He's strong...
But not in the way Sigmund or the Blood Emperor were.
This was the kind of danger that didn't need to roar.
Herras didn't walk toward Ian, he appeared beside him, as if he'd always been there.
"Interesting show," he mused, his voice low, smooth. "Chaos Angel. Hybrid Slayer. And now… the Blood Emperor's potential knight."
Ian tensed. How much did this guy see?
Herras smirked, reading his thoughts. "Enough."
The onlookers couldn't help but whisper.
"They say Seria trained him herself, not as a disciple, but as an experint."
"He's not as strong as the Alpha of Alphas yet, but his potential…"
"He once walked through a collapsing dinsion like it was nothing."
Herras ignored them, his mismatched eyes locked onto Ian.
"You've got ten years. Maybe less."
A pause.
"Want so help?"
Ian narrowed his eyes. "Why?"
Herras chuckled. "Let's just say… I enjoy watching the impossible happen."
Then, with a flick of his wrist, he tossed sothing to Ian, a small, star-forged token, pulsing with cosmic energy.
"When you're ready to stop playing hero and start surviving… use that."
And just like that, he was gone.
The crowd erupted.
"HERRAS JUST ACKNOWLEDGED HIM?!"
"That token, that's a Celestial Pass! Only Seria's inner circle gets those!"
"Is Ian really just so random cultivator?!"
Eldrin looked like he was about to pass out. "Ian… what the hell are you?"
Xia Lin's voice was barely a whisper. "He's not just strong. He's important."
Ian stared at the token in his hand, feeling its weight.
Ten years.
A Blood Emperor hunting him.
And now… Herras.
He smirked.
"Guess I've got options."
[New Quest: Unlock the Celestial Pass's Secret.]
[Reward: ???]
'I must investigate who are they really...' Ian mused.
...
Ian sat in the dim glow of an ancient library, surrounded by towering shelves of forbidden knowledge. The air slled of aged parchnt and ink, the silence broken only by the occasional flicker of candlelight.
In front of him lay two books, one bound in blackened dragonhide, the other in shimring celestial silk.
"Alright, let's see what I'm dealing with."
He cracked open the first one,
"The Crimson Annals: The Blood Emperor's Reign of Terror."
The Blood Emperor: A History Written in Blood
The pages practically scread with horror.
The Feast of a Thousand Kings. "In the year of the Shattered Sun, the Blood Emperor descended upon the Grand Assembly of Monarchs. By dawn, every ruler in attendance had been drained dry, their thrones lted into a grotesque monunt of gore."
The Drowning of the Sacred River. "When the Azure Lotus Sect refused to bow, he didn't just slaughter them. He twisted their sacred river into a tidal wave of blood, drowning their entire holy city in a single night."
The Still-Beating Heart of the Storm Titan. "After ripping out the heart of the last Storm Titan, he kept it pulsing in his palm for a century, just to prove he could."
Ian's fingers tightened on the pages.
"This guy makes Sigmund look like a stray puppy."
But the worst entry was yet to co.
The Eclipse Pact. "The Blood Emperor was not born. He was forged. A mortal who, in his desperation, consud the dying breath of a fallen Primordial. The act cursed him with immortality and an insatiable hunger for the essence of the strong."
"So that's why he wants ," Ian muttered. "Not as a knight. As a al waiting to happen."
Herras: The Star-Touched Enigma
The second book was different...
"Whispers of the Void: The Emperor Star Hydra's Chosen."
Where the Blood Emperor's history was written in brutality, Herras' was woven in mystery.
The Boy Who Walked Through Dying Stars. "Found as a child drifting in the corpse of a collapsed realm, Herras was the only survivor of a cosmic extinction event. Seria herself plucked him from the void, intrigued by the way oblivion clung to him like a second shadow."
The Trial of the Fractured Realms. "At sixteen, he navigated the Ever-Shifting Labyrinth, a dinsion where ti, space, and logic unravel. He returned not just sane, but sharper."
