Harem System In A fantasy World - Chapter 179: Holy Land

Chapter 179: Holy Land

Back in the great hall they had just left, the wall slowly rebuilt itself. The stone folded back into place as if it had never moved. Within seconds, the chamber looked perfect again, untouched and silent, as though no hidden passage had ever existed.

Deep inside the mountain, Lucius and Dorian walked quietly.

As they moved forward, the mana stones behind them dimmed one by one, returning that part of the corridor to darkness. At the same time, the stones ahead of them lit up, guiding their path deeper into the hidden passage.

“You have been here before, right?” Lucius asked after some time.

Dorian let out a short snort.

“Don’t tell me you forgot,” he said. “We both came here as boys for our coming-of-age ceremony.”

Lucius laughed softly.

“It’s not that I forgot,” he replied. “I was wondering if you might have. It has been a long time.”

Dorian’s expression turned serious.

“No one forgets something like this, Lucius,” he said firmly. “If you forget stepping into your own holy land, you might as well end your life for disrespecting your ancestors.”

Lucius did not argue.

After that, they walked in silence for over an hour. Their footsteps echoed softly in the smooth tunnel. The glowing stones cast long shadows behind them, and the air grew colder the deeper they went.

Finally, Lucius stopped.

“We are here,” he said.

If anyone else had been present, they would have asked, here where?

In front of them was nothing but darkness.

But Lucius stepped forward anyway.

The moment his foot touched the unseen ground ahead, the mana stones exploded into light.

An impossibly vast cavern appeared before them.

It was so wide and so tall that the entire castle above could have fit inside it. The ceiling curved high overhead, disappearing into shadow. The walls were lined not with multi-colored mana stones like the corridor, but with deep crimson ones that cast an eerie blood-red glow over everything.

The entire cavern looked alive.

Thick red vines crawled along the walls and across the ceiling. They stretched down into the ground and then rose again elsewhere. They pulsed slowly, like veins carrying blood through a living body.

In the center of the cavern, some distance away, stood what looked like an altar.

But it was not a simple structure.

The vines that disappeared into the ground along the cavern walls seemed to converge there. They rose again around the altar, thicker and more numerous, as though this was their origin.

Lucius and Dorian walked toward it.

When they drew close enough, its true form became clear.

The altar was hollow inside, shaped like a massive stone basin. It was large enough for ten grown men to stand within it.

But what lay inside was far more shocking.

The basin was filled with thick, dark red blood.

It was so dark that it almost looked black under the red light of the cavern.

And within that blood, more vines floated and pulsed. They twisted and gathered toward the center, where they wrapped around something.

At the very center of the basin floated a heart.

A large, bright red heart.

It pulsed steadily, glowing faintly with each beat.

The sound was deep and slow.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Lucius and Dorian stood before it in silence.

Their eyes were filled not with fear, but with reverence.

They were standing before the source of their bloodline.

The ancestral heart of the Vampire clan.

The reverence on their faces lasted only a moment.

Then it faded.

Dorian’s expression turned heavy as he looked down at the pulsing heart.

“It’s getting weaker,” he said.

It sounded like a question, but it was not. It was a statement.

Lucius nodded slowly.

“It is.”

The heart continued to beat, but the glow was not as bright as it should have been. The vines that wrapped around it pulsed unevenly, as if struggling to keep rhythm.

“And it will continue to weaken,” Lucius added, his voice low, “even if I feed it my blood. That will only delay the inevitable.”

He paused briefly before continuing.

“Unless a Progenitor bloodline appears within the next thousand or so years, our holy land may vanish entirely. And with it… most of our strength, our defenses, and our resources.”

If anyone truly understood what this meant, they would be shocked beyond words. Something that had been here for hundreds of thousands of years, vanishing in the next measly thousand.

It was inconceivable. This cavern was only the surface of the vampire clan’s holy land.

Behind the altar, further down, four separate tunnels branched deeper into the mountain. Each of those tunnels branched into more tunnels, forming a long channel, and they each contained vast quantities of mana stones, far more than those in the entrance passage.

The heart and blood before them were not just symbolic.

It acted as a conduit. It simulated what the world called a mana vein.

Mana veins were among the most valuable natural resources in existence. The last time one had appeared in the world, every major race had gone to war to claim ownership of it.

The conflict had grown so severe that, in the end, all sides were forced to compromise and share its output.

Mana veins condensed raw mana into mana stones continuously until they eventually collapsed. For mages, they were nearly infinite sources of mana cultivation resources.

Their strategic value could not be overstated.

And this mountain—

This entire sacred ground—

Was functioning as a mana vein.

In fact, it was something greater.

