With the cries of the dead rising to the heavens, I began to walk towards the sky. Without the Heavenly Beast Tamer Title giving me the nature of the Moon Fox, I was not able to rise to the sky as easily as before.
Then the weight of the dead was being added to my body, and so, the fact that I was standing meant I was burning a ridiculous amount of Anima to keep me upright.
If I were an Adept, then I would not be able to bear this cost, but as an Arcanist, I could hold this cost without breaking.
However, as the Title took from me, so also did they give. Storm Bearer was creating a storm overhead, and I was the one who could hold this storm. I had the memories of the Hollow Avatar, and I knew how it could harness the lightning and make it a part of my body.
So, I did the same thing here. The gathering storm cloud above had stretched for more than ten thousand meters, and every second or so, it was adding a hundred meters to its circumference.
I linked my body to the storm, and I took a step into the air, and the storm above fell a few meters. I had made the storm above the source of the lightning in my body, and in this manner, the storm began to drag me up slowly with each step that I took... but I was now really heavy, and the storm kept descending until it covered the dead and me.
My red hair brushed across my face, longer than I expected before it rose into the air, and behind me, the chains of blood resembled a cape before it extended into the storm cloud, filled with shrieking souls.
And then something strange happened to the storm cloud: the moment the souls entered it, they began to cry, and their tears fell to the ground like a rain of blood.
When the blood rain touched the ground, each drop entered the soil like seeds, and they germinated. In a few seconds, they had grown into a field of crops that resembled wheat, but instead of wheat, the crops were filled with screaming skulls.
I glanced down below, knowing I had seen this vision when I was dead, and I believed I had been looking at the realm of the dead; never did I think I would be the one who would create this transformation in this world.
The plants were drawing vitality from the earth, leaving everything below to become barren, and I shuddered when I felt a wave of cold vitality pour into my body, and my heart stopped beating.
It was then that I realized that as long as there was life for these plants to draw upon, it would be hard for me to die, despite the disadvantage of bearing this Title.
I also knew that this was a blessing given to me by Death, and was not part of the power of my Title, at least for now. She knew that I intended to wipe out every mage in the Conclave, and for such bounties of death... a superior blessing was required.
A grim smile touched my face. If the Conclave believed they were going to make this continent a home for demons, then they would be faced with something else.
∞
I looked ahead of me, and with the Mark of the Consort, I was able to borrow the senses of the tens of thousands of the dead chained to my soul, and I could see everything at the same time.
The dead could perceive the living like a bright torch in the dark, and so I was able to find the traces of the conclave more easily than before. With a speed that would terrify anyone who was watching this eldritch storm of blood, the storm vanished to the east, leaving a trail of screaming skulls behind, as the world was beginning to change forever.
I reached my first target in fifteen seconds, a Conclave staging train, strung out along the coast road below me, hundreds of black-and-crimson robes moving east, and they could hardly react before they perished. One moment, they were moving under the light of a dull morning sun, the next a bloody storm appeared overhead, filled with red lightning and the shapes of thousands of screaming souls.
A rain of blood poured down upon them, draining their spirit and breaking their souls, just as a field of screaming skulls was erupting from the ground around them.
A glance at them was enough to open the cloud above me, and cold red lightning came down in a sheet a quarter-mile wide.
In a fraction of a second, all of them were burnt to ashes, and my chains fell down and swept through the ashes, and it tore three hundred souls from their remains, and brought them screaming into the sky.
The weight on my soul grew heavier, but I did not slow. I moved east, and the storm followed me even as it was expanding.
I reached the next target in twenty seconds. A fortress, newly built, its walls still raw with fresh magic. Conclave Adepts manned the battlements, their spells already forming, their eyes fixed on the approaching storm. They had seen me coming; of course they had seen me coming; the screams of the dead were carried by the winds miles ahead of me.
They had prepared, but it did not matter, as my storm descended and the fortress melted. The stone ran like water, the wards shattered, and the mages inside were crushed before they could scream. I did not stop to count. The chains swept through the wreckage, and more souls joined the chorus.
The rain of blood fell, and the skull-fields spread. The storm was growing, and I was growing with it. Every death fed the weight on my soul, but every death also fed the storm. The red lightning was brighter now, the clouds thicker, the rain heavier. The skull-fields were spreading faster than I could track, their screaming mouths opening to the sky.
More dead vitality flooded into my body, and I could not help but assume the shape of a Titan as my body expanded, and my red hair grew longer until it billowed like a cloud behind me. My present height reached sixteen feet and slowly kept growing.
My skin became incredibly pale, and I discarded my Acolyte Robes to wear a robe of scarlet, filled with eldritch runes I could not understand, but those runes... were laughing.
I looked down at the continent below me, and I saw the storm had already covered a region, and it was still expanding.
"Good," I said. The word was a whisper, but it carried the weight of tens of thousands of souls.
I moved further east, as the next target entered my eyes, since I was no longer satisfied with pursuing the rabble, and a city was my next destination.
This city was now a Conclave stronghold, the largest I had seen yet. The walls were high, the wards were thick, and I could feel the presence of powerful mages within, Adepts, maybe even an Arcanist.
I looked down at the city, and I felt the cold thing in my chest pulse. This was what I had been waiting for. This was where the real fight would begin.