The apartment settled back into quiet after the last transformation faded, though the room still held small signs of what Noctis had spent the afternoon doing. One couch cushion sat slightly crooked from the wolf pup test, a dining chair remained a few feet out of alignment from the compact tiger's controlled turn, and one curtain panel still shifted in slow, shallow movements from the red flood dragon's flight through the living room. The tinted windows kept the afternoon sunlight softened and distant, turning the city outside into a muted arrangement of glass towers, pale sky, traffic lines, and people who moved through their ordinary day without knowing that a two-foot dragon had been circling above a luxury couch several stories above them. The quiet was useful, not empty, and Noctis stood in the middle of it long enough to confirm that nothing in the apartment had cracked, bent, burned, or drawn attention from the building around him.
His body felt stable after the repeated transformations. The Crimson Arsenal held its modern clothing form without any visible strain, restoring the fitted white shirt, blue jeans, shoes, jewelry, bracelets, and the small Nocturne and Ruin charms each time he returned to human shape. The Bloodform presets rested inside him like organized doors, each one waiting behind a name and a set of instincts that no longer felt temporary. Black Wolf Pup, Small Indoor Bat, Needle Spider, Flat Shadow Spider, Thread Spider, Compact Tiger, Suppressed Frost Ape, Red Flood Dragon — Small, and the Three-Headed Storm Dragon he had not been foolish enough to test in a high-rise apartment. None of the forms felt loose or experimental anymore. They had settled into the Blood Grid with the clean weight of accepted functions.
That was why he did not pick up the phone yet.
Liz's contact remained on the coffee table beneath the dark screen, ordinary and impatient in the way modern tools always seemed to be. Vivienne's messages sat above it, probably not finished if the vampire leader decided to worry again. St. Aurelia's still waited somewhere in the city with its old basement hall, side entrance, back stairs, and whatever hidden relic signature had drawn the demon token before Alexander's men interrupted the cab ride. Noctis knew all of that, but the Corvinus ring had changed more than one surface ability. Full Bloodform Transformation was too structured, too deeply integrated, and too compatible with his existing authority to be treated as a single isolated prize.
Before he walked into another old church basement, he needed to know what the Blood Grid had done with everything.
He sat on the couch again. The leather gave beneath his weight, and the stone coffee table reflected his hand, the phone, the spare keycard, and the envelope Marcus had left on the counter earlier. Beyond the tinted glass, sunlight pressed against the city but never entered the room with any real purity, filtered by protections Vivienne's den had installed for a weakness they assumed he shared. Noctis found the detail amusing every time his gaze crossed the windows, but the amusement remained brief. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and shifted his awareness inward until the hum of the vents, the distant elevator, and the far traffic below sank into background vibration.
The Blood Grid opened behind his senses.
It did not appear as a simple menu when he looked deeply enough. It was a living architecture of crimson channels, abyss-black veins, golden divine threads, silver-white pulses, and dormant roots that stretched through his existence like a second anatomy. Some branches were thick and ancient, carrying the weight of bloodline authority. Others were colder, darker, more distant, or more precise, tied to powers he had accepted but not fully built upon. The grid moved without moving, flowing like blood, branching like roots, and responding to inspection with system clarity layered over instinct. Every path had a texture. Every node had a pressure. Every sealed branch felt like a locked door inside his own body.
The Vampire Blood Path remained the oldest and strongest visible foundation. Its branch ran through the grid with dense crimson light, thick enough that the other active paths seemed younger beside it. Noctis touched it with awareness and felt the familiar weight of bloodline dominion, progenitor inheritance, regeneration, fangs, blood pressure, blood weapon manifestation, Crimson Arsenal response, and the long evolution that had carried him beyond any normal vampire category. It held too many of his primary abilities to be considered one path among many. It was the central vein from which much of his current existence still drew. The Corvinus ring had not altered its roots directly, but the Full Bloodform trait had settled near it cleanly enough that the path did not reject the addition.
