
A dangerous smile.
“Great… you want to look ugly? THEN CO ON!”
She leaped, straight into the larger group, landing right in the middle of them.
Explosion.
Literally.
The energy accumulated within her erupted all at once, creating a crater in the cave. Ghouls flew in all directions, smashing against the walls, many disintegrating on impact.
Kali erged from the cloud of dust, walking, shoulders tense, breathing heavily, claws bleeding demonic energy like purple smoke.
Beatrice watched her with a look sowhere between worry, fascination, and… mild amusent.
“Kali…” she called softly. “You’re going to destroy the entire cave at this rate.”
Kali kicked a ghoul in the stomach with such force that the creature crashed through an entire rock formation.
“SO WHAT?!”
Beatrice narrowed her eyes, again assessing the surroundings.
“So what if… if the structure fails, this place collapses and—”
“GREAT!” roared Kali. “ONE LESS PROBLEM!”
Beatrice sighed deeply.
“Just as I thought… totally FUCKED UP.”
The cave trembled once more, a roar coming from the depths—sothing bigger approaching.
Beatrice straightened up, “I miss my husband…” she said, watching Kali destroy everything.
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