Lord of The Mysterious Realms Chapter 648

The blood moon dominated the sky, and the instant Jenkins spotted the small black dot at its heart, a cold sweat trickled down his forehead. He knew what that crimson orb sealed away. While it was highly unlikely the entity could escape its prison so easily, even a sliver of its power leaking out would unleash a cataclysm upon the material world.

Liverpool's body continued to ascend, a malevolent, blood-red light radiating from him in all directions. Everything the light touched melted, dissolving into a viscous, blood-like substance.

From within the viscous red pools, pale hands emerged. The liquid coalesced around them, shaping bodies for their owners. Beneath the blood moon, hundreds of vampires manifested in the material world.

These terrifying creatures hadn't been summoned from some distant realm. Jenkins realized it was more akin to shaping new bodies for existing souls, because he recognized the three vampires he had just killed among the horde of monsters now embracing the blood moon.

Even if he had wanted to handle this quietly, the strange phenomenon was now impossible to contain. Liverpool hung in the sky, his eyes shut tight. Behind him, the blood moon swelled, growing so large it seemed poised to crash into the earth.

In truth, it was merely an illusion, a trick of perception caused by the overwhelming power radiating from the blood moon.

The crash of the collapsing building had already drawn the attention of people nearby, and the sight of the blood moon with a man floating beneath it drew cries of shock and alarm. Fortunately, this wasn't a residential district. Most of the buildings were commercial, which meant there would likely be few casualties.

In Jenkins's perception, Liverpool's Enchanter level was skyrocketing, leaping from Level 2 to Level 7 in the span of a few breaths. It was a miraculous surge of power, and Jenkins couldn't fathom how it was happening.

Given their location and the Church's typical response time, enforcers would likely arrive within five minutes. Jenkins didn't have much time.

"Go back to Ruen," he urged. "If everything's alright, I'll find you in half an hour. If I don't show, stay put. I'm confident I can handle this."

Alexia wasn't the type to hesitate at a critical moment. She gave Jenkins a firm nod.

"Be careful," she said. "Forty minutes. No matter what, I'm coming back then."

Without giving him a chance to argue, she vanished into thin air.

Jenkins let out a deep sigh and scanned his surroundings. The newborn vampires all held the same pose, arms outstretched toward the blood moon as if in supplication. None of them paid him any attention. In his mortal form, stopping this ritual in under five minutes was impossible. Worse, if he let it continue, the vampires would almost certainly succeed in summoning the entity from within the moon. Therefore—

He closed his hand around the silver metal block. Bathed in the crimson moonlight, its surface shimmered with an otherworldly glow.

Whenever he had assumed his divine form in the past, he had always done so far from mortal eyes. This would be the first time the new god—the God of Lies—revealed himself to the ordinary people of the material world.

He spent a few seconds contemplating the potential consequences before pouring his spirit into the object. The silver shell began to glow, then dissolved into a thousand points of glittering light that scattered into the air.

A brilliant golden light flowed from his palm, suffusing his body. In that instant, his consciousness soared, ascending to a distant plane of existence.

A great dark cloud had drifted across Nolan's night sky, but before it could eclipse the moon, a pillar of pure white light shot down from the heavens, piercing it through.

With a sound like a celestial chime, the pillar of light split the heavens and enveloped Jenkins. His divine form's feet left the ground, slowly ascending into the night sky while his mortal body lay silent in the alley's shadows. A magnificent, resounding hymn swelled from all directions, its sacred melody finally drowning out the insidious whispers that had grown ever louder since the eclipse began.

Liverpool's figure had completely merged with the blood moon. In the short time it had taken Jenkins to act, he had already surpassed the realm of demigods, shedding his mortal shackles to reach a level of existence unimaginable to the people of this land.

A dangerous power seeped from some unknown dimension to fuse with Liverpool, transforming him into something truly terrifying. Whatever ritual the vampires had used, whatever the final result of this transformation might be, such a rapid ascent was unnatural.

Even the God of Lies couldn't fathom the price for such power, but one thing was certain: until that price came due, no mortal could hope to stand against him.

Jenkins felt a strange sense of familiarity. With each divine incarnation, he grew more adept at wielding his power. This time, he had mastered flight with a mere thought, and the rate at which his divinity burned had not accelerated.

It was an innate instinct for divine beings, one that his past selves had simply never realized.

He raised his head, gazing at the black dot within the moon, and at the cost of his divine power, peered into the past. ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ꜰʀᴏᴍ N0veI.Fiɾe.net

The vision was simple: a humanoid figure wreathed in blood-mist stood upon a desolate plain. It raised its hands and lifted an entire mountain into the sky. The mountain merged with the blood moon, and as its great task was completed, the being turned. Its eyes met those of the God of Lies from the 18th Epoch.

"This is the end of the Thirteenth Epoch. The protector of the vampires, the great sovereign known as the Blood-Clad Emperor, is using the power of the red moon to seal the Beast of Calamity, the Scarlet Ephemera!"

Jenkins received the information in that fleeting exchange of gazes, and the vision of the past shattered. The great being from the end of the Thirteenth Epoch had not spoken a word, yet Jenkins knew with certainty that it had seen him—a god from the future, looking back across the chasm of time.

In the skies of the 13th Epoch, Jenkins had seen two moons. He recalled what a Keeper of Secrets had once told him: before the 11th Epoch, there had only been a single red moon. This meant the blue moon must have appeared sometime during the 11th, 12th, or 13th Epochs. And given the events he just witnessed, it was unlikely to have been the 13th. Jenkins was closing in on the timeline of the blue moon's forbidden origin.

He believed the origin of the two moons held the key to understanding the world's deepest secrets. He had assumed the creation of the blood moon was tied to the sovereign of the vampires, but now he knew that even that mighty being had merely borrowed its power.

That made the current situation all the more bizarre. The sovereign of vampires had sealed the Scarlet Ephemera away, yet these modern vampires were now trying to draw upon its power.

"Have they betrayed their own sovereign?" he mused. "Are these just another group of greedy fools who fled to the material world?"