Chapter 17: A Moment Before Death, A God Descends

The next second, the Vampire King released his aura. 

It erupted like a silent explosion—an unseen tidal wave of malevolence that surged through the hall. The air grew thick, pressing in from all sides as though the very walls had begun to collapse inward. Shadows deepened, flickering along the stone floor like dark fire, and the torches that lined the room guttered as if choked by the weight of the presence now flooding the space. 

It was overwhelming—an undeniable display of the abyssal gulf in power between the Vampire King and the rest. Dan could feel it instantly: a crushing pressure that wrapped around him like heavy iron chains, each link forged from raw dread. Every breath felt like inhaling molten lead. Every heartbeat pounded against the suffocating grip of the aura. 

The sheer intensity dwarfed anything he had experienced before. Not even the fearsome Warnack Overlord or the cold, commanding Duke Leion had exuded such soul-splintering power. Yet, through sheer will alone, Dan remained standing—his legs trembling, sweat beading across his brow, as if gravity itself had betrayed him. 

When he turned his gaze toward Nia and Zara, his stomach clenched. They were crumpled on the stone floor, their bodies trembling, barely able to lift their heads. Already wounded, they now looked like fallen statues, buckled beneath an invisible mountain. 

Dan's mind raced. If he didn't act now, they wouldn't even die in combat—they would be crushed into nothingness, erased beneath the Vampire King's suffocating will. 

Without a second more, Dan roared in his heart and activated Seal Flow Requiem—the strongest art in his arsenal. 

Power surged from within him, cascading like molten gold through his veins. Symbols of radiant silver and blue spiraled into the air around his arms, and the ground beneath his feet cracked with the force of the energy he unleashed. With a shout of pure force, he hurled the technique toward the Vampire King. 

For the first time, the Vampire King faltered. 

He stiffened, a flicker of confusion flashing in his ancient eyes. Then, slowly—almost imperceptibly at first—his overwhelming aura began to bleed away. It was like watching storm clouds unravel under sunlight, the suffocating presence thinning, flickering, then falling apart layer by layer. 

Within moments, his vast power had dropped to the Sacred level. 

But the cost was immense. 

Dan gritted his teeth, veins bulging in his arms and neck. Every fiber of his body screamed in resistance as he pushed more and more of himself into the sealing. The Vampire King's body wasn't flesh and blood alone—it was a fortress of ancient, cursed intricacies, layered with dark enchantments and timeless fury. Like trying to bind a living storm, the task defied logic and strength. 

The knots of the seal, glowing now with pale light, tightened with agonizing slowness. Dan's aura drained rapidly, his vision blurring at the edges. The hall spun. Sweat poured from his brow like rain. 

Still, he pressed forward—because he had to. 

Because even legends fall if you know where to place the seal. 

The Vampire King took a few seconds to comprehend what was happening. But soon, the truth dawned on him—his power had been sealed partially. 

He didn't wait another moment. 

With a flick of his pale, clawed index finger, he launched a telekinetic blast at Dan. The air crackled as invisible force surged through it—silent, swift, and deadly. 

Dan reacted instantly, diving to the side. A sharp, splintering crack! tore through the marble floor behind him like a whip slicing stone. Dust and debris lifted into the air—but before his eyes, the fracture healed. The floor rippled, smoothed over, and within a second, it looked untouched, as if time itself had reversed. 

There was no time to marvel. 

The Vampire King's next assault came like a rain of unseen hammers—each wave of telekinesis more brutal, more calculated. Dan twisted, flipped, and slid across the polished hall, barely keeping ahead of the invisible onslaught. The air around him throbbed with pressure, the temperature dropping with each pulse, like the breath of a crypt. 

Then—bang—the Vampire King appeared in front of him in a blur. 

Before Dan could react, an iron grip closed around his neck. 