He did not linger there. Nothing in the Vampire Blood Path felt newly unlocked. Nothing demanded resources, correction, or immediate attention. He acknowledged its stability and moved deeper through the grid, following a set of pact-threads that carried the scent of beast blood, dragon pressure, lycan instinct, and companion loyalty. The Pet Path sat in a separate region, marked by connected signatures that felt dimmer inside the trial's current separation but not broken. Bahamut's presence was not physically in the apartment, yet the path still carried the deep weight of the Primeval Sanguorath dragon: scale, fire, blood, ancient pride, and a loyalty that had become part of the pact structure. Rengar's signature was sharper, lower, and more predatory, threaded with ice, lightning, blood, and pack command. The Bloodbound Shadow Alpha Wolves appeared as smaller but stable points around the same network, guarding the mansion in the world outside this trial.
The Pet Path had always been useful, but Noctis had not spent much time refining it because his own growth had been too aggressive. Bahamut and Rengar were powerful in their own right, and the wolves had been raised for a purpose rather than treated as fragile followers. But the moment he examined the branch with more patience, the weakness in that thinking became obvious. If his own enemies continued scaling upward, then anything bound to him would eventually become a target. Gods, demon gods, immortal cultivators, ancient beast sovereigns, dragon rulers, soul-tamers, and bloodline tyrants did not always kill companions directly. Some tried to dominate them, sever the bond, corrupt the pact, suppress the lineage, or turn a beast's own nature against its master.
Noctis looked over the available nodes and found several that had remained untouched. Some were too expensive. Some were specialized for companion evolution stages that did not matter yet. Others were broad support nodes, not flashy, but useful enough to change how his bonded creatures survived future battles. He had accumulated enough resources through the recent arc, conversions, bloodline stabilization, relic absorption, and trial progression to spend without weakening immediate combat readiness. The apartment's silence helped him think cleanly. There were no enemies pressing him. No one was asking questions. For once, the Blood Grid could be managed without gunfire, collapsing barriers, or screaming priests.
One node drew his attention first.
Pet Path — Node Available: Blood Pact Reinforcement
Type: Attribute Support / Pact Scaling
Effect: Bonded companions gain bonus attributes equal to 50% of Noctis's current attributes while the blood pact remains active. Attribute transfer scales with Noctis's active state and remains limited by path stability, companion compatibility, and current suppression laws.
Applicable Targets: Bahamut, Rengar, Bloodbound Shadow Alpha Wolves, future bonded companions.
Noctis studied the description more carefully than the system display required. This version of Blood Pact Reinforcement was not merely a protective lock against outside control. It was stronger, more direct, and much more useful long-term. Any bonded companion would keep their own attributes, lineage, talents, and growth, but the pact would grant a scaling bonus derived from him. If Bahamut already stood as a primeval dragon, then adding half of Noctis's active attributes would make him far more terrifying. If Rengar relied on speed, aggression, and elemental burst, the bonus would sharpen every part of that hunting style. Even the wolves would become harder to dismiss as simple guards if the pact carried a portion of Noctis's own physical scale into them.
"That is better," Noctis said quietly inside the grid. "If they fight beside me, they should scale beside me."
He unlocked it.
The Pet Path accepted the resource expenditure with a deep crimson pulse that traveled along the pact threads. Bahamut's distant signature flared once, not physically close enough for a response but still connected enough for the Blood Grid to recognize compatibility. Rengar's signature sharpened as the node linked into the pact structure. The wolves answered as a coordinated ripple, smaller but immediate, as if the path had reinforced their foundations from somewhere far beyond the apartment. Noctis watched the bonus settle and noted the restrictions. Trial suppression would limit expression here if the pets were called into this world, but the underlying path upgrade belonged to the Blood Grid itself. It would remain after the trial.
The next node offered active support rather than passive scaling.
Pet Path — Node Available: Shared Vital Surge
Type: Active Support / Bloodline Vitality Transfer
Effect: Allows Noctis to transmit a burst of bloodline vitality through a bonded pact, temporarily increasing companion stamina, regeneration speed, and physical endurance. Effect strength depends on pact stability, companion compatibility, and available bloodline energy.
