The Pontiff’s Deception and the Bloodthirster’s Demise

“I led you here, sent magical signals to guide your way, and even tested all those traps for you in advance—” The young half-blood’s face twisted in terror, but the Outer God’s tentacles bound him so tightly that only his head and right hand could move, making his struggles appear utterly ludicrous. “You can’t do this! You are His Holiness, the exalted Pontiff! You should keep your promises!”

“Why should the Pontiff of humans bother keeping a promise to a lowly half-blood?” Bertram sneered, a cold edge to his voice.

“Damn it! Everything they said was true! You’re a liar! You—”

The half-blood youth’s curses were abruptly cut short.

Several crimson flames erupted from various parts of his body simultaneously, consuming him. In mere seconds, he, along with the binding tentacles, was reduced to scorching ashes, a mix of black and crimson.

They scattered.

The golden key clattered crisply as it fell onto the hard blood-crystal floor.

Bertram calmly adjusted the collar of his long robe, then fastidiously brushed off a speck of dust that had landed on him. Only then did he use a Mage Hand to retrieve the key.

The key’s end was carved with a bat wing, symbolizing the blood clan, while its center bore the imprint of a blooming rose.

“A rose?” Bertram murmured softly.

There were six blood clans in total, each with its own crest, but this particular emblem belonged to none of the known families.

There were already enough oddities to contend with, so Bertram didn’t dwell on it. He immediately inserted the key into the keyhole embedded in the blood-crystal wall.

As he slowly turned it, violent tremors and a dull, thunderous roar followed. Candles were instantly extinguished, and the sacrificial altar began to descend. The walls ahead and on either side receded, flipping backward to transform into platforms, while the grinding and friction of gears and bearings resounded in succession.

Before long, the former dead end, propelled by intricate mechanisms, morphed into a descending staircase.

Similar to the path he had taken to arrive, a solitary bridge of crimson blood-crystal hung suspended in mid-air. However, the surroundings were no longer silver-white solid walls, nor was the ceiling above made of blood-crystal.

Void.

A darkness deeper than night itself.

Mist, swirling with flowing purple lightning, stretched as vast as an ocean, covering every corner as far as the eye could see. Deep within the mist, iron-colored steles seemed to stand, entwined with rusted chains.

Bertram hesitated, his steps arrested. He gazed at those dark shapes, feeling as though something hidden there was also staring back at him, an eerie, icy sensation clinging to his heart like a crawling, tentacled insect.

Yet, at the same time, he noticed a transparent, spherical object enshrined within a gold and red altar on the broad platform at the bottom of the stairs.

Even from a great distance, its radiant, colorful light was dazzlingly apparent.

So sacred, this was precisely what Bertram had been seeking!

All his doubts and caution vanished. The Pontiff no longer hesitated, eagerly gathering his robes and striding down the staircase. His echoing footsteps faded into the black mist, leaving no reverberation.

Halfway down, a sudden, ear-splitting roar ripped through the void of darkness.

Crimson skin seemed to flow like molten flame, two pairs of dark, curved horns proudly adorned its head, and blood-engorged veins crisscrossed powerful, taut muscles, intertwining with stark white bone spikes to form a pair of horrifying demonic wings.

Clutching a blood-bone great axe and a spiked chain, a demon tore through the gloom and cleaved the air. Like a storm of blood and gore, it flapped its wings, descending with extreme ferocity directly before Bertram, blocking his path.

The left half of this demon, a servant of Khorne, was stark white bone, its eerie blue eyes swirling with murky impurities. Dimly glowing, dark-red blood-crystal lightning crackled around it, and scorching flames blazed beneath its feet.

“A Bloodthirster.” Bertram recognized the entity, a sneer gracing his lips. “A lost hound of Khorne.”

Beneath Khorne, the Blood God, sat eight supreme Daemon Princes, and each Daemon Prince commanded eight Bloodthirsters, beings whose power was second only to the Daemon Princes themselves.

Demons reconstructed their bodies from the abundant magical energy of the blood-crystal winds; their souls were immortal. Mortals facing the onslaught of a Chaos Daemon legion were left with only despair and death.

