The Hidden Monster of House Vale

Chapter 87: Chapter - 87 - The Blood Moon’s Reckoning

At the edge of White Crest City, the battlefield stretched out beneath a tense, suffocating sky, choked with thousands of waiting realm masters.

Celbeth stared into the vast, ocean-like army standing against her. She knew there was no going back now. She would have to fight this war alone.

Not far away, Isalyn’s knuckles turned white as she clenched her hands into tight fists. She desperately wanted to step onto the field and stand by Celbeth’s side, but her position as High Priestess bound her hands. Yet, as she watched the battlefield, a dark, absolute conviction took root in her heart. If anyone so much as attempted to harm Lucien, she would cast aside her holy title without a second thought and slaughter whoever stood before her. To Isalyn, the measly title of High Priestess meant nothing compared to Lucien’s life.

Celbeth stood resolute before the towering enemy horde, flanked only by the small detachment of soldiers she had brought from the Vale Estate. They were hopelessly outnumbered—but she had a plan.

Turning to her men, her eyes burned with quiet determination. ”Soldiers,” Celbeth’s voice rang out, steady and clear. ”When we left the Vale territory, we never expected to be caught in a war like this. It is unfair—three territories conspiring together just to bring us down. But that only proves how much of a threat we are to them! Do not worry. I do not expect you to win this war. I only expect you to buy time. Keep them occupied for as long as you can until Lucien wakes up. He is powerful, but right now, he is extremely vulnerable. Protect him with your lives... NOW, GO!”

Celbeth unsheathed her blood-moon katana—the deadly weapon bestowed upon her by Lucien—and charged.

The war erupted in a storm of steel and screams. Celbeth led the vanguard, diving straight into the thickest ranks of the enemy. With a single, ferocious sweep of her katana, a wave of crimson energy tore through the air, cleaving thirty soldiers cleanly in half in a single heartbeat.

”What are you all waiting for?!” Thereon bellowed from the rear, his face twisted in rage. ”Attack her! She’s just a retainer, and her master is asleep—I saw him myself when I was at their village as an envoy!”

Thereon was the strongest warrior in Blackstone City, but he possessed neither patience nor composure. He had only pride, and that pride had been thoroughly bruised by Celbeth.

”Calm down, Thereon,” Phelan warned, his voice stern. ”I know your pride is wounded, but do not act like a ruffian or a demonic realm master. We are righteous realm masters. We follow order. Wait until her main ranks begin to move.”

”But my lord, isn’t it better to strike first?” Thereon pressed, tempering his tone into a reluctant, mild cadence.

Phelan didn’t reply, keeping his eyes fixed on the field.

”Attack her!” Phelan finally ordered, his eyes narrowing as he saw Celbeth carving through his men. ”Kill her first! Ensure she dies immediately!”

A volley of long-range magical and physical attacks rained down on Celbeth. Yet, she moved like a ghost amidst the chaos, dodging the deadliest strikes as if she possessed prescience, seeing every trajectory before it was unleashed.

The enemy had forgotten a crucial fact: Lucien was monstrously strong, but his retainer was no soft target. Celbeth was a late-stage Spirit Forge realm master.

Suddenly, Celbeth turned her horse around and began to fall back, spurring her mount into a full retreat toward the nearby village.

”After her! She’s fleeing!” Thereon screamed, his eyes lighting up with bloodlust.

”Stop! It could be a trap!” Phelan yelled, trying to hold him back.

”I don’t care! Tonight, I drink her blood!” Thereon roared, ignoring his leader entirely. He dispatched a massive squad of soldiers and over a dozen realm masters to hunt her down.

Celbeth lured her pursuers deep into the village perimeters. Ten to twenty enemy realm masters closed in, throwing wild attacks to cut off her escape. Their strikes missed Celbeth, but a stray fire spell struck one of the wooden structures, setting the house ablaze in a burst of roaring flames.

”How dare you defile this sacred place,” a voice echoed through the air.

It was Isalyn. The pursuers never even saw her face. The moment her voice reached their ears, their bodies froze. They collapsed to the dirt, paralyzed, as swarms of grotesque, flesh-eating maggots burst from their skin, devouring them alive from the inside out. Isalyn was a High Priestess capable of divine healing—but she was equally capable of inflicting the most horrifying deaths imaginable.

Isalyn’s divine voice resonated over the entire battlefield like thunder from the heavens: ”Phelan, leader of Blackstone City! You have dared to attack the property of the Cathedral. You are now an official enemy of the Church. Divine soldiers, move! Exterminate every living soul belonging to Blackstone City, and any who dare to aid them!”

