Then, started seeping out of Aurea's skin pores.
There was so much blood to the point where it was flooding the tent.
The people outside could see that something terrifying was happening inside the tent.
When they tried looking inside, the soldiers dodn't let them.
But even the soldiers knew that something was abnormal.
The fact that the vampiric link they had with the 2nd Generation vampires, the elves, weren't terminated was the reason why they still didn't panic.
Inside the tent, a massive structure made of hardened blood and flesh was formed.
It was shaped like an egg that got half-merged into the ground.
Inside that structure was Aurea.
"An egg? No, a cocoon?" Muttered Lucky.
What was happening inside the cocoon was unclear.
"I'll take this cocoon somewhere else. I'll ask a soldier from outside to take my place. You three can still continue this, right?"
Seeing the girls nod, Lucky exited the tent with the giant cocoon stuck on a carved out concrete floor.
Instead of removing it from the ground, Lucky carved the ground around it to not mess with what's happening inside.
****
An endless nightmare was occuring.
A world full of blood and death.
A world where things that were inside became outside.
A world where the sense of smell became the sense sight and vice versa.
A world where the sense of touch described everything as big or small.
A world where seeing color felt like stabbing needles into your eyes.
It was a world where the impossible became possible.
It was a world residing in Aurea's mind.
And currently he was stuck in an endless nightmare.
A nightmare where he exists in this world of impossibility.
Then, one day, he woke up.
What met his eyes was blood. Lots of blood.
Every orifice of his body was filled with blood.
Although his brain kept giving him warnings of suffocation, he was actually capable of breathing in it, unbeknownst to him.
Clawing his way out of this seemingly endless ocean of blood, he felt a fleshy boundary.
Then, with a single swing of his sharp claw-like nails, he tore through the thick membrane.
Tearing through it, the whole cocoon burst.
A flood of blood came gushing out of the giant cocoon.
With the blood came a towering figure.
A height of at least 3 meters.
Pale green skin and a muscular body structure.
Not just that, but also two pairs of bat-like wings had grown out of his back.
His face had grown more handsome, similar to an elf's. Or rather, a hybrid of human facial structure and an elven one. With a bit of sharp goblin features.
His once bald goblin head had grown luscious long hair. White in color.
Sharp elongated fangs and deep red eyes showed that he was a vampire.
Aurea began to remember details of his own life.
"I.... I am Aurea," he muttered.
Though jumbled, he began piecing his memories together.
"Right, I became a vampire. But where is this? What had happened?"
The memories of being trapped in that endless nightmare began disappearing.
He felt relieved that he was now free from that nightmare, but now his new body felt odd.
It felt like he was reborn again, and his use of his limbs felt clumsy.
'Where am I?' He thought.
He was reminded of waking up not knowing where he was after getting punched by Lucky.
****
Going back to just after Aurea was carried outside the tent, Lucky was headed to the cave under his castle.
To make sure that the egg, or rather, cocoon wouldn't get disturbed, he put it in the deepest part of the cave.
The place was off-limits, and it's where Lucky had began tending to his hobbies after the war.
What was this hobby? To build a secret base.
Obviously, the girls knew where it was.
But Lucky did not care about that, he had this primal urge to make a place truly for his own self.
And this deepest part of the cave was it.
He had manually carved out everything, inserting furniture and many other things inside.
It was like a secret treehouse, though this one was in the opposite direction.
As childish as it was, this place could become useful if the surface was to ever get destroyed.
In that deep and secret base, Lucky put the cocoon in an even deeper corner.
He then covered it with some planks and called it a day.
The cocoon was soon forgotten, and 2 years passed.
****
Today was a sunny day.
Lucky was now probably around 21-years-old physically.
Pandora's population had grown tremendously, even moreso in Oer, its capital.
Now, Pandora boasted over 3 million people in its population. With around 70% being goblins, and the other 30% from other races.
What was once a small nation that controlled only 3 cities and a few small towns and villages, had grown into one that boasted a whopping 10 cities and almost a hundred towns and villages.
Peculiarly, none of these changes were noticed much by others.
This was because of the way Pandora expanded.
Instead of expanding outside of Mutant Forest, they expanded inwards instead.
Due to not wanting to start another pointless war, Lucky did not seek to conquer the lands already claimed by the Utara Kingdom that surrounded Pandora.
Out of all 10 cities of Pandora, only 3, including Oer, were situated outside or within the border of Mutant Forest.
The rest were all inside the forest.
Expanding inside the forest also proved to be a challenge.
The mutants became stronger and stronger the deeper they went.
Once casualties began to stack, Lucky immediately ceased all expansion into the forest.
Focusing on building his cities.
Luckily, his expansion into the forest proved to be even more fruitful than he had thought.
Since Pandora was located near the westernmost part of the East continent, it was near the coast.
Travelling through the depths of the Mutant Forest made them discover a bay.
The bay was shaped like a three leaf clover, thus it was named Clover Bay.
The location of Clover Bay was in the northwestern area of the forest.
It wasn't that far into the forest that it was certain death, but you had to travel through an unnamed mountain range to get to it.
Once Lucky had found this place, he immediately ordered everyone to make a 4th new city there. A port city named Clover City.
To make the passage safe, Lucky announced a grand project to build the widest and longest road in Pandora.
A road from Oer to to Clover Bay, cutting straight through the unnamed mountain range, now called Veil Mountains.
The name Veil came from the fact that it hid the bay from the outside world like a veil.
Along the road were checkpoints, and soon, these checkpoints became their own cities.
As such, the current cities of Pandora were:
Oer, the capital.
Clover City, the port city.
Otur and Goran, two former Utara villages near Oer that became Pandora's second and third cities. With Otur having a very bloody history.
Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon, in that respective order. These were cities that were formerly checkpoints in the grand road project, with Alpha being the closest to Oer and Epsilon being the closest to Clover City.
And finally, there was an odd city called Mutant City.
Mutant City was a fortress city located in the northeasternmost part of Pandora, deep within the depths of Mutant Forest.
Everything related to the hunt for mutants was occuring in this frontier city.