Bloodlines Online

He and War God were taken out of the council chambers and when he tried to speak again he was interrupted.

"You will wait until we are out of the city, the church has spies."

Upon hearing this he nodded and went silent.

The many citizens and players were gawking at the strange looking demoness that led then out of the city and when some attempted to follow they were scared away by a threatening look from her.

Once outside of the city the demoness must have felt more secure and began to speak.

"You will complete the dungeon as agreed, is the greater demon mate there part of your team?"

"Why do people keep calling us mates!"

War God\'s face was burning with a purple blush as she looked away.

"The rare instances of a male devil ever leaving their home would always involve a demon guardian, you two were found together so i assumed this was the case?"

The demoness actually had a playful smile on her face now as she looked at War God.

"Do you truly not value the male? If he is not part of your family or you are not a mate then you would not care if we took him away?"

"Well of course I would care! If you take him against his will then you are no better than the church in my eyes."

This seemed to be a very poor choice of words as she suddenly got lifted by the throat.

"How DARE you insinuate that we would ever be as disgusting and cruel as those filthy priests, you would believe that we would kill him?"

She threw War God across the ground forcing Ezekiel out of his stunned silence to try to help.

"You would DARE to compare us to the beings that would kill him for his affinity? You would DARE to compare us to those that would waste the life of a male?"

He stood between the approaching demoness and his friend.

"Hey how about we all calm the fuck down, maybe you can explain what all this weird obsession with me being a male is? Im a guy what does it matter?"

The demoness stopped now and had a smug look on her face while she watched him tend to War God.

"I forget that you otherworlders don\'t know anything about our world, fine I will tell you."

She began to walk away and when his friend was fully healed he helped her back up.

"You ok Layla?"

She nodded and looked at him with a strange expression when he used her name but turned to follow the demoness.

"Infernal culture developed in a certain way, we value magic most and since only about one in five of infernals are born with a talent for magic there are more demons than devils."

When they entered the trees to be fully protected from prying eyes she sat down facing them.

"Since about one in five of us become devils that means there are far more demons and our culture developed to have something that many have compared to the pack families of the beastfolk."

She began to use a stick to draw in the dirt.

"When young infernals grow up they will often split into groups with a devil and four demons, these are known as covens."

"A coven does not have any specific leader as all trust the others with their lives and all must be aware of the faults of one another for a coven to flourish."

She drew one X mark and four O marks on the ground to signify a coven.

"Eventually a coven will find another coven that is seen as trustworthy and valuable to the life of the current members, when those covens merge they are known as a clan."

She then begins to draw a line between another coven drawing.

This line was shown to stop at a Y.

"The purpose of this is for the eventual honor of procreating."

"Infernals struggle to birth males, we do not understand why but for some reason we have roughly ten females for every male and due to this disparity we hold males as a thing to be protected."

She then looks up at Ezekiel.

"You say she is not a mate, therefore you are unwed by infernal terms because a wedded male would never go unprotected... technically an unwedded male would mever be seen alone anyway as the sisters or mothers would not allow them to be in any danger."

When she said this War God spoke up.

"You keep talking about the men like they\'re helpless, do infernals think men are weak?"

The demoness looked at her in confusion before laughing.

"If you go into the woods you understand that you may encounter beasts yes?"

Layla nodded.

"Then if you have a territory nearby and a low level child that cannot defeat those beasts you would wish to keep them safe yes?"

She nodded again.

"Technically this is our own fault but we view females as more expendable so they are allowed to train more, males are protected like a glass flower which stunts their growth."

She looks at Ezekiel.

"You appear to be approaching adulthood, at your age you are probably in the upper 10% of male devils in terms of power at the same age"

She laughs at this as if its absurd.

"When we are within infernal territory you will be protected by myself and my sister so you would not have to worry about... unsavory advances."

She laughs even harder.

While Ezekiel was listening to all of this he eventually turned to look at Layla who was deep purple from blushing, when she saw him look at her she got up and quickly changed the subject.

"We\'re both demons right? You must know some good combat skills? If you want us to beat that dungeon easier then shouldnt we be learning about skills to help us?"

When she said this the demoness sighed and got back up.

"Yeah you\'re right, come on I\'ll teach you some valuable skills that every proper demon should learn. Go practice your magic boy."

The dismissive attitude annoyed him but he got up to go practice anyway.

Before he left he turned back to the two to give them some information he learned.

"Hey in the dungeon there\'s a spell circle protecting the boss room now and when tou touch it or try to harm it the mana is kind of released like a bomb."

As he was leaving the demoness looked troubled.

~

Deeper in the woods Ezekiel had found a quiet place to practice his magic as well as harness his new skills.

\'Ok first lets try this void conversion thing.\'

~~~~~~~~~~

Void Conversion lv1 (L)

Convert elemental mana into void mana at a ratio of 10 to 1.

~~~~~~~~~~

\'Void mana huh? Well lets try that out.\'

He activated the skill and... nothing happened.

He tried again and tried using mana at the same time, this time he saw a strange change in the mana but atill nothing occurred.

\'Maybe it affects spells? It does say elemental mana in the description.\'

This time when using the skill he cast a nova needle.

As the mana was rushing through his body he felt it being... refined? It was like the mana was becoming more potent even if there was less of it.

With the spell cast he watched what void mana could do.

It struck a tree and all he really saw was that it was eating away at it the same as consumption from shadow mana.

The main difference was void mana was consuming the tree much faster.

Because void mana was more aggressive than shadow mana he figured ot was better to focus on the elemental effect of it.

The damage dealt by the consumption effect of void mana has almost three times as many damage instances as shadow mana did which made the void version three times stronger.

\'I need a spell that can properly apply that effect more often... the best application would be something sharp but blades dont cut deep enough.\'

He began to experiment with this version of his spells.

When he tried using the void effect with his pseudo death mark skill he was surprised to see that it took the effect quite well, the explosive force was opening more surface area inside of the target to be affected by the void consumption.

"That spell I used against the wolf, the mana burn skill that let me make all those nova needles... I wonder if it\'s possible to make my needles denser and sharper, they would be able to break defenses well and even cause an absurd amount of void consumption...\'

With this thought in mind he began to practice making his needles as dense and sharp as possible.