There was an instant when everyone thought it was over but one look at the struggle on Coventry’s and Marcus’s faces revealed the truth.

The matter was far from finished…

If anything, things had become direr.

Andy’s and Kaulder’s bodies slowly mended themselves, straightening limbs that were once twisted as they wiped blood from their faces and arms.

Xavier and Mother Superion floated to the ground next to Sam and Amelia – The Elder Vampire was noticeably wheezing but she too, was healing.

Sam, on the other hand, remained sickly… but The Eternal could feel a simmering strength rising within The Shapeshifter.

Vlad, Philippe, and Blade were making their respective preparations for the continuation of the battle.

Still, there were several things left unaddressed.

The corpses of rats, bats, monkeys, and a dozen other nocturnal creatures loitered the battlefield.

The rich stench of blood was rapidly dissipating as drops of blood were being absorbed into the ever-present, massive river of blood floating above the devastated Los Angeles outskirts.

“Are we just going to ignore that?” Sam questioned, gesturing to the growing blood river in the skies.

Honestly, Xavier had too thought to point out the obvious problem of the blood river floating in the skies but since nobody addressed the matter, he didn’t feel the need to.

Andy and Kaulder were a thousand times more experienced than himself.

But, no matter how he looked at it, Lagus Tradio was the bigger threat.

And true to Xavier’s thoughts.

“Lagus Tradio is the bigger threat,” Mother Superion voiced.

Amelia and everyone else nodded in agreement.

‘One shitty problem at a time…’ They all thought.

Vlad held visible sorrow in the depths of his eyes as he pressed both hands to the ground… there was a rumble as the earth loosened.

Then, the creatures of the night sunk into Mother Earth’s embrace.

Vlad had buried the creatures who had rushed out of the forest to aid him during the battle against Lagus Tradio.

Everyone cast curious gazes in his direction.

The Vampire Progenitor opted to explain. “The Creatures of The Night fall under my domain. As such, I feel their pain and death – the least I owe them is a proper burial.”

Though they could not truly understand, everyone nodded.

Xavier understood especially, since his empathic powers were exactly what brought him to Philippe and subsequently, across The VEIL.

“One does not need to care about ants,” Marcus grunted.

His hands were occupied with the blood cocoon that held Lagus Tradio but still, he could find the time to throw a shade of disdain on everyone present.

“You don’t have to care about stepping on ants…” Andy voiced, wiping the blood off her Labrys. “—until you realize that we are all ants to someone.”

“Suddenly…” Kaulder chuckled, similarly sliding Hexenbane back into its sheath. “—ants are pitiful creatures.”

Amelia shared a similar look to Andy and Kaulder – the look of someone who had the curse of living longer than they were meant to.

But while Amelia was grateful for it, Andy and Kaulder were saddened by it.

Xavier found himself making a similar expression, though he was confused about the feelings welling up inside his chest.

One look at The Eternal’s confusion and Andy had a sudden feeling – she was slowly starting to realize that perhaps, she was not the oldest person on the battlefield.

“We all need a change of clothes…” Amelia cursed.

“Damn…” Andy cursed.

Unlike all the others, She and Kaulder were only capable of battling Lagus Tradio at close range, which meant they suffered from the most brutal wounds… and hence, the most torn clothing.

It didn’t matter much to them as immortals but…

“Yeah…” Kaulder agreed, staring at the hole in his shirt.

It was exactly where Lagus Tradio had pulled his heart out of his chest.

Andy’s situation was the same – her nipple fully on display since Lagus Tradio had grabbed more than her heart… a little of her breast had gone with it.

The breast had grown back but that was beside the point.

Luckily, Marcus was a man of many talents, including instantaneously stitching minor materials back together.

“Allow me,” The Blood Witch offered.

Kaulder, Andy, Philippe, Xavier, Sam, Amelia, Mother Superion, and Blade all shrugged and the next moment, with a tilt of Marcus’s head, the thread of their clothing flowed like snakes.

Slowly, they became whole.

CRACK

There was a loud crack that signaled the cocoon would not last much longer.

They all felt the urgency but even Sam – the least experienced – moved with an unrelenting calm.

It was the calm of someone who had seen the worst, and suddenly, everything else became inconsequential.