The next moment, he was slammed against the stone wall with a crash that shook the foundation. Pain shot down his spine. The cold surface bit into his back as if trying to etch his outline into the stone. The Vampire King's hand, like a sculptor's vice, held him fast. 

He leaned in, red eyes glowing like twin blood moons, burning with restrained rage. 

"Human," he growled, his voice like gravel scraping against bone, "you are already testing the limits of my patience. I don't want to kill you—you're interesting. To be able to lock up my power to this extent… No human, no Sacred-tier being, has ever done that before." 

In that instant, Hollow Vital activated. 

A glow surged across Dan's battered frame. His wounds sealed shut with a hiss, flesh mending unnaturally fast as if time bent itself around him. Every nerve in his body burned, his muscles tensed like coiled steel, pushed beyond their natural threshold. 

But he knew the cost. 

Hollow Vital was no gift—it would repay its favor with agony later, like a cruel god demanding its dues in blood and bone. 

With Dan's focus lost, the sealflow requiem was broken. 

Dan didn't flinch. 

He roared, a primal sound that echoed through the chamber like the cry of a warrior tearing open the sky. 

In a blur of motion, he unleashed everything: Golden Break, SkyDrive Mirage, Thousandfold Grasp, and Void Pulse Rend—an onslaught of techniques fused into a single, devastating strike. 

His fist, wrapped in swirling currents of collapsing matter, collided with the Vampire King's chest. A pulse of raw destruction exploded outward, warping the air with the scent of burning ozone and metallic heat. 

The Vampire King staggered—an expression of genuine pain flashing across his face for the first time. He was thrown back, crashing into the floor with a shudder that ran up the walls like a quake. 

Dan didn't stop. 

He followed up with Void Pulse Beam—a thin, brilliant lance of annihilation. The moment it struck, the chamber erupted. A brilliant light seared the air, followed by a thunderous boom. The sound rolled across the hall like a tidal wave of violence. 

Dust exploded outward in thick, choking clouds. Stones trembled underfoot. The very hall seemed to breathe, groan, and shift under the weight of unleashed power. 

Void Pulse Rend wasn't a normal technique. 

It unmade matter—disrupting the very lattice of atoms, reducing existence to fragments of nothingness. Dan had never dared test it before. 

But now… 

As the dust particles settled, swirling like golden ash in a dying fire, the vampire emerged once more from the haze. His clothes hung in tatters, barely clinging to his form, revealing pale white skin that shimmered like polished marble under the dim, broken light. His chest was bare, exposed to the stunned eyes of the trio. The Vampire King's body was flawless—an hourglass-shaped torso sculpted with rippling muscles, each one taut and defined as if carved from living stone. 

Rage radiated from him like heat from an open furnace. His eyes burned with a crimson fury, and anyone could see—he was pissed off at Dan. Murderously so. He wanted to kill him—desperately, violently. 

The entire situation had flipped like a table overturned in the chaos of a brawl. 

Nia and Zara lay crumpled on the cracked stone floor, their bodies trembling as they struggled to rise, to gather enough energy to heal. Blood stained their clothes, and the air around them buzzed with the faint flicker of damaged magic. Dan wasn't doing any better. His breath came in sharp, broken gasps, and his arms hung low with exhaustion. Inside, he was spent—drained to his core after unleashing everything he had on the vampire, only to see that the Vampire King didn't even bear a scratch. Not a single mark on that infuriatingly perfect body. 

Nia and Zara were in no shape to fight. Dan stood alone, shaking, barely upright, his skin glistening with sweat, his fists clenched but trembling. His chest heaved as he locked eyes with the Vampire King. 

In the blink of an eye—faster than thought—the Vampire King vanished. A gust of wind, a blur of shadow, and he was suddenly right in front of Dan. Cold fingers like iron shackles wrapped around Dan's throat. 

Dan tried to react—his hands sparking weakly with energy as he swung at the monster holding him—but it was all in vain. His blows bounced off like raindrops on steel. Not a single scratch. Not even a shift in stance. 