Noctis unlocked it after only a moment of inspection. Power was not always measured by killing the enemy faster. In longer battles, especially against enemies who could injure dragons, tear through lycan regeneration, poison beasts, or force companions into attrition, a direct vitality surge could keep them fighting through a critical exchange. The skill was not healing magic in the clerical sense. It was a bloodline transfer, something that used the pact as a channel and his own vitality as the source. That made it more compatible with him than external recovery spells.
The node opened with a warmer pulse. Unlike Blood Pact Reinforcement, which settled into the foundation, Shared Vital Surge formed a channel that could be activated at will. Noctis felt the route clearly: from his core through the pact, from the pact into the companion, from the companion's body into stamina, regeneration, and endurance. It would be especially effective on living bonded creatures, less so on constructs unless they possessed compatible bloodline structures. Bahamut and Rengar would benefit heavily. The wolves would benefit enough to matter. Future companions would depend on their composition.
The third Pet Path node replaced the broader pack-resonance options that did not satisfy him. It was not a raw buff. It was information.
Pet Path — Node Available: Shared Vision
Type: Sensory Link / Companion Perception
Effect: Allows Noctis to share visual, auditory, and instinctive sensory input with bonded companions. Sensory clarity depends on pact strength, distance, companion intelligence, environmental interference, and suppression laws.
Noctis paused on that one longer than he expected. Power won fights only after information made the fight reachable. Bahamut could scout from above with a dragon's eyes. Rengar could track through forest, city, snow, or battlefield with senses Noctis did not always need to personally use. The Bloodbound Shadow Alpha Wolves could monitor the mansion's perimeter without requiring him to stand there himself. Shared Vision would not replace his own Omni Eyes, and it did not need to. It gave him distributed perception through beings already loyal to him.
He unlocked the node.
The pact threads widened in perception rather than strength. For an instant, Noctis felt distant impressions press against the edge of the trial's separation: the weight of Bahamut's aerial awareness, the low predatory map of Rengar's senses, and the layered perimeter instincts of the wolves. The connection did not fully open because the current trial environment restricted direct interaction with his main-world companions, but the structure was there, waiting for the moment distance, barrier, or suppression no longer interfered. Noctis let the node settle, satisfied. The Pet Path had become more useful in three steps than it had been in several arcs of neglect.
He moved on from the companion branch with resources still available.
The Necromancy Path opened colder than the others. Its branch did not glow so much as absorb the light around it, carrying the pressure of death energy, corpse manipulation, soul remnants, skeletal command, battlefield death conversion, and the obedient stillness of things that had stopped breathing but had not stopped being useful. It was not active in the apartment because there were no corpses, no battlefield, no graveyard pressure, and no reason to fill a luxury high-rise with undead. Still, the path waited with practical patience. Noctis regarded it without disgust. Death was a tool when handled properly, and unlike many tools, it left plenty of material behind after most battles.
He reviewed the path with a clearer goal than before. The Necromancy Path did not need more dramatic corpse tricks right now. It needed battlefield utility. His summoned undead had to last longer, provide more flexible positioning, and support him in environments where Genesis Step was unavailable. The trial had locked Genesis Step, and while he still had Wraith Step, Phantom Dash, Ghost Vein, and Spectral Vein, none of those fully replaced the sheer convenience of long-range displacement. If necromancy could provide a different kind of prepared movement, then the path deserved investment.
The first available node was simple.
Necromancy Path — Node Available: Deathbound Capacity
Type: Summon Limit Expansion
Effect: Maximum active undead summons increased by 2.
Noctis unlocked it immediately.
A cold pulse moved through the Necromancy Path, and the active summon framework expanded with two new slots. It was not complicated, but not every useful advancement needed complex wording. Two additional undead meant two more sentries, two more anchors, two more shields, two more attack bodies, two more scouts, or two more expendable pieces on a battlefield where enemies expected every body to matter. Against high-tier enemies, weak undead would break quickly, but bodies did not always need to win duels. They needed to occupy space, carry marks, trigger traps, preserve angles, or serve as anchors for other skills.
