Chapter 3: My "Sickly" Family Just Dropped Their Disguises

　　I had already slid my fingers around the grip of my heavy brass wrench, ready to dive in front of my pale, anemic father before the first inquisitorial halberd could drop—when the ambient temperature in the Ashbourne foyer plunged so fast the falling rain outside the shattered doorway froze into jagged needles in midair.

　　"Sever his arms and legs?"

　　The voice didn't come from the fireplace anymore.

　　I blinked. A tenth of a second ago, my fifty-one-year-old father had been standing twenty feet behind me, leaning against the pulverized marble mantelpiece. Now, Duke Auric Ashbourne was standing directly between me and the two lead Inquest knights.

　　He hadn't run there. There had been no footstep, no rustle of silk. It was as if the shadows on the floorboards had simply folded in on themselves and spat him out.

　　"Father, get back! Your blood pressure—!" I started, grabbing at the back of his evening coat.

　　My hand froze an inch from the wool.

　　With a dry, crystalline crunch, the dark smoked-glass spectacles Father wore every waking hour of the day shattered right off the bridge of his nose. He didn't reach up to shield his "strained" eyes from the glowing rune-spears. Instead, he tilted his chin up, revealing two abyssal, vertical-slit pupils burning with the ancient, suffocating crimson of an apex predator that had drunk the blood of battlefields before the Radiant Empire even had a name.

　　Two razor-sharp ivory fangs slid down over his bottom lip.

　　"You come under my roof," Father whispered, his voice vibrating at a sub-audible frequency that made the iron chandeliers overhead swing wildly. "You track mud across the carpets my son spent all morning brushing. And you talk about taking a blade... to my boy's hands?"

　　The lead Inquest knight—a massive veteran with a glowing Fourth-Tier Iron-Boar mark pulsing on his breastplate—barely had time to widen his eyes.

　　"Monster—!" the knight choked out, thrusting his enchanted halberd straight at Father's throat.

　　Father didn't dodge. He raised his bare, pale left hand and caught the descending steel spearhead by the blade.

　　SCREEECH!

　　Sparks rained down as Father's bare fingers crushed the solid runic steel like wet cardboard, snapping the shaft in half. Before the second knight could even draw his sword, Father's right hand blurred across the gap in a streak of crimson mist, catching both armored men by the throat and lifting four hundred pounds of steel and muscle clean off the floor with zero effort.

　　"A Vampire Progenitor?!" Lother shrieked, stumbling backward so violently he tripped over his own discarded mink cloak, his face draining to the color of sour milk. "No! That's impossible! Progenitors were hunted to extinction during the Crimson Crusade! High Inquisitor, the Duke isn't sick—he's a Class-S Calamity!"

　　I stood right behind Father's left shoulder, my wrench dangling loosely from my fingers as my brain stalled completely.

　　Wait a second.

　　I stared at the two knights dangling helplessly in my father's grip, then down at the sapphire-blue First Academy diagnostic window that Peb—now clinging to my left forearm like an oversized silver wristwatch—was projecting across my vision:

　　[Entity Scanned: Auric Ashbourne.]

　　[Classification: First-Generation Sanguine Monarch (Colloquial: Progenitor Vampire).]

　　[Current Status: Extreme Blood-Fury triggered by threat to offspring.]

　　[Diagnostic Note: Target is NOT suffering from iron-deficiency anemia. Target has been consuming fermented High-Tier Behemoth blood from cellar casks #1 through #40.]

　　...That wasn't beet tonic?!

　　For thirteen years, I had been sneaking raw liver and spinach puree into this man's dinner soup because I thought he had low hemoglobin!

　　A gentle, warm hand covered my eyes from behind, which was probably for the best.

　　"Close your eyes and count to ten, sweetheart," my mother, Duchess Selena, murmured right beside my ear, her voice as sweet and soothing as a lullaby. "The dust in here is terrible, and Mommy is about to take her hairpins out."

　　"Mother, wait, the draft will flare up your pink-eye—!" I blurted out, automatically reaching up to hold her silk headscarf in place.

　　Too late.

　　With a sharp fwoosh, the heavy silk veil she had worn indoors for six straight years fluttered to the floorboards.

　　Even with her palm resting lightly over my eyelids, the blue administrator blueprint burned right through the dark, mapping out the sheer, unholy horror exploding above my head. Mother didn't have scalp eczema. Coiling and uncoiling from her crown were thirty thick, emerald-scaled vipers with eyes of molten gold, their fangs dripping with a neuro-calcifying venom that made the air smell of ozone and crushed lime.

