Beyond the Bloodline

The creature possessing these eyes had a lithe sinuous body draped in obsidian-hued scales that shimmered with iridescence, and ink-black razor-sharp claws that extended from its dexterous limbs.

The creature’s most striking feature was its elongated serpentine tail, which ended in a wickedly barbed appendage.

Even though the woman could see the creature right before her very eyes, she still could not sense its presence, showing just how superior its stealth abilities were.

But that was not what bugged the woman the most.

She was one who possessed an appraisal skill, though just the common variant that showed the target’s name, race and level, but just that little information was enough to let her know that winning against this creature was impossible.

She was a Level 370 Inferior Grandmaster lightning mage, and the creature staring down at her was a Level 642 Intermediate Epic Shadowstrike Ravager.

At that point, the woman had all but accepted her impending death, as it was impossible to even run, given that the monster’s shadowy aura had bound her to the ground, while its magic power was messing with her own magic circulation to prevent her from conjuring any sort of defences.

Perhaps having enjoyed seeing its prey quivering in fear long enough, the monster unleashed its lethal intent, sending its ink-black claws descending upon her with terrifying speed.

Just seeing its hand move, the woman could already feel the incoming searing pain the claws bearing down on her were about to inflict.

Her eyes reflexively closed, an eerie calm settling over her as an acceptance of the inevitable. Yet, the expected pain did not seem to come even after a few seconds had passed.

Slowly, her eyelids fluttered open and she met with a pair of vivid blue eyes, set perfectly on the face of a handsome man with silver hair that cascaded like the moonlight.

He was dressed in an attire that exuded an air of refined elegance, a suit and tie that seemed terribly out of place in this current crisis.

She then noticed he had his arm up for some reason, and when her gaze followed it, her eyes widened in shock at what she saw.

The man’s hand had blocked the halted the descent of the Ravager’s claw onto her, and she could see the shock in the creature’s eyes as it tried to push back against him.

“Well, Hello there.”

He calmly spoke as he exerted force with his arm, pushing not only the creature’s limb but its whole body away by more than a dozen metres.

‘…h-how?’

While she was asking herself this, the man calmly turned back to face the Ravager who now glared at him with wariness in its eyes, all while slowly using body-strengthening magic on itself.

It then activated a skill, causing the shadows around it to come alive and coalesce into eight shimmering, semi-transparent duplicates of the creature’s form.

Activating another, ‘it’ leapt forward, along with all of its copies, each one swinging its claws and releasing a trio of condensed aura blades.

In the face of this, the man only snapped his right thumb and ring fingers, an action that willed the surrounding ambient spatial energy to form a rippling cascade of protective light that shimmered and distorted.

All the aura-constructed projectiles collided with this barrier, resulting in a burst of radiant energy dispersion. However, they were unable to bypass the barrier, losing both their energy and their lethal momentum, diffusing into harmless luminous fragments.

Even though the projectiles had been dealt with, there was still the issue of the nine figures who leapt forward and arrived merely half a second after the projectiles they sent forward.

Each one swiped down with their sharp claws, while some struck with their serpentine tails, but it was all futile as nothing was able to pass the barrier of spatial energy.

“Got you.”

The man suddenly spoke, before waving his right hand and making nine stone spears sprout from the ground and pierce through the ‘Ravager’ and its copies faster than it could react.

Just like Davina’s earlier spell, the spears suddenly gained barbs which extended from them and through the bodies of the copies, disrupting the energy that constituted them and making all nine of them dissipate into nothing.

‘Wait…nine?!’

The female adventurer questioned internally upon the realisation that all nine Ravagers who had leapt towards the silver-haired man were copies made of its energy.

‘Then where’s the original?’

Just as she thought that; the man kicked off the ground, dashing forward as swift as the wind towards the ruins of a collapsed six-story building.

He coated his arm in ambient darkness law energy, before dipping it into the shadow of the fallen building, grabbing onto the tail of the creature hiding inside and then pulling it back out with all his strength.

“…Wha?!”

“Such strength…”

“Wait…how did he know where the real one was?”

Seeing the Shadowstrike Ravager’s enormous body flung high up into the air like a dirty rag, the other adventurers let out voices of surprise while one voiced out a very important question.

The instant the monster had seen the man in the suit, it instantly realised it was not his match and decided to run away, creating clones to hide this fact from sight.

Unfortunately, its normal shadow magic was nothing when compared to someone who could use the ambient law energy of the law of shadows, meaning that its copies were seen through instantly.

Thus, we have the current situation where it slipped its body around in mid-air and used magic, conjuring a storm of darkened projectiles that seemed to come from an abyss.

They launched forth, hurtling through the air with supernatural speed, ready to release their pent-up energies on everyone on the ground and buy time for the creature to run away once more.

But unfortunately, it picked the wrong target.

“White Nova.”

From the tip of the man’s finger pointing at the sky, a four-ringed magic circle with flame and light symbols on it manifested, after which a pure white fireball the size of a ping-pong ball shot upwards at breakneck speed.

It reached the Ravager’s body faster than its projectiles could even go more than ten metres from its position, colliding with it and splitting open in a pure white flash with a thunderous roar.

***BOOOOOOOMMM!!!!!

A massive explosion of white flames erupted in the sky, consuming both the Ravager and the projectiles it fired in a bright light that made those on the ground reflexively close their eyes.

Waves of magic and shock rippled outward in all directions, knocking some other flying monsters out of the sky and outright killing some of them who were dangerously close to the explosion.

A few seconds later, ‘something’ fell out of the explosion and crashed downwards, cratering the ground where it landed.

Upon closer inspection, this ‘something’ was revealed to be the charred remnants of the Shadowstrike Ravager, with the body of an unfortunate vulture-type monster right on top of it.

Looking at this scene, the female adventurer gulped loudly as she gazed at the man responsible, a hint of trepidation in her eyes.

‘That explosion…its area of effect was controlled. Destructive-type AOE Third-tier spells can clean a small town off the map, much less a fourth-tier one. And yet, we only felt the shockwaves.

Such precise power control…’

She was tempted to activate her appraisal skill on the man, but she feared him sensing the skill activation and being displeased about it—she had gotten into trouble regarding such a situation before, after all.

“All right, you guys handle the rest.”

The man’s sudden words snapped her out of her daze, and she caught sight of flashes of light streaking past his body and towards the area behind her.

Turning around, she saw that some lesser non-sentient monsters which had been attracted by the explosion had swarmed towards them.

She also noticed the appearances of five figures who were previously not present, each one of them emitting auras superior to her own.

“Wanete.”

“I know.”

The dark-haired and amethyst-eyed vampire replied as she waved her hand in the air, making a dark-hued grimoire adorned with intricately interwoven silver runes that pulsated with arcane energies float up beside her.

The book’s pages turned rapidly, stopping before stopping on a certain page which glowed with a green light.

“Magic Boost. Aura Boost. Physical Damage Bonus. Elemental Damage Bonus.”

*FLIT-FLIT!

“Vampiric Empowerment.”

Each spell caused a small rune sigil to float up into the air and hover above her grimoire, and after the last one, she snapped her fingers and the rune sigils quadrupled in number, before shooting towards the bodies of her companions in streaks of light.

Upon hitting them, they gained five bracelets of light each around their wrists, each one having the rune sigil for the spell they represented on them like a charm.

‘Oh…so that’s how she uses her runes.’