Chapter 1282 - Protect My Brothers Using the power of the Roseus tree, Quinn was able to coordinate the marked beasts to help out the Cursed faction in holding off the enemy. However, at the end of the day, they were just beasts, whereas nearly all of the enemy forces consisted of vampires who had access to super strength, great speed and blood powers. It also didn't help that thanks to a certain family that had been on the island for a while now the strongest beasts that the tree had been able to mark were at the King tier. Quinn could use the power of the tree to make them somewhat stronger but even that could only do so much against their foes' teamwork. Then there were also the stronger vampires who were able to ignore the beasts in the jungle and were heading straight towards the Demon tier beast. It was the second line of defence's job to intercept them. The group stationed at the East section consisted of Sam, Layla and Nate. Although he was the weakest of the bunch, just barely being a noble vampire, Sam stood at the front. Nate was also a strong vampire at the noble level, and despite being turned by Sam, had grown to become stronger than him. This was why Sam had decided to stay a bit at the back. As for Layla, she had scaled one of the trees and took the high ground. . Looking carefully she noticed some of the trees moving, and quickly held up five fingers on one hand, signalling the two from below. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶 "You haven't learnt how to use Blood Hardening yet, have you?" Nate asked. Sam shook his head, a little embarrassed. He had only ever learned the basics of using his blood skills. While the rest had continuously trained whenever they could, he had been left to deal with the administrative tasks for the Cursed faction, keeping it running. It was also the reason why their teams consisted of three members, instead of two like the other groups. The first to attack was Layla, as she placed five arrows in her bow and fired them all at once. Each one of them had been embedded with Qi. As they reached the vampires, one of them had attempted to grab onto the arrow, but it was too powerful for him to hold onto and went straight through his head killing him on the spot. Another of the vampires managed to move in time, letting the arrow hit the tree, but seeing this, Layla tried out her new skill. Using her telekinesis powers she made the arrow spin, also adding another surge of her Qi. 'My body still can't handle the amount of Qi I have, but somehow it's easy enough to share my Qi when I use it in tandem with my telekinesis powers!' Layla's thought distracted her for a brief moment and she ended up putting in a little too much power. The whole width of the tree exploded and the arrow carried on heading towards one of the black masked men. The masked man was lucky, due to the arrow shaft exploding with the force of Qi, the only thing that had managed to hit him was the arrow head. Still, there was one person who wouldn't miss this opportunity, and that was Sam. He had been patiently waiting for an opportunity to help out. The masked man managed to parry the arrowhead, yet three blood swipes followed closely behind it, hitting him and finishing him off instantly. 'My blood powers aren't any weaker than theirs. I can still help.' Sam thought. As for the other arrows that Layla had fired off, their targets seemed to be more skilled, as they had been able to strike down the arrow at the right time, or hit it with blood attacks of their own, swaying their path. 'Looks like there are some strong ones in the group, but there are some strong ones in our group as well.' Layla thought. She quickly moved from her position, onto another tree. She knew from her training that if she was going to support the group as a marksman, she couldn't afford to stay in one place for too long, otherwise they would find her. On top of that, from the initial five that were joining in the fight, more people in the distance could be seen creeping through the jungle. For now, she would do whatever she could to injure them as much as possible. 'I can do this!' The three that managed to get through, all ran forward at once, and one of them had gone straight for Nate. The masked man had its hand clawed and wrapped in blood aura, something Nate hadn't seen before, nor did he know it was something they could do. "Too slow!" Nate shouted, at the right time he stepped forward using a flash step to avoid the strike, and with a fist punched the masked person directly in the face, continuing the contact until the fist and his face were touching the ground beneath them. The other vampires soon came to attack him from either side, but he had Blood hardening on his arms, and managed to stop the attacks. However, they were faster than Nate had anticipated. He was hoping to get rid of two of them, so he could pick off one of them on their own, but now he was forced to block their attacks. "You guys should be ashamed." Nate smiled, as he continued to block hit after hit from the vampires. "You've been vampires from the beginning, right? That means you must have lived far longer than me. You had all this time to train your skills, yet this is as far as you got!" At the right time, when one of the foes was ready to attack again, a shadow appeared in front of him stopping his attack, meaning Nate was able to freely go after the other vampire. Quickly, moving his head he avoided a punch and grabbed the masked man by the back of the head, before pulling the head down and slamming it into his knee. Before they could recover, Nate made sure to use a strike he had been practising from someone he had seen so many times before. Throwing out a fist, with a Blood spray, Nate slammed a Blood hammer into the vampire's stomach, making sure he would never get up again. Turning around, Nate placed his shadow down expecting to have to deal with one more, but to his surprise he saw Sam there as well, and the other vampire already finished off on the ground. "If their backs are turned and distracted, I can do something on my own." Sam stated. "You don't have to look after me that much. Besides there's something I realised, something that these guys don't have compared to the vampires inside the vampire settlement. It might just have been the ones we have fought so far, but I have a feeling it will be true for all of them." "What do you mean?" Nate asked. "None of them have any of the vampire abilities that we've witnessed over there. They're just using their blood powers." Sam answered, still unsure what the reason for that was. Still, they only had a moment to catch their breath for there were more they needed to deal with. —— Inside the castle, both Raten and Vorden had moved rooms after the roots had come down to attack them. They ended up choosing one of the many regular rooms, one that would have been used by the maids. Just like before, Borden was guarding both of them, yet this time they were in an even worse state. Previously they had been consuming crystals one by one, this way after each crystal was absorbed they could still choose to fight if there was a need, albeit it weakened. However, after the attack they had experienced, they started to experiment with consuming many crystals. They both found that although the time to absorb the crystals was longer when consuming more than one. It was shorter than if they were to do so separately, one by one. Which was why, they both had decided to consume all of the crystals and were in the next step. How long it would take them to get out of it, and whether they would evolve or not, they didn't know and neither did Borden. While watching over the two of them, Borden heard the castle shaking from below. It was clear that something had hit the castle and he was wondering what it could have been. He looked at the two of them. 'No one will suspect that someone is in this room, right?' Borden tried to convince himself… but he quickly changed his mind. 'No, I have to stay in place! I can't disappoint them again!' Choosing to stay, Borden believed he was doing the right thing. He reasoned that it might just have been a stray attack from somewhere that had hit the castle, or maybe something else. After waiting a while, several bangs could be heard throughout the castle, and each time they were getting louder and louder. 'What is going on? This can't all just be coincidence. If something is in the castle, I have to make sure it won't disturb these two.' Borden thought. The banging and crashing was still heard, and as Borden made his way through the castle to try and locate where the noise was coming from it was getting louder and louder. Eventually Borden realized that the sound was coming from the dining room. Still in his large, adult sized form, Borden decided to form his spikes on his back before entering, listening to his Dalki self. Now ready to fight, Borden opened the doors confidently. As for what he could see was in the castle, it was a huge surprise to him. There were three figures in the room that were breaking and trashing everything they could see in the castle. They destroyed every room they had entered, but what was most surprising about them was that they were Dalki. "That one, is the one that attacked Slicer!" One of them pointed at Borden. Borden knew he couldn't hold back, because all three of them were three spiked Dalki.