Chapter 202: A Deal With The Devil

​The sheer weight of the revelation hung heavily in the suffocating, miasma-filled air. The supreme ruler of the demons, a being whose very name once caused empires to tremble, found his mind momentarily blank.

​"This?" Vassago was speechless. For a being trapped for centuries, learning that the lock to his cage was currently walking on the surface world was a reality-shattering paradigm shift.

​"Just thinking about it gives me chills... I had met this Mirabella, she is just Lv330, but she could take on a Lv500. If she gets all that?" Dracula lightly shook her head, her purple hair swaying with the motion. In the rigid hierarchy of Galaxy Fall, a level gap of that magnitude was supposed to be an insurmountable law of physics. Mirabella’s existence was a glitch, a terrifying anomaly that broke the world’s scaling rules.

​"The Graves?" Vassago’s glowing red eyes narrowed, his ancient memory clicking into place.

​"Yes demon emperor, the five graves of the sun family are known as the five great dungeons... If she gets in any one of these dungeons, we will be in trouble." She spread her arms wide, emphasizing the catastrophic scale of the threat. The Five Graves were legendary instanced zones, locked pocket dimensions overflowing with mythic-tier loot, primordial arrays, and resources that could fund a world war.

​"That’s why I came here to offer you a partnership."

​Vassago scoffed, the sound rumbling like falling boulders. He leaned forward against the divine golden chains. "So you’re scared of her?"

​Dracula’s eyes narrowed at his question, the surrounding shadows twitching in tandem with her irritation: "The Devil Cult is scared of no one... The reason we are powerless is because, Lord Hayatobi is protecting her, not only that, her soul is marked with the resurrection orb... So killing won’t bring out anything. I suggest, we capture her, take her blood and unseal this formation."

​The mention of the Resurrection Orb sent a ripple of tension through the elite guards. It was a mythical soul-binding artifact that bypassed the world’s permadeath mechanics, ensuring the user would simply respawn with their memories and core strength intact. Assassination was mathematically useless against her; she had to be taken alive.

​Vassago stared at her for some seconds, processing the tactical nightmare of capturing an anomaly guarded by a master teacher, and asked: "How can you get her blood?"

​"That’s our job, you don’t need to trouble yourself on that." Dracula answered, a cruel, supremely confident smirk playing on her lips.

​Vassago was silent for a moment, thinking. He analyzed the geopolitical board, weighing the risks of dealing with these dark magic practitioners against the absolute necessity of breaking his seal. And after some seconds, he asked the main question: "What do you want?"

​"That’s a very good question." Dracula stood up, as the throne behind her vanished, dissolving back into the dark matter from which she had conjured it.

​"We want the demonic Energy in this realm, I know the Abyssal have enough, so we just need 50%... When we’re done, the demonic energy will replenish itself." She said, her eyes fixed on Vassago. It was an astronomical demand. Fifty percent of the Abyssal’s ambient corrupted energy was enough energy to power a continental extinction event.

​"Demonic energy? Why do you need that?!" He asked coldly, his aura flaring defensively.

​"I am pretty sure Demon Emperor has a lot of secrets he won’t share with us, same do we." Dracula deflected smoothly, protecting the cult’s grand design from his prying mind.

​"Ok then... Before I agree to this, you must give me a Leverage, I can’t just trust you because you tell me what happened to the Sun family."

​’This bastard is really cautious.’ Dracula thought, her calculating mind instantly shifting to her contingency plans, and opened her palm.

​’Well, I can give this to him, it’s not that important, but it’s something.’ She thought, as a beating heart appeared on her palm. It pulsed with thick, black blood and radiated a horrifying amount of concentrated dark energy.

​"This is my heart, If you destroy this, I will suffer greatly, and also lost 50% of my cultivation, returning to Lv250... This is your leverage." She said, offering the grotesque organ as casually as one might offer a coin. Dropping two hundred and fifty levels in an instant was a crippling, agonizing fate for any cultivator.

​"Master, You can’t give something so important--"

​"--Quiet, Yin Tang!!" Dracula snapped at the third Lord, silencing the woman in the black cloak with a wave of oppressive, suffocating authority.

