楼上的上瘾女士

The attack knocked him a few steps back and right into Emily\'s arms as she propped him up and stopped his backward movement.

"Are you alright?" She asked.

"Sure I am" Hal answered with a grin even as his wounds continued to bleed.

While the Poison had been absorbed and was being refined by his Bloodline, it had stayed out long enough to slow down his regenerative abilities and it would take a while before it kicked in.

Emily could tell he was downplaying his injuries and she began to condense another Cosmic Aurora just as thick tendrils of Blood Expanded from out of Arya\'s feet and lifted her high into the air for all on the Battlefield to see.

Despite being preoccupied with the Flame Demons, it was not a sight Hal\'s forces could completely ignore.

Emily was about to toss the Cosmic aurora. She was quite confident as she charged it with even more energy than the previous one, her whole mindset was that there was bound to be a limit to the energy the pentagram shield could repel and she would find that limit.

But then, Hal grabbed her hand to stop her.

"Long-distance attacks won\'t work. We need to get up close and personal" He said.

The look Emily gave him following those words made it clear that what he had said was no short of insane but she nodded with resolution.

Hal stood to his feet and Regeneration finally kicked in and his wounds began to mend.

From the start, he never planned to battle someone as powerful as the Master with just his cultivation and had been storing up for a Bloodline Breakthrough which he felt was close at hand.

However, should he achieve it, there would be consequences and he had made his peace with that fact.

He gripped Executioner tighter and the Black veins shone on it before he and Emily kicked off the ground.

She went right towards Arya while he went for the point where the tendrils connected to her feet and slashed at it in an attempt to cut her down to size, however, the tendrils stitched back together almost immediately.

\'What a dilemma you have here\' Tiberius said from out of his Soul World.

Hal rolled his eyes but said nothing as the Fiend was bound to not be done and sure enough, 

\'So are you ready?\' Tiberius asked.

Hal sighed,

\'Yes\'

Tiberius had been the one to instruct him on the advancement of his Bloodline but not simple advancement but also a chance to make use of the authority he had been born with.

Much as he did not like the buff Demon, Hal had to admit he appreciated the instructions.

Granted, Tiberius himself already said that was why he was there.

*Bang*

*Bang*

Emily had summoned her Cosmic Armament and Hal was a little surprised to see it was a large Blue War hammer with which she battered at Arya who repelled her constantly with her Pentagram shield.

The effect of the shield was weaker in close combat and it couldn\'t regurgitate attacks.

Arya sneered and then spread her arms.

The pentagram spread even wider and would have blasted Emily out of the air if she was not already falling back down anyway.

Then Arya raised her arms upward and the Pentagram followed and spun slowly in the air as it expanded even more. It expanded enough to cover up the Clearing with its shadow 

As it spun, the Flame Demons whose Blood essence could not be reaped by the Blood Knights even after the effects wore off, on account that it had been burnt from the combustion, began to bleed.

The cracks on their body or dismembered parts that had been glowing orange now turned Blood Red and were sucked up into the slowly spinning pentagram.

The Great family forces who had been killed by their colleagues turned mindless puppet flame demons, whose Blood Essence the Blood Knights had not gotten to absorbing, had their Blood Essence sucked up as well.

The still-active Demons who fought Hal\'s forces were having their essence absorbed as well and even then they continued to fight.

As it turns out, You don\'t need Blood once you\'re dead.

All the Plebeian family heads, all of whom had been killed, all except the two Runemasters, had their Blood Essence siphoned as well.

As for the Runemasters who were still alive and stabbed into the ground by the Edgar brothers were stabbed with sharp tendrils that branched out from the ones keeping Arya airborne, after which their essence was siphoned as well.

Every Plebeian who got resources from her had been marked and as they were all on the battlefield, the tendrils sought them out, stabbed them and their essence were siphoned into the Pentagram.

The Flame Demons who had followed the escaped Great family forces into the city had caused a lot of chaos and attacked so many denizens and even after their essence was siphoned, they continued.

Not for long of course, they had already come to the end of their use so Arya no longer powered them, and while they continued to fight for a short while, they eventually ran out of juice and crumbled.

Arya stretched her hand towards Sassy and the Serpent began to lost towards her. At that point, she smiled towards Hal and he realized at that moment that the failsafe inside his Familiar was not merely to guarantee her obedience when the time came but also to absorb whatever she had as well.

Luckily, Hal had planned ahead and snapped his fingers to dislodged a small Bloody pearl which was the center of the spell.

Once dislodged, Sassy landed back on the ground, unscathed and very angry as she hissed at Arya who was glaring at Hal.

Then the alchemist absorbed the pearl which did not have much to offer as Sassy\'s cultivation was what she now shared with Hal and the pearl could not take that.

Hal would have sneered but because he knew what that pentagram was all about, there was so much more on his mind.

He was about to call for Melinda when he noticed she had left Lillian with Burt and was now at Emily\'s side.

Amelia was advised to still stay away on account of how dangerous it could be.

In that regard, even Marla had returned to Amelia\'s side but she did so with satisfaction as she had at least been able to fight with the big leagues.

Melinda placed her hand on Hal\'s shoulder and Hal smiled at her in comfort.

"What do we do now?" She asked.

"Continue trying to strike her down?" Emily suggested.

She had seen many things but something of this grand scale and malevolent nature was not one of them.

And that was saying something as she had seen Semi-saints in action and witness their might and knew that while Arya\'s cultivation was far from being up to that and she could not possibly achieve what they could, purely with Cosmic Energy, even Semi-saints will be cautious in the face of that pentagram.

She had heard tales of it and caught a glimpse of it in a battle with the Dystopians and so when Hal said what it was, he was only confirming those things,

"It\'s a Ritual. A Devil Ritual. And the Pentagram is its center.

She\'s been casting Demonic spells for this. It\'s how she was able to absorb Blood Essence from far away distances.

As long as she knew where the battle was happening, the Pentagram spell will seek it out." He said.

"When you say Devil Ritual, you mean..." Melinda started.

"Yes, I mean Devil as in me, Devil. Or at least an imitation. There are tribes in the Dystopian that worship Demons and they all defer to the Lord of Demons, The Devil" Hal said and did not add that the one they deferred to was his mother.

There would be time for that later.

This explained why he had noted reverence in the Master\'s words when she accused him of being the Devil that attacked the Holger Estate.

\'She probably thought I was just using the name flippantly and hated that\' he thought.

"All the more reason to strike her down now" Emily said with a slight frown.

Hal shook his head, 

"As long as that Pentagram is still spinning above her head to absorb, there is nothing we can do to stop it. It is not really her powering it and that is why it is sacred to Demon/Devil worshippers. They feel secure with it.

I reckon only a Saint is higher can interrupt a Ritual of this caliber."

"So what do we do?" Emily asked

Hal smiled but it was a hard one as though he was gambling and not entirely sure of success, 

"It might look bad but it also gives me time to try something and as this is a Devil\'s Ritual, I might as well borrow its energy and my plan just might work"

With that, Hal sat on the ground cross-legged and a pentagram of Devil Energy surrounded him as he sunk into his soul world and Delve into his Bloodline.