Though among the Jade Dynasty’s Twelve Pavilions, the Blood Shadow Pavilion ranked first in terms of overall strength, when discussing killing potential, the Silent Blades undoubtedly lorded over all others. Having practiced the most sinister killing arts of his arsenal and equipped with formidable artifacts, they were Konrad’s sharpest killing tools.
They walked without neither breath nor presence, silent shadows whose sole skill lay in unsheathing the blade to harvest lives! In typical times, even with her status, Heide couldn’t order them. But since Konrad gave his command, she now held the right. Of course, she knew that unlike Verena, the Valkyrie and Selene, within the shadows someone stood to supervise her. Someone she loved and loathed.
Not that it mattered. With her right hand, Heide held her Royal Blood Fruit, crunching it while with the left she moved her fingers in incantation gestures. The dark-purple cauldron kicked into gear, releasing a purple devil mist as it bolted toward the Deva High Gods’ remains and swallowed them whole. Their flesh, their blood, all became the basis of a new refinement as dark, billowing flames soared from the boiling cauldron.
The blood became the nectar, the flesh and bones the ingredients, and Heide’s devil force acted as the conductor driving the preparation. Devil Alchemy was one of Konrad’s many creations and a craft only Chthonian Lords and above had access to. Naturally, Heide had been schooled in the practice.
Taking the blood of the fallen as the core, their flesh as the supplement, the devil energies and the cauldron as the guide to refine Devil Pills of various grades. If Helmut excelled in warfare, then in terms of pill and artifact refinement, Heide didn’t know rivals within her generation. If not for her relentless investment in refining, with Konrad’s guidance, she’d have long since reached the late-stage of the Heart Devil Realm.
The reason for her insistence? Favor!
What their father lacked the least was mighty officials. The Jade Dynasty abounded with talents all vying for a spot in the legions and a chance to cross the Chthonian Devil ladder. But very little held interest in the Devil Pill and Artifact Refining. Even among the consorts, few exceptions lay. Daphne was the most apt, and for that Konrad greatly favored her.
Noticing that need, Heide gave her all to the craft, and got many boons in return. Of course, she’d yet to obtain what she wanted the most.
Purple fog soared alongside the eldritch flames, darkening the sky and staining the atmosphere with the miasma of the fell while the bloody mixture within the cauldron swirled in successive rotations!
*BOOM*
A deafening explosion resounded with a surge of dark-purple light, and as Heide finished her fruit, from the cauldron, seven purple pills rose, all shimmering, all exuding formidable devil force. But as she turned to face the result, Heide shook her head in disappointment.
“My cultivation is ultimately too low. Even while tapping in father’s Devil Seal, with those forty sacrifices, I can only refine seven high-grade Boundless Sea Devil Pills. If it were aunt Daphne, it would have been at least forty high-grade pills. As for father, fifty top-grade is a conservative estimate.”
Heide sighed in frustration and made a grasping motion, causing the seven pills to fly toward her. She never considered sharing them with the Silent Blades, not because of stinginess, but for she knew they only received boons from her father’s hands.
“Collect and keep the Blood Fruits ready for father’s examination.”
Heide ordered and instantly, the thirty Silent Blades flashed around the tree, harvesting all the fruits and sealing them in Internal Void Spaces. Unlike lower-ranked trees, Royal Blood Trees possessed strong defenses able to repel the average High God. Of course, when the Silent Blades made their moves, the tree’s defenses collapsed, allowing Heide to pluck a fruit with zero effort.
But by the time the Silent Blades cleaned the tree of all the resources it contained, in a whirlwind of pitch-black darkness, a dreadful force tore through the air, crackling space as it went, before landing on the scene. The dark winds dispersed, leaving behind thin layers of black sea undulating around a towering, bronze-skinned man of staggering musculature who swept the scene with blazing fury.
The Eternal Void Palace’s Great Elder:
Ravana!
The crushing pressure of a deva half-step into the Legendary God Rank burst as Ravana’s muscles bulged and his eyes shone with dark rays!
In the instant his rakshasas kindred fell, Ravana sensed their demise and rushed to this place. Alas, all was late. Besides the Cosmic Gods’ minced pieces, the sole remainder of their existence was those seven pills hovering around that riveting young lady of exotic looks and unknown background.
“We have neither grievances nor enmity. Why…why did you…how dared you harvest the lives of my kin and refine them into pills! Such demonic practices befitting the most abject of demons have no place in Heaven! Who the hell are you?!”
The trembling Ravana snarled in an eruption of indignation, rage and newly-formed hatred for that lass he knew nothing of. But before those words, Heide’s lips curved into a smile, and with her right index, she beckoned for one of the Devil Pills to fly toward her lips.
