Chapter 110: Lineage
Hunger. Primal hunger. In their limited intelligence the mountain-sized creatures only knew of devouring, and being sated.
…And they had not been sated in some time.
Well, relatively speaking that was. It had only been two days since their migration, and only six hours since their last meal.
Yet as the gluttonous, and biologically defective beasts that they were, they were already starving.
Suffice to say, Zan and Lloyd found themselves comparatively lucky. They were still unfortunate enough to encounter the monsters, but the colossal creatures they faced moved sluggishly and out of energy thanks to their empty stomachs.
Although…they were sluggish only in comparison to their normal mad thrashing.
Most would expect mountain-sized creatures to move very slowly, as the ones before Zan and Lloyd did, yet despite their size they normally had the speed of a floundering fish on land. That didn’t sound too menacing or impressive, until one saw the destruction such massive bodies could do with that kind of velocity.
Now, such a creature would not normally spare a glance to the walking specks of dust known as humans. Normally the bipedal creatures did not give them enough energy, nor were they very filling even when found in droves, hiding in their little nests.
Just the same as humans would normally not look to eat ants, they had no interest in eating normal human beings.
…But compared to normal humans, Zan and Lloyd were rats in comparison. And it was just so that the two creatures happened to be starving.
Even a sailor had rat stew when provisions became dire, much less a mindless beast who only knew of eating and feeling full.
A sky full of flesh and teeth came down on Lloyd, while the very ground itself seemed to be rising up to meet Zan who was just below the clouds.
The pressure was on.
Lloyd ran further north so that his sister and his warriors could escape.
There was a unique, passed-down lineage technique that activated the essence within his blood, by using the essence found naturally in the rain. With enough accumulation it strengthened his body, while empowering it further when willed. It was noticeably different from Zan’s vital energy which he got from food, yet it worked closely the same.
Energy concentrated itself into Lloyd’s legs, and he ran for dear life.
What was once a silent and peaceful night had now sunk into chaotic mayhem.
BANG!
Each step the swordsman took seemed to slam on the ground with harsh strength, yet he looked as graceful as a fleeting cloud.
At the slamming pace he was going, he calculated that he would just barely escape the radius of the monster’s fall.
No doubt that its fall would result in a cataclysmic shattering of the earth, but dealing with the flying, gargantuan broken pieces of stone was much more reasonable than enduring the weight of the creature.
Yet when his back was turned away from the beast in his mad dash, a brief flash of white lit up from behind him. For but a second most of the ground and nearby surroundings he was facing, was painted with an unnatural pale glow.
Having no idea what that was, the swordsman naturally looked behind him, finding unpleasantly that he was leading the beast away quite well. Actually…too well.
He could have sworn the creature was a few hundred meters higher, and he could also have sworn that it wasn’t approaching him from such an angle!
Previously, the body of the creature formed a loose diagonal, yet now it seemed the head of the creature was closer to dropping right above his own!
…On the positive side, it looked like his sister and warriors would all live— avoiding any collateral damage whatsoever.
Although he might not.
Energy swelled into his legs as if they were being put into overdrive, and his thighs almost exploded out of his armor. In fact, they almost exploded in general. He was facing the opposite of a problem Zan never even knew he had.
The vessel that was Lloyd’s body was too weak to handle the sheer purity in his veins. Although his body was naturally strengthened over the years, his naturally pure blood held a rich essence so powerful, that it could always destroy him from within, even still.
Over the years this affected his disposition, leading him to become overwhelmingly meticulous, thoughtful and careful. He often thought and planned ahead, which was a great trait to have albeit he was also prone to being lost in that storm of mental energy.
Even now his mind was racing. The sudden change in the monster’s position forced him to reassess all the current and future plans he had concocted.
His eyes scanned his surroundings, looking for something— anything that could give him a boost to his speed. Perhaps a surface he could propel himself off of, or something mildly explosive that could push him a burst forward. Maybe his newly made pugilist friend could launch him forward with a punch, or more pleasantly, a throw?
