Chapter 198 — Precursor

If she had to say, the drop of blood looked like a real world, with its own laws and operation rules.

But Liora had long been accustomed to this.

Staring at this droplet, her demonic energy controlled the beasts’ blood and let it drop onto it.

Immediately, the mysterious blood awakened.

It began to devour the blood like a hungry beast, while exuding a strange power that wanted to affect Liora and make her lose herself.

Fortunately, this strange power had been weakened severely compared to her time on the Crucible.

Seemingly affected by the suppression of this world, it became easy for Liora to brush its influence off.

The moment this power was dissolved, though, another wave of power came from the mysterious blood.

But this time, Liora didn’t try to resist.

Instead, she allowed this power to wash over her.

The next second, her vision grew blurry. Her soul seemed to have been pulled out of her body, entering an entirely different world.

Before long, she peeped into the memories contained within the bloodline of the beast.

Image after image surfaced in her mind, and she watched them from a third-person perspective, as if she were watching a movie.

--

Liora did not know how much blood she had used, nor how many memories she had digested.

All she knew was that the total memories numbered in the hundreds, if not even more.

Still, she was able to gain a surprising amount of valuable information through digesting them.

The fact that the mysterious blood could absorb the blood of other creatures and dig into their bloodline memories had long been known to her.

However, so far, this had not been useful.

Liora had tried to make use of this ability and had offered it many beast corpses before, but to absolutely no benefit.

After all, most beasts did not have any powerful ancestors.

The scenes she saw in their memories were quite ordinary, with almost no value.

Yet now, having obtained the blood of King of Knights beasts with the help of the Beast Emperor, Liora’s gains were truly massive.

With the help of the mysterious blood, she was able to catch a glimpse of this world’s history, as if she had personally witnessed it.

Time slowly went by.

Before long, all the blood brought by the Beast Emperor had been consumed, turning into fuel for the mysterious blood.

But Liora was slow to react.

Her crimson eyes were hazy, and her mind remained still, as if she had fallen into illusion.

It took a few minutes for her to recover.

Immediately, she shook her head and urged her demonic energy to rush through her body, dispelling the side effects.

"Sure enough, digesting so many memories is not without any danger. Although the blood’s influence is nearly negligible, the passive absorption of memories still has some side effects."

"If I had not regained my strength and become a Lesser Devil, obtaining so many memories at once might have driven me crazy.", Liora realized.

For this, she was not too disappointed. Instead, a smile appeared on her face.

Her gains had been huge this time.

Although her actual strength had not improved at all, she had thought of a way to increase her combat power.

Unknowingly, the prototype of an ability that she had wanted to develop for a long time was formed in her mind, and little by little, it was built upon.

Liora did not want to miss that light of inspiration.

Ignoring everything, she placed the mysterious blood back into its chest and took a blank canvas out.

Then, using her demonic energy as paint and her fingers as the paintbrush, she began drawing on it.

Each of her strokes left a large number of Devil Runes on the white canvas.

They flashed brightly for a brief moment before they dissipated, transforming back into paint.

But Liora did not care. Her hand moved on its own, quickly yet accurately painting her vision.

--

It was only a few hours later that Liora left the Space Orb.

Although she was a Lesser Devil, she, for the first time in a long time, felt tired.

Not physically, but mentally exhausted.

After all, she had first digested hundreds of years of memories, and then used the insights those brought to her to develop a new ability.

Nevertheless, Liora was left satisfied.

Summoning Alpha over, she sat on the porch of her residence and closed her eyes, trying her best to relax.

It was only when the smell of tea filled her nose that she finally opened her eyes again.

Seeing Alpha stand beside her with a stern expression, she waved her hand and motioned for her to take a seat.

Then, she picked up the cup and took a sip of her drink.

Feeling the bitter aftertaste on her tongue, Liora lifted her head.

"How is it? Have those two come over while I was away?", she glanced at Alpha and questioned.

Alpha shook her head:

"No, Lord. They must have realized that you are avoiding them by now.", she replied, and her eyes flashed with some hesitation.

"Lord, do you think that we should leave the city and find another place to stay? After all, offending those people and staying here might prove dangerous..."

Hearing Alpha’s concern, Liora chuckled.

"Don’t worry. Even if they wish to do anything, they don’t have the ability to cause any trouble.", she said with a smile.

Then, she raised her head and looked at the horizon, where the outskirts of the Ancient Beast Wilderness could be seen from here.

Although the forest was silent and looked the same as usual, Liora could sense many undercurrents secretly surging within it.

"Moreover, these two people will soon have other things to worry about.", she continued.

"Not only them. But the entire Iron Armor Empire."

Liora’s words were casual, and having not known the truth of this world, Alpha could not understand their deeper meaning.

She would never know that these words were the precursor to something bigger.