Everyone watched the tragic scene unfold, father and son, locked in a final, fatal embrace.
Mario let out a long breath.
"Clean it up."
He paused, noticing Nyssa struggling to her feet in the corner. He remembered her final wish from the original story timeline.
"Let her turn to ash under the sun. It's what she wanted."
With that, he turned and walked away. Behind him came the dense thwick-thwick-thwick of crossbows firing in unison. Both the surviving vampires and Nomak were pierced by countless bolts, their bodies erupting into flames before crumbling to ash.
When he emerged from the chamber, he found a group of people waiting in matching gray uniforms. Upon seeing him, they all nodded in acknowledgment.
He smiled and greeted them warmly.
"Clean this place thoroughly. Don't leave anything valuable behind. I want every inch scanned with metal detectors. These bloodsuckers loved hiding their treasures."
The group responded with enthusiasm. "Yes!"
They immediately began sweeping through the fortress, searching for anything of value.
Watching them work, his lips curved into a smile. All recovered assets would be split, part kept as the Association's operational funds, the rest distributed among members based on contribution. He'd made sure none of his vampire hunters would end up like Spider-Man, broke despite their heroics.
As he liked to say: "You can't fight vampires on an empty stomach and an empty wallet."
At the fortress entrance, several alert vampire hunters stood guard. Most were in stealth mode, without his mini-map, even he would have had trouble spotting them.
Footsteps echoed behind him.
Mario didn't need to turn around. Only one person made that sound tonight.
"All cleaned up?" Blade asked.
"Yeah. Just Nyssa left. You know, if I hadn't interfered, she would have fallen for you. But she still would have died in your arms in the end."
He grinned mischievously. "Want to keep her alive? Don't worry, I won't tell Karen."
Blade froze for a moment. He'd only met Nyssa once, during the truce negotiations. Mario's teasing left him silent for several seconds before responding.
"Don't be so childish. And when you're recording video, could you not shove your phone right in my face?"
Blade stepped out of his armor, looking exasperated. "Nyssa asked me to thank you. I could feel it... her heart's already dead."
Mario nodded silently, and looked toward the sky, which was beginning to pale with approaching dawn.
"I'm leaving this to you. If anything happens, call me. If I'm not available, contact Anna, the company security team is fully operational now."
---
After several transfers through his Nether highway system, Mario finally made it home. He collapsed onto the couch and pulled out the Darkhold, flipping through its pages. Still blank.
"Some legendary artifact this turned out to be. It can't even shoot a laser beam like an Infinity Stone. At least those do something flashy when you use them. This book doesn't even react."
The Darkhold was tossed onto the coffee table like yesterday's newspaper. He leaned back, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling.
If the book could talk, it would probably be screaming: "Just you wait, try not picking me up again later!"
But the "law of inevitability" was universal across all dimensions.
Three minutes later, Mario stood up, grabbed the Darkhold, tossed it into his inventory, and walked toward the Twilight Forest portal.
By now, he'd collected roughly 80% of all available spells. The remaining ones were significantly more difficult to acquire. This time, he planned to thoroughly loot the Twilight Forest's remaining treasure chests. Staring at the portal, he jumped through without hesitation. The familiar disorientation lasted only a moment before he emerged into the twilight of the dimension.
He pulled out his hover platform, and consulted his magic map. His targets were either the Dark Tower or the Labyrinth, both of which contained numerous treasure chests.
"All the nearby ruins have been cleared out. Looks like I need to venture further this time."
In the distance, a massive tower loomed above the dark forest, the domain of the Ur-Ghast.
As Mario flew closer, elite monsters began appearing on his mini-map. Long health bars covered with modifier text floated through the forest below.
"Regeneration, Fortified, Thorns... what a pain in the ass. Low DPS players would spend all day just scratching these things."
Fortunately, he was flying well above them. Otherwise, he'd waste the entire expedition just clearing trash mobs.
Soon he reached the base of the Dark Tower. He jumped down from his platform and surveyed the structure. He'd cleared this dungeon once before, so there was no need to find the main entrance or break any magical seals.
He pulled out an axe and started hacking directly into the tower wall. He wasn't here to fight bosses, he was here to loot treasure chests, which meant getting inside as quickly as possible.
"These tower wood planks are ridiculously hard. I should've upgraded the axe first."
He had primarily upgraded his weapons, armor, and pickaxe. He'd never bothered crafting a proper axe. Chopping through two tower wood planks with his minotaur axe took nearly as long as mining obsidian with a regular diamond pickaxe.
After finally breaking through into the dark interior, he found himself surrounded by pitch blackness. Only the faint red outlines of mob health bars drifted through the shadows.
He swallowed hard, peering into the gloom. "Why are there so many monsters in here?"
ROAR!
A loud bellow erupted from the darkness. In the next instant, a massive figure lunged straight at him.
WHAM!
A pair of enormous hands slammed into his chest, sending him flying backward. As he hit the ground and rolled, he finally caught sight of the creature, a hulking, green, Hulk-like zombie at least four meters tall.
"A Mutant Zombie?!"
His reaction was pure muscle memory. Shield up, crouch. That defensive stance had been drilled into him through countless beatings.
BANG!
The Mutant Zombie's fists crashed down again. Mario's combat shield had already been shattered, mutant creatures had shield-breaking abilities.
But with his 200 helath points, he could actually go toe-to-toe with this thing.
"What a wonderful surprise right from the start!"
He pulled out a handful of throwing darts.
