Chương 17: CHAPTER 15: THE CROWN OF ASHES

The air inside the subterranean ritual chamber of the Howling Shadow was thick with the copper stench of fresh blood and the burning smell of low-tier alchemical reagents.

"Stabilize his core! Now!" a voice shrieked through the dim light. Hades Malice lay flat on his back across the cold marble slab, his teeth bared in an animalistic snarl as his chest heaved erratically. His armor was completely shredded, caked in dirt, and a massive, deep laceration ran horizontally across his abdomen, weeping blackish-purple blood. The High Mage of the underworld frantically waved his gnarled staff, forcing a violent, violet runic circle to flare directly over the wound.

The unnatural heat of forced biological acceleration aggressively knit the flesh back together, sealing the muscle tissue, but Hades still writhed in agony. The neurotoxin from the medic's scalpel was still whispering through his nerve endings. The moment the runic light dimmed, Hades violently pushed himself up, coughing up a mouthful of dark fluid. He didn't even wait for the High Mage to clear the platform. He staggered off the slab, his eyes burning with an unyielding, monstrous frenzy.

"Where is the Boss?" Hades rasped, grabbing the collar of a nearby elite assassin guarding the chamber.

"He... he is in the central chamber, Master Hades," the assassin stammered, his face pale behind his mask.

"But... you must prepare yourself. The Leader is on death's door." Hades pushed past him, his heavy boots echoing hollowly against the living volcanic stone as he stormed through the obsidian double doors into the grand throne room. The sight that greeted him made his breath catch in his throat. Kaguro Orichi was slumped sideways on his massive iron throne, his towering frame trembling violently.

The ivory skull mask lay discarded on the floor, revealing a face that had turned a sickening, ghostly shade of slate-blue. The blue veins beneath his skin were pulsing erratically, constricting tightly as his body starved for oxygen. Several remaining elite assassins stood in a tense perimeter around the throne, their heads bowed in helpless frustration.

"What happened here?" Hades demanded, his voice cracking with rage as he approached the steps.

"I was gone for mere hours! Why is his core collapsing?" One of the senior elite assassins stepped forward, his voice a grim whisper.

"The medic. The silver capsule he administered wasn't just a temporary stabilizer. It was a Trojan horse. The alchemists analyzed the residual matrix—the boy planted a slow, unrefined chemical poison deep inside the Boss's vascular network. It's entirely locking down his blood. He is suffocating from the inside out, and we have no counter-formula." The senior assassin's eyes then locked onto Hades' torn, bloodied garments and his newly sealed abdominal wound.

"Hades... where is the rest of the squad? Where are your four companions?" Hades' fists clenched so hard his newly healed skin began to stretch.

"They're dead," he muttered, the words tasting like ash.

"Dead?!" the assassin gasped, the entire room shifting in collective shock.

"All four of them? How? They were elite vanguards! What did you do while you were guarding that brat?"

"I didn't do anything! It was all planned by that god-forgotten medic!" Hades roared, his psychological composure completely fracturing as the memory of the cliffside replayed behind his eyelids.

"He played us like fools! He used a hidden paralytic agent to take down the first three in the high brush without a single sound. Then, he manipulated the fourth, making him scream and mutilate himself to make it look like a betrayal! He used my own tactical instincts against me!" Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Hades slammed his fist against an iron pillar, leaving a dent in the steel.

"He played us at our own game! He made me turn on my own companion. I took the stance to slice his head off, believing he had gone mad and slaughtered the squad. But the moment my guard went down, that pathetic little orphan slid behind me from the blind spot. He drove his scalpel straight into my abdomen. The poison on the blade was so potent it locked my muscles instantly. Before I could even unleash a counter-spell, he blew the entire edge of the ravine with an explosive bag."

The throne room fell into a dead, horrified silence as Hades stared at the floor.

"The cliffside collapsed. He, along with the bodies of my four companions, fell thousands of meters into the deep abyss of the aqueduct. I watched them die in the torrent. That bastard medic didn't survive the fall... but he took my brothers with him." Before anyone could speak, a faint, agonizing scrape echoed from the throne. Kaguro Orichi slowly lifted his head, his blue-tipped fingers clutching the iron armrest.

