Guild Wars

Draco raised an eyebrow, but neither Loving Aunt. Nightwalker, Eva nor Shuangtian seemed surprised, as if they already knew who he was… which should be obvious.

"In that case, it's nice to finally meet you, Uncle." Draco spoke for the first time since his arrival, his voice flat and devoid of any familial bond.

Dominic smirked as he sat down. "You might feel that way, but my dear sister-in-law beside you sure doesn't."

After being called out like this, Fyre could no longer restrain her boiling emotions as she stood forth and spoke loudly. "Where is Dante, you traitor?! And how dare you sit upon that seat after what you did?!"

"Impudent! You might have been an Elder once but that is no way to address your Clan Master! Show some respect!" The young man who stood behind Dominic roared with bloodshot eyes, as if he would tear Loving Aunt apart if given the chance.

"Scram, you half-breed trash!" Loving Aunt snorted as she glanced at him with endless disdain. That was enough to make all that false bravado leave the young man instantly.

"And you, answer my question!" Fyre demanded as she focused on Dominic once more.

The Clan Master simply made a gesture of helplessness. "Me? I got this position from Dante in the first place."

Loving Aunt was stunned. "What…? How…?"

"Fyre, your hatred for me is blinding you. You've just arrived and by the looks of it you must be thinking I schemed some miraculous coup and imprisoned Dante or something, right?" Dominic asked with a knowing smile.

"You've done something similar once before, why can't you do it again?" Loving Aunt didn't back down and retorted with vitriol.

Dominic frowned, but sighed. "It's been ages yet you still haven't let it go… You probably think you were in the right back then, but that's fine, you and your wretched sister have a loud reputation for being senseless, overly protective of your own and unreasonable."

Loving Aunt exploded with a black light as her aura roiled, causing the faces of many in the room to pale at the potency of her bloodline.

"How. Dare. You!!"

Dominic saw her anger and didn't seem to care about her reaction. Rather, he sized up her aura. "My, you only had 25% bloodline purity when you left but now you radiate as much power as my darling prodigal nephew when he was a baby."

Dominic's eyes fell on Draco. "The only explanation can be that you are the cause of this. Tell me, have you discovered some way to increase the bloodline purity of Lineage members at will?"

Hearing this assumption, the entire hall which had been silently watching and listening to the drama exploded. Nothing was more important to Lineage members than their bloodline purity.

It did not only decide their power, social standing and ability, but also their literal lifespan!

Loving Aunt with 25% had lived since 1926. Lilith, Draco's mother, was born just 4 years later in 1930. Dante was born on 1925, a year before Fyre while Dominic was born 1927.

Due to Fyre's high purity, she still looked to be in her 20s, after molting, despite having lived for 139 years already. Originally this would have left her with slightly over 200 more years of lifespan.

However, her purity was abnormally high for her generation, which was why she had become the teacher for the entire God Serpent Lineage before she left. However, these other older generation fellows mostly had between 5-12%.

Most of those from Fyre's generation with lesser purities had already passed on as living above a hundred years was pushing it. If Draco could raise purities as he willed, he would be no different from the progenitor!

Dominic's eyes narrowed as he rose to his feet. His entire aura changed from lazy and resigned to serious and majestic, and Draco had the feeling that he could see the mirage of a younger man with a wide grin who loved to cause trouble everywhere.

Fyre's hateful expression softened when she saw Dominic's change and her eyes seemed to glaze over as she recalled scenes from the past, the beautiful past where everything was perfect and the future was bright.

"You asked what happened to Dante? He heard about Draco's deeds, then learned that he apprared to be in a relationship with young Eva and had restored his bloodline somehow."

"Soon after news spread that the Pangu Lineage had been destroyed with not a man, woman or child left, Dante felt a weight off his chest and decided to retire to the back house to watch over Lilith until they both died."

Dominic explained everything seriously without a hint of playfulness. "Neither him nor me ever cared much for this seat as it has little value in today's age, yet when he called for me to take his place, I accepted. Although it was never my wish to take on this role instead of him, the clan cannot be without a leader in this era, especially with our biggest enemies dealt with."

Fyre, Henry (Nightwalker) and Eva were shocked, their expressions changing greatly. Draco listened quietly without interjecting his opinion and Dominic focused on him while the others were still processing what they just heard.

"Nephew Draco, my brother made his choice because… no let's not sugarcoat it, it's because he is a fool. Due to his grief at being unable to prevent your exile back then he felt that he had lost any right to be your father. He thought that after how we've treated you, you would never want to return to this clan which was why even after knowing you were okay, they never reached out to you but rather went to hide."

Dominic shook his head helplessly. "Still, I can't fully blame him. If I was your father I also would not think I had any right to see you who managed to use your own strength and effort to rise to the top."

"But I am not Dante. I knew from the moment I heard your deeds that itvwaa just a question of time that you would come, not because you want to, but because those around you would push you to. That is the main reason I accepted this post from Dante and did not do anything rash till now."