The next node was the one that changed the path's value immediately.
Necromancy Path — Node Available: Grave Anchor Step
Type: Death-Bound Repositioning
Effect: Allows Noctis to teleport to the location of an active summoned undead by using it as a death-bound anchor. Range and stability scale with Necromancy Path development and may be restricted by barriers, domains, divine wards, superior spatial laws, or trial suppression. Requires a stable summoned undead anchor.
Noctis read the description twice.
This was not Genesis Step. It did not pretend to be. It required preparation, an active undead, path stability, and an anchor that could be destroyed, sealed, or isolated. It could not freely chain across line of sight, and strong barriers or superior domains could interfere. But that limitation was what made it useful instead of redundant. Grave Anchor Step gave him a way to place future movement points before a fight, during a siege, inside corridors, across a battlefield, around a fortress, or near an enemy formation. An undead hidden in a tunnel, left behind in a city, stationed outside a warded gate, or embedded in a corpse field could become a destination.
He unlocked it.
The Necromancy Path shifted, and a cold spatial thread formed around the summon framework. Unlike Wraith Step, which moved through shadowed presence and speed, Grave Anchor Step carried the sensation of a grave opening from one place into another. The anchor did not pull him through space by force. It provided a death-bound coordinate his body could answer. Trial suppression pressed against the node immediately, limiting range and expression while he remained inside the Demonic Crucible Trial, but the underlying structure was stable. Noctis recognized the tactical value at once. If he entered St. Aurelia's and needed a fallback later, summoned undead could become more than expendable bodies. They could become exits.
"This one matters," he said.
The third Necromancy node served the summons themselves.
Necromancy Path — Node Available: Dead Legion Fortification
Type: Undead Support / Resistance Scaling
Effect: Summoned undead gain resistance bonuses equal to 30% of Noctis's current resistances. Applies to elemental, holy, abyssal, curse, poison, mental, soul, and physical resistance categories where compatible with undead structure.
Noctis unlocked it after a brief evaluation.
Summoned undead were useful only if they did not collapse too quickly under the first wave of serious power. A skeleton did not care about poison in the same way a living body did, but holy fire, curse pressure, soul disruption, physical impact, abyssal corrosion, divine purification, and mental or command-based interference could all ruin undead formations. Tying their resistance to thirty percent of his current resistance profile made them far more durable without pretending they were equal to him. The compatibility clause mattered. A corpse, a skeleton, a death knight, and a spectral undead would not all express the same categories in the same way, but the scaling foundation was strong.
"Better than making more corpses that break too quickly," Noctis muttered.
The Necromancy Path accepted the node. The summon framework hardened, not physically, but structurally. Any undead he raised through the path would inherit a measured fraction of his resistance profile, enough to survive hostile environments and stronger opening attacks. Combined with the two additional summon slots and Grave Anchor Step, the path had gained real battlefield value. More bodies. Harder bodies. Anchor bodies. That was enough for now.
With the active upgrades settled, Noctis allowed the Blood Grid to quiet. The Pet Path and Necromancy Path now pulsed with new resource channels, each one integrated without conflict. He checked the Vampire Blood Path again briefly and confirmed the new spending had not destabilized anything. The Bloodform presets remained stable. The Crimson Arsenal structure remained unchanged. Omni Eyes sat dormant in his awareness, ready if he opened them outward, but nothing inside the room demanded inspection. The next branch that drew his attention was not one he had chosen.
It sat behind the active paths, locked in place behind a sealed layer that looked different from normal dormant nodes. The branch was crimson, but not like the Vampire Blood Path. Its light ran through narrow internal channels that resembled veins, meridians, marrow lines, and layered conduits stacked over one another in a disciplined pattern. The path did not carry the hunger of blood, the chill of necromancy, or the pact resonance of companions. It felt internal, structured, and restrained, like a body being rebuilt from the inside according to rules that were not native to vampire evolution.
The system response unfolded across his awareness.
Locked Blood Grid Path Detected: Crimson Vessel Path
Status: Sealed
Path Type: Vessel Tempering / Spirit Synchronization / Internal Channel Expansion
Access Condition: ???????
