"..."
The group was silent as they stared at it.
Unlike the weak Lesser Nox Damien and Rose faced back then, this one was a fully grown 4th class that had at least entered the nine revolutions at some point.
"I thought we drove them all out?" Luciel said icily.
"We did, but not all of them could be driven away," Alucard answered.
"The reason our party was put together like this was for the very purpose of hunting this Nox. Why are you still surprised?"
Luciel frowned.
"Regardless, this is strange. We had sufficient forces to push them back completely, so why is there one sealed here? It cannot be as simple as he needed to be sealed."
There was only a single Nox in a room large enough to be called an amphitheater.
He had the same ashen-grey skin as the rest, but his body was covered in strange archaic tattoos, concentric in design as if they were made for ritualistic purposes.
"We do not have much information on this being, however, it is certain he is not as simple as the ones we faced. He might even have connections to an Emperor."
"An Emperor?!"
The exclamation was shared by the entire younger half of the group.
Some of them had experienced the war while others were born near or after its end, but none of them had ever met an Emperor.
The Nox Emperors were elusive figures like that. While their identities were known, they never showed their faces, not even the Inhuman Emperor who was said to have an incredible thirst for blood.
"Regardless, all we need to do is kill, right? Funnily enough, that's my specialty."
Lucifer brought the atmosphere back to normal.
Right, they only came here to kill.
They didn't need to know why this Nox was sealed as long as they could kill him before the seal was released.
And so, they started moving for that purpose.
The two men who remained nameless to this moment stayed back to guard the entrance, Commander Huo stood on the other side of the room to prepare for any unforeseen circumstances, and with Alucard's help, Luciel and Lucifer were able to get through the barriers and approach the Nox being directly.
'Hmm…'
Alexander watched their process with scrutinizing eyes.
At the end of the day, he was an Avatar, not an individual.
He acted autonomously outside the main body's direct control most of the time, but he was still Damien.
He had Damien's soul, he had Damien's memories, and he acted on Damien's orders.
So even in this era, there really wasn't anyone who had more experience with the Nox than he did, especially after his main body absorbed the memories of countless Lords and two Emperors.
The problem was that even he didn't know anything about the tattoos on this Nox's skin.
'The Nox were never a ritualistic people. No matter how I think about it, tattoos like that shouldn't be on the body of a Nox, at least not by their own volition.'
It was strange no matter how he thought about it.
'Especially considering the environment. This labyrinth, this room, the prospective existence of an "owner" that isn't this Nox…'
Alexander's expression hardened.
'It's not that the Nox is sealed here, it's that he was being used as a test subject.'
It was a trap.
BOOOOOOOOOM!
As if it was waiting for that realization, a bloody explosion erupted from the Nox being and blanketed everything around it.
"Heuk…!"
"Kah!"
Lucifer and Luciel retreated rapidly under Alucard's protection and put their guards up, but they were already taken by surprise.
A claw ripped through the dust cloud and slashed Lucifer's chest.
A foot slammed into the ground, crushing it and sending a shockwave through the room that threw everyone back several steps at the very least.
"Finally…FINALLY!"
The Nox being's roar was booming to the extent of shattering glass. His eyes were red like blood as absolute hatred radiated from every bone in his body.
It had been several thousand years. He had been trapped here and tortured ruthlessly for all that time, and even in the current day, the experiments hadn't ended.
"Damn humans…"
That man, the one who captured him, was a maniac.
He never even made his goals clear. All he did was act as the perfect picture of brutality. He gained ecstasy from every moment of every day.
However, he didn't seem like one of those who fought against them.
Rather, he seemed like a traitor who had turned to their side.
An absolute psychopath like him was the perfect picture of a Nox despite being a human, and after enduring it for so long, how could this Nox being not feel seething rage towards anything and everything?
He didn't care about circumstances, he didn't care about the war or his people. All he wanted to do was kill.
And now, the perfect targets had come to him.
"All of you, become my sustenance, so when 'he' returns, I can return unto him what was done to me!"
Alucard stared at the being with narrowed eyes.
This power wasn't like a Nox. The mana radiating from that being's body wasn't the same inky black substance that the rest of his race used.
And his power…
'...they cannot handle him.'
Alucard stepped up personally to fight, and as his movements attracted the Nox's attention, Commander Huo moved as well.
BANG!
He attacked with a massive hammer disproportionate to the size of his body, slamming it down on the Nox's back.
However…
There was no movement.
The Nox didn't collapse or even seem to register the pain.
Instead, he merely turned around to look at the one who struck him.
"Too many pests…"
His mana raged, forcing Commander Huo to distance himself.
Unfortunately, that was the wrong decision.
In that single instant of freedom, the Nox being split his body into six clones.
Each of them had the same aura as he did and similar power, and without hesitation or any sense of reason in their eyes, they split and charged at each member of the party.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The battle began fiercely.
As Commander Huo and Alucard were forced to deal with two Nox copies each, the remaining two rushed at the weaker members and dominated combat against them.
Regardless of the power people like Lucifer or Luciel had, they weren't strong enough to cross the gap between a regular 4th class and the extreme peak.
It was difficult for them to even keep their lives.
They fought together as the other two did the same, and as they did their best to survive and hold off until one of their Supremes could come to their aid…
BOOM!
"AAAAAGH!"
An explosion rang out from behind them, followed by a guttural scream.
One of the two others was missing the entire lower half of his body, while the other was clutching the stump that remained in the place where his arm once was.
The mission already went wrong.
The Nox was supposed to be sealed and, more than anything else, this was supposed to be a learning experience for the younger experts who would one day stand at the head of the universe.
But looking at the current situation, those same younger experts weren't going to live past today.
Alucard and Commander Huo wouldn't be able to defeat their enemies fast enough to save them all.
No, perhaps even Luciel or Lucifer would be crippled terribly.
Alexander, who was watching from afar, frowned to himself.
'So, in the end, do I need to step in?'
He definitely didn't want to stand out, but…
His presence in this moment would definitely be less impactful on the timeline than the deaths or crippling of those two great figures!
