PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

644 Chapter 644 The Rise Of Lilith.

For Desmond, even angels could fall from his grace, demons become holy, and the universe could turn to scattered ashes. However, the family would still be sacred to him, and even though it happened unexpectedly, he already considered Lilith, his family.

Whether it was blood ties, Desmond’s empathy for Lilith’s situation, or his admiration for the kind of powerful yet benevolent ruler she had been, according to Nicolai’s memories, Desmond felt quite close to Lilith. Calling her his sister wasn’t too far-fetched for him.

With all these thoughts running through his head, Desmond experienced a very familiar feeling, something unbelievably similar to what he had been through when he injected himself with Nicolai’s blood. Desmond quickly understood that Lilith was trying to transfer or show him memories through blood, a trick that a powerful Bloodmancer like her could pull off.

Finding no reason to shield his mind against Lilith, Desmond put up no resistance, allowing a small but steady stream of memories to wash over him, showing him the story of the empress of absolute blood, the progenitor of the Darkblood clan, Lilith.

Predictably, Lilith’s origin was blood-related, but not in the way Desmond had imagined. Lilith was born in a world ravaged by war, brutality, and slaughter from rivers of blood spilled daily. From that darkness and that misery, the future empress emerged.

However, this was not in a metaphorical or poetic sense; Lilith had genuinely been born from nothing more than all the bloodshed on one of the largest and bloodiest battlefields of that time. For obvious reasons, Lilith did not remember anything before her birth, nothing besides the color red, so Lilith’s first memory was finding herself naked in the middle of a field of corpses devoid of blood.

Desmond couldn’t help but link Lilith’s memories to what little he knew about how Celestials or Nature were born, believing that Lilith might be a similar existence, either the embodiment of the natural order or the manifestation of someone fallen to tragedy.

“Good reasoning, but you got the wrong species.” Lilith’s voice answered as Desmond continued to see her memories.

Shortly after birth, Lilith was forced to fight and kill for the first time, quickly finding her strengths and tremendous affinity with and blood bond. This was the first time Lilith drank blood, something she soon became addicted to.

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During her first years, Lilith participated in the endless carnage of her world, growing stronger with each life she took, feeding on the blood of her opponents. Still, she quickly got fed up with the senseless violence and the lack of tranquility.

Despite being the greatest predator her world had ever known, an Arcana user, master of blood magic, and a natural killing machine, Lilith seemed to not enjoy violence as much as one might expect. On the contrary, Lilith craved peace and tranquility more than anything in the world, for her blood was a delicious delicacy and the source of her strength. Still, she did not want blood to become the only thing in her life.

As she became more powerful, Lilith gained more enemies, quickly becoming overwhelmed by waves of monsters and maniacs ready to die with a smile on their faces as they attacked her non-stop. Despite her immense power, Lilith began to tire; she still needed time to reach the peak of her powers. However, she needed more time and allies.

Eventually, Lilith sought solutions within her reach in blood magic, and in the vast and mysterious path of the Arcana, she found an answer to her situation; the creation of life through blood. Having delved into exploring the arcane law of blood for years and possessing an extraordinary affinity for it, Lilith took a little while to see results, and thus the Darkblood clan was born.

Only then did Desmond understand what Lilith meant when she said they were her descendants but not her children. After all, the Darkblood clan came from Lilith’s blood, but they were only born from her experiments and the alterations she made to her own blood.

In fact, the name Darkblood was given by Lilith as an allegory to the fact that this new species created by her was an inferior version or at least derived but not equal to her own species, which she called Absolute Blood.1

According to memories, Lilith had to change her blood to create a life because no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t make another life form identical to her.

From Lilith’s investigations and her understanding of blood magic, her conclusion is that she was some kind of anomaly or non-replicable natural phenomenon governed by laws not compatible with the law of blood magic. Roughly speaking, Lilith was like lightning that fell from the sky; no matter how many thousands more fell or she herself released, none would be exactly the same as the original lightning. Although in Lilith’s case, it was as if the world refused to give birth to another life form like her.

