Chapter 186: Fall of the Guardians

Chapter 186: Chapter 186: Fall of the Guardians

Clara stood over Vasilev.

The professor lay broken on the cracked ground below.

Clara lunar ice spear drove downward. SHLIKT.

The spear punched through Vasilev’s chest. The tip emerged from the professor’s back, embedding itself in the cracked ground beneath.

Vasilev’s eyes widened as her eyes dimmed and her body went still.

Dead.

Clara withdrew her spear. The lunar ice dissolved as she exhaled — a long, slow breath that carried the weight of everything she’d just done. She stared at Vasilev’s corpse for a single heartbeat. Then she turned and ran.

She arrived Lucian’s side. Lemora was already there — reaching toward him, her hands hovering over his shoulders, concern etched across her face. Clara grabbed Lemora’s wrists and pushed her hands away.

"Don’t touch him."

Lemora stumbled back, her violet eyes flashing with irritation.

Lucian looked up at Clara. His crimson eyes were exhausted but seeing she was okay, a smile spread across his face.

He reached into his Shadow Storage and pulled out a mana recovery pill. He held it out to her. "You okay?"

Clara took the pill. "I am now."

Lemora watched the exchange. A sharp pang shot through her chest as she felt greatly irritated and jealous. Her Lucian. Showing affection to another woman.

Lucian sat cross-legged on the ground. He swallowed two mana recovery pills. Then he pulled a poison-resistant pill from his Shadow Storage and swallowed that too. The dark veins crawling across his skin from Rashid’s blood mist poison faded. His Eternal Regeneration accelerated — the gashes across his chest, arms, and thighs knitting shut in seconds. The slash wound from Rashid’s final attack sealed without a scar.

He reached into his Shadow Storage again and pulled out a blood flask. It was filled with Rose’s blood — stored weeks ago for exactly this kind of emergency. He uncapped it and drank. The blood was warm and sweet. His Blood Energy replenished rapidly, the familiar warmth spreading through his body as his Ancient Vampire bloodline absorbed every drop.

Lucian stood.

He looked at Lemora. She was sitting on a piece of rubble, her arms wrapped around herself, her injured arm still bleeding from Rashid’s cut.

Lucian tossed her a blood bag and a mana recovery pill. They landed in her lap.

Lemora’s face brightened. She caught them with trembling hands — uncapped the blood bag first and drank deeply. Color returned to her cheeks. She swallowed the mana recovery pill and exhaled as her mana core stabilized.

"Thank you," she said quietly.

Lucian didn’t respond. He was already surveying the academy around them.

It was in ruins.

Buildings had collapsed. The Combat Department building was a pile of rubble. The main academic building had lost its entire eastern wall. Bodies lay scattered across the grounds. Students. Instructors.

Clara’s jaw tightened. "We need to go. The Research Department — the evacuation portal."

They moved. Lucian and Clara ran toward the northern side of campus. Lemora followed behind them, her steps unsteady but determined.

Clara turned. Her silver eyes were cold. "Not you. You’re also with them."

Lemora stopped. Her expression faltered.

Lucian placed a hand on Clara’s shoulder. "Whether she likes it or not, she’s one of them now. She just fought against her own family’s allies to help us. If she stays here, she’s dead."

Clara’s silver eyes held Lemora’s violet ones for a long, tense moment. Then she turned away.

"Fine. Let’s go."

Above the academy, the sky burned.

The remaining professors and instructors clashed with the Khamsin, Apep, and Du Maurier vampires in a chaotic aerial battle. Fire, ice, earth, lightning, metal — every ability in the academy’s arsenal was unleashed against the vampire assault. But the instructors were losing.

No matter how talented a human cultivator was, a vampire was always superior. Enhanced genetics. Centuries of combat experience. Regeneration that shrugged off wounds that would kill a human instantly. Unless a human possessed a powerful bloodline — and most didn’t — they could never measure up to a true born vampire in direct combat.

Professor Hendricks was driven to his knees by a Khamsin Mid Grand Core vampire. His earth barriers shattered and his golems crumbled. The vampire’s blood mist corroded his defenses faster than he could rebuild them. He fell.

Instructor Lira Cornell — Late Grand Core, Clara’s master — fought two Apep vampires simultaneously. Her ice domain held for three minutes before the vampires adapted, using shadow serpent strikes to pierce her defenses. She took a claw strike across her back. SHLK. She staggered. Kept fighting. But the wounds accumulated.

