Chapter 1300 - Blood Armour Weakness When Brock looked over at the six spiked Dalki's corpse on the ground, he believed that Richard had managed to find a way to defeat it, overpowering it by finding some sort of weakness. The truth was, Richard had done no such thing. In the middle of the fight, the Dalki had fallen on its own. There had been next to no interference on Richard's end. After his attack had managed to slightly damage its hands, it had started to become more and more aggressive, seemingly having become berserk. Despite the futility of its actions, it had continued to pound at Eno's strange invisible wall, not holding back its strength. Each attack only ended up creating red ripples of aura. Richard had only been able to pray that given the amount of energy it was exerting that it would tire itself out eventually. Knowing that his lance could at least slightly damage the Dalki he had been waiting for the right moment, yet without any warning, the Dalki had stopped attacking in its tracks, only to fall to the ground. There was no movement, and with his powerful hearing Richard had been able to tell that its heart had given out. All of this had happened moments before Jim had readied his attack with the shield, giving Richard just enough time to block the attack on Brock's behalf. "This is what happens, Jim! This is what happens when you force others to go past their limitations! Speeding up the process of their evolution has shortened its life to only a few minutes!" Richard claimed. Having the same ability, he had an inkling that this had to be the cost of using their ability, not the Dalki. As for what was exactly embedded in Jim's hand to allow him to force those transformations in the first place, that was a different story. "Too bad, looks like I picked a bad seed. If only he could have lasted a bit longer against you. Oh well, his corpse should provide me with more information after an autopsy." Jim noted, shrugging his shoulders as if he didn't care. Judging from Jim's words, Richard was figuring out a bit more. It seemed like all the Dalki had a different time limit of how long they would survive after this forced evolution. Perhaps it had to do with a Dalki's innate potential or maybe with their willpower. If it was meant to be strong, then the exchange, or use of Jim's power might not put too much of a burden on it, while weaker Dalki that would never have amounted to much, would die fairly quickly after he used their ability on them. Richard also had another theory, that their lifespan might be connected to how quickly they exerted their energy. After all, the Dalki that was still alive, had only performed a couple of attacks, while the one he had faced had been fighting non stop. "Could it be, you believe that this fact has changed the flow of this fight or something?" Jim asked. "Come on, Richard, you have seen how easy it is to turn one. It should at least give you an idea about what I am capable of." "Our power is a blessing and I never knew why you limited yourself so much. I used to be proud that you were the King at one point, but if you had only passed down and taught your descendants the proper uses of our ability and what it could do, then what title would have belonged solely to our family!" "Now you are just being foolish!" Richard snapped back. "Although our power is strong, the sort of power we use, the stronger deals we make, the more that has to be sacrificed. For you to be speaking like this, I don't even want to imagine the crazy things you must have already done." With the shield covering Jim's front, and the surviving six spike acting as a guard, Richard and Brock didn't dare to make their move. Jim knew this and he enjoyed every single moment of it. Lifting his hand up, a portal had opened up thirty meters above them. Coming out from it, were two large dropships that would hold around twenty or so masked inside them. The portal soon closed once again, and one of the dropships was seen going in another direction, while the other was heading towards them. The other dropship appeared to be heading in the direction of the Dragon. At the moment, there were a few loud crashes and explosions coming from that direction, indicating that there was a fight going on, but that had eventually ended. "I know why you are still confident. You think you know their weakness, and since you have the Blood armour you must be thinking to yourself that all you need to do is to outlast the Dalki, right?" "Too bad, that I know the weakness of your armour as well. You're limited to only being able to block the attacks you're facing from the front. Playtime is over, let's see you deal with more than just one." The dropship continued to hover over their heads, and had stopped just behind where Jim was. Seeing this, Brock had decided to throw a Blood swipe towards the ship. He didn't know what it was but it couldn't be anything good. The former Royal Knight couldn't allow Jim to go through with his plan and he knew that Richard wasn't moving because he was afraid the Dalki would attack. However, the red Blood swipe never reached the ship, for the Dalki leapt in the air, blocking the attack with its body. Neither it nor the ship suffered any damage from it. The next seconds the doors were seen opening, and instead of Masked, three more single spiked Dalki jumped out and landed by Jim's side. "You should have taken my offer when you had the chance Richard, it was a fair deal." Jim said, shaking his head as he placed his hands on one of the Dalki, his hand lighting up and the transformation process started once again. Now there was another six spike. 'Two of them should be enough, I'll make this one last a bit longer.' Jim thought, placing his hand on another one. When the transformation was done, it had eventually turned into a five spiked Dalki. 'It looks like Jim has more control over his powers than I thought.' Richard thought. 'This could be worse than I imagined. Perhaps it might be even possible for him to do this on the higher spiked Dalki. I don't even know if six spikes is their limit, or if he's able to increase the strength of those that are already strong. If so… I'm afraid I have no answer. But there has to be a reason why Jim hasn't done it so far! Are their leaders cautious of him?' "As for the last one, it's always nice to have a backup. Dalki aren't exactly in high supply these days." Jim made a crude joke, which only he found amusing. There was one thing that Richard was finding strange in all of this, why were they so willing to listen to Jim. He might be their creator, but they didn't strike him as the loyal type. They had their own will and they should be smart enough to have soon that this power boost was a one-way street to their demise. 'Has he found some way to control them?' Unfortunately, thinking alone did nothing to get Richard out of their miserable situation. Facing one six spiked alone had been tough, facing two would have been extremely difficult and although probably weaker, the five spiked Dalki might actually be the hardest to deal with. "Brock, I hate it when I am right. It looks like if we want to defend the island, we really do need the help of all the groups. It's a shame, but it looks like they even declined my invitation. Perhaps if they were here, then things would have ended differently." Richard let out a sigh. "What a strange bunch of last words for an old man." Jim raised his hand as he was ready to order the Dalki to attack, but at that moment, coming in between the two groups, a shadow could be seen in the middle. A figure started to rise from the centre. "Quinn! What are you doing here, you stupid fool? If you're here, who is protecting the Dragon?! Do you really want to play the hero that bad-" Richard complained, seeing who it was. However, having turned around and seeing the look on the Cursed faction leader's face, he quietened down. "Haha, this is great!" Jim laughed. "The leader of the Cursed faction himself has decided to grace us with his presence. You have been an unexpected pain in my plans for too long. Now I'll be able to get rid of two nuisances at once, it's time for you to die, Quinn!" Quinn's eyes looked at Jim with sadness and pity. He lifted his hand, and held it out before speaking up. "Jim… for you to have turned out this way, I can't help but blame myself. The one before you right now is not Quinn, but your nephew. I am Vincent Eno, former leader of the tenth family, who you have once sworn loyalty to!"