Way of the Knights

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As a God Beast, it is perfectly understandable that Dragons are extremely tyrannical. If it weren\'t for the fact that their reproduction is extremely low, they might as be called as true rulers of the Divine Realm.

On contrary to belief, Dragons don\'t have to share in bed with anyone or anything to reproduce. The vitality contained in its blood is enough to impregnate a lesser creature, like a human for example.

Vit\'hum is a hybrid between human and a dragon. It\'s unknown how its mother got hold of a dragon\'s blood but she consumed it and was clearly aware of the astonishing vitality it possessed, all she needs to do is to guide those vitality on her womb and she became pregnant with Vit\'hum.

Unfortunately, raising a dragon child is not something, someone from a Lesser World could support. The needs of the dragon child is far too immense for her to bear and due to that, the mother was forced to give birth to Vit\'hum earlier that expected.

Due to malnutrition, Vit\'hum lost the chance to become a true dragon, its transformation was cut-off that\'s why the baby appeared different from a normal human baby. As a child, Vit\'hum was extremely pale, his eyes are that of beast for it appears like slits. His body proportions are wrong too, his chest for one was extremely wide while his legs are too thin and weak looking. There\'s also two protrusions on his back, same goes on his forehead, making him look entirely strange that his mother can\'t even look at him.

The mother only took care of Vit\'hum until he was old enough to walk and do things without her supervision. He was then discarded in the middle of a vast forest to survive on his own. Unfortunately, this was probably the biggest mistake that she could ever make.

Though he is malformed, Vit\'hum still carries the blood of a Dragon. Despite being scared, he fought and managed to survive through the law of the jungle. He also discovered his own peculiarities on his own. He was able to assume transformation into a body of a Drake, albeit Scaleless. Despite this, Vit\'hum actually preferred to be in this state, he could feel an overflowing sense of power and confidence in this form. He was able to become the ruler of the jungle on his own efforts.

Vit\'hum originally wanted to live in peace, however humans started to go after his life. Remembering how his mother left him to die in this jungle, Vit\'hum despised the humans from the depths of his heart. Each time he sees a human, he would not hesitate to kill them in the most cruel fashion and devour their soul, something that Vit\'hum learned by accident.

Upon devouring human souls, Vit\'hum gains their memories, allowing him to learn their ways and secrets. He held nothing but hate against humans so he attacked their settlement, leading a massive horde of beasts behind him. Unfortunately, there are humans who are clearly stronger than him, so he had no other choice other than to retreat, but not before devouring as many souls as he could. With many souls as nourishment, his knowledge about humans grew.

Vit\'hum eventually realized that devouring humans souls seems to be particularly nourishing for him, in the end he became addicted to it to the point where he couldn\'t last for long without consuming human souls. He even figured that maybe, if devoured enough humans souls, he would eventually achieve his evolution into a true dragon.

This became a great motivation for the him. Unknowingly, he now treated humans as his cattle, he would instruct his lackeys to attack their settlement so that he could devour their souls, once he\'s done he will slumber for a while to digest them and then repeat this action.

Of course, humans won\'t just sit idly and wait for death. With the king as the fire starter, they went on a crusade against Vit\'hum, searching for him and destroying the threat before it grows too strong to drive humans to the brink of extinction.

The Crusade managed to catch Vit\'hum unprepared, the beast was heavily injured and was forced to flee in the deepest regions of the forest. Vit\'hum took a long time to recover but once it did, it immediately flew into rage and attacked the human settlement once again. This time however, he didn\'t expect that humans grew so strong that they nearly killed him.

The King of that time, Harold Maximillian was convinced that he ended that beast but for due to some mysterious methods, a part of its soul managed to survive and ever since then, he seduced many creatures to do his bidding and help him recover. He even started taking control humans to pay close attention to the current state of humans. Carefully planning and bidding time in order to have his revenge and pursue the path towards his evolution.

***

"…I don\'t know where this Pale Bastard is, nor how much he recovered but I\'m sure that Jubileus did a number on him, so we managed to buy time on our side."

Raven exhaled a mouthful of foul air after explaining what he knows about Vit\'hum.

A gloomy atmosphere descended on the room. Raven\'s tales about Vit\'hum had no concrete evidences so far yet for he doesn\'t seem to be lying about it.

Nobody here had knew about this beforehand. If it weren\'t for him informing them about this, they would remain clueless about this being and would have no other choice other than to accept their doom when it recovered.

"So, you mean to say that the true master of the Black Curtain Guild, isn\'t that Alastair but this Vit\'hum instead?" Ellen asked, to which Raven nodded. "Ai! What a headache!"

"You tell me." Raven laughed and replied.

"You said that only a part of Vit\'hum soul managed to survive right?" Mark asked, Raven nodded in agreement. "Then if it\'s only a soul, we should be able to manage right?"

"How I wish that it was that simple." Raven smiled wryly and shook his head, "Vit\'hum\'s lackeys managed to retrieve his body, the Scaleless Drake\'s body. Bastard\'s talented in souls, so I wouldn\'t be surprised be managed to fuse his soul back to the injured body and preserve it using some methods."

"So, in short. We have an enemy that\'s at least a couple thousands of years old, and is extremely angry at humans. Well, how in the world are we fighting that?" Paul asked in a distressed manner.

"Didn\'t you hear what Big Bro said?" Anne interjected, "We have time."

"Anne\'s right." Raven confirmed, "By estimations, we have more or less a decade to prepare before he launch a direct attack."

"Avi…" Luna\'s worried voice caught Raven\'s attention, he looked to her while she said; "Father…won\'t come across him, right?"

There was a very uncomfortable silence that followed her question. Balmung and Luna tensed up when they saw Raven placed a serious expression. After a while, they saw him exhale.

"I have no way to guarantee that he won\'t." Raven started, "May I know how strong the King is before his departure?"

This time, it was Old Lee who answered the question. "Half-step Hero Realm."

Raven let out a sigh of relief upon hearing that. "He must\'ve broke through by now then. If that\'s the case, then I am confident about the chances of him escaping. Even if the Pale Bastard used his remaining strength, there is no way that he would be able to keep that King if he decided to leave."

The rest heaved a sigh of relief upon hearing his statement.

"That Old Man. I swear I would smack his face when he comes back. Making us worry for his sorry ass, what a loser." Leona mumbled to the side while massaging her temples.

The rest could only smile wryly on her comments. Perhaps, she was the only one who could admonish the King in this way without getting punished.

"By the way." Balmung caught everyone\'s attention. "Who\'s this Jubileus that you spoke of?"

"Oh her?" Raven took a quick glance towards Luna and Old Lee before revealing a critical information. "It\'s a long story. To make it short, she was the one who caused Luna to suffer for a while. Remember back when she has to chain up herself to prevent herself from hurting other people? That\'s her doing, her will and essence was previously trapped in that Hairpin Heirloom."

"I didn\'t cure Luna since there\'s nothing wrong with her. It was Jubileus who I cured, so she owes me and Luna a favor. In turn she became Luna\'s Spirit Entity while she gave me a chance to summon her."

As Raven told the story, Luna seeming entered a trance. She remember just how much she had suffered back then, it even came to the point where she had to wear a disguise and leave the Royal Palace in order to not hurt anyone. During her hopeless times, Raven came to her aid. It was then that her life resumed that\'s why she will never forget that day.

"Spirit Entity? What\'s that?"