With the dissolution of Princess Bloomy and the annihilation of her Raffbloom legion, the remaining flora demons scattered throughout the Darkwood were rendered toothless, unable to mount any further resistance against the demon hunters. The Princess had consolidated her entire vanguard and every primary asset to spring her trap, wagering everything to ensnare the magis, Seraph.
Although her initial stratagem had been executed with clinical precision, her ultimate gamble to eradicate the human magis had collapsed into a ruinous failure. In the wake of her fall, every last Raffbloom within the Darkwood was systematically purged, leaving the forest a hollowed tomb.
Of the ten thousand contenders who had entered the woods, a mere 914 remained. Many owed their pulses to Seraph's direct intervention, and it was the young man who had personally dismantled the bulk of the Raffbloom legion. Without question, he stood as the pre-eminent victor of this first chain-mission.
The surviving hunters were a haggard lot, their spirits fractured. Though subsequent trials loomed on the horizon, the prospect of eclipsing Seraph's dominance felt like a fool's errand. Many had survived only by the grace of discovery—finding hidden sanctuaries through blind luck—having never encountered such visceral, high-rank lethality in their entire careers.
A wave of desertion threatened to break out, yet the Bloody Hunting was no mere game; they had bound themselves by blood-covenant. Just as the Demon Legion never aborted a crusade, the Sanctus would not permit a retreat from the hunt.
While the majority of the contenders had been culled, the tenth airship of the Bloody Hunting prepared to ferry the survivors toward the second mission. The remaining nine vessels lingered above the canopy, tasked with harvesting the esoteric resources birthed from the toxic corruption of the woods.
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Two days of gruelling exertion bled into the past.
Seraph stood before the first airship, his gaze fixed upon a transparent vitrine. Within lay the mangled remains of Princess Bloomy. Six Arkflame sentries shouldered the glass casket, heaving the carcass of the Raffbloom queen into the bowels of the vessel. She was to be transported to Arkflame for exhaustive research—a trophy of war for the energia engineers to dismantle.
The young magis surrendered the remains of Princess Bloomy to a joint research initiative between Sanctus and the Arkflame military. Once the carcass of this nascent demonic subspecies was hauled back, she would be interred within the Sanctus laboratories, where the high-ranking biogenetic sages of the order would undertake a rigorous scrutiny of its genetic mysteries.
The airships departed, ferrying the Princess's glass casket alongside several captured Raffbloom specimens whose physical integrity remained untainted by the blast.
Seraph's accomplishments sat on a plane of existence so elevated they defied comparison with his peers. The acquisition of the Princess's form provided a bonus to his standing that pierced the heavens, rendering his score nearly impossible to calculate by conventional metrics. Among the wardens of the Bloody Hunting, many had already established clandestine wagering tables, debating whether Seraph had already secured an absolute, unassailable victory for the entire campaign.
Though the toll of dead demon hunters reached staggering heights this year, the meteoric radiance of Seraph's power left the observers in awe. The consensus among the elite was clear: by the sheer weight of his authority, the young man had already transcended his current standing, possessing the raw potency of a Warlock that eclipsed the majority of Arkflame's seasoned magis.
This season had boasted the highest enlistment in the history of the Bloody Hunting, yet it simultaneously yielded the most horrific casualty rate in a singular opening phase. Such a massacre was the direct consequence of encountering a new demonic lineage—an event unseen for decades—especially one as lethally ranked as the Raffbloom.
Throughout the month-long ordeal, the ten airships had loomed over the Darkwood canopy like silent predators. They had deployed a network of massive observation crystals across the forest, tracking every heartbeat of the mission, scrutinising the contenders even as they sought fitful sleep in the dirt.
While only 914 contenders officially remained in the running, the Arkflame wardens had conducted covert extraction operations under the shroud of night. They had plucked nearly four thousand near-death hunters from the brink of the abyss, whisking them away to the Infirmary Halls without a whisper reaching the public ear.
Naturally, any contender compelled to accept the mission wardens' intervention faced immediate and ignominious disqualification. Yet, even accounting for those narrow escapes, the tally of the true deceased—exceeding five thousand souls—stood as a staggering, ghastly monument to the month's carnage.
Once the vitrine enshrining Princess Bloomy's remains was secured aboard the lead airship for transit to the Sanctus Sanctum, Seraph turned his back on the slaughter. He strode toward the tenth vessel, joining the grim assembly of the remaining nine hundred and fourteen.
As the young magis cut a path across the deck, the surviving hunters parted like a receding tide. They stood rigid, offering a silent salute as though a common conscript had stumbled upon a field marshal of the realm. Some found themselves bowing or nodding in reflexive submission before the thought had even formed. The atmosphere aboard the tenth ship was tomb-like; a heavy, breathless void.
With recovery operations concluded and the spoils of war interred, the first nine airships ignited their energia cores, banking away toward Arkflame. The tenth vessel was left in isolation, surging with predatory haste toward its next destination.
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The tenth airship had been airborne for less than an hour when the wardens saw fit to shatter any lingering hope of respite. The clarion call for assembly blared through the corridors once more—the very same summons to the Great Hall that had heralded their first descent into hell.
But the air had soured. There were no boastful shouts this time; no youthful exuberance, nor any remaining thirst for glory. The vessel had become a hollow shell of gloom and crushing pressure.
Those demon hunters who did not stand in solitary silence, arms folded over scarred chests, slunk into the hall's deepest shadows, as if praying the world might finally lose sight of them for good.
No soul among the assembly deigned to engage in conversation; the thirst for the title of the Bloody Hunting's pre-eminent victor had withered into ash. Grand stratagems were forgotten, and the whispered councils on how to fell the next threshold of demons had fallen silent. Each survivor stood adrift, scattered into their own desolate corners like wounded beasts retreating into the gloom to lick their lacerations.
Those few who remained in proximity were diminished to huddles of two or three; even the most formidable circles had shrunk to fewer than ten. To a man, they no longer viewed this season of slaughter as a celebration of martial prowess.
Only after the clarion bell had tolled a dozen times—after the wardens had conducted a grim sweep to herd the laggards toward the second mission briefing—did the 914 demon hunters finally congregate within the Great Hall. They moved with a leaden, compulsory gait.
Though the hall remained congested, the atmosphere was a stark, suffocating departure from the fervour of the inauguration. The vibrant ambition that had once occupied the air was replaced by a pall of grey exhaustion.