Silvery flames already seeped between Lith’s fangs as he curled his maw up into a grin and when he opened it, a jet stream of Dread Flames burst against the red wave.
‘That’s impossible.’ Shelk thought. ‘Between the two of us, there’s not a shred of world energy left. What are those things burning at?’
The answer was that unlike Origin Flames which ignited the world energy with a spark of life force, the Dread Flames needed to accumulate the world energy first. Only after replacing its six elemental components with their cursed counterpart was the world energy ignited to become Dread Flames.
It was the reason they would burn and destroy anything even in the absence of world energy. The Dread Flames packed everything they needed and when they met the Blood Tide head-on, they punctured it like a knife through a slab of meat.
While the Blood Tide was spread out and moving in every direction, forming an expanding energy dome, the Dread Flames were as focused as a laser. To make matters worse, the Leviathan’s bloodline ability was comprised of highly compressed world energy but still world energy.
The Dread Flames burned through it, becoming stronger by the centimeter as they turned the enemy attack into fuel.
‘Fuck!’ Shelk had no choice but to infuse the Blood Tide with a red bolt of lightning, stopping the Dread Flames in their track with a sudden burst of power.
Or so he thought, until the Void Flames component neutralized the Blood Maelstrom and the Dread Flames resumed their advance unimpeded.
Shelk activated Blood Blink to move escape but in doing so he emitted a trail of energy that guided the hungry flames to their target. The Blink bought him only one second during which the Dread Flames followed the exit point and hit the Blood Warlock like a truck.
The Void Flames component and the Blood Maelstrom canceled each other while the other five Cursed Flames that comprised the silvery fire burned at his equipment, body, and mana from the inside out.
Ulma couldn’t believe his bad luck. Building a herd was very difficult for a Nightwalker since he needed to find humans with an affinity for the darkness element who were willing to let him feed upon them.
Every one of them was a treasure hard to replace yet he was now forced to put several of them at risk.
‘I can’t afford to drain their life forces slowly. If I don’t save Shelk, I’ll be next.’ The Nightwalker consumed a large part of the members of his herd’s life essence and activated his bloodline ability, Shadow Transfer.
The Blood Warlock had Blinked away from Lith and near his ally in the hope of joining their forces. Ulma was far enough from the epicenter of the Blood Maelstrom so the stream of world energy from the mana geyser had already partly filled the void.
It was enough for the bloodline ability to conjure tendrils of darkness that the Nightwalker used to grab at the Blood Warlock. Most of them were burned on contact but they also neutralized the Blight Flames.
That and the absence of the Void Flames allowed Shadow Transfer to pass precious mana and life force to Shelk. It saved his undeath long enough for him to conjure a burst of Blood Flames from his body.
The two flames ate at each other like hungry beasts, the Dread Flames quickly overpowering the opponent before triggering an explosion.
“Fuck!” Ulma sucked his herd dry, using half of the collected energy to recover his strength and passing the rest to Shelk.
At the same time, he cast the tier five Source Magic spell, Healing Shroud, on the Blood Warlock who returned the favor by imbuing both the spell and its caster with Blood Maelstrom.
Earth magic formed a cocoon around Shelk, smothering what was left of the flames. Air gave the spell speed and created a vacuum, water cooled down the wounds and provided fluids, while light element nurtured the wounds.
Nightblood coated everything, ensuring that any residual trace of foreign energy would be destroyed so that nothing would hinder the Blood Warlock’s recovery.
The feast had allowed Ulma to replenish his blood core and, since he had already killed them, also to replace his missing arm with one from a human of his herd. The Blood Maelstrom coursing through his body sped up the process, making the transplanted limb shapeshift into a copy of the old arm.
The only difference was that due to the lack of darkness element it was grey rather than black.
“Oh, please.” The Voidfeather Dragon clicked his tongue in disapproval.
He couldn’t believe that even from his privileged position the Nightwalker had missed the still-flaming wings on the Dragon’s back. It was impossible to conjure one burst of Dread Flames safely.
They only came in pairs.
The wings sucked in the world energy while also filtering the elements it was comprised of in order to turn them into their Cursed counterpart. Yet producing Chaos gave birth to Decay, turning the earth element into Corruption generated Choke, and so on.
The byproduct Cursed Elements were stored in the wings, where Lith’s life force kept them isolated from each other and the rest of Mogar. He only needed to put them back together in his heart and ignite them with a spark of life force to obtain more Dread Flames.
In a last-ditch effort, Ulma conjured all the spells he had at the ready and infused them with every iota of Blood Maelstrom that Shelk had just granted him. The silvery flames burned through the tier five Source Magic spells like they were paper.
The darkness element they were imbued with barely slowed the Dread Flames down. The Nightwalker was struck before he could understand what was happening. His natural resistance to all elements was useless as he was burned to a crisp.
The Voidfeather Dragon didn’t miss a beat, launching himself forward in a charge with Ragnarök lunging at the enemy’s neck while bursting with Immortal Flames.
“I told you to wait f-” A Wendigo as big as he was powerful appeared from a Blood Gate conjured by one of Shelk’s apprentices.
The cold aura of his body was focused and enhanced by his enchanted mace, Windgust, making the temperature of everything it touched drop by dozens of degrees by the second.
The Immortal Flames heated the cold air into a dry desert wind, chipping the Adamant of the weapon’s head as it turned red hot. On top of that, the strength of the impact sent the Wendigo flying back despite the fact that he was already infused with several bolts of red lightning.
“Never mind. What the heck happened here?” Ulsor asked.
“No time for that. Go all out and try to last more than one second.” Shelk had barely enough strength to feed upon the human cattle that his apprentice passed him from the dimensional gate.
‘I can’t believe that it took Verhen a single blast of those things to almost kill a full-powered Blood Warlock past the half-full red blood core!’ He thought while eating as fast as he could before his core started to fade away.
