Chapter 993 - 992: What Comes After?

[What do you want to know?] Lilith asked. [But don’t expect me to answer every question you have.]

Simon lifted his head.

[Why not?]

[Because I know you. One answer will give you three more questions, and you’ll keep going until someone interrupts us.]

[We finally have time to talk.]

[Then use it properly. When I get tired, I’m stopping. Choose your questions.]

Simon shook his head and settled back against the headboard.

[The tribulation. What exactly was that lightning? Was the Demon Realm sending it, or did it come from somewhere else? And does it have a name?]

Lilith didn’t answer immediately.

Outside, falling fire lit the window before sinking out of sight. Simon waited, watching its reflection pass over the wall.

[You wouldn’t understand where it comes from, even if I explained it.]

His brows drew together into a frown.

[Why wouldn’t I? Is it something I can’t safely know?]

[No.]

[Then telling me won’t kill me?]

[You’re strong enough to bear this knowledge. Understanding it is another matter.]

Simon folded his arms.

[Try me.]

[Blackmoon, you would need to see what I was describing. There are things your present senses cannot reach. I could give you an explanation, and you would imagine something entirely different.]

Her tone had lost its teasing edge.

[That lightning did not begin in the clouds above you. Following it to its source requires more than looking farther into the sky.]

Simon remembered trying to understand the Will within the crimson strands. He could strip it away and use the power left behind, but he had learned nothing about where that Will came from.

[How strong would I need to become?]

[Reach the realm of the gods you know of.]

He looked toward the window again.

[That’s quite a wait.]

[And I mean reach their realm of existence. Being strong enough to fight one isn’t the same thing as reaching their realm of power. Your body, your soul, your mind, what you can perceive... those must advance.]

[Not merely enough power to cut through their attacks and defenses.]

[Exactly. Killing a god before reaching that realm wouldn’t give you its understanding.]

Simon uncrossed his arms. There were enough gaps in his knowledge already without pretending strength alone would fill them.

[I understand. But you can at least give me the name.]

[The Bloodline Extinction Tribulation.]

He repeated it silently.

Extinction.

The crimson dragon that had descended upon him had certainly seemed intent on leaving nothing alive.

[Did everyone face it when they evolved their bloodlines in your time? I’m sure that there were demons in your time and those demons would have wanted to become Daemons. And I’m also sure that there were Daemons that wanted to evolve their bloodlines like right now... there must have been others trying to reach their origins.]

[There were, and they didn’t face that tribulation.]

Simon sat forward.

[None of them?]

[Not as a consequence of evolving their bloodlines. We entered the Bloodline Origin Gate and travelled the Bloodline Origin Path. How far we reached determined how much we could recover.]

[And when you returned?]

[We dealt with the changes to our bodies. We didn’t have to survive any crimson lightning trying to destroy us afterward.]

Simon rubbed his chin.

He had assumed the storm was a danger anyone attempting the ritual would face. A price attached to forcing a degraded bloodline back toward its origins.

Apparently, it hadn’t always been there.

Someone attempting the same evolution in Lilith’s time would have faced the path without needing to survive everything that followed it now.

That raised several unpleasant possibilities.

Lilith had warned him to choose his questions. He resisted asking all of them at once.

[Then explain the gate and the path to me. Why did I need them for my one-horned bloodline, but not for the Byakko?]

[My demonic cat bloodline changed long before I came to Velmora, you know that. The Shadowgrave Clan was trying to extract blood from me, and I found myself facing a pair of enormous green eyes. They were serpentine pupils. A Basilisk’s bloodline.]

[A Basilisk’s bloodline? Are you sure about that?]

[I was not sure back then, but I am now. I couldn’t see a body, and I was occupied with trying not to die. But I’ve thought about those eyes many times since. Eventually, I recognised what I had been looking at.]

The memory made him shift his back against the pillow.

He recalled the needles along his spine. Blood leaving him while something far stronger pressed his lesser bloodlines of that time into submission.

[My body wanted to give up. But I was able to keep my mind clear, and I forced myself toward it. Then another pair of eyes appeared behind me. They were sky-blue and feline.]

He remembered the urge to close the remaining distance and sink his claws into the green eyes.

[My demonic cat bloodline was changing. That was the beginning of it becoming the Sky Tiger, or should I call it the One-Tailed Byakko. There was no gate and no road of ancestors to fight through.]

[The answer to your question is simple. You were lucky.]

