SSS Awakening: All My Clones Have Divine Bloodlines!

Hurried footsteps echoed through the streets of NY, filled with panic as two figures sprinted between the buildings at high speed, constantly changing direction in an effort to keep their distance from the things chasing them.

Arnold and Vincent had crossed paths just minutes ago, and since then they had been running nonstop from the strange creatures that haunted this place.

Behind them, shadows darted everywhere, across rooftops, through the snow, along the sides of buildings. Some were shapeless, others more defined, but all of them had locked onto the two figures ahead and showed no sign of letting up.

"Hey, at this rate they’re going to catch us. What do we do?" Arnold said, wrapping his body in a thin layer of mana to shield himself from the cold and, at the same time, keep at bay the strange layer of ice that kept trying to form on him.

Unlike the others, he had already had the privilege of experiencing that thing’s cruelty firsthand, and he had absolutely no intention of repeating the experience.

He had woken up buried beneath the snow, nearly suffocating, and as he barely managed to claw his way out, he had noticed that one of his arms was completely paralyzed.

At first glance it had looked like frostbite, but when he examined it with mana he realized the arm had started to wither, as though the vital energy within it was being drained away.

He understood then that this strange ice was not ice at all, but something else entirely, something silent and dangerous that, if not kept at bay with mana, could kill a person.

What he hadn’t expected was that the moment he used his mana to free himself from that layer, he would find himself surrounded by these strange creatures.

They had closed in on him from all sides, and if not for Vincent’s timely intervention, he very likely would not have survived.

"Remind me again how you managed to get those things to follow you?" Vincent said, raising one hand and forming a concentrated sphere of wind, sending it hurtling behind them.

"I had just found cover and was pushing back that strange layer of ice when these guys appeared out of nowhere and started attacking," Arnold replied, trying to use his wood element to improve their mobility.

He had already noticed that there were very few plants in the area, and even those that remained looked wrong, strange enough that he felt controlling them would cause more harm than good. So instead he was using his mana to create temporary platforms, keeping the two of them at a certain height above the ground.

Hearing that, Vincent said nothing. He simply watched his sphere of air shoot toward the monsters.

It curved sharply and slammed into one of the buildings along the side of the street.

The moment it made contact, it detonated, and countless deep gashes appeared across the building’s facade before the entire structure collapsed like an avalanche of rubble, burying the creatures beneath it.

Seeing this, the two allowed themselves a brief moment of hope, but almost immediately they watched shadows begin to rise from the debris and take shape once again.

Then Vincent noticed something was different this time.

One of the monsters, which looked like the living skeleton of a giant humanoid dog, appeared to open its mouth. The curvature of its jaw seemed to stretch into something he could only describe as an unsettling smile, while its hollow eye sockets seemed to gain a certain intensity, a faint blue glow, barely perceptible.

The creature’s eyes locked onto the two of them.

The moment he saw it, he felt a sharp, visceral sense of dread.

"Watch out!" he shouted immediately to Arnold, generating a current of air around both of them, ready to act, but it wasn’t enough, because just as he braced himself, the threat came from somewhere else entirely.

A shadow appeared behind them in midair without warning, and before Vincent could release the wind to push them clear, a claw came down on both of them.

In an instant, they were struck dead-on by the skeletal creature that had materialized at their backs, and sent hurtling downward.

Thud.

The road beneath them cracked as they slammed into it. A cloud of dust rose briefly before vanishing almost immediately, swept away by the snowstorm.

The strange creatures did not move right away. They stood still, dozens upon dozens of eyes fixed on the crater, as if waiting.

It was the giant skeletal dog that broke the silence.

It dropped down to the opposite side of the crater, its faintly glowing blue eyes immediately turning toward the spot where its prey had fallen.

Those pale blue lights remained fixed on the impact site for several more seconds before the creature slowly tilted its head.

The crater...

Was empty.

For a long moment, no one moved.

Then the creature’s eyes drifted to the right.

There, on the white snow, thin drops of blood formed a trail that was still fresh.

The blue glow in its hollow sockets seemed to intensify as it studied those tracks. To the creature’s eyes, the blood did not appear as simple blood.

Traces of mana still ran through it, traces it could perceive.

The monster’s head turned in the direction of the trail, and immediately every other creature did the same.

Without making a sound, the entire pack shot off in that direction and vanished between the buildings.

Only when the last of them had disappeared did a figure drop heavily into the building next door.

Thud.

Vincent collapsed to his knees, breathing hard.

Not far away, Arnold lay sprawled across the floor, his condition anything but good.

The current of wind he had generated moments earlier hadn’t only been meant to soften the impact.

The instant the two of them were about to hit the ground, he had redirected the airflow toward the alley between the two buildings, using the push to slightly alter their trajectory.

Not enough to avoid the crash entirely, but enough to shift their path just far enough to send them plummeting into the narrow gap between the adjacent structures instead.

The trail of blood, meanwhile...

That had been left there on purpose.

Vincent stayed motionless for a few seconds, watching the direction in which the entire pack had just disappeared, until the silence finally allowed him to let out a weak, exhausted breath.

"...It worked."

The relief lasted barely a moment.

A sharp, stinging pain shot through his entire body, forcing him to look down. Thin crystals of that mysterious ice were beginning to spread across his wounds again, creeping slowly up his hands, his neck, and even his clothes.

He had stopped using mana.

And the ice had returned.

It was then that every piece of the puzzle finally fell into place.

Before, no matter where they tried to hide, those creatures had always managed to find them. This time, however, they had been lured away by the trail of mana he had intentionally left behind.

They weren’t chasing them.

They were chasing the mana.

He realized they could detect mana, and that was how they had managed to find them every single time.

’So that’s how they find us,’ he thought.

Gritting his teeth, he dragged himself over to Arnold and carefully propped him up against a wall. Arnold had taken the brunt of the fall, and despite the air current having cushioned part of the impact, his condition was considerably worse.

Vincent breathed in slowly.

He couldn’t use mana.

Every time he did, the ice receded from his body...

But so long as mana flowed through him, those creatures could sense him.

He didn’t dare imagine what would happen if he used a mana-infused potion.

For now, the only option was to rely on the simplest things available.

He pulled out some bandages from his gear and began quickly wrapping the deepest wounds.

"We need to get out of here..."

The words died on his lips.

Something was wrong.

It didn’t take long to understand what.

From several of Arnold’s open wounds, the bleeding had stopped. In its place, thin filaments of ice were slowly emerging from the flesh, branching outward like crystalline roots.

Vincent went still.

His heart began to beat faster.

He raised his eyes slowly.

The interior of the building was almost entirely swallowed by darkness, enough to obscure most of Arnold’s face.

For a moment he couldn’t make out anything at all.

Then, slowly, Arnold’s face seemed to grow clearer in the shadow.

His eyes were wide open. Empty.

He was dead.

And yet that wasn’t what made the blood run cold in Vincent’s veins.

It was what was happening to his eyes.

In the pupils, slowly, the same identical blue glow he had seen moments ago in the eyes of those creatures began to surface.

The shadows around them seemed to stir and thicken, swallowing Arnold’s face once more, and where the face had been, Vincent now saw only two points of blue light, both fixed on him.