It had been created by the very first Ancestor of vampires. The First Progenitor had condensed his own life force, his blood, and his heart into this structure. He had sacrificed himself to create it.

For vampires, the effect was even stronger.

The mana here was denser. Richer and more suited to their blood.

This was one of the main reasons why vampires, though few in number, were often stronger than mages of other races at the same rank.

All promising young vampires were brought here in their youth and made to drink this dark, enigmatic blood, helping them grow stronger, making their bloodline thicker, and in some rare cases, awakening a stronger bloodline.

One might argue that why not allow every vampire to drink this blood and saturate their cores here and grow even stronger, but it was not so simple.

If one’s original bloodline was too weak, the ancestor’s vampire would purge them, essentially ending their life. This blood essence was not just some great progenitor’s remains.

No.

It was an amalgamation of their life force, their strength, their mana core. That kind of power was incomprehensible.

Even standing inside this cavern, one could feel the difference. The air itself was heavy with power.

Lucius looked at the pulsing heart again.

“It has been a long time since the last Progenitor bloodline appeared,” he said quietly.

Dorian’s jaw tightened.

“Fifteen millennia,” Lucius continued. “That was the last time this altar was fed a Primordial bloodline.”

The heart pulsed again.

Thump.

“Is there really nothing we can do about it?” Dorian asked quietly, his eyes still fixed on the pulsing heart.

“Unfortunately, there isn’t,” Lucius replied.

The cavern fell silent again for a moment, filled only with the slow, heavy beating of the heart.

“Then why did you bring me here?” Dorian asked.

Lucius let out a short laugh.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” he said, “but I do not suddenly have some grand plan.”

He turned slightly, his expression calm but firm.

“However, I think it is time for Celeste to undergo her coming-of-age ceremony.”

Dorian’s head turned so sharply that it almost looked painful. He stared at Lucius’ side profile, searching for any sign of hesitation.

There was none.

“You are serious?” he asked.

“Yes,” Lucius nodded. “If she believes she is old enough to make her own choices, and if she refuses to marry someone she does not like, then she must help the clan in another way.”

His voice hardened slightly.

“This is it.”

Dorian did not interrupt.

“I will send word to her,” Lucius continued. “She will have two choices. Marry the Kletis boy… or undergo her bloodline trial.”

Dorian’s expression grew solemn.

He still remembered his own trial very vividly. It was not an ordinary test.

When initiated, the one undergoing it would drink the enigmatic blood from this altar. Then their consciousness would be pulled somewhere else.

Whether it was truly within one’s own mind or another realm entirely, no one could say. All he remembered was darkness.

An endless horizon of black skies, and beneath his feet, water stretching infinitely in all directions. There was no land and no light. Only silence and darkness.

And then—

They would appear one by one.

Ancestors.

Vampires of the past, summoned according to rank and bloodline.

You would face them one by one. They would match your rank, but their bloodlines would vary. It would begin with weaker lines and increase depending on your performance.

It was brutal.

The ancient bloodlines were unimaginably strong.

Dorian had fought bravely; every battle had been brutal, even those with lesser bloodlines had been hard-fought battles.

In the end, he barely managed to defeat an opponent with a middle-grade True Vampire bloodline. When he faced one with a peak True Vampire bloodline, he had been crushed brutally.

And so, he had failed to improve his bloodline.

That was the reward of the trial. If you defeated an ancestor with a stronger bloodline than your own, that superior bloodline would be bestowed upon you.

But such a thing was almost impossible. Even Lucius had failed to ascend beyond his Ancestor bloodline during his own trial.

Dorian could not even imagine what it would be like to face an Ancestor-level vampire in that realm.

The worst part was this—

The trial could only be attempted once. No matter how many times you drank the blood afterward, it would never activate again.

There were no second chances. That was why Dorian was shocked.

Lucius himself had undergone his trial at fifty years old, which was still considered young adulthood among vampires.

But Celeste—

She was only twenty-one.

“If you believe she is ready,” Dorian said slowly, “then I will not argue.”

Lucius nodded once.

“Lilith, however…” Dorian began carefully.

“I will convince her,” Lucius said.

Dorian studied his friend for a moment, then sighed.

“It is a shame,” he said quietly. “She is the only child you two have together.”

A grin suddenly appeared on his face.

“I wish you would give me more nephews and nieces. Is my sister a terrible bedwarmer, or are you just impotent?” He teased.

Lucius laughed.

“Go find your own wife to impregnate, you bastard,” he replied. “Besides, it’s not as if we haven’t tried. You know how difficult it is.”

The stronger the bloodline, the harder it was to conceive.

Dorian nodded slowly.

“Yes. So they say.”