Logan let the others continue the fight.
He saved his strength for the stronger beasts—those had yet to co. The ones in their path now were easily stomped by Scorch.
A barrage of radiant feathers rained from above—Uriel's doing—followed by searing arrows conjured by Rubina. Each shot lit the air with fire, bursting on impact and sending embers through small fry too weak for them to even stop to fight.
Where they passed, nothing remained but scorched ground and smoke.
And yet, despite the destruction, the trees around them remained largely untouched by fla, as if the smog in the air swallowed anything that produced light before it could spread.
Logan didn't think much about the journey so far that is—until sothing changed.
All noise had seized to exist, leaving only silence.
They could see nothing through the dark mist. Now, they couldn't hear anything either.
The trail ahead began to shift—widening unnaturally, as though opening to welco them in.
But it wasn't welcoming.
There was sothing wrong with it, Logan felt sothing strange from the way the darkness mana reacted as if warning him.
Worse, it was sloping downward. They were supposed to be climbing toward the mountain of the temple, yet they were being led lower and deeper sowhere.
"Stop, Scorch… this isn't normal."
Logan tapped the great dinosaur's side. The beast rumbled but obeyed, coming to a slow halt. It was the only one that gave him the confidence to act without hesitation.
He wasn't going to take any chances.
Logan began casting Holy Nova, condensing pure light-elental mana at his fingertips.
Each second, a ter around them lit up.
A soft glow pushed against the darkness… and revealed what waited ahead.
"Damn it! Rubina, Uriel—get behind !" Logan shouted.
In front of them stood a temple.
But it wasn't like the ancient ruins scattered through the labyrinth. No, this one looked recent—almost freshly built, the stone too clean. Sothing was wrong.
And the spirit near its entrance? Definitely not the one Logan had been searching for.
What truly caught his attention, though, were the six figures gathered around it.
Demons—no, vampires.
Their fangs protruded past their lips, hands twisted into long, blood-drenched claws. Corpses littered the ground around them—so drained dry, others torn apart with brutal force.
Logan narrowed his eyes.
"Vampires…? Why are they here? And what was the point of luring us in like this?"
The illusion magic that led them to this place was beginning to unravel—his Holy Nova had weakened its grip, flickering bursts of light burning through the darkness. But the spell's effectiveness was waning, eroded by the suffocating aura clinging to the air. He couldn't maintain it for long.
"Rubina—take Uriel. Go back. Find the others. Bring them here!" Logan commanded.
"I'll hold these things off with Scorch until then!"
He knew Scorch's flaw, the large Trex had a slower reaction ti against smaller, faster targets. Vampires were exactly that: swift, precise, and deadly in numbers. Scorch could crush them, but not without suffering wounds first.
Still, he could buy ti and protect Logan just enough so he would be able to kill a few himself.
Logan stepped jumped off and casted his wings, mana already strengthen his living armor, while Scorch growled behind him—the ground trembling beneath the dinosaur's molten skill that began to make the floor bubble with lava.
He wouldn't let the vampires get past him—not to Scorch, and definitely not to Rubina.
The two had already vanished into the mist, Uriel flying low and fast beside her. Two of the vampires broke formation to chase—but Scorch's tail lashed out like a molten whip, sending one of them crashing into the trees with a sickening crunch. The other triggered one of Logan's pre-set traps: spectral webs laced with holy mana.
The threads shimred with light and snapped taut, locking the vampire mid-leap.
The creature hissed violently, its spellcasting cut off.
Logan allowed himself a thin smile. That should keep them focused on .
The remaining five shifted toward him. The sixth—the one Scorch had struck—was still groaning, one of his arms torn clean off.
One down, five to go. Not a bad start.
Logan stepped forward, whip in hand, its segnted tendrils glowing faintly—one with lightning, another with holy light, the third humming with dark energy.
"So," he called out, "mind telling what you're doing here?"
One of them stepped forward.
He was different.
White hair flowed to his thighs, and unlike the others—whose forms had started to twist with vampiric mutations—this one still looked fully human. His eyes were old, too old. Ancient even.
"We're here to kill you, of course," the vampire said smoothly. "You're a threat to our plans. Stronger than expected. That couldn't be allowed to continue."
