"I was foundation this morning. This must be embarrassing for you."

Regirat was not paying attention to him. Sev awkwardly in the sphere to see what he was looking at, scraping his neck on the stone. And was transfixed as he took a moment to truly see the war playing out before him.

The Dragon had indeed retreated. That should have meant a collapse of their fights, as the entire army piled on the Glutton and her mother until they died or were crippled.

What they had not accounted for was that every fighter without a nascent soul was a liability. His mother could drain the power of anyone that lay bleeding and dying, and Glutton found core formation cultivators a tasty and refreshing snack. Hundreds of core formation cultivators were rendered useless as they were forced to guard against the possibility that any stray drop of blood was turned into a weapon. Franarossi earth cultivators guarded against attacks from the Glutton, while Jubilee and Seaheart healers tried to close every wound taken.

Sev counted fourteen nascent souls facing his mother and the Glutton. Sev counted how many he guessed they had started with, and came up with a number somewhere between twenty and twenty five. Each of the two franarossi schools had six or seven, so to get that many people almost all of them would have to come in addition to a few from each of the other supporting countries. This had been a massive blow to the Martial Alliance, all things considered. Considering most of the cultivators they bought seemed to be Franarossi, this would weaken...

Ah. That no longer mattered, not in the way it had yesterday. The eventual conflict which the sect had prepared for years had come to pass. And while his mother had taken a heavy price, she could not last forever. If they still had the support of the dragon, they might even be favored. The enemy had made a grave tactical error in underestimating Glutton if he had to guess: if they had assumed that the enemies was an elder dragon, a human as strong as one, and two or three nascent souls, they were well equipped to win with few casualties.

The problem was twofold: first, they had not understand that the Glutton was as strong as an elder dragon. Not as mobile, and without dragonbreath, but far harder to kill and with reserves that allowed it to fight for far longer than a human could.

Second, the Martial Alliance knew how to fight dragons. Their model for how to fight blood mages was based on fighting vampire lords, but they only manipulated their own blood. His mother manipulated any blood, which made fighting her on a battlefield akin to fighting a fire cultivator in a bonfire.

Left to stew in his doubts, unable to move, Sev had to admit that even if lost them this battle he would still have made the proclamation he did. Few of the disciples died in the fighting, but that would have changed if his mother was on the field. Nascent souls wouldn't waste time subduing them, and some of them would have gotten themselves killed trying to fight a losing battle. Their blood would have been drained to his mother without her batting an eye.

It was a bitter realization, but his sister had good points. He wished he could have made the sect something better. Something less violent, less accustomed to loss, more focused on the growth of its disciples and less on the whims of its leadership. Something still so much more free than the Martial alliance, something that strengthened humanity in the hinterlands rather than being satisfied with a peace while millions squandered their lives under vampiric or draconic rule. If that wasn't to happen, then he would rather his sect didn't become a weapon for his mother to throw at the Martial Alliance. Maybe better it didn't exist.

He looked once more at the two battles playing out, one on the ground and one above it. His new core formation eyes were much sharper than they had been prior, allowing him to see the details of battle a thousand paces away.

The glutton was facing three teams of four Nascent soul practitioners. That battle was an endurance battle. Each group could had at least one person who could protect from the snake's thrashing, one person who could pierce its thick hide, and one person who could heal. Whenever the snake tried to swallow someone whole the attacked team would attack its face and hold its jaw open while the other two teams came to the rescue. It was astonishing to Sev that a human could hold those gigantic jaws open, but he guessed that Nascent soul cultivators didn't get their for nothing.

The fight in the sky was the more interesting battle, however. His mother was fighting two people, who were very clearly a cut above the rest.

Paladis was a water cultivator. she atop a blob of water that could comfortably fit five or six people, and was constantly shooting jets of water that curved every which way in the air.

Danit had taken out a sword and a shield and was holding off his mother. He was also managing a dozen flying swords, which were battling countless blood swords which were flying through the air.

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Sev figured out the strategy after a moment. The blood swords would ideally go to the rest of the battlefield and cause havoc, and so Paladis used faster jets of water to shatter them if they strayed too far. Danit's job was to physically tie her down and tire her out.

His mother was not focused on defence in the slightest. As she tried to break through Danit's guard and stab him with her dagger, she was constantly deflected with either sword or shield. While her blood swords outnumbered his metal ones, the handling lacked the dexterity and control his mother usually had.

