The perpetual cloud cover of acid rain in the Maya district was forcibly torn apart by a powerful force, and the once dim streets were bathed in a sacred, chilling white light. This was not dawn, but the Holy Blood Council's highest-level holographic matrix, the 'Holy Blood Projection'.
Aaryan and his companions were huddled deep within the ruins of a monastery in an abandoned pumping station. Through cracks in the broken dome, they beheld a sight that would overwhelm any mortal: half the sky was filled with an enormous image. Lord Malakor was dressed in a pure white priest's robe and had a handsome, androgynous face. His pale purple eyes seemed to look down from a higher dimension at every ant struggling in the gutter. 'Lost children,' said Malakor. His voice was not loud, yet it struck the very depths of their souls through every resonant point of the citizens' prosthetic ears and every loudspeaker on the holographic billboard. 'The prosperity of the Maya District is built upon order, but that order is being eroded by a virus called "Ember". Aaryan, the thief who stole the royal bloodline, has ignited a spark powerful enough to destroy your homes.'
He extended a slender finger and lightly touched the ground, instantly turning the entire city from grey to red. 'To purify this land, the Council has decided to initiate the "Holy Blood Baptism" ahead of schedule. From this moment on, the entire city will be without power. Only those who participate in the hunt for the rebels will receive a reward of ether.' As the declaration was made, the ether base stations that Maya District depended on for survival shut down one after another, plunging the impoverished people who had been working through the night into darkness. Then, countless prosthetic eyes, gleaming with a yearning red light, opened in the shadows. In Maya District, cutting off the ether supply meant death. Malakor's only lifeline was Aaryan's life.
'He has turned us into bait for the whole city.' Cyrus's withered fingers gripped the compass tightly, grey blood seeping from under his nails. 'This isn't baptism; it's the start of a sacrifice. The script from 1969... He's finally performing his final act.' From outside the pumping station, chaotic and frantic footsteps echoed in the darkness. They weren't elite guards, but rather powerless, crazed vagrants brandishing rusty wrenches, modified nail guns or even exposed prosthetic limbs.
'There! That glowing shadow!' screamed a scavenger, half-faced and mechanically enhanced, pointing at Aaryan. Due to the recent bloodline resonance, Aaryan still radiated a faint, undeniable purple-gold glow.
'Damn it! They've gone mad!' Pau cried out, swiftly pulling several high-frequency vibrators from his bag with his only intact mechanical hand and attaching them to the pump station's only iron gate. "These civilians are victims too. We can't…"
'If we don't act, they'll tear us apart for that "ether milk powder".' Balthazar roared. His massive greatsword was already gathering crimson magic in the darkness.
'Aaryan, put away your mercy! There are no civilians in the Maya district now, only hounds!" A refugee broke through the defences. His poorly modified legs possessed astonishing jumping power. He leapt directly at Aaryan.
Aaryan's eyes were icy cold. He didn't draw his sword, nor did he use all his strength.
"Retreat." "
He parted his lips slightly and a visible, translucent ripple, accompanied by a single syllable, emerged from his royal bloodline. The oppressive power of his bloodline, with its strict hierarchy, squeezed the hearts of several refugees who rushed forward, causing them to collapse to their knees in puddles with a few thuds. This combined fantasy-like 'realm suppression' with 'ethereal punk' 'gravitational disturbance', allowing ordinary mortals to experience the fear of superior beings at a genetic level.
However, this fear lasted only a moment. Malakor's voice resounded in everyone's minds again: 'Kill him and you will become the new "Holy Bloodline".' This was no longer a battle, but a desperate push to break free. Like a bulldozer, Balthazar used the spine of his sword, not the blade, to push back hordes of refugees, fighting the enemy and observing Aaryan at the same time. He noticed that Aaryan's fighting skills had become even more unpredictable in such an oppressive environment — he could use the shadows of the ruins to create water-like paths through the gaps in the crowd. Golden arcs of electricity flickered from his fingertips, striking pressure points on the refugees and paralysing them without killing them.