　　They hissed in terrifying unison—a sound that had nothing to do with static electricity.

　　"Don't look at her!" one of the rear Inquest captains roared, throwing his forearm up. "Gorgon! She's a Royal Gorgon—!"

　　Lady Evelina, who had been craning her neck from behind Lother to watch me get dismembered, froze mid-sneer. Her wide, arrogant eyes locked directly onto Mother's uncovered gaze for less than two seconds.

　　Crack-ack-ack.

　　A creeping frost of dull gray granite raced up from Evelina's satin slippers, swallowing her ankles, her knees, her silk ballgown, and stopping just below her collarbone—leaving my former fiancée trapped from the neck down inside eight hundred pounds of solid limestone, her mouth stretched open in a silent, paralyzed wheeze of terror.

　　Three Inquest knights who had raised their shields a fraction of a second too late weren't even that lucky; their raised arms and iron bucklers turned to brittle chalk and shattered against the floorboards as Father tossed the first two unconscious guards into them like bowling pins.

　　"My legs! Lother, my legs are stone!" Evelina sobbed hysterically, unable to even turn her neck.

　　Lother didn't even look at her. He was scrambling backward on his hands and knees through the mud, his glowing orange Flame-Hound chestplate sputtering like a dying candle. "Guard me! Where is the vanguard?! Shoot them! Shoot the monster—!"

　　Two knights at the back of the formation raised heavy arbalests loaded with silver-tipped siege bolts—aiming not at Father or Mother, but past them, straight at my chest.

　　"They want the boy!" the marksman shouted. "Kill the human!"

　　"TRY IT, YOU TIN-PLATED BASTARDS!"

　　A roar that sounded like a volcanic eruption tore down from the second-floor landing.

　　I peeked out from between Mother's fingers just in time to see my twenty-five-year-old brother Julian leap off the ruined staircase. He didn't land like a swordsman this time. Mid-leap, his tailored evening tailcoat exploded into flaming confetti along the seams.

　　Two colossal wings of jagged black obsidian and magma-veined membrane burst from his shoulder blades, spanning twenty feet across the hall and smashing both crystal chandeliers out of the ceiling. From the base of his spine—right where he always claimed he had "bad posture"—a twelve-foot, armored dragon's tail whipped out with the speed of a siege ballista, smashing the marble pillars on either side of the door into gravel and swatting both crossbowmen straight through the front wall of the manor.

　　Julian slammed down onto all fours in front of me, obsidian scales rippling across his forearms and neck as a geyser of black-and-gold dragonfire washed over the front courtyard, turning the rain into a blinding wall of scalding steam.

　　[Entity Scanned: Julian Ashbourne.]

　　[Classification: Abyssal Dread-Drake Host (78% Draconic Assimilation).]

　　[Diagnostic Note: Not psoriasis. Stop applying aloe vera ointment to this unit's scales; it clogs his thermal vents.]

　　I lowered my wrench slowly, staring at the massive, spiky black tail currently curled protectively around my waist so I wouldn't get singed by the backdraft.

　　Okay. So the broken banisters weren't from his hip.

　　"Step back from the boy, or I'll bury your souls under six hundred tons of grave-rot!" a dry, echoing voice cackled to my left.

　　Grandma Irma hadn't even gotten up from her velvet armchair. She had simply tossed her lace shawl aside, revealing a ribcage of polished, rune-carved ancient bone pulsing with a terrifying, sub-zero blue soul-fire where her lungs should have been. With a flick of her skeletal wrist, the spilled Earl Grey tea on the carpet froze into twenty razor-sharp icicles of necrotic mana, hovering an inch from the throats of the remaining Inquest soldiers.

　　And down by Lother's muddy boots, my twelve-year-old sister Mimi was no longer crying.

　　She was crouching on all fours like a little pink-frosted gremlin, her shadow expanding across the wall into a cavernous, iron-banded chest lined with three hundred spinning rows of serrated shark teeth. With a happy little giggle, she lunged forward and bit the solid steel Greatsword of House Gran right out of Lother's trembling scabbard, chewing the enchanted blade up like a breadstick.

　　Crunch. Crunch. Gulp.

　　"Too much nickel!" Mimi complained, wiping her chin as Lother let out a high-pitched squeal and wet himself right on the foyer rug.

