World Seal, Ch 28: Blood Realm (Patreon)

In the Highfold Merchant District

The inn room they had taken over from a young noble was expensive and well-appointed, but Vaskel ignored it as his hands tightened on the balcony railing.

Behind him, Herug was studying the spear from the Lord of Wind and Water and trying to sharpen it with a piece of high-tier beast horn.

It didn’t do anything, but he seemed to enjoy it.

The auction was still going on at the peak, but the two assassins had retreated for the night, along with three-quarters of the attendees. The richest and most interested were still up there bidding in a fierce competition, but it was going to take a while for it to finish.

At least a couple more days.

As the auction went on, the prices should drop, but it didn’t look like it would be by much. The first win had set a standard of 50,000 elemental crystals or the equivalent.

It was an insane price, equal to a wealthy noble’s income for fifty years or more, but the Level 399s didn’t care much for wealth.

It was worth it for transcendence.

That was what people were calling it now, after the name of the hall that the High Artificer had built for the conclave.

Transcendence.

The act of breaking through the World Limit.

Vaskel felt the appeal of it in his bones. It tugged at his heart and made his hands grip the ironwork railing more tightly until his knuckles turned white.

“What if we transcended?” he asked Herug without turning his head. “What would our future be?”

“Tomorrow when the bidding is slower, it will be time to strike.” Herug said, ignoring the question. He was focused only on the spear in his hands as he continued.

“When someone wins an auction, they go up to see the High Artificer to be granted freedom. That will be our moment.”

He ran the beast horn over the blade of the spear, rubbing at a mark that was set into the metal.

“Do you really think that spear is going to be enough?” Vaskel’s tone was doubtful.

“Yes,” Herug said, the word full of certainty.

“It doesn’t even look like anything,” Vaskel muttered as he studied the spear and then turned back to look at the view of Highhold in front of him.

“I can feel the times are changing for this world. Perhaps there is another path. It won’t be long now until everything we know shifts into a new future. There has never been anyone like the High Artificer in the world before. His presence changes things. He can remake the world.”

“There are still things to prepare,” Herug said, his eyes half-focused as he continued polishing the artifact. “Help me with this spear. Feed it your mana. It has already drained mine. It feels insatiable.”

“This is not a good idea,” Vaskel said, ignoring the request as he continued to look out. “The lord didn’t say anything about feeding it. That makes it sound alive.”

The city was alive and the thoughts of breaking through the World Limit and exploring the vast reaches of the Void filled his mind. The High Artificer’s images were dancing there, showing him things he’d never considered.

“Didn’t you feel his power?” he asked suddenly. “How can we defeat him? He’s beyond us in every way.”

“We will complete our mission,” Herug growled. “Your doubts are unbecoming of an assassin and of someone at the World Limit. Didn’t you set them aside when you were an apprentice?”

“Completing our mission is one thing, but if it’s impossible, we need to alert the Lord of Wind and Water,” Vaskel argued. “There’s no point in dying here. When a mark doesn’t fit the information, you revise the plan.”

“On that, I agree,” Herug said, his words becoming calm, “but there is one thing that you’re forgetting.”

“What’s that?” Vaskel asked with surprise. Before he could turn around, a sudden shift of the breeze made him flinch.

Then the explosive pain of something tearing through his chest cut off his words. Blood erupted from his mouth as his lungs and heart were shredded by a quick twist and a second stab.

He tried to reach out and grab the railing again, but his hands wouldn’t respond.

He looked down to see a black metal spear protruding in front of him. The symbols along its length glowed darkly as they absorbed his blood and mana.

He tried to grasp at the balcony rail, but his hands were too weak to hold his weight and blood was running down his arms. His grip slid off as he fell to the ground.

As the light in his eyes faded, his gaze was fixed on the distant peaks of Highfold and the moons in the sky, which seemed to draw farther away as his heart gave its final beat.

“There is no need for two assassins,” Herug said gruffly as he pulled the spear back. “Then we would have to win two auctions instead of one.”

He began to clean the spear with a rag, but it wasn’t necessary. The blood was disappearing like a fog into the interior of the shaft as the runes shone more brightly.

“There is only one path ahead of us,” he said to the body on the floor as he returned to polishing the spear. “The path of death.”

***

At the Hall of Transcendence.

