RD 2 Ch 8 (Patreon)

Chapter 8

The ancient beasts were mostly legends. The legend went that once the worlds were forming and in their infancy, demons tried to invade and infect the worlds before they were fully formed.

Beasts who had lived in the universe prior to that came out of every corner, devouring and destroying demons to protect the worlds. However, there weren’t enough of them. They were few in number and the tide of demons was never ending.

Thus, the ancients beasts spread their blood with the battles far and wide.

That blood seeded each of the growing worlds with additional strength for the inhabitants of the planets to resist the demon horde in the future.

On Earth, five ancient beasts remained until the end protecting this world, one for each of the Clans.

Though, only their spirits survived.

My cynical thoughts were that perhaps they died during the war and their spirits took shelter here.

While there was good that had come from them, the ancient beasts were notoriously selfish.

I had only seen one in passing in my past life. And that was just a spirit, yet the destruction it caused was unlike anything I’d seen before or after.

So I could not help but use my Soul Gaze to track the dark red form as it swam through the air like a sea serpent.

There was a rumble that I quickly realized was it humming to itself as it came down towards the two blood pools.

The giant soul circled overhead and my jaw dropped. I didn’t even look at its stats.

The ancient beast above me was using an illusion of a giant red dragon. In actuality the beast was a giant leech. A maw filled with needle sharp teeth undulated as it hovered over the pools of blood. Multiple more mouths opened along its side like it was tasting the air.

“More.” It said eagerly. “More of my blood.”

I felt my own blood shift as it drew in breath. My Soul Gaze shifted to myself, piercing the talismans on me. I looked at my bloodline as the words changed.

Heros Bloodline was removed and behind it was Golden Titan Bloodline SSS.

What?! My bloodline was something so incredible? This whole time in this life and the past one I had a SSS ranked bloodline hidden by the Heros Clan?!

I was instantly spitting mad because a second later the bloodline vanished as the giant leech sucked a thread of blood from each of us that went into the many mouths of the leech. I wanted to shout and scream for it to give me my bloodline back, but the pressure on my body was so intense I couldn’t even do that.

This stupid leech. I was going to squeeze it for all it was worth and make it give me my bloodline back.

The pressure vanished for a moment as the leech slipped into Zane’s body.

I peeked open my eyes, but everyone else was unconscious and sitting in the blood pools. Despite my anger, I calmed myself, preparing for battle. I had to decide what to do next.

It was probably going to pop back out of Zane shortly and move through everyone. The soul opening paste would make even my soul permeable.

The power reappeared partially as the leech shot out of Zane and over into the other pool, going into Galen next.

I glanced at Zane and confirmed he got the SSS Black Dragon bloodline of the past timeline as well. This thing was handing out bloodlines.

At some point, it was going to enter my own soul and I needed to prepare.

Thankfully, my soul was one space I might actually be able to put up a fight against this thing’s power. Unlike Simone, the system hadn’t recognized my skill with Soul Absorption Arts yet. With the strength of my Spirit stat, along with Soul Resilience, I might have a chance to squeeze something worthwhile out of this beast.

Rather than fret, I calmed my mind and waited for it to come to me, feeling its aura swell and disappear several more times.

There was no focus to spare. Instead I was like a hunter waiting for its prey to enter the trap.

The leech soul hit me like a spear to the head, pushing and wiggling itself into me.

I felt slimy and disgusting with it inside of me. But this time I took a better look at the things stats.

[Name: Xothnilium

Level: -

Race: Leviathan Leech

Status: Spirit Form, Greedy, Bloodlust

Strength: 128

Agility: 47

Vitality: 5800

Intelligence: 3982

Spirit: 301865

Skills:

Leviathan Body SSS

Blood Sense SSS

Bloodline Manipulation SSS

Powers of Blood SSS

Many Mouths SSS

Devour SSS

…]

It actually had physical stats despite just being a soul. That in of itself was impressive, not to mention that absolutely monstrous spirit stat. I could only imagine what its physical stats had been when it was alive. I was not even able to scroll through all the skills. But the skills were awfully tempting.

“Oh this one had the Golden Titan.” It spoke while inside of my soul and I waited. “Well, that was too good for this one anyway. Vampire Lord? Pfft. I’m the lord of blood and you’ll get what I tell you to get. How about B rank—Ack!” It’s bitter monologue was cut off.

My soul appeared, larger than life and grabbed the throat of the leech. “How dare you take that bloodline from me and give me some B Rank trash.” I wrapped my hand around it, working to strangle it.

It thrashed in my soul which wasn’t inconsequential.

My eleven thousand spirit, even with Soul Resilience S, was strained. Soul Resilience S would help me mitigate much of the damage, making my strength inside my own soul several times stronger than it would normally be.

“Give me my bloodline back.” I continued to strangle the ancient beast.

There was something inside its clear form and I stabbed into it, ripping it out.

[Bloodline Amalgamation ?? - Primordial Bloodline 97%

This Bloodline Amalgamation contains the bloodline of all things and grows ever closer to the beginning when all beasts were one.]

“No!” It shrieked out of all of the mouths at once and my soul felt like it was about to split. “Give that back you wretched cur! Do you realize how many thousands of years I’ve been working on that.” It wiggled free and all of those mouths tried to bite at me at once.

