In front of Damien a fight of insane proportions was taking place which had him in awe, Tobisha could be seen fighting off five members of Bloodless all on his own, his body covered in a red baleful aura making those that felt it despair.
“Tobisha did not use this when he was testing me,” Damien said aloud mainly to himself but the old spirit hearing this laughed loudly and his words and said. “Well, I would hope he did not use it, the aura you see around him currently is an ability that allows him to have strength equal to the head's strength.”
Surprise colored Damien’s face, ‘equal to the head?’ seemingly unable to imagine an ability that boosted someone's strength by so much, then again the head also had a broken ability. Even if that ability cost him his life it was still insanely powerful.
Looking at Tobisha’s fight Damien could see the man easily dominating the bloodless men who at this point had grim expressions but were mostly composed as all they had to do was survive until his ability ran out, once that happened it would be easy to turn things around.
Charging forward Tobisha covered his fist densely in the red aura and punched at one of the men, in response the man easily dodged the attack as it was not particularly fast. However, even though he dodged the aura still managed to touch him making his face go from grim to horror.
The aura seeped down into his bones and organs through the skin and started to corrupt them making the man bleed from his pores and his bones to make a loud grinding noise before breaking causing him to scream out in pain.
Watching this scene, the other bloodless members' faces strained further. “Keep your distance and use ranged attacks, otherwise if he gets close to you…” Damien who was watching this fight heard the man's words and looked over at him.
The man was much more composed than the other three and looked to be the leader as his clothes were different from theirs, the other three men had the same black and red outfit but only had two symbols of a drop of blood on their shoulders. The man who just spoke however had three drops so Damien assumed that it had something to do with ranks.
Looking over at Sokai he asked him about it, “I am quite surprised you managed to figure that out, yes the drops of blood on their uniforms signify their ranks, the bloodless organization has ten ranks as far as I am aware.
“For the men fighting Toshiba the ones with two drops are rank two which is called “blood officer” while the one with three drops is as you could imagine rank three being called “blood leader” As for the ranks after that they really don’t matter as there is only a few individuals in those ranks since the higher the rank, the stronger the person with said rank.”
Damien nodded his head in understanding and said, “So you said you were going to tell me about Earth’s history, what did you mean by that?” he asked this since he was genuinely curious about his planet’s past and wanted to know what the old spirit had meant when he said that planet had been awakened once before.
An odd look appeared on the old spirit’s face before he let out a sigh, “Look before I tell you about any of that I need you to understand something alright?” Seeing Damien nod for him to continue he smiled before continuing to speak.
“Earth's history is complicated and even I don’t know everything about it and just knowing about even some of said history can attract unwanted attention, as to what I mean by that is there exist beings capable of knowing if someone is aware of the information they should otherwise not be.”
“What do you mean? Like some random person can just know that I learned about Earth’s history?” Damien asked with a look of confusion as it did not make sense how someone could know that he knew about something without him telling them.
“Look, I know it's confusing and weird, even I agree with what you probably are thinking. Regardless though all you need to know is that learning this information could put you in a lot of danger. So I need you to decide, do you want me to tell you about this knowing that some random being could potentially detect it and send people after you? Or would you rather have me tell you the information before teaching you a way to seal it, allowing you to set a time for it to be unsealed. That way anyone looking to see if someone learned of this information would be unable to find anything.”
Taking a minute to process the words of the old spirit Damien fell into contemplation, on one hand, he could just learn the information and take the risk of not sealing it which had both upsides and downsides. The upside was the information could prove to be useful in different scenarios and situations, the downside was insanely powerful beings hunting him down.
As for the other option which was learning the information now before sealing it away, the upside was not having powerful beings on the hunt for him but the downside was not knowing the information that could prove useful. After thinking about it for some time Damien decided it was best to keep the information sealed until he was at least a c grade otherwise he could die too soon.
“I pick the second option.” Hearing Damien’s choice the man nodded his head in approval happy that Damien was being smart rather than taking needless risks. “Goo,d I’ll teach you the sealing method now before telling you about the planet’s past.”
Suddenly the man raised his hand and touched a finger to Damien’s head catching him off guard. “What are you doing?” he asked confused.
“Relax, I am going to transfer the skill over to you. The system has certain skills that can be transferred between people, these skills are usually awarded by the system and then learned or are found in ruins. What I am doing now is the method to transfer the skill, you should see a window pop up after I begin asking for your permission for the skill to be transferred.”
Stolen story; please report.
With that, the old spirit touched Damien’s head once more with a finger and closed his eyes, shortly after a window appeared asking for his permission just like Sokai had said. Damien stared at it momentarily in interest before quickly accepting it, upon doing so another alert appeared from the system.
*DING* new skill acquired - “Memory seal” - Allows the user to seal parts of their memories. (Can not be used on others)
The description said nothing of interest other than the skill could only be used on the user themselves and not others, Damien was a bit bummed out that the skill was relatively useless but honestly, he had no reason to complain he had gotten a skill for free and who knows maybe it will prove useful in the future.
