16 Empress Hailyn of Regarus

The sun rises, its radiant shine entered the dark room where a black coffin lay. As the rays of light touched the lid of the black coffin, the coffin's lid slowly opened. Inside the coffin is a handsome, slightly pale youth with black hair. When the lid fully opens, the youth opened his blood red eyes and he pulled up his back to sit.

While he sat, he felt a little tired. Most likely due to sleeping for around 12 hours straight made him want to sleep more. Suddenly a notification from Hailyn rang in his head. In Hailyn's joyful voice it spoke, "Master, I've defeated the remaining monster king. I'm officially the empress of Regarus forest and I managed to reached Immortal-7 rank just like you Master!" He's surprised at Hailyn's joyful tone, she usually used near emotionless tones when talking but still managed to make it look normal with her smile.

He spoke to her through the link and gave her a simple congrats. She is currently at the teleportation tower she is building. The tower had a polished stone dome as its roof, the walls are made of hard, ancient wood that he had never seen before, forming the tower's tall cylindrical shape. There are many stone gates with near transparent images of their respective destinations on the wall. There are circular wooden balconies every 2.5m from the last or the floor. Each floor can be reached through wooden stairs situated on the east quadrant of the tower, one stair with 12 steps on each floor.

Each floor had a total of 26 portals except for the first and last which only had 24, 25 gates respectively. The gates are wide enough to allow 7 people to enter at once without having to touch each other involuntarily. Hailyn was standing near the tower's center at its bottom floor. She looked up towards the upper floors while communicating with her master. After remembering that she had conquered Regarus forest, she thought of an ambitious plan. She kept it hidden for now and gave back a simple thank you to him.

He noticed that she hid something after thinking of it immediately. Out of curiosity, he peered into her thoughts secretly and what he found is something of greatness and revealed a very interested expression. Hailyn took notice of this and mentally replied shyly, "You saw it didn't you master. Is it too ambitious?" Sebastian smiled sweetly and shooked his head. He replied in an encouraging tone, "No Hailyn. Your plan is amazing, even I didn't think about it at all. Adding monsters as a member of society may be hard and ambitious but it has an unlimited potential." Hailyn's eyes sparkled and happily replied, "What? Even I didn't think it would have that much potential. I thought that it would just make things better."

After receiving the feedback from her master, she decided to aim for the monster integration plan and conquer most of the non human areas within Agareth kingdom. Sebastian only smiled at her servant's new plan and felt that he started to care about her. After the conversation, he lazily stood up and walked out of the coffin. He did some rounds of exercise before heading downstairs. He walked around the castle to the library, he wanted to slay another eternal monster so he could reach immortal rank-8 within this week. He wanted to appear as an invaluable ally for the royal family by showcasing his combat rank on their visit.

When they see that his rank is 7 ranks higher than their strongest man, the general, they would immediately promote him to a duke or even give him their full support on his actions. An Immortal rank-8 is the average rank for the emperors who rule an empire. With someone that strong on their side, they would surely want to do anything to keep Sebastian close to them. This would be a stepping stone to the creation of his kingdom.

As he entered the library, he found a succubus maid flying around the room with her small devil wings, sorting out the books and dusting. She had long, straight black hair and deep blue eyes. Unlike Lilith, her face is mostly innocent and had some similarities to Theresa. All succubi are beautiful for all humanoid races, if they are to be ranked in beauty, most of them would qualify being a model even without makeup. She looked down and noticed the handsome black haired youth with red eyes clad in black.

Upon noticing, she immediately flew down to the stairways in front of him and bowed. She greeted him in a young, sweet voice, "Welcome Lord Sebastian, I have cleaned and managed this library recently. If my Lord needs anything, please tell me and I will get if for you immediately." He flashed her a smile and walked past her towards the rack of books. He searched for the rack that had the words 'Monster Distribution List' inscribed on it in bold. Seeing that her master is searching for something, she rushed to help.

However, she stopped midair after finding her master disappear and reappear with a book on his hand at one of the circular balconies above. She resumed to looking for things to clean and when she found nothing to clean, she took out a book and read, increasing her knowledge. While reading a book on eternal monsters, he discovered that there are other eternals in the kingdom, however they were few and far between. Else than the Tyrant Beast King, there are only 3 other eternal ranked monsters in the kingdom.

The first is the elusive Sacred Griffin, it is an evolved monster of the Eternal-3 rank. Evolved monsters are monsters that have awakened the bloodlines within them that are gained through their ancestry. There are many bloodlines, older bloodlines are far stronger than younger bloodlines. Triple or Tetra mutation may naturally trigger an evolution. The Sacred Griffin is a triple mutated monster that had awakened the Cherubim Beast bloodline, a powerful ancient bloodline. Based on its mutation and blood line, it should be an Eternal-3 ranked powerhouse with the power of a mutated Eternal-6 rank.

