novelraw Chapter 217: The Anchor... its obvious.
Chapter 217: The Anchor... its obvious.
The narrow stone vault felt smaller as the air grew heavier with the hard breathing.
Red lunged again, his movements had a feral, unnatural speed.
Soren realized that despite his F-Rank status, his own soul-enhanced strength should have crushed a normal man—yet Red was parrying blows that would have shattered a pillar.
Soren reached behind his back, his fingers curling around the hilt of the short sword Li had gifted him.
The pressure of the blade felt rightas he swung it for battle.
"Polystar, hurry up!" Soren barked, parrying a heavy strike that vibrated up his marrow.
—surprised that Red just blocked a blade with his palm.
"I’m—almost—there!" Polystar hissed, his blue soul energy twitched as they danced inside the safe’s tumblers.
Red was strong, but he lacked the refinement of a true warrior.
Besides, Soren had been in more battles than he looked.
Soren adjusted his center of gravity, entering a state of flow.
As Red threw a massive, telegraphed punch, Soren didn’t block it.
He stepped into the man’s guard, using the back of his hand to redirect the force of the arm while simultaneously spinning his short sword in a reverse grip.
In one fluid motion, Soren stepped past him.
The blade whispered through the air, a silver arc that painted a thin, red line across Red’s throat.
Red’s eyes bulged, his hands flying to his neck as he collapsed, blood pooling on the cold stone.
*Click. Whirrr. Thump.*
The safe door swung open.
Instantly, the cocoon of Chronovore in Soren’s soul thrashed with a desperate, agonizing hunger.
It was a gravitational pull, a demand to consume. Soren gritted his teeth, his vision blurring as he fought to keep the Shade locked down.
Polystar reached inside and pulled out the prize. He turned back to Soren, his face a mask of utter bewilderment.
"Polystar? What is it?" Soren wheezed, fighting the hunger from Chronovore.
Polystar held it out. It wasn’t a paper contract or a simple soul stone.
It was a Glassheart. But it was unlike any modern model they used at the Academy. It was encased in oxidized bronze, the surface pitted and rusted, looking like a relic from the very dawn of the Neuralink era.
"A Glassheart?" Soren whispered. "This is the anchor?"
"Don’t move," a cold, wet voice croaked from the doorway.
Soren and Polystar spun around. Black stood there, his chest still oozing that foul green goo, his hand clamped firmly around Sophia’s throat.
He held her own cadet dagger to her jugular.
Sophia’s eyes were wide with terror, her golden dress was stained and torn.
Black didn’t speak another word, but as the blade pressed deeper, drawing a bead of crimson, his intent was clear:
One step, and she dies.
"Wait! Don’t do it!" Soren shouted, dropping his short sword to his side. "We understand. Just... don’t hurt her."
From the corner of the room, the shackled old man let out a broken, wheezing cry. "My... my princess? Sophia?"
Sophia’s head snapped toward the shadow.
"Papa?" The word left her as a broken sob.
Before anyone could react, the heavy thud of boots echoed in the passage.
Don Alejandro swept into the room, his white suit spattered with soot, his face contorted in a terrifying mixture of panic and rage.
"You meddling little worms," Alejandro snarled, his eyes darting to the open safe.
"You idiots have no idea what you’ve just woken up!"
At that moment, a sickening, wet sound came from the floor.
Soren watched, paralyzed, as Red—whose throat he had just sliced open—jerked his limbs. With a series of pops and cracks, the man rose to his feet.
The massive wound on his neck didn’t just stop bleeding; it knitted together, the flesh bubbling and sealing itself shut until not even a scar remained.
The twins stood side-by-side once more, their eyes glowing with a dull, sickly green light that matched the goo in their veins.
These were not men... at least not anymore.
They were extensions of Eldritch horrors.
"What the hell are you?" Soren asked, his voice barely a whisper.
Alejandro adjusted his white cuffs, a smug, twisted pride returning to his face despite the chaos.
"They are my sons." He replied. However his tone suggested that he was telling himself more than he was making the confirmation to soren and the others.
