Undercover Operation (3)
Clatter! Clunk!
In the middle of a desolate plain, devoid of any signs of life, a skeletal carriage carrying sacrificial prey gradually slowed to a halt. The escort surrounding it spread out, and soon the carriage came to a complete stop.
“Open it.”
Viscount Lavirusk, the owner of the skeletal carriage, disembarked and gestured with a flick of his finger. A ghostly knight, obeying his master’s command, opened the door at the back of the carriage.
As usual, the people who emerged were those to be offered as sacrifices. However, these individuals felt distinctly different from the usual offerings.
“I can faintly taste salt in the air. Are we near the southeastern coast of the Count’s domain?” remarked a female mage, draped in a fur coat over her black leather armor, a long, slender sword at her waist.
“Tsk, tsk. What’s the point of living four hundred years if you can’t even drive a cart properly without it rattling all the time?” grumbled a dwarf, scratching his bushy beard, while a boy with silver-blue hair glared at the viscount with a disgruntled expression.
“Viscount, it might be unnecessary advice since we won’t see each other again, but considering the long journey, you should consider adding more ventilation,” suggested an elderly mage, tapping his staff on the ground as he spoke.
“I’ll look into it,” the viscount replied.
“Earth mages are surprisingly skilled in this area. They often build towers underground, so they’re quite adept at creating ventilation. Oh, but don’t count on our tower. Elgaia doesn’t deal with bloodsuckers.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” the viscount said, massaging his temples as he watched the skeletal carriage. Today, there were six sacrifices in total, but one had yet to disembark.
Thud—
A heavy footstep. The carriage tilted dramatically backward.
Creak…
The wooden planks groaned as if in pain, and the bones reinforced with dark magic emitted an ominous sound. The viscount instinctively took a step back.
“Cramped,” a deep voice rumbled.
The figure that emerged was a massive warrior, his frame filling the carriage door and then some. He paused momentarily before forcing his way out, nearly demolishing the door in the process.
Crash! Thud!
The doorframe shattered, and the door fell with a heavy thud. Watching the splintering bone fragments, the viscount felt his headache intensify.
The warrior, who had effectively doubled the width of the carriage’s rear door, nonchalantly brushed bone fragments off his shoulder.
“You’ll need to fit a larger door,” he remarked.
The viscount frowned. Of course, they would need to replace it—after all, he had just broken it.
“That is, if your head remains attached to your body when you return to the fortress,” the warrior added.
“Thank you,” the viscount replied, his expression souring further.
The warrior, Dalen, nodded, satisfied. It was only polite to respond when spoken to. Having confirmed that the Eastern manners he’d been instilling over the past few days had taken root, he turned away from the vampire viscount and rejoined his companions.
The group had been surveying their surroundings since disembarking, though there wasn’t much to see. The barren plain stretched endlessly, with nothing but dry soil and rocks as far as the eye could see.
“If there were a blackened desert, it might look like this,” Dalen mused, just as Felber spoke up.
“Something’s odd.”
“What do you mean?” Dalen asked.
“I’ve been looking around, but there’s no trace of spells or magic here. Not even hidden by illusions.”
To have scanned this vast wilderness without any magical disturbance was impressive. The ability to manipulate the timeline, a power even Dalen hadn’t mastered, was indeed extraordinary.
Felber continued, stroking his beard with his shackled hands. “You said the Blood Spirit’s Altar is constantly moving, so I even checked the sky. It could be floating like the sky fortress Barshavak. But there’s still nothing.”
The old mage’s eyes gleamed golden.
“That means one of two things: either the viscount got the location wrong, or he deliberately led us elsewhere.”
“No, this is the rendezvous point,” the viscount insisted.
“Can you prove that?” Felber asked, his voice laced with suspicion.
A silent pressure began to close in around them. The viscount, clutching his trembling hands, took another step back. Despite his frail appearance, the old mage’s magical aura was overwhelming.
Recalling the surprise attack that had nearly destroyed his fortress in mere hours, the viscount remembered how the old mage’s spells had outperformed those of other superhumans.
Even after two hundred years at the fifth rank, the old mage’s power hinted at an insurmountable barrier—the pinnacle of the fifth rank, reaching for the divine.
Just as the viscount feared it was the end, a deep voice interjected.
“Old man, did you check underground?”
“Hmm?”
The pressure dissipated instantly, and the old mage’s expression softened. The viscount clicked his tongue in disbelief.
Meanwhile, Felber’s gaze, following Dalen’s suggestion, fixed on a point beneath the ground. The old mage asked, “Dalen, could it be…?”
“Yes,” Dalen confirmed.
The mage’s face hardened, his eyes filled with uncharacteristic wariness as he stared at a spot deep underground.
The others exchanged puzzled glances at his reaction.
Then, suddenly—
Rumble!
The ground began to shake violently, as if an earthquake had struck.
A low, ominous rumble filled the air.