　　The hall fell dead silent, save for the crackle of Julian's black flames and the hiss of Mother's snakes.

　　Surrounded by an elder vampire, a royal gorgon, a rampaging half-dragon, an arch-lich, and an abyssal mimic—all standing in a tight, fanatical defensive circle around me—I slowly rubbed my temples with my uninjured hand.

　　"Wait a minute," Father said suddenly.

　　Now that the immediate threat was pinned against the ruined walls, Father slowly turned his glowing red eyes toward Mother's writhing hair. Then he looked at Julian's twelve-foot dragon tail, then at Grandma Irma's glowing blue ribcage.

　　"Selena?" Father asked, his terrifying Progenitor voice cracking with genuine domestic shock. "Why do you have vipers on your head?! You told me you had a scalp fungus from that antique mirror!"

　　"I didn't want you to be horrified, Auric!" Mother snapped back, her thirty snakes turning to glare indignantly at Father. "And what about you?! 'Oh, Selena, the account books hurt my eyes, I need to sleep in the wine cellar where it's cool!' You're a Blood Monarch?!"

　　"Wait—you two aren't human?!" Julian roared, twisting his horned neck around so fast he knocked over a coat rack with his left wing. "I've been sleeping on my stomach for three years hiding this damned tail so I wouldn't scare you fragile mortals into a heart attack!"

　　"Language, Julian," Grandma Irma rasped, her jawbone clicking as she adjusted her necrotic aura. "Though I must say, Auric, if I had known you were undead too, I wouldn't have spent seven years pretending to drink this dreadful lukewarm tea."

　　"I ate a box when I was seven!" Mimi piped up proudly, raising her hand.

　　I stood in the exact center of the circle, staring at the five apocalypse-class monsters who had raised me.

　　"Hold on," I said loudly, my voice cutting right through the family reunion. "Are you telling me that for the last decade, while I was waking up at five in the morning to oil Grandma's joints, brew Father's iron tonics, and plaster over Julian's wall-holes... every single one of you thought you were the only monster in a house full of frail humans?!"

　　All five of them froze.

　　Thirty snakes, two crimson vampire eyes, two draconic slits, two balls of lich-fire, and one pair of big doll-like mimic eyes slowly turned to look at me—then down at my bleeding, completely ordinary, 100% human palm.

　　"Well," Julian mumbled, his massive dragon wings drooping sheepishly as he nudged me further behind his leg with his tail. "We were right about you, weren't we? You don't even have scales, Milo. Look how thin your skin is. A kitchen knife cut it."

　　Clap. Clap. Clap.

　　A slow, deliberate round of applause echoed from the far end of the hall.

　　None of us had forgotten High Inquisitor Vist.

　　While Lother was whimpering on the floor and his surviving knights were trembling against the walls, the fifty-year-old Inquisitor hadn't retreated a single inch. He stood calmly amidst the splintered oak and freezing steam, his smooth, glossy white porcelain skin reflecting the black flames of Julian's wings.

　　And he was smiling.

　　"Magnificent," Vist murmured, his polite voice carrying an edge of sheer ecstasy. "Truly magnificent. When I intercepted Viola Ashbourne's letters in the Capital last week, I suspected the northern dukedom was harboring unregistered anomalies. A Progenitor, a Gorgon, a Dread-Drake, and a Lich... all playing house to protect a single Zero-Mark key."

　　At the mention of my second sister, Viola, the air in the room spiked with murderous intent.

　　"What did you do to Viola?" Mother hissed, every snake on her head flattening its hood as she took a step forward.

　　"Your mermaid daughter is currently resting in a brine-cage beneath the Capital scaffold, Duchess," Vist said pleasantly, lifting the three-foot pillar of braided copper and bone he had pulled from his robes. "And you will all be joining her in the dissection vaults very shortly."

　　"Kill him!" Father snarled, vanishing into a blur of crimson lightning straight toward Vist's throat, while Julian inhaled a lungful of white-hot magma to incinerate the doorway.

　　Vist didn't even flinch. He simply raised the copper-and-bone pillar above his head and slammed the spiked base straight down into the stone floor.

　　"Capital Mother-Engine Sub-Node," Vist whispered. "Protocol: God-Slayer Suppression."

　　THOOM!

　　A dome of blinding, blood-gold geometric light erupted from the pillar, expanding across the entire Ashbourne estate in less than a millisecond.

