AUTHOR'S NOTE: Quick Update - Found a Missing Chapter! đď¸
Hey there, it's me again! Just a very quick update for everyone.
While I was reviewing the draft backlog, writing new chapters, and uploading the missing ones over on Scribble Hub, I noticed a weird mistake: Chapter 140 was missing here on WebNovel!
I have just uploaded it, so you can go back and check it out if you want. It's not a massive issue if you don't, but for those interested in the lore, this is the exact chapter where Vexia is introduced and we see the brutal training sessions she conducts with the clan soldiers. If you want to see how that went down, go give it a read!
See you all very soon!
â Void-Scribe
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Chapter 140: The Ash Librarian and the Flesh Foundry
While the Morningstar Sequences entered the first forty-day cycle in the Palace of Heritageâleaving twenty-one relative days after the brutal annihilation of the Stage 5 Saint Golemâthe real world on the floating Citadel kept turning. It was the second day of the journey toward the Purple Light Sect. On the Citadel's surface, a tense silence reigned beneath artificial purple clouds, but on the lower deck, hell had been industrialized.
Vexia, the Ash Librarian, Grand Marshal of the Void, had claimed the great training plaza and transmuted it into a Biomechanical Flesh Foundry.
The atmosphere in the industrial cavern was suffocating, a sensory assault that would have collapsed the mind of a common cultivator. The air was not just hot; it was saturated with an oily gas, a cloying smell of ozone, charred blood, and melted stellar metal. The constant hiss of hydraulic cooling mingled with the high-frequency electrical hum of Vexia's runes. The former Battleship Leviathan of the fallen Cryon familyâwas being devoured. Tons of its stellar metal and black ice alloy were being melted in immense alchemical crucibles that burned with a supernatural cyan fire.
Vexia walked among the endless ranks of the Black Winter Legion. Her Victorian maid uniform was impeccably ironed, without a single spot of soot, but her divine metal gauntlets dripped boiling oil. Her runic glass spectacles reflected golden mathematical equations and biometric data streams moving at inhuman speeds. To her, the 30,000 conscripts were not men; they were "biomechanical compute units" that had to be optimized.
"Pain is simply a nerve signal indicating active biological integrity," Vexia said, her voice soft, cultured, and librarian-like, but amplified by the cavern's metallic acoustics until it resonated like a mathematical sentence in the bones of those present. "But you... You are no longer biological. You are Morningstar property."
She raised her bone riding crop. "First Phalanx! To the Crucible!"
A thousand men, with red, empty eyes devoid of will due to Samael's [Puppet Art], marched in absolute unison. They didn't walk like men; they walked with the mechanical efficiency of worker ants serving a hive mind. Clang. Clang. Clang. The vibration of their runic iron boots made the platform tremble.
The Slag Baptism process wasn't torture for pleasure; it was a mandatory structural upgrade for industrial war. The soldiers entered tempered crystal containment capsules. Vexia typed on holographic terminals with her cold metal fingers, monitoring the melting temperature of the Black Ice Alloy. Runic tubes pierced the conscripts' bodies, and liquid stellar metalâmagically cooled to a temperature that caused agony but not instant deathâwas injected directly into the bone marrow and beneath the dermis.
SSSSSHHHHH.
The horrible sound of flesh burning and fusing with alien metal filled the room. Normally, a mortal cultivator would die of neurogenic shock in milliseconds. But Samael's [Puppet Art] kept their souls chained to the tormented body, preventing them from dying. Samael had stolen their right to death; Vexia was stealing their humanity.
Herein lay the true logistical challenge. Stellar metal was immensely heavy and dense; fusing it with mortal flesh would kill the host from the sheer weight of its own metallic exoskeleton. The human body would collapse under its own structural density.
A mystical glue was needed, a conceptual bridge. And Vexia had it: the Primordial Dragon Blood of Samael Morningstar.
Samael was no ordinary dragon; he was the progenitor, the Saint King of a forgotten race of primordial dragons, a creature whose blood contained the laws of creation and blood itself. Even though the dose was massively diluted by Vexia so the puppets wouldn't explode from the sheer vital potency, it remained an overwhelming catalyst.
Vexia stopped before the calibration center. In a mystical diamond container vibrated a thick, luminescent golden-green liquid, emitting a vital pressure that caused nearby metal to heat up through resonance. It was Samael's Diluted Blood.