Sev was lost. His mother had taught him qi control and many weapons. She was better than this. Why was she fighting like some brute she was not? Sure, if she did manage to stab Danit the fight might be over. But his weapons outmatched hers, and he was covered in something magical. The smart option would be to retreat and focus on the blood blades. Try to overpower and outmaneuver the jets of water, escape the fight and cause collateral damage elsewhere to empower herself.

His mother was losing. And it broke Sev's heart.

He felt the stone unexpectedly crumble around him. He turned to see Regirat, knife in his neck, crack a protective charm and disappear. The knife remained, edge coated in blood. His father stood above it, gaze on the battle in the distance.

Dexalor Kraitchild, son of Everum, was an unassuming man, unlike the rest of the family. He was transformed, with scaleskin the color of the rocky moutain below him and slit eyes. He should be terrifying, but more than anything he looked subdued.

"I loved that women. Love her still. I knew she would be the death of me, and today that easy guess has come true."

"What the hell is wrong with you, father? How could you let this happen!" Sev yelled.

"Let what happen? Your mother told your sister, who somehow managed to leak it to the Martial Alliance. My own family, destroying everything I built. Kind of fitting, that my dad's dream dies because of the girl he disapproved of."

"Then why aren't you defending it? Or them? Or prepare for the Martial Alliance finding out. How can you not care about the sect you helped build?"

His father shrugged. "Please. I'm only fifty three. I can escape and rebuild a sect. Your grandparents would have been furious at me, but growing the sect was fun but not worth it. I'll have a small sect, and make everyone worship the ground I walk on. This high cultivation life was fun, but I'm over it."

"You have a responsibility to the sect."

"Why bother? Ignore the fact that you're leader at the moment. Life's a game, and they all got dealt a bad hand. The smart among them will benefit from this: our sect does not have the resources of the Martial Alliance, and they will be foxes in the henhouse. Hungrier, stronger, and more cunning than their future peers. The elders made an informed choice with the risk: we didn't keep them here. Ignore all that, even. Leadership doesn't mean responsibility. It means power. You'll need to learn that lesson soon, kid. Training the disciples is cute and all but what's the point?"

Somehow, his father made him angrier than a man who called him a snake and wanted him dead. "Then what's the point of anything?"

"Hey, if I hadn't done all this do you think I would every have gotten to marry your mother? Have servants for all my daily needs? Give my kids everything they could ever want? It's a good life I've lived, but I gotta defend it."

"Then do so! Father, the sect is going to die today."

"The sect is gonna die. I know, you know I know, yadda yadda. Kid, you need to stop trying to fight your way out of problems. Your mother's trying to make the most of it, but you and Elder Ang minimized the bloodshed. Not enough juice for her to do take down more than a few weaker nascent souls, and now that that Paladis and Danit have entered the battle she's at best in a stalemate. Her plan was to collect all the blood and death qi in the area, but your mother's hatred of the Martial Alliance is a blind spot. There's no world where this ends in a massacre, unless she was the cause."

Sev belatedly realized that the deal he had made with Vilex had been worthless. Even if the Martial Alliance might want to slaughter them - which by all accounts they didn't want to - they would wait until his mother was subdued.

"That's the mistake I made, to be honest. Your mother cares too much about getting vengeance on the Martial Alliance. For how much she pretends to not care, she was heartbroken over her sect dying. She was like a more selfish and unscrupulous version of you, beloved by her sect and ready to lead it to glory. While her parents' poor management is what sent her sect into the meat grinder, she would do anything to 'win' over the Martial Alliance, whatever that means. I still remember the day you won the Young Sovereign. Hadn't seen her happier since your sister was born. "

Sev didn't know what to say to that. His dad usually wasn't... sappy? He had already been entombed in rocks and crushed by a serpent today, but he had never felt more stuck in place until today.

"The sect will die today, but my family won't be taken prisoner." He tossed him two charms. "Stop by the sect archives on the way out, and get all the cultivation manuals you'll need. This key will unlock anything. Other one's a tracking charm I put on your sister. It'll last a day, or less if she realized. Take it and track your sister. Protect her. She can crush her traveling companions, but you have a more level head. We'll cover your escape and leave, and let the Martial Alliance handle the rest of the sect. And remember kid."

He looked at Sev then, his slit eyes and scales turning blue as he prepared to fight.

"You want to make the world you want to make? Want to make the sect you want, and care about the dregs below you? You have to be strong, kid. Lay low, and don't let this moment consume you like it did your mother. Take care of your sister."

With that, he looked forward and bounded and blended into the cloudless sky. Sev took a moment to process, then started sprinting towards the archives. He could process things later.

He may not have been able to protect the sect. But he would protect his sister.