People came up to Sam one by one. They handed over the price for the auction and he released them.

Pillars of silver light and the trumpets of the Sky Guard marked the sky with each departure.

Most of them chose to head to the Void immediately, to explore it on their own before they decided if they wanted to break through or return.

Now that they were free of the World Limit, they had a choice again, and they planned to make the most of it.

From the speed things were going, it looked like it would take the rest of the night and perhaps all of tomorrow to get through the rest of the releases he had.

The bidding was intense.

The price had mostly stabilized after the first dozen, but it was marked by old rivalries between the transcenders. There were surprises where it suddenly jumped in a fit of emotion between two rivals.

It had a good result, but the next time he did this, he would set a price and see who matched it, rather than letting them bid one by one.

The attendees had already figured out who had the most money and the top ones had made a silent agreement about how much they wanted to pay. It was a steep price, but nothing they couldn’t afford.

It would probably change up a little as the slots began to run out, but at the moment, it was in a steady range of around 50,000 elemental crystals.

Sometimes artifacts were handed over instead and Sam had to evaluate them for an appropriate price, which was the most interesting part.

He’d set a requirement for interesting and powerful artifacts and the transcenders were living up to their reputation.

Quite a few were Outsider artifacts and others were Third Evolution ones. There were even strange fragments from Breakings that were hard to identify, some with runes and others that looked like raw materials from the Outsiders’ galaxy.

He even saw chunks of what had to be invasion outposts that reminded him of the ones he’d destroyed near Alora’s homeworld.

Most of the artifacts were broken, especially the Outsider ones, but that didn’t bother him. He could see the enchantment structures that remained and that gave him almost as much information as a working artifact would.

There was also a large amount of rare ores and other crafting materials, which he sent to the relic’s treasury and other appropriate places. They would support the crafters’ growth and outfit their guards.

A lot of this material was too low of a level for it to be used directly for the relic itself, but it would go very well on the secondary areas and to their allies, including to the dwarves who were working to repair the buildings and other living spaces of the relic, like the farms.

The elemental crystals could be infused into the relic directly once he refined them. They would go a long way to repairing the elemental pylons and other energy pools.

Several of his avatars were hard at work doing that as the auction continued.

As the night drew toward the early hours of the morning, he began to pay less attention to the auction. Instead, he was studying the red realm inside the World Seal that the two Voidborn had brought him to.

Khaes and Yeria had finally reached their destination.

He wasn’t sure what they were planning by heading there, but they paused just outside of it.

Its border looked like a giant wall made of liquid blood shadows. Chaotic energy from the seal surrounded it like mist, making it seem as if the wall had no beginning or end.

His two avatars that were following them hung back as they studied the area, checking for traps.

Whatever they were up to, it was probably a bad idea to let them do it.

From the way they’d stopped, it didn’t seem like they planned to enter this place themselves. They were waiting just outside of the wall.

It was an enormous thing, hundreds of feet tall and miles long, but it was difficult to tell where it ended. It was partially obscured by the chaotic energy of the World Seal, and some enchantment on it made it foggy even in Sam’s senses.

It was some type of realm wall that separated an internal space from the World Seal, but there was no record of it in the information he had.

He wasn’t sure what was inside, but the energy in it was similar to the essence from the Path of Blood, the same as Khaes.

That didn’t bode well.

He began to swiftly construct a containment enchantment out of dimensional fragments. His two avatars worked together to weave it into a giant sphere.

If these two didn’t move on soon, he was planning to trap them in it.

Then he would fish them out of this area to a place where it was safer to deal with them.

His actions didn’t go unnoticed.

Khaes sent a dark smile back toward the avatars and then he held out his hand toward the red wall.

A quick slash of his talons across his palm sent blood flying outward in a spray that landed on the barrier.

As soon as it struck the wall, it was absorbed into it with a hiss of bubbling essence.

Then the wall began to boil.

Rippling currents of blood appeared, twisting through the massive structure.

Next to him, Yeria looked nervous and backed away.

The wall began to bulge outward and then jagged finger tips pierced through from the other side. They turned into skeletal hands that bent inward and gouged an opening in the side.

Their progress was slow, as if the wall was fighting against the change, but after a short while, they ripped open a jagged hole.

They seized the edges and held it open. Then the finger bones melted and reformed into a circular bone frame around the opening, reinforcing it so that it couldn’t close again.