　　The reaction was instantaneous—and horrifying.

　　The golden light didn't strike the walls or the furniture. It locked directly onto the raw, catastrophic magical signatures burning inside my family's bodies. The moment the array touched Father in midair, the crimson mist around him violently imploded. Dozens of heavy, runic chains forged of solid golden light burst right out of Father's own veins, wrapping around his limbs and slamming him face-first into the flagstones with a sound that cracked the foundation of the house!

　　"ARGH!" Julian's roar turned into a strangled cough of blood as the golden matrix latched onto the dragon core in his chest, turning his own draconic heat against him and pinning his massive wings flat to the floor under ten tons of localized gravity!

　　Mother and Grandma Irma were forced to their knees simultaneously, golden shackles snapping around their throats as the array used their own S-Rank monster cores as batteries to crush their bones! Even Mimi let out a pained squeak, curling into a ball as a golden cage locked around her stomach.

　　"Run, Milo...!" Father gasped, blood pouring from his fangs as he tried to claw his way up, only for the golden chains to tighten and drive his shoulder deeper into the cracked stone. "The window... get out...!"

　　High Inquisitor Vist let out a soft, satisfied sigh, brushing a speck of dust off his porcelain cheek as he walked leisurely toward my pinned family. He planted his white silk boot squarely atop Julian's bleeding black horn, pressing my brother's head into the floor.

　　"Pathetic," Vist said softly, looking down at the four Calamity-class beings groaning beneath his array. "Do you know how the Capital Mother-Engine works, Duke Ashbourne? It doesn't fight your power. It turns the weight of your own bloodline into a millstone. The stronger your monstrous core, the heavier the chains. An S-Rank Calamity cannot even lift a finger inside this dome."

　　Then, Vist lifted his cold, glassy eyes and looked straight at me.

　　"Which leaves only you, little Zero-Mark," Vist purred, holding out his hand toward Peb. "Your monster family is neutralized. Your sister in the Capital dies at dawn. And you don't have a single drop of magical blood in your veins to fight back. Now... crawl over here and hand me that crystal before I crush your brother's skull."

　　"Milo, NO!" Julian roared, his scales cracking as he strained against the golden chains until blood pooled beneath his chest.

　　I stood three paces away.

　　The blinding, blood-gold suppression waves of the Mother-Engine Sub-Node washed over my chest, my face, and my arms in pulsing tides that were currently crushing a dragon and a vampire lord into the floorboards.

　　I looked down at my sleeves.

　　The golden light passed right through me like a warm summer breeze. My heart wasn't racing. My knees weren't buckling. In fact, the air felt remarkably crisp.

　　On my left wrist, Peb spun its platinum rings with a happy little whir, projecting a massive, rotating 3D schematic of Vist's copper-and-bone pillar directly into my eyes—highlighting four glaring red structural flaws right at the base of the Sub-Node:

　　[Warning: Hostile Sub-Node 'Mother-Engine Model II' detected.]

　　[Targeting Logic: Locks onto all Non-Human Cores & Godmark Signatures. Pressure scales with tier — the weak are only leaned on. The strong are crushed.]

　　[Current Threat to Administrator Milo (0.00% Mark): ZERO. System registers you as 'Empty Air'.]

　　[First-Year Exam Prompt: This device is poorly maintained and missing three grounding screws. Use 'Lawbreaker' Override to invert the target registry?]

　　Slowly, I reached into my leather tool apron.

　　No sword came out of my apron. What came out was my favorite flathead screwdriver, my runescribe's tungsten-carbide scalpel, and a pair of insulated wire-strippers.

　　Then I took a casual step forward, walking straight through a solid wall of golden "God-Slayer" lightning without a single hair on my head moving, and tapped the side of my wrench against my palm.

　　High Inquisitor Vist's polite smile faltered for the first time all night as I strolled right up to the glowing red core of his priceless imperial artifact.

　　"You know, Your Grace, you really shouldn't brag about how your machine works in front of the mechanic," I said conversationally, crouching down beside his buzzing Sub-Node and wedging the tip of my flathead screwdriver into the seam of the outer casing.

　　I looked up into his horrified porcelain eyes and grinned.

　　"You just said it yourself—your invincible array only targets beings with Bloodlines and Godmarks. To your machine, I'm invisible. Oh, and before I flip this switch... who the hell do you think built your Mother-Engine four hundred years ago?"