Dominic's eyes blazed at his pupils seemed to become red. "Now that I've seen you, I believe that you should be no weaker than Lucifer, our progenitor. In fact, you might be faintly stronger, because our family history never mentioned Lucifer being able to raise bloodline purities after birth, only during gestation."

Draco was startled by this, as he did not know that Lucifer had limitations. Eva and Shuangtian were also surprised because nothing was said about this and since they were in possession of the ability after reaching 100%, they assumed that their original selves had it as well.

"Now that you're back, I can't imagine you are here to play house. What you want is likely an account of what happened back then from the second person point of view, from the very mouth of Dante himself." Dominic continued confidently.

Draco nodded softly, and the man smiled slightly. He took out a strange golden apple from a compartment within the throne and tossed it to Draco, who caught it easily.

"You might not be used to it, but we have various special items like this which we use to achieve various purposes. This is a golden apple, a resource we produce in our back garden that was created and watered by Lucifer using Eden's power. It has the ability to store a copy of memories from a group of people and synthesize them."

Dominic explained with a wave of his hand, and John who was silently all this while had his eyes light up as Eden manifested above his head with a look of excitement.

"Descendant, is my tree still alive?!" Eden asked Dominic impatiently.

Its appearance shocked every member of the Lineage, especially those of the God Serpent Inheritance as they felt like their blood was about to leave their bodies. Not only that, but they recognized Eden based on the various tapestries and paintings in the clan's archive of the ancient era.

Dominic glanced at Eden with a hint of surprise, but not much. "So Dante was right…"

"He told me about the likelihood of the 9 most powerful God Serpents being reincarnated into some of our descendants who were supposed to assist the prodigy, but apart from young Henry back then, there was no other."

Dominic nodded to Eden who was becoming impatient. "Great Eden, fear not, your tree is still there. All the special fixtures related to the various avatars are still in the clan, though some are still in the Vatican City where we originally used to live."

Eden seemed satisfied by this and dissipated, returning to John's soul space in order not to interrupt the proceedings again since this was Draco's show.

"As I was saying, the apple in your hand contains the answers you seek, but in a more direct way. I synthesized the facts using the memories of myself, Lilith, Dante and a few others who were part of the key events during that time."

Dominic nodded to Fyre, who was silently simmering as she contemplated the facts. "I would have loved to have gotten some of Fyre's memories to patch the holes but she stormed out a few days after you were cast out. You'll have to make do without it."

"If you want to experience the memories, simply do what the myths said and take a bite. The truth will be yours and you can make your next decision from there." Dominic concluded as he sat down and his aura returned to the decadent and lifeless version from before.

Draco inspected the apple for a few seconds before smirking. He glanced at Eva and Shuangtian who nodded with serious expressions and then took a bite, chewing on the surprisingly tasty and crunchy apple.

Immediately, his mind was washed away by a comfortable tide of softness. He seemed to enter a daze where he could see things from a pseudo-third person perspective, like a movie but with 3D effects in a way.

Of course, this could only happen because he allowed it to and wanted to experience it fully, so he restrained his own great mental prowess from Control, his bloodline and all other means.

The first scene he saw did not begin at his birth like he expect, but rather went farther back, to a period when technology was still in its early stages and the world was in turmoil due to constant wars.

It was the 1940s, and Dante, Lilith, Fyre and Dominic were all around 10-14 years old. As a bunch of teens now experiencing puberty, they began to grow and experience their first bloodline awakening.

Unlike the clumsy awakening that the core members of the Lucifer Lineage experienced, the Lineages had a proper way to activate the bloodline in youths after the age of 10. This method was not only safe, but it also allowed them to further awaken their bloodline if fortune favored them.

Dante had awakened with a purity of 28% and a single Inheritance of Horned Demon, specifically the Hellfire Demon which controlled the purest Hellfire and had strong offensive power. Dominic had awakened with a purity of 23% and also a single Inheritance of Horned Demon, specifically the Sinful Demon which was based on the Seven Deadly Sins and most had crowd control-related abilities.

Fyre had awakened with a purity of 25% and a single Inheritance of God Serpent, specifically the Blue Water Adder major and the Dark Swamp Serpent minor, of which the major was an offshoot of Leviathan and controlled water while the minor was an offshoot of Nidhogg and had powerful poison abilities.

Lilith had awakened with 21% purity and a single Inheritance of the Dark Angel, specifically the Fallen Angel which had some combat ability, but was mostly a higher rank of a succubus.

Each of them were outstanding among their various cousins so they stood out in their generation so much that the others weren't even named. How sad.

As they grew, they displayed their great talent and were regarded as the future leaders of the clan. Fyre, Lilith and Dominic were groomed to be the next leaders of each Inheritance branch and become the instructor, while Dante was outright groomed to become the next clan leader.

As they were of the same age, of the same grade and of the same status, they naturally spent a large majority of their youth together, so they were closer to each other than they were to anyone else of their clan.

This was fine, until the first issue popped up. Both the older sister, Fyre, and the younger sister Lilith, developed romantic feelings for Dante.