Damon could feel the wrath of the item spirit inside him, cursing him for using her God’s na as a recruitnt benefit, but he did not care. His strategy worked wonderfully.
"The Venom... King?" One of the elders gasped. "That’s... a forbidden na. No one speaks it in this realm. The gods themselves erased his existence from the records!" His skeletal fingers trembled. "You... you lie."
Damon tilted his head, his grin widening. "Lie? Maybe. But if I were lying, would your poison still tremble before mine?" He raised his hand, and the miasma around them coiled like a thousand serpents bowing their heads. They all drifted toward Damon, drawn like iron to a magnet.
The silence shattered as one of the order’s masked figures fell to his knees. "Please accept as your disciple. No, slave."
The elder was a venerable mber of the order feared by countless people in the Great Western Desert. But he did not even hesitate for a mont before kneeling in complete submission and signing the slave contract.
Others followed, one after another, until nearly the entire Venom Sigil was kneeling, their eyes reflecting a mix of fear, awe, and feverish devotion.
Damon smiled faintly. "Good. Then from this day forward, the Venom Sigil is mine."
He flicked his wrist, and the slave contracts disappeared, all signed and sealed. "You all will be the main mbers of the new Venom Sigil. If you are adding anymore new mbers, make them sign contracts under you."
"You can also use poisons for which there is no antidote and force them to stay in the Sigil. You know... your usual devious thods. I don’t have to outline these things, do I? You have all been doing a wonderful job of running a poison order, so please carry on with it. The only difference now would be your base of operation."
"Take a few hours to prepare. All of you will be moving to the central region, the main part of the light faction continent, to Niera City."
The poison masters all froze. Niera City? The heart of the Light Faction’s dominion?
Damon chuckled. "You all don’t have to look so worried. Niera City is currently taken over by vampires, and so are the other cities around it. Nobody would bother to disturb you there. It’s ti to move to the dark faction officially."
Everyone nodded. They too had heard about the recent developnts in the central lands of the light faction. It was just that they had never thought they would be moving over to the main focal point of all the action. Excitent flickered in all the eyes as the elders nodded obidiently one after the other.
"Half of you deal with the moving preparations. The other half, co with . I plan to pay a visit to the other orders as well. Our aim is to take over as many orders as possible today. They can either join us or they can die."
Damon’s words were both shocking and awe-inspiring to the assembled group. The fight between the various orders to establish their supremacy is not sothing new. They have all been fighting with each other for decades now to prove their dominance.
And now it was finally ti for the Venom Sigil to stand out and take over all the orders. This made everyone’s blood boil with excitent. Who knew that this single vampire was the catalyst they had been waiting for all this ti?
Everybody started moving imdiately, not daring to delay things any longer.
Damon, anwhile, went back out to the surface to absorb all of the remaining miasma. A couple of elders stood next to him, guarding him and silently watching him in amazent as he sucked in all the miasma from the surroundings.
They had all lived here in the Dune of Graves for several decades, and their order had existed for centuries, yet none of them had ever witnessed sothing like this. The Dune’s miasma was an eternal storm, poison given form, and yet it was all being consud like it was nothing.
The dunes howled as Damon drew in the last vestiges of venomous energy. His skin glowed faintly with a dark violet sheen, veins pulsed with an eerie luminescence as if liquid plague ran through them instead of blood. It only lasted for a mont before everything disappeared, and only a normal pale skin was visible.
The elders stared at this with shock and awe. Absorbing this much poison should have left so sort of mark on the body. It should have defined the very existence of the being.
And yet, nothing of that sort happened. Even after inhaling this much poison, the blood sucker in front of them remained unaffected.
Finally, Damon opened his eyes. The dunes had turned still, quiet for the first ti in a long while. The once-rolling fog of death was gone, leaving behind only dry, trembling sand. "That should do it," he smiled and stood up.
"So, where are we going first? Which order is the weakest to take down?"
loman, the second elder of the Venom Sigil, quickly replied. "The weakest among the Nine would be the Pain Serpents. They had always relied on us, the Venom Sigil, to carry out their operation. They excel in torture techniques and information procurent. Their only plus point is that they have so soul techniques, which are capable of causing imnse agony."
"But if you have a soul strong enough to defend against that, then they are pretty much useless. A surprise attack also works. We almost managed to completely eradicate them twice, after which their leader signed an agreent with us and we ford a peace treaty in exchange for resources, corpses, and services." loman continued
"I should also warn you that their leader, Namina, is a crazy bitch. Please forgive for my crude words, but I do not know how else to describe the woman. She rules through fear and obsession. She’s unstable, my lord, in all kinds of ways, and she is the only real threat.
"But her son commands a faction of loyalists who want to overthrow her. Their infighting has weakened them severely. If you wish to strike first, there will never be a better ti."
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