Rise of the Blood Sovereign

Lyle quickly ran through the forest, since it was so close to the city, there were no powerful monsters inside of it, merely some normal animals that the hunters could hunt in order to get meat and leather while deeper inside the forest one could find some weak monsters that were used by the adventurers guild to train the newbies.

Rarely would stronger monsters appear, but when they did, they would be quickly hunted down by the adventurers before they could kill people. Of course, there would always be some casualties, some unfortunate newbie would get slaughtered by the monster, or a hunter would disappear, but that was a risk that they knew existed every time they went into the forest.

The lush trees made for a great cover for Lyle. The moonlight was barely able to penetrate through the canopy of the trees and made the inside of the forest dark and most would struggle with their sight.

For Lyle, however, it was no problem. As a vampire he was a creature of the night, they preferred being active at night and had night vision, which made the forest a perfect place for him.

He didn't know whether the old archmage was still looking for him, but even if he was, he wouldn't be able to find him inside the forest. Flying above the forest in order to locate Lyle was almost impossible, and going inside was even worse for the old archmage, at least that was what Lyle thought.

The reality was that the Irin was following him from about 200 meters away. The forest spanned tens of kilometers ( 1 mile = 1.6km ) and Lyle had already gone deep inside of it. His speed was incredible as he didn't slow down at all, wanting to get as far away from the city as possible.

Irin was still not ready to attack him, even though they were already about 2km away from the city, there was still a chance that some people were nearby, and even though the chance of that happening was almost zero, Irin didn't want to take even the smallest risk right now.

He wouldn't lose Lyle's trace, that much was certain, so he didn't mind waiting a bit more before attacking him. He thought of what he should do, should he simply attack the young assassin from above when he was unaware of his existence, or should he appear before him and let him squirm for a while?

He knew that taking care of Lyle quickly was the best course of action, but he was angered by the assassin that had killed Orsted and foiled his plans. Whoever gave the information about Orsted betraying the empire was not a member of his kingdom as he would have been informed about it before, which made it clear that he couldn't continue being active here and had to go back to his kingdom soon.

The assassin was simply a tool that the enemy had used, but Irin still felt irritated by him. He didn't want to give Lyle a quick death but wanted to torture him and make him suffer before ending him.

Lyle was completely unaware that Irin had gotten a drop of his blood and that he was using it to track him. Even though Lyle's ability was manipulating blood, he could only do it in a certain radius, all the blood that was more than 50 meters away from him can't be sensed.

As long as Irin kept his distance, Lyle would be completely unaware that he was being tracked. Even if Irin was to get close to Lyle, the latter would still be unable to sense the blood since Irin had used it for the spell.

Lyle ran fast as he wanted to get as far as possible from the city before his transformation ended. After that, his power would drop and he would be completely unable to do anything against the archmage. Even though he was fairly certain that he was already safe, as an assassin he was taught that being cautious was something that he should never forget.

No matter how good something looked like, one should be as cautious as possible when dealing with anything.

As Lyle got some 3km away from the city, Irin made his move. His speed was suddenly increased by three-fold as he quickly overtook Lyle before dropping down and standing in the air in front of him.

Seeing in the dark was not a problem for the old archmage, as a simple spell was enough to give him night vision.

Upon seeing Irin, Lyle stopped running and started at him in shock. He didn't know how the old archmage was able to get here, he was certain that he had created more than enough distance between them previously.

Upon staring at the old mage, he noticed the arrow on the back of his hand that was pointing straight at him.

"A spell?"

"Correct, I have to praise you, you almost managed to escape, almost," Irin said as he stared at Lyle with a smirk on his face.

"But now it is time to end this little game of cat and mouse," Irin said as he spread his arms open. A green gas suddenly started being released from his body as Lyle stared in shock.

The grass and plants near Irin started withering as even the trees showed signs of being corroded by the gas. The sight made alarm bells ring in Lyle's head as he suddenly ran to the side.

'Poison, his mastery is in poison, damn it!' Mages that mastered the art of poison were rare, incredibly rare.

They were usually ostracized from society as any of their spells would always cause many casualties. Poison didn't discriminate against friends and foes and those that fought against a poison mage or fought together with him both had to be incredibly careful to not fall to his poison.

Of course, such mages usually had antidotes to their poison that they would hand out to their allies, but the damage they would deal to the surroundings was also something that most kingdoms and empires disliked.

To find a poison archmage was rare as they were mostly members of underground societies that didn't care for the lives of the innocent.

Seeing the poison made Lyle think of a person. There existed only one known poison archmage in the surrounding area, and he belonged to a kingdom that was part of the alliance that went against the empire.

How Orsted managed to poison the duke so easily was now easy to imagine, with a poison archmage by his side, the duke wouldn't have suspected a thing.

"I doubt that I can survive, I need to at least find a way to leave a message to the organization, they need to know Irin's true identity." Lyle thought as he ran with all of his might, only for Irin to once again appear in front of him. He pointed his hand and a small cloud of poison was sent at Lyle's way, who didn't have enough time to dodge.

The poison cloud hit him and he simply passed through it, he didn't inhale any of the poison, but it didn't matter, the poison spells of archmages could get inside the body by entering through the pores, and there was almost no way of blocking it.

One would have to be at the same level as the archmage in order to use mana to block the poison or suppress it when it entered the body, and unfortunately for him, Lyle was not at the same level.

"Don't worry, that poison is not a lethal one, it will simply weaken you for a day, I still have a lot I want to do to you before killing you, who knows, if you behave properly, I might even give you the antidote," Irin said as he touched his spatial ring and showed a small vial to Lyle.

Whether the antidote was real or not was something that Lyle had no idea of, but looking at how the archmage was behaving, and the complete control he had over the situation, he had no reason to not believe his words.

Lyle stared at the old man who was smiling at him before suddenly jumping to the side. A deep cut appeared on the ground he previously stood on and sweat started covering his head.

The poison was already working, thanks to Lyle's ability to control blood, he could actually lessen its power since Irin had underestimated him by not knowing his ability and used a weak poison on him.

"Now, don't move, like I said before if you behave, I might give you the antidote and let you live, I don't have anything to gain by killing you."

"Hmph, you can keep your words to yourself, magister Ilya," Lyle said as he stared at the old mage whose eyes constricted a bit.

Ilya.

The magister of a kingdom, the main figurehead amongst all the mages of the kingdom.

He was counted as one of the most powerful and dangerous mages in the surrounding area.

Many years ago, the empire, together with the neighboring kingdoms decided to get rid of him, he was after all too big of a threat to them as his poison magic could change the outcome of battles, no matter how large they were.

Over 10 archmages had gathered and attacked the magister during a conference, and out of the 10, only 6 survived, the others had fallen to the powerful poison.

Everybody believed he was dead, but the old mage somehow survived, disguised himself, and joined the empire.

"Ah, so you have figured out my identity, that is too bad, now I really need to kill you."

"You would have killed me anyway, there's no need to try and fool me."

"I see, well then, I guess I should end this." The old archmage said as he lifted his hand.

An incredible amount of mana was suddenly drawn to the man, if somebody was to look at the forest from above, they would be able to see the mana forming a vortex as it got drawn in by Ilya.

"Farewell, young assassin," Ilya said as he brought his hand down at Lyle.

And nothing happened.

The vortex of mana suddenly dispersed, and the archmage was brought down to the ground as the spell he used in order to float was gone. 𝚋ｅｄｎ𝚘𝚟ｅｌ.ｃｏ𝚖

[ The system has begun integrating with the planet named Corleon. ]