Episode-233

Words : 1576 Updated : Oct 1st, 2025

Chapter : 465 The battle they had anticipated, the brutal, satisfying beatdown of a lone intruder, was over before it had even begun. They had brought a rusty club to a fight with a thunderstorm. And the forecast, they both knew with a certainty that chilled them to their very souls, was pain. Absolute, overwhelming, and probably quite electrifying, pain. — The subterranean office of the Gilded Hand had become a shrine to terror. The air, thick with the chemical stench of their foul trade, was now supercharged with the crisp, clean scent of ozone, a smell that was utterly alien to this place of rot and decay. The greasy yellow light of the oil lamp was a pathetic, flickering candle against the brilliant, pulsating azure nimbus of Fang Fairy’s Lightning Cloak. The two brothers, Joseph and Jacob Croft, the self-proclaimed masters of their grimy little empire, were no longer men of power; they were just two terrified, cornered animals, staring into the face of a power so far beyond their comprehension that it might as well have been divine wrath. Joseph, the bull, the brawler, stood frozen, his heavy club lying forgotten at his feet. His brutish face, usually flushed with aggression and cheap wine, was a pale, slack-jawed mask of pure, unadulterated terror. He stared at Fang Fairy, at the crackling, incandescent storm wreathed around her ethereal form, his mind utterly, comprehensively, broken. He was a man whose entire worldview was built on a simple, brutal equation: bigger and stronger always wins. And in the face of this beautiful, terrible, lightning-wreathed goddess, he was a child. An insect. Jacob, the cunning one, the man of schemes and half-baked alchemy, was in no better state. He was still sprawled on the floor where he had fallen, scrambling backwards like a crab, his wheedling, intelligent eyes now wide, vacant pools of mindless panic. He babbled, a stream of incoherent pleas and promises, his words lost in the low, menacing hum of the Lightning Cloak. He had tried to be clever, to outwit the world, to build a small fortune from fish oil and lies. And his cleverness had led him here, to this moment, prostrate before a silent, white-masked demon and his personal, pocket-sized thunderstorm. Lloyd, the White Mask, stood at the center of it all, a figure of absolute, chilling calm. He watched the two brothers disintegrate into their component parts of fear and panic, his own expression, hidden behind the blank white void of the mask, one of cold, dispassionate assessment. He felt no triumph. No satisfaction. Only the grim certainty of a necessary task being performed. These men were a rot, a poison. And the only cure for poison was fire. Or, in this case, lightning. He had no intention of wasting time. He had no interest in their pleas, their bargains, their pathetic, terrified confessions. He had all the information he needed from Debala. These men were not sources of intelligence anymore. They were simply... the problem. And the problem needed to be solved. “Joseph Croft. Jacob Croft,” Lloyd’s voice was a quiet, cold whisper that cut through the humming silence, making both men flinch as if struck. “You have stolen a name that is not yours. You have sold poison to the innocent. You have built an empire on the suffering of your workers and the deception of the public.” He took a slow step forward, Fang Fairy gliding silently, terrifyingly, at his side. “This is not a negotiation. This is not a judgment. This,” he declared, his voice utterly devoid of emotion, “is an act of cleansing.” The raw terror in the room finally galvanized Joseph, the brawler. His fear, cornered and with no escape, curdled into a final, desperate surge of rage. With a guttural roar that was more animal than human, he kicked his fallen club aside and lunged, his massive, ham-like fists raised, aiming to overwhelm Lloyd with sheer, brute, desperate force. “I’ll kill you! I’ll tear you apart!” he screamed, his face a contorted mask of fury. Lloyd watched the clumsy charge with a detached, almost bored, contempt. Predictable. He didn’t move. He didn’t need to. He simply raised a single hand. The air around it shimmered, and with a sound like a thousand metallic whispers, a thick, gleaming chain of polished Ferrum steel erupted from his palm. It was not the delicate, almost invisible wires he used for tripping; this was a heavy, brutal instrument of control, each link as thick as a man’s wrist, humming with the contained power of his B-Rank Steel Blood. Chapter : 466 The chain shot forward, a living serpent of steel, and wrapped itself around