F-Rank Soul Eater

Chapter 214: The Plan in motion

...The gold-threaded dress shimmered under the harsh Southern sun, a cruel irony for a girl who felt her soul withering.

Sophia walked the length of the platform, the heavy scent of marigolds cloying in the humid air.

Every step felt like a drumbeat in a death march.

The altar was a masterpiece of red and black silk, flanked by the twins who stood like two predatory bookends.

To their side, the Priest of the Church of the Neuralink waited, his chest bearing a crimson rune that have a low glow against daylight.

Don Alejandro stood behind them, his white suit blindingly bright, his chest puffed out like a peacock who had finally cornered the world.

As Sophia approached, her eyes stayed fixed on the red ribbon tucked into her sleeve.

She didn’t hate Soren. In her heart, a quiet, flickering warmth remained.

He had given her a journey of hope, even if it had ended here.

She only prayed that he, Polystar, and the others were far away by now, fleeing back to the safety of the Academy.

If this was the price for her brothers’ lives and her father’s memory, she would pay it.

She would be the Saintess they demanded, even if it meant becoming a ghost in a golden dress.

The mariachi music softened, the blaring horns replaced by the mournful, sweet strumming of guitars. Sophia reached the top of the stairs.

"You look truly divine, Saintess," the Priest murmured, his eyes glazed with a fanatic’s devotion.

"The Goddess herself," Alejandro echoed, his voice filled with a greed he no longer bothered to hide.

The Priest turned to the crowd, raising his hands. "Today is a day of perfection granted by the God of the Neuralink! We gather to bind the light of the Saintess to the eternal House of Los Elegidos. A union of flesh, spirit, and blood!"

He turned to the twins, the men in Red and Black. "Do you, sons of the Chosen, take Saintess Sophia to be your lawfully wedded wife, to share in her grace and guard her glory?"

"We do," they answered in a haunting, synchronized baritone.

The Priest turned his gaze to Sophia, his hand hovering over the Neuralink rune on her collar. "And do you, Sophia, take these two gentlemen to be your—"

BOOM.

The explosion didn’t just rattle the platform; it shattered the afternoon silence like a hammer to glass.

The shockwave sent a cloud of dust and stone shrapnel whistling over the heads of the screaming crowd.

Before the Priest could finish his sentence, a white-robed guard was launched into the air as if thrown by a giant.

The man’s body soared several meters, limbs flailing, before crashing directly onto the altar.

The Priest was pinned beneath the weight of the unconscious guard, his red robes staining with dust and blood.

Alejandro’s face twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated fury. He gripped the railing of the platform, his knuckles turning white as he stared at the billowing smoke in the courtyard.

"¡Maldita sea!" he roared, spittle flying from his lips. "¡Guardias! ¡Maten a cualquiera que no deba estar aquí!"

Through the haze of the explosion, a massive, hulking silhouette began to emerge. The sound of escaping steam hissed through the chaos—a deep, rhythmic venting that could only belong to one person.

Cynthia.

The wedding was over.

The rescue had begun.

The twins, their eyes fixed on the towering silhouette of Cynthia amidst the billowing smoke, began to step forward, their fingers twitching with the urge to join the fray.

But Alejandro’s hand snapped out, barring their path.

"No," he hissed, his face a mask of cold pragmatism.

"She is the priority. Take the saintess inside. Lock the doors. If she is lost, this family dies today."

Alejandro turned toward the chaos as Enrique pressed a heavy, silver-etched pistol into his palm.

The white-robed guards surrounding him unslung rifles from beneath their robes, their movements fluid and practiced. "I will deal with this mountain myself," the Baron growled, heading toward the courtyard.

Inside, the silence was a sharp contrast to the thunder outside. Soren and Polystar were moving like whirlwind, tearing through the Baron’s private sanctuary.

They ransacked the study, tossing leather-bound journals and overturning heavy mahogany desks.

They moved to the music room, Polystar ruthlessly snapping the necks of guitars and shredding the velvet curtains, his eyes darting for any shimmer of a hidden resonance anywhere.

Even Alejandro’s bedchamber was dismantled, the silk sheets torn and the floorboards tested for any hollow echoe.

"Nothing!" Polystar spat, kicking a discarded jewelry box across the room.

Soren wiped sweat from his brow, his Blackfield scanning the walls.

"Polystar, are you sure about this? We’ve checked every safe, and every floorboard. Maybe there isn’t an anchor. Maybe it’s just a spoken oath."

"Impossible," Polystar snapped, his breathing ragged. "A Soul Oath of this needs a physical tether. Pause, Soren. Think. We are looking for something hidden, but nobles... they don’t just hide their power.

Yes.

They boast of it. Erm... like... like its a part of their legacy."

Soren stood still, the memory of the previous night flashing through his mind.

