Bloodbound Codex: I Grow Stronger in Secret

Chapter 102: Alberion - I

While Atlas went toward the Ruin to Assimilate the newly opened page’s Title and reach S-rank, across the whole world a carnage had started at almost the same time he had begun his fight against that Monster.

Before getting into that though, there was something worth understanding about how the world was structured, because it tied directly into what was now happening across it.

In the Angelic Continent there were no Kingdoms or Empires divided across the land, only cities, and this was the same across every continent in the world, no single ruler sat over a vast territory the way one might expect, instead the hierarchy of Nobles was tied directly to which city they governed, the importance of the city determined the rank of the Noble assigned to head it.

A Duke or Duchess sat at the top of that hierarchy and was assigned the most important city among all cities in a continent, just below that came Marquess, then Earl, then Viscount, then Baron at the lowest end, each assigned to cities of decreasing significance, and together they managed the structure of their respective continents under that system, each continent had at most thirty massive cities and forty smaller ones, though the exact numbers varied slightly from continent to continent.

Atlas knew some of those terms from hearing Nobles use them in Ormolio, Viscount and Duke especially, though he had no real understanding of how the hierarchy was ordered or what each title actually meant in terms of authority.

Now, back to the carnage.

In Lumivale the Monster had appeared near the city route and had been stopped and eventually killed by Atlas before it could reach the city itself, but that same scene, an S-rank Monster emerging from an Abyss-Rank Ruin along a city route and moving toward populated areas, was unfolding across almost every continent in the world at the same time, the only exception was...the Dragon Continent known as Zanmatle, which remained untouched while everywhere else descended into chaos.

The reason was the same experiment that had been running inside that Ruin on the Lumivale-Solara route, the one where the crazy old man had been laughing about his success before escaping, that experiment had not been running in only one location, it had been set up inside Abyss-Rank Ruins across multiple continents simultaneously, each one turning an A-rank Boss Monster into an S-rank through that Bloodline Crucible process and the grey liquid, and the result was S-rank Monsters carrying Null emerging from those Ruins all at the same time.

Null that the entire world was completely unfamiliar with, not a single person outside of Atlas and whoever had designed these experiments had any understanding of what it was or how to counter it, and these Monsters didn’t distinguish between Explorers or ordinary people or anyone else, they killed and ate without stopping, exactly the way that Monster had been slowly eating the head of that Angel Explorer before Atlas intervened.

But there were exceptions scattered across the carnage, certain individuals whose strength was enough to meet these Monsters head on and stop them, people the world regarded as exceptional even among the already exceptional.

In the Elven Continent...

Deep inside one of its forests, one of those exceptions could be seen standing with a thin black weapon in his grip, the kind that in another world entirely(Earth) would be called a Katana, though this world had its own name for it.

The figure panted slightly, "hah..." his gaze fixed entirely on the Monster in front of him, though the panting was not exhaustion, he had been in this fight for about half an hour and his body was not tired in the slightest, the panting came from the sustained concentration of fighting something that wasn’t behaving the way it should.

’What...is that thing around it except Spirit?’

He thought it without any panic behind it, just trying to work out what he was looking at, the Monster in front of him was a Muxical, that much was clear from its fur and the six tails swaying behind it as it stood on two feet, its front limbs hanging at its sides with claws that looked unreasonably sharp even for its type, its body broader and more solid than any Muxical had any reason to be.

And that was the problem, ’It’s definitely a Muxical...but how is it like this? S-rank? No Muxical should be S-rank, they should be B-rank at most, and they always stay in groups, never alone like this...’

Then a worse thought followed, ’What if...the whole group has turned into S-ranks?’

The moment that possibility settled he stopped thinking further and took his stance, lowering his back, and without wasting any more time he blurred forward, his form becoming a streak of pure motion.

The Monster’s Instincts fired the moment he moved, and it didn’t wait either, its legs hardened beneath it and it blurred as well using raw speed, not a spatial movement technique like the Monster Atlas had fought, just pure physical speed, but the speed of it was something else entirely, faster than the Monster Atlas had faced despite the lack of any technique behind it.

As both streaks of blurr met, time seemed to slow around them as the Katana descended with lethal precision in a complete fourty five degree angle along the Claw that was tearing right at it, it seemed to cut the very air around it as it descended.

And just below it the claw...seemed another disaster incarnate, it was coated with Null after all, it’s speed ridiculous even in that seemingly slow motion.

Then...they struck.

The Katana from above and ...the claw from below.

And -

CLANG! BOOOOM!

The metallic sound echoed first and the next moment an ear deafening blust erupted outward from what seemed like a tiny spark in that point of contact.

Both were thrown aback with even more of a ridiculous speed than they were moving at, earlier.

But...the figure - Known as Alberion, the 10th special S-rank in the Elven Continent, rooted from the Soberun family, one of the Viscount family, controlled his movement the next second, he performed a motion that simply defied...gravity.

He jumped while his feet were in air...the moment he did, the pushing back force reduced to a minimum and then he flipped and landed on the ground without so much as a scratch, only a small pant again while his grip slightly trembled from that exchange.

On the other hand the Muxical was not any less than him, it also performed it’s own escape method from that shockwave, it did not jump in air...no that was simply impossible for it, it had no understanding of those Fundamental Forces or anything related to them.

Instead it forcefully stopped the shockwave...it used Null and spirit mixture as the shield which made that very Shockwave to get erased slowly as it skidded backward while maintaining its feet in the ground even though the force was pushing it upward.

At the same moment Alberion came on the ground, the Muxical had also stopped in its skidding back, it looked up, towards Alberion...and grinned as it saw the horror in Alberion’s face.

Alberion looked at that grin and thought, ’What?!...It reflected my technique?...that carried a Fundamental Force behind it?’

His eyes went wide for the first time since the fight began.

- - -

[A/N: Only one Chapter today as I am building stockpile for the next month’s Privilege, also next month the price will be lowered for tier 5 and 20 Chapters would be there instead of 15...

Thanks for reading!]