As such, Lilith created the first members of the Darkblood clan and became their leader and progenitor. With the help of her new artificially created family, Lilith began to gain the upper hand on her enemies, slowly forcing them back into the face of her small army of blood-drinking monsters.

Ironically, to achieve the peace she was seeking, Lilith was forced to shed blood like never before in the history of her world. Millions died at the hands of Lilith and the Darkblood clan before the war finally stopped. Nevertheless, it stopped not because of the number of deaths but because, by then, Lilith had already become a nearly invincible entity that infused fear in the hearts of his enemies.

After forming a treaty with the other four ruling species of this world, the five noble families were created. The hierarchical system that dominated the world for thousands of years was established. For millennia, there was peace and prosperity, and the country founded by Lilith explored the world and expanded to cover most of it with her banner.

Those were good times; although the world was not perfect, mainly due to the violent tendencies of the species that inhabited it, it lived with relative tranquility and dignity. Under the rule of Lilith, the Empress of Absolute Blood, the world found its balance and peace. Still, everything changed when Lilith came face to face with an extremely bizarre and evil creature.

Although the general shape was humanoid, the creature seemed to be made up almost entirely of mouths filled with sharp teeth unique to large portions of gray muscle. On what Lilith assumed was the creature’s face, there was a particularly elongated mouth with an ever-smiling expression that seemed to mock everything that existed in this world, as well as a pair of putrid green eyes.

In addition to its grotesque appearance, the detail that Lilith remembered most about the creature was the strange essence it emanated, which was part of its presence or even an aspect of its existence. It was like looking at something you knew shouldn’t exist, like seeing a piece of madness walk in a body of flesh and teeth, some kind of anomaly whose mere presence desecrated the land it stood on.

Lilith took the initiative to attack the creature based on her instincts alone. She was lucky to do so as it prevented it from ripping her head off with a sneak attack. What followed was a fierce fight against the strange creature that seemed to defy Lilith’s common sense.

As an arcanist, Lilith was close to the laws, understanding their role in shaping the universe. It was precisely that understanding that filled her with horror when she realized this hideous creature seemed bound by laws such as madness, decay, and other obscure laws.

Finally, after hours of fighting, Lilith managed to prevail, defeating the creature and forcing it to leave. Lilith knew she couldn’t kill the creature with her current strength, but that didn’t ease her regret at letting it go, especially when that creature swore to return and get revenge. However, Lilith’s mind quickly left that threat behind and focused on something else that she had said to that creature in the middle of her fight.

Seeing the memory of that moment and hearing the words spoken by that creature, Desmond turned pale, not wanting to believe what he had heard, muttering that same word unconsciously. “Oscuras.”

That’s right, that creature was a member of the Oscuras species, chaotic creatures filled with a desire for destruction, torture, and all kinds of deranged things. They were basically the embodiment of chaos and evil in the universe.

But that wasn’t what made Desmond blanch. “You are one of us, but you are different, an anomaly, an exception to the rule that must be corrected.” Those were the exact words of the creature and the reason Desmond was alarmed.

Lilith was an Oscuras, the embodiment of malevolence and madness, or so she was supposed to be. Yet, she clearly preferred peace and quiet, only resorting to violence when necessary. An Oscuras who isn’t crazy and doesn’t want to be an infinite source of evil? Maybe that’s what that thing meant when he called Lilith an anomaly; she was strange even to her species.

“After that day, I did what I could to find out more about the Oscuras, you can imagine my reaction when I found out what they were, but I was still so different from them. A little girl born of blood and death and the madness of endless war, an Oscuras, that was me, and it made sense. My innate abilities and talent with the law of blood made me a perfect killing machine, a source of death and evil. I can only assume that something went wrong somewhere, and the only thing I wasn’t given was the evil heart of that species.” Lilith explained calmly as if she didn’t notice Desmond’s fear.

Without waiting for Desmond to reply, Lilith added. “In any case, it was there that I met this creature that began my eventual downfall.”