Everyone used the brief downtime to accomplish different things.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Amelia added bullets to her gun…

Marcus strengthened the blood prison…

Coventry aided Marcus while simultaneously casting all the body-strengthening magics in his arsenal…

Xavier carefully twisted his fingers back into their sockets – his shoulder was also taking longer than usual to heal…

Blade reluctantly passed the divinium sword back to Mother Superion while simultaneously inquiring where he could find one of his own.

Sam cleaned the blood off his face… earlier, he had torn one of Lagus Tradio’s arms off his body and of course, it was a bloody affair that still made him sick to the stomach.

Xavier moved closer to Sam…

The Eternal could feel his mind drifting in and out of clarity – he was on the brink of recalling something very important but instinctively, he fought against it.

Sam, on the other hand, was starting to experience chills… his body had been experiencing countless minor changes internally, and now, it was manifesting externally.

“Hold it together,” The Eternal placed a hand on Sam’s shoulder, though it required him to float a bit off the ground. “The battle is not over yet. Not until we find a permanent way to deal with Lagus Tradio.”

“Bite his head off,” Sam growled, his teeth growing for a moment to become something thicker and sharper. “We already have him trapped.”

Xavier shook his head admonishingly. “Will you be doing the biting?” He jokingly questioned. “Then maybe, Lagus Tradio will pop out of your stomach since he is fucking immortal!”

“Can anyone else here eat him?” Coventry questioned – he was holding onto a rapidly paling blob of red energy.

A couple of minutes later, Kaulder noticed something amiss. “Everyone,” He announced, raising his hand to highlight a ring that was starting to rapidly shift color.

“Magic is gathering…” Marcus confirmed. “A very nasty type of rot magic,” He further explained.

Everyone hoped the gathering magic had nothing to do with Lagus Tradio but reality did not bend to the whims of Immortals, Eternals, or Angelic Beings.

Reality was more likely to bend to the whims of billionaires than Immortals who had weathered the deepest, darkest years of history.

“Are we finished?” Sam telepathically asked Xavier, shifting to his larger wolf form before he even had an answer. “I mean… there is no escaping – what is it called? Blood Magic?”

“I don’t know…” The Eternal shrugged his reply. “Nothing is infallible. Magic is not something unknown to me, but… it is fresh in a sense.”

Everyone turned to Marcus and Coventry for the answer to the potency of the magic.

“It is a variation of a Witch’s Prison, meant to torment and strip a witch of all their abilities,” Marcus voiced, widening his stance to battle the chaos inside the blood cocoon. “But as you all know; this Being is no witch…”

“And because we aren’t dealing with a witch,” Coventry continued the explanation. “I added a small dimension inside of it… a mirror spell that will reflect the terrors and the attacks against the terrors infinitely,” He sighed as he slumped to his knees. “The more he fights, the worse it will get for him.”

“Well, now I hope that the vampire is a fighter,” Andy chuckled.

“Noble,” Xavier corrected. “Lagus Tradio is a Noble… the species Vampires were created to imitate.”

Kaulder, Lady Amelia, Mother Superion, Philippe, and everyone else were shocked by that bit of information - they were doubly shocked that Xavier knew such information.

“Then we turned out better than the creators,” Amelia snorted, not leaking the fact that vampires were a Corvinus creation. “This Noble species is very disgusting…”

“They aren’t… the very definition of Noble was meant to describe an entire species,” Xavier stared up at the skies as if he were reminiscing about the ancient past. “Nobility was the human’s tactic to try and replicate what they saw in their infancy. Lagus Tradio is an outlier. In The Ancient God Tongue, Noble is pronounced as imanity, from which the term humanity originates.”

Andy and Kaulder gave The Eternal weird looks.

Philippe, Blade, Marcus, Coventry, Mother Superion, and Sam were also educated by the brief exchange.

The way they all looked at Xavier profoundly changed.

The Eternal was stunned by their gazes at first but soon, his eyes started to glow with a resplendent white that shrouded his pupils.

A couple of seconds later, Xavier was clutching his head, trying to suppress a massively growing headache.

Knowledge was flooding the forefront of his mind.

Mystical knowledge…

Scientific knowledge…

Fantastical knowledge…

“You okay?” Mother Superion placed a hand on Xavier’s shoulder, showing that she held a modicum of care for the boy.

It took some time for The Eternal’s headache to settle.