The Head Instructor was barely holding. His golden avatar — the massive construct that had been holding the line since the battle began — was cracked and flickering. His Peak Grand Core mana was draining rapidly. He fought Tariq al-Khamsin and Seth al-Apep simultaneously — two Peak Grand Core vampires who were each over two hundred years old. Their combined experience exceeded his by centuries. Every technique he used, they had a counter for. Every opening he created, the other exploited.

He was losing.

The Vice Principal clashed with Louisa Du Maurier.

Their fight was cataclysmic. Early Astral Realm against Early Astral Realm. Fire against death. Each collision sent shockwaves across the sky that shattered windows in the towns below. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

The Vice Principal was landing hits. His fire — boosted by the S-Rank artifact — burned hotter than any flame Louisa had encountered. White fire scorched her death energy shields. KRRRAK. His fists broke through her defenses, striking her ribs, her shoulder, her jaw. Louisa grunted with each impact — but her regeneration closed the wounds instantly.

She gave as good as she got. Her corpse bear — reformed after the Vice Principal had destroyed its head — slammed into him from behind. CRAAASH. He was thrown sideways, his fire aura flickering. Her necromantic energy lashed at his body — dark tendrils that ate through his defenses and left burns that healed slowly.

They exchanged blows in a brutal, grinding stalemate. Neither could finish the other.

The Vice Principal pulled back. His aura surged. White fire — hot enough to melt stone, hot enough to vaporize steel — gathered around his body in a spiraling inferno. The temperature across the entire battlefield spiked. Students on the ground felt the heat from hundreds of meters away.

"INFERNO BURN!"

A massive burst of white flame erupted from his body. The fire a wall of absolute destruction that rolled toward Louisa with the force of a volcanic eruption. FWOOOOOOM! The air itself ignited. The sky turned white.

Louisa’s eyes widened. She raised both hands. Two of her most powerful beast puppets — a peak B-Rank corpse bear and a peak B-Rank corpse serpent — materialized in front of her. The flame wave struck them.

The bear was vaporized instantly. Ash.

The serpent lasted two seconds before it, too, disintegrated.

The flames reached Louisa. She screamed as white fire engulfed her body. Her death energy shield held for a fraction of a second before cracking. She reinforced it desperately, pouring every scrap of mana into her defense. The fire ate through the shield layer by layer. HSSSSSS. Steam and smoke and the acrid smell of burning flesh.

Louisa barely survived. She dropped from the sky, her robes burned, her skin blackened in patches, her dark hair singed. She coughed blood as her regeneration worked overtime — closing burns, regrowing damaged tissue.

The Vice Principal exhaled. The Inferno Burn had cost him — his mana was significantly depleted. But Louisa was wounded and vulnerable now. One more push and —

A figure appeared behind him.

A blade coated in death energy drove through the Vice Principal’s back. The tip emerged from his chest in a spray of blood.

The Vice Principal’s eyes went wide. His fire aura sputtered. He looked down at the blade protruding from his chest. Dark veins spread from the wound — death energy flooding his body, poisoning his meridians, shutting down his organs.

He coughed blood. A thick spray that hung in the air before falling.

"YOU—" His voice was a wet gurgle. His hand reached backward — grasping at the figure behind him. His fingers found nothing.

His body fell from the sky.

It hit the ground with a sound that echoed across the academy. BOOM. Dust erupted around the impact point. The Vice Principal of the European All-Star Academy — Early Astral Realm, one of the strongest defenders of the institution — lay dead in the dirt.

Louisa coughed blood. She was burned, wounded, exhausted. She looked up at the figure who had descended beside her. A woman — lean, dark-haired, with cold violet eyes and a blade still dripping with the Vice Principal’s blood.

"Took you long enough, sister-in-law," Louisa said, her voice ragged.

Colette Du Maurier. Lemora’s sister-in-law. Her specialty: presence concealment and assassination. She had been hiding since the battle began — waiting for the perfect moment to strike. The Vice Principal had never known she was there.

Colette looked down at the Vice Principal’s body with an indifferent expression. "He was strong. The Inferno Burn nearly killed you."

Louisa spat blood. "Nearly. But I just wouldn’t die. At least not yet."

Meanwhile, Lucian, Clara, and Lemora arrived at the Research Department.