The sorrowful roars gradually faded into the distance.
Not long after, the sound of footsteps slowly echoed again within the cave.
Yaka, who had been sitting to the side, finally turned his head to look at the newcomer.
"Father."
Yarn looked at Yaka, who had been staring at Burton's remains, his expression somewhat complex.
But Yaka seemed unconcerned by this; he rose from the ground and asked, "Is Hughes dealt with?"
"Yes." Yarn nodded. "Although he was wary of my sudden appearance, when I told him something had happened to Burton, he became anxious, which gave me an opportunity. …Just as Burton said before, I was a second-tier Flame Hound Bloodline from the start, so when the Bloodline concentration reaches a certain level, I naturally enter the second tier, unlike first-tier Bloodline Users who experience a clear 'bottleneck'."
The improvement of a Bloodline User's strength can only be achieved by continuously stimulating the Bloodline concentration within the body through various training methods.
It can be simple physical training, or it can be the development and mastery of one's own Bloodline abilities, with different methods being suitable depending on an individual's aptitude.
Yarn's Bloodline stimulation method originated from Berman, the Flame Hound Bloodline Knight of the Gem Territory. His potential and strength were clearly not strong, and Yarn himself was the same. So, if he hadn't cheated by using Robin's "loss of control" earlier, he might not have reached the second tier even in another ten years.
Conversely, Yaka's Bloodline concentration increase was quite fast.
Even now, it had only been a little over two months, but he could already clearly feel the surging power hidden deep within his Bloodline, which made him realize that the path to becoming a second-tier Bloodline User was probably not very far off.
"What was the result?"
Yarn sighed softly. He couldn't help but marvel at his son's keenness: "As you guessed, Hughes's Bloodline Power was indeed absorbed. His corpse quickly withered, just like the Bloodline Knight I killed in the Gem Territory back then."
"I wonder if Burton's corpse can still be used now."
Under the second Armored Demon Rabbit's resentful charge, Burton's entire upper body was completely smashed into a paste of fresh red flesh smeared on the stone wall. The lower body, which wasn't smashed, also couldn't escape its fate and was devoured by the Armored Demon Rabbit.
This rising star of the Kasein Family had prepared numerous contingency plans and combat strategies before embarking on this journey, but none of them had anticipated that he would end up without a complete corpse.
Yarn knew what his son was thinking.
He didn't say much and directly thrust the rusty sword into the puddle of flesh on the stone wall.
The next moment, surprise instantly appeared on both Yarn and Yaka's faces.
The fresh red paste on the stone wall visibly darkened at a rapid pace, as if it had been there for several years: the unique vibrant vitality it once possessed completely vanished as its color faded.
...The longsword's reaction to Bloodline absorption left Robin quite helpless, as it was not a result he could control.
He had originally thought that only Bloodline Users killed by him would have their Bloodline absorbed, thereby forming a Bloodline Seed—this was Robin's term for the true Bloodline that appeared directly in this sword's inner world after being absorbed by the longsword.
But when Yaka, in a flight of fancy, decided to try and see if he could extract some Bloodline Power from the paste of flesh on the stone wall, Robin realized that as long as something possessed Bloodline Power, he could directly absorb it.
At this moment, two drops of different colored blood beads appeared before him.
One drop was a dusty gray, which was Hughes's second-tier Bloodline, Ghost Fox.
One drop emitted a cold, grayish-white light, which was Burton's second-tier Bloodline, Gray Scale Snake.
And what caught Robin's attention was precisely this Gray Scale Snake Bloodline.
Burton's Bloodline advancement method was not like Hughes's, who directly consumed a second-tier Bloodline Secret Medicine. Instead, he started by consuming a first-tier Bloodline Secret Medicine, Armored Rockworm, and then, after his Bloodline concentration reached the second-tier standard, he consumed the second-tier Bloodline Secret Medicine, Gray Scale Snake.
This was due to the effect of Burton Cassein's family Bloodline, Six-Armed Martial Armored Demon Ape.
Earlier, Burton had briefly mentioned the matter of Bloodline to Yarn and his son, but he had not told them that Bloodline Users with Bloodline ability enhancements would not face a risk of death during the first few tiers of Bloodline advancement. This allowed Bloodline Users with Bloodline abilities to activate from first-tier Bloodline Secret Medicines and continuously advance and strengthen, thereby giving them an advantage when facing Bloodline Users of the same tier.
Therefore, for Bloodline User families with Bloodline abilities, they no longer merely consider the temporary strength or weakness of Bloodline abilities but constantly devise ways to further strengthen and amplify their own Bloodline abilities.
For example, the first-tier Bloodline, Armored Rockworm, has the Bloodline ability of Skin Hardening.
The effect of this ability is not outstanding; it merely allows the Bloodline User's skin to harden, preventing punctures and bleeding from sharp objects. Basically, no Bloodline User would consider this Bloodline.
However, the Kasein Family had researched a Bloodline advancement path starting with Armored Rockworm—if their family's second-tier Bloodline advancement chose Gray Scale Snake, then the Skin Hardening ability would mutate into Scaled Armor, which would allow the Kasein Family's Bloodline Users' skin to be covered with a layer of soft armor like snake scales, giving them almost immunity to cutting attacks.
In addition, their strength could also receive a very significant boost.
For example, their family's inherited Combat Skill, Guillotine, could only be learned after reaching the second-tier Bloodline.
