Chapter 229: The Plague Rain Falls
The first ink-green black raindrop fell on the arena edge with no warning. The broken obsidian did not even have time to sound before the viscous liquid silently burned through it. A half-meter-deep pit formed instantly, edges smoking poison, even the bottom sand melted into bubbling toxin. The fetid mucus, with the gale, became a sky-covering downpour. The rain fell indiscriminate on the thousands of kneeling ordinary werewolves below.
The outermost row of low-rank wolf warriors who had just sworn loyalty became the first vessels of the abyss malice. The viscous drop, the instant it touched their rough hard skin, was like hot oil on snow. Flesh collapsed and dissolved visible to the eye. Black-brown blood mixed with yellow pus of liquefied organs ran in sheets down their backs, converging in the mire into stinking poison-creeks. The black-qi patches from the Southern European blood-pool depths, like living vines with independent will, climbed madly up their bare skin texture and blood vessels.
Shrill screams exploded one after another, wholly drowning the thunder. The bottom-layer wolves thrashed in the acid mud. Their thick fingers dug at their own throats and chests, trying to claw out the toxic parasites already in their arteries swimming toward the heart. Bone, under the Progenitor plague, snapped with a shrill twist. The hard spine bent backward uncontrolled. The once-sturdy bodies, in moments, mutated into limb-dislocated monsters.
This Progenitor cataclysm, forcibly detonated from the open-sea ley-line depths, gave this just-transferred city no breathing room. Chloe stood at the edge of that boiling toxin haze. Her scrapped titanium right-leg exoskeleton was fully wrapped by corrosive gas. The metal surface roared dense, the hydraulic lines spat scorched black oil. Just as the ink-green rain-curtain that could melt a man to pus was about to pour on her head, a burning sting burst from deep under the skin below her left collarbone. That was the Blood Moon old wound she had once gouged out its physical form yet still rooted in her soul’s deepest place. This ancient protection pact, forged from Victor’s half a heart, was forcibly awakened without refusal upon sensing fatal high-dimensional malice. Scalding heat climbed her neck’s great artery, nearly boiling her blood.
A glaring dark-gold light shot from below her torn collar, like a blade slicing the dim toxin-rain. This glow, carrying the Ancient Wolf God’s purest purification force, wove fast in mid-air and forcibly raised a ten-meter-diameter hemispherical absolute-defense barrier. The black rain falling on the gold light let out a shrill hiss the instant it touched, then was mercilessly evaporated into harmless white vapor. The halo steadily expanded, wholly covering Victor and Leo at her side.
The sharp black-ice under the three-year-old cub’s feet, which had raised countless spikes to resist outside malice, turned obedient the instant it met this warm bloodline. The ice surface’s defensive posture slowly dissolved, re-spreading into a smooth sheet. Victor’s chest extracorporeal circulator, near overload from sensing same-source Progenitor force, under the gold light, its glaring red alarm finally flickered out. The fluorocarbon breathing fluid racing to burst the valve in the transparent line regained a steady, strong pump rhythm.
The pureblood tyrant lowered his eyelids slightly. His scarlet gaze crossed the churning rain-curtain and fixed on Chloe’s glowing collarbone. The soul bond kept sending his mate’s near-self-destructive bloodline overdraft. To hold this purification barrier, Chloe’s already-dried meridians endured unimaginable crushing. The man clenched his rear molars, enduring the agony of that half-ruined heart torn by the rule in his chest. He lightly avoided the life-support medical lines and with one hand pulled off the pure-black tactical greatcoat from his shoulder. The wide heavy fabric, carrying his unique tyrant gravity field and cold pheromone, snugly wrapped Chloe’s shaking shoulders from blood-loss and pain.
Not far away the rain-curtain was brutally smashed open. Leon charged into the gold-light barrier’s shelter against the toxin rain. His uniform hem already burned through with several holes by acid. The spare tactical terminal on his wrist, just black-screened from field pollution, now relit a glaring high-frequency red. That was Costa family’s highest-level disaster warning. Leon raised his hand-back and roughly wiped the two blood-tracks the toxin gas had burned on his cheek. The one flesh eye left was bloodshot. His finger slid the screen, projecting the real-time battle situation received by forcing the high-frequency encrypted signal through the pollution field. His voice was tense like a steel string about to snap.
“Matriarch. Costa’s intelligence nets in three European sectors just sent a fucking top-secret urgent.” Leon’s voice held rare cold. “The Progenitor plague is not only breaking in the royal city. Berlin’s surrounding ley-lines, along with Zurich and the Nordic altar’s core nodes, were forcibly detonated by the open-sea buyers at the same time.” The hologram showed European city coordinates, green points spreading at a despairing speed, turning scarlet in sheets. “The local riot armor divisions cannot block this high-dimensional gene pollution. Conventional fireblock lines are like paper before the black rain. All werewolves and blood-clan touching the toxin rain, even without incubation, twist into mindless kill-vessels within ten minutes, attacking civilians indiscriminate.”