The ground boiled like water droplets on a hot stone, like the bubbling springs near a volcano.
The sight of the black earth sizzling across hundreds of meters was surreal, almost impossible to accept as reality.
The acrid stench of burning filled the air, and the rising heat dried their skin.
Dalen took a deep breath, feeling the dragon’s blood within him heat up, as he fixed his gaze on the distant, boiling ground.
At the end of his gaze, a long object slowly emerged from the churning earth, accompanied by an eerie wail.
“What is that?” someone murmured.
“A mast,” Dalen replied to Bjorn’s dazed question.
As soon as he spoke, the long object shot up, revealing its full form above the ground.
A chorus of screams echoed across the land.
Three towering masts, assembled from the bones of hundreds of people, with sails made from stitched-together skin and rigging of sinew and muscle.
“My God,” someone whispered.
The ship, with its masts inscribed with strange symbols, was constructed entirely from human bones.
On the deck, charred skeletons scurried about, while dozens of oars, resembling giant arm bones, thrashed the air.
The four anchors dangling from the ship were dragon skulls, each one writhing, and the stern was adorned with thousands of faces, all screaming in unison.
“That’s why I said it’s hard to enter even if you know the location,” Dalen remarked calmly amidst his companions, who stared in shock at the massive ghost ship.
“The Blood Spirit’s Altar is inside that ghost ship. You can’t just dig a tunnel thousands of meters down.”
Beneath the earth, in a sunless, timeless void, the Blood Spirit’s Altar was the heart of the drifting ghost ship.
“So, what do you plan to do now?” the viscount asked cautiously, regaining some courage at the sight of the ghost ship.
Dalen shrugged. “What else? We do what we did with you.”
“With me…?”
“We go in. We break it.”
The viscount’s expression twisted. He was clearly cursing Dalen with his eyes, but Dalen didn’t care and continued.
“The deal isn’t over yet. It’s your job to get us safely inside.”
Thud. Thud. A heavy hand, like a bear’s paw, patted his shoulder.
With each pat, the viscount flinched, and Dalen couldn’t help but let a sly grin spread across his face.
Boarding the ship turned out to be surprisingly easy.
They climbed a ladder made of interwoven ribs, only to be greeted by a high-ranking vampire of baron status.
From what Dalen had experienced beyond the monitor, it was normal to go through all sorts of procedures and processes right before boarding a ship.
The fact that they didn’t have to likely meant the viscount had already taken care of all the formalities behind the scenes.
He must have staked his life on it, or at least his title as a viscount.
“Baron Angelac.”
“Viscount Lavirusk.”
After a brief exchange of greetings, the high-ranking vampire led the viscount and his party down the corridor below deck.
The baron seemed slightly puzzled by Dalen and his group’s unusual appearance for sacrificial offerings, but he decided it wasn’t his place to interfere and continued to lead them without comment.
Dalen and his companions were skilled enough to conceal their true strength, which helped maintain the facade.
As they walked down the corridor, the viscount suddenly spoke up.
“So, the count has returned, I see.”
“Yes. We boarded with the count near the southwestern border. As per the Blood Lord’s orders, we’re gathering forces and heading to the count’s castle.”
“Hmm… I see.”
The viscount glanced back at Dalen and his group.
This guy… Dalen raised an eyebrow slightly.
The viscount’s thoughts were obvious. With the vampire count, who had ascended to a demigod-like status long ago, and the recently descended Blood Lord, he might be considering a confrontation.
Dalen casually tapped his waist.
There was no axe hanging there, but the gesture alone was enough to make the viscount flinch and quickly turn away.
“Is something wrong?”
”…No, just checking on the state of the offerings.”
“Come to think of it, it’s been a while since you’ve personally presented offerings, hasn’t it? The quality of your offerings has always been excellent, and the count is looking forward to this one as well.”
“Is that so? Well, he’s in for a treat.”
The ghost ship was far larger than it appeared from the outside. Even with Dalen’s keen senses, the ship’s physical size seemed to defy logic.
Given that it housed the altar of a dark god, it wasn’t surprising that the concept of space itself was distorted.
After walking down the seemingly endless corridor and descending several flights of stairs, they finally arrived at a massive door.
“The count and the Blood Lord are waiting.”
Creeeeak…
The door began to open.
It was as large and imposing as the gates of a city, and the speed at which it opened was agonizingly slow.
Dalen smirked as he watched the viscount’s back, now drenched in cold sweat.
There was no need to hide anymore.
He unleashed his suppressed presence, gathering the winds of magic around him.
Whether there was one boss or two, there was only one thing to do when the boss room opened.
As his right hand brushed his waist, a rift in the air opened, and a chain imbued with cold delivered an axe from the void.
[Enter, my child, who has traveled far to prove your loyalty—hmm?]
Before the voice from the crack in the door could finish, a faint disc of light vanished into the gap.