Thwick-thwick-thwick!
The darts fell like rain, and the creature's health bar dropped rapidly.
"Is that all you got?"
The moment he finished trash-talking, Mario's body was suddenly yanked into the air against his will. The Mutant Zombie leapt up after him with terrifying speed.
This was the creature's special ability, Throw Attack. When you got too close, it would grab you, hurl you skyward, then jump up and slam you into the ground for massive damage. Shield blocking resulted in the shield being destroyed.
Mario hit the ground even faster than he'd been thrown up, creating a small crater on impact.
Mutant creatures really are dangerous. If it weren't for the mod increasing my max HP, that one hit could've one-shot anyone without full diamond armor.
He smirked. There's no "what if" in life.
Rumble...
Rain began falling from above. Standing in the downpour, he faced the Mutant Zombie and hurled more darts. This time, he maintained a safe distance to avoid getting grabbed again.
A few seconds later, the Mutant Zombie collapsed.
Mario exhaled in relief. The fight hadn't been too difficult, but facing a four-meter-tall monster was still intimidating.
With a final roar, the creature fell face-down, but didn't dissolve into smoke like normal mobs.
Seeing this, he searched his inventory. "Flint and steel! Where's my flint and steel?!"
Sometimes human eyesight was a complete mystery. He knew he had flint somewhere, but couldn't find it in the heat of the moment.
ROAR!
"Damn it!"
He stopped searching. The zombie that had been lying motionless was already climbing back to its feet.
Mutant Zombies had to be burned quickly with flint and steel after they fell, or they'd resurrect after a short cooldown period.
This time, the creature used a new ability. With a furious roar, it summoned a horde of regular zombies, but these summoned mobs were granted elite status, their health bars showing various modifier buffs.
His vision suddenly went dark, restricted to barely a meter of visibility.
That was one of the elite monsters' abilities: Darkness.
He switched to full scatter-shot mode, wildly flinging boomerangs in every direction.
With over 30 attack power, any normal zombie that got hit died instantly. Even elite zombies couldn't withstand more than four hits.
Urgh...
That familiar death groan. The massive Mutant Zombie collapsed once more. This time, he didn't bother looking for flint. The creature could revive up to four times anyway, not too hard to handle once you knew the mechanics.
After another fifteen minutes of combat, the Mutant Zombie fell for the final time. Its body slowly turned transparent and vanished, dropping loot.
He pulled out a golden carrot and bit into it, crunching loudly while his hunger bar refilled.
"One Mutant Zombie was this much trouble. I definitely need to upgrade my weapons again. When am I getting the Equivalent Exchange or Draconic Evolution mods?"
Once his hunger bar was maxed, he drew his wand and headed deeper into the Dark Tower.
Inside, darkness reigned supreme.
He waved the wand, and a swarm of tiny, fairy-like creatures materialized around him.
[Vex Swarm:
Tier: Advanced
Element: Sorcery
Mana Cost: 50
Effect: Summons 5 flying Vexes to fight for you. They last 30 seconds if not killed and are immune to fire.]
He kept swinging his wand, and wave after wave of vexes surged into the darkness ahead.
"Let's see how you like getting mobbed for once."
The vexes might have been small, but their attacks were vicious. Within moments, the entire tower echoed with the screams of dying monsters.
Mario also summoned a moonworm queen, which shot out glowing larvae that stuck to walls, providing faint illumination.
"The lighting's pretty useless now..."
The worms were great for caves or small rooms, but in the vast Dark Tower, their glow barely made a dent in the oppressive darkness. Before long, the monsters inside were completely annihilated by the relentless swarm of vexes.
He occasionally summoned fresh batches to clear the way, and soon reached the location of the first treasure chest.
Opening chests always gave him that loot-box thrill, that gambling rush of not knowing what he'd find.
"Come on, come on... Black Hole! Give me Black Hole!"
Creaaak.
Inside the chest, he found some Twilight Forest-exclusive items and a few Thaumcraft trinkets, but no spell book.
"Seriously? How hard is it to get just one Black Hole spell?"
He pulled out a blue shulker box and stuffed everything inside, and true to his frugal nature, the chest itself after breaking it down.
He continued climbing higher, opening chest after chest. He collected plenty of spell books, but none were the ones he actually wanted. After navigating floor after floor of the labyrinth, he finally reached the boss chamber at the very top.
As he stepped onto the highest level, a shrill, piercing screech echoed from above. He looked up and saw a massive Ur-Ghast.
Regular ghasts were already huge, but compared to this boss, they looked like babies.
Three enormous fireballs erupted from the Ur-Ghast's mouth, flying straight toward him. Unlike regular ghast fireballs, these couldn't be deflected. He dodged aside quickly and swung his wand. Shards of ice and snow filled the air.
The Ur-Ghast howled in pain, and two enormous, cartoonish tears rolled down its face. Beneath it, countless tiny droplets began falling from the air like rain.
The dense barrage was impossible to completely avoid, but thankfully, the damage wasn't too severe for his upgraded armor.
From one of the nearby trap rooms, the sounds of other ghasts echoed. His eyes lit up, and he sprinted toward it.
"Time to farm mini-ghasts!"
The Carminite Reactor would randomly summon several mini ghasts in one of the four rooms atop the tower. The Ur-Ghast could absorb them to restore its health.
Once the boss lost significant health, it would gain massive resistance to further attacks. The only way to break that resistance was to use the trap rooms to lure it down from the air, that's when its defenses would vanish.