"You should have said so earlier."
Li Ang felt the strong presence rapidly approaching from behind. His four Spider Claw arms swung backward together, beginning to shoot and suppress. Meanwhile, his other four pale arms shattered the glass floor-to-ceiling window, employing the same old trick to swing him high up. This action took him directly to the eighty-ninth floor, above Caesar's bedroom.
Li Ang swung the Virulent Poison Dagger in his hand and fiercely slashed at the eighty-ninth floor's glass window.
The blade, infused with Ripple Energy, easily shattered the glass. Amidst the flying shards, Li Ang, dragging Caesar, tumbled into the room.
This appeared to be a young girl's bedroom. It had a two-level duplex structure, occupied a vast area, and was extremely luxurious in its decoration. It also featured symbols typically associated with girls, like dolls.
The only anomaly was in the corner of the living room.
There, flanking the huge LCD TV, were twenty neatly arranged vertical glass display cabinets. Each housed a dismembered and reassembled corpse of a mortal.
They resembled rag dolls, assembled from various parts, with dense stitches at their palms and ankles. Thin steel wires extended from the bottom of each display cabinet, running through their arms and thighs to keep them in place. Their faces, already devoid of any spark of life, were fixed with molding glue into stiff smiles, silently grinning towards the sofa.
One of them was Eileen Raphael.
The girl, who smiled so brilliantly in the photographs, was now like a ballet dancer. She wore a white skirt and stood on tiptoes, posed inside the display cabinet as if caught mid-dance. Her face bore a serene smile, as if greeting Catherine Raphael, who had suddenly burst in.
Under the cabinet that held her, a plaque was affixed—A Clumsy Brother's 16th Birthday Present for Alice.
Li Ang fell silent.
Caesar Zimmich, whom he was dragging by the collar, was streaming with tears and snot, crying, "Please, I beg of you..."
Li Ang remained silent for a moment before he swung down the Virulent Poison Short Dagger, severing both of Caesar's arms.
Blood spilled all over the floor, seeping into the pale yellow hand-woven wool carpet laid on the marble tiles.
"Don't hurt my brother!"
A girl's young voice came from upstairs. A Blood Clan girl, about fifteen or sixteen and dressed in a bright red, fluffy gown, leaped down from the room's second floor. She bared threatening, sharp fangs at Li Ang.
She was quite beautiful, and her face bore a faint resemblance to Caesar's. Her fearful expression was mixed with a trace of toughness, and her crimson eyes clearly displayed concern and worry for Caesar Zimmich.
"Let him go!"
The Blood Clan girl's clear voice echoed in the bedroom. Her pupils suddenly dilated as an imperceptible psychic attack shot straight at Li Ang.
Unfortunately, the Blood Clan's Charm Skill had no effect on Li Ang, who possessed Cat's Eye and whose very essence of life was gradually departing from humanity.
A look of despair flashed across Caesar's ghastly handsome face. With his last bit of strength, he shouted, "Alice, run! You're not his match..."
Before his words finished, Li Ang had already activated the illusion Special Effect of Cat's Eye, immobilizing the girl. He closed in on her, and the Virulent Poison Short Dagger in his hand drew a crescent moon.
The young Blood Clan girl felt the world spin violently. The last thing she saw was the back of her own unmoving figure on the ground.
Caesar Zimmich, all four limbs severed, stared blankly as his sister's body collapsed to the floor, her eyes devoid of any spark.
You foolish girl... Why were you still hiding here? Why... didn't you run...
He no longer cared about the severe pain in his body, no longer cared that Li Ang had slit his throat with a knife, no longer cared that his windpipe was drowning in blood foam.
Li Ang listened to the System's notification sound in his ear and turned his head.
Elias Zemis was suspended outside the floor-to-ceiling window of the eighty-ninth floor. He looked at his dead nephew and niece inside the room. His lips first curled slightly, then his expression immediately twisted into a grief so profound it seemed to penetrate his very soul.
"Die!"
The Blood Clan Earl cried out shrilly. Copious Blood Ability spilled out, extending behind him to form two crimson wings that spanned over twenty meters. These wings violently closed in on the floor where Li Ang was.
Before the Blood Ability Wings, the blast-proof glass was frail, and the steel beams were as good as non-existent, being corroded and melted into blackened remnants.
A second before the crimson wings hit Li Ang, his figure vanished, leaving behind only an IED, an improvised explosive device, on the spot where he had been standing.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
The countdown ended. The IED exploded amidst the blood-colored wings, destroying the entire room along with the glass display cabinets that had been placed in the corners.
Hours later, the dark world was completely shaken. A person of unknown identity had attacked the Zimmich Family stronghold in Frankfurt City, murdering the son and daughter of the Zimmich Family's current head right in front of a Blood Clan Earl, cutting off the family head's entire lineage.
It is not easy for the Blood Clan to multiply; each member of their race is precious, especially a direct descendant who has inherited the ancestral Bloodline.
The Zimmich Family awoke several Marquises overnight, trying to identify the assailant through a sacrificial ritual, but to no avail.
Just as the current family head, bereaved of his two children, plunged into utter madness, willing to unleash everything to activate the family's sacred artifact to curse the murderer, the venerable Elder who had once single-handedly saved the Blood Clan woke from his slumber and stopped the act.
The various forces of the dark world, itching for action, could never have imagined this outcome. The Zimmich Family, having lost two precious direct bloodlines, would unprecedentedly lower their banners and cease all preparations for war. Instead, they diligently cleaned up the Lexington Building, mitigating the incident's impact in the human world.
Everyone was speculating what exactly His Highness Akado Zimishi, the uncrowned king of the current Blood Clan, was thinking...
"Clean up all traces, do you understand?!" a gaunt-faced Blood Clan noble, standing in the scorched eighty-ninth-floor room, shouted at the Blood Slave guards conducting the cleanup.
He stepped over the blackened, ash-covered floor, adjusted his white gloves, and carefully picked up half an arm that had been blown to pieces from the ground.
"This is... Master Caesar's."
The Blood Clan noble sighed heavily, gently placing the arm on a white towel atop a golden cart beside him. He then continued to collect fragmented bones from the floor.
Nobody noticed that on the cross-section of the half-severed arm, there was an exceedingly faint layer of mottled green glow, characteristic of the Virulent Poison Short Dagger...
"ACHOO!"
The noble, squatting on the ground, let out an unexpected sneeze. Wiping his nose with his wrist, he complained internally about the excessive amount of dust in the place.
My nose is so itchy.