"He's conserving his energy," thought Balthazar with a chill. 'He's waiting for his real killing blow.' Just as the four were about to burst out of the pumping station, a thin, high-energy cutting ray illuminated the darkness.
"Bang!" Pau's half-repaired mechanical shoulder blade was instantly pierced. A long-lurking 'Council Mercenary' leapt down from the ventilation duct. His body was 90% mechanised, and four exhaust vents on his back spewed out pale steam. He wasn't targeting Aaryan, but rather the weakest: Pau and the blind Cyrus.
The mercenary grinned maliciously. 'Take those two prisoners, and the royal brat will kneel! No one will harm my friends.' Aaryan's voice was as deep and resonant as the Earth's core. The sewage beneath his feet instantly boiled, creating a sense of temporal overlap with 1969. He didn't use any footwork; he simply vanished from his spot.
The next second, he appeared beside the mercenary, his right hand clawing at the man's hard ceramic armour. With a crack, the armour, which was strong enough to withstand heavy machine gun fire, crumbled like paper under Aaryan's grip. Golden lightning poured in through the gaps, completely burning out the mercenary's electronic circuitry.
They finally escaped the pumping station and reached an empty street, but the scene before them plunged them into despair: Malakor's merciful yet cruel face appeared on every streetlamp and building in the entire Maya district. 'The first round of baptism is over. Now, the second phase begins — a city-wide hunt.' Malakor's projection smiled slightly.
In the distance, several massive 'Council Judgment Mechs' roared past buildings, their red probe beams sweeping wildly across the ground. The four exchanged glances. In this once-familiar city, they had become outcasts.
The neon lights that usually lined the streets with cheap advertisements now emitted a uniform, solemn dark gold. Malakor's face was clearly visible in every piece of bulletproof glass, and this omnipresent mental pressure made Pau feel nauseous, despite his usual adeptness at navigating the alleyways.
'The etheric signal has been completely reconfigured.' Pau's fingers trembled as he fiddled with the almost broken terminal on his wrist. 'Now, all the base stations in the city are conducting biometric scans. Aaryan, the wavelength within you is like a lighthouse in a dark sea to them.' Balthazar was breathing heavily; the demonic markings on his left shoulder had turned a morbid bluish-purple from overwork. He looked at Aaryan, a complex expression flashing in his eyes.
'That white-robed madman was right; you are the fuse. As long as you keep moving, this city's 'baptism' won't stop." He stopped, his greatsword scraping the marble floor with a harsh sound. 'If we split up now, this little guy and I might survive.
'This isn't true betrayal, but a survival instinct under extreme duress.' Aaryan looked at Balthazar silently. Instead of using his royal authority to intimidate them, he calmly extended his left hand, which was covered in obsidian scales. "You said the events of 1969 aren't over. If we disband now, we'll forever be nothing more than batteries in Malakor's tank. Do you want to die in the slums, bearing this humiliation, or come with me to destroy that projection's true form?'
'Stop arguing.' Cyrus tapped the ground with his cane, his voice echoing in the dark alley. 'Malakor activated "Holy Blood Baptism" not just to capture Aaryan. He's forcibly accelerating the operation of the "Crimson Furnace". Listen, the bells have changed.'
Everyone held their breath, vaguely hearing a muffled sound from deep underground that resembled the beating of a behemoth's heart. This was not the sound of bells, but of thousands of tons of ether being compressed and forced into the inner city. The peaceful facade of the Maya District was peeling away to reveal the bloody energy harvesting matrix beneath.
'Whoosh!' Three powerful, crimson scanning lines, capable of vaporising steel, instantly locked onto the alleyway where the four were standing. With a heavy hydraulic roar, a 'Judgment Mech – Seraphim Type', standing over ten metres tall, crashed through a nearby apartment building and landed amidst a cloud of dust.
Its cooling fins, resembling steel wings, spewed white steam generated by overheating.