Vexia adjusted her runic glasses. It wasn't an energy injection; it was a mystical solvent.
"Calibration of Catalyst Subject at 0.0031% Primordial concentration," Vexia murmured, her metallic fingers typing commands of pure logic.
She oversaw the injection of Samael's diluted blood directly into the forced circulatory system of the soldiers being smelted. The primordial blood acted as an alchemical solvent that "melted" the conceptual barriers between dead biology and alien mineral. It was a glue that bound flesh to stellar metal at a molecular level, transmuting the circulatory system into a network of galvanic conductors.
Under the influence of Samael's primordial blood, the puppets' internal organs were forced to continue functioning at industrial levels. Their mortal hearts didn't beat rhythmically; they pumped at supersonic speeds, internally reinforced by stellar metal filaments and fueled by the primordial dragon's vitality. Their lungs breathed superheated air and ash without suffering damage, converting the toxicity into low-grade Qi to maintain the alloy's integrity.
The Primordial Blood forced the dead biology to fuse with the Morningstar metal, creating a symbiosis of war where pain was no longer a weakness, but the fuel cementing the union of flesh and steel.
Vexia watched the life monitors. "Subject 405. Imminent heart failure due to Primordial solvent overload," she said with conceptual coldness. "Flow diversion detected. It is not a bug. It is a biological self-preservation calculation error. Inject blood law stabilizer (concentrate)."
A mechanical needle pierced the dying soldier's chest, injecting stabilizing Qi directly into the metallized heart. The heart, forced by the Patriarch's primordial blood, resumed a rhythmic beat, pumping not just blood, but metal particles and draconic vitality through veins that were now dark alloy tubes.
When the soldier emerged from the containment capsule, he was no longer human. His skin had a grayish sheen, matte and hard as runic iron. His veins stood out jet-black beneath the skin. His bones, now conceptually alloyed with stellar metal thanks to Samael's primordial solvent, could withstand a direct impact from a siege truck without breaking.
"Next," Vexia ordered, without looking at the monster she had just created.
Three real days later (Day 5 of the Journey), the 30,000 were "upgraded." They had become runic steel terminators with industrial draconic blood. Now came the part that required Vexia's true genius: teaching them to kill as a single organism.
Vexia stood on a raised platform. Below, in the industrial cavern, the Dead Blood Guard formed an endless sea of gray heads, black ice alloy armor, and glowing red eyes staring into nothingness.
Vexia didn't use war cries or inspiring speeches. She used direct mental connection. Her multi-threaded hive mind connected simultaneously to the 30,000 biological yet empty brains of the puppets.
"Unit 01 to 30,000: The self-preservation instinct is a logic error that delays execution by 0.5 cosmic seconds," Vexia's voice spoke directly into their minds, her tone soft but laden with the mathematical authority that made the Citadel's structure vibrate. "We are going to correct that error."
She activated the [Infernal Instruction Array]. She didn't make them march repetitively around the plaza. She projected milliseconds of tactical simulations into their minds. In a single second of real time, the brains of the 30,000 experienced a thousand simulations of extreme pain and a thousand simultaneous virtual deaths, calculated by her Codex to eliminate the biological friction of fear. The soldiers in the plaza trembled, but they did not move.
When they opened their eyes, the "delay" of humanity had disappeared. They had been patched.
"Formation: Wall of Thorns."
In 0.01 seconds, 10,000 vanguard soldiers slammed their black ice shields against the ground with a CRASH that shook the foundries, and drew their stellar steel spears in unison. The movement was so incredibly synchronized that it didn't seem like the act of men, but the mechanism of a gigantic, sadistic clock activating. There wasn't a single spear out of place. It looked like a solid wall of steel and death.
"Formation: Maws of the Void."
The legion's flanks opened. 5,000 soldiers ran up the cavern walls (their stellar metal boots digging into the rock with a grinding sound) and launched themselves into a suicidal dive from above, while the center retreated rhythmically to lure the enemy. It was a fluid, calculated, terrifying movement. They had no fear of dying, so they moved with a suicidal efficiency that no human army could replicate.
