Inside the VIP box, the heavy titanium armor plates sealed away all sound and light, locking in the acrid stench of devoured poison and an overwhelmingly oppressive aura of death.
Crash!
Through the shattered hole in the bulletproof glass, the specialized "toys"—the very instruments previously scattered at the edge of the stage to humiliate starlets and extract their lifespans—floated eerily into the room. Guided by the absolute tether of gravity, they moved as if manipulated by the invisible hands of the Grim Reaper himself.
Old Thorne slumped paralyzed on the carpet, his cloudy eyes locked onto the mechanical contraptions he knew all too well. Those cold pieces of metal and silicone, pulsing with the faint, deep-purple glow of array runes, had once been his favorite "harvesting tools." He used to love sitting on high, watching the beauties on stage be tortured to the point of breaking, all while greedily inhaling the lifespan siphoned from their bodies.
But now, these cold, mechanical maws were slowly turning toward him.
"No... Mr. Vane, I beg you! Kill me! Just kill me directly!" Old Thorne finally let out a genuinely agonizing shriek. He knew exactly how terrifying these toys, inscribed with the [Lifeforce Extraction Array], truly were. For an elderly mortal, having one's sensory nervous system forcefully stimulated while lifespan was violently extracted in reverse was the most barbaric torture conceivable in this world.
"Kill you directly?" Caspian sat on the single leather sofa, his long legs elegantly crossed. A chilling, sadistic amusement unique to a tyrant flickered in his dark golden eyes. "That would be a tragic waste of the lifespan you have stolen. Mr. Thorne, every drop of the Sovereign's assets must be thoroughly liquidated."
Caspian's gaze shifted to the trembling figure huddled in the corner.
"Hound. Come here."
Victoria shuddered. Like a well-trained dog hearing a whistle, she scrambled on her hands and knees to Caspian's feet, submissively tilting her head up.
"Your former father-in-law seems quite fond of these rules," Caspian methodically adjusted the cuffs of his obsidian suit, his voice echoing like the final judgment. "Help him maintain his dignity. Right here, in the secret room he is so proud of, use his favorite toys to let him experience the true meaning of 'ecstasy'."
Victoria's pupils dilated instantly. She looked at the old tycoon on the floor—the man who once held absolute power over the Thorne family, the man she hadn't even dared to breathe too loudly around in the past. And now, this supreme Sovereign had casually handed the scepter of execution directly to her.
An extremely twisted thrill, a cocktail of morbid excitement and absolute submission, surged through Victoria's veins.
"Yes... my Master."
Victoria stood up. Her haute couture dress was reduced to rags from the corrosive poison gas, but she couldn't care less. She walked over to the floating instruments and grabbed the thickest, longest mechanical cylinder, heavily etched with dense extraction runes.
"You bitch! You dare touch me?! Tyler was blind to ever want a whore like you..." Old Thorne cursed frantically, struggling to crawl away.
"Noisy." Caspian didn't even lift a finger; it was a mere thought.
[Gravity Lock].
Old Thorne's body was instantly slammed onto the dark red velvet sofa by a terrifying, invisible force. He was pinned spread-eagle, entirely immobilized like a dead pig on a butcher's block. Under the violent shearing force of the gravity, his custom-tailored suit disintegrated into fine dust, thoroughly exposing his sagging, age-spotted, and repulsive bare body to the cold air. The gravity even locked his jaw open, leaving him only able to let out hollow, wheezing gasps.
Her high heels clicking softly, Victoria walked up to Old Thorne. There was no more fear in her eyes—only the frenzied, vengeful thrill of watching the old hierarchy collapse.
Without a shred of hesitation, she took the cold mechanical cylinder, ruthlessly forced it into the most vulnerable depth of Old Thorne's defenseless, withered body, and cranked the array's power to its absolute maximum limit!
"AAAAAARRRRRGGGHHHH—!!!"
A shriek so horrific it no longer sounded human erupted from Old Thorne's throat.
This was not pleasure; this was the pure, unadulterated stripping of the nervous system and the violent extraction of lifeforce! Under the frantic vibration and the deep-purple glow of the array, Old Thorne's eyes bulged instantly, the bloodshot orbs practically popping out of their sockets. His face, once artificially flushed and youthful from years of feeding on stolen lifespan, began to rapidly turn ashen and hollow.
"So this is what it feels like to have your lifespan drained, Mr. Thorne," Victoria laughed morbidly. She grabbed several more clamps lined with electrified barbs, mercilessly attaching them to the most sensitive parts of his exposed flesh. "When you sat up there watching us women be tortured, did you ever imagine that one day, you would become the 'receptacle' being squeezed dry?"
Caspian leaned back into the sofa, swirling his glass of Romanée-Conti. He coldly admired this ugly, yet highly poetic, theater of karma.
In his high-dimensional vision, the dense lifeforce within Old Thorne—lifeforce that never belonged to him in the first place—was being violently drawn out by the frantic machinery. It sprayed into the air as a foul-smelling red mist, rapidly dissipating back into the ether.
Old Thorne's body convulsed violently under the extreme sensory overload and rapid aging. Clumps of his silver hair fell out. His skin wrinkled and shrank at a terrifying speed, resembling a dehydrated citrus peel. His muscles dissolved at an anti-physical rate, until the sharp outlines of his skeleton pressed starkly against his paper-thin, dried skin.
This extreme extraction lasted for five agonizing minutes.
Old Thorne's throat could no longer produce sound. His jaw hung slack, only exhaling, unable to draw breath. After enduring a torturous eternity that felt like the deepest pits of purgatory, the very last trace of his stolen lifespan, along with his rotten soul, was completely sucked dry.
Clatter.
Victoria turned off the machines and collapsed onto the floor, panting heavily, drenched in sweat.
On the sofa, the apex tycoon who once summoned wind and rain in Sancta Lodo was now reduced to a desiccated husk weighing less than thirty pounds. His face was frozen in an expression of ultimate agony and twisted despair. He died without a shred of dignity, far more pathetic than a rat in a sewer.
Caspian finished the last sip of his wine in one smooth motion.
He stood up, glancing down at the shriveled remains. There was not a single ripple of emotion in his cold voice.
"Treating the despair of others as fine wine only guarantees you will eventually drown in your own greed."
Caspian turned and walked toward the concealed door at the back of the vault.
"Victoria. Stay here and clean up this mess. Take over the security network," the Sovereign's command brooked no argument. "Elena, bring your equipment. Now, we descend to the very bottom of hell to see exactly what kind of 'cure' the Temple has prepared for me."
Before the tyrant, the heavy blast doors leading to the abyss of the eightieth floor slowly began to part.