“We should help those trapped under the rubble,” Philippe offered, glancing around at the devastation caused by a battle between Supernatural Beings. “—we should hurry before Lagus Tradio gets out.”

Everyone nodded…

However, just as they were about to move… something unbelievable happened.

CRACK

The Blood Cocoon that everyone thought would last at least another hour suddenly cracked wide open, revealing that there was nothing inside.

Nothing… except, more blood.

Darker blood, almost black, and definitely rotted.

The blood cracked with a hint of red lightning.

“Well, fuck me sideways,” Andy couldn’t help but blurt.

Kaulder and everyone else had a similar thought.

Then, the blood river above their heads started to stir, faintly forming the outline of a humanoid figure.

Still, everyone present was a combatant who had journeyed through countless wars – Lagus Tradio was not enough to scare them, only make them wary.

“FUCK!” Xavier cursed, noting the blood river in the skies growing more condensed at an alarming rate. “He is absorbing the blood!” The Eternal voiced. “All the blood he collected before is getting absorbed.”

All eyes shot to the skies.

Then…

A tremble traveled through all their bodies.

“It’s time for last measures,” Kaulder spoke in his heaviest voice, pulling out a small cube from his pocket and pressing it. “Send the grimoire over…” He commanded.

……………

A dozen miles away, The 36th Dolan – already an old man – cut the red bindings strings on a wooden box that was shaking with unmatched intensity.

Immediately, the wooden box exploded and a shining, yellow light shot into the air and into the distance… toward the river of blood and devastation.

……………

Kaulder extended his hand to the skies and soon, a ray of yellow light, as if one of the stars had descended, appeared above his palm.

And it coalesced into a yellow book – a book dripping with gold but still, it appeared tattered enough to fall apart at a random gust of wind.

“The Third World Grimoire!”

Xavier, Marcus, Coventry, and Philippe blurted at the same time.

The Eternal’s eyes shrunk to pinpricks – with his mystical knowledge completely intact, he now knew several things… one of which was the potency of The Third World Grimoire.

“DON’T!!!!!” Xavier yelled, no longer caring about the gravitons around Coventry as he blurred toward Kaulder and the book in his hands.

Alas, it was too late.

The Eternal would have much rather faced a mega-tsunami of blood that would have melted his bone to its elemental components than utilize The Third World Grimoire.

His memories of the book were horrific… and that was from an Eternal’s perspective.

Inches away from getting his hands on The Third World Grimoire, a bloody wave of corruption drowned everything… a split second later, a brilliant golden glow erupted, shrouding the entirety of the red.

There was a stirring.

Left…

Right…

Up…

Down…

A biting cold followed by flittering heat.

Xavier saw the moment the blood river shifted targets, almost entirely being pulled into a few measly pages of The Third World Grimoire.

Andy, Kaulder, Blade, Amelia, Sam, Vlad, Philippe, Marcus, Mother Superion, and Coventry flashed smiles of relief.

But The Eternal knew it was far from over.

Faster than he ever had before, Xavier felt the core of his being… the heart of Ikaris that pounds with cosmic potential.

He drew upon all the power at his fingertips and then some, circling the cosmic energy through his bones, then veins, then blood, and finally, his skin.

When every single cell was saturated…

Faster than Xavier even thought possible… with an unnatural grace that he didn’t think was possible for Ikaris, much less the Xavier that had replaced him.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH~

The Eternal blurred and reappeared next to Blade, pushing The Vampire-Hybrid in the chest… this launched Blade away with the strength of a cannonball.

Then Andy…

Then, Mother Superion and Sam…

An injury Coventry and vigorous Marcus…

Then, Vlad and Amelia…

Finally, Xavier saved Kaulder and Philippe last – he blurred and dug his hand into Kaulder’s shoulder, going beneath the flesh and securely grabbing bone.

Philippe had already become shadows.

The Eternal sunk into the shadows, appearing amid Mother Superion, Sam, Andy, Blade, Vlad, Coventry, Marcus, and Amelia.

The gravitons tightened, pulling everyone next to Xavier as he prepared to touch upon supersonic speed.

But The Third World Grimoire was faster…

The Blood River had been entirely sucked into the void of golden lights that was The Third World Grimoire… and now, it was time for everything else to follow the trend.

An irresistible gravitational force erupted.

Before Xavier could even fight back, he found himself being pulled and pushed every which way, disappearing into the golden void alongside his comrades.