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Wait! That's right, he was launched into the skies himself.
Lloyd looked around the terrestrial ground but there was nothing. The further he ran north the more flat the earth beneath him became. He long outran the hills and mounds from previously, including any sort of machinery left over from the ship that could possibly blast him forwards.
At this point the monster’s sudden and unpredictable shift in descent might very well be his death. If he was not crushed on impact by the literal mountain falling atop him, those thousands of vile teeth the size of boulders would definitely do the trick.
Lloyd pushed away the encroaching feeling of despair. Mind racing with thoughts on what he could and should do now in his situation.
Honestly, it was kind of humorous. He was excellent in sword and strength. Deadly skillful, and outrageously powerful. Most surprisingly however, the only thing sharper than his blade, was his mind.
And using both, he triumphed against stacked odds and illustrious foes.
A battle of a thousand versus ten thousand. A fierce dragon general who wore impenetrable armor using the bones of an ancestor. Twin sea serpents, rogue bloodsuckers, fogmen—
Using creative and brilliant strategies executed with devastating perfection, each and every single one of them were all overcome.
In time he became a seasoned knight commander, embodying skill, strength and strategy.
Unfortunately, none of those things were going to let him escape his impending and crushing doom by a mountain sized worm.
…Well, the swordsman did have one more possible solution to avoid an ignoble crushing into paste.
If he could truly harness and rein in the pure essence of his blood with extreme focus, he could burst the blood vessels and muscles within his legs with minimum injury— just enough to boost him out of the radius of the monster’s fall, while maintaining a painful but “healthy” enough athleticism to keep running.
After the explosive burst of power, his legs would at best become broken puppets strung by rain-essence strings. Kind of like what Zan did with his broken body when he fought Balon.
However, the potential problem with doing such a thing, was not just that he would become temporarily crippled. The main problem was that he was far more likely instead, to spontaneously combust.
All of Everrain’s most royal bloodlines shared a connection to two powerful progenitors. It was hotly debated who exactly their exact identities were, but nonetheless their existences were so powerful that their sired children gained immense power.
And among the children of the bloodline of rain, were those whose blood was especially pure. Innately regal, yet wild and uncontrollable. Many who had seen or inherited such powers, all came to the conclusion that they were not meant to be wielded by mortal kind.
Lloyd was no exception, at least in terms of control. Although born with outrageously pure blood himself, it only made it harder for him to wield whatever wild angel or demon was within his veins.
The mountain of flesh continued to fall. As the air broke under such immense pressure, it produced a sound akin to a magical engine rumbling, albeit multiplied a few thousand times.
Lloyd breathed in and out calmly. Despite his mad dash and the stress of the situation, his outer appearance was cool and seemingly unbothered. Actually, he seemed even more calm than previously.
What he was planning to do after all required an inhuman amount of focus. One that strived to connect body, mind, and spirit.
Not that he knew that, of course, but with his life on the line he could only try his best.
The swordsman intuitively portioned his mind. A slice of infinity went towards keeping his legs running, while the greater portion of infinity went towards harnessing every ounce of his being— his existence in of itself. Every illogical ounce of his existence including not just his body, but his mind, and the ever illusive and even more intangible soul property.
Lloyd’s eyes had long closed, although his body still kept up the same olympic-level sprint.
Within himself, he was trying yet failing to prod his blood. It felt like standing behind a locked door into one of the rooms of his own house. He turned the knob over and over, slowly realizing with each attempt that he didn’t have the key.
This occurrence was strange to him. In the past, utilizing the deeper powers of his blood felt like trying to direct a raging sea serpent. Never was it like this where he couldn’t even get it to move.
Yet the swordsman was only momentarily discouraged. He brushed off the odd occurrence simply because thinking over it would get him no answers.
He focused once again on harnessing every bit of himself, he had no other option but to try even harder. He held out hope that there must be something— anything that could help him.
…And something heard his plea. The very sword that flew into his hands previously, unsheathed itself on its own accord.