Joseph’s charging form with a series of brutal, clanking impacts. It coiled around his torso, his arms, pinning them to his sides, then snaked around his thick neck, arresting his forward momentum with a sickening, jarring choke. Joseph was lifted bodily from his feet, his roar cut off into a strangled, gurgling gasp. He hung there, a few inches off the ground, a massive, struggling marlin caught on an unshakeable, steel line, his face rapidly turning a dark, purplish shade. Lloyd held him there for a long, silent moment, his gaze, hidden behind the blank white mask, cold and unpitying. He wanted Jacob to watch. He wanted him to understand the absolute, effortless nature of their defeat. He wanted the cunning brother’s mind to have time to process the sheer, hopeless power disparity before he, too, was dealt with. Jacob watched, his babbling pleas turning into a high-pitched, keening whimper of pure terror. He saw his brother, his strong, brutish protector, being effortlessly choked, suspended by a magical chain that had appeared from nowhere. The sight shattered the last vestiges of his rational mind. This wasn't a vigilante. This wasn't the City Guard. This was a demon. A demon from the deepest pits of hell, come to claim their souls for their poisonous trade. And in that moment of absolute, soul-shattering terror, Jacob made a decision. It was not a decision born of cunning, or strategy, but of pure, abject, animal desperation. If he was going to die, he would not die alone. He would drag this white-masked demon down to hell with him. He would unleash the secret he had kept hidden even from his own brother, the source of the ‘alchemical knowledge’ he had used to create their foul product. He would call upon the power he had paid for not with coin, but with pieces of his own soul. He scrambled backwards, away from the terrifying, lightning-wreathed goddess, away from the sight of his brother’s slow, silent strangulation. He fumbled in his tunic, his trembling fingers pulling out a small, jagged shard of what looked like polished, obsidian-black rock. It pulsed with a faint, sickly, dark light, and the air around it felt cold, dead. “You want power, you masked freak?!” Jacob shrieked, his voice a ragged, unhinged screech that was a stark contrast to his earlier wheedling tone. He held the obsidian shard aloft. “You want to see real power?! Then see what a true master can do! A master who doesn’t serve the gods of this pathetic, sunlit world!” He drew a small, rusty knife from his boot. He did not hesitate. With a wild, desperate cry, he sliced his own palm open, a deep, ragged gash. He pressed the bleeding hand against the obsidian shard, his blood, dark and thick in the flickering blue light, sizzling as it touched the strange, cold stone. “By the blood and the shadow!” Jacob screamed, his voice taking on a strange, resonant, guttural quality, the words of a dark, forgotten litany. “By the pact that was sworn! I call upon you! I offer this blood, this life, this vessel! Arise, my servant! Arise, my beast! Arise and devour the light!” A wave of pure, malevolent, negative energy erupted from the obsidian shard. It was a power that was utterly, fundamentally, wrong. It was not the clean, crackling energy of Fang Fairy’s lightning. It was not the cold, controlled hum of Lloyd’s Void power. It was the energy of decay, of corruption, of a darkness that was antithetical to life itself. It was the unmistakable signature of a Black Spirit, fueled by a Devil’s Bargain. Lloyd felt it instantly. A cold, nauseating pressure that was a violation of the natural order. His eyes widened behind his mask. A Devil Worshiper. Here. This pathetic, wheedling little counterfeiter was a servant of one of the dark powers. This changed everything. This wasn't just a commercial dispute anymore. This was a battle against a far older, far more dangerous, enemy. He flicked his wrist, and the chain around Joseph’s neck went slack, dropping the now-unconscious brawler to the floor in a boneless heap. His full attention, his full power, was now focused on the new, far greater, threat. The shadows in the room deepened, pulling away from the walls, drawn towards the bleeding, chanting Jacob. The very air seemed to congeal, to thicken into a swirling, semi-solid mass of inky, corrupt darkness around him. A low, guttural, multi-toned growl echoed from within the swirling shadow, a sound that seemed to scrape at the very edges of sanity. And from that swirling vortex of living night, a creature of pure, amalgamated nightmare began to emerge.

Episode-233

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