Catalyst Requirement: ???????
Visible Node: Node 1 only
Additional Node Data: Sealed
Noctis stared at the wording longer than the information deserved.
Vessel tempering. Spirit synchronization. Internal channel expansion. Those were not vampire terms, not demon noble terms, not necromantic terms, and not the usual language of his bloodline evolution. He focused on the only visible node, and the sealed branch allowed one point of information to surface before the rest vanished into blank darkness.
Node 1 — Crimson Marrow Tempering
Effect: Refines marrow density, blood production, internal vessel durability, and the body's ability to withstand high-energy circulation.
Current Status: Locked.
Noctis opened his eyes.
The apartment returned around him, quiet and expensive, with the tinted glass holding the sunlight outside and the phone still sleeping on the table. He did not move for several seconds. The system wording remained in his mind with irritating clarity, and the longer he considered it, the less he could pretend it belonged to any Western vampire or demon progression. Marrow density, internal vessel durability, high-energy circulation, spirit synchronization, internal channel expansion. There was only one honest conclusion.
"Body and spirit cultivation," he said.
The words sat in the living room like something that should not have crossed into this arc yet.
Noctis slowly stood from the couch. The movement was controlled, but the pressure under it made the coffee table give a faint tremble, enough for the phone to shift a few millimeters against the glass. He looked toward the ceiling as if the luxury apartment, the upper floors, the private hallway, and the filtered sky beyond the building might somehow provide a direct line to the person responsible. His annoyance sharpened into disbelief, not because cultivation itself was useless, but because he recognized the design logic behind the integration. There was no chance this had appeared by accident.
"Damn it, Gaia."
The name left his mouth before he fully decided to speak it. He drew in breath to call louder, to push the words through whatever connection still existed between his system, the trial, the Blood Grid, and the divine administrator who seemed determined to make genres collide inside his body. Then the memory struck with enough clarity to cut the impulse in half. Gaia under attack. The virus event. The sense of a divine system being struck by something hostile enough that even calling attention to her had not ended cleanly. The last time her attention had been dragged directly into a problem, she had been hit by something that should not have been able to touch her at all.
Noctis closed his mouth.
The room remained silent except for the vents and distant traffic. His irritation did not vanish, but it lost the reckless edge that had made him want to shout. Gaia had done many things worth cursing over, but calling her blindly while she might still be dealing with the consequences of that virus was not intelligence. If there was one thing more annoying than a locked cultivation path hidden inside his Blood Grid, it was breaking the system further because he decided to yell at someone who might already be compromised.
He sat back down with a slow breath. "Right. Bad idea."
The couch accepted his weight again, and the phone stopped sliding after the table steadied. Noctis closed his eyes once more and returned to the Blood Grid, this time inspecting the Crimson Vessel Path with less anger and more caution. The sealed branch refused to open beyond the first node. He tried to read the access condition, but the question marks remained absolute. He pressed with bloodline authority, then with a controlled pulse of abyssal power, then with the calm focus of Omni Eyes turned inward rather than outward. Nothing changed.
Access Condition: ???????
Catalyst Requirement: ???????
Manual Unlock: Unavailable
Additional Node Data: Sealed
Noctis considered brute force for a fraction of a second, then dismissed it. The Blood Grid was not an enemy door. It was internal architecture connected to his existence, his progression, and whatever deeper code Gaia had embedded into his transformation from game avatar memory into reality. Forcing a sealed path without knowing whether the trial, the virus damage, or his own core structure had placed the lock there would be stupid. He had survived too many enemies to injure himself because Gaia had annoyed him.
"Fine," he muttered internally. "Later."
He withdrew from the Crimson Vessel Path, but the Blood Grid did not fully settle.
Another sealed branch waited beyond it.
