Chapter 9 First Blood [3] - The Cover Up

[ Uladia Forest ]

*Pant, Pant*

"I came here as fast as I could... Where is my mother?" Rhea panted while leaning forward and supporting her body weight onto her knees.

"Your mother?" A man raised a brow.

They were currently right outside the entrance of the Uladia forest, where the sound of battle could be heard echoing throughout the vast woods, the sound of metal clashing against metal hitting their ears like a symphony of an untuned piano.

"Yes, my mother!" Rhea shouted in anger. She couldn't waste any more time. There was a chance that her mother might die if she didn't get to her in time.

"I'm right here." Keira suddenly appeared out of nowhere, covered in blood from head to toe. However, looking at how she was practically unscathed, the blood was clearly not hers.

"Mom? You're... Okay?" Rhea asked while walking forward and checking her mother for internal wounds with a quick analysis spell.

"Of course I am! I just single handidly killed the alpha of that monster hoard; give me some credit!" Keira sneered while turning to the town chief, who slowly walked toward a pile of monster heads and placed the largest head at the top.

"With a little help from that guy," Keira admitted with a sigh before continuing-

"Also, why the hell are you here? Who are Syra and Silas with?" Keira glared at her daughter.

"But, Jenna told me that you were dying and that you needed a healer because Diveen was fighting..." Rhea replied.

Silence descended on both of them, and in that same moment, it felt like the entire forest had suddenly gone silent too.

Both their eyes slowly widened, panic and horror taking over both of their expressions.

"Did you leave the kids with her?" Keira asked with a deadpan tone.

"I didn't know-"

*SMACK*

All Rhea saw was a hand move toward her. The next moment, she felt like she was spinning, and finally, she felt herself slam face-first into the dirt.

"Diveen! Come with me! No time to explain!" Keira gritted her teeth and quickly kicked her heel into the ground.

Red runes slowly appeared all over her boots before flames began to spew in coordinated patterns, allowing her to move as fast as possible without losing control of her feet.

***

[ Uladia Skylark Home ]

Silas looked at his hand and watched as his blood vessels turned green, making the burns on his hand that he got from touching the burning hot iron-rod, disappear within seconds of the green energy appearing.

Silas was covered in blood from head to toe, while the entire house looked like a scene from a horror movie.

Everything from the blood that coated the walls, and the brain matter that was sliding off them...

Of course, it didn't really bother Silas. He had seen scenes like this in his previous life. Actually, he could remember a time when an experiment of his had gone wrong, causing the body he was experimenting on to explode and cover his entire lab with guts and blood.

"Was that one my adoptive father or mother? Eh, who cares. The past is the past." Silas nodded with a weird amount of excitement.

Stepping off the corpse of the man who tried to kill them, began to whistle the melody of a song he used to enjoy before the apocalypse.

At the same time, he analyzed his fight with the mage and the warrior.

'I was far too reckless with that last move. Being mid-air also means that I'll be vunerable to attacks since I won't be able to move out of the way fast enough. It would take at least a second to create an air blast magic circle to push me out of the way of the attack, and by then, he might have killed me.' Silas thought to himself, thanking fate for being so generous and bringing him two idiots instead of intelligent warriors.

Plus, the woman was barely a garnet core, and since she wasn't a warrior, her senses were far too slow to stop the air bullet that shot through her head.

'Toki users seem to be a lot more dangerous than mages... I don't know why that is the case, but it means that I will have to learn how to use it.' He thought to himself, thinking back to how he channeled mana through his arm to strengthen the power of his punch.

Of course, that wasn't toki. He had watched his father train enough time to know that toki was the manipulation of mana outside one's body to cover themselves with it. It was a bit like how Silas controlled mana and absorbed it into his core, but at the same time, it was a lot more complicated than that.

Toki seemed to be mostly instinctual. Every time his father would swing his sword, the flow of toki covering the needed body parts for that swing improved. Even though the improvement was nearly abysmal, 10,000 swings eventually added up to a marginal improvement, no matter how small it seemed in the grand scheme of things.

Silas' theory of toki being instinctual was confirmed in his fight against the warrior. No person would have the reaction time to block his attack in time without being exceptionally good at using toki.

On the one hand, Silas knew that toki could improve senses and even increase the user's reaction time. On the other hand, the man was far too weak to have enough of an improvement in his senses to allow him to block such a quick attack.

'So if toki is primarily instinctual, I'll probably have to learn toki the normal way first before trying to do it manually.' Silas thought to himself.

Walking to the bathroom, Silas took a few minutes to wash off the blood that was covering him. At the same time, he could not help but think of another thing.

'My evolution blessing it pretty over powered...' He chuckled while wiping the blood off his face.

Blessings were essentially like a unique personal ability. Their quality was ranked on how useful and rare they were, yet even then, blessings themselves were considered extremely rare, possibly even rarer than a competent mage.

According to the screen he was seeing, his evolution blessing could evolve him in every way, starting with his body, mind, and soul. He didn't really understand the soul part, but he understood the mind and body parts of it.

'Everything I do and everything done to me can affect how I evolve, right? So when I got slammed onto the wall by Syra's awakening, the evolution blessing must have seen that and changed my body in a way that would make me less vulnerable to such attacks.

At the same time, by having toki used against me, even though the man didn't hurt me, having him around caused me to evolve, making my control over the mana element stronger... It's as if my body is learning by just having him around, by why didn't the same thing happen when my father used toki?' Silas thought to himself while slowly leaving the bathroom and walking toward his sister.

The bathrooms in this world were quite old... There was no flushing function, but if he had to admit, the plumbing in this world wasn't too bad.

It reminded him of the Romans before the dark ages.

Finally reaching his sister, Silas bent down and checked her pulse. It was normal, and she was breathing fine. However, using what he now called the 'Mystic Eyes,' Silas could still see large amounts of silver energy entering and leaving her body. However, he didn't need his eyes to tell him since there was still a faint white light around his sister that indicated that she was still awakening.

Looking at he hands, Silas frowned.

They were burnt from having held the hot metal rod, and even though he would never admit it out loud, he could feel a stinging pain coming from his chest area.

'Is this guilt?' Silas thought to himself, but he quickly shook his head.

He would have loved to heal his sister before she woke up, but he had to ensure everything was in place so no one would suspect a thing about the fight.

Apparently, people going through their awakenings can cast spells without magic circles, and in a way, it made sense.

Their body is manipulating a large amount of the wind element around them, so it is only natural that they can create powerful gusts of wind to attack their enemies on instinct.

'To be fair, I only heard that geniuses could do such a thing. At the same time, maybe a wind bullet was overkill?' Silas looked at the woman with a 2-inch wide hole at the front and back of her head.

To anyone else, it would look like Syra had suddenly awakened and exploded the head of the woman by using her awakening, while jumping at the man and stabbing through his eye... Or possibly throwing the metal rod...

'Yep... She will definitely be labeled a genius...' Silas thought as he slowly sat in the corner of the room.

*boom*

*Boom*

*BOOM*

Hearing the sound of explosions coming closer, Silas looked into the air and let out a toe-curdling cry.

*Crash*

Suddenly, he saw his grandmother crash through the front door while sliding on the ground with two magic circles readied, hovering over her hands and pointing forward to kill anything she deemed as a threat.

However...

'...'

Keira's eyes wandered around. She glanced at the blood covering the walls and floor, as well as the two dead bodies that looked like they had been brutally killed.

And then, she looked over to her left, where Syra lay on the ground and glowing with white light, as well as Silas, who was crying his eyes out.

"What the hell happened here...?"

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