They’d created a gate.

From Sam’s perspective, it wasn’t possible to see what was inside, but a red wind flowed out and resolved into a masculine figure.

He was made entirely of blood and swirling mist, and his features were partially indistinct, but he was wearing a set of archaic armor and a long red cloak that billowed in the wind.

His shoulders were broad and the edges of his armor were jagged with spikes. A large red sword was sheathed across his back at an angle, its hilt pointing up over his left shoulder.

His features didn’t have the same level of detail as a living man. He was made only of blood hardened into smooth planes and sharp edges, like he was carved out of bloody ice, but it was still possible to see proud cheekbones and sharp eyes.

The only part of him that wasn’t made of blood was his hands, which looked exactly like the skeletal ones that had come out of the wall. In Sam’s eyes, intricate white runes floated around them, burning with the power of laws.

They had to be some type of artifact weapons.

The figure was some type of blood avatar, a projection or memory of the real being.

Even in this form, however, he was utterly familiar. His posture, the blood energy, the stance…

It was all exactly the same as the Demon of Blood had walked out of the Nexus in Sam’s memories.

As if that wasn’t enough, the power of the Sixth Evolution raged around him, making the chaotic energy of the World Seal bend like a vortex had suddenly appeared.

It was only a fraction of what it would have been if the real Demon was here, but it was enough that it felt like Sam’s avatar was utterly insignificant, as if the being’s mere presence was enough to crush him out of existence.

The wall behind the avatar rippled as it was drawn toward him and then pressed away again by the force of his aura.

It was beating in time with his heart.

He was the first Sixth Evolution being that Sam had seen in person, or at least the avatar of one.

His memories held some impressions of Sixth Evolution Titans, but it was harder to get a feeling of power from those. The power of this avatar was far above his own.

It also made it clear what the divisions were between the higher evolutions.

The Fourth Evolution focused on merging your power into a singular concept.

The Fifth was about turning your concept into a complete Domain of Law, which overlapped with the Fourth Star for him.

The sixth was about Truth.

It was becoming part of natural power on a higher level. This avatar was a Truth of Blood.

He didn’t know which one, but from the feeling he was getting, it felt like it was something as essential as “Blood is Power.”

There was no denying the power of the avatar as he looked at it.

The demon looked at Khaes, who was bowing low in front of him, and then at Yeria.

“Khaes, my old general,” he said slowly. His voice was a shifting blade of power that pressed at Sam’s mind, but it was also authoritative and elegant. “You have finally come to pay your respects to your lord?”

His hand lashed out, slicing across Khaes’s chest with his bony talons. His robe was shredded as five furrows of blood were torn through his skin.

The Outsider staggered and let out a short cry, but he didn’t try to evade. As soon as he stabilized himself, he bowed again and stayed that way, refusing to lift his head.

The blood left his chest in streams of energy that flowed toward the avatar and sank into him.

The avatar let out a growl of satisfaction as he rolled his shoulders. The color of his body became richer, shining with new force.

“Your offering is accepted,” he announced. “It has been a long time since I last absorbed fresh blood, especially from a Fifth Evolution being. But you should have come before. You were always too independent as a commander. I will consider your punishment. Wait to the side.”

Then he looked across the distance at Sam.

He’d clearly noticed him before, but he’d waited until he absorbed the blood to pay attention.

It felt like a power play, as if he’d wanted Sam to see it.

“So this is why you’ve come here?” he asked as Khaes and Yeria moved away to his left. “You’re being chased by an Astral Titan and you can’t handle him yourself? Even with your offering, it will be difficult unless he comes into my realm. The Titans were always the most difficult of our enemies.”

“He has more forms than this, my lord,” Khaes said as he bowed his head. “Alone, I could destroy those two avatars, but he has at least six more,and one of them is twice as strong as the others. That is why I brought him here. Your avatar might benefit by absorbing them.”

“Eight avatars?” There was a note of surprise in the demon’s tone. “Now I am interested. You did well. I will reduce your punishment by half. The other half is because you brought a problem to my door...and because you’re trying to use me for your own gain.”

He flexed his skeletal hands as he looked back at Sam.

“It took a lot of effort for me to carve this place away from the World Seal, and that was with my true body. This is only an avatar I left behind in the war to guard this place. But even so, it will be enough to deal with one Titan who’s only at the Fourth Evolution.”

