#78
Brocoslac Clan (5)
“…So this is what a Clan Lord is.”
Heinz glanced at the severed arm in Mullo’s hand, then turned his gaze back to his face.
Apparently, in exchange for concentrating all the barrier’s power on himself, every ability he possessed—including strength, speed, perception, and stealth—had surpassed its limits.
He must have come up with this method after seeing that blood magic did not work well on Heinz.
‘It looks like it puts a heavy strain on the body, though.’
But with the vitality possessed by a True Blood vampire, he would be able to endure the aftereffects for quite some time.
It was an exceedingly troublesome situation.
‘Did I move too hastily? …No, this was still the best time. The Lord’s level was simply beyond what I expected.’
No matter how well they disguised it, the abnormalities among the bloodkin were bound to be discovered eventually.
He had brought Prisia in to delay that as much as possible, but that too was only a stopgap measure.
‘I thought it would be more efficient to ambush him before he sensed any sign of it, at a moment when he expected nothing…’
Thanks to that, he had been able to reach right in front of Mullo without any interference.
The only problem was that the level of preparedness he maintained in ordinary times—something that could not be learned from the explanations of Prisia, a martial type—far exceeded expectations.
“Hoo— hoo— You bastard, I’ll finish you off as quickly as possible.”
Whoosh—
The severed arm in Mullo’s hand, as he kept breathing heavily, was engulfed in crimson flames.
He casually flung it to the floor.
Before the burning arm even hit the ground—
Swish—
The sound of air being sliced rang out.
Perhaps because he had not taken his eyes off him for even an instant, this time Heinz was able to react the moment Mullo vanished.
He used “Acceleration” and narrowly evaded the five blade-like claws raking toward him from the front.
Then, without hesitation, he thrust his left hand into the opening his sharpened senses had caught in his opponent’s guard, but…
Kagagagak!
He failed to pierce that solid body, only sending sparks flying.
‘He’s hard. Is this how the enemies who fought Heinz all this time felt?’
As if ignoring Heinz’s attack, Mullo’s right hand swung again, tearing through space.
Though his specialty was magic, Mullo was still a vampire who had lived for hundreds of years.
Even if he was not quite on Prisia or Obor’s level, his movements were anything but ordinary.
Just as Heinz was about to evade again, his movement abruptly came to a halt.
‘Kuh? What?!’
Crimson thorny vines were coiling around his legs from the floor.
They were instantly snapped apart by Heinz’s strength, but by then Mullo’s grasp had already arrived right before him.
“Hup!”
He struck the opponent’s wrist with his left hand, concentrating as much blood magic power into it as possible, twisting its trajectory.
Before he could even recover his bloodied left arm, Mullo’s sharply extended left hand stabbed toward his heart.
In that desperate moment, with his posture broken and no way to evade…
Heinz twisted his body to protect his heart as much as possible and, as a last resort, thrust out his “right hand” to take the attack in its place.
Puhwaak—!
His right arm was ripped away by the sharp claws tearing into it.
And so his right arm once again ended up in Mullo’s left hand.
“Hoo— hoo— Hm…? What is this?”
Mullo froze for an instant, breathing raggedly, and looked down at the severed arm in his hand with an uneasy expression.
It was déjà vu.
“You… your arm?”
With blood tears and even a double nosebleed streaming down his face, he twisted his features grotesquely and looked back and forth between the arm in his hand and the arm that had fallen to the floor and was still burning.
There was no doubt about it. Both were right arms.
But that was not the end.
“Hm? Ah— you mean this?”
Heinz boldly extended his right hand toward him and wiggled his fingers.
As if showing off the smooth new article that had already regenerated through “Super Regeneration.”
Mullo, who had been looking back and forth between the old arm of Heinz in his hand and the newly sprouted arm, only opened and closed his mouth.
Of course, once one reached the level of True Blood, regenerating a lost body part was entirely possible, but it was absolutely not to that extent.
He was not a slime—how could a severed part grow back so readily like that?
“What blood could you possibly have inherited to possess abilities like that? A branch family of Brocoslac? That’s absurd…!”
Mullo gnashed his teeth and brought his nose to the cross-section of Heinz’s severed arm to smell it.
