Chapter 20: Mid Grade Bloodline.

[The path of the sovereign is one of conquest, bloodshed, and righteous justice. You have slain 12 First Awakening Peak Grade Snake-kin. +1,500 Sovereign Points for each. +1,000 for contributing to the death of an Aura Awakening Mid Grade Snake-kin.]

[You have gained 19,000 Sovereign Points.]

Kren was almost itching to pull up his status page and watch those numbers roll in. It was as if these Snake-kin had simply delivered themselves to him on a platter of gold, ready for harvest. Though from what he could tell, he’d only received a partial reward for Bunaya’s death, since Toa had landed the killing blow. He’d have to make sure he was the one finishing things next time.

Still, nineteen thousand points would make a real difference — because by now, Kren hadn’t just seen what the system could do for him. He’d lived it. Any lingering worry that this was some kind of unearned shortcut had long since evaporated. He was, in every sense of the word, becoming enamored with this way of growing stronger.

Before he reached the gates, the rest of Lasthold — really just the Black Panther and Snow Leopard clans at this point — poured out to meet him. They parted around their king without hesitation, ignoring the blood still drying on him, following his every step with fervent, hopeful eyes. For a moment, the weight of their expectation settled over him like a vice around his throat — one he could neither shake off nor outrun. He paused, looked out at the crowd gathering around him, then at the freed captives being led over the hill, chains finally gone. He smiled, remembering how often he’d watched his father, and Bernice, do exactly this.

Felines were a species that thrived on reassurance, affection, affirmation. But more than anything, this was a victory — and his people needed to feel it as one. Morale mattered, especially given everything still bearing down on them.

"The enemy crept up on us while we slept." Kren’s voice started low, but in the silence blanketing the crowd, he might as well have shouted it. He kept his expression hard, which wasn’t difficult given the storm of emotion still churning in his chest.

"They poisoned our rice fields under cover of night — cowards, slithering in the dark. And then they put chains on our brothers and sisters! Tore children from their mothers and fathers and sold them across this bloody empire like cattle. Like crops for merchants to trade!"

Someone growled low in their throat. Another hissed. Aura spilled out across the gathered crowd, thick with shared rage.

"They meant to send a hundred and seventeen feline souls to their deaths — to breach our gates and poison every last one of us." The crowd gasped, and whatever restraint had held their anger in check finally gave way.

"They were going to poison our river, then send our own people back to us carrying plague hidden in their blood. Those snakes are the worst of our enemies, and today they proved there is no sky under which N’kora and N’Ale can exist side by side." Kren paused, his eyes burning with something close to hatred.

"Either we end them, or they end us. I am done running. I am done cowering in fear. Aren’t you?" By now the freed jaguars had already been brought down into the town proper — Aki and Fima worked fast, it seemed.

"I leave tonight to find us allies, because we cannot do this alone, no matter how much we wish we could. We cannot save the rest of our fellow feline clans unless we become exactly what the N’korans have always been feared for. We must unite. We must fight back. Because at this point, I would rather die fighting the dragons and their poisonous servants than spend one more day beneath their heel!

"Ten years too long under their tyranny. Ten years too long denied our birthright. So here is what I promise you, my people, in the war to come: there is no more running. Our backs are against the sea now. We have no choice left but to fight — no choice left but to die. And if that is the choice in front of us... then let us burn it all to the ground!"

Kren left it there. His people roared his name back at him, something closer to fury than celebration spreading through the crowd. Days of quiet dread had finally crystallized into the same conclusion he’d already reached himself. There would be no escape. No middle ground. Fight, or die. It was good, in its own grim way, to see they’d arrived at the same answer he had.

He left the crowd to their own momentum — Bernice would handle whatever came next. For now, he needed to get cleaned up, prepare to leave, and above all, find somewhere quiet to work out exactly how he wanted to spend his Sovereign Points. If Ruhu’s information held true, securing the Storm Eagles’ loyalty meant dealing with their Lyndwyrm alpha problem — and he had no idea how strong that beast actually was. He’d need every advantage he could buy.

He wound his way back through town to the townhouse, and to his room. The moment the door shut behind him, he pulled up his status page, weighing what to improve before the trials ahead. He wanted to be certain, this time, that he wasn’t second-guessing his choices. And after coming to a conclusion, he went ahead and made his decision.

[10,000 Sovereign Points Used. Your Black Lion Bloodline Has Advanced from Low Grade to Mid Grade.]

A ripple of Aura tore through him with the fury of a thunderstorm. Kren’s back arched, held captive by energy that seemed to be rewriting him down to the cellular level.

What was a bloodline, really, at the end of it all? The power was never bound only to the crest. It was family, and recognition. The pull of home, and the weight of ancestry. It was the story of the beast slumbering inside you.

It was love and hatred. Rivalry and an ancestral grudge. The touch of a lover, the counsel of a father. The soft embrace of a mother, and the cold bite of a blade when your own brother buries it in your back.

Kren found himself standing in a vast, empty space — everything around him swallowed in darkness. The only presence he could sense waited directly ahead. The darkness itself. Or something wearing its shape.

Eyes opened in the black, and a pressure unlike anything he’d ever felt pressed down on him from every direction. That was when he understood — the darkness wasn’t darkness at all. It was fur. Fur so black it devoured every last trace of light around it.

And around those massive, golden eyes, the darkness moved — thicker, denser, resolving at last into a mane. The Black Lion. The sovereign bloodline of all felines. His bloodline.

Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the vision was gone.

Kren found himself on his hands and knees, breathing in ragged, strained wheezes. A pungent odor clung to his clothes and skin — a foul brown sludge that seemed to have forced its way out of his own body. He shook uncontrollably, unable to stop himself from asking, out loud, to no one.

"What in the hell just happened?"