The Primeval Era-Chapter 89: Why? II

And standing before an incoming army of beasts, Damian continued to unleash even more rivers of blood.

His marrow churned with production that exceeded anything natural, filling his vessels as quickly as he emptied them. He regenerated the blood he lost, and then he lost more, and then he regenerated more, the cycle accelerating with each passing heartbeat.

The area around him grew redder.

The stone beneath his feet became saturated with his essence.

The Lands themselves drank what he offered with a thirst that seemed bottomless.

And before even a few seconds had passed...

"PERSEVERE."

He growled out the letter of the Primordial Tongue again, and this time his voice carried force that made the air itself vibrate!

BOOM!

Blue-gold flames exploded outward from his body with intensity that dwarfed the previous eruption. They spread across the blood-soaked stone, igniting his essence wherever it had seeped, creating a circle of sacred fire that expanded outward in every direction.

And he gushed out seas of crimson blood all around him!

Not rivers anymore.

Seas.

Torrents of crimson burning with stellar blue, pouring from wounds that he kept open through sheer will, spreading across the Lands of Stone with the unstoppable force of a flood. The blood covered everything within reach, sank into everything it touched, connected him to an area that grew larger with every heartbeat.

The scene was astonishing.

Even the closest beasts that had been charging toward him, creatures whose eyes held only mindless rage moments before, felt something terrifying within those flames.

They began to pause.

Their charge faltered.

Their instincts, honed across generations of survival in the Lands of Stone, screamed at them that they were approaching something that should not be approached. Something that transcended the normal categories of predator and prey. Something that belonged to legends rather than reality.

Damian looked like a terrifying ancestral creature.

He stood at the center of an expanding circle of blood and flame, his body wreathed in blue-gold fire that didn’t burn him, his wounds pouring crimson that didn’t kill him. His eyes blazed with light that matched the flames, dark blue irises surrounded by crackling tendrils of Mana that made looking directly at him painful.

He was bleeding himself dry.

And he was more alive than he had ever been.

When he finally stopped and the flames died down, his body felt more imposing than ever.

The Mana raging inside him was even more potent and concentrated than before, his reserves expanded by the very act of using them. His skin shone with a primal sheen of blue energy, as if his flesh had absorbed some of the fire that had been burning around him.

And all around him, for more than a mile in diameter...

The Lands of Stone were painted sparkling crimson red with sparks of stellar blue.

An entire region transformed.

An entire territory claimed.

His blood saturated the stone in every direction, connecting him to an area that dwarfed the Purple Stone Tribe’s walls by orders of magnitude. He could feel every inch of it. Every crack. Every fissure. Every grain of stone that had absorbed what he offered.

It was all part of him now.

With a cold gaze, he looked at the beast tide that had frozen in confusion before him.

And with a thought...

HUUUUM!

The stones began to vibrate.

A moment later, they began to move.

As if they were listening to his words. As if they were obeying his intent. As if the Lands themselves had become an extension of his body, responding to his will as readily as his own limbs.

The stone beneath his feet churned and began to rise.

It lifted upward, carrying him with it, rock flowing like water as it accumulated beneath his position. More stone joined from the surrounding area, drawn by the connection his blood had established, adding to the growing mass that climbed toward the storm-darkened sky.

It looked like a mountain was forming.

With him at its peak.

All around him, fissures began to appear in the transformed Lands. Cracks widened into chasms, the stone pulling apart according to his design. And within those chasms, the crimson-blue stone he had created shaped itself into jagged spears that pointed upward like teeth waiting to bite.

A deadly battlefield.

Anyone or anything that fell into those fissures would be impaled on stone that had been hardened by his blood and his Mana. Anyone or anything that tried to cross this territory would face obstacles that responded to his will, that could shift and change according to his needs.

The area he stood on continued to rise.

The small mountain grew larger.

Stone accumulated beneath him with speed that defied natural law, drawn from the surrounding Lands by the connection his blood had forged. Higher and higher he rose, the tribe behind him shrinking in the distance, the beast tide before him becoming more visible as he gained altitude.