The second is the powerful Metallic Earth Dragon, it is also an evolved monster but of a higher degree of evolution. It had awakened the Draconic bloodline and the Earth Titan bloodline. It's rank is of Eternal-6 and it is a tetra mutated monster. Its strength is already beyond his reach so he immediately turned to the next page.

The third remaining eternal within the kingdom is theKeratin Armored Tarrasque. It is the only non evolved monster within the list but it's a double mutated of the Eternal-5 rank. With its double mutation it should be a stronger Eternal-6 rank. After assessing his strength after his elevation, gaining new skills and inheritance from the Tyrant Beast King, he should only be able to defeat a single mutated Eternal-4 rank. Since none of the Eternal monsters here are able to be defeated by him, he placed the book back into the shelf and drew out another book on immortal rank monsters.

He filtered them so that only Immortal-9 and Immortal-10 ranks would appear. Then, he filtered them further with only triple mutated and above. Finally, he filtered them to only show ones with an awakened bloodline. From the 159 Immortal-9 and 10 monsters within the kingdom, only 2 of them qualified for the filter. The first one is the Blackwater Serpent, an Immortal-10 rank triple mutated monster with the Abyssal Boa bloodline. The second is the Shadowfire Phoenix, an Immortal-9 rank triple mutated monster with the Dark Immortal Phoenix bloodline.

The Blackwater Serpent had a total combat strength of an Eternal-2 rank, he won't have to use his berserk skill to kill it quickly. While the Shadowfire Phoenix only had a total combat strength of an Eternal-1 rank. He chose the phoenix without hesitation due to its close location. The phoenix had its own nest in the eastern region of Regarus forest. Killing it is a quick rank up because before his elevation, he had managed to kill the Tyrant Beast King whose power almost reached the Eternal-3 threshold. With the 3 new skills, he should be capable of combatting an Eternal-3 rank and a weak Eternal-4 rank with his berserk skill.

The Shadowfire Phoenix can inherit 3 skills, 1 passive while the rest are active skills.

• Flaming Form

Effect: User has a 10% chance to absorb fire and use it to heal the user by 40% of the fire's power.

• Brimstone Shower

Effect: Summon 3 waves of 7-11 fireballs with a radius of 6-15m over an area. Each fireball explodes 3 times its size and each will deal 150% fire damage on impact.

Channeling Time: 4 seconds

Cooldown: 8 minutes

Duration: 9 seconds

• Flame Spirit

Effect: Summon a flame spirit with 65% of the user's attributes and abilities and 150% of the user's health and attack to fight. Only one spirit max.

Channeling Time: None

Cooldown: 5 minutes

Duration: Until spirit dies.

He evaluated these skills and found all of them to be quite decent. As he did not want to waste much time being a picky cultivator, he immediately exited the room and flew towards the east region of the dense, dark forest. As he flies through the forest, he noticed that the monsters no longer eyed him with their glowing red eyes, waiting to strike. He noticed that they all seemed to ignore him as if he is a fellow monster. While figuring out what caused this oddity, he recalled that Hailyn said that she had conquered the forest, all of the kings were defeated by her.

Since she is a non-human, she was easily accepted as their new uncontested ruler. Thus making her the empress of Regarus forest. With their mind link, she would've known that Sebastian is going out to elevate his rank and would have commanded all the monsters to ignore him or treat him like a fellow inhabitant of the forest. The phoenix's nest is only a 10 minute flight at Mach 1 speed, he was able to notice this oddity by using his massively enhanced senses due to being a vampire.

The Shadowfire Phoenix nested atop a large stone hill. There were no trees or grass on it, only glowing dark purple embers, bones of various creatures and ashes. The phoenix is sleeping peacefully, its slow breaths releasing embers of shadowfire. As it seems to be in a deep sleep, it's a perfect opportunity to kill it in one blow. With his normal attack being able to easily injure mutated Eternal-2 ranks, he could just send a few hits to end it. However, he planned to use eternal death on it so it could become its phantom, the phantoms he gained could be useful in the future to fight against other monsters or decimate enemy attacks.

Although phantoms cannot get stronger, they could be fed to summoning monsters or his servants to increase their rank once they have become obsolete. He activated Curse of Wrath, all of his attributes and abilities increasing to that of a mutated Eternal-4 rank for 46 seconds. He turned into a black flash and used Eternal Death upon making contact with the monster's dark feathers. The monster opened its eyes for a split second before noticing that it had died in a flash. The monster's purplish black aura began to surge towards Sebastian and in a minute's time, all of it had been absorbed into Sebastian.

A blood red aura emanated from him immediately after, the aura started to grow until it met its climax after expanding to a 6m radius and shrinked rapidly until it disappeared. A notification rang inside his head congratulating him for reaching Immortal-8 rank. Another notification rang and congratulated him for killing a monster in one hit, gaining him a 99% inheritance and all three skills. After this upgrade, he could now challenge mutated Eternal-3 ranked monsters. As the skills finished their integration to him, a mysterious notification appeared on his head.