CHAPTER 151: WARNING DO NOT UNLOCK

"Is this how it ends..."

Noctys muttered, her voice barely more than a whisper lost in the wind.

She lay sprawled across the scorched earth, the remnants of her once-regal form clinging to existence. Her face was smudged with ash and dirt, but it wasn’t the pain that made her tremble—it was the void. Everything below her neck had been obliterated, her body severed as if she were no more than a discarded puppet.

She couldn’t move.

She could barely feel.

And worst of all—she couldn’t stop what was coming.

In the distance, the sound of footsteps echoed.

Soft. Steady. Closer.

Each step pounded like a war drum in her skull, an ominous herald of the end. The air was growing colder, heavier, as if the world itself was mourning what was about to befall her.

With each echoing step, Noctys’s face turned paler.

Her breath hitched in her throat.

"Just why..." she murmured again, voice hollow with disbelief.

None of this should have happened.

Her plan had been perfect.

The village... that cursed village. It was meant to be her cradle of rebirth, where her ancient treasure would awaken her to her former glory. She should’ve soared again, draped in power, feared by all.

And yet—

Here she was, bloodied and broken, crushed beneath the heel of some nameless undead girl who shouldn’t have even existed in the records of the world.

Beaten like a rabid dog.

Humiliated.

Her thoughts began to stutter, unraveling as her vision wavered—colors bleeding into gray, outlines becoming ghosts. Darkness crept in at the edges, curling around her consciousness.

But just before she slipped into unconsciousness, her gaze landed on something—someone.

Dark Shadow.

The once-proud gardner lay in the rubble a short distance away, limbs twisted unnaturally, body limp like a discarded doll.

A sharp pang pierced Noctys’s soul.

Even now, even in this pitiful state, one word escaped her lips.

A whisper. A question. A cry.

"Why?"

Just one word. But it carried the weight of a lifetime’s confusion and pain.

Why would Dark Shadow do this?

Why would she sacrifice herself—for her?

After all Noctys had done—after all the blood she had spilled, the lives she had tried to snuff out, even their lives—why would anyone choose her over their own survival?

Did a monster like her... a demon... deserve salvation?

Her thoughts spiraled, heart caught in a maelstrom of guilt and rage and something deeper—something unfamiliar.

It wasn’t weakness. No, Noctys had never feared pain or death.

It was... grief.

Unspoken. Undeniable.

And unbearable.

Her spiritual field, once proud and arrogant, now trembled with chaotic surges. The emotions storming within her chest were too vast, too foreign—ripping through her like wild fire.

Only moments ago, it had been so different.

The battlefield had been theirs. Alexandria had dared to strike, and the undead princess—angered beyond reason—unleashed her true might. The air cracked with unrelenting fury, and in the blink of an eye, she almost annihilated all three intruders.

It should have ended there.

But then...

Dark Shadow had transformed—her draconic bloodline awakening in a desperate bid to protect them.

That single act... had changed everything.

It had saved them.

And now Noctys lay here, broken, her body fading, her mind teetering between consciousness and oblivion... wondering if perhaps—for the first time in her cursed life—she had lost something far more precious than power.

Just then, the footsteps that had been haunting the background... stopped.

Silence descended.

A dreadful, bone-deep silence.

Noctys’s eyes fluttered open, narrowing in instinct.

Something was wrong.

Too quiet.

Then it came.

That voice.

That terrible, grating voice, half-mad and wholly wicked, tore through the silence.

"Surprised how you managed to survive for so long..."

The undead princess stepped into view, her expression unreadable. The manic glee that once danced in her crimson eyes had vanished, replaced by something far more unnerving.

Calm.

A stillness that didn’t belong to the living—or even the sane.

She crouched slowly, her movements fluid, almost graceful in their wicked elegance. Her pale, cracked face leaned in closer to Noctys, so close their breaths nearly mingled.

Her voice dropped to a whisper.

Soft. Icy. Murderous.

A chill rolled across the field, gnawing through bone and spirit alike.

It was a voice that could have frozen souls.

But Noctys didn’t flinch.

She was no helpless girl. She was the Demon Queen of the Abyss, a former Stage 4 tyrant who once silenced empires with her wrath.

In her golden era, she had dozens of undead princesses like this one kneeling at her feet—loyal, silent, and obedient.

And yet...

