The situation in the Sacred Desert wasn't the only one that changed.
Eren sat cross-legged in the middle of space somewhere in the Lunar Stellar System, thinking about the recent events with the Supreme Human Alliance, his encounter with Michael, and the fact that Michael had not only control over two Curses but that both Curses had already awakened even before he ascended to a Higher Lifeform.
'I wonder if throwing him into the Sacred Desert was too much. Evee mentioned that the Curses in the Origin Expanse have gotten stronger in the last few years. The Will must be overwhelmed dealing with the imbalance of the Origin.'
He shook his head and sighed deeply. His eyes shut tightly, and he drifted in pace, pondering the future steps. It had been a rushed decision to leave the Nest, but Eren was confident it had been the best choice. Something terrible would have happened if he'd deployed someone else to check on Evalynn and the Hellbound Cataclysm. Bloodhound might be considered a relatively weak Divine Lifeform, but he was one of the few Hyumans with the oldest bloodline.
The majority of his power didn't originate from his War Rune or Soultrait. It stemmed from his blood. He was the child of one of the oldest human races. Even among Hyumans, Bloodhound was one of the purest.
Many Hyumans ended up breeding with other human races. That wasn't frowned upon and was very common, unlike interracial breeding, which was punished with execution in the Supreme Human Alliance. Nonetheless, the offspring of Hyumans would grow weaker after breeding with a younger human race. The difference was not apparent, but it was existent. The changes would be more obvious thousands of generations later, especially upon using the Primordial Bloodline technique.
Using the Primordial Bloodline technique was still possible, showcasing that they were purely Hyumans or mixed with Humans. Still, only pureblooded Hyumans like Bloodhound could unleash Primordial Bloodline's true power.
Fortunately, Bloodhound was scared of Eren. He didn't want to die just yet, otherwise, the Lunar Stellar System might have ceased to exist. That wasn't within Eren's plans since destroying an entire stellar system connected to origin energy would affect the events within the Origin Expanse. The influence of a single stellar system wasn't tremendous, but it would affect the Origin Expanse.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64ce79d606107d003c23ea27", id: "pf-5140-1"})When his bracelet lit up, a myriad of thoughts flashed through Eren's mind. A tiny spark lit up from the bracelet, shrouding Eren in a gray membrane that transformed quickly into a bubble.
Eren lifted an eyebrow and accepted the call. Countless mots of light burst out of the bracelet, forming the outlines of a familiar woman who appeared before him. The woman had a small face and a feisty wolf-cut that highlighted her silver hair beautifully. Her emerald eyes stared intently at Eren, still drifting in space.
"I will never understand why you're out there in space doing…whatever you're doing. I don't really get it," The woman said, straightening her white blazer. She wore her uniform pridefully. The crisp blazer had been tailored to perfection. It fit her better than any clothes she owned and was also more comfortable. But the comfort might as well come from the blouse that added a formality to her set of clothes.
Lastly, her skirt completed her uniform, granting the final touch to the perfect ensemble.
To highlight her uniform, the woman wore striped ties, meticulously knotted, lending her appearance a sophisticated dash.
"And I will never understand why you're still wearing this shitty uniform. It has been centuries – no. Millennials since we fini–..."
"Shut up!" The woman commanded, pointing at Eren, who shook his head in denial.
It was a matter of fact that her clothes clung perfectly to her figure, highlighting her well-trained body and extraordinary figure, but wearing the same set of clothes—multiple sets of clothes—over and over for more than a thousand years was overkill.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64cc9e79c7059f003e4ad4b0", id: "pf-5109-1"})The uniform didn't look that good.
"Evee, I just thought about you," Eren greeted her with a flat smile, trying to change the topic before Evee sent a barrage of missiles his way. They wouldn't kill him, but Evee could sometimes be…hard to predict.
"Keep that nonsense to yourself," Evee snorted, "This is important."
Eren raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything. He turned more severe and stopped floating mindlessly in space. His expression changed at once as he gestured Evee to proceed.
"You know no one was stationed near the Sacred Desert, right? The long-distance radars were faulty. They picked up multiple sources of curse power in the Sacred Desert…but it was only one. I researched the Sacred Desert and surrounding regions and found some interesting facts about our Curse." Evee stopped there. She stared at Eren, who frowned deeply.
"Continue," He said, his expression showing clearly that he was not in the mood for jokes right now.
'Something was wrong. Why did I tell him to kill the Curse?'
"You are no fun at all!" Evee pouted, only to be glared at, "Okay. Okay. Our Curse is probably the strongest Pharaoh of the Second Epoch. He ruled the Sacred Desert and some surrounding regions for a few hundred years. It has been a while, but we have some pretty nasty information about the Undead Pharaoh. He experimented with Corruption and Curses when he was alive."
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "663633fa8ebf7442f0652b33", id: "pf-8817-1"})Eren frowned deeply.
"But that is not even the worst. From what the long-distance radars, the Ancient Curse Spheres, detected, we can be certain that the Undead Pharaoh has enough curse power to rival Nest's Commanders easily, or he managed to procure a Cursed Artifact, one of the stronger ones. If it's the latter, the Undead Pharaoh is probably at the 5th Tier and way too strong for a Cursed Child to deal with. No matter how powerful this Michael Fang is…you send him on a suicide mission."
Eren paled visibly. He clenched his fists and didn't notice that his fingers had transformed into silver claws. The claws dug deep into his palms even as he began to bleed in streams.
