Ascension of the Dark Seraph

"Tobias, is that you hiding behind the car?"

Both Bakar and Leandra stiffened instinctively, pressing their backs against the car's body.

Lucivar was supposed to be on their side; he was supposed to be the one leading the family against the person behind their misery, but now, he wasn't being himself. He snapped, and perhaps, he had lost the ability to recognize anyone other than Master Tobias.

And that's a problem.

His strength has already swelled to the point that nobody from the family could match him.

Bob was the closest person to Lucivar's power before all of this, and now, even if he were somehow still alive, he wouldn't be able to stop Lucivar. So, if Bob couldn't, Bakar and Leandra certainly couldn't, as they were relatively weaker than him.

"Oh, fuck…" Bakar mused tensely, hearing the footsteps approaching. "We're going to fucking die."

On the other hand, Leandra looked at Bakar with clear anger mixed with annoyance.

She couldn't believe that he still dared to use his voice.

Even with Lucivar approaching them to check, he still ranted as if they weren't hiding right now.

'If we survived this, I'm going to choke him to death.' Leandra thought determinedly.

Krrk!

Just then, a grating noise rang across the area.

Another guest stood up and tried to creep away while Lucivar's attention was fixated on Leandra and Bakar, but unfortunately, he stepped on a frail wooden plank. Though it was light, the noise came like a freight train in the silence pressing on the area right now.

Slowly, the man looked over his shoulder and froze.

Lucivar's piercing eyes were already on him, filled with immeasurable bloodlust.

"H-Hey, I… I was only leaving. Whatever this is, I'm not involved. You do you, man…"

Shingg!

Instead of answering with words, Lucivar swiped the sword.

An energy slash burst forth, cleaving the man's head cleanly.

So clean that it took a second for the man to register what happened, and his head slid off his shoulders.

Thud!

Realizing that it was only a matter of time—before all of them made a mistake, the guests immediately made a run for it in all directions. It was a silent agreement between them. As opposed to staying still and being picked off one by one, they decided to run at the same time.

At least that way, Lucivar wouldn't be able to take them out instantly.

Some of them would come out of this alive.

And for a few seconds, the guests thought that their plan worked.

Even as they were making their fourth steps, they were still alive and well.

None of them dared to look back, sprinting with everything they had as their lives depended on it.

Oblivious to them, Lucivar was looking at the gleaming spheres around him that only he could see.

Killing those guests earlier yielded Divine Blood, and the sight stunned him for a second as he slowly came to a realization of one thing. Once his mind clicked, a humorous chuckle forced its way out of his throat, that slowly becoming more frantic by the second.

Bakar and Leandra stayed in their hiding spot while Lucivar laughed aloud.

"Ah, I forgot…"

Swoosh!

In an abrupt manner, Lucivar flapped his four wings and soared before landing not too far away.

He covered quite a big distance in the blink of an eye.

"Oh my God!!"

One of the guests, a bald man with pallid, rotting skin, a clear mark of a Zombie Hybrid, stumbled back and crashed onto his rear as Lucivar dropped before him with a thunderous crack. His eyes flared wide in raw, instinctive terror.

Seeing Lucivar's merciless stature, he smiled nervously, a bead of cold sweat trickling down his face.

"Bollocks… I'm the unlucky one."

Out of at least ten people running in all directions, Lucivar chose him.

If it wasn't bad luck, then the man didn't know what is.

"Kind Sir, I don't know what your vendetta was, but I'm harmless." He said lightly, raising a hand.

Lucivar wasn't listening.

He was in the world of his own.

"Tobias, as damned as he was, he helped me go through my bottleneck. I've let go of fucking Delilah," He stated, laughing like a maniac as he bent forward, one hand grabbing one side of his face. "Now that I'm at the Third Divine Elevation, I can get stronger again!!"

Mercilessly, Lucivar grabbed the bald man's shiny head with his free hand and crushed it.

Before the bald man could even say anything, his head was crushed.

From the corpse tumbled several spheres, striking the ground with a crisp clink that was like beautiful music to Lucivar's ears. Then, he seized the body, lifted off, and hurled it like a projectile toward another guest who was scrambling to escape.

Upon impact, the escaping guest's spine cracked, paralyzing him from the waist down.

However, he didn't need to think about his broken spine as Lucivar came crashing down, stomping his back and breaking his body apart. More spheres clinked against the ground as he continued, going from one side to the other, hunting down every single guest that caught his eye.

None of the guests stood a chance.

Lucivar was relentless, killing them all with maniacal laughter in his throat.

In his eyes, these people weren't people, but livestock he could slaughter in exchange for divinity.

Crash!

Right on the pool, Lucivar crashed there, blasting the water everywhere in a huge splash.

