He climbed up through the hatch to the roof, and with a [Necrotic Mutilation] umbrella protecting him from the bloody rain, Sylver looked towards the 4 mountains.

He had expected to see only 3 since the rain would have quickly settled the dust, but all 4 were still there.

Wait…

It was slow enough that he could barely see it, but there was a 5th mountain, slowly rising out of the ground. Because the other 4 were drenched in blood, it took Sylver a moment to realize that the rising mountain wasn’t simply covered in blood but was in fact made of blood.

Sylver silently walked over to the edge of the roof and looked down.

To describe the motion of the blood below as “flowing” implied far too much movement. Just like the mountain, it was slow, subtle, the blood was already being disturbed by the falling rain, if Sylver hadn’t been actively looking for it, he never would have noticed the liquid gradually moving towards the center of the Schlagen mountains.

“Is this good or bad?” Ria asked.

“There is very little that is “good,” about this situation. For future reference Ria, if it ever starts raining blood where you are, leave,” Sylver explained, as he jumped down from the roof, and landed half a meter from the ground.

“Are you alright!” a voice shouted from somewhere in front of Sylver. He looked up and saw Tarragon standing there, with a shiny sphere surrounding him and protecting him from the raining blood.

“Aside from the obvious, yeah!” Sylver shouted back, as he stepped down from his invisible platform, and used [Dead Dominion] to move the blood on the ground away from him.

The same way Tarragon was surrounded by a shiny sphere, so was Sylver, with the only difference being that his sphere was invisible.

And used about one-twentieth of the mana Tarragon used.

Not that anyone was counting.

“Are your people alright?” Tarragon asked, as he and Sylver closed the distance and were close enough to speak at a normal volume. The raining blood could best be described as a drizzle, if you ignored the random screams of terror in the background, it was quite quiet.

“A couple of sprained ankles, but nothing fatal. How are your lot doing?” Sylver asked, and for a split-second Tarragon’s mask of calm composure slipped, and Sylver got a glimpse of the frightened elf underneath.

Even for Eira, blood raining from the sky was rare.

“Is this you?” Tarragon asked.

Sylver couldn’t decide whether to laugh or get angry.

After a moment, he chose to interpret the question as a compliment.

“I appreciate that you think so highly of me, but no. If I had this kind of power, I wouldn’t bother with something this… indirect,” Sylver said.

Something in Tarragon’s eyes just didn’t look right.

He was scared, which is completely understandable given the circumstances, but he was too scared for someone with his level of power.

“No one told you?” Tarragon asked.

It was only now that Sylver noticed that the old elf wasn’t completely stable on his feet, he wasn’t swaying, but he was massaging his fingers the way mages did when they overexerted themselves.

“Told me what?” Sylver asked.

To Tarragon’s utter dismay, instead of being as worried as he was, the news caused Sylver to laugh so hard he slipped on the ground, and nearly fell into the surrounding puddles of blood.

***

Even though Sylver knew being surrounded by blind devotion would end terribly, he couldn’t help but appreciate how nice it was to have people that didn’t question him.

Michael didn’t say a word, and simply pulled his arm back, and punched Sylver’s blood-covered palm.

Sylver’s shoulder made a funny sound as it absorbed the impact, but he’d seen Michael train, and even if he wasn’t using his full strength, at the very least Sylver’s arm should have been blown off.

And yet, Sylver’s arm was perfectly fine.

His fingers weren’t even numb.

Sylver placed his hand on his stomach and spread the blood around the front portion of his torso. He took two steps back from Michael, lifted his hands out of the way, and as he nodded for Michael to hit him, tensed his abs.

Sylver heard a crack as Michael’s fist reached Sylver’s stomach, but to Sylver’s surprise, the crack hadn’t been one of his ribs being broken. Michael’s face went a bit pale, but aside from that, he didn’t react to his ring finger bone cracking.

Tarragon didn’t say a word as he walked over to Michael and healed the boy.

“I’m surprised I didn’t realize it sooner,” Sylver repeated, as he released the blood clutching to his stomach and made the dark red liquid flow towards the nearest window.

“Can you do it?” Tarragon asked.

Sylver pretended to do the math in his head, even though he had done it the moment Tarragon explained everything.

“No,” Sylver said.

It was a lie.

Between his [Dead Dominion], [Necrotic Mutilation], and the backup of Tarragon’s elves, making a hole in a 15-meter thick scab would have been easy.

All the exits from the Schlagen Mountain dome had been sealed shut. With a giant bloody scab, that was immune to all forms of Ki attacks, and very oddly, didn’t react as much as it should have to raw physical strength.

Interestingly enough, the blood/scab was also immune to magic, or at least that was what Tarragon originally thought.

Because, as Sylver had discovered, the blood wasn’t immune to dark magic.

At all.

If anything, manipulating the blood felt easier than it should have been.

Almost as if someone had created this blood with a mage like Sylver in mind.

“How many of these blood barriers can you make?” Tarragon asked, with a vague gesture towards the wall.