The Unfinished Symphony. "Herras does not fight wars. He orchestrates them. It is said that when the Obsidian Phoenix rebelled against Seria, Herras ended the conflict with a single sentence: 'Burn yourself out, or I will do it for you.' The Phoenix chose self-immolation."
Ian exhaled.
"So he's not just strong. He's clever. And that's worse."
But one line stood out above all:
"Herras does not serve Seria out of loyalty. He stays because she is the only being he has yet to fully understand."
Ian leaned back, the weight of what he'd just read pressing down on him.
The Blood Emperor wanted to either recruit him or consu him.
Herras had his own agenda, and Ian was now a piece on his board.
And the worst part?
Neither of them saw him as a threat.
Not yet.
He closed the books, the candlelight flickering across his face.
"Ten years."
That's all he had to change that.
The streets were quiet, too quiet.
Ian kicked a pebble, hands in his pockets, breath fogging in the cold night air. Man, I need a drink. Maybe two. Or ten.
Then...
A sound.
Not a growl. Not a scream.
A whisper.
"Help... ..."
Ian froze. The hell?
The alleyway ahead was pitch black, but sothing was moving in there. Not like a person. Not like an animal.
Like... liquid.
Then it stepped into the dim streetlight.
Oh.
Oh shit.
The thing was human-shaped, but that's where the similarities ended. Its skin wasn't skin, it was eyes. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, blinking at different tis, wet and bloodshot, covering every inch of its body. Its mouth was just another eye, stretched wide like a grotesque smile.
"You... see ?" it gurgled, voice coming from everywhere and nowhere.
Ian's Chaos Laser Eyes flickered on instinct. Okay. New rule: no more midnight walks.
The abomination shuddered, its eye-mouth twisting. "Kill... ..."
Ian blinked. Wait, what?
Before he could react, the thing lunged.
Ian sidestepped, but the abomination wasn't attacking; it was grabbing him.
The mont its eye-covered hands touched his skin, visions exploded in his skull.
His na was Loran.
Once, he was just a guy. A nobody. A farr's son in so backwater village.
Then the Cult of the Gazing Void ca.
They didn't kill him.
They chose him.
"A vessel for our god," they whispered as they strapped him down. "You will see all. You will know all."
They carved out his eyes first. Then they replaced them, not with new ones, but with theirs. Every cultist plucked out their own eye and stitched it into their flesh.
And then...
The ritual worked.
Sort of.
Their god didn't possess him.
It just... left him like this.
A living prison of eyes, forced to witness every horror, every atrocity, every mont of suffering in the world, because the cult's eyes still saw, even from his body.
For decades, he begged for death.
But the eyes wouldn't let him die.
The Aftermath
Ian stumbled back, gasping, tears streaming down his face.
The abomination, Loran, just stood there, trembling.
"Please," it, he, whispered. "I can't... I can't take it anymore."
Ian's hands shook. Fuck. Fuck. What do I even...
Then he rembered.
The Chaos Laser Eyes weren't just for destruction.
They could erase.
"Alright, Loran," Ian muttered, wiping his face. "Let's get you so peace."
The abomination wept, if a thing made of eyes could weep.
Ian took a deep breath.
Chaos Laser Eyes: Purge.
A beam of black-and-gold light lanced out, not burning, not destroying, but unmaking.
The abomination didn't scream. It smiled. And then, for the first ti in decades...
Loran was free.
The alley was silent again.
Ian stood there, staring at the empty space where Loran had been.
"Damn it," he whispered.
The system pinged.
[New Title Acquired: "The One Who Ends Tornt."]
[Effect: The ability to purify the darkness out of the target's soul.
Ian scoffed. "Yeah, great. Real helpful."
He turned and walked away, hands in his pockets again. But this ti, the night felt heavier. Because now he knew...
The world had way worse things than Blood Emperors and Alpha of Alphas. It had people. And sotis...
People were the real monsters.
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