Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

The three black-scaled wyrms looked like vicious, snake-like beasts. Their bodies were covered in horns and their menace seemed to pervade the air with a poison-like Domain. However, rather than attacking one's body, it felt like it attacked one's mind instead. Fear, trepidation, disgust... It made you feel all sorts of emotions that ebbed away at your Focus Qi and made you feel inferior before their might.

However, if on one side it seemed to be a bundle of darkness, on the other, there was a sparkling, transcendent-like aura, one that filled the skies with sparkling shards of diamond and palms that could blot out the sun.

Elena weaved in and out of their trio of attacks, her dress fluttering along with her hair. Oddly enough, the wyrms couldn't seem to touch even the hem of her clothing, but every time she tried to output enough strength to deal a deal blow to them, more blood would leak from the corner of her lips, causing her to clench her jaw as though to stop herself from crying out in pain.

A tail whip came from her side and her gaze flashed with determination. With a step forward, she struck out a palm to her side, a large, pink and illusory palm forming and grabbing it.

BANG!

Elena's winced, her entire body feeling like it was falling apart. The weight and strength of these wyrms were even more sinister than their domain. She had been avoiding meeting them head on all this time, but she realized that if she didn't, she would never get the chance to win. They'd just slowly whittle her away until she had absolutely nothing left to give.

A coughing rain of blood came from her lips, but she didn't let it stop her next movements.

A pair of wings appeared on her black, glittering like delicately sculpted pink diamonds. The domain of the wyrms seemed to be suppressed in that moment, just in time for the follow up attacks of the two remaining wyrms.

If there was any advantage that she had, it was the fact that her body was much smaller.

The beasts of the Ninth Heaven had their sizes suppressed even more so than the others. However, these True God Beasts were still over 15 meters long and had heads that dwarfed her in size. Thanks to this, it was incredibly difficult for them to attack her at the same time without also attacking one another.

While she was dodging, they had the advantage. But now that she had grabbed one of them, the other two couldn't attack as they pleased. Instead, they opened their maws, sending out a jet of black liquid that seemed to corrode the air.

Elena flapped her wings once and clenched her fist and took a step. Her torso flexed and rippled with strength as she pulled the wyrm up and back, swinging out a powerful booming strength with the other.

Somehow, she seemed to be able to transfer the effort and weight of the wyrm from one of her hands and explode with a great amount of strength with the other.

Runes on her delicately sculpted wings flashed as her fist imprint crushed the jet of black liquids, popping and sizzling in the air before turning them into a rain of ash and continuing to one of the wyrms.

BANG!

Though it tried to dodge, a quarter of its head was blasted to smithereens. Blood and bone fell in shards that played on the heart, dyeing the forest floor in carnage.

Elena wanted to celebrate her victory but her body shuddered, a violent fit of coughs shaking her to her core. This time, it wasn't just blood that came up, but her inner organs as well, falling in small fleshy pieces.

Her grip on the wyrm she had commandeered loosened enough to allow it to escape and lash out with a tail. At the same time, the second wyrm seemed to have realized the chance as well, slithering by its companion and surging forward.

In the far off distance, in the group of three that Ryu had noted earlier, one of them was dressed very differently from the others.

The Dregs of the Martial Gods all wore simple tan robes. It was a well-designed robe, one that had its own beauty carved out from its simplicity. One wouldn't look at them and assume that they were beggars.

However, it was just a fact that they were simple.

The third of them, however, wore extraordinarily elaborate robes. One of their shoulders were adorned by feathers from what must have been from an extraordinary beast considering the aura it was giving off, forming a pauldron of energy. The other shoulder, and the entire side of that shoulder for that matter, seemed to be weaved from strong, black scales. As for the feather shoulder's side, it was in perfect contrast to the feathers themselves.

The feathers were a delicate white with veins of red, and its half of the robes was a blazing red with embroidery of white.

Like this, the robe formed a dichotomy of red, white and black, and despite the imbalance, it seemed to work together well.

When the young woman wearing this robe saw one of the wyrms die, her eyes flashed with rage. Her seething anger seemed to scare the two Dregs by her side and they felt their hearts shudder.

"Die, you bitch!" She ground out through her teeth. It seemed that the only thing that could satisfy her would be if Elena died under this assault, but even then it felt like she would never recoup her losses...

However, just when it seemed that Elena would die, the illusory palm the first wyrm had broken free from seemed to solidify and she reaffirmed her grip before the beast's tail whip could gather up momentum.

At the same time, the last surviving wyrm maw bore down on her, trying to eat her whole.

Unfortunately for it... the tail of its companion suddenly appeared in its way.

And in that same instant, a young man wearing robes of white and sky blue appeared before the feather and scale robed woman, his gaze seething.