Chapter 77: Bloodborn

Elder Hua slowly bent down and closed her eyes, gently placing her hand on the dirt. She focused her mind and listened intently for any sign of movement. Red decal-like scales appeared all around the edges of her face as her body began emitting a faint red hue.

After a few seconds, her eyes snapped open and darted towards a closely-knit patch of tress in the distance.

“There.”

She grinned smugly and immediately dashed to the location where she had sensed underground movement.

This was not the power of her Angelica — the Nightstalker Angelica didn’t provide any tracking abilities. This was the power of the Bloodborn — a special race of humans who wielded supernatural powers much like Angelicas, but at the cost of their own blood rather than mana. If they used their powers too much, they would faint; if they push too far, they’ll outright die.

Only children born on a specific day pf a given year, when the moon shines a bloody red, had a chance of being a Bloodborn. This was known as The Crimson Night, and it happened once annually — but that’s not all. In order to give birth to a new Bloodborn, their parents must both be Bloodborn as well. And since the Crimson Night’s date was different every year, it was practically impossible to purposely try to give birth to a Bloodborn. Couples could only hope their child would become one.

Elder Hua was one such incredibly fortunate child. Not only was she a Bloodborn, she also had an Angelica. Every Bloodborn had their own intrinsic ability, and Elder Hua’s just happened to be tracking. She could see footprints where others could not, observe minuscule changes in the environment to detect moving entities, and also had a powerful sixth sense that could tell her when danger was near and which direction it came from — almost like a radar.

With this, she essentially had two Angelicas, Oculus and Nightstalker. But rather than having to learn Abilities one by one, these tracking skills were built into her body, and she could activate them whenever she wanted. Such was the power of the Bloodborn.

With ease, she found Reaper’s hiding spot. Kicking the dirt below her feet, she snorted.

“Oi. Get out from under there. I already found you.”

Reaper didn’t respond, thinking it was a trick.

Elder Hua sighed in annoyance.

“Ugh… I thought robots would be easier to deal with than humans…!”

She gritted her teeth and reached into the dirt, feeling Reaper’s dark hood around his mechanical head and pulling it up out of the ground before mercilessly tossing him to one side with a loud clunking sound of metal. The robot, undamaged, slowly cranked its head upright and floated up into the air, staring at Elder Hua with his single red sensor.

[Analysis: Reaper should not have been caught. Status: Perplexed. Requesting explanation.]

“You didn’t do that bad, compared to some of your allies,” Elder Hua chuckled in reply. “Maybe, if your opponent was someone different, you would’ve have gotten caught this quickly. Too bad.”

[…]

Reaper fell silent, contemplating her words as she walked away in pursuit of the final two.

[… Status: Still Perplexed.]

*****

‘Now then… where are the last two?’ Elder Hua thought to herself as she returned to the starting point once more. ‘If they went separate ways, finding the wheelchair girl should be easy. But those two seemed quite close, so they’ll probably be sticking together. If that’s the case, then the range of possible hiding locations for the two of them just expanded a whole lot.’

‘There are no visible tracks on the ground… they’re not bad.’

Then, her sight landed on the two sets of footprints she discovered earlier, from Fanatic and Octane.

‘Could it be… they stepped in their teammates’ footprints…?’

But as Elder Hua thought about it, she quickly changed her mind.

‘No… the wheelchair’s gone. I find it hard to believe they carried the heavy wheelchair the whole way, so they must’ve went a different direction and erased the tracks after.’

Narrowing her eyes at the seemingly clean ground, the same red scales from earlier made an appearance on her face once more as her black pupils flashed crimson momentarily.

From her perspective, the world was now tainted in a red hue. Before her, invisible to everyone else, a set of footprints lay, along with two long parallel lines beside it that looked like thin tire tracks. Above the footprints was a faint trail of red air, once again only perceivable to her.

‘Aha… found it.’

Keeping her Bloodbreak effect active while remaining mindful of her limits, Elder Hua followed the scarlet trail in search of her prey.

*****

Several minutes later, Elder Hua arrived at a clearing in the forest.

‘The trail ends here and splits into two smaller ones,’ She thought in her head. ‘But my blood… it’s too risky to keep using it.’

With a wave of her hand, she canceled her Bloodbreak and scanned her surroundings normally.

‘They should be somewhere around here…’

She first looked at the bushes, then the trees. Nothing. But then, she spotted something peculiar in the distance, not too far away. The handle of what seemed like a wheelchair poked out from behind a tree — just barely, but still visible.

‘What a rookie mistake… here I was, thinking they were actually worth teaching for once,’ Elder Hua sighed in her mind. ‘Though I suppose… they are better than their three friends, at least.’

After seeing the wheelchair, she was now sure the two she was looking for were somewhere nearby. She first focused on the wheelchair girl, since she was an easier target.

‘Her legs are crippled, so I doubt she’s lieing down in the dirt somewhere. That wouldn’t be very comfortable. Which means…’

Suddenly, Elder Hua heard a noise coming from behind her and she immediately spun around to see a piece of bark falling down from high up on a tree.

She grinned in triumph. ‘… Too easy.’

“Oi. You can come down from up there. I see you already.”

“Ah… looks like I’ve been caught,” Iris sighed from up on the tree.

“Hurry up and jump down. I’ll catch you. I’m on a timer here, still have to catch the last one.”

“Right…” Iris slowly shifted her body onto the edge of the branch she was sitting on and prepared to jump into Elder Hua’s spread-out arms. But just before she did so, she smiled.

“Too bad… he’s right behind you.”