The end is always a beginning

-- Audrey’s POV --

“Do we have some more salt? This salt cellar is empty,” I asked, trying to shake the last bit out of it.

“Hmm, let’s see,” Jake murmured and a moment later, took out one from his storage ring. We found a few small-sized spatial rings when we looted Sealu, before leaving Dink. They were perfect for carrying miscellaneous things like these.

“Put a bit more into it, I like it with more salt,” he urged me, seeing that I barely put more into it.

“But it’s unhealthy!” I raised my voice.

“Hahaha, as if things like those had any effect on us at this level. Hell, I could drink fifty liters of seawater and I’d be completely fine,” he shook his head and pulled it out of my hand to spice it a bit more. I was cooking scorpion stew, but he liked it only when it was salty. Luckily, I had no problem with his salty version either.

“Haah, seriously you…” I sighed.

“What? We’ve been eating for days, let me eat it the way I like it, at least. Also, I think that we should stop eating scorpion meat. It’s not like we can’t live off of mana,” he said, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

Biting my lips, I peered towards the lush green forest in the far. Ever since we left Trigon, we’ve been exploring the northwestern area of Ketarn, while Cor was gathering the undead at the Skeleton Hill. We hit up a camp right between the Bear God’s forest and the Demon Burrows, which was a rather fantastic place by the way.

The demons lived underground in crystal-filled caves that illuminated everything. Some caverns were illuminated in red lights, while others were in green, yellow, purple, blue, or even numerous colours mixing together. Those crystals were mana crystals, each gathering different kinds of elements, which changed their colours.

At the deeper caverns, we found multiple coloured crystals as well, but we weren’t allowed too deep since we were both weak and had the looks of low-class demons. We just took up the looks of Alps, the ‘big brothers’ of Imps so to say. The Demon Burrows was definitely a more powerful nation or whatever they called themselves, since even the low-rank demons had an average level of six hundred and fifty, so the leaders were most likely above the seven hundredth level.

If Dred could turn them into his blood servants, in his Demon God form, we’d get in control of a considerably powerful force. Especially because demons were individually stronger than humans, though they were fewer in number as well.

“What are you looking at?” my reminiscence was interrupted by Jake.

“We’ve explored most of the Western, Northern, and Southwestern parts of Ketarn, but we have yet to check out the Bear God’s forest,” I replied as I raised my hand to my chin.

Taking out the kitchen spoon from my hand, Jake stirred the contents of the pot I was holding in my hand. We didn’t need fireplaces since we could just cover our bodies or our hands in flames if we wanted, and I was doing just that.

Raising his head, he said, “I’m a bit reluctant to go in there. Even at the Dragon Lake and in the Misty Forest, we came upon powerful monsters, especially that dragon,” he shuddered. “It’s no wonder it had a territory of that size.”

“I know, that’s why I’ve been avoiding going in there as well. If we got spotted, God knows what kind of shitstorm a legendary creature could start. It might be very territorial like some animals. I guess we should ask Elena or Dred about it,” I said, adding, “They should know more about these creatures than us.”

“That might be a good idea,” Jake nodded. “Also, stop the fire, the meat is good,” he mused. Withdrawing my mana, I stopped the flame coming out of my palm and put the pot on the ground. Since we were in the middle of the desert and it was daytime, we didn’t have to worry about anyone noticing the fire. Hell, the sun would have scorched us if not for the fact that we were using elemental barriers to make ourselves feel comfortable.

Since I kept the temperature around me in an area of two meters at nineteen degrees centigrade, despite the outside temperature being around sixty degrees centigrade, I could afford to wear a long sand-coloured robe, reaching my feet. I kept my red hair which stood out in the desert, but that much was okay. The monsters were around our levels, after all.

Turning away from the green forest and looking at the pot, I took out my portion into a plate and started eating. “That forest looks so inviting after spending two days in this damned desert, nothing but sand, sand, and sand!” I shook my head and gulped down my food in the meantime.

“Don’t speak with your mouth full,” Jake chuckled. “And yeah, we either go in or we should return to our ‘masters’~”

“Aww, don’t bug them, Elena was sad enough that she had to accept her role as the queen of the hive. She would have preferred keeping a friendly relationship with everyone, not one of master and servant,” I reprimanded him.

“I know, but that’s impossible when everyone who isn’t an ‘overlord’ like us is head over heels for their masters. They’re a bunch of fanatical lunatics!” he replied.

“Why, now, if you drank my blood at that time and not Elena’s, you’d be like that as well. You’d follow her around like a puppy whenever you had the chance,” I said with a smirk.

“...It’s not like either of us could or would want to disobey hers or Dred’s commands, but our position is certainly better. As she mentioned it before, there can be only three direct blood-servants of a devourer, while other legendary creatures just don’t dare to make more because they’d be hunted down by the other races. That, and they don’t like crowds,” he muttered.

“Do you think Elena would make one more overlord and Dred another two? Will there be more people like us?” he added.

“How should I know, it most likely depends on whether they find capable people or not. I don’t think they’d turn a new-born into overlords, even if they’d grow up to our level in a few years with their help and resources. That Emily Heder should have a chance to become an overlord, but I’m not sure,” I pointed out.