His voice carried the weight of preditation—of sothing long-planned.
"We've lived here for a while. Studied the island and designed this trap for you, should you ever co. Looks like you did."
Logan narrowed his eyes. "Guess I fell for it, huh?"
He cracked the whip once, arcs of energy flashing along its length.
"Good thing, though. I wouldn't want my allies to steal the kills. I like to finish my fights personally."
The vampires chuckled. Even with one wounded, they weren't afraid. Not of Logan or the dinosaur.
The white-haired one tilted his head, smirking. "Relax, kid. We're almost done here anyway. You see... we vampires have created a new elent."
Logan blinked.
Shade.
That strange magic Serana had shown him. Half-ford, unnatural, and powerful.
"You should know it," the vampire continued. "Your little artificial vampire uses it already, doesn't she? We failed near Elris—too much light. But here? This place is perfect. Darkness thrives all over this place and with it powerful shadows we can control. We were able to finish the ritual here."
Logan's fingers tightened on the whip.
"You're saying you created an elent? That's impossible. There's no spirit backing that. No domain to draw from."
"There wasn't," the vampire replied with a sinister smile. "But we're not from this world. Neither are demons. In our world, we had our own deities. And with enough blood, with enough faith, we can bring them here."
He turned toward the temple's black altar, where the others had begun tossing blood in gory handfuls. The liquid vanished on contact, absorbed instantly.
"Soon, you won't be facing us," the vampire said softly. "But it. We're just sacrifices."
More blood splashed the altar.
Then the corpses around it began to rise—and dissolve. The altar devoured them all, bones, flesh, even the mana still clinging to their forms.
Scorch growled deeply.
Logan took a slow step back.
The air changed. It wasn't just the altar feeding anymore—it was eating the darkness itself.
"Scorch! Fall back! Ranged fire only!"
Scorch obeyed, releasing a torrent of molten fla as he retreated step by step.
Logan didn't wait. He gathered light-elental mana and cast Elarion's Gleaming Reckoning—a concentrated beam of divine power ant to vaporize corruption.
The blast struck the altar—
—and did almost nothing.
The fire and light flared, but the altar didn't even crack. The air rippled, and whatever was being summoned kept forming.
"Damn it…" Logan muttered.
This wasn't a ritual.
It was the birth of sothing dangerous.
And they were already too late to stop it.
Logan gritted his teeth, eyes locked on the altar.
Why... why would the spirit of darkness allow this?
This place—this entire domain—should have been protected. The presence of such corruption, a twisted ritual to summon sothing new… unnatural… it didn't make sense.
The spirit should have intervened.
Unless... it couldn't.
A chill ran through him, colder than anything Wyver could conjure. The vampires weren't just cunning—they were prepared. Whatever they were doing, they'd likely accounted for the spirit too. A distraction? A seal? Sothing was keeping it away.
Logan didn't have ti to think about it.
Because the altar was moving.
A hand—no, a clawed monstrosity—erged from within the black portal forming above it. Blood-drenched, skeletal, and pulsing with dark veins, its five fingers were each the size of a broadsword. Runes flickered beneath the flesh, etched directly into the bone.
The thing trying to erge wasn't just a vampire.
It was a giant.
A shade-born, blood-fed titan of darkness.
And it was already halfway through.
Logan didn't waste a second. Light surged in his right hand—Purity Lash chained into Gleaming Reckoning, followed by another and another. Each beam slamd into the hand, blasting chunks of rotted flesh from the fingers. It twitched, reeling back, but the summoning didn't stop.
With his left hand, Logan began casting Holy Nova.
The darkness in the area—once hostile to his magic—was now being drained by the altar. That change let him stabilize the spell. Not large. Not flashy. But condensed. Dense with light-elental mana.
The pressure in the air thickened as the nova grew.
This wasn't just any spell, it was going to be his strongest Holy Nova yet.
"Let's see if this fake god can take this," Logan muttered, eyes burning with divine energy as the spell reached critical mass.
Scorch let out a guttural snarl beside him, molten breath lighting up the altar once more—buying ti, while holding back the beast who roared as if telling them he was almost free.
And Logan stood there, hands trembling from the pressure of the dual cast.
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