Ludwig approached slowly, boots shifting across the withered vinework that covered the stone like an organic veil, the platform beneath his feet barely holding firm under the weight of what lood above. The vampire stood at the center, her back turned to him, unmoving, but her posture held a dissonant stillness. There was no alertness in the way she stood, no defensive rigidity. She was neither braced for combat nor relaxed. She seed caught sowhere between mory and trance, like a revenant caught in a dream it no longer understood. Ludwig lifted a hand and waved gently before her face.
"Hello," he said, voice low, not out of caution but out of respect for the gravity settling in the air.
She turned toward him. There was sothing fragile in the way her gaze found his not fear, not surprise, but the subtle shimr of recognition buried beneath layers of shattered focus. Her expression was half-ford, like a na she once knew sitting just beyond the tongue. Her eyes searched his face, not truly seeing him.
"We can't stay here," Ludwig continued, stepping closer. "Whatever you're searching for, it won't co to you here. Sothing big is on its way, and I think it might be the queen, and she wants the core that you're harboring." His voice was calm, but pressed with urgency. There was no edge in his tone, only a growing gravity that settled around every syllable.
Even as the words left him, the ground began to pulse beneath his boots. It wasn't a tremor in the traditional sense. It felt more like the groan of sothing breathing just beneath the stone, as though the earth itself had lungs. The roots that veined the platform twitched and withdrew slightly, only to snake forward again in writhing arcs. The walls, thick with thorned limbs and organic ridges, stirred. The texture of the chamber shifted from sothing lifeless to sothing aware. The platform they stood on groaned as the roots began to peel back, uncoiling like serpents disturbed in their nest. Small openings revealed themselves between the living walls, dark hollows that spread wide and echoed with sothing more terrible than wind.
From within them ca the howling.
It began as a distant cry, a chorus of dissonant voices overlapping, many throats harmonizing without rhythm. Then the sound deepened, sharpened, growing closer. The first notes of the Perturbants.
"Master Davon…" the Hunter's voice cracked from behind him.
"I know," Ludwig said flatly, though he hadn't taken his eyes off the vampire. Even with the shrieking approaching from every direction, even with the platform shifting like a sinking raft beneath them, he remained fixed. He wasn't going to leave her. Not now. Not after coming this far.
Necros's quest weighed heavily, of course. Its commands still echoed in the corner of his mind like cold water dripping in an empty cave. But there was sothing else. Sothing deeper and less defined. His master had never spoken of lineage, and the concept of True Vampires was never addressed directly, but Ludwig had seen the difference. The power his master held was no accident. The resilience, the magic, the quiet, overwhelming control, it hadn't co from rank or bloodlust. It had co from sothing much older.
And now, before him, stood another.
If the Hunter was to be believed, she was also one of them. A True Vampire, and not just any, but one who had survived torture beyond imagining and remained whole enough to stand, to move, to kill. That wasn't coincidence. That was bloodline. But was she a Bastos? The thought hovered for only a second before Ludwig dismissed it. Van Dijk's entire family had been wiped out in the chaos wrought by that Werewolf in Van Dijk's journal. There shouldn't be any survivors. There couldn't be.
Still, doubt gnawed at the edge of certainty.
Ludwig inhaled once and shook his head. There wasn't ti. The Perturbants would be on them within monts, and the Queen wouldn't be far behind. He didn't know how long they had, only that it wouldn't be long enough.
"I'm sorry," he said, voice firming. "But I'll have to take you with , even if I have to use force."
The vampire didn't react. Not imdiately. Her gaze drifted back to the center of the chamber, as if sothing was calling her from below. A pulse Ludwig couldn't hear. A mory he couldn't touch.
The rattling of the walls and the coiling of the roots was an indicator of sothing grave was happening. Sothing was approaching. Sothing that should not be t.
And if it was the sa thing that the red notification window was talking about… it would be mortifying.
It was the first ti Ludwig had ever seen a warning like this. The kind of alert that implied that whatever was coming could not be fought, could not be reasoned with. Only avoided.
