Speed Is King

Elliot stared at Jennifer and watched the interplay of emotions on her face, and instinctively understood her conflict.

Of course he did. He was experiencing the exact same thing!

“It won’t happen overnight. I hate him as much as you do. But continuing to hate him would be tantamount to hating ourselves. Hatred is poison. We must get it out of our system. Promise me you’ll try and do that?” Elliot said to Jennifer.

Jennifer nodded slowly and let out a deep, shuddering breath.

“I will try. I promise.” She said after awhile.

Both Elliot and Jennifer knew that it would be a long, long “try”. But Elliot still nodded in satisfaction.

Life is what it is. Some things cannot be forced, especially heavy things like letting go of hatred.

The easiest way to let go of hatred was to forgive, of course. And forgiveness is a choice. At that moment, forgiveness was a distant thought in their minds.

The next easiest way was to forget. It was a longer road, but the only one that they were willing to walk at that moment.

Yes, it was enough that she try.

Whether or not she succeeded would depend on her fate, and the size of her heart.

He looked at Jennifer for a moment longer as his mind processed Rak’Tharos’ last words.

His high intellect was more than sufficient to immediately piece together what roughly transpired in the past two weeks of Jennifer’s life.

To become strong, she had been forced to embrace the bloodline of her hated enemy!

He could already imagine the state of brokenness that Jennifer must have been at during those trying moments, the despair and guilt that must have so viciously crushed her little heart.

That her sister had died and she had lived, that her beloved brother was condemned to live days of constant worry and pressure to get strong so that he could try to rescue her.

It must have been unbearably painful!

And for the sake of taking concrete steps towards power – she did the most unthinkably grotesque but undeniably necessary step that she could have done in such a situation – taking on the bloodline of her most hated enemy!

But fate was kind to her, and gave her a gift that allowed her to make the best out of a desperate situation, and made her the ultimate victor out of the horrible transaction that she was forced to do.

Her unlocking of the ancient version of Rak’Tharos’ bloodline was singularly the luckiest thing that had happened to her in her entire life!

Well, maybe apart from having Elliot as an elder brother, of course.

“It has been really difficult for you, Jen.” Elliot said softly and gently as he pulled Jennifer into his embrace.

All thoughts of Rak’Tharos and the strange way he died disappeared from their minds, drowned completely under the utter joy of being reunited once more!

“Huhuhuhu…” In front of her big bro who had always taken good care of her, Jennifer could finally stop trying to be strong. She simply nodded and cried her heart out to Elliot.

Jessica didn’t want to be left out, and so she immediately snuggled in next to Jennifer and the three of them got into a group hug.

They stayed that way for a long, long time.

The three siblings were finally reunited again.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

“Wow big bro, you have so many beasts now!” Jennifer marveled as she sat atop Winter and got to know each and every one of Elliot’s beasts.

Indeed he had!

Witht he addition of the two dragons, the moles and the birds, the number of beasts he had under his command had increased in number to be almost a hundred!

And if he added the clan members of his Beast Apostles… He probably had almost a thousand already.

He truly was a full fledged Beast Master at that moment.

“Yes I do. Jen, how would you like to have Winter as your personal beast?” Elliot smiled at Jennifer and asked her.

“Can I really have her?” Jennifer asked in a voice filled with wide eyed wonder.

“Of course. I just have to spend enough points to transfer ownership from me to you. I’ve asked Winter, and she’s completely agreeable to it.” Elliot explained.

“Oh… how many points do you have to spend to do that?” Jennifer asked.

“Quite a bit, but it doesn’t really matter to me. I will be outgrowing the system soon, and I will probably won’t have much use for thr points aside from boosting my stats.” Elliot waved the cost aside dismissively.

“I see. There’s no hurry for me to own Winter now, since I can be with her this way. Give Winter to me only after you’ve totally outgrown the points, alright? Till then, just get as strong as you can. Every single bit of strength counts.” Jennifer said quietly.

Elliot looked at her, and completely understood her feelings. After going through so much, her desire for power had probably grown and reached heights that rivalled his.

“Okay. We’ll do that.” Elliot agreed.

“When we do that, please give me a beast as well, okay? I don’t want a big one. I want a cute one!” Jessica said happily.

She was so assured of her brother’s love for her that she had already assumed he would agree even without hearing his answer!

And of course she was right.

“Of course! I will tame the cutest one on this planet and then bestow it to you.” Elliot promised.

“Good! Anyway, when can we go and visit this new base of yours? I can’t wait to meet all the other people you’ve saved!” Jessica asked.

“We’ll go as soon as Jen finishes absorbing his Blood Essence and the Life/Death energy. I want to make sure that nothing goes wrong.” Elliot replied.

After they had successfully killed the soul of Rak’Tharos, they had immediately extracted his Blood Essence so that Jennifer could complete her evolution to be the progenitor of the Elemental Scaled Feline – Royal Elemental Feline.

Unlike Rak’Tharos who only had two elements – gold and fire, Jennifer’s Royal Elemental Feline had three, the third one being the element that gave it the royal status.

The Royal Element – Darkness.

However, the most amazing thing about Jennifer’s bloodline was not the number of elements it allowed her to control. It was its grade!

The Royal Elemental Feline was an Origin Grade beast! It was at the level of the two blue dragons!

No wonder it completely suppressed Rak’Tharos’ bloodline.

Elliot could even feel a faint pressure emitting from Jennifer. It was the natural pressure that any lower grade beast would feel in the presence of a higher grade beast!

And with the Darklight Energy that she was about to ingest, Elliot was sure that Jennifer would eventually become one, if not the strongest, being on the whole planet.

Excluding him of course.

After all, he just got his hands on the blood essences of all five metallic dragons! He truly had no idea what they would do to him.

He was actually very keen to find out, but he needed solitude to do that, and he intended to bring his sisters into the relative safety of his base camp first before he did that.