We're All in the Same Boat
While the weapons Lily wields shift with the situation, her most signature armaments are the spear and the hammer.
Hwoong!
There's no telling which comes first.
The spear boasts an uncanny movement, blistering speed, and destructive authority. Blocking it is all but impossible, and the spearwork that pours down in dozens of branching streams delivers an endless cascade of blows.
And the hammer, by contrast?
“.......”
Its movements are simple, and it isn't nearly as fast as the spear. It carries no special authority. It doesn't hurl down an infinite storm of attacks that can't be withstood.
“Ready?”
And yet the most threatening of the two is the hammer. No spearwork in existence can surpass the hammer's overwhelming force.
Lily is holding the hammer. That still-unfamiliar divinity courses along its shaft.
Right. I told her to throw everything she has at me.
She would push him just as hard as that time — no, harder. She touched the empty air with a soft tup. At their master's will, the authority of blood conjured dozens of blood-born spells in an instant. Not a sliver of casting time — a single will-laden command, and everything was prepared.
A rain of blood fell — a rain of razor-sharp daggers. Apart from the space where Lasty stood, the hall was packed without a single gap, and Lily herself was buried beneath hundreds upon hundreds of blood-forged blades the size of forearms.
...Here it comes!
Crack-crack-shatter!
The mountain of daggers broke apart. Lily came bursting through the rain of blood, drenched head to toe in red, lunging like some vengeful yaksha — and yet her beauty was so far removed from anything a "yaksha" should be that a chill ran down his spine unbidden.
KWAAAAAANG!!!---
The veil of blood, strengthened far beyond anything before, shuddered violently. The divinity-soaked hammer began purifying the authority of blood — and far from stopping at purification, the divinity swelled in size as if to show off. The veil shattered.
“......”
She really is a monster, isn't she. Unnie.
How can a person be like this? Even after enduring ages of agony and growing stronger, and stronger, and stronger again — does it actually make sense that she could readjust to her own weakened state and still strike down stronger enemies? If it were him, he'd have collapsed cursing the world that had changed him so. Or else he'd have become a vampire, brimming with nothing but vengeance.
...But that's exactly why she's Unnie.
Yes. Lily Elbrit had always been like this. She wandered the world battling countless mighty foes, subjugated those very foes to herself, and fought even mightier ones. In the end, she slew miracles no one could ever have faced — with her own two hands.
Right. Let's see it again.
“Good.”
“...?”
Rrrrrrmble...
The wreckage of the shattered veil rose upward, and every last fragment transformed into hundreds of weapons of blood, floating into the empty air.
Unnie said to fight her with everything I have. True, the current mood was something playful, and their relationship as dean and professor was absurd on its face. But he would think of the Unnie before him as the Unnie of the past.
“Lasty?”
Only then did the true figure come into view. He understood, at last, who the being before his eyes was.
Lily Elbrit. Master of the monsters that swayed the fate of the world, and the sole savior of a world in its decline. The Nightmare of Monsters.
An ancient authority manifested from Lasty's heart. Long ago, the test subject born of Blood Dominion had surpassed her experimenter's every prediction — and then surpassed even the limits that had been set for her.
Puguguk!
The True Blood pierced Lily through.
[?]
[Whoa]
[no way no way no way]
[Lily NO!!]
[where did THAT come from]
[The Progenitor is cracked ㄷㄷ]
[Whoa]
[LILY!!]
[??????]
Her pierced body tipped naturally backward. Nothing about it was strange.
Lasty's True Blood was the authority injected by the highest-ranked demon who had experimented on her. The demon was dead and gone from this world, but the blood it had planted inside her remained. Across thousands of years, that lingering True Blood had become entirely her own — and now it had surpassed even the limits the demon had set.
The problem is... why use it now, in this form of hers? He'd told her to take this seriously, sure, but to draw on power beyond her current form—
“Ugh!”
The authority of the True Blood that had burrowed into her body went berserk. It crawled from place to place, gnawing at her, launching attack after attack, as if to devour and seize control of her from within. She detonated her divinity from inside her own body. As the light of purification burst outward from within, the raging True Blood's rampage subsided — but it did not die. It still lingered in her flesh. Unless she ignited the Sacred Fire itself, burning the True Blood away completely was impossible.
Hundreds of weapons of blood came flying at her.
...Right. I wasn't taking this seriously enough. This stage was, in effect, Lasty's grand debut. Lasty, returned to the world after thousands of years. She had observed the present through Lily's eyes and received her own explanations besides, but even so, the time she'd had to adapt was nowhere near enough.
So I'll meet her where she is. He would think of the Lasty before him as the Lasty of the past.
Who was she?
“...Unnie?”
The vampire monarch who had lived for thousands of years. The Progenitor who had swallowed half a continent and dyed even the countless ancient monsters in her own blood.
Lily swung the hammer once more.
KUGUGUGUNG!!