Certainly, though it had been altered, he could tell that its foundation was the bloodline of Brocoslac.
It seemed Prisia’s earlier words had not been complete nonsense after all.
“…Something’s strange.”
But he felt an intense sense of foreignness from that blood.
The foundation was definitely something familiar to him, but only that much.
Everything else was “something” he could not understand.
‘Can the blood of a branch family be altered to this degree? Even devouring a member of another clan wouldn’t result in this…’
Something was fundamentally different.
It was a contradiction through and through, a series of incomprehensible events.
A situation so frustrating it was unbearable.
While glaring at Heinz, who was confronting him, he lightly licked the blood flowing from the severed arm.
After all, once one was at least Pure Blood, tasting a small amount of blood to analyze the opponent was common practice.
For him, a True Blood, this much should not have been any problem at all.
…It should not have been.
But that became the problem.
“Kup—?! Ptoo! Kheup… Kuwoeok—!”
Hududuk—! Cheolpeok—!
Mullo immediately spat it out, then vomited up a basin’s worth of blood.
“W-what in the world is this…?”
The small amount of blood he had ingested instantly affected the blood inside his body and spread.
If that were all, it would not have mattered much… The problem was the immense amount of obsession condensed within that blood.
[My dearest wish…]
[The Blood Alliance…]
[Power…]
[…….]
Because of that, he had no choice but to vomit up all the blood that had been affected by Heinz’s blood.
‘Dozens? Hundreds? How can he remain fine while carrying such vile blood?’
This was blood no different from deadly poison to vampires.
To begin with, he had never once imagined that blood like this could exist.
It had only been a fleeting instant, but the shock was enough to shake even his abilities, which had explosively risen by concentrating the barrier’s power.
‘Damn…!’
And when his scattered senses recovered, he realized his mistake.
Puk—!
“Keheok!”
“They say you were cooped up in your room for ages, so I guess your instincts have dulled? You sure spend a long time thinking about other things in the middle of a fight.”
Of course, that was by their standards.
His concentration had been disturbed for barely three seconds.
But at their level, that was ample time for one’s life to be taken and lost a dozen times over.
Enough time for Heinz to approach stealthily and swiftly and drive his hand-blade into the heart of the careless Mullo.
“Lord—! Move, Prisia!”
“You’ll have to keep me company for a little while.”
Obor rushed in urgently, but Prisia, who had by then subdued all the vampires, blocked his path.
Until before, catching up with the speed of an assassin type like him was something she would not even have dared to imagine, but with the strengthening effect of “Refined Blood Crystal,” it had become possible.
“Grr— you bastaaard!”
Whoosh—!
As Mullo, his heart destroyed, violently swung his claws, Heinz withdrew without hesitation.
He had been able to pierce his defense by aiming for the instant his abilities weakened, but now that Mullo had regained his senses, there was nothing to gain from trading blows up close.
As Heinz stepped back, the hole in Mullo’s chest quickly healed with transcendent regenerative power.
That did not mean there had been no gain.
“Kkeuheuk— cough! Hoo— hoo—”
Eyes, nose, mouth, ears.
Mullo was bleeding profusely from all seven orifices, gasping for breath, and his appearance told Heinz that the time remaining to him was not long.
***
Charrrrk—
“Grrrk! Y-you bastard…!”
The two severed right arms melted into blood and transformed into two crimson chains that bound Mullo’s entire body.
Because Heinz’s tenacious vitality was fully contained within them, even the one arm that had been burning for quite some time had only lost a little of its outer layer.
‘Whew… This is the end.’
Heinz let out a light sigh and looked down.
Having already exhausted all his strength and with the barrier spell broken, Mullo seemed to have no energy left to resist and was only gasping for breath.
Kwaaang—!
At that moment, the fierce clash between Prisia and Obor on one side also came to an end.
The winner, of course, was Prisia.
Not only was there a significant difference in their specs due to “Refined Blood Crystal,” but she also had the compatibility advantage of a warrior against an assassin.
Drag, drag—
She grabbed the limp boy by the nape of his neck and approached Heinz.
“It seems you’re finished as well. I just wrapped things up myself.”