"Funnily enough," Evee's expression lit up, "Your little Michael Fang is a diamond in the rough. No. I don't know if we should call him that. Monster probably fits a little bit better."
"What do you mean?" Eren inquired, his expression still sour and filled with guilt.
"Your little guy from that backwater galaxy managed to kill the Undead Pharaoh! His Curses are either on a higher rank than you've reported, or they're even firmer fused with his Soul than they should be. If it's the latter, you'll have to deal with the issue before it's untreatable. The Ancient Curse Spheres detected the presence of two mighty Curses right before the Undead Pharaoh died. There was something odd about one of the Curses. Its presence was too 'active' to be a Curse, but we can check that later when this Monster comes to the Nest.
Eren's expression lit up.
Michael was alive. That was good.
A moment later, his expression turned eerily dim again. "You could have told me that he killed the Undead Pharaoh right away. Why did you–... No, don't tell me. You fooled me."
Evee smiled from one ear to the other.
"Yes, I did~. Either way, bring that kid to the Nest. If he can kill a crippled Divine Lifeform, who has either more power than Commanders or wields powerful Cursed Artifacts, he can do a lot more after undergoing some proper training. He will blossom and become a true powerhouse once he leaves the backwater galaxy!"
"He will be worse than his sister," Eren smiled, still relieved.
"Hesta? I hope Michael beats the shit out of his sister in no time. She deserves some beating!"
Eren chuckled but shook his head.
"I doubt he'll be able to beat Hesta Fang anytime soon. Is that everything you want to tell me, or is there more?"
Evee lifted an eyebrow and stared at Eren through the projection.
"You want to hear more? Isn't it enough to hear that this freaky little kid, a Lesser Lifeform, was strong enough to kill a Divine Lifeform, crippled or not?"
"If you say it like this, it sounds like I'm greedy," Eren murmured. He gave it a shrug, "So there is no news about Bloodhound and the Supreme Human Alliance? They haven't been making a move in the Origin Expanse or the Cosmos?"
"You don't want to know additional about your future disciple? Well, that's fine. You should do your research. It's quite annoying for me to use my Soultrait alongside the Seer Curse. This kid drains more curse power to get a glimpse of him than most brats I've investigated. But that's not the point. You wanted to know what's going on with Bloodhound, right?"
Eren rolled his eyes. Evee was an extreme case of a chatterbox. Unfortunately, she didn't know when to keep it short. It was almost like that was impossible for her.
"There is no news about Bloodhound. Since I cannot even see him with my Soultrait, he is probably still in a coma. It will probably take a while before he wakes up. Maybe he won't wake up before the portal is done. You can return with Michael and Evalynn before Bloodhound and the Supreme Human Alliance stir any more trouble."
"That will be hard. Since Bloodhound managed to get to this place, additional people will come, even if it's merely to hunt down the Berserkers and Warlock Centaurs. Michael understands that as well. He might be foolish enough to stay back."
Evee shrugged, "I know how convincing you can be. Just convince him to come with you to the Nest. He can rip Soultraits out of Awakened and form them into stable orbs. We can fight for him if he provides the Nest with enough Soultraits."
Eren sighed, "I should talk to the other Commanders soon or the Leader. Maybe the Leader knows what to do with Michael and the Tritan Alliance. I'm tired of leaving other races behind. I don't want to witness the Supreme Human Alliance extinction of additional races. I'm getting sick and tired of them!"
A deep growl escaped his lips alongside a thunderous roar. Evee smiled sadly at Eren for a moment before slapping her cheeks.
"Let's not think about this for now. The Supreme Human Alliance has been less active recently. We discovered another human race, Fera did, to be precise. She managed to protect some lesser races from Searon and managed to kill him!" Evee exclaimed trying to lift Eren's mood.
Her attempt worked out fairly decent. Eren smiled at Evee's projection.
"The deals with the Thorn family are doing fine as well, and we found a few additional races with territories in unique regions in the Origin Expanse. We managed to strike great deals with them. However, we had to give them some Origin Sap in exchange. The Leader was not too happy about that, but it's fine. We gained a lot more than we had to pay."
"That leads us to the bigger issues," Evee sighed deeply. We need additional powerhouses. Our forces are exceptional. We are one of the strongest forces in the southern parts of the cosmos, but we are simply too few. We need to expand our forces. Shouldn't we accept more people instead of relying on Curse Users only?"
"Didn't we talk about that already, Evee? You know as well as I do that Curse Users are pursued by misfortune wherever they go. Only other Curse Users are unaffected by the influence of other Curses."
"You might have forgotten about it since it has been so long since anyone close to you has been affected by the influence of Curses, but it's pretty obvious over here. Bloodhound came and killed the leader of the Warlock Centaurs because of a Curse User. Of course, that could have been a coincidence, but the Undead Pharaoh is not a coincidence. He wouldn't have been resurrected if Evalynn had never hidden her children from the Nest."
Eren shrugged slowly, "There are probably far additional instances in which misfortune struck Micahel and his brother, but they survived almost all of them. Michael wouldn't be strong enough to defeat the Undead Pharaoh if misfortune hadn't pursued him so desperately."
Michael had grown powerful quickly, but he also escaped death multiple times. That was the fate of all Curse Users and those unfortunate enough to be around them.
"I hope Michael accepts his fate. He should come with you as soon as the anchors are installed. Otherwise, the people he loves will suffer." Evee mumbled, faintly recalling occurrences of the past she'd long forgotten.
Eren sighed deeply as well.
Michael might be strong enough to handle all kinds of misfortunes, but his beloved wasn't.
