Disciples of the Holy Blood Sect, numbering around a hundred, gathered in front of the wide clearing between the mountains and were waiting for the instructions of the duo standing a few steps ahead of them.
"Judging by the sounds coming from inside, two wild animals are fighting each other; we will wait a bit and hunt them both when they fall weak!"
Bloody Sun Sol and Bloody Mountain Cumbre had assigned half of their accompanying men for exploration and brought the remaining half to the entrance hidden by dense vegetation. When they found this place, the sun was just reaching its zenith; although they didn't know it, a long wait was beginning.
A hundred people waited with their ears open to hear the sound coming from the cave; minutes chased minutes, hours chased hours, but the intensity of the sounds never decreased. Although not a peep came from the crowd, one of the duo standing in front of them was getting tenser moment by moment.
"When will these get tired?"
When the frequency of the question asked every hour dropped to ten minutes, Bloody Sun Sol's patience ran out.
"We waited long enough; get ready, we are going in!"
The fifty people receiving the order drew their weapons, but the other fifty were waiting silently; their eyes were on Bloody Mountain Cumbre.
Sol was harsh, scorching; Cumbre was calm, arrogant. How could the men of such a person bring themselves into a state of war with the word of another?
"You draw your weapons too and get ready for battle!"
A hundred people came to a state ready to take lives at any moment; they started advancing to catch the wild creatures fighting inside off guard, but just around these times, someone appeared at the dark entrance of the cave.
"He he he, so much fresh meat here!"
The old man, consisting of a head attached to a body almost as thick as an adult man's arm, called out to the Holy Blood Sect disciples who had assumed a battle stance.
"Who is this guy?"
"Did we enter the graveyard zone?"
Following the unexpected event and the old man's words, mocking words accompanied by chuckles were heard within the crowd. After one or two taunts, the old man joined them too; he was laughing opening his mouth wide, unable to hide the filth of his missing teeth.
"How nice, how nice. You cheerful kids!"
These behaviors of his made the crowd lined up behind the two leaders slowly fall silent; this guy had either lost his mind or gambled on dying today.
"Geezer, go your way. I don't want to dirty the bottom of my foot by crushing you!"
Someone standing right behind Bloody Sun Sol rushed forward; Bloody Mountain Cumbre's men followed him. They started to disparage, mock, and even curse the man with unspeakable words. The old man didn't lose his composure at all; he didn't speak until the moment everyone fell silent and waited for what would come out of his mouth.
"Look, you wimpy scumbags, I give you ten breaths; fuck off!"
The cheerful aura of the old man changed when the words ended; it turned into a black hole swallowing all colors. Bloody Sun Sol and Bloody Mountain Cumbre looked at each other; five breaths had already passed.
The two leaders brought their hands to their necks, took the square prism crystals into their palms, and when nine breaths passed, they turned into light beams and disappeared. The hundred people standing behind them couldn't understand what happened; their bodies were stiff until they heard a voice coming from behind them.
"I am going for a little stroll; let's meet again when we cross to the other side!"
The old man who was in front of them just a moment ago had moved behind them in the blink of an eye; when he finished his words and disappeared, they let out a deep breath. Of course, not all of them succeeded; it was impossible for those whose heads fell to the ground first.
Some of those whose different body parts were separated could see their other parts lying right next to them because brain death hadn't occurred. In the time passed during a blink of an eye, the old man separated a hundred people into at least five pieces.
"The thing I dislike the most is bugs wandering on my lands; I must do what an adult man does to pests entering his house. I will step on them and crush them!"
Laughing intermittently, the skinny man cleaned up all the men of the two clan representatives within an hour; when he returned to the cave, a few small wild creatures were gnawing on the pieces of a hundred people.
"There is room for all kinds of living beings on my lands; I only don't want pests called humans!"
He entered the cave rapidly, and three breaths later he was on the large rock he always sat on. A few steps ahead, the young man carrying two swords, one white and one black, was fighting with a giant weasel attacking him with its tail turned into a dagger and the knife it held in its mouth.
"You surprise me, brat; I thought you would be dead by now!"
The person the skinny old man called out to was none other than Alis; there was no limit to his joy while fighting with his own power animal in its original form.
"I won't die without returning to her side!"
Alis's scream grew hitting the walls of the cave; when it couldn't fit inside and overflowed outside, the wild creatures gnawing on the flesh of a hundred people fled in fear.
The same scene took the stage in another part of the Blood Valley. Black Lily Virgen's roar caused the birds perched on nearby trees to flee in flocks.
"You took my brother's arm; I will take yours too!"
Nafız drew patience with a deep breath; she couldn't take action against the little boy being caught by the throat.
"How will you take it? Shall I give it here or wrap it up?"
Virgen couldn't react at first when he heard words he didn't understand the meaning of; then squeezing the throat of the child he grabbed with his claw, he made him groan in pain. The middle-aged man broke his silence in the face of the cry; falling at Nafız's legs, he asked for help.
"He is my everything; I can't live without him!"
Nafız found herself in a great dilemma; although she was happy her enemies came to her feet, someone using a hostage to threaten her was reopening her old wounds. Those looking from outside might think she focused on the child, but in Nafız's mind, there was Sangre clutching bars of fire.
The child's groans were the sound form of the dense smell mixing into the air from burning hands in her eyes. The pleadings of the man hugging her leg were her inner voice that never fell silent during her two-year seclusion.
"If I do what you want, will you let the child go?"
Nafız spoke neither in a high nor low tone; she was her usual self except for her dull timbre, but a huge smile appeared on Black Lily Virgen's face.
"Of course; after all, we have no business with these two!"
"Which one do you want?"
"I want the arm with your right hand!"
The moment the words of the youth with a black lily tattoo on his face finished, an arm flying into the air glided and fell at his feet. The blood dagger coming out of Nafız's left hand tore off her right arm from where it joined her shoulder and threw it.
"You did it, you really did it!"
Virgen was shouting amidst laughter; although he insisted on it, it was very obvious he didn't think the beautiful girl opposite him would do this.
"Now, send the child!"
When the claw-like fingers gripping his throat loosened, the little boy started running towards the middle-aged man. While Nafız concentrated on stopping the bleeding in her right arm, she was following the events with her eyes.
When there were a few steps left for the reunion of the gray-haired man and the child he saw as his son, the little one suddenly accelerated. When the man caught him, he hugged him tightly, kissing him with longing, but before five breaths passed, he stopped doing this.
His whole face was covered in blood. The red liquid leaking from the corner of the little one's mouth was flowing onto the middle-aged man. When Nafız saw the dagger embroidered with black lilies on the child's back, she roared with anger; the blood dagger coming out of her left wrist had reached the height of a human.
"Degenerate dog, how could you kill a tiny child!"
When Virgen's tattoo lost its shape due to his crooked smile, he spoke spreading his mouth.
"She lost an arm; her power must have decreased by half. Surround her and kill her!"