Space itself warped. The authority of blood that filled the hall trembled, and the tip of Lasty's finger readied to loose the True Blood once more. Lily brought the hammer down — divinity erupting wildly — in a single, merciless strike.
KWAGAGAGAGAGAGA!!!!
The throne hall broke. The castle broke, and the earth broke with it.
[oh wow]
[excuse me?]
[LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL]
[Lily hitting the gas LMAOOO]
[the castle is GONE what]
[I'm sorry, what?]
[Lily done broke the castle AGAIN lol]
[CastleBreaker Lily lmaoooo]
[this is a genuine clash of legends...]
Hammer and blood clashed in full. Each time Lily swung, Lasty's blood assailed her through grotesque sorceries. Healing layered upon healing, Lily ignored her wounds entirely and hammered away at Lasty.
KWAAAAAANG!!!---
Every single blow detonated with divinity. None of the explosions were intentional. It was simply a natural phenomenon born of overwhelming force.
“Haah... haah...”
Szzz...
Of course, Lasty was regenerating too. The Progenitor's blood was abundant indeed — but it was never infinite. As far as Lily could tell, her current form had nothing left in reserve. To turn this situation around, she would have to draw on the True Blood of her main body, just as she had before.
“Unnie...”
“Lasty. You're looking a little tired.”
“...So are you, Unnie.”
She pointed a pale finger at him. True. Honestly, he felt like he might collapse at any moment. His divinity was already heavily spent, and the True Blood still lingering inside him was gnawing at his nerves. If it were up to him, he'd simply end the fight right here—
“But we see this through to the end.”
Having committed to taking it seriously, there was no backing out now.
[whoa whoa whoa]
[but why is the Progenitor THAT strong though]
[Lasty is unreal]
[isn't Lily basically going full power right now?]
[what even IS the Progenitor;;]
[god, how long has it been since she fought this hard?]
[insane difficulty;;]
[wait, we're supposed to BEAT this?]
Lily stopped healing, and poured every last scrap of divinity into the White Savior. Lasty, sensing the end, gathered the authority of blood she had scattered across the field into a single point, preparing her final blow.
And then—
The winner was decided.
“Your name.”
“......”
“Your name. Tell me your name.”
“...Lasty.”
“And your family name?”
“Ervenu— wait, why are you even asking that? You're going to kill me anyway.”
A distant past.
The vampire called Lasty glared at her. Of the four great continents, twenty-eight lesser continents, and the thousands upon tens of thousands of islands that existed in this godforsaken world — this blood monarch had dyed fully half of a great continent into vampires, and now she was glaring at her.
A mad existence that had revived again and again, coming back to life even after half her soul had been burned away at the very end. She had crawled through this place for quite a long span of years and met countless enemies, but never once had any of them been as troublesome as this vampire. She was infuriatingly, obscenely strong.
“...Enough. Kill me now.”
Lasty wore an expression of relief. Throughout her battles with her, the vampire had spoken of "death" more than once.
“Now I finally have a body that can die... thank goodness. Truly, thank goodness...”
“Why should I kill you?”
“...? Because you said you could kill me, obviously.”
“I did say that. Your physical body, I promised to destroy beyond doubt.”
She walked slowly forward and took hold of both the shoulders of the utterly spent girl. Frail. So terribly frail. The great Progenitor who had turned hundreds of thousands of humans into vampires and flooded a continent in blood as if to swallow the whole world was not here. All that remained was a delicate young noblewoman who had suffered through experiments for ages uncounted.
“Lasty Ervenus. Your sins are terribly heavy.”
“...Planning to lecture me, Saintess?”
“I gave up the title of Saintess long ago.”
“Then just kill me alrea—”
“I turned the hallucinations you showed me against you. Thanks to that, I saw your past.”
The past in which, across more than a thousand years, her soul had been torn from her body again and again in the name of experimentation. The past in which she was cast out into the world with her mind broken, and the first thing she did was kill her own family. The past in which, by the time she came to her senses, everything was already over.
She had seen all of it.
Lasty's brow furrowed.
“...I don't need your pity. It's all in the past anyway.”
Was it, truly? Would someone for whom everything was truly finished have devoured half a continent and tried to become their king? Perhaps the reason she had gone out of her way to become the Progenitor was—
“It is not over.”
“...What?”
“You have a great deal left to do. Help me, and devote your strength to making this world a little more peaceful.”
“Why in the world would I—”
“For the record, this is not a request.”
The sealing formula had bound Lasty's soul long ago. Realizing that her soul was drifting somewhere entirely beyond her control, Lasty stared at her with a look of sheer disbelief.
“You're... far too strong for me to fit into any weapon. I suppose I'll have no choice but to bind you to my soul, like the Pharaoh.”
“...I feel like I just got caught in something very one-sided.”
"Not to worry. You'll have plenty of company, so you won't be bored."
Everyone's in the same boat, after all.
《The Progenitor, "Lasty Ervenus," is activating Blood God Regression!》