The young noble, his opulent silver-threaded robes entirely ruined by his previous groveling, stood with his back pressed against the carriage door.
He was vibrating with a profound, mortal dread. Having just witnessed the Supreme Flesh-Crafter effortlessly purge the illusion-arrays from his flawed Venom-Macaque, Fen explicitly believed that his own life was currently dangling by the thinnest of frayed soul-tethers.
He desperately needed to offer an absolute, undeniable tribute to appease the monster standing before him.
Sunny stood perfectly rigid in the gloom. His pale, aristocratic features were locked into a flawless mask of chilling apathy. His crimson eyes glowed with an unnatural, predatory light, and thick waves of dark Qi rolled off his shoulders. Internally, however, Sunny was experiencing a catastrophic spiral of civilian exhaustion. His uncultivated spine ached, his head pounded with an unrelenting migraine, and he explicitly desired nothing more than to retreat into his warded pavilion and sleep for a century.
"S-Supreme Patriarch," Fen stammered, his teeth chattering so violently he could barely form the incantations required to unlock the carriage. "I beg you to inspect my personal reserves. I possess dozens of medicinal parasites harvested from the weeping trenches. Please, claim any entity that pleases your dark mastery!"
Fen wrenched the heavy lead-lined door open, revealing the dim interior of the carriage. Ranks of glowing, rune-carved glass jars lined the walls. Inside the vessels, hundreds of standard Corpse-Leeches writhed in a grotesque, mindless frenzy, explicitly starved to increase their aggression.
Sunny maintained his freezing silence, stepping closer to the carriage. He explicitly did not want a writhing jar of aggressive tapeworms, but his survival strategy dictated that he acquire a biological healer. He swept his glowing gaze across the inventory.
The Supreme Merge System instantaneously flooded his retinas with cascading blue data frames. He explicitly ignored the endless stream of ’Normal-grade’ and ’Trash-tier’ notifications, his vision filtering through the biological garbage.
Suddenly, his gaze snapped to a specific, heavily warded jar resting in the darkest corner of the carriage. Unlike the other parasites, which aggressively slammed themselves against the glass, the entity within this vessel was a semi-translucent, pulsing crimson orb that explicitly darted away from the light, desperately pressing itself into the furthest edge of its confinement.
[Target Identified: Sanguine Void-Leech]
[Monster Level]: Tier 1 (Novice)
[Monster Grade]: Elite (Mutated)
[Monster Attribute]: Blood / Yin
[Monster Weakness]: 1. Purified Salt Arrays. 2. Solar Qi. 3. Profoundly terrified of sharp objects, sudden movements, and loud noises; will suffer core-paralysis if exposed to standard battlefield combat.
Sunny stared blankly at the floating blue text. He explicitly marveled at the absurdity of demonic biology. The system had just identified a demonic beast that was actively terrified of sharp objects and loud noises. It was the absolute, ultimate pacifist, an evolutionary anomaly entirely unsuited for a sect defined by perpetual slaughter.
Yet, it possessed an Elite-grade, dual-attribute core. It was exactly the miraculous healer he needed.
Sunny slowly raised a pale, aristocratic finger and pointed directly at the warded jar in the corner.
"..."
He offered absolutely no verbal explanation, letting the heavy, suffocating silence project an aura of absolute command.
Lordling Fen followed the finger, his eyes widening in sheer, unadulterated panic. "Supreme One! That specific anomaly is a catastrophic failure! The pit-masters isolated it because its mutated Yin core requires an extortionate volume of highly refined Abyssal Blood-Nectar merely to survive! It will bleed your resources dry!"
Sunny slowly shifted his unblinking, crimson gaze away from the jar and directly onto Fen’s sweating face. He explicitly narrowed his eyes by a fraction of an inch, amplifying the ambient pressure of his villainous aura.
To Lordling Fen, this microscopic movement was the ultimate psychological execution. He explicitly interpreted the Young Master’s mute, heavy stare as a terrifying promise of agonizing death. Fen firmly believed the Supreme Flesh-Crafter was profoundly insulted by the suggestion that he could not afford to feed a mere parasite, and was silently calculating the precise angle to sever Fen’s head for the sheer disrespect.
"I am an ignorant insect!" Fen shrieked, dropping to his knees in the toxic ash. "I will provide its sustenance! I swear upon my rotting meridians!"
With frantic, trembling hands, Fen scrambled into the carriage, retrieving the jar containing the mutated Leech. He then violently tore open a hidden compartment under the floorboards, dragging out a heavy, iron-bound crate filled with dozens of glowing, crimson vials.
"Twenty cycles worth of pristine Abyssal Blood-Nectar, Supreme One! I beg you, accept this worthless tribute and spare my soul!" Fen wept, pressing his forehead into the mud.
Sunny explicitly loved the terrifying economics of the Demonic Path. He casually utilized a minor telekinetic array to lift both the jar and the heavy crate of expensive catalysts, completely ignoring the groveling noble. He turned his back and walked toward his isolated pavilion, explicitly leaving Fen to weep in the dirt, entirely convinced he had just narrowly escaped being flayed alive.
