Isaiah
Isaiah waited for the Gale Clan members to leave, deactivating the Power Attack he had ready, and tried to figure out why all eight hundred plus members of the Gale Clan were following the woman’s orders.
“Do you not know much about skills?” The woman asked him, looking somewhat confused.
Isaiah knew quite a lot about skills, but probably not as much as Aleron or Ava. There was a reason they always called him stupid.
In his mind, though, most skills were about boosting combat roles. Movement skills to chase or run away faster, offensive skills to hit harder, defensive skills to provide protection, these were the basics. Then there were stealth skills and detection skills to counter them, as well as the trickier types of skills the woman in front of him seemed to favor.
He didn’t know of any command skills which would make another force listen to you, though.
“I signed contracts with all of them,” the woman explained, looking at him with those eyes again. “They have to follow my orders or they die.”
Isaiah knew about contracts and what she said didn’t make any sense. “Who would sign a contract like that?”
“Someone who would die if they didn’t.” The woman smirked. “Or someone really horny.”
“It sounds like it would be better to just die.”
“Maybe.” The woman was watching him intently, and Isaiah got the feeling she was trying to decide something. “But I’ve yet to have anyone make that choice, Omalia Gale included.”
“So, you’re the one responsible for Omalia’s disappearance.” Isaiah started to grow angry again. He’d been yelled at for hours due to the woman in front of him’s first arrival at the Gale Clan.
“Yes.” The woman kept looking at him with those eyes. “And I learned quite a lot from questioning her.
“For one, her family was in the middle of betraying the Gale Clan to the Flare Clan. Two, both clans think they are working with the Kindar Raiders, but it is more likely the Flare Clan due to Omalia’s betrayal. And three, some interesting facts about you.
“Would you like to know what they were?”
Isaiah started to glare at her, but he didn’t dismiss her claims. Aleron and Ava had been worried about just such a betrayal from within the clan.
“First, are you aware who your biological father is?”
Isaiah just continued to glare at her, not answering.
“Well, I didn’t get his name, but he is a powerful C rank, the fifth son of the War Dragon King, and he raped your mother for some reason. The more important fact about him is his father, and thus your grandfather, is the one who killed the Shadow Thief whose inheritance is over that way.” She pointed north toward the inheritance, but Isaiah just continued to glare at her.
“Second, your mother didn’t abandon you. I have no information on her personality, but Omalia explicitly told me she was killed by her husband, the leader of the Gale Clan, and seemed very certain of that fact.”
Isaiah just continued to glare, now not believing a word the woman said.
“Finally, according to Omalia, the reason the Gale Clan leader kept you alive, even though your talent was a potential threat to him, is because sacrificing you on an altar inside the inheritance is an almost sure way to gain a reward.”
Isaiah decided to stop listening to the liar’s words and moved forward with Storm Steps while charging up Power Attack. The Clan Leader was Raven’s father. He wouldn’t have killed his wife and he wouldn’t have raised Isaiah with the plan to sacrifice him.
The woman was lying. Aleron and Ava were not dead. And he was going to kill her.
When he got close enough, however, he realized the woman on the pillar was an illusion. And he couldn’t sense her actual location.
Then he heard a noise to the east and, when he looked over, he saw a woman running away from the eastern edge of the camp who looked like a Gale Clan member.
Without thinking much, he chased her, but the woman was fast, moving as if with the wind, and, with her head start and the obstacles in the woods, it took Isaiah almost a minute to catch her.
He stabbed a power attack toward her, but, before he hit, the fear faded from her eyes and he realized she’d died.
At the same time, Isaiah received a System notification.
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Your Pillar of Conquest has been taken over by a native of Hira.
If you don’t regain control within half a day, your force will be considered conquered and you will be trapped on Hira for the next 72 years.
He’d been tricked. Ignoring the Gale Clan member who’d died after distracting him, Isaiah ran back toward the camp as fast as he could, and, during that time, he figured out what had happened.
The tricky woman was a native pretending to be an elf and then pretending to work for Princess Silveea. Everything she said was a lie and Aleron, Ava, and their entire force were certainly okay.
The woman did have the power of contracts though. The actions of the Gale Clan members left in camp didn’t make sense otherwise. And she’d forced the Gale Clan messenger he’d just chased to run away from him with an order such as ‘run away to the east if Isaiah attacks and, if he catches you, kill yourself’. The messenger didn’t want to kill herself, so her soul burned up from the contract and the native woman gained the primal energy.
She then knew Isaiah was as far away as he was going to get and activated the Pillar of Conquest so he’d have to stop and regain control of it, allowing her to get away.
