Hitting his majestic body on the ground with the end of his words, the Second Elder opened his eyes completely. He wasn't moving, but his chest was rising and falling like a bellows.
"So be it, but I cannot just leave his legacy!"
Slowly raising his arms into the air, the Second Elder suddenly brought them down. His fingers were embedded in the soil.
"Did you die? Majestic man, fierce warrior, protector of the Holy Blood, where are you going leaving your beloved sect?"
The skinny man, standing on top of his energy snake, was laughing with his mouth twisted, and what spilled from his forked tongue was echoing outside the Blood Dome.
"Where is the Sheikh?"
"Did he die?"
"The Second Elder is dead! Run!"
Thousands of people, caught in a flood of panic, started moving away in waves. They were running without even knowing how absurd their action was.
"Fools, the Dome is standing right there!"
The pleasant woman inside Nafız's Blood Dome spoke lowering her eyelids halfway. Her interest was outside, but the red-haired girl next to her was looking straight ahead.
"It's your turn! Do you believe that scrawny thing will protect you?"
The skinny man raising his two whips into the air was still talking while bringing them down ruthlessly.
"I will burn and destroy everywhere. This cursed sect will be wiped off the face of the earth!"
Nafız didn't bat an eye while the Third Elder came at them; she seemed to know something no one else was aware of.
"I wonder who the real fool is? The people or that beanpole?"
Nafız murmured quietly. A moment later Jashua shouted, and the woman in red turned her gaze to the body lying on the ground.
"Sir!"
A massive crack appeared under the Blood Dome. Nafız, who had remained calm since the beginning of the battle, grabbed Ralf and shot up from where she was.
"We're leaving here!"
The Blood God finished her technique; what she did while the enemy's attack was coming at them was equivalent to suicide, but the Third Elder had already retreated a hundred steps away.
"Traitor! You've reached the end of your poisonous tongue and sneaky plans!"
The Second Elder didn't get up from where he lay; he literally shot up and appeared in the air. The light rising from inside the cracks in the area where he was at the center was gathering around him. He was like a blood-red sun. The sun was growing moment by moment; the energy coming from underground was charging relentlessly.
"You're too late to commit suicide, you arrogant bastard!"
The skinny man retreated a bit further. He looked uneasy while his opponent relentlessly drained energy from the underground blood crystal veins.
"The transformation has begun. The Holy Blood has met its new guardian!"
While Nafız and her team, who fled to the other end of the dome, caught their breath, the Third Sheikh's spirit animal was watching the giant sun.
"Will he be able to live after draining this much energy?"
Lareina, wiping the sweat from Ralf's forehead, wondered about the Second Elder's fate. The answer would come from the person who spoke just a moment ago.
"From this moment on, he and the Holy Blood Sect are a whole. Neither the Holy Blood can harm him, nor can he harm the Holy Blood Sect!"
It was as if she was telling a prophecy from ancient times; like a mythological hero was being born from the dusty pages of history. The blood crystal beds under the sect could be seen with the naked eye; as the Second Elder drained their energies, they were losing their glow and turning black.
The blood sun had grown so much that it covered three-quarters of the area inside the Dome. If it continued a bit more, there would be nowhere left to run. The Third Elder at one end, Nafız's team at the other, had retreated to the border.
"Ma'am, how much longer will this continue!"
Jashua, when his back rested against Sheikh Atractivo's Blood Dome, had to voice the question on his mind. The answer didn't come from the woman; a roar from inside the blood sun was saying what needed to be said.
"As long as I draw breath, no one can harm the Holy Blood Sect!"
The shout rising from the center of the sun collapsing inward like a black hole echoed across the sect's lands. The sun was shrinking dramatically. When everything was over, from the blood sun that vanished as if it never existed, only the Second Elder remained. Most of the clothes on him had burned away; those who saw his exposed upper body didn't know what to say.
"He's not dead! The Second Elder came back!"
"What happened to his body?"
The feeble words wandering amidst the chaos created by the people barely found their way and entered the old man's ears.
"Grandpa, I'm so scared!"
The little girl couldn't look at the Second Elder hovering in the air. She had buried her head in the leg of her grandpa's patched trousers. She wasn't wrong; the Second Elder emerging from the blood sun was in a state that would strike fear into everyone's heart.
Just as the cracks on the ground were, he had the same cracks on his body. Through the two-finger-thick cracks continuing right across his white skin, a dark red color looked as if it would burst out any moment.
His face, arms, legs, torso were lined and opened up like parched earth cracked from thirst. His hair and beard were in place, but his eyes, which had turned into two large blood crystals, were very scary.
"Die!"
Disappearing from sight for a moment, the Second Elder appeared in front of the skinny man and swung his fist from three steps away. Before the blow reached its target, the resulting wind created a brand new crack on the ground.
The Third Elder wanted to escape wriggling like a snake, but a claw catching him by the nape slammed his head to the ground. Saving his neck at the last moment, the skinny man got on the energy snake and moved. He also managed to advance a few dozen steps, but the Second caught the energy snake this time.
"This energy belongs to the sect!"
Taking the snake into his hands, the Second Elder opened his mouth and swallowed the massive energy mass in one go.
"The energy in your body also belongs to the sect!"
The majestic man, forcibly tearing and taking the energy of the Third Elder whose head he grabbed, was like the incarnation of the angel of death descended to earth. He drained his enemy until he breathed his last, without showing the slightest hesitation.
Whatever he took from the sect for years, he was giving it all back; the Second Elder had condemned him to death. When dozens of breaths passed, the dead body of the Third Elder, turning into an empty sack, drifted down and fell like a leaf.
The majestic man landing on the ground right after placed the palms of his two hands on the floor. The blood emptying from the dead bodies was filling the cracks. The sect, taking back what was forcibly torn from it for all those years, had no mercy. Bloods were practically spurting out of the dead.
"Little Girl!"
Nafız turned to the Holy Mountain Clan Leader who was barely standing; the man leaning on his giant mace was breathing with difficulty.
"Promise! Promise me you won't kill my people!"
The man falling to the ground while completing his words was sweating blood. Due to the blood coming out of the pores on his body, he couldn't speak further. A few breaths later, a huge hole opened in his back, and the red liquid indispensable for life scattered in every direction.
Nafız and those next to her, deprived of the defense of the Blood Dome, also got their share of this explosion. The dead lying at their feet also exploded; bloods were raining down on them like rain.
The Second Elder was ruthless as he filled the earth cracking for his transformation with the blood and bodies of his enemies. Whatever was torn away, he was taking it back without a gram missing. Nothing less, nothing more.
"Wow, what happened here!"
While those lying on the ground were mixing into the soil, one of the corpses stood up. Stumbling right and left, he couldn't manage it even if he wanted to walk.
"Sheikh Atractivo!"
Lareina was the first person to see him; then Nafız, those next to her, and finally the Second Elder who finished his job noticed the drunk Sheikh. Atractivo couldn't walk; the others were going to have to go to him.
"You're all red, why did I stay so white like this!"
Atractivo was wasted. Bending down with difficulty, he pressed his palms to the blood the soil was trying to absorb and started smearing it on his face as he got up.
"Look, it's fine now!"
The Sheikh was laughing. As for those surrounding him, there wasn't even a single muscle twitching on their faces.
"But I'm so bored. Since you're not having fun, let's go somewhere we can have fun!"
Atractivo swung the thin long sword appearing in his hand towards the void. When the result of the move, which carried no meaning other than being funny, became clear three breaths later, the majestic man grabbed the Sheikh tightly by the collar.
"Are you crazy? Where are you opening a portal to?"