It gleamed in the moonlight, visible cracks enveloping it like silver lava. Although its form was broken, the pieces stayed together as if ignoring both gravity, and the force of the wind.
Though…it might also have been taking the form of its user.
Suddenly, the shattered sword hummed.
Lloyd, who was closing his eyes, also heard the sound. Within his mind three points lit up like stars, and in an instant he felt a strange sensation. To say the least, it felt like awakening when he was already awake.
The strange sensation filled his body, it filled his mind, and he felt it fill something even deeper within.
And then, he felt all three of them connect. The three twinkling stars within his mind also connected, as beams of light formed between them a perfect triangle.
That triangle began to rotate over and over, before it started to push into the dark oblivion of his mind.
Its light started to fade from view as it was absorbed into unseen matrixes and weavings.
Then, the mysterious power within his blood started to unlock, and Lloyd was soon to find out why exactly it was sealed away from him.
His blood ran cold. Extremely cold. Despite being of the essence of rain, the overwhelming vitality started to scorch his body from the inside out.
It was an overwhelmingly piercing sensation, like dry ice being pressed into his skin, except instead they replaced his blood vessels.
Lloyd was used to cold rain hitting his skin. To some it felt uncomfortable, while to others the sensation could feel refreshing. It always felt nice to him, but this sensation felt like an icy river, its temperature multiplied by a thousand times all over his body where blood could flow.
Immediately he fell towards the ground. The leftover force from the speed he was going at left him tumbling and skidding over the floor, yet he never felt the pain that came from such a thing.
Light came out of his eyes like flashlights. Iris, sclera and all were replaced by that harsh light.
He looked like a wrathful god, except he was in pure, visceral torment. People had been burned alive before, and now Lloyd was being cold-scorched from inside out.
The mountainous worm above him sensed it. Suddenly, it felt extreme instinctual fear, yet its gluttonous instinct also told the creature that it was about to eat a supreme delicacy.
Either way, it was not like it could change its velocity now that it had used all of its energy. Not without eating something nutritious, after all.
It hesitated, but opened its mouth wider in slobbering anticipation.
If Lloyd could see the rain of disgusting ooze above him, he would scream in blasphemy. Well, he probably wouldn’t scream it with his personality, but something close.
Four-hundred, three-hundred, then two hundred meters…
Light itself was starting to pierce through Lloyd’s flesh and skin— his own blood becoming a freezing, piercing lava.
Two powers. One that was obvious, direct, and falling above him— and another which came unexpectedly from within, seemed to be having a race of who would consume Lloyd first.
Now only a hundred meters separated the swordsman and the worm, and only a few seconds separated Lloyd from his unweaving.
It was then that his shattered sword reacted.
Within his mind, a thousand sword fragments manifested. In a flurry storm they immediately eviscerated the triangular key that released his sealed blood.
Then in the physical, the broken blade siphoned the power to itself. The light that was threatening to penetrate through his flesh and skin started to flow into his right arm, and then into the sword.
Unbound to the veil between the conscious and subconscious, it searched deep into the memory of its owner's blood.
In the next moment, the sword once again turned into a thousand floating fragments. Each one moved as if they were etching symbols and runes onto the fabric of reality.
Droplets of water materialized and the sound of rain hitting the ground could be heard. First a drizzle, then a flooding storm. A blurry fog of rain embraced Lloyd, before the color of light blue flashed over the area.
The mountain-sized worm came down not a second later. It smashed a hole through the earth the size of a stadium, and broken pieces of Eok flew through the air like meteors.
A blue flash reappeared not too far away from the radius of the impact, and the longhaired swordsman found himself on his knees. The sound of intense pouring rain quieted back down to a drizzle, before fading away completely.
Lloyd found himself nauseous, disoriented, and confused. He could not remember for the life of him how he appeared where he was— which to note, was about five hundred meters away from the rampaging worm.
And he would not know for a long time, that the very power of his blood ripped holes through the fabric of space.