Until finally...

His height matched that of the massive Behemoth Primal Beast in the distance.

The Inkanyamba, which had been rushing toward him with fury that could devastate nations, slowed its approach. Its storm-filled eyes, each one the size of Damian’s entire body, looked upon what this tiny human had accomplished in mere seconds.

And for the first time, something other than rage flickered in those ancient depths.

Astonishment!

The surging tide of beasts that had been coming toward him...

Had stopped.

Completely.

They looked at the single human standing atop a mountain that had not existed moments ago. They looked at the transformed Lands surrounding him, the crimson-blue stone that pulsed with power they could sense even from this distance. They looked at the fissures filled with jagged spears, the deadly terrain that had appeared from nothing.

And they did not advance.

A moment later, a second human appeared near the peak of the newly-formed mountain.

Serala arrived on white-blue wings that beat against winds that had grown increasingly turbulent, her figure landing on the stone beside Damian with grace that even this chaos couldn’t diminish. Her wing-shaped pupils were wide, her expression showing the same incredulity as the beasts below.

She had seen many things in her life as the Holy Daughter of Stone.

She had witnessed Imperators clash with force that cracked mountains.

She had watched her master perform feats that lesser cultivators called impossible.

But this...

A young man who should be at the Second Circle at most, creating a mountain through sheer will and blood, transforming the Lands of Stone themselves into an extension of his power...

This was something else entirely!

At this time, feeling the interminable strength and control of the land around him that was now connected to his very being, Damian voiced out grandly...

"WHY?!"

HUUUUM!

One young man faced a whole army of beasts as he bellowed such a word.

And now, they would have to give him an answer.

At this time...

BOOM!

As all the beasts had frozen, the Inkanyamba moved.

The Behemoth Primal Beast surged forward, its massive serpentine body cutting through the air with speed that belied its size. Its wings beat with force that generated hurricane winds, scattering the lesser beasts below it, clearing a path directly toward the mountain where Damian stood.

The closer it came, the more the surrounding weather changed.

The storm-clouds that followed in its wake intensified, darkening from gray to black to something deeper than black. Lightning crackled within them with increasing frequency, bolts that arced between clouds and occasionally struck the ground below with explosions that left craters. The temperature dropped, the air growing cold with the promise of torrential rain.

Wind howled around Damian’s mountain, tearing at his clothes and his hair, trying to knock him from his perch. Thunder rolled continuously, so loud and constant that it became less a sound and more a physical pressure against his eardrums.

And still the Inkanyamba came closer.

Its horse-like head grew larger as the distance shrank, its features becoming clearer. Ancient scars marked its scales, some of them clearly caused by human weapons. Its mane of thunderclouds crackled with fury that had been building for longer than most human civilizations had existed.

Damian, standing atop a mountain bathed in his own blood, looking upward at the oncoming massive Behemoth Primal Beast. His dark blue eyes met the storm-filled gaze of the Inkanyamba without flinching. His body, still crackling with residual blue Mana, stood tall despite the winds that tried to bend him.

The only one floating beside him was the Holy Daughter, her white-blue wings struggling against gusts that could have scattered lesser fliers across the sky.

When the Inkanyamba came near enough that its shadow fell across the entire mountain, when its presence alone made the stone beneath Damian’s feet tremble...

Booming Mana raged from its jaws.

The power that gathered in its mouth was visible, a concentration of energy that made the air around it warp and shimmer. And that Mana formed into meaning, shaping itself into words that could be understood, waves of power that became a voice that shook the very foundations of the mountain Damian stood upon.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN WHY?!"

The Inkanyamba’s voice was thunder given language, lightning given meaning.

"YOU HUMANS KILL OUR YOUNG FOR SPORT! YOU BOMBARD OUR MOUNTAINS AS YOU JUST DID! BUT WE CANNOT DO THE SAME?!"

Its massive head swept closer, close enough that Damian could see the fury burning in eyes older than tribes.

"YOU KILL US! WE CANNOT KILL YOU?!"

...!

BOOM!