"Dang," Urag muttered as the Blood King's Fehl Legion covered his escape. As expected of the self-proclaimed Mogul of Excess and Debauchery, Urag carried the Mark of Lust on his back. The Lust Overload skill he just used relied on it. But since he still stood far from mastering his Lust, Urag couldn't maintain the form for over one minute. Afterward, he'd go into Lust Withdrawal and lose 90% of his strength.
Breaking through the Blood King's defense lines to take his life needed more than one minute. Once exposed, grim consequences would follow, so Urag had no choice but to watch the Blood King escape. Still, by destroying one of his Philosopher's Stones and forcing him into retreat, Urag dealt the Blood King severe wounds. As a Sin of Pride, he was doomed to agonize.
By the time Urag made his choice, the Blood King's Legion had vanished from the forest's sky and retreated to their headquarter. In the area where the explosion took place, a pale-blue, wraithlike version of Anke hovered. With a smirk of satisfaction, she shrank into a palm-sized blue orb and flew back into her inert body.
For the typical human, the soul was an immaterial storage place for experiences, Dra Roots and Elemental Crystals. Upon their owner's death, white and light-gray souls left for the Aether Plane while black and dark-gray souls dove into the Nether Plane. Besides the souls that inhabited them and the magical energies they held, there was absolutely no difference between Aether and Nether Planes. No reward, no judgment, just cleansing and reincarnation.
Souls traditionally had no offensive abilities of their own. But because of her mutation, Anke's soul had turned into a Fehl Banshee, enabling her to not only use her vocal chords as weapons, but expel the banshee soul to possess or ruin her foes. Still, if not for the Blood King leaving himself vulnerable, Anke wouldn't have been able to affect him—even for that split of a second.
But as Urag stared at Anke's stirring form, his eyes narrowed, and with a step, he appeared before her.
"Weird...why aren't you cray cray?" Urag asked with his usual tact. Better than most, he could see that Anke's mutation stage had already fallen into Beast category. When her banshee soul became one with her body, she'd ascend to the Fehl Plane and become a daemoness. But to reach such a mutation stage, she should have long turned into a walking abomination singing lethal lullabies and sowing destruction wherever she went. Obviously, that wasn't the case.
From beginning to end, she remained alert and logical—only briefly losing herself at the Blood King's arrival. Unless she received a serum akin to Kilian's or had the backing of some mighty fehl entity, that made little sense.
"From what I heard, I had an episode and forced my uncle to use his unique magical abilities to recalibrate my mind. At first, he planned to erase all the fehl madness. But when that proved impossible, he redirected it all at the source. Unless confronted with it, I can remain mostly sane,"
"Your uncle is a throne?"
"I don't even know what that is."
"My bad. What's your relationship with the Blood King?"
"No relationship. He just wears the face of my ex-fiancé."
"Then why did you help me?"
"I want to strangle my ex, but he's dead, so I just take it out on those related to him."
"Ha, typical."
Anke straightforwardly answered all of Urag's inquiries, and following the exchange, the imp lord pursed his lips—shaking his head at the deranged lady's words.
"You're very honest for a bitter banshee."
"I don't know if you or the 6,666 daemons at your back can read minds, and would rather not gamble with my life until I resurrect and punish Kilian," Anke said, but this time, a pause settled in, with Urag blinking at the deranged lady with his large, beady eyes.
"Wait, wait, what Kilian exactly?"
…
Meanwhile, Kilian stepped into the nearby Sura Tribe. From Eleonora, he learned that all rivers and lakes in the Sura Plane had been corrupted by high-level Fehl Magic—with prolonged consumption dooming the drinkers to a unique form of Fehl Taint. Tailored to suras, this taint didn't affect humans or other species. But should a human dare drink the contaminated water, they'd experience a poison ten times worse than botulinum toxin.
"Over the past ten years, the Sura Queen prayed all deities she knew of to save her race. And around the time of the Blood King's birth, a top-ranking fehl answered her prayers. Most suras don't know who that fehl is, but now my bet is on Ashera.
Ashera granted the Sura Queen and tens of thousands of willing suras her blood, twisting them into the Fehl Suras we now confront. The majority of suras, however, refused the gift, so the Sura Queen asked Ashera to taint the lakes and rivers, forcing those suras that drank from them to join her ranks," Eleonora explained. While suras possessed eternal life, without a regular intake of their Divine Water, their Dra Reserves gradually shrank.
Fehls, thrones, chiropterans, suras, all immortal species had one weakness in common. Once their Dra Reserves reached zero, they collapsed into nothingness. For the first three, that rarely became an issue. Suras, however, had shallow Dra Reserves, and heavily relied on their Divine Water for survival.
By asking Ashera to taint it, the Sura Queen effectively left the resistance with no way out. Faced with either death or surrender, thousands chose surrender. But alienated by the Fehl Suras, many more persisted, rejecting the foul fehl deities to die for their beliefs. Those suras were now the prey of both the human invaders and the bellicose Fehl Suras.
But as he stepped into the glade, Kilian felt that many points were far too convenient. As if for thousands of years, the Sura Plane was being shoved into this one gulf, and forced to take shelter under the fehl banner. But then, between Adramelech who set the events into motion, and Ashera who ended them, who truly pulled the strings?
The answer wouldn't come today. At the entrance of the tribe's forest glade, about 400 suras assembled—mostly adults—all wielding makeshift wooden weapons that wouldn't even fit the bill in medieval Earth.
But while he typically showed no empathy for hostile parties, as he glanced at the gathered suras, Kilian's heart skipped a beat.
Unlike the traditional suras' shimmering silver wings, those suras' possessed a dull-gray color and slouched as if ready to fall at any time. Thick wrinkles stretched the faces of the adults and few kids that faced Kilian's trio, and their skin had atrophied to the point that ribs and bones poked out.
Four-hundred skeletons with thin sheets of dark-gray skin faced Kilian with their large, bloodshot eyes trembling in fear.
"W-we d-don't have anything t-to offer you. P-please spare us," one senior sura begged, with barely enough strength to speak the words. At a glance, Kilian could see that unless they surrendered to the Sura Queen and drank the tainted water, those suras wouldn't survive another three days.
And while he stared at them, Eleonora stared at him, wondering what choice he'd make.