​’Hmm... This must be very important, but handing something like this, she must be confident in getting Mirabella’s blood.’ Vassago thought, his paranoia slightly appeased by the apparent sacrifice and the subordinate’s genuine panic. Stretching his hand forward, the heart floated towards him, and landed on his palm. The demonic chains hissed as his corrupted flesh made contact with the item.

​"Good... I will keep this with me." The Heart vanished from his hand, absorbed directly into his spatial inventory, and he pointed a finger at Dracula, his voice dripping with lethal promise:

​"Remember, If you fail your task, I will not only destroy this heart, I will reveal the headquarters of the devil cult to the humans."

​"You!" Yin Tang, a cold energy rising beneath her cloak.

​Dracula raised on hand, stopping her third Lord. She nodded at Vassago, entirely unfazed by the threat of total annihilation.

​"The devil cult never goes back on their words... As for the humans above, we will also help you lead your monsters on the land to help deal with the humans, this is us showing our friendship to you." She said, perfectly weaving her own agenda into a gesture of goodwill.

​’Lead my army? What a cunning snake, why didn’t you use yours? But if I refuse, I will be rejecting their friendship.’ He waved his hand dismissively, seeing right through her tactical maneuver to use his forces as cannon fodder while preserving her own cultists:

​’No worries, I won’t have to send my elite guards... They should do as they please.’ He thought, calculating that the low-tier monsters in the Southern Region were entirely expendable:

​"Alright, you can take this token, it will help you control the monsters in the southern region. Succubus Queen will also take you to the right location to gather more demonic energy."

​A black token, with an image of a red claw on its surface appeared before Dracula, pulsing with the brutal, domineering command code of the Demon Emperor himself, who nodded and took the token.

​"We will take our leave." With that, they turned and walked out of the hall, their Level 500 auras silently parting the toxic sea of miasma before them.

​The moment they left, the heavy stone doors grinding shut, Succubus Queen turned to Vassago, her demonic instincts screaming that they had just made a terrible mistake:

​"My King, is it wise to give them the token? Or even trust them?"

​"I gave them the token because it can only control ten thousand monsters, all below Lv300. As for trusting them? Only a fool will trust the devil cult... But let them use the demonic Energy here, go and lead the way... While doing that, try to see their purpose for our energy." Vassago commanded, his strategic genius reasserting itself. He was trading expendable pawns for highly valuable intelligence on the continent’s most dangerous wildcards.

​"Leave them to me, My King!!" Succubus Queen nodded, spreading her dark wings, and walked towards the door.

​"The rest of you, be on guard."

​The remaining guards nodded in understanding, drawing their weapons and fading back into the obsidian shadows of the throne room.

​The air outside the throne hall was marginally less suffocating, though still heavily polluted by the Abyssal’s corrupted ecosystem. The moment they were out of the Emperor’s sensory range, the tension in the group shifted.

​"My Lord, why give him such a valuable thing?" Yin Tang asked with a frown, her dead eyes showing a rare flicker of true concern for her master’s well-being.

​"Come on, It’s just a heart, I have four more of them, and with this one I am using, it makes five, which is still in my possession... By the way, good acting." Dracula grinned, a terrifyingly casual admission of the monstrous, bodily modifications she had undergone to reach the apex of dark cultivation. She wasn’t playing by human biological rules anymore.

​"Huh?" Yin Tang was stunned, her mind struggling to process her master having six hearts.

​’I wasn’t acting, I was genuinely worried... I should have known Master is as cunning as a fox.’ She thought, realizing her genuine panic had perfectly sold the deception to the Demon Emperor, and looked over her shoulder, her high-tier senses instantly picking up an approaching hostile signature, sensing Succubus Queen, who walked out of the castle.

​"I am tasked to lead you to the best location, please follow me." Succubus Queen said with a flat expression, hiding her extreme wariness behind a mask of demonic compliance, entirely unaware that the Devil Cult leader had just scammed the oldest, most dangerous entity in Galaxy Fall.