Chapter 466: Crimson Ridge

The silence in the grand strategy chamber was heavy enough to crush bone.

Outside the high arched windows, the blizzard raged across the capital, throwing thick sheets of snow against the stained glass. Inside, the long mahogany table was covered in tactical maps, troop movements, and glowing mana-maps of the Lumia Kingdom’s borders.

King Troy stood at the head of the table, his arms folded behind his back, his cold blue eyes fixed on the shattered silver clearance token Kyle had placed in the center of the wood. Beside him, Princess Lumia sat motionless, her hands tightly clasped in her lap. Her golden hair fell over her face, concealing her expression, but the trembling of her shoulders betrayed the storm brewing inside her.

"Commander Ona..." Lumia whispered, her voice barely audible over the roaring wind outside. "She was with me when the outer walls fell. She protected me for six months while you were gone, Kyle. She took three cursed arrows to her back defending the lower refuge... How could she be a traitor?"

"She isn’t a traitor, Lumia," Kyle said flatly, leaning against the edge of the heavy table. His left shoulder was bound in fresh linen beneath his torn dark coat, where Ona’s broadsword had grazed him. "She didn’t choose this. She was turned into a puppet."

Troy didn’t flinch. His cold, raspy voice cut through the heavy room like a rusted blade. "It makes no difference whether her mind was her own or stolen by blood magic. The commander of the royal legion had full access to our defensive arrays. Because of her, fifty thousand beasts nearly breached our subterranean ley-lines, and our forward posts were wiped out without firing a single alarm flare."

"It does make a difference," Kyle shot back, his dark slitted eyes locking onto Troy with icy intensity. "Because the entity pulling her strings isn’t sitting inside these walls. Snow analyzed her aura before she was yanked through that blood portal. The mana signatures match an ancient line."

Kyle paused, his knuckles turning white against the edge of the table.

"The Blood Moon Clan," Kyle said softly. "Vladimir."

At the sound of that name, Troy’s cold posture shifted ever so slightly. His eyes narrowed into thin, dangerous slits.

Vladimir.

Kyle remembered him all too clearly from his early, brutal days in this world. Before the hunger games, before the palace politics, Vladimir had been one of the elite combat instructors who had drilled Kyle until his muscles tore and his bones cracked. He had taught Kyle how to read high-speed spatial trajectories and how to control his center of gravity in blind combat. And then, when the void corruption began to seep into the kingdom, Vladimir had sold out his own disciples, abandoning his oath to join the higher dark forces of the Upper Firmament.

"Vladimir..." Falcon muttered from her seat near the grand fireplace. Her four dark-brown tails were wrapped tightly around her waist for warmth, her rich brown skin still bearing the exhaustion of five days in the mine, though her golden eyes burned with fierce interest. "I’ve heard about that old leech. A high-tier noble of the Blood Moon Clan. If he’s involved, this isn’t just a basic invasion. It’s an entire blood domain expanding beneath our feet."

"Is Vladimir the one controlling Ona?" Lumia asked, looking up, her tear-stained eyes wide with a desperate mix of anger and hope.

"No," Kyle answered, shaking his head slowly. "Vladimir is too high up on the food chain to be sitting in a lower borderland running field operations. He’s a general serving the Void Spire. The creature who turned Ona, the one who pulled her through that portal, is one of his primary blood lieutenants—a blood noble sent down to secure the eastern front."

Troy took a step forward, placing his heavy gloved palms on the edge of the map. "Then your target is clear. The Blood Moon Clan operates out of the Crimson Ridge—a desolate, toxic mountain range three hundred miles east of here. It is a dead sector covered in permanent blood fog and jagged obsidian cliffs. No royal army can march through those passes without being ambushed and bled dry."

"We don’t need a royal army," Kyle said, pushing off the table. "An army is too slow. It gives them time to move Ona deeper into their subterranean domain or break her mind completely. A small strike team can move faster and cut through their forward scouts before they even realize we’ve crossed the border."

Yua cracked her red knuckles, a wicked, razor-sharp smile spreading across her pale face. "Count me in. I’ve been wanting to taste high-tier blood mana for months. Their blood puppets tear apart too easily."

"I am coming as well," Seraphina chimed in smoothly, her azure ocean trident resting lightly against her side. "The toxic blood fog of the Crimson Ridge corrupts pure elemental mana. My ocean water can cleanse the atmosphere around us as we advance."

Falcon stood up, stretching her arms as emerald sparks of green poison fire crackled along her sharp claws. "You’re gonna need a tracker who knows how to navigate a toxic dead zone without walking off a cliff. My poison fire can burn through their blood-scent wards, and my four tails can pick up spatial ripples from five miles away."

Kyle looked at the three of them, then turned back to Princess Lumia.

"We’re bringing her back, Lumia," Kyle said, his tone dropping into a low, absolute promise. "If her soul can still be severed from that blood contract, I’ll tear the master down myself. And if she’s already too far gone... I’ll give her the clean death she deserves as a commander of this kingdom."

Lumia swallowed hard, then slowly stood up and gave Kyle a single, firm nod. "Bring our commander home, Kyle."

The long journey to the Crimson Ridge began at midnight.

Leaving the royal capital behind, the strike team moved like four silent specters through the howling snowstorm, cutting fast across the frozen northern plains. Without the heavy royal supply wagons or armored foot soldiers to slow them down, their pace was brutal, covering dozens of miles before the pale winter dawn even broke over the horizon.

By the second day of continuous travel, the white, pristine snow of the central plains began to thin out, replaced by sharp, jagged slate and dark volcanic rock. The air turned noticeably thicker, losing the fresh, crisp bite of the mountain wind and taking on a stale, metallic reek of copper and old sulfur.

