RD 2 Ch 9 (Patreon)

Chapter 9

After what could have been a moment or an eternity the leech pulled back, allowing me to see my soul once again. Every surface was covered in a mouth that was trying to munch on me.

“I warned you.” It ripped and ripped.

All it did was open deep caverns with more space in my soul.

I laughed. “Ancient beasts aren’t well versed in the combat of the soul are they?” I checked his stats.

[Spirit: 293209]

I wanted to cry. All of that work and sure I’d made a dent, but it was a mere fraction of the ancient beast's total spirit.

And this beast was spitting mad. It tore at the landscape within my soul like a child throwing a tantrum. “Fine. Then I’ll leave and destroy you. Your physical body is nowhere near this tricky.”

I tossed the ball up and down in my hands. “Sure. But this thing will stay here and die with my soul.”

Xothnilium squinted at me. “You will not survive, no matter what you do. But for me, the worst I’ll have to do is restart my efforts to build back up to what you hold. It has taken thousands of years, and it is frustrating to get this close only to have it be denied, but it can be rebuilt.” He tried to take the high road.

“You were apparently looking at my memories, so you know the truth. The demon invasion is coming. You don’t have two years let alone thousands. But please, test me.” I squeezed the ball. Despite it being a high rank item, it felt like I could break it. After all, it was still a lump of blood with the consistency of a meatball.

“Hold on now.” The beast held up tendrils in the universal sign of surrender.

I smiled, wanting to keep it here. That Soul Opening Paste would last perhaps a half an hour. If I could wait that long, I could actually trap this thing in my soul. “So. What’s going to happen when you use this? After I give it back, of course.”

“Well, it's meant for a human. To give them not just the bloodline of an ancient beast, but a primordial.” The leech spoke without directing its attention away from the glob in my hand.

I tilted my head, an invitation for it to continue. “Interesting. They came before the ancient beasts?”

“Things of incredible power.” The leech spoke with awe. “There were twelve and all the ancient beasts are the descendants of those twelve.”

“Oh.” I said, making sure I sounded suitably impressed. “So who’s mom and dad to you?”

“The Great Leviathan and the Never Ending Hunger.” He glared at me. “Now, give it back. You understand chasing after your parents.”

“No.” I pulled back and played with it. “Which one will this make the body that you chose?”

“I don’t know.” The leech admitted. “In an effort to reach the origin of bloodlines, I have been making that, gathering every bloodline that exists in this world. The system is the one who thinks it’s almost done.”

“Ah. You don’t actually know what you are doing, instead just playing with blood while the system does all the work. I completely understand.” Clicking my tongue, I brought it close.

“It isn’t done!” Xothnilium jerked forward before stopping. “Listen. I’ll really give you that Golden Titan Bloodline back. You’re gonna get big though and probably a little shiny. You’re the one they bred in with the Borrson Clan, right? I can tell you how to go talk to that stupid bird and get something good too.”

I squinted at him. “You know me?”

“Of course. In order to complete this, I sent some people out of here with messages for the Clan leaders. I needed more diverse bloodlines. Those of the other five families would do wonderfully. Those stingy bastards have been refusing to share with me.” Xothnilium sighed.

“Because they are doing the same thing?” I asked.

“What? No. They have no powers over blood. Each of them probably wants a ride off this world though. We did our duty and saved the world, now it’s time to get our reward by the time the world’s shell cracks. Then we can go back out and enjoy the universe again.” The leech shrugged as if he couldn’t help itself. “There’s an entire universe teeming with demons now. I want to be just as strong as the next person.”

I couldn’t really fault him for that. “Fair. How much of my memory did you see? Did you see what happened to the rest of them?”

Xothnilium shuddered. “I saw enough.”

“Then I have a question. If you talk to the Elders of the Heros Clan, where is Tartarus?” I asked.

The main mouth opened and then closed. “I frankly haven’t cared for how the clan lives past bringing me new bloodlines. There’s no point in it for me. Soon I will have finished my grand prize and be able to roam the universe unobstructed.”

