Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

Ryu didn’t even look at him. He wasn’t interested in what Young Master Shade wanted to say. If he wanted to attack, then attack…

As far as Ryu was concerned, everyone here was an annoyance. Other than the ones he consciously chose to spare, the rest would all die.

Every single last one of them.

Including Young Master Shade.

Ryu’s arms flashed and he was already punching forward before there were any changes to the region around him at all.

A bony arm wrapped in chains appeared from empty space.

“You really should pay attention while I’m—.”

BANG!

A fist slammed into Young Master Shade’s back. He was sent flying into the distance, his body rebounding across the ground.

“You’re the weakest of them all,” Ryu said coldly, still not quite looking at Young Master Shade directly. “I’m not sure where your arrogance comes from, but your Dao Heart is volatile and weak, and your body shifts between corporeal and incorporeal not for some cool effect, but because you have no ability to properly control yourself at all.

“You bit off more than you could chew, stepping onto a path you’re too weak to follow, but somehow you think that gives you the right to be arrogant.”

Young Master Shade’s pupils constricted before the flesh on his face vanished once again, revealing the skeleton beneath.

Then he grinned, a savage grin lacking even the slightest hint of humanity.

“But that means that you have the solution.”

“I do,” Ryu replied, his hands slowly coming together to form a seal. “I’ll give it to you. Just obediently become a Summon.”

Young Master Shade was stunned for a moment before he laughed uproariously. Why would he take such a path if not for avoiding this precisely? He might look like he was in a ridiculous state, but that was only to Ryu’s eyes.

The fact that Ryu could see through this didn’t make him more apprehensive. If anything, it made him more excited. That meant if he could capture Ryu, his path to the peak would be completed.

The Demon slowly stabilized his body, but then he froze.

Ryu formed a second seal, and then slowly formed a third. There seemed to be a pressure trying to keep his hands from coming together, but he only continued to move.

By the fourth seal, their combination caused a clap of air to collapse space around his palms and fingers.

Young Master Shade couldn’t even move anymore, his teeth gritting against one another as he tried to pull himself out.

But he seemed to have been forcefully snapped into his Skeleton King form and he couldn’t come out of it no matter how he tried.

“Mixing the path of Demon and Faerie. You tried to become a Quibus Faerie and contract yourself, gaining the ability to perfectly control your Dao Path and lord over Death itself.

“It’s an interesting path. You’re just not smart enough to use it properly, and you don’t have nearly the talent you need to execute something like that.

“To others, you’re powerful. To me, you’ve always been an ant never worth my attention.”

The sixth seal formed.

“ARE YOU ALL JUST GOING TO STAND THERE?!” Young Master Shade roared.

The seventh seal seemed to rewind time, and the Demon’s voice echoed again, falling into an abyss of nothingness.

“I already told you what would happen. Why you, as a Demon, think you can stand before a Summoning Necromancer and keep your life is beyond me. Obediently yield.”

The eighth seal formed and Shade fell to the ground, his body convulsing.

He could feel that it was over. There was nothing that he could do at all.

It was then, when Ryu was slowly forming the ninth seal, his forearms and wrists trembling in an attempt to keep his fingers straight and true, that a figure moved.

A black shadow, shrouded in a cloak that seemed deeply entrenched into the very bounds of space themselves, closed the distance in the blink of an eye, slamming out a bony palm toward Ryu’s back.

Ryu’s maw opened, a sneer painting his face. As savage as Shade’s grin had been earlier, this was even more so. Shade might have been a demon, but at this moment, picking between the two, there was only one devil present.

And it was Ryu Tatsuya.

Ryu continued to press his fingers together, and all at once, the pressure on Shade vanished into thin air. Then it formed over the man behind him.

BANG!

The pressure descended from the skies.

BOOM!

The figure was driven into the ground. It was only a brief instant before they broke free, their shadowy figure vanishing into motes of blackness that reformed in the distance, but that brief instant was enough for Ryu to grab out.

There was a tearing sound through the air. The pressure had already shattered the cloak of the figure, but that wasn’t Ryu’s real aim.

A rattling filled the air and a figure was ripped out. Chains of blackness and foggy darkness filled the air, each lashing carrying the howls of souls and the dispirited air of Bad Karma.

And then came the wall of crimson.

A hoofed steed with a majestic mane and arrogant disposition manifested.

The once cloaked figure reached out, trying to grab at one of the chains, but it was too late. The delay in its escape ripped it out of striking distance.

Ryu grabbed out, grabbing one himself and pulling.

The crimson steed bucked, rage and fury coming from it as it lashed out against everything and anyone.

Ryu’s arm was almost ripped from its socket. He didn’t even have much strength left in him.

The steed’s bucking and whining were enough to destroy worlds, its stomps cratering space itself. Every buck was like another smashing fist against Ryu’s body.

But Ryu held on.

At the same time, the dissipating seal energy in the air seemed to converge once again.

“Come home, Nemesis.”

There was a calm rumble to Ryu’s voice.