Upon unsealing the heavy obsidian doors of his tent, Sunny stepped into the gloom and commanded the wards to lock behind him.
The Phantom Ash Scorpion, currently resting upon the sacrificial altar, immediately sensed the new biological presence. The massive, lethal assassin raised its dual, venom-dripping stingers and explicitly locked its multiple ruby eyes onto the pulsing crimson Leech floating within the glass jar.
The Scorpion let out a sharp, rhythmic clicking of its mandibles. It was actively projecting a localized aura of intense, insectoid disgust. The Tier 4 assassin explicitly viewed itself as the apex predator of Sunny’s shadow, and it felt profoundly insulted that its master had brought a squishy, pathetic blood-bag into their domain.
With a final, aggressive hiss, the Scorpion scuttled rapidly up the obsidian pillar. It retreated into the highest, darkest crevice of the vaulted ceiling. In a display of pure, petulant jealousy, the insect violently secreted a thick layer of dense shadow-resin, effectively sealing itself into a hardened, lightless cocoon, explicitly refusing to look at the new arrival.
Sunny internally sighed, his migraine throbbing. He explicitly did not understand why his demonic weapons possessed the emotional maturity of spoiled toddlers.
He shifted his gaze to the center of the room, where his logistical nightmare was currently looming.
The Sovereign Ghoul Ape, having recently ascended to Tier 5, was explicitly far too massive for the standard Vanguard command tent. The undead construct stood at a towering fifteen feet, its dark-metal skeleton woven with toxic-green veins. To avoid tearing the blood-wards painted on the ceiling with its jagged metallic horns, the Ape was forced to maintain a perpetual, awkward crouch.
Its colossal, glowing Abyssal Heart pulsed within its ribs, the heavy thrum vibrating the ash on the floor. It explicitly looked like an apocalyptic titan crammed into a broom closet. Sunny realized with absolute certainty that he needed to extort a larger evil lair from the Grand Elders before the Ape accidentally stood up and collapsed the entire structure.
Sunny approached his alchemy station, exhausted but determined to secure his new healer.
He drew a cursed bone-needle from his sash and pricked the tip of his pale index finger. A single drop of crimson blood welled up. He unsealed the glass jar and pressed his bleeding digit directly against the semi-translucent membrane of the Sanguine Void-Leech.
Because the anomaly was merely a Tier 1 Novice, the spiritual strain of the soul-tether was negligible. Sunny explicitly felt a faint, timid spark of consciousness latch onto his mind—a fragile presence that radiated an overwhelming desire to remain hidden and safe.
He uncorked one of the extorted vials of Abyssal Blood-Nectar. The sheer concentration of the dark catalyst was so rich it smelled like burning sugar and iron. He poured the glowing liquid into a shallow, cracked skull-basin.
The Leech immediately sensed the extreme biological nutrition. It drifted out of the jar and submerged its lower membrane into the nectar. As it fed, the creature explicitly pulsed with a warm, comforting Yin Qi, its bruised color shifting to a vibrant, healthy crimson.
Once satiated, the Leech floated upward, drifting close to Sunny’s face. It affectionately bumped its fleshy, wet membrane against his pale cheek, radiating pure, telepathic contentment.
Sunny explicitly shuddered, suppressing a profound wave of civilian revulsion. Having a giant, floating blood-clot rub against his face was objectively disgusting, but he endured the sensory nightmare for the sake of his future survival.
He walked over to his spine-throne, retrieving a chilled skull-goblet of restorative dark-elixir. He explicitly needed a drink to soothe his frayed nerves.
Suddenly, a frantic, highly compressed psychic transmission echoed violently within Sunny’s mind.
It was the Phantom Ash Scorpion.
The assassin explicitly realized that the dense shadow-resin it had secreted to seal itself in the ceiling had hardened far too quickly in the cold air. The Tier 4 insect was now completely immobilized, permanently trapped within its own petulant cocoon.
"Release..." the Scorpion’s insectoid mind projected, thick with rising panic. "Dark confines... release the shadow..."
Sunny remained seated upon his spine-throne, bringing the chilled goblet to his lips. He explicitly decided to let the arrogant bug suffer in the dark for a few minutes to teach it a lesson about throwing tantrums.
"Open the seal..." the psychic transmission demanded, the mental frequency vibrating with desperate rage.
Sunny took a slow, deliberate sip of the dark-elixir, enjoying the freezing sensation against his parched throat. He offered the insect absolute mental silence.
"Open the shadow... rot your mother’s core!"
Sunny violently expelled the chilled elixir from his mouth, spraying a mist of dark fluid across the obsidian floor.
He descended into a fit of ragged, shocked coughing, his crimson eyes wide with absolute bewilderment.
He explicitly could not fathom how his cold-blooded, terrifying instrument of murder had just successfully learned how to hurl a coherent demonic profanity.