Chapter 436: Blood Mastery: Reverse Circulation

The oppressive darkness of the deep abyss was regularly ripped open by violent, crimson flashes. Beneath the jagged overhangs of the Serpent’s Maw, the sea ran thick with the metallic stench of mana-rich blood and the acrid ozone of overcharged execution seals.

Yua stood at the epicenter of a shattered cavern floor, her pale skin glistening under the faint red light of her own aura. The water around her pulsed with heavy, agonizing waves of pure bloodlust. Her crimson eyes, stripped of any human warmth, locked onto the five figures arrayed before her in a ragged semicircle.

The executioners of The Root were no longer moving with the graceful, mechanical precision that made them feared throughout the Clover Spire.

**Vesper**, the squad leader, held his silver rapier in a tight, defensive low-guard. Blood—not human blood, but a glowing, artificial magenta liquid mana—seeped from a deep tear across his left shoulder where Yua’s bare claws had shredded his runic cloak. Beside him, **Thorne**, the massive vanguard warrior whose twin shields had shattered two mountains during the Siege of the Western Isles, knelt on one knee. His heavy steel tower shields lay fractured at his feet, their internal core arrays completely melted by the sheer heat of Yua’s condensed blood-flames.

Further back, the three support executioners—**Kaelen**, **Lyra**, and **Mirei**—were frantically chanting in unison, their hands tracing intricate golden binding circles in the murky water. Yet, their fingers trembled. The air within twenty yards of Yua was so saturated with heavy vampiric intent that every breath they took felt like inhaling crushed glass.

"She... she isn’t draining our life force," Lyra choked out, her fingers shuddering as her light circle flickered and died. "Her vampiric passive is useless against our mana-veins... so why is her physical pressure *increasing*?"

"Because she isn’t using a spell, you fool!" Vesper snarled, his dry, raspy voice carrying a rare edge of panic. "She’s burning her own royal bloodline core to force raw physical output! She’s converting her flesh directly into kinetic force!"

Yua didn’t offer them the dignity of an answer.

She took a single step forward. The stone beneath her bare foot shattered instantly into fine sand, and before the shockwave could propagate through the water, she vanished.

"Defensive Array Delta!" Vesper screamed.

Thorne reacted on pure instinct born of a hundred brutal campaigns. Abandoning his broken shields, he slammed his massive, silver-plated gauntlets together, detonating the emergency mana-packs embedded in his shoulders.

**"Root Art: Iron Palisade of the Sixth Gate!"**

A dense, multi-layered wall of interlocking steel roots and light-blades erupted from the seabed, forming a ten-foot-thick fortress wall between Yua and the support casters.

An instant later, Yua materialized directly in front of the wall. She didn’t draw a weapon. She didn’t chant an incantation. She simply pulled her right fist back, her slender arm swelling slightly as ancient, dark red runes flared along her pale skin, and drove her knuckle straight into the center of the steel roots.

*BOOM!*

The underwater shockwave was so immense that it blew out the stone ceiling thirty feet above them, causing a shower of massive boulders to rain down into the trench. The ten-foot-thick iron wall didn’t just crack—it disintegrated into thousands of whistling, razor-sharp shrapnel pieces that tore through the cavern.

Thorne, positioned directly behind the wall, took the full force of the kinetic blow. The kinetic impact bypassed his thick plate armor, shattering his sternum and blasting him backward through two solid stone columns before he slammed into the trench wall, coughing up mouthfuls of glowing magenta fluid.

"Thorne!" Mirei cried out, reaching into her pouch for a high-grade restoration rune.

"Don’t look at her!" Vesper bellowed, leaping forward with his rapier raised high. **"Piercing Ray: Lightfall!"**

Vesper’s rapier thrust forward a hundred times in a fraction of a second, creating a blinding net of golden light spears that targeted every vital point on Yua’s body. The speed was absolute—an execution art designed to pin fast-moving apex beasts before they could react.

Yua didn’t dodge.

She tilted her head slightly, letting three of the light spears graze her cheek and neck, cutting shallow red lines across her skin. But as the remaining ninety-seven thrusts descended, her crimson eyes flared with a terrifying, ancient power.

**"Gaze of the Crimson Sovereign: Domain of Stasis!"**

The air around Vesper grew impossibly heavy. The moment his eyes made contact with Yua’s glowing pupils, his mind was slammed with a vision of a sky dripping with dark red rain and an endless ocean of skulls. His nervous system froze. The liquid mana in his artificial veins turned to solid ice, locking his arms and legs in place mid-thrust.

"W-What... is this..." Vesper gasped inside his mind, unable to even move his tongue to speak. "My mana... is being commanded... by her gaze?!"

With Vesper frozen in mid-air like a statue, Yua casually reached out and grabbed him by his throat. Her cold, slender fingers dug deep into his neck armor, crushing the silver plates like soft clay.

She raised him off the seabed, her face inches from his pale, horrified eyes.

