Supreme Couple In Apocalypse: Undead King & Demonic Queen

"Sounds good. We need more power to safely and dominantly establish ourselves here until it's time to leave," Erix nodded, his eyes laced with ice-cold determination. "Let's focus on that progress in Limitless Plane until we achieve it."

Closing their eyes, they meditated for a few seconds before they entered the Limitless Plane.

However, they were immediately greeted by a familiar avatar as they arrived in the sky above the vast ocean filled with islands.

The avatar was none other than the woman who gave them the Spiritual Art, The Way of Unfettered.

Tenebria.

"You…"

Rin and Erix were startled.

"It's about time we met again," Tenebria said with an obscure smile in her obscure avatar.

Rin and Erix saw the avatar's eyes shining before a familiar item materialized before Erix.

Babin Maw Hook!

"Erix. I gave you this artifact for your benefit. It is cursed, but I am sure you will overcome it and reap the benefits. Feel its depths by using and mastering it and try to comprehend its space power."

"As for the other thing…" the woman avatar paused before turning to Rin. The woman's smile became prominent as her lips moved.

"What?" Erix couldn't hear anything, but when he looked at Rin, he was taken aback seeing her sparkling expression filled.

"It really works like that?" Rin asked, her face flushed red. In her origin region, she could feel an additional rune, an additional power.

Tenebria chuckled softly and confirmed with a nod. "Enjoy the discovery. It's time for me to depart."

At that, Tenebria's avatar disappeared.

"What were you talking about?" Erix quipped in puzzlement.

"That's a surprise~ You will know when the time comes," Rin cheekily grinned.

Erix helplessly smiled.

"Come on, I'll show you the islands I was talking about."

"It seems you've explored before."

"Yep."

…

After a while, Erix and Rin entered their own different worlds.

Erix was meditating on an island's tallest peak. The island was filled with all sorts of ore veins containing all sorts of Metal and other materials.

He was sensing all of them by spreading his consciousness, learning about them, and searching their depths. He wanted to familiarize himself with the foundation of Metal and the metal elements and comprehend their mysteries.

Of course, he could automatically learn about unique metal structures during that process as ore veins contained various metals, thus myriad ways to understand the foundation of Metal Elements in the metaphysical realm, which includes the law of Metal itself.

On the other hand, Rin was also in a similar process to deepen her understanding and achieve mastery of Lightning.

Amidst thundering clouds with blue and purple lightning dancing around, Rin floated and let herself be struck by lightning with the unlimited power accessed through using the Way of Unfettered spiritual art in the Limitless plane.

Since whatever they imagined could be achieved with the Way of Unfetterened in Limitless Plane, both Rin and Erix were using this Spiritual Art to the fullest to aid them in quenching their thirst for acquiring more power.

It didn't take long for an hour to pass in this manner as they were kicked out abruptly with their meditation breaking at once.

Both of them slumped down, their faces plastered with disappointment.

"I felt like I was so close to breaking through to the next level," Erix sighed.

"Same," Rin rotated slightly, putting her head on Erix's lap.

"We'll enter the next session right after twelve tonight."

"Okie. I'll give you a surprise before that, and that'll take three hours, so let's finish today's adventure by nine," Rin grinned and pulled Erix's cheeks. "It's going to be fun."

…

Rin and Erix left the Inn and directly went to the Hunter Guild.

After looking around the hall, they learned various things and chose three missions.

All of them were in Blood Stone Forest.

1. Collect 12x Horns of Redrock Goats. Reward: 30,000 Abyss coins.

2. Collect 60x Feathers of Bloodthirsty Chickens. Reward: 60,000 Abyss coins.

3. Collect 10x Red Mist Bloom. A type of flower. Reward: 100,000 Abyss coins.

…

While Rin and Erix were heading to the Blood Stone Forest, they were unaware of a pair of eyes following them.

Inside the Dark Queen's mansion, she sat on her dark red throne with four people standing before her.

Two middle-aged men with nervous expressions wearing merchant outfits and two young women in maid dresses.

"Lion Force guild is determined to build their post in Blood Stone Forest and have already taken over one of your Blood Stone mines in the north of the forest," said the vampire maid with a slender and tall figure with straight blond hair.

"Did they kill our people?" Dark Queen asked, her eyes coldly narrowed.

"Four dead. The rest escaped, and they didn't chase," the other maid, an elf girl looking in her late teens with a long brown ponytail, answered.

"Launch a probing attack and assess their power," Dark Queen ordered.

"Understood."

Both maids bowed and left.

"Now, you two pigs," Dark Queen coldly glanced at the two middle-aged men. One human and one dwarf. "Give me a good reason to spare you."

"Please give us one more chance. We will pay back the exact worth of your resources we smuggled."

Dark Queen coldly chuckled, "You didn't even receive the payment for things you helped smuggle out of my territory. You were caught before you could escape. So…."

"How-are-you-going-to-pay me?!"

Although Dark Queen couldn't personally hurt them because of the 10-level difference rule, she had her subordinates around their levels to do the work.

"L-Let us go and retrieve our payment. We'll give all of that to you on top of paying more."

"Yes. We can form a soul contract."

"No need to form a soul contract," Dark Queen suddenly smiled, a smile oozing out pure cruelty. "I trust you."

"Because I have the means to find you and give you the worst tortures if you don't pay me on time."

"Now, scram."

"T-Thank you for your generosity."

Both men quickly left after thanking her.

On the other hand, Dark Queen murmured something and waved her hand, causing a red-bordered cloudy screen to manifest before her.

The screen showed a forest and two individuals dancing around trees with quick and deadly attacks against a bunch of rock-scaled red goats with drilling horns.

Leaning back on her throne, Lilith silently observed Erix and Rin with a hint of amusement and interest.

'A hybrid of zombie and a human. Undead and living.'

'What do you have that broke the zombie hex and allowed you to keep your soul with such a pure undead source?'

A strange drunken expression replaced her face, her cheeks painted with red. 'A zombie, the lowest and purest of undead, merged with living...'

'Fascinating creature~ I want you and your future!'

The direction of Erix's evolution, when ascending to Royal-order, would be something never before seen because reaching Royal-order meant going through a proper bio-magical evolution of their body, and Erix would be the first Hybrid Zombie to achieve that.

Being a hybrid herself, Lilith seemed to have something in mind, an experiment, and an ambition to use another hybrid with a different nature but having partially similar factors.

Human and Zombie, Demon and Vampire. Both hybrids had one thing in common.

Zombie and Vampire were both undead-type lifeforms, but Erix was a never-before-seen hybrid!

'You will be mine!' a devilish grin, a lusty expression adopted her face as Lilith continued watching Erix.

Underneath her eccentric behavior was also a calculus that was forming a plan on how to acquire her toy.