The Burning Fiend

"... the young master of the Yura Clan hired us to capture the elf woman who travels with you. Besides the paid, we were told that we could keep the other women as compensation". The God was speaking without hesitation assuring Reynolds of the veracity of his words.

He frowned and remained thinking for a moment noticing that Catherine was trembling slightly, he shook his head and released a sight. "Catherine, give your mask to Rosarie. Wife would you please engrave, on that mask, a stealth array that limits its reach to block her bloodline from leaking?" Rosarie smiled and walked towards Catherine waiting for her response, but after hesitating a moment she took off her mask and gave it to Rosarie.

Reynolds spoke to her again. "After you get your new mask, you will change the appearance of your body... I think that your way of hiding is too obvious". He was not asking, it was an order, and she understood it as well. He felt that she was putting his family in danger and all of that could have been avoided if she has just told them what is so special about the elf family.

His attention returned to the prisoner and asked. "Tell me about the Yura Clan. Who is their most powerful combatant? Where is the main location of the clan?" His voice was business-like, but that seemed to work better for the trembling God who stopped begging for death to answer the question.

"The Y-Yura Clan is one of the main families on the Jade Float Mountains, and they rule over one of the most important c-castles. The P-Patriarch is rumored to be a 7-star Fiend, but his identity is kept as a mystery". Reynolds frowned again as the information did not seem quite useful, but he was not really worried about a clan under a 7-star Fiend.

He directed a look at the begging God who instantly turned into ashes leaving a divine spark and an interspatial ring on the ground as the only evidence that he had once existed. Reynolds bound the ring with his blood to check that the God would not have another avatar that might have reported their location already.

He was thinking if killing his way towards the Yura Clan Castle and killing everyone would be a good way to establish his prestige and avoid similar situations on the future, but he did not know if the 7-star Fiend had the support of another powerful entity. Perhaps adding an array to their metallic life form to ensure its invisibility to sight and divine sense would be a better approach. They could leave this place without getting into conflict and continue their travel with leisure.

He will have to ask Rosarie about this idea, as he was sure that it might take him a few decades just to select and arrange the runes needed to create the array. He sighed a little annoyed, but he found himself motivated by the idea of working on such array and wondered why this kind of array was not used on metallic life forms.

Still, he decided that the first thing to do was to kill these hunters as they will soon find out that one of them was missing. If he kills them the Yura Clan might think that they had escaped and would avoid, at least for a time, a complete swept of the forest to look for them. He looked up and found that many of the hunters were already together discussing what to do, he smirked and floated in their direction.

Terak was frowning as his instincts were yelling at him to leave this cursed place, but the leader had refused to listen to him, suddenly he startled as he noticed that all the Gods were turning into ashes and that the Highgods were holding their heads with their hands while screaming in pain and one by one they turned into ashes as well. Then to his horror he felt that his soul defense artifact was crumbling, and he mustered his greatest speed to escape while looking with horror at a God with purple hair wearing a black long coat that was looking at him curiously.

Terak was cursing his look, this demon looked like the Burning Fiend and now that he was thinking about it, the man on the recording that could only be seen in the distance was wearing a black long coat as well.

Reynolds hesitated for a moment, but then he smiled thinking that it would be better to let one of them escape and be sure that they know who they were dealing, that way he could better understand the situation. The God had said that the recording orb only showed his image at the distance as if making sure that his face was not visible, the images recorded focused mainly on the women. 'Perhaps someone tried to use me to destroy the Yura Clan?' He frowned at this thought and returned to the camp after collecting all the divine sparks and interspatial rings.

On the distance, a group of Highgods frowned as they watched the events unfolding. "He let him go... I think that things just got complicated, and we need to report back... perhaps we need to abort this mission". The blue haired man said while the others frowned waiting for his explanation, he looked at them and understood their unwillingness.

"It took a while for him to attack after one of the Gods entered his camp, I'm guessing that he tortured the God and obtained information about the Yura Clan and perhaps he also noticed that the recording orb they were using to identify their victims avoided showing his appearance. He might be already suspecting a third party trying to use him".

The rest of his group frowned and a few sweat drops were forming in their foreheads, that idea was terrifying. "I will report to the Lord Prefect immediately". They nodded and waited.

Reynolds returned to the camp and noted that Rosarie was working on engraving an array into a medallion instead of using the mask, he nodded in appreciation. It will be a better disguise to change Catherine features with divine power instead of using a mask. After all, the medallion will block her bloodline from being recognized and a mask would indicate that she was hiding something.

He took a seat next to the river and started concentrating on the array he and Rosarie would engrave on their metallic life form, he sighed realizing that they might end up living here for a few decades instead of a few months and felt a little guilty thinking on the happy face Talia sported every time the idea of exploring the continent was mentioned.

---

A beautiful blue haired girl walked in good mood thinking about how annoyed her cousin had looked within her isolation chamber, she even chuckled before returning to her expressionless face. She entered her grandfather studio and looked puzzled at a saint that waited patiently on her grandfather, then she looked at the Lord Prefect and found, to her great amus.e.m.e.nt, that he was frowning and smiling at the same time and could help but chuckle startling him out of his meditation.

"Oh, why would my favorite granddaughter would come to visit me? You already managed to throw your cousin into an isolation chamber for the next thousand years, aren't you becoming greedy?" His comment made her blush and frown for a moment thinking how to answer to that.

"I was just curious on how you were dealing with that new 7-star Fiend". She mumbled in embarrassment making the Lord Prefect laugh satisfied. "Well, Donaro was explaining to me that this kid turned out to be more resourceful than we expected and might have already figured out that a third party is trying to guide his movements. We suspect that our current plans will not work out as we had expected". He seemed to be talking to himself but the young woman seemed to be highly interested on the situation and asked for details from Donaro while her grand father started pacing the room while thinking.

---

On a luxurious hall, a muscular man with dark red long hair was frowning while waiting for his disappointing son to enter the hall. He had ignored him for nearly 400 years and this was the first time they met, he was not happy to see him.

The young man entered the hall, bowed respectfully to him while and greeted him. "Lord Patriach". The muscular man seemed satisfied at not being addressed as 'father' and his anger quelled a little. "Speak". His tone did not permit disobedience and the young man knew well about this.

"Lord Patriarch, I think I have caused trouble for the clan. I received a recording orb with images of a group of Gods on which a female elf was traveling on the outer areas of the forest below. After knowing that there were no Highgods with them, I sent a group of hunters to capture the elf".

The muscular man was interested on the elf woman and was waiting to know what the problem was, the young man did not make him wait. "It turns out that I was tricked, there were no Highgods among them... but the only male on the group turned out to be the Burning Fiend. He killed the hunters only allowing one to escape, he might already know of the Clan as it seems to have captured one God for interrogation before attacking".

The muscular man was angry and still hasn't given up on capturing the female elf. But there was more important things to understand first. "Who gave you the recording orb?" His voice was cold as he understood that somebody had used his useless son to create a conflict with a powerful adversary, one that he was not sure he could best.