Looking back over at the old spirit Damien spoke, “Alright, so how about you tell me about the planet’s past and what role your temple played back then?”
With a smile the old man began to speak with a reminiscent look, “My temple as you probably heard Kingston say is called the forsaken temple, back when I was still alive it was one of the number one powers on the planet and everyone who thought themselves to be talented would try to join.”
“However we were not the only major power back then there was also the other power you are aware of, the bloodless organization…” Sokai’s expression changed to one of immense disgust and hate making it apparent that he despised the entire organization.
“They like us were a major power but were on the opposite side of the spectrum from us, we were what you would consider the good guys and did not participate in mass slaughter like they did. Don’t get me wrong we were not saints but they would do truly disgusting things and had no such thing as limits when it came to things you might consider evil.”
“Whether it was the slaughter of innocents, rape, torture they did it all with a smile, but the worst thing they did was create labs where they would bring back kidnapped bloodline users and subject them to all kinds of experiments.”
The second Damien heard those words his expression became extremely grave, “What do you mean by that?”
Glancing over at Damien the old man saw his expression, “You… have you experienced something like what I just said?” he asked hoping that Damien’s expression was for different reasons.
Taking a deep breath Damien calmed himself and his expression eased after some time before he looked directly into Soaki’s eyes, “Currently there is an organization which I do not know the name of on our planet, they kidnapped me at the age of twenty right before the system descended and had been putting me through simulations for the last 180 years before I managed to escape with the help of Ela.”
Upon hearing this Sokai’s expression also turned for the worst, “There is no doubt about it, the bloodless organization someone had members survive allowing for their legacy to continue. Something does not make sense though…”
Sokai paused for a second and appeared to be in deep thought, “After this big fight that you are currently seeing subsides, the remaining temple members get together and ally with other powers on the planet of which a few were also major. After that we hunted down every last member of Bloodless using a special method to track them, I killed quite a few myself and saw almost every single one die with my own eyes.”
“Is it possible someone let some members survive?” Damien asked.
“I want to say no, but honestly I have no idea. Back then I was blinded by rage and hate and lost to my emotions, Mainly because I had let both the head the man who saved me and his only son die. Having not been able to save at least one of them I simply lost myself.”
Damien understood where he was coming from. If something had happened to Ela and he had made a mistake causing her death where had he not she would have lived. Damien was not sure what he would do.
“Are you sure it's the bloodless organization? While they have similar aspects there are also differences.” Damien said with a pause. “The people who kidnapped me did not experiment on my body but instead put me in a simulation to see how I would react in different lives and surroundings, I believe they were using that information to understand my bloodline and find a way to extract it.”
The old spirit appeared a bit relieved hearing this: “Then they may be a different organization. One issue, though. How are you aware of that word?”
Confusion immediately dawned on Damien’s face, “What word are you referring to?”
“Eventide.”
Realization appeared on Damien’s face before it became grim again: “It was the only word I knew of when I awoke in the last simulation. For every simulation, they erased my memories completely before sending me into a new one with a new set.”
The old spirit sighed hearing this and said, “In that case the organization I know of and you know of are the same. All is not bad though, they are currently weaker than ever before… I would recommend trying to hit D rank as soon as possible and then destroying them. Do not let them grow, otherwise there will be dire consequences for Eventide.”
“Eventide?” Damien said aloud confused once more.
Sokai chuckled in response, “Oh right the reason I asked you why you knew that word is because that was the name of the planet during my time.”
“That’s a horrible name for a planet you know?” he mocked a little annoyed that he had not figured that out without needing to ask.
“It’s not like I named it, besides “Earth” is certainly not better,” Sokai responded once more laughing loudly. Suddenly a look of relaxation appeared on the old spirit’s face, “I just remembered that I forgot to tell you something important.” he said with a look of seriousness.
“What is it?” Sokai looked over at Damien and sighed, “The system is very erratic and what I mean by this is that it will sometimes stay dormant and make no changes to the way it works and operates which is what I always preferred but unfortunately, the system is not always like this and a lot of the time it will make random unannounced changes to itself…”
“What does that even mean? Like does the system implement a feature and then take it away a week later or something?” Damien asked in response not sure what to make of it if that were the case.
“Pretty much, yes. One time, the system introduced a new way to level up, but after three short years, it silently removed it. As a result, millions of beings across the multiverse were affected, losing their path. While it is possible to navigate a path without the system, it is millions of times harder, and almost no one chooses to do so.” Sokai seemed genuinely annoyed while discussing the system’s actions, and Damien found it easy to understand why. Imagine following a designated path in a forest, only for that path to suddenly disappear in all directions, leaving you completely lost.
After a few moments of silence, Sokai looked over at him his calm look having been restored replacing the one of worry from moments ago, “Just be careful Damien, while I have no idea why the system does what it does I also believe whatever the system is or whoever is running it has their reasons for those actions.”
“Alright enough rambling about the system, how about I tell you how our temple collapsed and our beliefs on why the system left the planet?”