“I used a focus to make it, I don’t have anymore,” Sylver lied.

Now that he had one working spell, setting another up wouldn’t even take 10 minutes.

But getting to the sect Tarragon was staying at would take half an hour, not to mention Sylver didn’t want to have to deal with people begging him to protect their sect too.

“Bring your guys here, we have plenty of room. I’m leaving Mora here to guard the place, so all of you should be safe,” Sylver said, as he patted his robe down, and absorbed his layers of [Necrotic Mutilation] armor into his [Bound Bones] storage.

“Where are you going?” Tarragon asked, as Sylver opened the door, and extended a hand out into the rain.

“I need to take care of something,” Sylver said, as the blood directly in front of him stopped falling, and instead clumped together into a big sphere, and gradually became bigger and bigger. He wanted to know how much he could bring with him if he needed to.

Tarragon had the foresight not to ask any question Sylver wouldn’t have answered anyway, and simply left.

***

“Great minds really do think alike,” a voice on Sylver’s left said.

Even though 5 years had passed, Lion sounded exactly the same.

Owl’s protective barrier wasn’t as good as Tarragon’s, all 4 of them were wearing blood-soaked clothing, but they weren’t as wet as they should have been.

“I want to talk to the emperor before you do your thing. And I want a heads up for when you’re ready to tackle the High King. And I want to increase the off-limits radius around Arda from 1,000 kilometers to 6,000,” Sylver said. Silia would be just at the edge of that radius, give or take 100 kilometers.

The pause was brief. Very brief.

Barely a full second, even if it felt to be much longer.

“How long will your talk with the emperor take?” Aurick asked.

His clothing was glued to his body, he didn’t bother with armor, and wore a simple dark blue tunic and trousers. If he wasn’t covered in blood, he would have looked like the world’s most average boy.

Owl, Hound, and Lion on the other hand looked like they were either on their way to war or had just returned from it.

Where Lion’s left leg used to be, there was now a metallic prosthetic that looked to be malfunctioning due to the magic interfering rain. His form-fitting leather armor was such a dark shade of brown that it might as well have been black.

Owl had his staff behind his back and was holding a glowing rune-covered rock in his left hand and was dressed in light brown robes that oozed magical power.

Hound looked miserable. But not in a self-deprecating way, he had the look of someone who wasn’t used to being upset and was going to make sure everyone around him felt as bad as he did. His armor looked almost shabby, but Sylver could tell every single cut and crease was meant to be there. His right arm was covered in a thin cape and hid his weapon from prying eyes.

“A couple of minutes? I just want to ask him 2 or 3 questions, and to be perfectly honest, I doubt he’ll be able to answer any of them,” Sylver explained, as he felt something brush against the edge of his soul sense.

He didn’t even need to look; it was very hard to confuse witch magic with anything else.

“If you have them, why do you need me?” Sylver asked as he gestured towards the end of the street.

The blood had congealed around the surrounding ground, walls, tables, and chairs. The best way to explain it is to imagine that a meter of snow fell, except instead of fluffy white snow, you had slimy red/black blood. It clung to everything as if it were alive, and even now Sylver could see it subtly shifting towards the center of the Schlagen Mountains.

Abby, and the 12 witches behind her, were all squeaky clean. The rain fell evenly, more or less, and yet not a single drop landed on the 13 women’s clothing.

“He isn’t going to be defenseless. Neither will his guards or the various sect heads that he was meeting with when the rain started,” Abby explained.

She was far enough away that Sylver shouldn’t have been able to hear her, and yet, he heard her loud and clear as if she was standing right next to him.

“Once we’re done, we want you to help us leave. If the blood clots don’t disappear by themselves, I mean,” Aurick added, with a gesture towards Abby and her witches.

Considering a giant ancient dragon was going to tear its way out of the ground, Sylver somehow doubted anyone would need help leaving this place.

“If that’s all, we have a deal,” Sylver said, as he lifted his right hand towards Aurick.

They shook hands and continued on their way toward the emperor.

Aurick didn’t know about the dragon, somehow, or at least that was what he had told Sylver when he “interrogated” him. He knew about the bloodline but didn’t know what exactly the combined bloodline would do.

As they walked, Sylver had some time to think things over. Faust and Anastasia were safe and far away from here, and yet, something didn’t sit right with Sylver.

Sylver’s feeling of unease had subsided after a certain point, but it never completely went away.

Somehow his thoughts landed on that door he had seen inside the dungeon, the one that needed sword hilts to be opened. The one that referred to the dragon as “the serpent of the mountain.”

Sylver got stuck on the part that mentioned bathing in a river, because the word for “river” wasn’t quite right, and it took Sylver far too long to remember where he had read that specific word before.

And once he remembered that he was able to decipher the next portion of the text.

The warrior that sealed the dragon away didn’t bathe in any old river, he bathed in “a river of blood.” Which is just an ancient euphemism for a lot of blood…

Just as Sylver finished the thought, he had to shield his eyes so as not to be blinded. An enormous bolt of lightning had appeared out of nowhere and struck the emperor’s palace.