178 The Conference VIII : Taking Off The Gloves

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat as I watched Teluna sweep the legs of his opponent, and slam his shoulders into the air borne vampire, smashing his rib cage hard enough that most if not all of the vampires here could hear it. As a leader I've been tested to see if I was worthy, and after that came the test for the members of my coven to prove themselves worthy of being in one.

They aced the test, though Kodak seemed to have a little problem, but that was mainly due to the way he fought. He was passive, and only acted aggressive when he knew he had a chance to take his enemy out.

He relied too much on his defense, and while that was shaping up to be a rather formidable aspect of his fighting style, Kodak had to be a little bit more versatile. Of course he still won his fight in the end, so that was no problem.

Other covens were now challenging each other, and funny enough even with our dominating display of power, we were still challenged. Of course the challengers had chosen to avoid me, or to be more exact as a recognized leader it wouldn't be proper for me to fight vampires with a lesser rank than myself.

Which is why Teluna was down there fighting his fifth battle. And that was not just him, everyone else including Asha has been challenged. And if I didn't know better I would say they were all trying to wear us down with the constant fights.

Each coven has three chances to challenge any selected coven. There would be two fights between the ordinary members of the coven, and a fight between the leaders. So far all that has been going was the member fight, with the leaders avoiding me. It was not hard to imagine the out come of such a fight, and they all wanted to protect their positions while simultaneously trying to mess mine up. I've had enough.

I watched as Teluna ran towards his dazed enemy, and jumped into the shadow realm when he was just three meters away, only to appear in front of his opponent and deliver an earth shaking punch to his gut.

From where I was standing I could see Teluna's fist shimmer with a black light, as scales appeared over them for the tiniest fraction of a second before disappearing. I don't think I would have noticed if I hadn't looked a little closer. But I don't think it was anything to worry about, that was probably a new skill of his.

His opponent flew backwards for quite a distance, bypassing the coal zone to come splashing down in the water zone. The water zone was deep in some areas and barely up to my knees in others. But where his opponent landed seemed to be deep, as the vampire sank like a rock to the bottom of the water. Also fun fact of life, vampires don't swim, and we can't cross or stay close to running water for too long. It made us weak for some reason which I don't know yet.

Teluna was declared the winner, and before he could get back up to his seat, I saw another member from another coven come down in an attempt to challenge him again. This guys were really not afraid of me were they? Did they think that should I snap and completely lose my mind right here, that the elders would protect them or something? What the hell was going on here. I don't think they would be this gullible and stupid as to step on my toes over and over again. Whatever this is, it ends now!

I used the minor teleportation and appeared in front of Teluna's opponent. My sword swung in arc towards his neck, my soul energy infused in the blade as the rune for [BREAK]lit up with a menacing blue light. His eyes widened in shock and fright as he quickly retreated, jumping into the shadow realm and appearing in the stands beside his leader unharmed and completely terrified.

A beam shot out from my sword, turning the coarse sand zone into a trench of really fine dust, and up turning the coal zone; digging a four foot deep and twenty foot long trench on it.

So far we've had to deal with the challenges of eleven covens, each of them a mixed breed of vampires and other races. While the leaders are vampires, most of the followers are from other races.

I don't know if this was a trend, or if it meant that only covens like that have a grudge against me and my people. Either way, I wanted to make an example out of all of them. I raised my sword, and pulled my shield from my back as I pointed at each of the 11 leaders and asked them to come down to the zones for fight......they refused.

And in doing so forfeited their chance to compete in the conference today, and for another twelve years. This was also another rule of the conference; challenges are to be accepted, but should someone refuse a challenge, especially a leader,he or she would be seen as a shame to the vampire race and banned from participating in the conference for another twelve years. That is to say they'll miss the next four conference.

But this was a trap right from the beginning, their job was to push at my buttons and harm my people for as long as they could, and when I've finally had enough and reacted, they would pull away; leaving me angry, frustrated and without a person to vent on.

The rules of the conference protected them, which meant I couldn't do anything stupid or my chances of being a coven leader would be stripped from me. But it was a little too late to care, because at this point; I was beyond pissed off.

This guys were throwing stones and all sorts of trash into a lion's den. In what universe does someone get away with doing something like that. I didn't need to be the leader of a coven to rule the blue district properly, I was just here out of courtesy, and some douche bags thought it was smart to spit in my face. Funny,I wonder what they thought would happen after doing this.

[PULL]

All eleven leaders were dragged from their seats and thrown Into the air, coming towards my position in an haphazard manner. They were shocked by my sudden actions, which was why they couldn't act on time. Some of them were elders, more than enough challenge for me if not more than I could handle. I used the pull rune to group them together, and then released my soul energy using it to cover all of them, as the fell to the ground like a tangled yarn of vampires.

They landed on the ground with a soft thud rather than the loud boom everyone was expecting. I pulled my soul energy back, dragging with it the souls of all 11 elders. But that was not the end of it. As soon as their bodies were exposed, sharp gasps rang out through the entire basin as some peopleeven lost their lunch.Whatwas left of the coven leaders was just skin, and as the rune for [BREAK] slowly faded away from the foreheads, their now bone less bodies seemed to assimilate with the sands, looking like a carpet of skins.

I pulled my soul energy back into my body, dragging with it the abundance of life and experience that was the souls of eleven vampires who have lived beyond a thousand years. For the first time in a long time, I felt full of soul energy, and deep inside of me, something broke and I reached new heights of power than I ever expected. There was a loud boom as an explosion of soul energy wafted off my body, raising my hair up like I had just made contact with static electricity or was thrown into a pool.

