Even though the Leader of the Elemental Ten tried to appear calmer than the others, her trembling right hand prevented her from holding her staff steady. The Deputy Leader, with the corner of one eye, looked at Alator, whose blonde hair bearing white glitters flew in the windless air, while with the other, she watched the orc warrior, from whose worn armor ice grains trickled down.
"Now it's time for the bigwigs; I've always wondered, what is the power of you two, who haven't used your element on your own outside of formation attacks until today?"
The Elemental Ten didn't consist solely of men like the ten-person orc group in the northern region; even though they couldn't be distinguished at a single glance due to their long hair and generally delicate physiques, four of them were women. The Deputy Leader was also one of these women, and after getting permission from Alator, she stood before Nafız.
Whether it was because he was the target of mocking gazes or the effect of the responsibility placed upon him, the druid warrior coming after Alator looked more serious than ever. Since there was no danger of being attacked, she planted the handle of her staff into the ground and muttered with her eyes closed until the Pentagram inside the magic circle under her feet appeared clearly enough for everyone to see.
She was in no hurry; from the moment she went into a trance, she wasn't on the battlefield; she swayed along with the sounds coming out of her mouth as if meditating by a calm river. The movement, which started slowly, accelerated as the seconds passed, the magic circle became increasingly prominent, and it continued this way until its brightness became dazzling.
"Uigeadail"
She shouted in a way you wouldn't always hear; completely different from the battle cries, screams, and pain-filled groans hurled on the battlefield. When her mutterings finished, the deputy leader of the Elemental Ten spilled a single word from her forked tongue. The glowing magic circle faded and disappeared, and all her friends, including Alator, closed their eyes simultaneously.
Only Blood God Nafız's bloodshot eyes, knowing no fear, were wide open to watch what was happening. When the magic circle with no glowing edges disappeared, when the others closed their eyes, or when the soldier whose life she took half an hour ago hugged her leg with his hand missing two fingers, she continued to watch without hesitation.
The corpse, wrapped in pitch-black energy, could barely hold the leg it grabbed; Nafız didn't use her blood energy to prevent its action. Without resorting to the body armor she previously used to protect herself from physical attacks, she allowed another corpse wrapping around her waist to embrace her.
All the dead soldiers within the ten-pace-wide circle with her at its center rose to their feet and, ignoring their missing pieces, headed towards her by crawling, limping. It was obvious their goal wasn't to inflict physical wounds, but at that moment, anyone looking into Nafız's inner world could see the true definition of savagery.
Finishing her spell, the deputy leader stepped back five paces without opening her eyes, and she only dared to do this when she stepped outside the dark area she created. Along with her, the other members of the Elemental Ten also began to witness the show one by one. Dead bodies filled with pitch darkness had surrounded the Blood God as if to swallow her.
Only her eyes, managing to shine even in the darkness enough to suffocate worlds, were visible, and her blood-red pupils were constantly trembling. The Deputy Leader of the Elemental Ten had raised the lifeless soldiers using the darkness, then used a technique that appeared physical but attacked the target's soul. Only she could know what Nafız, sinking into the dark swamp and dragged deeper every second, was struggling with.
"I don't want to die!"
"I can't leave my wife in the hands of that degenerate, I can't die here!"
"I can't go without getting my revenge, without finding those who killed my father!"
Voices she had never heard before echoed in her mind. People, some of whom she saw, some of whom it was impossible for her to recognize, were screaming, standing across from her. Then one of them crossed the distance between them in two large steps and thrust his right hand into Nafız's heart.
Even though what was happening was only in her own mind, the body was more than willing to accept this as real. The Blood God, whose torso curved inward, stayed like that for a while, and when a hundred breaths passed, her body returned to its former state.
"Fuck off, loser. Didn't you really know they would take your wife away if you couldn't pay it back when you were borrowing money?"
While a cold hand held her heart beating several times in the blink of an eye, the Blood God was giving her answer to the man screaming in her face.
"You are heartless, how can you blame me?"
Everything the man experienced passed before Nafız's eyes like a film strip. He had opened a small business; he wiped his brightly colored shoes arranged in a one-by-one showcase every hour, and welcomed the customers entering the shop before they took their first step through the door.
He put the shoes he sold into boxes at least as shiny as them, turned the thin ribbons into bows with the inside of his scissors almost like a magic trick, and glued them to a corner. There wasn't a day silver didn't enter his register, in fact, sometimes the total of these was enough to make a few gold pieces; the small shop never lacked customers.
Everything was going very well for the merchant, but he was unaware that only one thing was going bad, and that was himself. The affectionate, hardworking person from the early days who didn't withhold his respect from his customers had disappeared, becoming someone who insulted the two employees he hired, who didn't come to the shop on some days, who lived more in the den of iniquity descended by a few steps and where he couldn't understand how time passed than his home.
The employees, sick of the pressure and humiliation, had blown up the shop, and his accumulated gambling debt had dropped him into the hands of the loan shark. He disposed of everything he had; his house, his shop, even though he sold the watch encrusted with diamond stones he inherited from his father, in the end, he had to leave his wife as a hostage against his remaining debt and come to the front lines.
"Am I heartless because you didn't know the value of what belonged to you? Do you know what pains my heart faced in both worlds, with what sorrows it grew calloused? Get out of my sight, cuckold!"
There, even if the others, the ten druids watching her, couldn't see, the moment her chest puffed out and her back straightened, was exactly this moment, but it wasn't going to end. Next was the miserable life of the man who hugged her leg and crawled all the way here, leaving his lower half behind.
His was not a fall coming after a success story like the one in the previous scenario; he had been, so to speak, crawling since the moment he was born. An unknown father, a mother who sold her body to earn a living, and a childhood spent escaping the twisted desires of the customers she couldn't satisfy.
Thrown onto the streets so as not to be an additional burden, the addresses it dragged him to were the front lines, scenes from the weird experiences he had during the time until his death, and the Blood God watching them all.
"Your death has been by my hands. This must be the most beautiful moment of the miserable life you lived; I hope you manage to stand on your own two feet in the new world you've gone to."
Other than her, only a few people knew that the place called the World of the Six Civilizations wasn't an end. Except for some bad choices this man made, he had almost no fault, but there, such small details were enough to waste a lifetime.
Nafız saw that the man, who had the chance to make a fresh start the moment he was thrown onto the street, couldn't move forward by strictly clinging to his past. His legs were ready to take him to a new and beautiful tomorrow, but he hadn't even thought of using them.
The Blood God raised her right leg into the air and stomped it hard on the ground. A part of the darkness on her mixed into the earth, which purifies everything it takes inside. She had more than twenty corpses awakened by the darkness on her body, and she had only been able to get rid of two of them yet.