"Hades..." the Leader wheezed, his lungs expanding in a desperate, empty gasp for air.

"Come... closer..." Hades sprinted up the steps, dropping to both knees before the dying tyrant.

"Boss... I failed the extraction. I let the antidote slip into the abyss." Kaguro Orichi let out a low, gravelly hum that sounded like grinding stones. He didn't look at Hades with anger. Instead, his failing, glassy eyes swept across the remaining assassins standing in the hall. With the last vestige of his authority, Orichi raised a trembling hand.

"Assemble... the inner circle. Vote... for the next shadow." The remaining elite assassins looked at each other, their expressions heavy with sorrow. Without a single word of dissent, every single man in the chamber stepped forward, kneeling in perfect unison and bowing their heads toward Hades Malice. Their votes were unanimous. Hades stared at them, his mind completely numb.

"What... what are you doing? The Boss is still drawing breath! We can find another alchemist, we can raid the capital—""Silence, boy," Kaguro Orichi rumbled softly, a dark, tired smile touching his blue lips as he looked down at his finest creation.

"Hades... you are the best assassin I have ever trained. I raised you with my own hands. You are the only one worthy to inherit the title of the Supreme Leader of the Howling Shadow." Orichi slowly slid a heavy, intricately carved obsidian ring from his thumb. The metal hummed with a dense, mysterious, and suffocating dark energy—the Ruler's Core Matrix. He pressed the cold metal into Hades' trembling palm.

"This is the full authority of the empire," Orichi whispered, his breathing growing dangerously shallow as his internal organs began to face permanent hypoxic shutdown.

"It is my parting gift to you. Hades... do not make the mistakes that I made. Do not underestimate the weeds of this world. It is time... to say farewell." Hades clutched the ring, his vision blurring as a rush of memories violently flooded his mind. He remembered the freezing streets of the Royal Capital years ago. He and his four companions weren't just comrades; they were biological brothers, left completely orphaned and astray after their parents perished in the lower slums.

Because of Hades' unique, terrifying doll-compressing active skill, the upper-tier citizens had labeled him a freak, a cursed monster. People had beaten them, hunted them, and driven them out like wild dogs into the dirt. But then, Kaguro Orichi had found them in the dark. He hadn't feared Hades' curse. He had taken the five starving brothers off the streets, brought them deep into the subterranean fortress, and given them a home.

He had fed them, trained them in the arts of silent slaughter, and treated them all like his own flesh and blood children. To the world, Orichi was a merciless tyrant. To Hades, he was a father. And now, that fifteen-year-old medical brat from Mizugaon had destroyed everything they built in a single afternoon. A mere lower-tier insect had wiped out his entire family line. Kaguro Orichi turned his fading gaze toward the remaining assassins who still had their heads leaned forward in deep, heavy sorrow.

"Bid farewell to me... smilingly," the Leader commanded softly, his final breath leaving his lungs in a long, peaceful sigh. The blue light beneath his skin completely vanished, his massive chest stilling as his body turned to cold stone on the iron throne.

"Boss..." Hades whispered, his head dropping against Orichi's knee. A moment later, Hades Malice stood up. He slid the mysterious obsidian ring onto his finger. The moment the metal locked around his skin, a massive, mountainous surge of inherited dark mana violently exploded from his body, rattling the obsidian walls of the throne room and shattering the glass grease-lamps overhead. His abdominal wound was completely burned away by the sheer density of the new power.

When he opened his eyes, the sorrow was gone, replaced by an unyielding, monstrous obsession that burned brighter than the volcanic fires.

"Gather every informant across the borders," Hades commanded, his voice carrying the new, suffocating weight of the Supreme Leader.

"I don't care if his body was torn to shreds by the aqueduct. Scan every riverbank, every sewage outlet, and every valley from here to the Royal Capital. Even if I have to tear up the very earth, I will find him. If the Ghost Medic is dead, I want his skeleton. If he is alive... I will personally disassemble his circuits piece by piece." The hunt for the fallen healer had officially transcended the borders of Mizugaon. The war had just begun.