Thalion was a bit perplexed. These two were starting to get quite annoying behind him. The situation beca even more uncomfortable when they finally reached the ground and could no longer descend any further.
The two imdiately caught up and started talking while Thalion tried to think about where they would appear in the next stage. This was the lowest point in the stage. To be fair, earth mages might be able to dig even deeper, which sparked the question: would they appear on the surface or underground in the dwarven tunnels? If possible, Thalion would prefer to start underground—where all the treasures were.
"Hey! Who do you think you are? You can’t just run around and steal soone’s loot!" the young woman complained, landing on a root in front of him. She had to be very young to still not understand the basics of how this new world worked.
"This isn’t so simple quest where everyone grabs what they like. This is war and normally, I kill everyone for their loot. You two were lucky that I’m already in first place. Now leave us alone, unless you want to die," Thalion replied coldly.
It hit the young woman like a slap. She stumbled back, staring at him in shock before the man quickly grabbed her and jumped upward with her.
Even if the two weren’t strong enough to threaten him, Thalion didn’t want them giving away his exact location to another party. He had gained another two million points from the seed, plus the five-million-point bounty. These two weren’t useful at all, and with his bloodslaves, it was best if they stayed far away.
Speaking of his bloodslaves—their condition was excellent. All the insects that lived on the trees had taken flight, which made them easy targets during the descent. The bees being far too slow to catch up helped trendously.
Now he only had to wait until the stage ended and they were teleported to the next one. There was quite a difference from how the earlier stages had ended. At the beginning, the land appeared inside the zone of nothingness, but now they were simply teleported away, leaving no trace of the forr safe zone. Thalion anticipated that the ascension to the next stage would be similar.
There was still so buzzing above, but most insects had vanished behind the approaching zone of nothingness.
"Should we kill the two? They are a risk," Veylana suggested, her voice thick with bloodlust.
Sothing in that question made Thalion perk up. He couldn’t place it, but sothing was changing with Veylana and he received a faint warning from his title.
Veylana was by far the strongest of the five and a specialist in ntal skills. Could she be regaining control over her thoughts and the hunger?
No… not the hunger, that made little sense. But Thalion could feel that she no longer viewed him the sa way she had right after being turned. He would need to keep an eye on her.
"No. In the next stage we’ll move very quickly, and with the height difference between us, we might end up in different tunnels anyway. Fly up and feed on the insects. I need you as strong as possible when we enter the next stage," Thalion said after thinking it through.
His bloodslaves leapt upward and disappeared quickly. They still had a few hours until the stage ended. In the anti, Thalion wanted to take a look at the fruit he had stolen from the girl. He had enough points, and normally he wouldn’t care about such a treasure—but the Sanguis Impera was very interested in it.
The longing wasn’t nearly as strong as when he had plucked the golden seed, but it was still significant. Since he had already upset the Sanguis Impera once, he hoped to ease so of the tension with this little gift.
He pulled the fruit from his spatial ring and let the Sanguis Impera do its thing as several vines shot out to consu it.
Thalion had considered asking the girl a few questions. She was definitely so sort of plant mage, judging by how she manipulated the branches, but he didn’t want to share any information. No one needed to know he had such a strong ally. Most chosen likely already knew, but there was no reason to also inform everyone.
Those two certainly didn’t hold Thalion in high regard and would sell that information the mont they t another group. Until the civilization stages it would be difficult—most other teams would simply kill them, but once kingdoms existed where murder was punished, selling information in exchange for treasures would beco very realistic.
No, no—best if they both went their own ways. Stealing the fruit from the young woman shouldn’t be too much of a loss for her anyway.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
During the next hours, Thalion practiced more blood control and tried to learn the basics of so new ritual skills from the scroll. A few hours weren’t enough to make much progress, but he still looked forward to being teleported to the next stage as the first place in the treasure hunt.
When the stage ended, they were teleported to the sixth stage and appeared in a massive cave. The man and the young woman didn’t appear in the sa area. The cave was over thirty ters high, and in the middle ran a stream of lava that radiated intense heat. Thalion had never seen lava in person before, but he guessed this was sothing special based on how unbelievably hot it was.
Besides the lava, there was no one else in the cave.
It was also interesting that the lava changed to the color of his bloodline flas just monts after they appeared. What was new, however, was that it drained over ten percent of Thalion’s mana. Normally the passive didn’t cost mana—or at least, Thalion had never noticed any drain before. Sotis he used mana to intensify the flas, but changing their affinity had never cost anything until now.
Maybe it was because of the intense heat of the lava?
Either way, Thalion would have to learn to control his divine passive skill now, or he’d run into trouble running out of mana just by walking through the stage. It was the sa problem his bloodline slaves had with their passive skill that constantly consud mana. He wasn’t able to shut his off either.
Until now, there had never been a downside, but now it was almost ga over in this stage.
At least Thalion had an easier solution than his bloodline slaves. He didn’t need to turn the skill off; reducing the range was enough. If the range was only a few centiters around him, the mana loss was no threat at all. Thalion had already worked a bit on controlling his passive before, but he had never made much progress. He also hadn’t thought it was high priority—until now, the only negative effect he’d noticed was that torches on walls would shift color when he got close.
And ever since he acquired his curse, the flas would also apply it. That could make it dangerous to stay near people—especially fire mages. If they summoned a fla while he was nearby, they could get infected by the curse, which Thalion definitely did not want.
So maybe it was a good thing he was now forced to learn to control his passive skill.
There was another problem: the lava actually felt hot. If the volcano was as hot as the lava, then he could forget simply diving inside—and inside a volcano there was usually a lot of lava.
Yeah… he had been far too confident when it ca to this stage and how easily he would obtain the treasure.
"Scout the area. I will be standing here," Thalion commanded.
Four bloodslaves instantly shot into the tunnels in search of prey. Veylana lingered for a second, staring at him, before she followed the others.
Thalion didn’t like where this was going, but for now she was still too useful to kill outright. At the mont, he had more urgent problems—and they were hot as hell.
User Comments
0 comments from readers