CHAPTER 55: I’LL RISE EMBRACING DEATH

"Great idea! Let’s do that!" he said with an excited smile on his face.

Ames sighed in relief.

"But I can’t move my body, most of my bones are broken and I’ve lost too much blood! Let me heal first for a few days." Ames tries to reason out for some time with him, so that he can think of some plan to get out safe. But immediately his hopes were crushed.

"No need! I’ll heal you right now."

He picked a skull from the floor and crushed the lower jaws, forming a bowl out of it. He then pulled out a few blood lilies from the back and crushed them into a paste and put it in the bowl.

He put the bowl on the armrest and used his sharp and long nails to make a cut on his right palm. Dark red blood seeped out and filled the bowl to the brim. He used a finger and mixed the paste and the blood.

Ames was confused as well as surprised. He couldn’t understand what he was doing. He knew that crimson blood lilies were effecting in healing, but they would leave some death energy inside the body, so they were not preferred much for healing purposes; but how can blood heal him, unless it was blood from a certain species.

"A-Are you a troll?" Ames asked, though the man in front of him didn’t look one.

"I’m half troll and a quarter blood barbarian. I am a mixed blood!"

Mixed blood were the beings who were born human sharing lineage with other non-humans and had two or more bloods mixed in their body.

The trolls were known for their immense regenerative powers and the blood barbarians were berserkers who got more powerful the more they bled.

This man was like a cheat, who could lose blood to become more powerful but also regenerate the blood lost.

With the bowl in his hand, he walked towards Ames.

"Drink up." He held Ames’s mouth and poured the liquid in his mouth.

Ames didn’t retort and gulped the liquid down his throat. He felt as if hot molten lava had passed through his throat as his face twisted in pain, but he endured and kept drinking as healing takes priority now, no matter how.

After Ames drank the whole liquid from the bowl, he then threw the skull bowl away and walked back to the throne. Taking a seat again focused his attention on Ames.

Ames’s body started heating up, his skin got red from the heat from his stomach. The liquid started taking effect immediately as his broken ribs started joining themselves. The broken bones in his legs and hand started healing up as he could now move them slightly.

The wounds and cuts sizzled as they healed and new skin formed. But the whole process came with intense pain.

Ames felt his body tearing up, it felt like millions of small ants were biting him continuously. But he endured it all, not a single scream escaped him.

He thought of the faces that he would one day wipe out with his own hands. His revenge was due and this pain was just a reminder of the betrayal and conspiracy he faced.

He endured the whole painful process and finally unable to hold anymore, lost consciousness.

"Impressive!"

****

Holdok was hammering on the metal upon the anvil and Marilda was standing in front of him at a distance.

She was looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to answer something for her.

Holdok sighed. "How will I work if you keep standing there all the time looking at me like that?" he said.

"Why won’t you answer me then?"

"Why are you being so adamant! I told you there’s a reason you shouldn’t know about it!" Holdok yelled, annoyed at her adamant behavior.

"I’m dying of curiosity! How can I not when everything happened in front of my eyes! You almost lost your life! Don’t I have the right to know about it!"

"You....." A deep sigh escaped Holdok. After his wife, Marilda was the only person Holdok couldn’t get furious on, nor can he say no to her.

"There are some things that knowing would inflict karma. the universe will pull you in the game it has set!" Holdok said in a grave tone.

"Me knowing about it made me get involved with that brat! I don’t want you to be a part of it!"

"But I want to be a part! I can’t let you get involved and watch from the sidelines! If anything befalls you, I want to bear it together with you father!" Marilda yelled at him, worry apparent on her face.

"Just tell me enough so that I can be prepared! The moment you got involved, I became a part of it already!"

Holdok’s hammer stopped. He dipped the hot steel in the water as it boiled with a sizzling sound. He placed it back on the anvil, put down his hammer beside and looked at Marilda.

"Cast a silence spell."

An excited smile formed on Marilda’s face. She immediately casted the spell and along with Holdok took a seat at the bench placed beside her.

"Remember to never speak of this in front of anyone and don’t try to delve deeper in this matter!"

"I promise!"

Holdok sighed in helplessness and started speaking.

"It’s an event which is almost five hundred years old. I heard it from my grandfather who had been a part of it. I was a child then not this three hundred years old man!" he said with a smile as he reminisced of those times.

"Five hundred years ago, the continent suffered in very dark times. The sun had vanished and the skies were always dark, those days were called the ’endless nights’!"

"Almost half of the mages and wizards of the continent lost their lives fighting a demon, born out from among the humans! He was so powerful that one swing of his fist wiped out cities. He was thirsty for blood and massacre, killing aimlessly."

"I know this story! The heroes of our continent united and put an end to him! There’s nothing new here father!" Marilda protested as it was a common story known by everyone.

"Yes! But what others don’t know is that he was born without a circle and cultivated a different mana system! He wasn’t always evil, but a righteous hero once, but after a certain event he turned to darkness!"

"When he fought, five dark black rings floated behind him with flower petal like patterns. And the magic he used was far more powerful and destructive then other wizards and mages!"

"You mean to say...the pattern Luke had when he was here..." Marilda was shocked when realization hit her.

"He was called the first demon. ’Endless darkness SHIKAMI’!"

"And Luke performs the same cultivation method he used."

"But it doesn’t mean that Luke will turn out like him!" Marilda said.

"Well...after he died, the then Holy saintess made a prophecy.... ’The skies will darken again, the demon will rise once more, with six rings of color at his helm, he will paint the world with blood, the sun shall vanish and the nights will grow long, as he shall become the divine and annihilation will fall’!"