F-Rank Soul Eater

Chapter 216: What Should not be disturbed.

...This basement of the manor transformed into a sun-bleached hellscape.

Vass didn’t just release his soul energy; he detonated it.

A massive dome of golden-white fire expanded from his body, reaching over 700 meters wide in a fraction of a second.

The heat was so intense it reached 1800°C at the core, evaporating the green ectoplasm into dry, cracked black clay.

Bloodshine flinched, her vision white, but the inferno curved around her like a living shield. Even in his rage, Vass’s control was surgical—a testament to the raw talent of an SS-rank Soulbound warrior.

The gargantuan Eldritch wailed, a sound that vibrated the very bedrock of the town.

Even the town folks above heard it, many looking around in fear of what was tk come next.

But as the echoes died down, Vass’s grin faltered.

There was a secondary sound layered within the monster’s shriek—a ragged, human scream, wet and full of agonizing clarity.

"Did you hear that?" Vass muttered, shaking it off as he raised his cadet dagger to eye level.

The ground erupted. Dozens of mouths the size of dinner tables, lined with jagged, obsidian teeth, tore through the blackened floor.

Vass didn’t back off.

He lunged, his body trailing tongues of flame that didn’t just burn—they sliced.

He was using his fire as a blade, cutting through the Eldritch flesh with the precision of a master butcher.

Bloodshine watched, her eyes wide.

’His combat technique is garbage, but that output... it’s like trying to fight a forest fire with a toothpick,’

she thought.

Vass had no Blackfield; meaning that he was blind to the attacks coming from his rear.

He blocked only when the teeth were inches from his neck, relying on pure instinct and speed.

Rolling her eyes, Bloodshine drew her own dagger and blurred into motion.

Where Vass was a landslide, she was a scalpel.

She danced through the chaos, parrying strikes from behind her back without even looking, her Blackfield mapping every twitch of the monster’s nerves.

"I don’t need your help, snake-eyes!" Vass roared, incinerating a cluster of tentacles.

"Will you just shut up and keep your head on?" Bloodshine snapped, parrying a spike that would have impaled his spine.

"I can kill this thing myself!" Vass insisted, his ego flaring hotter than his flames.

"We have nøt found what we came for, you idiot!" she yelled over the roar of the fire.

"This is nøt a Grade 2 or higher—we need a Soul Mecha for a clean kill. Besides, We do nøt have the evidence of the farming; let’s nøt get back to Soren and get Sophia out!"

"No!" Vass screamed, his golden aura spiking.

"If the Turdface can take down an Eldritch with a mecha, i then i can too, without one. I’m not leaving until this thing is ash!"

Another wail tore through the chamber, the human voice within it screaming a name—Sophia—in a distorted, gurgling tone.

Suddenly, a massive appendage, thick as a house and covered in hundreds of blinking, milky eyes, burst from the center of the vat.

Vass’s eyes turned predatory. "The head."

He planted his feet, his soul energy swirling into a localized cyclone.

*"First Form: Sun-Eater’s Wrath!"*

A colossal avatar of roaring gold flames manifested behind him, mimicking his strike.

The blast was so concentrated it didn’t just burn the head; it erased it from existence, leaving nothing but a cauterized stump and a smell like ozone and burnt hair. Bloodshine stood speechless.

That wasn’t a first form—that was the destructive output of an Instructor.

"See?" Vass chuckled, leaning on his knees, his breathing heavy. "Killed it. No Mecha needed."

The silence that followed was heavy. Then, the ground began to vibrate—not a shake, but a low-frequency hum that turned their bones to jelly. A voice, deep and ancient, echoed from the very walls.

"You insects... how dare you take it."

A wave of Soul Pressure, cold and absolute, slammed into them.

It was like the atmosphere had turned to lead. Both Vass and Bloodshine were hammered to their knees, the skin of their faces pulling tight as their nervous systems began to misfire under the sheer weight of the presence.

Vass felt a primal fear he hadn’t known existed.

His flames flickered and died. It took several seconds of agonizing paralysis before he realized Bloodshine was clawing at his tunic, her face pale and drenched in sweat.

"Vass... move..." she wheezed, her eyes wide with terror. "We have to run! Now!"

Meanwhile... Sophia gasped, her lungs burning, as she lunged.

She was dominating now. Cadet training—hard-drilled blocks, precise thrusts, and acrobatic slips—was a blur of lethal kinetic energy.

She hammered a roundhouse kick into Black’s ribs that cracked like a gunshot, following up with a palm-strike to his chin that snapped his head back.

She didn’t stop.

Spinning on her heel, her gold dress fluttering like a banner of dried blood, she drove her elbow into his temple.

He staggered. For the first time, he didn’t counter-attack.

This was her moment. She screamed, a raw, piercing war cry, and drove her cadet dagger straight.

The soul steel blade sliced through his fine silk tunic and sank deep into his chest. Right in the heart.

She twisted the blade, her knuckles white, before tearing it free with a sickening *shhk*.

Black crumpled to the polished floor, his eyes wide and fixed on nothing.

Dead.

Sophia staggered back, collapsing against the grand staircase.

She dropped the bloody dagger and pressed her palms to her knees, panting hard, the copper tang of adrenaline flooding her mouth.

It was over. The wedding, the lineage, the servitude—she had killed the first lock on her cage.

Then, the floorboards creaked.

Her head snapped up.

Black was standing.

He rose with a jerky, mechanical motion, like a marionette with too-tight strings.

The hole in his chest was gushing fluid, but it wasn’t just red blood.

Thicker, viscous green goo——was oozing over his fingers as he touched the wound.

He looked down at the injury with a flat, indifferent curiosity, then slowly raised his eyes to meet hers.

Sophia froze, her breath catching in her throat as she slid down the stairs.

"What... what are you?" she whispered.

He reached for the discarded dagger, his skin began to ripple, a faint, internal green luminescence pulsing beneath the flesh of his chest.

Outside, the air was a hurricane of forced steam and automatic gunfire.

Don Alejandro was screaming orders at his white-robed guards, who were systematically unloading clip after clip into the towering, expressionless shape of Cynthia.

However, like any soulbound warrior, bullets were not so effective.

Suddenly, Alejandro choked on his own breath.

He staggered backward, gripping his chest. His eyes widened into dinner plates as he looked not at Cynthia in front of him, but down at the vibrating cobblestones beneath his boots.

A groan—deeper, colder, and more terrifying than the explosion—vibrated through his very bones.

Alejandro’s face went pasty white. He ignored the battle, ignored his men, and looked at the manor.

"¡Mierda!" he roared, his voice cracking with sheer, unadulterated terror.

"They woke him up! Those idiots woke him up!"

Alejandro spun around and sprinted back toward the manor entrance with a desperate, flailing panic that made his earlier pompous strides seem like a joke.