'Ember band detected. Execute final annihilation.' The mech's synthesised electronic voice was cold and ruthless. He stopped, his greatsword scraping the marble floor with a harsh sound. 'If we split up now, this little guy and I might survive.
'This isn't true betrayal, but a survival instinct under extreme duress.' Aaryan looked at Balthazar silently. Instead of using his royal authority to intimidate them, he calmly extended his left hand, which was covered in obsidian scales. "You said the events of 1969 aren't over. If we disband now, we'll forever be nothing more than batteries in Malakor's tank. Do you want to die in the slums, bearing this humiliation, or come with me to destroy that projection's true form?'
'Stop arguing.' Cyrus tapped the ground with his cane, his voice echoing in the dark alley. 'Malakor activated "Holy Blood Baptism" not just to capture Aaryan. He's forcibly accelerating the operation of the "Crimson Furnace". Listen, the bells have changed.'
Everyone held their breath, vaguely hearing a muffled sound from deep underground, like the beating of a behemoth's heart. It wasn't the sound of bells, but of thousands of tons of ether being compressed and forced into the furnace.
Aaryan rushed to the front of the mech, attempting to activate 'Instant Step' again. However, the air was as viscous as mercury — this was the mech's 'Domain Suppression Device'. A heavy punch from the mech came down and Aaryan raised his hands to take the hit.
'Boom!' Cracks radiated outwards from Aaryan in the ground. His legs sank deep into the mud and the golden arc of electricity in his right hand extinguished like a candle in the wind under the opponent's overwhelming physical and energy-crushing force. His obsidian scales shattered inch by inch, blood flowing down his arm and dripping onto the contaminated earth.
This scene was broadcast live to the entire city via a massive projection in the sky. Malakor's projection wore a merciful smile, as if watching a predetermined sacrifice.
It wasn't the mech that filled Aaryan with despair, but the reaction from the surrounding apartment buildings. Those he had once protected, those who had shared the slums with him, were now hiding behind curtains and staring at him with greedy yet fearful eyes. 'Kill him... kill him, and the baptism will end!'
'Look, his blood is purple-gold; he really is a monster!' A little girl whom Aaryan had saved in Chapter 12 was now having her eyes covered by her mother. However, the mother clutched a distress flare tightly in her hand, her fingertips trembling as she pressed the fire button.
At that moment, the malice of the Maya District was suffocating Aaryan more than the Judgment Mech's cannon fire. This city-wide betrayal had brought the atmosphere to freezing point.
Just as the cannon was about to fire a final close-range shot at Aaryan's head, his pendant suddenly erupted with an unprecedented cold light. It wasn't light; it was more like a 'visual absence'. The mech's cannon fireball vanished the instant it came into contact with the cold light — not cancelled out, but 'sheared off'.
'This frequency...' Cyrus looked up from the ruins. His eyes were lifeless, but he looked as if he had witnessed an unbelievable truth.
"No, this isn't the power of 2026. Aaryan, you've triggered... The punctuation of 1969.'" Aaryan stood rooted to the spot, feeling his consciousness split in two: one half experiencing the agonising pain of broken bones, the other wandering through the gardenia-scented ruins. He looked up at Malakor's projection in the sky and noticed a huge, rusty clock face faintly appearing behind the white-robed man. Its hands were spinning wildly anti-clockwise.
'Malakor,' Aaryan spat, spitting out a mouthful of blood. His voice was hoarse, yet carried an ancient pressure. 'What you fear isn't me, but the thirteenth chime of the clock.'
The crimson light from the Judgment Mech's cannon had condensed into a tiny dot — enough energy to flatten an entire city block — before unleashing its full power. Aaryan stood directly in front of the cannon. His obsidian scales cracked slightly under the intense heat, but he didn't retreat.
'Malakor, you'd better watch this,' he muttered to himself, his voice piercing the booming holographic projections. 'The embers that couldn't be completely burned away in 1969 will burn your hypocrisy to ashes today.'