The Vampire King tightened his grip. Dan's feet left the ground for a moment. Pressure built in his skull. His vision blurred. His lungs screamed for air. 

He was choking. He could feel it—consciousness slipping like sand through desperate fingers. One more second... 

And then—the earth shuddered. 

A deep, groaning rumble rolled through the hall like thunder in a cave. The ceiling above trembled. Cracks split across the surface like veins of lightning. Then, with a deafening boom, chunks of stone and metal tore free. Explosions erupted above, sending shockwaves through the chamber. 

Dust and debris cascaded down, clanging and crashing against the floor. For the first time in what felt like hours, light—pure, golden sunlight—pierced the gloom, filtering in through the falling wreckage. It bathed the scene in surreal brilliance, slicing through the chaos like a blade. 

Dan coughed, blinking against the sudden brightness, stunned. 

And he wasn't alone. 

Even the Vampire King—eternal, ruthless—looked momentarily bewildered. His brows furrowed. His eyes narrowed. And with surprising swiftness, he retreated, his steps slow and wary as the ceiling continued to fall around them. 

The ceiling of the hall was breaking apart with a groaning crack, each fracture sounding like the scream of stone under pressure. Dust spiraled through the air, catching the dim light like ash in the wake of a fire. From the widening rupture above, they could see the sky—an unnatural glimpse of blue and silver streaks beyond the ruins, proof that someone had utterly destroyed the house, the spiraling stone staircase, and the once-impenetrable ceiling of the great hall. 

A hole yawned in the ground, wide and deep, as if a colossal hand had scooped out the earth and punched straight through the upper layers. This wasn't mere destruction—it was a calculated, brutal display of power. Someone had made a path through solid bedrock and shattered an unbreakable structure from beneath. 

This was not the work of an ordinary person. 

No, someone formidable had done this—someone strong enough to challenge the Vampire King. That alone was enough to make the king retreat, his eyes narrowing, his boots stepping back across the cracked floor with wary precision. 

All eyes turned skyward, necks craned, hearts pounding. Who had come? 

Through the drifting dust and broken beams of light, a figure floated down from the sky, descending like a shadow against the pale backdrop of day. He wore black robes that flowed like liquid ink in the wind, the long folds fluttering as if they carried their own weight of presence. In one hand, he gripped a wooden staff, and his face was hidden beneath a dark hood that obscured his features in shadow. 

As he came closer, the light caught his face. 

Dan saw him—an old man with snow-white hair, neatly combed, and a crisp, white French mustache that curved like the edge of a crescent moon. His skin was smooth, pale but warm, unmistakably human in both tone and texture. There was something timeless in his features, a stillness like the calm before a storm. 

Zara gasped and pointed, her voice breaking the silence. 

"It's Principal Dormund!" she shouted. "We're safe!" 

Dan stared at the man floating in midair. The Principal of King's Academy. That title alone echoed with weight and power. To hold it meant mastery beyond measure—someone considered among the most powerful beings in the universe. 

He couldn't look away. 

A human—just a human, draped in a heavy black cloak that rippled with each movement, as though the very fabric responded to his will. Dan couldn't make out any further details beneath the cloak, only the simple wooden staff in the man's hand. At the top of it sat a perfectly round orb—unadorned, unremarkable, and yet it radiated an eerie calm, like the eye of a storm. 

Dan's thoughts swirled with awe. This man—Principal Dormund—stood far above anyone Dan had ever faced or feared. Not the shadowy depths of the Warnack Organization, nor the towering might of the Leion Dukedom, could compare. They were ants beside this man. 

A flicker of hope stirred in Dan's chest. Relief washed over him like a cool breeze after fire—luck had saved him. Again. 

Without hesitation, he summoned his God Sight. His vision shifted, scanning the depths of the man's essence. 

A Primordial Being. 

This words echoed in his mind, heavy as thunder.