Simon stopped.

[That’s your explanation? Luck?]

[Would you prefer I invent a more flattering one?]

[I was having my blood pulled out of my body. It didn’t feel particularly fortunate.]

[Being captured wasn’t fortunate. Surviving it with a stronger bloodline was.]

He couldn’t argue with that, although he disliked hearing her say it.

Lilith continued before he could interrupt.

[Some bloodlines evolve without the Bloodline Origin Path. The right pressure, the right response, and a descendant whose body and Will endures long enough. It happens. Though rarely.]

[And the Basilisk provided the right pressure?]

[Yes. Byakkos and serpentine Daemons have a long history of hunting one another. Usually, the Byakko does the hunting.]

Simon looked down at his hands.

[Your demonic cat bloodline carried that ancestry, however faintly. A Basilisk forced it to cower. You refused to submit, and the bloodline began responding differently.]

[It wanted to attack.]

[Of course it did. Something its ancestors hunted was making it tremble. Did you expect your newly evolved bloodline to take that lightly?]

Simon flexed his fingers, remembering how urgently he had wanted to claw at those eyes.

[Your refusal kept you alive long enough for that response to develop,] Lilith said. [The conditions suited your bloodline. Once it stirred, the evolution itself came far more easily than it otherwise would have.]

[So another demon could face the same pressure and gain nothing?]

[Another demon could die.]

The answer came without hesitation.

[It isn’t something you can reliably repeat. Your bloodline had to be ready to respond, and you had to survive long enough for it to do so.]

Simon gave a small nod.

He hadn’t known what lay inside his blood then. The Grave Lord hadn’t known either. That bastard had been searching for something Simon didn’t possess, and had helped awaken something he did.

For once, the clan’s attempt to take from him had left him with more.

The thought almost made him smile.

[And the nine-tailed form? It didn’t need the gate either.]

[By then, your Sky Tiger bloodline was already awake. Under the Uruqath’s pressure, it reached farther into what it possessed. You gave it the opportunity and the power.]

Simon remembered the tiger forcing itself upright beneath the Uruqath’s gaze. It had nearly torn his body apart rather than bow.

The Basilisk’s eyes had provoked the same refusal much earlier.

His Will had mattered both times. But so had the blood that answered it.

There had been more luck involved than he cared to admit.

[That still leaves the path itself,] he said. [What is it? Who made it?]

[I don’t know its true origin.]

Simon blinked.

[You don’t?]

[I know how to open the gate and guide someone through the ritual. That doesn’t mean I know how the path first came into existence.]

He considered that. Lilith spoke with such certainty about most things that it was easy to forget she had limits to her knowledge.

[Some of the beings I encountered on the Path could speak. They threatened me, made decisions, even recognised an ability I used. What were they?]

[You can think of them as the spirits of your ancestors.]

[Spirits? Are those Daemons alive somewhere?]

[No. They’re dead.]

[They didn’t behave like something dead.]

[Their spirits retain awareness. That isn’t the same as their bodies surviving somewhere and waiting for you to find them.]

Simon rested his elbows on his knees.

The Otheryn’s hands had felt real enough around his throat and inside his stomach. Its anger hadn’t seemed like a memory repeating itself. Nor had the fear that followed.

[So I was fighting my own ancestors.]

[Yes.]

[They weren’t very pleased to see me.]

[And I’m sure you weren’t particularly respectful.]

[The one with six eyes put a hand through my stomach. I stopped worrying about respect after that.]

Lilith gave a quiet laugh.

Simon looked at his palm. Devour had worked where his weapons and elemental abilities couldn’t reach him. He had consumed spirits belonging to the very ancestry he was trying to recover.

He could not help but wonder if using Devour on those ancestral spirits would have consequences in the future.

’Well, hopefully it won’t be too bad or it won’t be that a future Daemon with the same bloodline path won’t be able to become a Uruqath or Otheryn.’

Although Simon had this thought, he wasn’t going to regret surviving or regret his actions.

But it did make the path seem far less like a collection of old bloodline memories.

His fingers slowly closed.

There was one thing he hadn’t mentioned.

[Lilith. After I killed the Uruqath ancestor, I felt something farther along the path.]

He straightened, and his expression grew serious.

[It hadn’t ended there. There was another presence. I could feel that my bloodline could evolve once more if I reached it.]

Simon paused before asking the question that had stayed with him ever since.

[Do you know what that last race was? What comes after the Uruqath?]