Her mouth opened wide, and she swallowed it whole, letting the surging devil force fuel her veins, soul, energy center and usher a breakthrough into the late-stage of the Heart Devil Realm.
“What a joke. What enmity do the Nature Spirits have with you that your deva lot so casually sentenced them to destruction? The weak don’t dare offend the strong; yet the strong still trample them without mercy.
We devils never care for justification. We do what we do because it so pleases us.”
Heide replied, causing blood to fill Ravana’s raging eyes. And seeing how that lass just went from mid-stage Void Goddess pressure to peak-stage Void Goddess pressure with just one of those foul pills, he resolved to execute her on the spot!
Balling up his fists, Ravana stretched out his arms, causing an illusory shadow of himself to appear at his back and expand to reach one-hundred meters: An incomplete Godhead!
Legendary Gods cultivated Godheads, to become a Legendary God required the refinement of one Godhead, a mid-stage Legendary God needed one-hundred, a late-stage one-thousand, and a peak-stage ten-thousand.
The average Primogen took fifty-million years to refine one. Two-hundred to refine one-hundred and one billion years to refine one-thousand. As for the ten-thousand Godheads, Sakra and Dolgron were the only cases, and both took around three-billion years.
Talroth achieving that in three million years was a frightening feat. If not for Hell’s restrictions, he was destined to become an Overgod, and perhaps reach higher stages. A matter for another time.
Just like Ravana, the incomplete Godhead bared two heads and four arms and condensed four titanic spears of darkness around which black winds whirled, all aiming at Heide.
At that time, a voice echoed in her mind.
“The Silent Blades will not meddle. As his majesty ordered, you’re here for experience. Relying on external forces for any trivial problem does you no good. You shall handle this alone.”
The voice that came from the forest’s shadows, declared, causing Heide to sigh in exasperation. In those bushes, who besides that woman, the chilling, lifeless, Silent Blade Duchess, could possibly speak such words?
“As you wish, adoptive sister.”
Heide replied to Konrad’s first creation and adopted daughter, the invisible Chimera, and stepped forward. With every step, she climbed an invisible bridge to rise into the air and stand above Ravana!
“You…can fly…here?”
He asked in a stupor. In this place where even he couldn’t remain in the sky for long, a peak-stage Void Goddess, four ranks beneath him could? What sorcery was this? Alas, before his inquiry, Heide had no words to offer.
Blades were her sole response!
Two additional pairs of arms grew from her sides, giving her a total of six and in succession, armaments of oppressive might filled them all!
A dark-purple sword, her Natal Devil Artifact!
An icy-blue blade with swirling black fog, her Omnislayer!
An emerald spear of endless life essence, the lineage weapon inherited from her mother: Evernight!
A jade-colored war-hammer from her father’s lineage: Catastrophe!
A shimmering blood blade from the Royal Vampire line: Sanguine Dance!
And last but not the least, a golden staff encrusted with nine diamonds, a mighty Truth Devil Artifact refined by Konrad himself: the Heaven Toppling Staff!
Heide’s Devil Seal kicked into gear as Ancestral Glories appeared at her sides and Auspicious Clouds filled the sky, propelling all those armaments to their limit! Worse, the illusory shadow of a gargantuan devil with fifty heads and one-hundred arms now stood at her back!
Konrad’s shadow!
And feeling the crushing pressure now bursting from this little lass, Ravana felt himself shiver with fright! How could a lass of such tiny cultivation suddenly erupt with such dreadful strength? Could she be a Divine Lord in disguise?
Alas, he didn’t have time to ponder as Heide vanished from his sight to reappear at his back and pound the six armaments into his Godhead!
*BOOOM*
The Godhead collapsed, Ravana spurted blood, the armaments carried on their way, tearing space to shred before lodging right into their target’s skulls and back!
*BANG*
Like a meteor, Ravana hurtled toward the ground and cratered within!
…
Similar scenes played all around. Verena now held Anura, the Radiant Light Mountain’s Great Elder by the throat while his dozens of disciples lay inert, with their Fate and very future severed from the face of Heaven!
“I am an ancient deity dating from the First…God of War’s era…how…how can you possibly…control my Fate?”
Anura stammered while his outwardly unharmed body trembled within the supreme grasp of Verena’s fate-commanding hands.
“Because I am its embodiment, and I now sentence your Fate to destruction.”
Verena replied with a gentle smile contrasting with the callousness of the execution, and instantly, all the Fate variations lying in Anura’s future morphed to become a single possibility, one ramification within the Fate Standard. The Fate Standard collapsed, and he dropped onto the ground, as lifeless as the rest.