She’d likely been hiding in one of the tents near the Pillar of Conquest and he’d been stupid to think her illusion skill was powerful enough at low F rank to project an illusion from the edge to the very center of the camp.
Running up into the air and focusing all his attention on his eyes, Isaiah could see the woman running to the west. But it wasn’t simple as she had a high grade shadow path Law Egg. Isaiah, however, had the Perception Prince uniqueness, tripling his Perception, so she couldn’t get away.
He didn’t stop to regain the pillar and instead chased her, but, even though she seemed slower than she was the last time they fought, likely having used her movement skill as part of a skill combination, she still started ahead of him.
He wasn’t close enough for his Kinetic Senses skill to track her, so, when she split into five people, all running about thirty meters away from each other, he couldn’t tell which one was her real body.
The five clones reached where the rest of the Gale Clan members had stopped, and then four of them vanished, the last one turning to look at him, her pink eyes slightly odd to his heightened sight.
His anger started to fade as soon as he looked at her eyes and an odd feeling began to spread from his groin to the rest of his body. For some reason, he wanted the woman to like him, and that didn’t make sense.
With the power attack charged up on the end of his spear, he stabbed his own left thigh, trusting in his Troll Heart racial ability to passively heal him, and the feeling faded, allowing him to look away from her eyes.
Then he rushed the woman, fighting through the pain, and stabbed her, his spear passing right through her illusionary body.
Due to his confusion, he’d failed to use Kinetic Senses, and he quickly activated the skill, looking around at everyone. Wherever he looked, however, he felt that same feeling, and he had to stab himself again.
“Everyone, kill yourselves.”
The voice came from behind him and Isaiah whirled around to see the woman standing about five meters from him, looking directly at his eyes.
The effect felt stronger than before, even though he knew the woman in front of him wasn’t real, and he had to stab himself once again to shake himself out of it.
He quickly turned back to see all the Gale Clan members falling and the woman running away again, leading to an almost instant realization. The effect was stronger because the woman had leveled up from killing all the Gale Clan members.
Isaiah tried to chase her, but every time he looked near her, even while her head was turned, he felt the effect. It wasn’t as strong as when he looked into the eyes of one of her clones, but it was overpowering and required quite a bit of pain to shake off.
It was then Isaiah had an idea. He closed his eyes and focused on following her with his ears. It slowed him considerably, but he didn’t feel the effect and managed to chase her.
Then he heard a different noise, however, and almost immediately something felt wrong. He opened his eyes to look and saw his spear, the spear Varick had given him, had been cut in half, the upper half having dropped to the ground.
When the charm skill stopped working, the woman had used telekinesis again and, while he had his eyes closed and was adjusting, she’d sent a sword to attack his spear.
It was one of the same two swords she’d used to kill Gale Clan members while trying to frame him last time, and the other one, the larger of the two, hit him in the chest while he was distracted.
She’d apparently recovered them during her time in the Gale Clan camp, and she was using the same strategy which had allowed her to escape before.
“I’m going to kill you!!!” Isaiah yelled, feeling more anger than ever before in his life, and, for the first time, he ignored the one thing he remembered his mom telling him when he was barely two years old, only a day or two before she killed herself.
She had said, “Isaiah, no matter what happens, don’t give in to anger.”
It hadn’t been until puberty that he’d understood what she’d meant. In his blood was the power of a War Dragon and it was activated through rage. According to Varick, rage meant a loss of control, and a loss of control meant a loss of status as a warrior and a degradation into being a monster. So, his mother had wanted to keep him from becoming the type of monster his biological father had been, and she didn’t think he could, which is why she’d killed herself.
Completely ignoring the System messages which started popping up in front of his eyes, Isaiah slowly, reverentially, moved backward and placed the lower half of his spear on the ground next to the upper half, where he could come find it again later. Then he closed his eyes and fully lost himself to his rage, chasing after his enemy.
Had he looked at his system messages, however, he would have seen something other cultivators could only wish for in their dreams.
Law Egg gained - Incineration
Your soul is affected by your understanding of Laws.
Magic +8, Soul +4
Law Egg gained - Ravaging
Your soul is affected by your understanding of Laws.
Strength +6, Agility +3, Vitality +3
Congratulations!
Your Law Egg of Incineration has advanced to middle grade.
Your soul is affected by your understanding of Laws.
Magic +8, Soul +4
Congratulations!
Your Law Egg of Ravaging has advanced to middle grade.
Your soul is affected by your understanding of Laws.
Strength +6, Agility +3, Vitality +3
Congratulations!
You have self formed the skill Dragon Drive (F-Epic)
Dragon Drive (F-Epic) Magic, Activation, Dragon
You burn your health to destroy your enemy