“That powerful?” I glanced down at the ball, really wanting to eat it now. Though, it would be best to wait. I checked my status to see if I was still under the effects of Soul Opening Paste.

It was still there, but it had to be nearing the length of its affect.

“The Primordials were the most powerful creatures to ever exist. Of course their bloodlines would be even stronger than Ancient Beasts.” Xothnilium huffed.

“You have no clue, do you?” I teased tossing the ball up and down while I watched my status menu out of the corner of my eye. “I think I’m going to keep this.” Catching it with finality, I popped it in my mouth. “You took my bloodline in this life and in my past life. The least I could do is pay you back for that!”

[Bloodline Amalgamation Processing… 72 hours required]

I froze. Syssy! The plan had been for whatever power was in this mound of blood to help me defeat this monster.

The world of my soul exploded as the leech went on an absolute rampage.

It was all I could do to dodge the sonic attacks combined with innumerable tendrils of blood flailing here and there. Rather than weave between them like before, I was putting distance between me and the ancient beast.

“You will pay for that! I will crush you and extract that back from your cooling corpse!” Xothnilium threw an absolute tantrum when he realized his attacks were failing to do more than wreak havoc. He turned and threw himself up into the sky to escape.

But then he hit a dark red barrier and bounced off of it, his main maw hanging open in surprise. “The Soul Opening Paste!”

“It’s worn off.” I summoned a replica of Alabaster again.

“You are trapped in here with me.” The beast turned around, its tendrils finding the barrier everywhere in the sky and hanging off of it. “That will be the worst mistake you’ve ever made.

I clicked my tongue. “No. You are trapped here with me. After all, I’m the one who practices Soul Absorption Arts.”

Thrusting my sword forward, I closed the space between us and sliced off two tendrils before shooting back with a deep breath. Those pieces of his soul turned to dust to nurture my own.

Sadly, I didn’t even gain a single stat point. To have such a fat meal in front of me but be unable to eat it all was beyond frustrating.

Xothnilium threw himself at me once again, energy gathering in his maws.

I let my soul draw me away as Alabaster drew an inscription in the air. It wasn’t something I could do in life without the reagents, but here in the soul the rules were a little different.

“World Severing!” Xothnilium’s tendrils formed a massive sword that seemed to extend forever before it swept down on me.

I finished the inscription. “Break.” Pushing my mana into it, the inscription met his and a giant cage of magic appeared around him. His World Severing pinged off the side.

“What is this?” Xothnilim gasped, looking to realize he had not even scratched the giant cage.

“Theoretical inscription of god sealing. In practicality, you have to have a cage stronger than the thing you are trying to seal, which most of the time is fairly useless. Trick in the soul is that my imagination is greater than your power. In fact, your talk of primordials helped. I imagine that Primordial bone is stronger than you.” I smirked, now clear of his attacks.

If the Soul Opening Paste had still been active, he would have been able to escape even from the cage. Now that option was gone, and there was no reason not to finish this battle.

A cloth napkin appeared in my hands and I carefully tucked it into the collar of my shirt. “Sorry, this isn’t anything personal… actually it is. You stole my fucking bloodline.” I sigh and shook my head. “I’m totally going to enjoy this.”

Alabaster appeared in one hand and a fork in the other. “Bon Appetit.”

“No!!!” Xothnilium screamed.

***

I held my soul’s stomach that now stuck out despite all efforts to stop my imagination from giving me a gut.

A burp escaped and I held a fist to my mouth wary something else might escape.

Xothnilium had put up a good fight the whole way.

Unfortunately, even the most powerful demons weren’t a match for the Soul Absorption Art. It was wonderful, even if the System did me dirty and only leveled it up to E rank after everything I had just gone through.

Sadly many stats were lost, and I was only able to focus on trying to absorb a few skills that I wanted.

Chief among them.

[Bloodline Manipulation S - Able to suppress, steal, and gift bloodlines]

It hadn’t retained it’s incredible SSS rank. Most of my efforts were spent on consuming his soul and putting it towards this skill. I’d settle for S. For that I offered Syssy a thanks. With this, at least the Heros Clan wouldn’t perish.