"When their mother was pregnant with them, it was the most trying time for the Los Elegidos family. The land... MY land—was dying. And those useless parasitic shadows that call themselves nobles of the empire were closing in.
I had to make... drastic choices to ensure the bloodline didn’t flicker out."
Soren looked from Red to Black, seeing the empty, hollow green light in their eyes. "Are they even human anymore?"
"Human enough," Alejandro replied coldly then chuckled.
"At least, ensuring the saintess... Sophia gives birth to the next generation of the Los Elegidos is very well within their abilities. They are sturdy. They are... eternal. Just like this house."
"No! Leave my Sophia alone!" The old man in the corner shrieked, his voice cracking.
He tried to lunge forward, the chains rattling violently, but his withered muscles gave out.
He collapsed forward, only for Alejandro to stride over and deliver a brutal kick to his ribs.
The man fell back, coughing up a mixture of bile and blood.
Alejandro’s face contorted with a decade of buried rage.
He pointed a trembling finger at the prisoner.
"You trash! You are the reason for all of this! You are the reason I had to make the choices I did! My family was already suffering, and then you—a common thief—broke into my house and stole the one thing that gave us standing! You took my family’s Artistic Perception Technique!"
He kicked the old man again, the heavy thud of leather against bone echoing in the vault.
Soren’s eyes sharpened.
He leaned toward Polystar, his voice low. "What is he talking about? Perception technique?"
Polystar didn’t take his eyes off the twins, his expression grim. But he whispered back.
"Its more serious than you think."
"Tell me." Soren pleaded. He felt lost as to what was happening.
Polystar gladly explained.
"There are certain criteria for a noble house to be recognized by the Empire, Soren.
Wealth and land are just the surface. To be recognized as a True noble House of the empire, you must possess two things: a Fighting Technique
that can be be taught and transferred down generations.
And secondly, you must possess a self acquired Artistic Perception Technique.
Which is the only way to unlock and stabilize a Soulbound’s Second Form."
Soren felt a jolt of realization.
He remembered how things worked in the academy. At least the way Buttermint had explained it to him.
Commoners could learn to fight, but without this Secret Knowledge of artistic perception held by the nobility, they were almost always capped at the First Form.
In fact, it was safe to say that letting commoners learn the first form was bait, so that they could be pulled in by noble families who had the only method possible for them to grow their power.
This was the invisible wall—the monopoly on knowledge that kept the elite in power.
And from what Soren was hearing, Sophia’s father dared to steal it.
In fact from the look of things, he might have even succeeded.
Soren could not help but look at the withered old man differently.
As one that was a commoner, once living a terrible life, he could not help but be impressed and cheer for the old man in his heart.
"Stop lying to yourself, you fool!" Sophia’s father wheezed, looking up through a mess of matted blond hair.
His eyes burned with a defiant hatred. "You know why I did it! Your family... your father... he is the one who cursed this land! He brought the Eldritch here to fuel his own vanity! All I did was take away your right to ruin the world any further!"
Alejandro let out a guttural snarl and spat on the man’s face. "Lies! We brought power! The one thing this land needed.
And what... oh at the cost of a few lives!
Your kind. Your fucking commoners should thank us. You should thank me."
"Leave my father alone!" Sophia screamed, her voice breaking as she struggled against Black’s iron grip.
Alejandro spun around, his hand whistling through the air as he delivered a stinging slap to Sophia’s cheek.
Her head snapped to the side, a red mark blooming on her skin.
"Be silent!" Alejandro hissed, his eyes wild.
"You are lucky you have a use with the commoners, girl. If you weren’t my bridge to the next generation, I would have ’disciplined’ you the same way I did your brothers. You are a tool. Nothing more."
And then Don Alejandro turned to Polystar. His gaze was a fierce one. "Hand it over." He presented a hand foward.
Obviously referring to the Glassheart.
Polystar’s gaze tightened in obvious rejection.
(Author’s Note: if you guys are still reading please let me know. What do you think about the Los Elegidos family? What are they planning?)