"You replaced your blood with artificial mana so I couldn’t feed," Yua whispered, her voice layered with a double resonance—one human, one ancient and monstrous. "A clever trick for lower nobles. But you forgot one thing, surface rat."

She pulled him closer, her dark fangs extending past her lower lip.

"Blood is not just food for my kind. It is our authority. And your artificial mana is still fluid... which means it belongs to me."

Yua closed her fist around his throat and *squeezed*.

**"Blood Mastery: Reverse Circulation!"**

Vesper’s eyes almost burst from his sockets. The glowing magenta fluid inside his veins began to flow backward at violent speeds, bursting out of his pores, his eyes, his ears, and his nose! The artificial mana gathered in mid-air around Yua’s hand, condensing into a floating, swirling orb of dark purple energy.

Vesper’s body rapidly withered, his metallic skin shriveling into dry, grey ash as every drop of energy was forcibly ripped from his system. With a casual flick of her wrist, Yua tossed his empty, lifeless armor aside. It clattered against the stone floor, completely hollow.

"Squad Leader Vesper is down!" Kaelen shrieked, dropping his staff as sheer terror broke his mental conditioning. "Retreat! We need the Archmages! We can’t suppress a Pureblood in open water!"

"Nobody is leaving," Yua said softly.

She thrust her hand into the floating orb of Vesper’s extracted mana. The purple energy ignited, transforming into four long, whip-like ribbons of solidified blood-light that extended fifty feet across the cavern.

Kaelen and Lyra turned to flee toward the upper exit of the trench, casting defensive light-shields behind them as they swam at maximum output.

Yua didn’t even chase them. She simply snapped her wrist, sending two of the blood-whips cutting through the dark water.

*SLASH!*

The whips passed through their light-shields as if they were made of parchment, cleanly bisecting both casters at the waist. Their bodies dissolved into clouds of fading golden particles, lost to the dark abyssal currents.

Mirei, the last remaining support executioner, fell to her knees in the mud. Her staff lay forgotten beside her, her hands trembling uncontrollably as she looked up at the terrifying red silhouette approaching her through the murky water.

"P-Please..." Mirei whispered, tears welling in her eyes. "I was only following orders... The Fifth Seat... they promised us—"

Yua stopped three feet away from her. The blood-whips vanished, dissolving into fine red mist that settled over the cavern floor. Her breathing was steady, but the crimson glow in her eyes slowly began to dim, revealing the deep, profound exhaustion underneath her ruthless exterior.

"Where is the transport ship holding the captives?" Yua asked, her voice dropping back to its normal, quiet tone.

Mirei swallowed hard, pointing a trembling finger toward the northern cliffside beyond the Serpent’s Maw. "The... the high-altitude council shuttle... It’s docked at the upper ridge... Grand Duchess Selena took her personal vessel there... They’re preparing to launch for the Spire in ten minutes..."

Yua looked toward the north. Her sensitive ears caught the faint, distant hum of high-grade mana engines powering up near the surface of the trench.

Before Mirei could say another word, a heavy, staggering footprint echoed from the dark tunnel behind them.

Kyle stumbled out from the shadows of the narrow canyon, leaning heavily against the rock wall with one hand while his other hand clutched his broken ribs. His clothes were charred, his skin covered in severe burns from Sir Gareth’s solar light, and his face was deathly pale. Yet, his dark eyes were clear, focused on Yua.

"Yua..." Kyle wheezed, coughing up a small fleck of blood as he dragged his legs forward. "You’re... still whole."

Yua turned to look at him. The monstrous aura surrounding her completely evaporated, replaced by a sudden, sharp look of concern. She glided across the short distance between them, catching Kyle by his shoulders just as his legs gave out completely.

"You fool," Yua murmured softly, supporting his weight against her shoulder. "You used your shadow channels past the threshold again. Your core is practically screaming."

"Gareth is dead," Kyle muttered, a faint, weary smile touching his blood-stained lips. "The refugees... are safe in the lower caverns. But... Elara..."

"I know," Yua said, her red eyes turning back toward the northern ridge. "Her mother took her. They’re at the upper launch pad."

"We... have to get her back," Kyle said, his grip tightening on Yua’s arm despite his failing strength. "If they take her to the Clover Spire... we’ll never reach her."

Yua looked down at Kyle’s broken state, then at her own trembling hands. Her raw physical explosion had consumed over eighty percent of her blood reserves. Fighting six Grand Archmages or breaching a high-grade Council transport in their current condition was suicidal.

Yet, as she looked at the dark, empty trench where their home had been destroyed, she knew there was no going back.

"Can you walk?" Yua asked softly.

Kyle forced his eyes open, pushing himself up off her shoulder until he stood on his own two feet, though his knees shook violently. "I can fight."

"Good," Yua said, her lips setting into a hard, unyielding line. "Because we’re going to hijack a Council ship."

Without looking back at the surviving, weeping executioner kneeling in the mud, Yua and Kyle turned toward the northern ridge, disappearing into the dark, churning currents of the abyss as the distant roar of the shuttle engines grew louder.