[Powers of Blood D - Able to unlock latent strength of target's bloodline]

The new skill had also been added to my skills. A very welcome ability, one that I’d have to work on. Once it got higher ranked it could do some very interesting things.

Sadly I was able to gain so little and the ancient beast’s soul provided literally zero experience.

Perhaps because it was outside the system the experience for its defeat wasn’t defined?

Either way, I was disappointed, but I couldn’t be too greedy.

Pushing out of my soul, I blinked my eyes open like I’d been in the dark for far too long and found myself in the bright sun.

Everyone was still sitting in the blood pools, still unconscious.

My sense of time was a little off from the battle in my soul, but it couldn’t have been more than two hours.

I stretched and used Soul Gaze to check on everyone. Four SSS Ranked bloodlines, Eight SS Ranked and over a dozen S ranked.

All of those bloodlines and that fucking leech was going to give me a B rank.

Good riddance, stingy bastard. Must not have liked my mother much either.

Hmm? Whoops, it seems he hadn’t finished yet and one of them didn’t get a bloodline.

Maybe I should kill him to cover it up?

“Is it over?” Zane groaned followed by several more of them. “Bran, you’re awake?”

“Just woke up a moment ago and was about to check on everyone.” I laughed to hide my awkwardness and my killing intent.

Zane’s stats had shot up with his bloodline awakening.

My eye twitched. His SSS Bloodline was focused on physical stats and put him slightly above me.

Fucking bloodline advantages.

Several inspections hit me and I brushed them aside.

“How’d you do that?” Rylan asked.

“I don’t know. Felt like shooing away a gnat. I just did it out of instinct.” I shrugged. “Besides, it’s good to keep some secrets.”

“Wow, four SSS rank bloodlines.” Zane sounded happy. “Well, what is yours Bran?”

I rubbed my nose. “SSS Rank too. So that makes five.”

It would give me an excuse to let loose my full strength if they believed it. Maybe in a few days I’d be better able to show off.

Nyx had it worst. She was staring at her hands, her depression rising back up to bite her.

She was another lucky SSS Rank bloodline holder, and it went perfectly with her class. Gorgon Queen SSS. She was absolutely going to get snake hair.

“What do we do now?” Another asked.

Zane was about to speak, but Galen shouted loudly from his blood pit. “We fight! This instance is special. It’s one of, if not, the only low level S ranked dungeon. Meaning we can kill monsters for high quality loot at this level.” He laughed proudly from his pit. “Follow me if you want the best items.”

“What kind of monsters are here?” I asked Zane.

“Cyclops.” His expression was grave. “Eight foot tall, powerful S rank monsters. Without our bloodlines, we would be crushed by them, but with them we stand a chance.” Zane pulled a ring off his finger. “Here everyone, pick out a weapon. My father gave this to me so that we wouldn’t go into the fighting unarmed.”

“Ha, my father likely provided higher quality equipment. Come join me and get some.” Galen once again attempted to divide the group. “We’ll head east. You can go west. It’s best if we don’t cross paths, Zane.”

The dragon knight nodded. “I’d say the same to you. There’s no reason we have to be at odds in here. The clan should work together.”

“And split the loot more? No thanks. We’ll do fine without you.” Galen looked at those gathering around him and turned to one of the women. “Get lost, B rank class and only A rank bloodline? You’re deadweight.”

She was aghast and looked like she wanted to hide her head in the sand.

“Come on over with us.” Zane gestured towards her. “What’s your name?”

“Lisa.” She was pretty like most adventurers.

I blinked though when I heard her name and double checked her sheet.

Fuck. This was Zane’s assistant in my past life.

Something like this was already starting?

“Get out of here.” Galen shouted and someone splashed into our pool.

The boy was in rough shape from just a kick.

I winced. He was the one who hadn’t gotten a bloodline. “Don’t worry Zane, I’ll make sure this one makes it through. We can pick up the slack with three SSS ranks in our group, right Nyx?” I tried to bring her out of her thoughts.

“Yeah. Three SSS ranks. We’ll do great.” She answered mechanically.