And the third-tier Armored Demon Rabbit, in addition to further mutating the Scaled Armor Bloodline ability into Armored Weaponry, providing the Kasein Family's Bloodline Users with near immunity to cutting, piercing, and other attack methods, would also further significantly enhance their strength and physique.
After understanding these things, Robin also began to officially take the concept of "Bloodline" seriously, because he found that there were clearly many areas that could be explored and researched.
...Yarn and Yaka did not know that Robin had begun to research the existence of Bloodline.
They were just a little curious as to why, after killing Hughes and absorbing Burton's Bloodline Power this time, there was no reaction like the first time they killed the Gem Territory Knight, nor did new pure Bloodline Secret Medicine appear as it did when they previously brewed Bloodline Secret Medicine.
After a moment of thought, Yaka eventually proposed a theory.
He believed that perhaps it was because both of them were already Bloodline Users, which was why the rusty sword did not transform new Bloodline for them. After all, this time they plundered the enemy's Bloodline Power by killing them, rather than brewing the Bloodline Secret Medicine themselves, and there was a significant difference between the two.
Yarn knew that his son was much smarter than him, and he couldn't come up with any more reasonable explanations or theories, so he agreed with his son's deduction.
He looked at the broadsword on the ground, his face full of regret: "What a pity."
"That Burton clearly has a significant background. We can't take his exotic iron weapon with us. If it's discovered, it's no different from other Bloodline Users discovering the special effects of the rusty sword." Yaka was very clear-headed and had no intention of coveting the two men's weapons. "Even Hughes's corpse, we can't leave it here; we must take it up and feed it to those monsters."
"I understand." Yarn nodded.
In fact, he was a very cautious and careful person, so he naturally wouldn't have the idea of taking Burton's broadsword and Hughes's dagger.
Hughes had recognized him earlier through the lingering scent on him when he killed that Bloodline Knight from the Gem Territory. So, when he went to hunt Hughes just now, he also poured a bottle of Armored Demon Rabbit repellent scent potion on himself before making his move.
Yarn admitted that he didn't understand the various special abilities of Bloodline Users, so no one could be sure if there would be any special investigative methods. Therefore, he naturally acted with extreme caution, mainly to avoid any "what if" scenarios. So, faced with the exotic iron weapon used by a prominent figure like Burton, Yarn would never have any thought of embezzlement; he didn't want to cause himself any trouble.
"By the way, Father, have you found the component?"
"Not yet. I was busy dealing with Hughes just now, and there's another Armored Demon Rabbit in here, so I didn't take the risk." Yarn said, "However, the sensation is indeed getting stronger and stronger, and the location should not be far."
So the father and son began to cautiously search within the cave.
Because they could sense the distance through the strength of the rusty sword's feedback, they actually didn't have too much trouble finding the missing component of the rusty sword, which they didn't know why it was brought here.
It was the end of a sword hilt with a counterweight stone, its length roughly one-third of the current rusty sword.
"So it's a two-handed sword!" Upon seeing this component, Yaka instantly looked enlightened. "I knew it looked strange. ...So what do we do with this component now? Should we find a blacksmith to reforge it?"
"I don't know either."
Yarn was also somewhat perplexed.
He held the rusty sword and the small section of the hilt and gestured with them, but the next moment, that small section of the hilt with the counterweight stone seemed to be attracted by some magnetic force, suddenly transforming into a stream of light and colliding with the rusty sword.
Immediately after, the rusty sword suddenly erupted with a black glow.
Like a black hole, it absorbed all light completely!
And the moment Yarn and Yaka were enveloped by this black glow, their Bloodline, which had already merged with their souls, transmitted a trembling fear. Both of them felt a chill throughout their bodies, as if their souls were about to freeze because of it.
But what they didn't know was that it wasn't just this cave that experienced such an anomaly at this moment.
Instead, throughout the entire Deadwood Forest, all the monsters felt a trembling fear from their souls at that instant. Not a single monster dared to move at this time, only cowering on the ground, trembling, and many were so scared that they wet themselves. Even the Bloodline Users who were attempting to hunt monsters at the edge of the Deadwood Forest at this moment were equally terrified, their limbs cold, unable to move.
Especially for Bloodline Users with stronger Bloodline concentrations and higher ranks, this trembling fear from the soul was even more severe.
...In a dark place, somewhere in the world, the sky was dim and lightless.
Even the earth did not exist; there was only an invisible abyss.
But in such a peculiar place, there was a cluster of golden, glittering palaces floating in mid-air.
In the center of this cluster of palaces was a giant tower, hundreds of meters high.
And at this moment, the stargazing platform at the very top of the tower looked as if it had just experienced an earthquake; all the items placed there were askew, and there were many broken objects on the ground.
"What's going on? Why did the Sacred Tome suddenly lose control and go berserk?"
A voice filled with alarm rang out.
On this stargazing platform, four elderly priests dressed in different colored robes all looked inexplicably terrified.
"It must be the Sacred Sword that records the supreme Bloodline inheritance, as spoken of by the Cyan Offspring, that has appeared!"
"What nonsense are you talking about? If such a thing truly existed, our Spirit Hall would have found it long ago."
The sound of their incessant arguing made the otherwise quiet and solemn stargazing platform chaotic.
But in the end, with the opening of an ancient voice, the increasingly heated argument finally ceased: "No matter what the situation is, the sudden loss of control of the Bloodline Sacred Tome is a major event. We must report this to the Hall Master."