The once bright air around the campfire turned heavy at Vlad's remark. Everyone's eyes were drawn to Vlad who was staring at the blood crystal like an old friend. The flicker of the fire illuminated the sadness plastered along Vlad's face. The sun was steadily sinking into the horizon, which made the clouds seem like they were bleeding.

It was at this moment Vlad stopped looking at blood crystal and tilted his head towards the group.

“I guess the best way to start this tale is from the beginning. As you all know I practice the arts of blood magic, and I know some of you frown upon such magic.”

He cast a look over at the commoners he was transported with and smiled at their displeasure.

Vlad then turned his eyesight towards the fire, “And their fear isn’t unfounded. Blood magic users are known for their cruelty in their path in deepening their understanding of the art. As every mage that calls themselves mages will always be drawn to the research of magic. A nature that is hard to repress, remember from this point on that magic isn’t innately bad. It is the user who decides to use it for good or evil.”

Usbain snorted, evidently fed up with Vlad’s explanation, “What does this have to do with your death and our ‘impending doom’? Don’t you see that wall? It’ll protect us from those vermin!”

Vlad just smiled and continued, “We had walls that would put our wall to shame; we had hundreds of magicians all coming from different branches. Warriors of great renown that flocked across the continent and an army in the tens of thousands. All for one purpose and you wanna know what that was?”

Stopping for a moment he took in the expressions he saw. He wanted to see that everyone was paying attention to the weight of his words.

Urist asked completely focused, “And what was it?”

A bitter look appeared full on the blood mages face, “Just one thing boss. To slay a Monster King. My story leads up to that event, you see back to what I was saying about mages hunger for the knowledge they choose a field to study. The field I choose to learn was bloodlines that focused on King Bloodlines.”

Mentioning this his eyes glowed with wanderlust, “You see Bloodlines are an interesting subject. Some theories state that origin bloodlines can control all its descendants and if so how much can they control. And so I began my experiment on a weak insect creature the praying mantis.”

As Urist listened he could feel a nagging idea where this was headed, “Don’t tell me you…”

A little pride showed on Vlad expression, “Yes after ten years of research I managed to produce a king bloodline of praying mantis using a special method of invoking it. It was simple really, all I had to do was feed the test subjects their kind. Then I had those that survived to fight each other allowing the winner to eat the loser.

“Eventually after years of research, it bore fruit. One day I came back into the lab to see a strange sight, the other night I had a dozen of my best playing mantises fight it out. Low and behold one was alive and it was different than before.

“This one actually was one of my first specimens I had gotten my hands on the twenty-first to be exact. It had fought dozens of battles, killed hundreds of his brethren, and had scars litter its body. But that little bug always survived when I thought he would die. if he had maybe things would have happened differently…”

Vlad took a bit of silence before continuing, “The bug before me had changed considerably. It’s once green body had turned pure white and its eyes were now pure gold.

Urist asked a question, “Wait how did you know it was the 21st if its body had become white?”

Vlad replied calmly, “I was quite lucky to catch it while it was shedding to allow me to catch a glimpse of its number. Now back to the story. That wasn’t the only thing that caught my attention, all of the praying mantises alive in their cages acted strangely… They were… They were bowing to the twenty-first.”

Uria who had now replied with a hint of awe, “Like subjects to a king.”

Vlad's face looked like that of a child finding recognition from an adult. “Exactly, it was then I knew that I had found a way to invoke a King’s Bloodline. I was the first person to document the process of making a king. Natural kings had been born in the wild such as a goblin king, but no one knew of a way of artificially create them.

“Everyone thought I was crazy in my theory that a king couldn’t be born in such a brutal way. Only my father was kind enough to lend me money for my research and he was the first one I showed my discovery too! And then… and then...”

When he got to his father Vlad faced noticeably darkened. As if hitting a sour note in his memory Urist could see confusion, hatred, and sadness all mixed up in one.

And so Urist asked, “What happened Vlad.”

The darkness that covered over Vlad twisted in rage before he took a breath and settled down, “I’ll tell you what happened, I made the biggest mistake of my life when I told my father… when he had company. I was so blinded by the success that I told my father of what I had accomplished, I didn’t notice the general he was talking to.”

Tears leaked down the cheeks of Vlad’s face, “It was until my father forcefully shut me up that I knew I screwed up. The general used space teleport to leave our house for fear of being silenced.

“Not even a day later, that hateful general sensing profit told the city lord and they raided my lab allowing the King Praying Mantis to escape in the confusion. That was the beginning of everything going wrong.

“I and my father were thrown into the dungeons not allowed to leave until I gave up the knowledge of my research. The city lord wanted to use my research to create loyal King class creatures to rage war on neighboring nations to increase our territory.

“I and my father were stubborn in the city lords attempts to get the secret out of me. While I told the city lord to go and kill the King Praying Mantis. He did not heed my warnings and instead, for two months we wasted inside that prison. And that was enough time for the king to truly gain strength...”

Vlad truly had a bitter expression on his face full of grief, “First it was a dwarven village that was killed off in a single night without a sound leaving not a single corpse. At first, someone thought it was wild beasts that had overrun the village so a squad of knights was sent out. The squad of knights did not return.

“Then another village was wiped off the map, then another. And as more warriors were sent out to discover what was causing it. Over a dozen towns were cleared out in a brief period of time. As soon as it was about to become a national crisis the attacks suddenly stopped. After one month the people had thought the breast was appeased and decided to not worry about it anymore after thoroughly searching all over the nation.

“I didn’t hear any of this until one of the guards watching over us said something to us. It was at this time I decided to crack and tell the city lord everything if he went back to searching for the beast.”

He picked at the soup in his bowl listlessly, “That bastard agreed, but it was already too late. The King had grown too strong, after building up its strength for so long it finally attacked a town razing it to the ground with over ten thousand three meter-sized kin.”

“A town of five thousand dwarfs were killed and were used as nutrition to grow the king's army. That wasn’t the end, the army moved through the air going from town to town killing all they could see and increasing their numbers.

“The nation was put into high alert and all remaining citizens were evacuated to the city. Every man woman and child old enough to hold a spear was enlisted to fight the now two hundred thousand strong army of bugs.”

He paused after his long story to let the full effect sink in before continuing.