Inside my own soul, I was able to control the space. I quickly put distance between me and the leech, yet it moved so incredibly fast it was able to chase me down like a shark who smelled blood.

“What are you even doing?” I shouted, playing the game of chase.

“Making the ultimate bloodline of course!” It growled and came to a stop, realizing it couldn’t catch me so easily. “That’s for one of the eventual heirs to the Heros Clan.”

“So I can take it?” I went to lick it.

The Leech screeched and tried to stop me only to find that I had moved out of the way again. “You can’t fucking take that because I can’t take your damned body.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You want to finish this thing and then give one of the heirs a powerful bloodline as you possess the body?”

“Duh. Similar to what you’ve done. You understand me. The two of us are the same.” Somehow all of the mouths made the same greedy smile. “Right? I should have seen it earlier. You are… an older version of yourself? Oh, you possessed your child for another chance!”

“No. Well, not too far off.” I possessed myself, but explaining that to the beast seemed pointless at present.

It glanced to the side as if it were staring into the depths of my soul.

At the same time, I was recalling the history of the Heros Clan. If this thing was at 97% then it was almost done. By the time I joined the Heros Clan, the initiations had stopped and the bloodlines had started to fail.

That failure was because of this beast. It had finished and left the clan. And there was one prodigy that supposedly left the clan to never return.

Had this thing…

Yeah. From what I’d seen so far, this thing was completely capable of ditching the world and the clan once it got its bloodline and the body to wield it.

Which means, keeping it alive wasn’t necessary. It was going to leave in the next five years anyway.

“That… that’s impossible?!” The leech shouted. “Future? Nothing can break the barrier of time.”

I turned my attention back towards it. “Well I did.”

“No you didn’t!” It shouted. “It is impossible. No creature, not even the greatest of the primordial beasts, were able to touch on time. The… the only thing that can move through time are the worlds themselves, the systems.”

I laughed. “The systems aren’t alive.”

The leech looked at me as if I’d hit my head as a child. “The system is the breath of the world which is very much alive and very capable. That’s it. This world must have helped you. I guess if the world helped you, perhaps I could give you back your bloodline, but you’d have to give me that thing.” It gestured at the undulating ball of blood in my hand and tenderly moved forward.

“Not a chance.” I pulled away. “Don’t think I’m so naive as to think with this back in your hands that you’ll just give me what I want. Since I took this, you stopped trying to wreck my soul.”

The leech showed off its many many teeth. “I’m giving you a chance. Whatever future you’re from doesn’t matter. There will be no future for you if you don’t give that back.” It seemed to compress itself into a ball.

I had no doubt that it could move faster in a burst than it had so far.

It proved me right, expanding and shooting across the space between us in the blink of an eye.

A steel cage snapped into place that the leech conveniently blew through, but the cage slowed the ancient beast soul down enough for me to regain some distance. “Careful, there might be obstacles in your path.”

“Fuck you. I’m not playing around, boy. Give that back or I will just start tearing your soul asunder.”

I tossed the undulating ball of blood up and down. “Don’t think so. The system doesn’t even know how to rank this thing. Primordial Bloodline. That sounds powerful.” I held it out as if I was going to eat it.

The leech exploded in a torrent of blood that consumed the horizon within my soul, each strand of blood becoming a tendril of the leech and a maw of razor sharp teeth opening at the end.

Thousands, maybe millions, of these rushed at me from every angle.

My hand flicked to the side. Here within my own soul space I could make what I wanted. I had fought in here on numerous occasions, killing all manner of demons who had tried tricks to possess me.

A gleaming white sword so bright that it seemed to peel back the surrounding light and claim it for itself appeared for me. Alabaster, my old friend. A sword carved in another world from the largest fang of an ancient beast.

I didn’t run away, but charged into the maws.

My blade curved in a wide arc as I cut space for me to step on a head and flip over the ones behind it as my fighting style made for a packed battlefield came in handy.

Tentacles of blood were slashed and cut a dozen ways as I operated with the skill and agility of my past life. Alabaster cut through everything around me like paper.

“Do not think some mortal could hinder an ancient beast!” The mouths said in unison.

I breathed deep as the cut tendrils turned to red smoke and came up into my mouth as I absorbed his soul.

[Soul Absorption Arts F]

The system message pinged and made me smirk.

“Impossible! Those arts have been lost. We made sure of it!” The maw tipped tendrils continued to chase me and I spun like a dancer on a stage with Alabaster slicing through dozens, then hundreds of tendrils. Each cut only empowered me more while the leech lost more of his strength.

“Nothing is impossible if you put your whole mind to it!” Saws began to rain from the sky. Most of them did nothing, but some of them found weak points in the beast’s focus, slicing through tendrils as I swept deeper breathing in his soul and cutting through more tendrils.

I needed to level up Soul Absorption Arts.

Even now, I was only getting the barest trickle of spirit stat from the process.

To devour something this size, it would be an absolute waste to fail to gain something. I had my eyes on one of the skills. If I killed this thing, the Heros Clan would lose its bloodlines. Bloodline Manipulation was absolutely required to keep the clan running. Of course, I could just take the other benefits and escape, and I had to admit the idea was tempting.

I continued working as I debated. Thousands upon thousands of mouths tried to take a bite out of me, but I remained standing, clearing as much of the leech’s seemingly endless mass piece by piece.

Served this thing right for taking my bloodline from me!