Within the Stadium

Arkaz feels nothing but pride as he ignores his fae partner’s rambling – what Oberon calls commentating – and watches his son and granddaughter fight it out. The both of them showing off the pride of the royal family.

Ever since he first met her, he’s known that she would be great. Even if he put aside the prophecy nonsense that his son and that human he took were following.

And just from watching them, he knows that his granddaughter won’t take too long to catch up with him.

But he also understands that it’ll be harder for her to level up the higher her level reaches, even with her Red Plague. Especially since void creatures don’t have life force, so she’s only devouring their realities without gaining any life force from them to feed her own.

A process that slows down her leveling speed.

If he’s being perfectly honest, when he first saw Scarlet after she became the Warden of the Red Plague, he almost had a heart attack. Metaphorically, since that’s physically impossible for him.

In just a single instant, he understood everything that was different about her body.

Most other people would never understand the exact difference, and Arkaz is pretty sure even she doesn’t realize it. But she is not human or blood lycan anymore. Not entirely at least.

If he had to guess, she’s probably around 0.01% human, 29.99% blood lycan, and 70% Red Plague now. A large amalgamation of pure corruption in the form of a blood lycan and human hybrid.

And it’s not just that. He can tell just from her entering his blood domain that she will never age, even if she doesn’t kill things and receive their life force.

What saddens him a little is that she can’t have children either, but he’s pretty sure she doesn’t care about that. From what he’s been told by her herself, she has no interest in romance, much less children.

She may care that the choice was taken away from her though.

Not that she had much chance to have kids even without the Red Plague, considering her status as a hybrid and all.

But now the Red Plague would kill anyone who tried to get with her, much less their child.

Arkaz does feel secretly pleased that she’ll never end up taken away by some man though.

He notices Oberon sending him a strange look, likely having been listening in on his thoughts as he’s been blabbing his own mouth. But the fae king turns his attention back to the battle again as Arkaz’s son and granddaughter continue clashing, sending shockwaves throughout the arena and turning the competition that was meant to be for all of them into just their personal duel.

Leonidas is currently using his blood runes to strike at her from every direction as she repeatedly dances around in the air, nullifying small parts of the blood runes each time, making them explode. And at the same time, they clash one time after another, both in their quadrupedal beast forms.

Both of their forms are around the same size, with Leonidas being a little bigger. But both of them are near evenly matched in brute force power, each using the same legendary version of Arkaz’s Beast of the Apocalypse skill.

Arkaz’s son shows more skill in combat, and his granddaughter shows a more powerful defense thanks to her Red Plague. Especially since every time they clash, his son has to make sure he cleanses the Red Plague from his body. A natural process in his body thanks to the Blood Domain, but still a mana intensive one.

In the end, they’re both evenly matched.

But Arkaz knows that both of them haven’t used all of the skills hidden up their sleeves.

As if on cue, Leonidas jumps backwards with a grin on his face and lets out a roar while using Blood Dominion to directly take control of every demon and human around them of level 1700 or above that have ranged attacks. Likely because the weaker ones wouldn’t be able to so much as scratch Scarlet.

He also doesn’t manage to control the Knights or Demon Lords.

Then he forces each and every one of them to start launching barrages of ranged attacks on Scarlet, who simply narrows her eyes in response.

“So that’s how you wanna play it?” she asks, to which her father just grins.

Without hesitation, his granddaughter spreads both of her arms out and activates multiple skills at once. The first one being obvious as wounds begin opening up all over every last demon and human attacking her, making them all fall to the ground in surprise.

But that’s not all she does as lines of red energy begin to connect her to every last demon and human in the area, regardless of if they’re attacking her or not. And Arkaz can immediately tell what happens due to those red lines.

The stats of each and every being in the competition except his granddaughter’s cousin, who she didn’t target, begin dropping by about five percent. Meanwhile Scarlet’s stats start climbing, and life energy begins rushing through the red lines along with mana and any other form of energy including mental power, qi, and even soul power. All rushing to fill her as more and more wounds open up on their bodies from his granddaughter’s healing reversal skill.

Even Leonidas flinches when he feels his stats dropping by just a single percent, with just as many wounds opening on his body as the others. Wounds that all heal instantly the moment they appear.

“Looks like things are starting to get a little more serious!” King Oberon declares, Arkaz finding the man’s enjoyment of this battle practically flooding his mind through their bond.

But Arkaz can’t blame him, since battles on this scale aren’t commonly seen. Or almost ever seen.

So he just continues watching, feeling more and more excited to see just how far his granddaughter has come.