Chapter 630: Appeasing the restless (1)

Philip frowned at the spot the Gateway had been only a second ago before he took another wide glance around.

"So the Blood is here, then," he said, "Now where is it?"

"Depends on what you mean by ’here’" Caius said lightly, "If you mean ’here’ as in this dimension, then yeah, you’re right. The Blood is here.

If you mean ’here’ as in where we currently stand within this dimension, then you’re wrong. We’re still far off from the Blood from here."

Philip frowned.

"Again, I say, you know all this how, exactly?" He asked, "And why is the Blood hidden in a dimension anyway?"

"Could you think of a better hiding spot?" Caius asked, ignoring Philip’s first question as he continued,

"You could scour the entire world but if you don’t know the exact point to call for the Gateway as well as the exact string of words in the Vampiric tongue to use, you’ll never find it. Only the one who created the Dimension knows how to access it, and if they leave no clues to guide others, it’ll remain hidden forever. The world could be destroyed right now, and the dimension would remain intact—the Blood safe within it. All that would be affected are the chances of anyone ever finding and opening the Gateway."

Philip opened his mouth to speak but stopped as he suddenly looked over at Athenodora who had crouched low, her brows furrowed.

"What is it?" He asked.

"There’s something about this water..." Athenodora said, cocking her head to observe her reflection within it.

At first, the reflection mimicked her actions and then, it stopped and began to morph. It changed from her beautiful face into a male face— handsome but bearing no resemblance to her.

With the sound of rushing water, the morphed reflection began to rise until it burst out of the surface of the water.

"Fuck—!" Athenodora cried out, standing to her feet and taking a step back to avoid the morphed reflection.

It wasn’t a morphed reflection anymore though. Now out of the water entirely, the figure stood tall, garbed in dark armor. His hair reached down to the middle of his back and was a brilliant black that shone in the moonlight that was all over the dimension.

The figure ignored Athenodora, Caius, and Philip. It raised its hand and there were more rushing water sounds as more figures rose out of the water behind it— an army. The army was so massive that their numbers stretched as far as the eye could see.

On the other side of the armored figure, another armored figure rose, carrying a similar air of dignity and authority as the first. Behind the second armored figure, another army rose, stretching to the farthest and unseen boundaries of the other side of the dimension.

It took a second for Philip and Athenodora to realize they were now standing between two opposing armies of uncountable numbers. When the first figure dropped his hand, they already knew what was about to happen but the speed at which it happened made them flinch.

"Fuck, we’ll be caught in the middle of— whatever this is!" Philip gritted his teeth and began to harness his Mana for defense.

Even with the Emissary designation he carried, Philip knew he could not at all hope to face off against such massive numbers.

"No!" Caius called out just as Athenodora was about to draw on the reserves in her Blood Reservoir, "Not yet!"

Caius directed his words at Athenodora like he couldn’t care less if Philip wasted his Mana but Philip did pause at Caius’s cry just long enough for the battling forces to pass through him as though he wasn’t there.

"They’re... not real," Athenodora said.

"Not these, no," Caius said.

He would be lying if he said he hadn’t flinched as well. He knew what was going to happen but that didn’t matter to his survival instincts.

Philip noted the ’not these’ that Caius said but before he could even form the thought to ask about it, there was a great crash as the two battling sides clashed.

The cries were loud and deafening. Weapons tore through flesh, skulls were cracked open, wails of pain and despair, grunts of effort and valiance. And of course, Blood— so much blood spilled.

In only two minutes, the blood that had been spilled was enough to turn the water they were standing on to Blood-red. At least that was how it appeared. In reality, none of the blood was real. The clashes were producing sounds but did not exist, unlike the water which Caius, Athenodora and Philip could actually feel.

As the water turned bloody, Athenodora frowned and murmured,

"The water isn’t getting sullied with blood. It’s becoming blood."

"What’s the difference?" Philip asked.

Athenodora shrugged.

"I don’t know," she said in a tone like she hadn’t really heard Philip’s question because if she had, she would have explained that there was most definitely a difference between water getting bloody and water turning into Blood.

Athenodora’s eyes became troubled. Ever since they arrived here, she had sensed something strange about that water and now she couldn’t help but feel that it had been because her Blood Magic had made her sensitive enough to know the water was never water and was always Blood.

The battle waged on and as unending as the two forces had appeared, they eventually began to dwindle in numbers. Although Caius, Athenodora and Philip were by now aware that none of what they were observing was real, there was something about seeing an uncountable number of ’people’ fall to their deaths in horrid ways that stuck to them.

Of course, in the case of Philip and Athenodora, what they saw didn’t tug on their heartstrings. Not really. They had killed so many in their many centuries of existence and were fairly numb to suffering. Still, they weren’t totally unfeeling.

Caius, however, just pursed his lips. The details of this in [To Kill A Demon Lord...] had never really gotten across how terrible it was to experience. But he had to steel himself. This was the easiest part of all this.

Eventually, a victor was clear between the two sides;

On one side, warriors were numbering at least a couple of tens of thousands.

On the other side, there were ten forced to their knees. In front of them was the handsome armored man who had morphed and risen from Athenodora’s reflection. He didn’t look very handsome now though; there was a gash at his temple, Blood dripped from his nose and out of his mouth to dye his chin red. His armor was dented, and his arms just hung at his sides, looking as though he couldn’t move them.

"And so ends your conquest," said the opposing armored warrior who still had tens of thousands of warriors behind him. He was bloody but standing tall, a look of victory in his eyes.

"Any last words, ’King’? Will you ask that I spare these ten loyal men who now kneel with you? Go on, plead. I just might grant the request. Any further show of pride however, will doom them."

The kneeling man in black armor raised his once-handsome face, parted his lips to reveal gritted teeth, and spat out.

"Kill me— kill us if you will. My head will never bow!"

The standing armored man smiled sadly.

"As you wish," he said and raised his hand.

Ten of his warriors stepped forward and raised their swords. The nine kneeling with the defeated ’King’ shivered as death drew close. They cast their eyes at their leader as though hoping for one last word that might see them keep their lives.

It never came.

The weapons came down and the kneeling men and the standing warriors all dissolved to join the Blood on the ground in a loud splash and the dimension was silent once more.

"What the hell does any of that mean?" Philip asked.

"A first part of a long story," Caius said and he began to tense, "But now is not the time to discuss it. Get ready. They’re coming."

Philip tensed as well and so did Athenodora. Unlike Caius, they didn’t know what was coming. However, their instincts warned them of oncoming danger.

Blood rose from the river of Blood on the ground like a pillar. That pillar formed a figure. The figure was made entirely of blood but still had describable features;

For one, it looked garbed in dented armor that was ripped off in places. For another, it looked like it was missing flesh on parts of its body leaving its femur exposed on one arm and its skeletal fingers on its other hand. Its entire lower jaw was missing skin and just clattered like the skeleton it appeared to be.

It moved with its head cocked to the side, wobbling like it would fall off into the river of blood with a splash and it began to wade closer to the trio of Caius, Philip, and Athenodora, boasting the magical signature and physical might of the Seventh Circle.

With a frown, Philip stepped toward the undead-looking creature, drew back a hand, and struck forward a fairly simple-looking blow that shattered the creature entirely.

"Is that it?" Philip asked, "Do I get the Blood now?"

"No, that was only the first wave," Caius said from behind him,

"The first of Twenty."

Right then, ten pillars of Blood rose and formed into ten undead creatures all boasting Seventh Circle Might like the one Philip had just destroyed and they began to charge at Caius, Athenodora, and Philip with loud splashing sounds as they ran through the river of blood.