“Well, if she has to pretend to be normal and accompany her father for who knows how many years, she probably has no chance to become one,” he shook his head and continued to eat in silence.

Relatively speaking, there were three more positions to be filled as overlords. Even if Elena made another three people drink her blood, only the first would become her blood-servant. I had a hunch that it had to do with the Abyss and I do remember Dred mention something like that.

Strangely enough, we could have five direct blood servants, who were descendant levels, and they could have ten, who were pawn levels. And the pawns could have as many as they wanted, but their blood would do nothing but convert people into fanatical believers of the devourers. Well, most of the people under our rule were like that anyway…

Haah, seriously, what have I gotten myself into back then? At that time, I could have killed Elena as well, if not for her aura that made me trust her more than I’d have normally done. Well, I do feel that everything is alright and happy now, but if I was still a human, I’d most likely feel disgusted by the things I’ve done. Fufu, but humans are just one of the many races we will turn into our faithful believers and once the universe falls, peace shall reign over everything! At that time, I can spend the rest of my life at leisure.

Nobody ever fought against each other under the devourers rule, I wonder why. Does their blood make us maturer and we can solve our conflicts by simply talking about it calmly? That’s what I’ve seen happen all the time, so I guess her blood has a calming effect. Wait, but isn’t it like drugging everyone then? I guess it is… hahaha. So I’ve been drugged for life. That doesn’t sound so good… but it is!

“Audrey?”

“What?” I raised my head.

“Were you talking with Elena or were you just thinking?”

“Why?” I raised a brow.

“Well, you had this strange grin on your face for a bit.”

“Are you telling me that I’m grinning when I’m talking with Elena?” I covered my face.

“Well, not just Elena. Even when you're talking with Dred,” he replied.

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“Ugh, I never realised. We’re fanatics as well, after all,” I forced a laugh.

“I can’t deny that. I’d definitely feel jealous if I saw you grinning like that while talking to another guy, but Dred? I feel nothing when you do that,” he shook his head.

“We aren’t normal, after all,” I sighed. “I was just thinking, but since you mentioned her, I’ll contact her and ask her about this Bear God’s forest,” I added.

“Uhm, I talked with Dred not long ago and he said that Elena was rather busy with the Warton brothers,” Jake said.

“Then I’ll contact Dred,” I replied.

“Yo, do you have a moment?” I asked as I established a link with him.

“Audrey? What’s up? Don’t you two want to come back? We pretty much know everything about that area already, so you could take a break if you wanted,” he said.

“That sounds good. Once we return, I’ll go on a holiday with Jake! Oh, and I need some of your or Elena’s blood as well. I think I’d prefer hers, probably because I received hers originally,” I said.

“Sure, that’s no big deal. Did you contact me to tell me this?”

“No, I just wanted to say that we never entered the Bear God’s territory, so I wanted to ask about that. Should we go in or not?” I asked.

“The Bear God? Hmm, it has a rather large territory, so it probably has some forces or it’s strong enough itself. Although we talked about this with Elena before and she also said that it’d be good to know more about the Bear God and its level, I think it’s better if you don’t go in. If it was to notice you, we’d have no way to help you run away and escape, after all,” he replied.

“So should we just go back and leave it be?”

“I’d say a definite yes this time. I don’t want you two to die on me because of exploration,” he said.

“In that case, we’ll go and fetch Cor, and then go back to Trigon. Or should we leave him there?”

“Wait, I’m talking with him already, let me bring him in on the conversation as well,” Dred replied and I felt Cor connecting in the next moment. If this was a chat, then Dred and Elena were the admins who had infinite power over the chat. They could overtake us, possess us, connect us with each other even against our will, really anything…

“I haven't heard of you for a while, reddie,” Cor ‘greeted’ me.

“...”

“Hey, don’t badmouth my woman!” Jake defended me from his harassment. Cor liked making fun of me way too much sometimes, though I was much more used to it than Jake.

“Cor, do you want to stay there or would you come back to Trigon?” Dred asked, ignoring our little banter.

“Is there anything I should do in Trigon? Like, can I even enter the city?” Cor asked.

“Uhm, unless you use cosmological constant to change your looks, no, not really. And you have nothing particular to do here,” he replied.

“In that case, I’ll stay here in Skeleton Hill. It won’t take much longer for me to get in control completely and turn every undead into my blood servant. There are a few peeps here who can turn fallen monsters into undead monsters as well. If I learned it and then taught it to every undead here, we could create a huge army of undead!” Cor said with excitement.

“Well, my dear friend, although that sounds good, much to my unhappiness, the person in control of Ketarn is someone who’d be capable of destroying that whole army with a snap of his finger. But you can do it anyway if you want to. I don’t think he’d intervene unless you threatened the existence of the races. But if it was just waging war, we should be able to use your army,” Dred said.

“Aye! Then I’ll stay here and proceed as planned,” he replied.

“Good. You two should return in that case,” Dred said, but just as he finished talking, I sensed some people nearing us.

“We’ve got some company.”

A moment later, a few bears or bearkins with half-human looks appeared all around us. Inspect.