He paused half a second and looked at the Blood Moon mark on Chloe’s collarbone, now soft gold. “Tech confirmed the goddamn toxin sample spectrum just sent back. All known defense arrays and modern anti-toxin serums are ineffective against this mixed ancient-wolf-toxin Progenitor plague. Except your Blood Moon pact. Only the Ancient Wolf God’s mate mark has the sole antibody that directly purifies Progenitor black qi.”
The words were heavyly in the rolling thunder. The open-sea buyers detonated the global ley-lines not for mere slaughter venting. They used all of Europe’s lives as hostage chips to force Chloe to hand over the core that can wholly restrain the abyss. Chloe listened quiet to this disaster report that could crush any empire. Her face held not a fraction of retreat. She raised her good right hand and pulled the greatcoat, still carrying Victor’s body-heat, tighter on her shoulder. The Ancient Wolf God pressure roared unyielding again in her dried meridians. Her left arm’s broken bone still wept blood, dripping the obsidian. But those dark-gold eyes held only absolute kill-intent and cold.
Chloe reversed the notched serrated combat-knife from the thigh holster. The notched edge refracted a heart-chilling cold arc under the gold light. She dragged that right-leg exoskeleton that could scrap at any moment, against unimaginable bodily load, step by step to the highest edge of the altar ruins. The stone underfoot cracked under the metal weight.
Below, tens of thousands of ordinary werewolves struggling in the toxin rain, some already mutating, raised those corroded unrecognizable faces by their last reason. Through the toxin haze they looked up at the blood-drenched woman atop, holding up the last pure land like a goddess. “Third Heavy Battalion, all switch to high-explosive silver rounds.” Chloe’s rasped yet piercing voice, through Leon’s reconnected broadcast, rang unobstructed in every corner of the royal city. “Night Owl squadrons immediately ascend, fully seal the royal-city airspace. Any unverified aircraft, shoot down without warning. Medical, start all spare hibernation pods, send the heavily wounded civilians to underground shelters. From now, this city enters highest wartime state.”
No extra emotional release. No complaint at fate. She stood atop the ruins and proved with her broken body and absolute hard will who the true master was. The royal guard commander kneeling in the mud wiped the acid from his face. He watched the woman still straight-backed in desperation, his heart pounding. He grabbed the heavy issue broadsword from the ground and struck his broken chest-armor with the hilt. A dull thud. The metal clash spread in the storm like a thunderclap. Thousands of guards keeping the outer order rose in unison. Without hesitation they drew their waist weapons and tilted their heads up, loosing toward the high Chloe one mourning yet frenzied wolf-howl. They needed no old master’s order, no code’s restraint. At this abyss-descent moment, they would only spill their last drop of blood for this woman who dared draw her blade at despair.
Victor stood half a step behind Chloe. He did not interfere with any wartime order she issued. The pureblood tyrant only silently released his remnant gravity field, crushing the toxin rain that tried to sneak from the rear blind spot into nothing. This was a soul-submission beyond absolute possessiveness. He willingly restrained all his world-ending arrogance and brutality, content to be her most lethal and steadiest trump card.
The instant the whole city’s armed force began to move, the thundercloud over the arena suddenly stopped churning. The roaring wind fell into absolute dead silence within a second. Everyone felt a bone-deep cold from the marrow, the raindrops near hanging in mid-air. In this eerie suffocating quiet, the black-lead altar, corroded into a deep pit by toxin rain at the arena center, suddenly gave a deafening fracture roar. A bottomless ley-line crack blasted open along the altar base. The crack raged outward, tearing through nearly half a stand’s load-bearing structure.
In the churning black rain, a vaster, older, colder will than the Grand Elder’s god-descend rose slow from the abyss fissure. In that ultimate darkness even light could not pierce, a phantom across thousands of years loomed faint. It had no specific features, no physical outline, only two huge pupils burning sick-green ghost-glow suspended above the fissure. Those eyes of the abyss’s Progenitor utterly ignored the high-explosive silver rounds flying everywhere and Victor’s city-destroying gravity deterrence ready to fire. The cold merciless gaze pierced layer on layer of void and locked dead on Chloe. More precisely, nailed her Blood Moon mark at the collarbone, now wildly warning and glowing gold.
A pain near tearing the mind came from the soul bond’s depths. The death-duel curse mark on Chloe’s left wrist, already faded to dead gray, lit a bizarre red again under this same-source force’s pull. The true master of the abyss finally crawled out from the ley-line depths across the long river of time. It was ready to reclaim the one lethal weapon that could destroy it.
--- Something inside her went very still and very certain. Then we end it, she thought, fuck the running.