Given the prevalence of blood-crystals here, the manifestation of a Bloodthirster was not particularly unusual. However, its presence in a ruin dedicated to Mother Lamia seemed somewhat out of place.

Bertram had no inclination to investigate such a trivial anomaly. He simply wanted to swiftly acquire the Developer Item located behind the demon.

This thirty-year-long plan was a precise chain, allowing no room for error.

He had waited long enough for this moment.

The Greater Demon roared, swinging its man-high axe and a chain thicker than an arm, charging forward. Yet, just before the axe blade and spiked chain could strike Bertram, the Pontiff merely waved the scepter in his hand casually to his side.

It was as effortless as swatting away an annoying, buzzing fly.

The Greater Demon, wreathed in lightning and flames, vanished from Bertram’s sight, only to reappear in a circular teleportation gate that opened nearby. It then immediately plummeted into another circular teleportation gate directly below.

The two portals seemed connected. The frenzied, violent Bloodthirster thus continued its endless cycle of falling, disappearing, appearing, and falling again, its roars and bellows echoing intermittently, now distant, now near.

“Insignificant cur, go play by yourself,” Bertram remarked with a cold glance.

Before a max-level player character with every profession mastered, such a Greater Demon was utterly inconsequential.

‘Bertram’ was the character on his most frequently used account—his so-called ‘main’—on the official COG server.

After his transmigration, he had awakened in this world as ‘Bertram’.

As for why, he didn’t know, nor was it important; starting at max level was certainly better than having to re-level from one.

Now.

There were no longer any obstacles.

The Pontiff’s eyes now saw only the translucent jewel nestled in bright red velvet upon the altar. As if enchanted, he saw nothing else, heard no other sound, merely advancing step by step.

Bertram absolutely refused to admit he had fallen under some magical allure. This was his own desire, his own wish.

He finally arrived before the altar, able to appreciate up close just how dazzlingly splendid this sacred object truly was.

Transparent, yet not entirely so.

Smooth and lustrous like a pearl, yet it radiated a colorful, variegated light. Beneath its glass-like, beautiful shell, golden, flocculent material seemed to gently drift and sway.

Beneath the jewel, a silver-white metal ring seemed to extend, shallowly buried within the velvet box.

A… ring?

Instinctively, he felt something terrible was about to happen, yet his hand lifted and reached out almost uncontrollably, then gently grasped it.

The dreamlike, sacred jewel was clutched between his fingers, still emitting that unreal, ethereal glow. Its glass-like shell acted like a mirror, and Bertram seemed to see his own greedy, intoxicated expression reflected within.

From above, a woman’s faint, mocking laughter inexplicably drifted down.

Terror.

Cold sweat.

He wanted to let go.

But he couldn’t control himself.

His hands and feet no longer belonged to him.

Before his eyes, a stream of ethereal blue data seemed to flash by… A string of zeros and ones rapidly filled his vision, then recompiled into garbled text and legible words…

[Bertram – Male – Imperial Human]

[Praying Cleric – Lv100]

[Blazing Sun Lineage – Luminous Path (Sequence 1) – Blazing Sun Angel]

[HP 100%]

[MP @#unknown]

An unstable, azure screen unfolded in his vision, the characters blurry and flickering. Only the first five lines could be vaguely discerned; everything thereafter was meaningless numbers and symbols.

A character attribute panel, both familiar and strange, almost identical to COG’s interface, yet it sent a shiver of dread down Bertram’s spine.

For thirty years, he had believed this was a real, other world, but everything he now saw shattered all his previous understanding.

This was indeed the account he had used, the character he had controlled before. These data were all the character’s attributes before the servers shut down.

Before Bertram could register more surprise or doubt, the text on the screen began to flicker again. The bottom four lines turned into garbled code, leaving only the first line barely recognizable.

But even this first line, displaying his character’s most basic information, began to show anomalies—his name, Bertram, was being erased and replaced with another.

[Daphne – Female – Half-blood (Succubus Physique?)]

[@#unknown]