Chapter 914 Drax Awakens
The days following the banquet passed quickly for Max and the gang as the focus was on planning weddings for both Sebastian and Max.
Queen Rhea was insistent following the masquerade ball that Max completed his commitment to Mira as soon as possible and was pressing down on him for a date.
He could also feel in his bones that he had a real shot with Hazriel if he tried as the sweet memories of the two dancing together often made Max smile at random parts of the day.
At the same time, the benefits of entering the quadra-alliance had finally started to materialise for the vampires as once the contested borders received reinforcements from the other states, not only did they bolster the vampire defences but they also provided Max with the leeway to send his troops into enemy territory to liberate occupied planets.
With the death of Ulrich and the support of the quadra-alliance, the time for counteroffensive seemed ripe as Max made the most of this window of opportunity by pushing Dracula's forces on several fronts at once.
On one hand, Max knew that pressurising Dracula in the way that he was currently doing could prove to be the reason behind him going berserk and throwing away all reason as he went on a planet destroying spree.
Under such circumstances Max would need to deal with a mad monarch who could destroy dozens of planets at whim and fighting whom would not be easy at all but he still took the risk of pressing Dracula's buttons, trusting his own judgement on Dracula's behaviour that the primordial one would do nothing even when provoked.
Just like how Max seemed to be waiting for Drax to wake up before taking on Dracula, the primordial god also seemed to be waiting for something before fighting Max.
His current tame behaviour was him taking a step back because he had no choice, however, he had not retreated or cowered away.
He was waiting for an opportunity to open up and when it did, he was going to strike back at Max and the vampire society for the death of Ulrich.
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( Dracula's POV )
" My lord, our forces on planet Feta and Dona are facing significant challenges and have requested reinforcements immediately" A subordinate reported to Dracula who seemed to be preoccupied with his own thoughts as he did not even spare the subordinate a glance.
" Just tell them to kill all the modern vampire slaves on the entire planet and evacuate as many of the primordial vampires as they can from that planet to some other.
Neither Feta or Dona is a planet worth holding onto anyways and I'm not doing to send more forces as reinforcement for planets that are inherently worthless" Dracula coldly commanded as the servant bowed and took his leave.
Ever since Ulrich's death, the atmosphere within the primordial camp had took a turn for the worse as troop morale had taken a hit and the vampires had started to crack down on them pretty hard.
Although Dracula was not the kind of man to take such an offensive lying down, he was biding his time at the moment since he had already found a way out of this mess.
[ Dark Dimension ] was a divine move that worked in principle as the fourth dimension a.k.a the void dimension, however, it permitted the passage of physical matter through its realm.
It was impossible to detect from the third dimension and any target that Dracula dragged into that world would be completely cut off from the rest of the universe, which meant that if Dracula managed to take Max into the dark dimension then he could potentially kill him in that world without the universal queen or Rudra Rajput being able to interfere with the fight.
It was the ultimate Equalizer for Dracula who was being suppressed by the Rajput's as if he could isolate the younger brother from the older one, he had the confidence of killing Max in a one vs one battle.
The only problem to this plan was that Dracula could not master [ Dark Dimension ]. The attack needed one to have a significant mastery over both darkness and void elements and during his tier7 promotion he had only mastered darkness while building a passable understanding of the void, which was holding him back in learning the technique.
Shockingly, at tier8 he was forced to go back to the basics and focus on learning more about the darkness and void elements so that he could master the forbidden technique the dark dimension. However, he was very close to achieving that feat.
Once he mastered dark dimension and killed Max, he knew that Rudra was not going to leave him easily and neither were the other heads of the quadra-alliance which meant that his life was going to get a lot more tougher, which would force him to live permanently within the dark dimension and only pop out while carrying out critical attacks and surgical strikes until Rudra moved on from the universe.
It was a dangerous and potentially taxing plan which involved self isolation for several years, however, Dracula was willing to undergo through all the hardships as to him the goal of wiping out all the modern vampires was worth the troubles.
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( Max's POV )
Max was working as usual, wracking his brains as to when and where he would marry Mira when the day that he was desperately waiting for months finally arrived!
Drax finally woke up from his slumber and manifested himself as a full fledged physical human before Max, completely taking him off-guard as Max accidentally reached for his sword when he manifested out of nowhere.
" Easy there boy, I'm sure you recognise me, it's only been a few months" grandpa Drax said as Max immediately threw his sword back in his inventory and said with a big smile on his face " GRANDPA DRAX!"
Drax looked just like what Max had always imagined him to look, like a wise old wizard with a long white beard and kind eyebrows with grey eyes and long slightly curly white hair.
Before this, when Max completed all three parts of the Agni-Astra, he did see Grandpa Drax's hologram form whereby he could physically manifest as a small hologram, however, this was his first time watching Grandpa Drax manifest as a full-fledged individual.
" Woah, grandpa Drax you can form a physical form now?" Max asked looking absolutely surprised at how much the A.I. had evolved as Drax audibly chuckled at his question.
" No. This is actually the clone, one of your signature skills but instead of just controlling the clone's body, I can now take over the clone and give it my own appearance or take the appearance of anyone from your memories" Drax said as he shifted from looking like himself to looking like Max, then Sebastian, then Severus, Asiva and finally Rudra.
" So cool!" Max exclaimed as he felt impressed by the upgrades in Grandpa Drax already when in reality he had not even seen the tip of the iceberg.
After absorbing Bavuma, Drax had evolved beyond what a normal A.I. was capable of and had become a near sentient being.
The immense knowledge that he possessed was straight out of the repository of the seed of knowledge as at the moment he was akin to a tier7 archmage, an entity that was unheard of in the entire universe as he had access to skills and spells that could destroy entire planets and shift the momentum of any battle within seconds.
Post his evolution, the Agni-Astra could be considered more than just a tier9 weapon as it had transcended into the realm of a pseudo tier10 weapon, surpassing the power of a simple tier9 seed.
The skill [ Perfect Cloning ] had essentially evolved to [ Summon Drax ] whereby Max would have a battle mage as his ally which could use a variety of tier7 and higher attacks to support him in battle.
In his A.I. mode, he could provide Max with solutions to problems and use the vast repository of knowledge to find weaknesses in his opponents attacks or their race as it was akin to using the seed of knowledge, without having to deal with the negative effects as Max now had access to a library of forbidden information that he could access at will through Drax.
These two abilities were broken in and of itself, however, finally and most importantly, Drax waking up gave Max the option of using [ Soul Devour ] once more which meant that he could finally take on Dracula if the opportunity arose.
He no longer needed to hold himself back from picking a fight with the primordial one as he could quickly finish him off and absorb his soul to reach the pinnacle of tier7 and prepare for tier promotion.
With his ultimate goal being to become a deterrent against his brother who might lose control at any moment, Max knew that while his current strength was enough to beat almost anyone else in the universe, only by becoming a true monarch could he be in the league that his brother was at.
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