The Primeval Era-Chapter 43: We Are Alive! II

The atmosphere was breathless!

No one moved and no one spoke. Even the crackling of the bonfire seemed muted, as if the flames themselves had paused to witness what had just occurred.

The imprisoned women stared with expressions that mixed horror and awe. Their tormentor was dead, his head lying separate from his body, and the one who had killed him stood with a spear still piercing his chest as if it were merely an inconvenience.

The Chieftain and the two Warriors looked on with disbelief painted across their ruined faces. Ayala’s one functional eye blinked repeatedly, as if trying to clear a hallucination that refused to fade.

Only Grandmother Essun remained calm.

She continued tending to the disbelieving Chieftain and the two others, her gnarled fingers working the Bloodmoss Paste into wounds with practiced efficiency.

As for Damian...

He reached up and grasped the shaft of the spear protruding from his chest.

Without hesitation, without ceremony, he pushed it forward. The weapon slid through his body, the stone tip emerging further from his back, then the shaft followed, and finally the entire spear came free from behind him.

He let it clatter to the blood-soaked stones.

And the swirls of Mana flowing into him only increased.

As if he had just completed a ritual.

As if the blood he had spilled, the life he had ended, the wound he had received, all of it had somehow opened floodgates that had previously been only partially ajar.

With the night pressing close and the glow of the Ancestor Pillars casting their verdant light, he looked like a ghost of Mana standing there bleeding while power surged into him like raging rivers. The tendrils of blue energy wrapped around his form, sinking into his flesh, disappearing into systems that hungered for exactly this kind of nourishment.

It looked beautiful to those watching!

Ethereal and otherworldly!

But for Damian...

"Holy..."

He was putting in waves of Mana many times more compared to before. All his systems were absorbing it with intensity that should have been impossible, drinking in power that would have killed any normal thing!

His flesh expanded. His bones creaked. His blood boiled. His marrow strained. His organs trembled.

They soon began to feel squeezed and unstable.

Blood began to leak from his nose and mouth, crimson streams that joined the blood already soaking his face. His vision flickered. His consciousness wavered.

An instant later, before the damage could become catastrophic, before his body could tear itself apart from the inside...

"PERSEVERE."

BOOM!

Blue-gold flames erupted around him with force that made the Ancestor Pillar nearby sway. The fire was more luminescent than anything else in the surroundings, brighter than the bonfire, brighter than the glowing leaves overhead, brighter than the stars themselves.

His figure became utterly regal within that inferno of healing light.

The injury at his chest rapidly closed, flesh knitting together with impossible speed, bone reforming, muscle reconnecting. The blood all over his body, both his own and that of his enemies, was cleansed away by flames that burned without heat. His skin emerged clean beneath the sacred fire, unmarked by the violence he had just committed.

And from his body...

POP!

POP!

POP!

Damian looked down with incredulity.

Truly, unbelievably, he heard pops.

Pops!

The marker of Bone Tempering!

The sound of a skeleton transforming, of bones becoming reservoirs of Mana rather than merely structures of support. The sound that every Tribesman hoped to hear when they crossed from the First Circle to the Second.

He felt the bones across his body in ways he had never felt them before.

They were denser now. Harder!

Thrumming with stored power that he could access at will. His skeleton had become a framework of strength that could withstand impacts that would shatter ordinary bone. Well, it was starting to.The Process would be long and grueling.

But what made his situation different, what made Vakochev’s Doctrines of Stone so unprecedented, was what surrounded those bones!

The flesh around them was also saturated with Mana, more so than any First Circle cultivator could achieve. The blood coursing through vessels near the bones carried power that supported and nourished them. The marrow within the bones stirred with the beginnings of generation, not yet crystallized but far more active than it should be at this stage.

These three aspects actually supported the bones and caused them to be filled with higher concentrations of Mana than normal Bone Tempering would allow. To the point that they began to shine with a light blue luminescence visible even through his flesh.

A marker for those who had entered Bone Tempering.

But not ordinary Bone Tempering.

Something magisterially more!

At the same time, there were also dense waves of Mana in his blood and marrow. They surged like mighty rivers inside his body, carrying power to every extremity, feeding systems that were developing far ahead of schedule. His heart and other organs beat like drums, working harder than ever before, processing Mana that organs should not touch until the Fifth Circle.

So far, only his bones had taken that next step into the Second Circle.

But everything else was close.

Everything else was waiting!

Everything else would follow when he pushed further along this path he was forging.

This alone was ridiculous enough.

While Damian sensed the profound changes in his body, the blue-gold flames surrounding him died down. The sacred fire faded into sparks that drifted upward toward the stars, leaving him standing in the aftermath of transformation.

He looked around.

The scene of devastation stretched in every direction.

Thirteen bodies lay scattered across the encampment. Twelve Flesh Awakening Warriors and one Bone Tempering Warrior, all of them slain by a single man in less than a minute. Blood painted the stones in spreading pools that reflected the firelight. Weapons lay where they had fallen, unused or useless against the force that had swept through this place.

And the living looked at him with expressions that varied but shared one common element.

Awe.

The captured women stared with eyes that had shifted from terror to something else entirely. Their gazes held shock still, yes, but also reverence. They looked at Damian as one might look at a spirit of vengeance given flesh, a protector sent by the Ancestors to save them from their fate.

Such gazes were difficult for him to receive.

He turned away from them.

Grandmother Essun was smiling at him, her hunched figure rising from where she had been tending to the Chieftain. Her ancient eyes held satisfaction and a sense of pride.

She gave him a thumbs up.

"Death is a part of the Lands of Stone."

Her voice was calm, almost gentle.

"Those that have died will join the Ancestors. Those that are living can always seek vengeance and a fulfilling life."

She gestured at the carnage around them with casual acceptance.

"Right now you are alive, Tokoloshe. We are alive. And that is more than enough."

...!

Right.

Damian clenched his fist as he felt the waves of heavy power surging through his body.

He was alive.

After everything that had happened today, after killing more than a dozen Warriors, after pushing his cultivation to heights that should have been impossible, he was still alive.

And that was more than enough.

He went forward to check on the Chieftain and others. Ayala looked up at him with that one functional eye.

The plan had failed catastrophically. People had died because of it.

But that was not a conversation for right now.

"Are they okay?"

Damian asked the question to Grandmother Essun rather than to the injured men themselves. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

The Wisewoman nodded calmly.

"They will be okay. The Bloodmoss Paste is doing its work, and nothing is broken beyond repair."

She straightened fully, her bent spine somehow seeming less hunched than before.

"But we may not be okay if we leave the stench of blood to permeate all around. As much of a waste as it will be not to turn them to fertilizer, best to turn them to ash before any Primal Beasts are drawn over here."

She pointed her gnarled stick at the Chieftain.

"Ayala, get up."

Then at the two Warriors.

"You two as well. You are heavily injured, but you should be able to drag bodies to the fire."

Her voice brooked no argument.

"Come on."

...!

What followed was like a ritual!