Shelika’s gaze cooled like frost. “Does an apology fix it?”

The High Priest spoke as if she’d predicted that line. “Of course not. So we’ve confined Cerise.”

She continued, words laid out like coins on a tray. “And we’ll compensate in supplies. Would that satisfy you?”

Shelika dipped her chin, a feather-light nod. “That’s more like it~.”

Caution edged her tone like a drawn blade. “What exactly will you pay?”

“What do you desire?” said the High Priest. “So long as it’s not excessive, in the names of the Crimson God, the Ancestor God, and Margaret, we’ll try to grant it.”

Shelika paused, thoughts rippling like a quiet pond. Her gaze slipped past the priests to the blood pool in the Grand Sanctum beyond.

Before the central statue, an offering table glimmered with veiled gold, like dawn behind mist.

Jewels crowded the table, rare offerings piled like a glittering reef.

About six hours ago, when Shelika entered with Cerise and the others, she’d had no time to study the offerings. Time had been knotted tight.

Now she drifted to the blood pool, steps soft as falling snow, and surveyed the altar’s bounty.

In a humble corner, she found it, like a star tucked in shadow.

A pale-gold bottle, lavish, with filigreed reliefs that curled like vines.

The bottle was opaque, the brew inside hidden like a secret moon.

But its costly, exquisite body carried an unmistakable signature, bright as a seal.

No doubt, this was the tribute the god of wine, Dielnis, had demanded.

Shelika lifted a finger, a spear of intent. “Give me this bottle, and I’ll forgive you.”

At her demand, the High Priest’s magnanimity sagged like a damp banner.

She faltered. “Lady Shelika, forgive me. Of all the offerings, this one bottle we cannot release.”

Her brow rose, a blade lifting. “Why? Doesn’t Lady Margaret dislike wine?”

“You’re right,” the High Priest paused, breath held like a stopped bell. “But this wine is rare. The bottle alone is worth a chest of coin.”

“The brew isn’t ordinary. It’s pressed from special berries, grown like stars in dusk.”

“Though it’s wine, it carries a deep blood fragrance, warm as iron in rain.”

“Its taste nears the phantom beast blood Lady Margaret loves most.”

“A count-rank Blood Clan noble charged us to offer it to Margaret.”

“We cannot give this bottle to you.”

Shelika weighed it, thoughts clinking like beads. “So you want me to trade phantom beast blood for it?”

She hadn’t meant that, yet the idea took root like a vine. “If you bring us one liter of phantom beast blood, we can hand you this already-offered tribute.”

“Alright…” Shelika sighed, breath like a thin ribbon. “Then, do you know where to find phantom beast blood?”

The High Priest’s brow knotted like bark. “Phantom beast blood is simply a beast’s blood, but phantom beasts vanish like ghosts. We’d like to know that too.”

Shelika turned, cloak swaying like dusk. “Fine, I’ll find a way myself.”

She took her leave. They bowed her out. “May Margaret guard you,” they intoned, like a quiet bell.

After the meeting, Shelika stepped out of the Crimson Temple, back onto Temple Street, feet skimming like swallows.

As she walked, feeling led before thought—restless as wind. If phantom beasts are a kind of monster, the Holy City’s monster-hunters should know.

Across the Dark Spirit Empire, each city’s hunts fall to the Central Exchange hunters, steady as iron.

So Shelika headed straight to the Central Exchange on Market Street. The doors gave her the cold shoulder, shut like granite.

No one had refused her. The Exchange was simply mired in trouble—mud thick as night.

A captured wyvern had slipped its bonds and rampaged through the hall, claws scattering sparks.

The hunters scrambled to recapture it, a flock thrown into storm.

“Bind that wyvern, quick—!”

“Take this—hraaah!”

Watching the uproar from outside, Shelika felt adrift, like a boat in chop.

They needed a live capture, not a kill. That made it hard, exhausting, and chaos kept blooming like brambles.

But as Shelika hesitated to intervene, a fully armed knight squad arrived, steel like rain.

They stormed in through the main doors and swept back the crowd. “Clear the way—clear it!”

Their Daemon Knight gear felt familiar, like last night’s image echoing. No—

Not like. It was the same.

Seeing Rex lead the unit, the hunters burst into cheers, voices rising like fire.

“Oh! It’s the Knight of Ruin’s unit.”

“Wait, Lord Rex?!”

While the cheers rolled, the unit moved, smooth as a drawn bow.

They spread and wove a net around the wyvern, a ring tight as iron.

Intimidated by the net, the wyvern stopped its wild charge, breath steaming like kettles.

As the wyvern wavered, not knowing whom to strike, Rex drew twin knightly sabers from his hips. He crossed them in both hands, a dual-wield stance like lightning.

As all saw, the Knight of Ruin, Rex, was a dual-wielding knight, edges singing like cicadas.

The crowd quivered, excited, like a play’s curtain about to lift.

“Oh~! It’s starting!”

“Oh~! The Knight of Ruin’s secret art!”

Rex held the stance for seconds. Seeing the wyvern ignore him, he straightened.

He raised his right saber, gathering Battle Aura, and declared, “Gaia Legion, Knight Unit 318, commence monster suppression!”

Rex belonged to the Demonic Human Race, a knight born to the arts of Battle Aura, mastery hard as tempered steel.

He held Sky Rank power, so his aura’s surge was fierce, like a storm-tide.

As his aura gathered, wind ripped through the hall, a wild banner.

Buffeted by the gale, the wyvern finally found the source and swung its gaze toward Rex, eyes like coals.

Too late—

Rex was rare—a knight with twin aura forms, water and dark, a river under night.

His right saber gathered water, while his left drew darkness, Battle Aura shaping like glass.

He drove the right blade forward. When it fell, the left swept across.

Water and dark currents braided, surging ahead to become a swamp of shadow.

The wyvern lunged, only to be snared by that endless-looking mire, legs sinking like stones.

It skidded and dropped, trapped, unable to move, wings splayed like broken fans.

The ease of the subjugation stunned everyone, silence falling like snow.

Rex shouted to the crowd, voice like a drum. “Move! Get the shackles on it!”

The hunters snapped awake and rushed in. In no time, the wyvern was trussed tight, ropes crisscrossed like a web. The matter ended.

The hunters marveled. “Such clean form. Worthy of a knight bearing the name of Ruin!”

While the crowd orbited Rex like stars, Shelika studied the scene, mind steady as a lake.

He subdued a large monster swiftly, yet left the site untouched—no splinters, no scars.

His Battle Aura covered a wide area, but touched only the wyvern, like rain that chooses one leaf.

Not just mighty in aura—his control was peerless.

No doubt, Rex was a powerful Sky Knight, high as a hawk.

Yet even a Sky Knight, woven into the Legion, shoulders many tasks, weights like stones.

One link in that chain is handling monsters.

With that in mind—and a try-it pulse beating—Shelika walked toward Rex, steps measured like metronome ticks.

On the fringes, people saw a stunning Blood Clan girl approaching. Whispering flowed like night rain.

“Hey… is that her?”

“Who?”

“Last night, at the Crimson Temple…”

“What! That’s her…”

Rumors unfurled like silk. They murmured and parted, opening a path for Shelika.

Rex puzzled at the sudden clearing, then saw Shelika, surprise flickering like a lamp.

Because of the pre-dawn incident, the air between them turned awkward, thick as paste.

Rex offered a strained greeting. “Hey, Shelika…”

Shelika cut straight, clean as a blade. “Rex, if you can—where do phantom beasts tend to appear?”