In his dominant hand, Lucivar clutched a corpse impaled clean through the chest by his sword, carrying the corpse around like a décor. In the other, he dragged a woman by her legs—frail, battered, and visibly broken.

She was wielded like a weapon, used to kill several guests earlier.

All because she managed to withstand an attack from Lucivar, showcasing her sturdy physique.

She clearly possessed the bloodline with immense physical strength.

Perhaps a Titan bloodline, since she was bigger than normal.

Even throughout all of that, there was still no sign of Master Tobias, as if he had been swallowed by the earth and never to be found. Lucivar looked around, eyes narrowing, "He ran away. After doing all of that, he ran? Pathetic."

Lucivar leaped out of the drained pool.

As soon as he landed, he saw a woman no older than twenty, shivering underneath the rubble.

She wasn't pinned, but hid instead.

However, as soon as Lucivar's eyes spotted her underneath the rubble, her heart skipped a beat.

Almost instantly, more tears came out, an instinctive response from people who were hopeless.

One that he had seen several times already from the victims he killed.

Even though she had barely graduated from a Blank in Lucivar's dictionary, he has no mercy to spare for her. He raised his left hand, shaped it like a handgun, and pointed it at the young woman. A ball of energy appeared at the tip of his finger.

Lucivar was casting the Night Piercer ability, one that would kill her in an instant.

Bang!

Not even needing to chant, his fingertip fired a dark bullet.

It spun as it tore through the air, a streak of void-born malice screaming toward its mark with the speed of lightning. Lucivar's lips curled into a thin, expectant smile—he could already picture how the young woman's face would curve inward.

Following that would be he clinking of spheres scattering like coins across stone.

But then, Lucivar's eyes saw a yellow light.

A sudden flare of yellow slashed across his vision, faster than his mind had time to register.

Before the dark bullet reached its mark, it was already intercepted mid-track.

Mirel stood in its path, his arms braced forward, hands sparking with raw yellow lightning as he caught the lethal round. The clash screamed in the air, the dark projectile grinding against the lightning barrier that he had conjured.

For three long, shuddering seconds, Mirel held it back.

It was stronger than he anticipated, far stronger.

He clenched his teeth as arcs of darkness crawled over his body as if threatening to tear him apart.

"Raaarggh!!"

Unleashing one final roar, he gathered every ounce of strength left in him and wrenched the bullet up to the sky. It whistled into the heavens, like a single rising star that wanted to go back to the emptiness of space, vanishing with a distant pop.

Before Lucivar could even react, Mirel was already moving.

No words, no warning—he turned into a streak of yellow.

Boom!

Mirel's body slammed into Lucivar with all the force of a thunderclap.

He put his all into that slam, and the impact it produced that cracked stone beneath their feet and sent a shockwave rippling through the air was proof of that. But unlike the shockwave, Lucivar only staggered back a few steps.

His balance was shaken, but it was nothing more than a tap for him.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" Mirel screamed, eyes crackling with yellow lightning as he turned to the young woman, with a clenched jaw. "She's innocent in all of this, all of the guests are innocent! Why are you killing them?"

All of them should be aiming for Master Tobias right now.

He was the one behind everything.

Mirel couldn't understand for what reason Lucivar had to kill the survivors.

But there was no reaction from Lucivar.

Instead of responding, he only stared at Mirel's wrathful features and then tilted his head.

Slowly, Mirel began to feel the bloodlust that came from Lucivar, pressing on his body like being inside a body of water. He was too impulsive since waking up from being knocked out, and only now did he realize that Lucivar was not being himself.

Just the look Lucivar was giving already told him enough.

Death!

As Lucivar's muscles twitched to attack, a voice cracked through the air.

"STOP!"

Mirel, who was already sweating, turned to look and found Leandra.

She came out of her hiding the moment she realized that Lucivar was about to kill Mirel.

Behind her was Bakar, also coming out hesitantly.

"Lucivar, it's me…" Leandra muttered, loud enough for Lucivar to hear her clearly. She approached with steady and slow steps. "We are not your enemy. You remember me, right? It's me, Leandra. We're not going to hurt you."

Even though her heart was pounding inside, she refused to believe that Lucivar had forgotten about them.

Inside, she was hoping that if pressed enough, he would come back to his senses.

But when she was halfway through, she stopped as her eyes widened in shock.

She met Lucivar's eyes, and in them, she saw nothing of the man he once was—not even a bit.

SPLASH!

Leandra's eyes widened as her body froze entirely.

Before her was Lucivar, so close that his scent reached her nose.

Lips trembling, and hands shaking, she looked up at Luciivar's eyes in reluctance and disbelief.

Blood spewed out of her lips, which shocked Mirel and Bakar to their cores.

"LEANDRA!"