He saw Alejandro standing by the grand staircase, his hand heavy with rings, stroking the frame of a painting with a strange, sickly affection.

"The portrait," Soren whispered, his eyes widening.

"He kept talking about his ’papa’ and the glory of the lineage. He wasn’t just being sentimental; he was touching the anchor."

They raced back to the grand foyer. The massive portrait of Alejandro’s father loomed over them, the eyes of the painted patriarch seeming to judge their intrusion.

Without hesitation, Soren and Polystar gripped the heavy gilded frame and heaved.

With a groaning screech of wood against stone, they tore the painting from the wall, letting it crash to the floor.

Polystar pressed his palm against the exposed masonry, tapping rhythmically.

Thump. Thump. Hollow.

"There’s a door here," Polystar muttered. He wound up a fist, his soul energy flickering briefly, and punched. The stone shattered, revealing a dark, narrow passage smelling of old dust and ozone.

Soren grinned, adding his own strike to widen the hole. "Jackpot."

They shared a quick, triumphant look and scrambled into the darkness of the passage.

However, at that exact moment, the heavy front doors of the manor burst open.

The twins, Red and Black, were dragging a struggling Sophia between them, her golden dress had become torn and dusty as they pulled her.

Red’s eyes immediately locked onto the shattered wall and the tail end of Soren’s cloak disappearing into the hole.

The brothers shared a wordless, almost telepathic look.

Black tightened his grip on Sophia’s arm, pulling her toward the stairs, while Red broke into a sprint.

He leaped over the fallen portrait and dived into the passage after the intruders, his eyes glowing with a murderous, crimson light.

While the manor above was a literal powder keg, the air beneath it was thick enough to chew.

Vass and Bloodshine waded through the narrow maintenance tunnels—the sound of their boots squelching in the dampness.

"Sewage. Fantastic," Vass muttered, his voice echoing off the grime-slicked walls.

"While the Turdface and the Foureyes are upstairs playing hero, I’m stuck in a hole where there’s nothing to kill but rats. This is an insult to my rank."

Bloodshine didn’t respond. Her eyes were glazed over, her Blackfield pulsing outward in rhythmic waves, tracing the jagged, oily resonance she had caught a glimpse of the day before.

"I’m telling you," Vass continued, his ego bruised by the hierarchy of the mission, "that Turdface thinks just because he’s achieved so much, he can order me around. When we get back to the Academy, I’m going to kick his ass like I used to back home. Remind him where he sits on the food chain."

Bloodshine stopped dead. The sudden lack of movement was more jarring than a scream.

She turned slowly, her snake-like eyes narrowing into thin, predatory slits.

"Do you think I don’t know?" she whispered, her voice like a razor drawn across silk. "Do you think I didn’t hear about the things you did to my Soren? You are nøt lucky he considers you one of his closest friends, Vass. Because if he didn’t... I would have nøt skinned you myself."

The air in the tunnel seemed to drop twenty degrees. Vass paused, his golden soul energy flickering instinctively.

He was an SS-rank soulbound warrior—a powerhouse of raw, destructive force.

He wasn’t afraid of anyone in his year. And yet, looking into Bloodshine’s cold, unblinking stare, he felt a genuine shiver of survival instinct.

He knew her power was just illusions. But the aura she was radiating right now didn’t feel like a trick.

It felt like a promise from someone who knew exactly how much skin it took to make a rug.

For a moment, the hot-headed bully actually considered the possibility that she could do it.

"Nøt Found it," she said suddenly, her tone shifting back to a hauntingly cheerful melody.

She spun around and sprinted toward a rusted ventilation grate at the end of the corridor.

’He considers me his friend?’ Vass thought to himself in disbelief.

With a single, sharp kick, Bloodshibe sent the metal screeching into the darkness. Immediately, they were assaulted by a stench so foul it felt like a physical blow—the cloying, sweet rot of death mixed with the chemical burn of concentrated ectoplasmic waste.

They crept to the edge of the vent and peered down into a massive, hidden sub-chamber. What they saw made even Vass’s bravado falter.

The room was filled with glass vats, each one leaking a thick, neon-green goo that pooled on the floor. But in the center, hooked up to a series of pulsating tubes that ran directly into the town’s foundations, was a gargantuan, twitching mass of translucent flesh and barbed tentacles.

"Is that an Eldritch creature?" Vass whispered, his eyes wide.

Bloodshine nodded, her breath hitching.

"But...with this size and soul energy, it’s nøtat least a Grade 2... maybe even a Grade 3.

We will nøt need a soul mecha to deal with..."

She hadn’t even finished her sentence when a familiar, manic grin split Vass’s face.

"Finally!" he roared, leaping from the ridge into the pit. "Some actual action!"

As he fell, his soul energy flared to life, a brilliant, blinding gold that cut through the green gloom like a miniature sun.

He slammed into the wet floor, his fists already wreathed in flames.