Vexia nodded, adjusting her runic glasses. "Acceptable. The error has been corrected by 99.987%. The last 100 to react in the next simulation will be structurally dismantled and their components will be recycled for spare parts for the efficient units."
The threat of logistical dismantling was the only motivation their cells understood.
Samael Morningstar descended to the foundry's lower deck. The infernal heat did not affect him; his primordial bloodline ignored it. He walked beside Vexia, observing his new industrial legion with the Eye of Destiny activated. A Morningstar soldier ran past him, carrying a nicked two-ton Valois steel beam as if it were a simple dry wooden branch, his metallic skin not even sweating under the strain.
"Report, Grand Marshal," Samael requested, his voice deep and calmâthe voice of pure violence meeting pure logic.
Vexia bowed deeply, perfect and impeccable. "30,000 biomechanical operative units, Master."
"Structural Integrity: Black Ice Alloy (Capable of withstanding Stage 1 Saint attacks individually)."
"Piercing Armament: Bone and Stellar Steel spears fused by the Patriarch's Blood."
"Loyalty: Absolute (Controlled by the Puppet Art and Vexia's Multi-threaded Hive Mind)."
"Calculation Error Detected: They lack creativity. They are incapable of improvising or adapting to clumsy tactics not simulated by Vexia. They only execute."
Samael nodded, impassive. He approached one of the Morningstar Puppet soldiers. The puppet-man stood motionless, staring straight ahead with his glowing red eyes, not breathing, not sweating, his forced heart beating at industrial speeds. Samael placed his hand on the soldier's metallic gray chest. He felt the stellar metal in his bones, fused by his own solvent primordial blood. He felt his [Puppet Art] and his Blood Law acting as the operating system for that killing machine.
"I do not need creativity, Vexia," Samael said, his voice echoing in the industrial foundry. "I have the Sequences for that. I need a tidal wave that does not stop. An anvil against which the waves of my enemies' chaos break."
Samael looked at Vexia, his own golden eyes reflecting the cyan fire of the crucibles. "Are they ready to kill Saints?"
Vexia smiled sadistically, baring her cold metal teeth under the artificial light. "Master, individually, a Stage 1 Saint would crush a puppet like an empty metal can. But the [Omniscient War Codex] has calculated logistical victory. A Stage 1 Saint has a Qi stamina limit of 4.2 hours under uninterrupted siege. My units do not have stamina, only structural integrity. We will statistically lose 843 puppets per hour. The Saint will die in hour 5 from absolute Qi exhaustion and systemic fatigue."
Vexia looked at the mass of 30,000 gray heads.
"And we have thirty groups of a thousand, Master. They are not an army, Samael Morningstar. They are a pack of metal wolves that never tire. And the Purple Light Sect is the old stag that has believed itself king of the mountain for a thousand years."
Samael smiled, pleased with the annihilation calculation. He went back up to the Citadel's surface, leaving behind the biomechanical hell of the flesh foundry.
Night had fallen over the Morningstar Citadel's artificial purple clouds. They were close. Samael stood on the upper deck of his invisible city and activated his [Eye of Destiny]. He looked toward the distant horizon of this mortal world.
He saw the Black Mountain of the Purple Light Sect, the millennial fortress of their historic enemies since the beginning of the novel, those who had conspired with the now-annihilated Valois to eradicate the Morningstar Clan. The mountain was surrounded by perpetual violet lightning and arrogant defensive auras. Samael saw thousands of Purple Light Sect disciples patrolling the wallsâarrogant, noble, and secure in their millennial power, believing themselves invincible. They didn't know that an invisible city floated above their heads. They didn't know that 30,000 of Vexia's metal monsters waited in the holds, their hearts beating at industrial levels. They didn't know that 21 young dragons were about to emerge from a time chamber as nuclear-level beasts.
Samael Morningstar smiledâa sadistic, predatory, freezing smile that promised the end of an era.
He added the visceral contrast in his mind. Down there, on the black mountain, the enemy disciples were arrogantly meditating, practicing noble and elegant stances with their noble swords, following millennial martial arts traditions. Up above, in the clouds, Samael Morningstar had 30,000 steel terminators, 30 groups of a thousand biomechanical wolves capable of devouring Saints through sheer logistical attrition, and 21 monster-dragons sharpening their fangs in the Palace
Note from Void_Scribe: đ
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