This one was harder to categorize. It did not resemble the internal channel structure of the Crimson Vessel Path, the crimson dominance of the Vampire Blood Path, the cold pressure of Necromancy, or the pact resonance of the Pet Path. It appeared as a dark red thread sinking into a black center, not wide, not bright, not active, but present with a pressure that made the surrounding grid seem quieter. There was no sound inside the internal space, but Noctis felt the equivalent of silence leaning toward that branch. The path was locked, but unlike Crimson Vessel, it did not feel like a useful progression system waiting behind an annoying gate. It felt like something deliberately sealed because the name alone was enough to make the Blood Grid hesitate.
The system identified it.
Locked Blood Grid Path Detected: Endless Hunger Path
Status: Sealed
Path Type: Hunger Expansion / Devourer Evolution / Consumption Recognition
Access Condition: ???????
Catalyst Requirement: ???????
Visible Node: Node 1 only
Additional Node Data: Sealed
Noctis did not immediately inspect the node.
He read the path name again.
Endless Hunger.
The words were simple, but they did not sit simply inside him. Hunger was not new to him. Devour was not new to him. Fangs, blood absorption, domain feeding, authority consumption, hostile energy digestion, and the conversion of enemies into strength were already part of his existence. He had long passed the point where consuming power felt unnatural. But there was a difference between an ability that could devour and a path named after hunger itself. An ability was a tool. The path sounded like an appetite learning to grow.
He focused on the path type.
Hunger Expansion. Devourer Evolution. Consumption Recognition.
"That sounds like a problem," he said, though the words only echoed through his awareness.
The first node became visible.
Node 1 — Hunger Refinement
Effect: Stabilizes post-consumption refinement. Reduces waste, backlash, incompatibility, and corruption risk when assimilating complex foreign powers.
Current Status: Locked.
The practical value was immediate. Noctis did not need a new way to consume; he already had several. What he needed, especially against gods, demon gods, immortal cultivators, Dao fragments, divine authorities, bloodline roots, and hostile systems, was stability after consumption. Not every power should be swallowed crudely. Some things carried poison in their structure. Some authorities resisted integration. Some divine fragments contained ownership, worship hooks, mental contamination, or hidden backlash. Some Dao principles might be more dangerous after entering the body than before being broken outside it. Hunger Refinement would reduce waste, sort what was useful, discard what was toxic, and make foreign assimilation cleaner.
It was exactly the sort of skill he would want.
That was what made the name worse.
"Useful," he muttered. "Uncomfortable name."
He tried to inspect beyond the first node.
Nothing opened.
Where the Crimson Vessel Path had at least shown the language of structured cultivation, Endless Hunger gave him less. The path beyond Hunger Refinement did not offer outlines. No hidden node names appeared. No blurred descriptions surfaced. No list of future skills waited behind question marks. The branch simply descended into dark pressure, and the system refused to define what came after the first step.
Additional Node Data: Sealed
Path Access Required
Noctis remained still inside the Blood Grid for a long moment.
The Crimson Vessel Path irritated him because he understood the joke. Gaia had taken body refinement, meridians, energy circulation, spirit synchronization, and marrow tempering, then inserted the entire idea into a vampire-demon Blood Grid as if mixing Eastern cultivation into Western dark fantasy was a perfectly reasonable design decision. It was annoying, but it was understandable. The Endless Hunger Path was different. It did not annoy him. It gave him the sense of standing near a closed door in a place where doors were not supposed to breathe.
He pushed lightly against the sealed darkness, not enough to force it, only enough to confirm whether the lock reacted.
It did.
The reaction was not rejection in the way a barrier rejected intrusion. It was absence. His awareness touched the edge of the path and found nothing to grasp, as if the Blood Grid had folded that future out of reach until the correct condition existed. He tried Omni Eyes inward again. The first node remained readable. The path name remained readable. The rest did not resolve. It was not hidden by insufficient perception. It was not hidden by a weaker lock. It was not hidden by ordinary question marks. It was simply unavailable.
For once, Noctis did not feel irritated that something refused to open.
He let the pressure go.