Just then, the pendant on his chest vibrated violently, like a heartbeat, and the holographic screens throughout the city flickered. Malakor's once sacred face was suddenly obscured by the afterimage of an old black-and-white newspaper — the 26 April 1969 edition of the Malakor Times. "Boom!" The mech fired.
However, the anticipated devastating explosion didn't occur. The crimson energy beam seemed to enter another dimension, bizarrely 'folding' when it touched a metre in front of Aaryan.
Before the onlookers' eyes, the light of destruction did not disappear; instead, it suddenly appeared behind the mech. 'Time-Space Borrowing: Causality Reversal.'
This was a magical attack on a technological weapon. The cannon struck the mech's cooling fins and, with a deafening explosion, half of the "Chairman of the Council's" shoulder was blasted off by its own attack. It fell backwards amidst billowing smoke. Aaryan gave it no chance to recover. She leapt up, transforming into a dark golden lightning bolt, and plunged directly into the mech's damaged cooling vents. Within the dense network of ethereal circuits and hydraulic lines of the mech, she activated her 'Royal Divine Sense' and placed her hand on the core control sphere.
'Your order now belongs to me.'
In that instant, the mech's cold, blue electronic eyes turned fiery purple-gold. The steel behemoth, which had been carrying out the order to annihilate, slowly rose before everyone's eyes. It was no longer facing Aaryan's allies; instead, it had abruptly turned its head and pointed its cannon at the enormous, towering phantom of Malakor in the sky.
'Malakor, since you like watching live streams, I'll let the whole city see what colour your so-called "holy blood" really is.' Aaryan's voice, amplified by the mech's loudspeaker, echoed like thunder across the city.
The mech pulled the trigger. Although the holographic projection was merely light and shadow, the shot struck the inner city's base station's transmission tower precisely. The giant face in the sky distorted and shattered violently, turning into countless snowflakes. At that moment, the "false god myth" in the hearts of the people of the Maya District was irreparably damaged. Taking advantage of the chaos caused by the mech's rampage, Balthazar struggled to crawl out of the rubble and grabbed the injured Pau. Meanwhile, Cyrus quickly disappeared into a fissure blasted open by the mech under Aaryan's cover.
By the time the Golden Flame Guard reinforcements arrived, only a melting Judgment mech and a pile of golden fragments remained. The four had completely vanished from the Maya District's surveillance network. They had escaped the monastery's hunting grounds and hidden in the deepest part of the slums — the lower cooling zone. This was the dirtiest place in the city, but also the safest as the ethereal noise was enough to mask any biological signature.
Pau leaned against a rusty pipe, painfully repairing his mechanical hand. Suddenly, he stopped, staring at a broken message on his terminal.
'What's wrong?' Aaryan asked, approaching him. His palm was still burning from overusing his time-space abilities.
'My... my old coworkers.' Pau's voice trembled; his usual shrewdness and smoothness had disappeared, replaced by pure fear. 'The people who saved me in Chapter 12 have disappeared from the Council's "Blood of the Gods" list.'
Cyrus tapped his compass, his voice heavy. 'Disappeared?' In the Maya district, there are only two possible outcomes for civilians who disappear: they've either become fuel for the furnace or they've been sent to the 'Reconstruction Chamber' in the inner city. Your friends may no longer be 'human'."
Pau stood up abruptly, his bloodshot eyes fixed on Aaryan. 'Aaryan, you just said you wanted to destroy that projection's true form. Count me in, not as a saviour, but as a way of repaying those idiots in this junkyard who were the only ones who treated me like a human being.'
Aaryan watched the holographic static outside the cave gradually dim. He knew that Malakor's 'Blood of the Gods' was far from over and that the real conspiracy was unfolding with the disappearance of his lowly co-workers.
Chapter 21: While searching for survivors, the four missing workers discover that the so-called 'baptism' is actually a large-scale biological experiment aimed at refining the 'abandoned bloodlines' of the lower classes into a tonic for Malakor's immortality.