I could feel my soul energy weaving in and out of my body, giving me access to a world that I've never experienced before. The soul energy that used to spiral out of my body in a fog like form, came out again. But this time it was with a massive difference. It had experienced a qualitative change, as I felt moisture and liquid from it.

My soul energy was converted from it's original version that was nothing more than just light and energy in my body. But using the three states of matter as a template I had trained myself to release it in a gaseous form, and now it seems I've achieved the next state and reached liquid.

I raised my hand as my soul energy floated in the air as drops of liquid and fog, rotating in four different fields, with some of them going left or right, and the others going up and down. I felt stronger, more powerful and smarter too. I felt another ring light up in my mental tree, giving me a sharper clarity and senses than should be normal for a vampire at the BloodChild realm.

[CONGRATULATIONS ON ACHIEVING THE FIRST CIRCLE OF THE THORACIC REALM, AND THE THIRD LEVEL OF THE OPEN MIND REALM.]

Safe to say, I was more dangerous than I was previously, a whole lot more dangerous. I raised my left palm, and pointed it at Maze. Then I pulled him towards me, and teleported right in front of his face. Making sure the inertia that pulled him towards me, properly Introduced my knee to his face.

The power behind the strike was so powerful that he was sent back into the elders podium, slamming into the young master of the Inferno bloodline coven as the podium exploded in a shower of rocks, dust and wood. Guess there was no going back now, it was about time I put an end to this.

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THE BLUE DISTRICT

SUB-LOCATION: THE CITY: SOUTH GATE

KUYAIT.

The world tree is a formidable entity and one of the most primal and powerful force of nature in the known universe. However this guy here was still young. He was just born, and as such his control over his powers and abilities were very weak. He was not even one tenth the size of a medium sized world tree, it would take him millions of years to get to that point; as most mature world trees are the size of suns, and have literal worlds growing and resting from their cosmic branches.

To some people world trees were just a glorified delivery and transportation system, as the trees made travel between the worlds on it's branches easy and faster than using interstellar travel. Though most people still preferred the comfort of the stars and the long silent solitude and beauty of space.

In the known universe there are 24 major planets and 85 lesser planets spread between the branches of the only four world trees in existence. Kael has no idea how rare this being he has guarding his gate is.

And now this bunch of ignorant vampires were busy attacking him with corrosive spells. He was putting on a good fight, but there was only so much he could take with the amount of people attacking him. But it was time to lend a help, or he was going to die.

I moved up, a platform of ice appearing underneath my feet as it raised me up and past his branches to have an uninterrupted look on the soon to be dead bastards that were attacking him. They were a lot of them, like thousands if I'm not mistaken. Quite a lot of them were already dead though, there was literal forest in front of me, and hanging from the branches of the luscious green trees were the dead bodies of the assailants.

If I should be honest I would say that the forest actually grew out of their bodies, and even now blood still dripped off the leaves and branches, down the trunk and into the roots. I have to say this tree was a whole lot more brutal than the other world trees, heck except for a select few no one has seen those world trees, much less talk to them.

ROAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRR!

That familiar pressure cascaded all over my body, forcing me to shiver involuntarily as a smile became etched on my face. It has been so long, too long since I've heard Hetorvaizarx roar, it made her roar in anticipation and pleasure as she pounded against her cage begging me to let her out. I didn't blame her, she got along with Hetorvaizarx way better than I did with Asare.

Though that was more my fault than his. Our dragons were in love, it was just too bad that we were completely different people from our dragons and the love they shared did not stretch to their human personalities.

It's not like I didn't love him, I truly do. But at the time when it would have really mattered, I had given my heart to another man, and had hurt him terribly for it. He tolerated my presence, worked with me, and took care of me out of obligation and a sense of duty. Though my heart tells me otherwise, its better to not be hopeful. As far as Asare is concerned I'm a sinner that broke the unbreakable Asare.

[Enough with the dialogue! Kuyait let me out now!] A voice screamed from deep within me.

I couldn't help the smile the smile that came over my face. Why was she so impatient, I was getting to that.

"Blood of My veins, Veins of my Pride, Ice of my Soul, Soul of my Heart. Awaken Sister, Awaken Ice Mother. Awaken Zeroizart Lirael."

I couldn't help the scream that tore out from my throat. It dragged the attention of everyone fighting to me, as I hunched over clutching at my stomach in pain. It hurt, it always did. And while Asare and the rest of our brothers and sisters have learnt to master their pain, and get over it, I never did manage to do that.

But it was different for me, and that was because it was only in that moment of intense pain that I could see the world a little clearly. My fangs stretched out of my lips, growing larger than normal as my face pushed forward, scarred beauty giving way to a terrifying reptilian visage.

My ribs shifted, growing larger as my heart expanded, followed immediately by my lungs and stomach. I felt my skin stretch taut over my flesh and rapidly expanding bones. Midnight blue scales slowly stretched and covered my frame, my ears elongated as horns painfully forced their way out of my forehead.

I had to open my clenched fist as my nails had grown into ferocious looking claws that dug into my palms painfully. My clothes shredded and I felt a tail poke it's way out of my tailbone, tearing my skin apart like a butterfly when coming out of it's cocoon. I stretched my body and screamed as everything went black......….

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Ahhhhh! It's been a while since I've been out. It would do Kuyait a lot of good to sit still and think about her terrible life choices. How could she give away our son! So stupid. I turned my huge reptilian head to the north, and watched happily as flames filled the sky with it's differing splendor of black, red and green. Looks like he was having fun raining down fire on this attackers. I turned to look at my own dinner, and quite a lot of them too.

Well if Hetorvaizarx wanted to rain fire on them, well I guess I'll be raining ice and cold on them too. Ahhhh! This will be fun.

ROOOOOAAAAARRRRRRRR!