The Blood Grid settled slightly, and the locked path receded without disappearing. It remained there in the architecture of his existence, a dark red thread leading toward a sealed center that gave him no more than one useful, unsettling node. Hunger Refinement. If the path ever opened, the first benefit would be safer consumption, cleaner assimilation, and reduced backlash from powers that would otherwise resist him. On its own, that was reasonable. In context, it felt like the polite first sentence of a much longer threat.
Noctis withdrew from the sealed branch and returned his attention to the active sections of the grid. The Pet Path remained newly reinforced, its three fresh nodes stable. Blood Pact Reinforcement carried the most obvious long-term value because it tied his companions' scaling to his own growth. Shared Vital Surge created a support channel he could activate in battle. Shared Vision waited for a clear connection to Bahamut, Rengar, or the wolves, ready to turn their senses into extensions of his own. The Necromancy Path rested colder beside it, expanded by two additional summon slots, strengthened by Dead Legion Fortification, and sharpened by Grave Anchor Step.
The new necromancy movement skill drew his attention one more time. He examined its restrictions carefully, because any movement skill could become a liability if misunderstood. It required one of his own summoned undead. The undead had to be stable. The anchor could not be behind a superior sealed space unless his authority could breach that separation. Range would scale with the path and shrink under trial suppression. It would not let him cross the entire city casually unless he prepared the field, and it would not replace Genesis Step when Genesis Step returned. But within a battlefield, dungeon, city block, fortress, or crypt, Grave Anchor Step could be decisive.
It also meant the two additional undead slots mattered more than numbers suggested. Two more summons meant two more possible anchors. If he placed one at an entrance and one deeper in hostile territory, he could reposition between them. If he sent one into a lower level while keeping another near an exit, he gained a line of retreat and attack. If St. Aurelia's basement had hidden chambers, narrow corridors, or sealed rooms, the skill might become useful sooner than expected. The apartment did not have corpses to raise, and he was not about to create undead from nothing just to test a skill in a luxury high-rise, but the tactical pattern was already clear.
The Blood Grid inspection finally settled.
Noctis opened his eyes.
The luxury apartment returned fully around him. The sunlight had shifted beyond the tinted windows, leaving the living room darker than before without needing the blackout curtains. The city continued below with no awareness of the paths inside him, the companion upgrades, the strengthened undead framework, the locked cultivation branch Gaia had likely hidden, or the other sealed path whose name made even him leave it alone. The phone rested on the coffee table beside the spare keycard and envelope. No new notification waited. Vivienne had not called. Liz had not been contacted yet because he had been spending the afternoon turning into animals, designing dragons, strengthening pets that were not present, expanding undead summons he had not yet raised, and reading sealed warnings inside his Blood Grid that no normal person would believe.
Noctis leaned forward and picked up the phone.
The device woke under his touch, and he unlocked it with fewer pauses than before. The motion was still not natural, but it no longer felt completely foreign. He opened the contacts, found Liz's name, and paused with his thumb above the screen. The keyboard appeared, small and irritatingly eager to correct him. He remembered Vivienne's instruction not to press too hard, tapped the first letters slowly, erased one mistake, and wrote the message in plain words.
Ready. St. Aurelia's. Can you meet?
He looked at it for a moment before sending. The message felt absurdly ordinary after everything he had just seen. No system warning appeared. No sealed path reacted. No divine virus struck the room. The phone simply made a small sound and placed the message into the thread beneath Liz's contact. Noctis set it back on the coffee table and leaned into the couch, letting the apartment's quiet return around him while he waited.
The reply came sooner than expected.
You better not bring another convoy of psychos this time.
Noctis stared at the message for several seconds, then typed carefully.
No promises.
The dots appeared almost immediately.
That is not comforting.
Noctis glanced toward the tinted windows, then at the sealed Blood Grid paths lingering at the back of his mind. Crimson Vessel annoyed him. Endless Hunger waited. Pet Path and Necromancy Path had become stronger in ways that would matter long after this modern trial ended. St. Aurelia's remained the next reachable problem, and compared to locked cultivation systems and sealed devourer evolution paths, an old church basement with a nervous human guide felt almost simple.
He picked up the phone again when Liz sent the meeting point and directions, and the room stayed quiet while the new route loaded.