Now, broken and beaten, her chest rose and fell in ragged gasps. Tears welled at the corners of her eyes—subtle, glinting like cursed diamonds.

She wasn’t crying out of fear.

No, it was the absurdity of it all.

A being like her, reduced to a tragic figure lying at the mercy of one she would have crushed in her prime.

She choked out a whisper, eyes barely holding on to light.

"Is there really no escape from death today?"

Whether the undead princess heard her or simply read her like an open book was unclear.

But the monster smiled.

A wide, cruel smile stretched across her cracked lips.

"Indeed, little lamb. There is no escaping death today."

Noctys didn’t argue.

She didn’t even blink.

Her eyes drifted shut, as if finally accepting the inevitable.

Her voice was silent, her aura fading.

But just when peace seemed near, the undead princess’s smile vanished.

Her voice dropped even lower, so venomous it stung the air itself.

"Not so fast. Death is the last thing you’ll get."

She leaned in closer, her breath brushing past Noctys’s cheek.

"For all the headaches you’ve caused me... a thousand years of soul-burning would be mercy."

Noctys paid no heed to her tormentor’s words. Her eyes, dim and unfocused, drifted to the unmoving bodies of the two girls and Dark Shadow—twisted and broken, their conditions hovering in that dreadful space between life and death.

The undead princess merely snorted, her expression filled with cruel amusement. Then, with graceful malice, she lifted one slender leg high above Noctys’s crumpled form, her heel poised to bring down the final crushing blow. There was no hesitation in her movement—after all, the body was worthless. The true torment would be inflicted upon the soul.

But just as her foot began to descend, she froze mid-motion.

Her body locked up, not by her own will, but as if an invisible mountain had slammed into her, pressing down with such overwhelming force that it felt like her bones would splinter.

A suffocating silence fell.

Then—

A voice shattered the stillness. Cold. Commanding. Deadly.

"Are you tired of living?"

The words echoed like a death knell, sending ripples through the air. The undead princess’s eyes darted about, panic rising like bile in her throat. Her arrogant composure fractured. For the first time since her emergence, true fear flickered in her eyes.

She tried to move, to flee, to lash out—anything—but the oppressive force anchoring her in place didn’t relent. It was as though the heavens themselves had chosen to crush her.

"Who?" she rasped, her voice brittle, cracking under the weight of terror.

And then, in response—

A roar of wrath, filled with killing intent sharper than a blade.

"You dared to barge into my castle... hurt my friends... and then failed to recognize me—the Venom Fang Sovereign!"

As if reality itself bent to accommodate his return, Ricky stepped out from the void.

He looked unchanged yet altogether different. His poncho clung to his body, soaked red from the blood of twenty-nine powerful undead generals. His expression was calm, but the air around him pulsed with the weight of a massacre—the residual fury of hundreds of thousands of deaths burned silently in his wake.

Behind him trailed Darius, Kael, and Felicia.

But they didn’t cheer.

Their faces were stiff, frozen in disbelief. They had seen something—no, witnessed something—that had stripped them of words, of certainty, of the very foundation of what they believed Ricky to be.

Their gazes fixated on him like one might stare at a god descending in wrath.

The battlefield, once loud and drenched in madness, now fell into a silence so deep it bordered on sacred.

Ricky’s eyes locked onto the undead princess, and in that gaze, there was no rage, no pity—only judgment.

"Venom Fang Sovereign?... Impossible!"

The Undead Princess staggered back a step, her eyes wide with disbelief.

"How could you be here? Twenty-Nine should have already killed you!"

Her voice trembled, muttering half to herself as if trying to make sense of a nightmare. It was dazed, uncertain—shaken in a way that exposed a fracture in her otherwise unshakable arrogance.

The Venom Fang Sovereign.

The killer of her friend. The one they feared. The one Twenty-Nine had been sent to kill. Her lips curled in confusion and growing dread.

He should have died a dog’s death the moment he ran into them.

And yet...

He stood there. Not wounded. Not limping. Not even breathing heavily.

Worse still—there was no sign of Twenty-Nine. No bones. No shattered armor. No aura lingering in the air. It was as if they had been erased from existence.

As the thought unraveled further in her mind, a creeping coldness coiled around her spine.

No. That couldn’t be.

It was absurd....

It was impossible.

And yet—...

Don’t tell me...