Phelan’s face turned pale as he screamed toward the heavens, ”This was your plan all along! The Cathedral was always planning to side with the Vale family! High Priestess Isalyn, this dishonorable deceit does not befit your station! My soldiers never targeted the Cathedral!”

”You are mistaken,” Isalyn replied coldly, her voice carrying across the wind. ”Priestess Xandra belongs to the Cathedral, and whatever belongs to her is Church property. This village is her home. By striking it, you struck the Cathedral itself.”

Celbeth turned her horse back toward the battlefield, a razor-sharp smirk gracing her lips. ”Thank you, Thereon,” she called out mockingly. ”Without your hotheaded incompetence, we never would have secured the Cathedral’s direct intervention. Let’s see how well you fight now!”

Before Phelan could respond, Isalyn raised her hand. A blinding wave of holy energy swept across the vanguard, instantly disintegrating hundreds of Blackstone soldiers into ash. It was a terrifying display of the absolute gulf between an ordinary realm master and a peak Spirit Forge master.

”We have no choice!” Rhys shouted, panic bleeding into his voice as he turned to Phelan. ”We have to kill Priestess Isalyn and Celbeth together! Once they’re dead, we can apologize to the Cathedral and claim the Vale family used them as a shield!”

”A sound plan,” Phelan growled. ”Send our most powerful retainers after Celbeth and Isalyn. Once those two are dealt with, the rest will fall!”

A group of high-tier realm masters leaped into the air, flying directly toward Celbeth.

Celbeth was already carving through enemy foot soldiers like wheat, but as one of the flying realm masters dived toward her, she launched herself off her horse with blinding speed. She caught the flying warrior mid-air by his throat, snapped his neck with a sickening crack, and hurled his lifeless body downward into another airborne realm master.

The impact shattered the second master’s focus, sending him plummeting to the earth where his skull split open against the stone ground.

”Realm masters so easily forget that we are still made of flesh and bone...” Celbeth landed gracefully, a wild, sadistic laugh escaping her lips as she looked at the corpse. ”If you fall from high enough, you still die!”

Unlike Lucien, who flew as naturally as breathing, these realm masters had merely learned the bare mechanics of flight. It limited their movements and diluted their combat instincts. To them, flight was their ultimate trump card; to Lucien, it was as trivial as walking.

Celbeth threw herself back into the fray, her bloody katana flashing in terrifying arcs. Her innate ability, Bloodthirst, activated—the more life her blade claimed, the sharper and more lethal her strikes became. Celbeth didn’t just endure the bloodshed; she revelled in it.

When a unit of a hundred elite soldiers rushed her simultaneously, she unleashed Blood Crescent. A massive, crescent-shaped wave of blood-red energy tore across the field, butchering every man in its path.

Yet, her astral energy was not infinite. Fatigue began to weigh down her limbs, and the enemy commanders watched like vultures, waiting for her to finally break.

After slaughtering thousands of men single-handedly, Celbeth was drenched in sweat and panting heavily. The ground beneath her had turned into a literal lake of crimson, though not a single drop belonged to her.

Seeing her falter, an enemy realm master crept behind her, driving his blade straight through her back.

Celbeth gasped, but before she could turn, another realm master struck, thrusting his sword into her side. Then another, and another, until five separate blades protruded from her torso.

The agonizing pain didn’t break her—it made her feel alive.

With a guttural roar, Celbeth spun around, decapitating the men who had impaled her. She yanked the swords from her body, blood spurting from the deep wounds. She reached into her pouch for healing potions, but it was empty; they had left the Vale territory in a rush, wholly unprepared for a war of this scale.

Refusing to fall quietly, Celbeth tapped into the very last drop of her vitality and screamed, ”BLOOD MOON ECLIPSE!”

A giant, dark-red moon materialized in the sky directly above the battlefield. A wave of oppressive gravitational force slammed into the surrounding enemy forces. Blood burst from every orifice of the soldiers caught beneath it—their eyes, ears, mouths, and pores—as they died in screaming agony. Celbeth’s own blood flew upward, wrapping around the artificial moon like the rings of Saturn, amplifying its destructive radius until thousands more collapsed into the crimson mire.

When the light of the crimson moon finally faded, the battlefield fell into a terrified silence.

Celbeth sank to her knees, her blood-stained katana slipping from her numb fingers as she leaned heavily against the gore-soaked earth.

I guess... this is it, she thought, her vision blurring as darkness edged into her mind. It wasn’t a long life, but it was fun. At least I’m dying like a warrior, not wasting away in old age. I only have one regret... I never got to see those red fields my father used to tell me about.

She closed her eyes, holding onto one final, stubborn thought.

Lucien... don’t you dare give up.