Prisia smiled at Heinz with a proud expression.
She seemed extremely satisfied with the abilities she had directly experienced this time.
“Ah! And I didn’t kill the other vampires either. I only subdued them. After the barrier’s effects disappeared, it wasn’t that difficult.”
Since they had been fellow bloodkin, she must have had some reluctance to kill them, but in any case, they would need many hands for what was to come, so the more labor they had, the better.
Nodding to her, Heinz looked down again at the subdued Mullo.
He was worried about whether it would be all right to inject “Refined Blood Crystal” into him as he was.
Prisia had clearly been inferior to him in both blood magic power and martial strength, but…
Mullo was not such an easy opponent.
In fact, in terms of the amount of blood magic power, he even had more than Heinz.
“Hmm. Then I suppose I’ll try it that way.”
After briefly pondering what to do with him, Heinz finally made his decision and pulled on the chains to raise him up.
Then he brought his mouth to Mullo’s neck.
“You bastard… what on earth are you…?”
“I’m inheriting the position of Lord.”
Puk—
Sharp teeth sank into the nape of Mullo’s neck.
***
A stone chamber buried deep underground.
In the sealed darkness where not even air could pass through, there was a single figure lying down.
Twitch!
A small change came over the one who had been lying like a corpse in that silent space.
Starting with the fingertips that kept twitching faintly, the tightly closed lips trembled and slowly opened.
“…Ah…”
A rough, cracked voice echoed through the sealed stone chamber.
“Ahh…”
Only after making a few sounds as if clearing the throat did the voice finally begin to sound normal.
And in the darkness devoid of even a single point of light, a pair of red lights slowly flickered.
“What is it?”
The being muttered softly.
Something abnormal had been detected, but it could not tell what it was.
Sleep kept pouring over it, preventing normal thought.
“Ah, I’m sleepy…”
Having awakened much earlier than the scheduled time, it could not immediately break free from its hibernation state.
The eyes that had barely opened began to close heavily once more.
“…I’ll sleep a little longer and then get up.”
And so the pair of red lights that had illuminated the darkness slowly closed, and the stone chamber was once again buried in quiet darkness.
***
Several days had passed since Harris began walking along the “Forest Path” with the elves.
As the days continued, with education and training carried out even while they traveled, Lafori, who had been leading them, looked back at the group with a smile on his face.
“We should be arriving soon. We only need to go a little farther.”
That did not mean there was any immediate change in their surroundings.
The dreamlike forest path they had grown tired of seeing over the past several days simply continued on.
“Wow! Really? Then will we be able to meet the World Tree soon?”
Cecily, who had been devoting herself to training while burning with rivalry toward Harris, asked with sparkling eyes.
Since she was from the Ion Continent and had never once seen the World Tree since birth, the thought that she would soon be able to face it seemed to fill her with fresh emotion.
‘And that also means Cecily will soon become a High Elf.’
After all, for a qualified High Elf candidate to reach the presence of the World Tree was the final condition.
“Of course. The World Tree will be very pleased to welcome you as well, Miss Cecily.”
Lafori, who knew that, also looked at her with a pleased smile.
At last, their long journey was ending, and they were about to see its fruit.
After that, the group walked along the forest path for several hours, unable to hide their excitement.
And finally.
The path they were walking gradually began to change into an ordinary forest…
“Waaah~!”
With Cecily’s exclamation of admiration in the background, Harris blankly looked up.
An enormous tree, so immense that it ignored all sense of perspective, stood before his eyes.
“Unless there is a truly urgent matter, it is not good to go directly to the World Tree through the Forest Path. And since this is also Miss Cecily’s journey to become a High Elf, that is all the more true.”
The path to the World Tree was a kind of pilgrimage.
The journey of heading toward that colossal tree with reverence and with one’s heart composed was also part of the process.
‘It’s so huge I have to look up at it like this, and yet it’s still such a long distance away…’
A sense of awe rose in him before he realized it.
It seemed they would still need a little more time to reach the World Tree, but compared to the emotion he felt now, that was not a particularly important matter.
At long last, it was the moment Harris set foot in the Elven Kingdom of the Enamel Continent.