His pulse quickened, though he had no heart.
Then he reached out.
He grabbed her wrist, not roughly, but with enough force to pull her attention. "We have to go," he said.
She didn't move.
But the wall did.
A shattering scream tore through the chamber as the upper corner of the cavern burst apart. Roots split, vines shredded, and a body the size of a house crashed into the space like a tidal wave of writhing limbs and screaming thorns. The Thorn-Wombed Queen descended with her full weight, her form tangled into a pillar of roots that twisted her mass into a long, serpentine column. She didn't fall , she lunged, riding the wall itself like a wave.
Ludwig didn't hesitate. He yanked the vampire to the side and leapt backward with all his strength just as the Queen's claws exploded into the platform, rending the stone apart like soft earth. The chamber shook violently as the platform collapsed beneath her impact, fracturing into massive slabs that crashed downward into the dark below. Her arrival had destroyed whatever structure remained.
Before Ludwig could even catch his balance, the Queen was reforming. Roots gathered and rose again, reconstructing her body above the rubble in a fluid, grotesque bloom. Her fingernails elongated and lifted, pointing at Ludwig the way she had done once before. He recognized the gesture.
"Move!" he bellowed to the Knight and the Hunter, but he didn't need to say more. The two had already broken into a sprint, boots thudding against the shifting roots as they rushed toward the exit.
Ludwig turned to run.
Then numb distant pain.
His arms buckled beneath him, not from exhaustion or spell backlash, but from separation. They were simply gone.
[Your arms have been severed!]
-1,000 hp
-1,000 hp
He stumbled forward, catching himself against the uneven slope with his knees, eyes wide in shock. For a second, he couldn't even process what had happened. The vampire stood in front of him now, silent and still, her expression unreadable.
She didn't even glance at him.
Neither the Knight nor the Hunter had noticed. They had disappeared down the hollow path, one of the rare tunnels that didn't echo of Perturbants, unaware that Ludwig had just been dismbered.
Cursing under his breath, Ludwig leaned down and sank his teeth into the ragged stump of his left arm, the one that still held the Soul Shackle. It was a disgusting yet desperate action, needed for the connection to be made.
Now he was connected again to his bracelet.
With a surge of mana and the trigger of will, the Soul Shackle activated. From within the wound, the chain writhed to life, erging in a hiss of tal and ether. It twisted, curved, and seized both severed arms from the ground, reattaching them in place like a snake fitting bones into sockets. With another burst of mana, precise and controlled, he completed the regeneration, bones aligning, undead muscle stitching, crooked skin sealing, the last threads of his regalia sewing shut over the joints as the garnt's enchantnt pulsed with repair magic.
He flexed his fingers once.
The numbing pain of severed arms lingered slightly, but it was manageable.
"Oi," he muttered, glaring at the vampire, "why the hell did you do that?"
She didn't respond.
Her attention was now fully focused on the Queen. The air between them had shifted. There was sothing quiet in the way she stood. She wasn't afraid. She was waiting.
The Queen's neck bellowed in song that bore through not the ears, but the bones and marrow.
[You are immune to ntal ailnt effects!]
Ludwig shook his head, ignoring the grating voice. The realization that her 'spell' didn't work made the Queen screech so more, this ti raising her arm up then flicking it down like the crack of a whip.
Two thorns, thick as tree trunks, burst from her fingers and launched toward them with devastating force. Ludwig braced to dodge. He didn't need to.
The vampire moved, raising one hand in a slow, almost graceful motion, and for a mont, less than a breath, her arm seed to shimr. A spectral claw mark raked across the space in front of her. The thorns t it midair and turned instantly to sawdust.
She didn't even flinch.
For a mont, Ludwig realized that he was completely and utterly outclassed. There was no way that he would be able to even forcefully move this person from where she stood, or stop her from doing what she wanted, with force at least. That wasn't possible.
And looking at the still flickering red screen, Ludwig ca to another realization, that the Queen was not what the red warning was about... a far greater danger was rapidly approaching.
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