A swirling force of blood swept through the area around him, making the wall shudder.

The curve of a dangerous smile crossed the avatar’s lips. It was eerie to see it on those half-blank features. It made Sam wonder if the lack of detail was a choice, rather than a requirement.

A deep laugh echoed from the avatar. It was a strangely pleasant sound.

“A Fourth Evolution Titan...this is the most interesting thing I’ve seen in ages, almost since I was stuck here. In fact, it’s only the second event that really makes this stay worthwhile, ever since my main body was sealed away.”

A wave of killing intent flowed across the space.

“I have ages of experience with avatars,” he said, his attention fixed on Sam. “As long as that one is connected to you by blood, you fall within my domain. You are already mine, even if you don’t know it yet. I will seize your avatar and then consume you. You will not be able to escape.”

There was a tone of absolute certainty in his words.

Sam could feel the avatar’s power locking down this area of the World Seal. It was also trying to seal his movements.

His own domain was fighting against it, but the power his avatars had to use for that battle was limited.

There was a chance that his main body could extract these avatars if he used the teleportation lock from Portal. It was designed to break through most locks.

Destroying these avatars was also a possibility.

Right now, however, the danger his avatars were in was less important to him than getting more information.

He hadn’t known this avatar was down here or that this realm existed in the World Seal.

It had to be a subdimension that the Demon of Blood had created and used as a base for his invasion of Aster Fall. When the World Seal was created, it must’ve been trapped inside.

That had happened with many of the subdimensions near Aster Fall, both natural and artificial.

He’d encountered something similar once already with the Passion Gate, which had connected to a subdimension full of the Demon of Passion’s old followers. The entrance had collapsed before he’d been able to explore it more fully.

It was probably still out there somewhere inside the Seal, the same as this one. There might even be more of them around somewhere, hiding like traps left over from the war.

“I’ve seen a lot of Titans at the Fifth Evolution, but I’ve never met one at the Fourth,” the Demon of Blood continued. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry to kill Sam.

“The Titans always had their own unique path to power, but that is interesting. Also, you feel young...your essence is still hot and fierce.”

He paused as he studied Sam, his eyes swirling into liquid vortices. Then a trace of astonishment flashed across his face, making even his indistinct features jump.

“Impossible!” he shouted suddenly. “How do you have a trace of Shattered Skies’ bloodline? I can sense it in you!”

His skeletal hand lashed out, crossing the distance before Sam could even blink, and wrapped completely around one of his avatars.

Size didn’t matter in the face of that grasp. His hand held a power that was large enough to force space to bend around it.

He dragged Sam’s avatar back toward him, holding him in front of his face as he studied him. He drew in a long breath, pulling Sam’s scent into his nose. “There is no way to merge our bloodlines,” he growled as his grip tightened, drawing streams of starlight from the edge of the avatar. “I know that better than anyone! I tried many times to experiment with blood fusion between our races, but the Titans’ bloodline is just as domineering as ours. It does not accept mergers.

“The only time a merger between one of our core bloodlines and one from this realm was possible was in that project…the child who betrayed us. Asenya should have been one of us, but she sided with you.

“But you...you are a pureblooded Titan. I can sense that in you as clear as the essence in your heart, but you smell like Shattered Skies...you are definitely related to her.”

He froze as a flash of understanding seemed to hit him.

“It is impossible, but there’s one way it could happen,” he said suddenly, his attention locked on Sam. “Chaos rules all. It breaks all bounds, reshapes the past and future, shatters the known and unknown, mixing them like dreams. It is the gift of potential that makes the impossible serve it. You could only be like this if you inherited the spark of divine chaos she was carrying.”

The way he looked at Sam suddenly seemed like he wanted to swallow him whole. His red fangs were bared.

Thoughts tumbled through Sam’s mind as he put together all the possibilities for escape. He was on the verge of destroying his avatars, but his attention wasn’t fixed on the Demon of Blood any longer.

He was staring into the portal behind him instead.

Because at that moment when the avatar dragged him over, there had finally been a reaction from the tracking artifact in his hand.

A pulse of Asenya’s bloodline was coming from the gate.

It was a weak signal, but it was there.

Somewhere inside, she was alive.