Name: Gaamh

Race: Bearkin

Level: 606

Threat Level: 1

Class: Berserker (Uncommon) (Increases physical stats by twenty percent.)

Allegiance: Bear God

Uh, I bet his physical resistance is high with that class, but unlucky him… I’m magic focused and I also learned to use the soul spells from Elena. Hehe~ this soul realm is wonderful.

No matter who I inspected from the eight of the people encircling us, they were all at similar levels. Although I had yet to master those soul spells, they were more than enough against these weaklings. Either way, I didn’t want to get in a fight with them unless it couldn’t be avoided, so I straightened my back and greeted them respectfully, “Greetings, people of the Bear God.”

I wasn’t sure about their personalities and only their lower halves were humanoid, so reading their expressions was kind of impossible. They started growling and snarling at each other and at us, but seeing that we didn’t understand any of it, the one called Gaamh stepped forward and used his soul force to talk to me. “Greetings. You are to follow us to the Bear God’s forest.”

“I’m sorry for intruding on your territory, we’re about to leave, so I’d like to refuse your offer,” I replied.

“The God noticed that you’ve been moving around in this area for a few days now, so he got curious and wished to see you two. I’m afraid you aren’t allowed to leave without the God’s consent,” he said, taking another step towards Jake us.

Jake told everything that was happening to Dred in the meantime, so I waited a moment for Dred’s reply. “Don’t go in.”

Looking at Jake from the corner of my eye, I said to Gaamh, “I’m sorry but I have to refuse your invitation. In case the God was concerned about our presences, tell him that we meant no harm and were just exploring the area. We’re taking our leave now.” I was about to teleport away when I felt him use space lock. He clearly had no plans to let us go.

“Like I said, you can’t leave without our God’s consent.”

“In that case, I’m afraid we’ll have to brawl it out,” I said as my arms turned black and I took out my short sword from my spatial ring. Even if the effect wasn’t as powerful as Elena’s and Dred’s inner-devour, I could still use it.

“Yhrlou dhrlie,” he hurled something incomprehensible to me.

“Sure,” I muttered as I stomped on the ground and grabbed their legs with the help of earth magic. Jake appeared behind the closest with Blink and cut off his head in one clean swing of his blades. The bearkin next to Jake was already swinging his blade-like claws, but I covered for him and attacked the same bear with soul crush and used soul devour on Gaarmh at the same time.

It came a bit as a surprise when I saw the bear receiving the soul crush fall to his knees and spit out a mouthful of blood. I shot a blade of wind towards his neck and got rid of him. Seeing the remaining six jumping towards me, I clenched my fists as I formed an eight coloured ball in my palm and blew it up right in front of my own face. The bears jumping at me had little chance to avoid it at point-blank range, but I simply used my shadow form.

Thanks to the soul realm, Jake knew about it beforehand and wasn’t caught unprepared. When the destructive energy of the drip element dissipated, only four was still alive from the eight that attacked us, but Jake quickly reduced that number by one more when used soul crush on the bear that got behind me. While he defended against Gaamh’s attack, I finished the crippled guy behind my back with my short-sword and managed to turn around in time to block the other bear’s claws.

“You dirty human, you killed my brothers!” it shouted in my mind.

“Well, you had a large family then. It must have been hard to feed so many mouths!” I shouted as I enhanced my body and pushed up his heavy arms. I kicked him in the stomach, but as expected, he received no damage. Luckily, I planned to use him as a foot holder to jump back from the very beginning. Landing a bit further away, I threw my short sword towards his face, but a red aura with the shape of a bear burst out of his body and pushed my sword away.

The bear lunged towards me, knowing that I was much weaker physically. But chance had it, I wasn’t alone and I’ve been using soul devour on Gaamh for a few seconds now, so Jake had no trouble finishing him in his weakened state. I thrust my hand towards the bear’s face, much to his happiness, but he could be happy about it only for a moment.

He didn’t even notice that Jake finished Gaamh and was swinging his weapon towards the back of his head. Before the bear could hit me and bite my hand, Jake slit the back of his neck with his first swing, while the next one beheaded the bear. His headless corpse fell towards me, his claw grazing my arm in the process. Jake shook off the blood from his weapons and stored them in his spatial ring.

“Are you alright?” he rushed over, but my wound healed by the time he got there.

“Hahaha, of course, but let me report,” I said amused, seeing his worried face. It was just a graze…

“We finished them,” I reported to Dred.

“Then get away from there as quickly as possible, I’ll move out with Elena as well,” he replied.

“What? Why would you come?”

“I’m sure it sensed you and will chase you. Try to hide your presences,” he urged me, seemingly a bit impatient. Raising my brows, I looked at Jake. We were masking our auras with cosmological constant all the time, so I didn’t think anyone could find us as easily as he said.

Wait, he noticed that we’ve been around his forest! Shit, we better hurry, I grabbed Jake’s hand and teleported away, realising that. Since we couldn’t teleport that far away yet, just as we appeared at the next location, I felt an enormous presence appear at the place where we killed the other bears. Well, at least, we devoured their bodies while talking with Dred…

“Dred, he’s chasing us, and I don’t know how!”

“Just run.”