The terrain grew unforgiving. They were entering the outer barrens—a vast, desolate wasteland that separated the Lumia Kingdom from the ancient, unmapped territory controlled by the Blood Moon Clan.

As they reached the crest of a high obsidian ridge on the third evening, Falcon stopped at the edge of the drop-off, her ears flat against her dark hair, her four brown tails whipping restlessly in the heavy wind.

"We’re at the perimeter," Falcon warned, pointing a long, sharp finger toward the horizon.

Ahead of them, the landscape transformed into a nightmare.

A massive, endless wall of dense, crimson fog stretched as far as the eye could see, completely blanking out the sky and smothering the base of a giant, jagged mountain range made of pitch-black volcanic glass. The red mist didn’t behave like normal fog; it rolled and churned like a living, liquid ocean, pulsing with a faint, sickly purple light deep within its heart.

"The Crimson Ridge," Seraphina murmured, raising her ocean trident. A faint, clear bubble of blue pressurized water expanded around the four of them, keeping the sharp, metallic stench of the outer fog from reaching their nostrils. "The mana inside that mist is heavily saturated with blood-rot. Mortals who step into that fog without protection would have their lungs dissolved within ten minutes."

"It isn’t just toxic," Kyle noted, his dark slitted eyes scanning the rolling red horizon. His shadow gauntlet vibrated softly beneath his dark sleeve, its demon energy reacting to the unnatural blood domain ahead. "Snow, can you map the interior topography?"

’The blood fog is acting as a natural spatial jammer, Kyle,’ Snow’s calm voice echoed softly in his head. ’I can only scan two miles ahead. However, I am detecting multiple mobile energy signatures moving along the lower mountain passes. They are not mindless chimeras. They move in structured, three-unit hunting formations.’

"Blood Moon scouts," Kyle said aloud to the group. "They know the mine controller failed, but they don’t know we’ve already reached their front door. We use the fog to our advantage."

Yua grinned, her crimson eyes gleaming through the dark. "How are we splitting them?"

"We don’t split," Kyle commanded, drawing his dark coat tighter around his frame. "This is going to be a long, brutal push across five major sectors before we even reach the lieutenant’s main spire. We stay together, strike fast, and leave no survivors to raise the central alarm."

Falcon stepped to the front, her dark brown skin slick with sweat as she ignited small, green poison flames across her palms. "I’ll lead the way through the fog tracks. My poison fire can melt their blood-triplines without setting off their spatial alarms. Just stay right behind my tails."

Without another word, Falcon leaped off the obsidian cliff, diving straight into the thick crimson fog below. Kyle, Yua, and Seraphina followed instantly, plunging into the dark, red-tinged abyss.

The inside of the Crimson Ridge was an endless labyrinth of narrow stone ravines, dark obsidian caverns, and toxic blood pools.

For two straight days inside the fog—the fourth and fifth days of their relentless journey—the group carved their way through the Blood Moon Clan’s outer defenses.

The encounters were fast, silent, and bloody. High-tier vampire scouts clad in dark red bone armor lunged out from the fog, wielding curved blood-blades that could slice through solid rock. But between Falcon’s green poison flames melting their armor joints, Seraphina’s razor-thin water spears piercing their core engines, Yua’s brutal close-quarters claw strikes, and Kyle’s lethal shadow-fire, every forward ambush was wiped out before a single distress signal could be launched into the sky.

Yet, with every mile they pushed deeper toward the central mountain peaks, the atmospheric pressure grew heavier, and the corruption in the air turned more aggressive.

By the evening of the fifth day, they reached the threshold of the Third Sector—a massive, hollowed-out canyon floor littered with the giant skeletal remains of ancient subterranean beasts.

They paused beneath the shadow of a massive obsidian archway to rest and recover their mana.

Falcon sat against a rock, panting heavily as Seraphina applied a soothing blue mist to her arms to heal the severe mana recoil caused by continuously using her green poison fire to clear their path. Yua was wiping black vampire blood off her red claws with a scrap of cloth, while Kyle stood at the edge of the archway, staring up at the distant, towering mountain peak visible through the thinning red clouds.

Sitting atop the highest volcanic peak was a massive, spired castle forged from pitch-black stone and dark iron—the primary fortress of the Blood Moon lieutenant.

’Kyle,’ Snow’s voice sounded in his mind, carrying a sharp, analytical edge. ’I have managed to bypass the local blood-jamming array now that we are within ten miles of the main spire. I have located Ona’s core energy signature.’

Kyle’s posture went rigid. ’Where is she?’

’She is inside the central altar room of the fortress,’ Snow revealed. ’However... her core energy signature is rapidly fluctuating. The vampire noble controlling her is accelerating the blood-binding ritual. He is trying to completely erase her remaining mortal memories to make her a permanent, high-tier blood commander before we breach the inner gates.’

Kyle slowly closed his hand into a tight fist, his dark gauntlet erupting in a sudden, intense burst of pitch-black demon fire that burned so hot it turned the obsidian rock beneath his boots into liquid glass.

"Kyle?" Falcon asked, looking up from the rock, her golden eyes sharp. "What did your intuition tell you?"

"We’re running out of time," Kyle said, his voice quiet, cold, and carrying an absolute, terrifying weight that made even the wind in the canyon seem to stall. "The lieutenant is trying to finish her transformation tonight."

He turned to look at Yua, Seraphina, and Falcon, his dark slitted pupils glowing with lethal resolve.

"No more hiding. No more quiet stealth," Kyle commanded, raising his right arm as pitch-black demon flames wrapped completely around his shoulders and blade. "We smash straight through the main canyon gate and tear that castle to the ground."