Isabella's eyebrows shot up, frankly quite shocked that Draco dared to talk back to her, he who had usually been meek and unable even to raise his head in her presence. However, this only fueled her pent-up anger, which exploded beyond its limits, causing her eyes to become bloodshot.
"Qualifications?! You have NONE! YOU ARE ONLY ALIVE TODAY BECAUSE OF THE SACRIFICE OF MY DAUGHTER! HOW DARE YOU, DRACO MORNINGSTAR!" Isabella shrieked with madness, seemingly inches away from directly attacking Draco head-on.
Her words caused the lips of everyone to thin as they knew that the longstanding elephant in the room had finally been brought to the light. None expected Draco to barge in here with a changed attitude, much less for him to provoke this woman head-on, and now it seemed that the issue which had been swept under the rug for over 20 years was going to be brought to the fire today.
Before Draco himself could speak, his mother, Lilith, exploded like a powderkeg and stood up with a black light flaring from her body, her nails elongating menacingly as her features became more demonic.
"ISABELLA MORNINGSTAR, HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO MY SON THAT WAY? DO YOU THINK I DON'T DARE TO KILL YOU AND YOUR CRIPPLED LITTLE SHIT OF A DAUGHTER?!"
Everyone in the room sighed and recoiled slightly, aware that now that one crazy woman had been triggered, it would be the turn for the even crazier one who would even break clan rules for her son to flare up. This issue left many of the elders of the various branches with bitter expressions, wishing they could sneak out of the room while the young ones watched on with youthful ignorance, wondering what the big deal was.
The two women locked onto each other as Isabella's features deformed similarly to Lilith's, but was not as detailed nor with as a strong aura. Just as the two women who stood at the top echelon of the clan were about to face off, two masculine voices with similar cadences spoke.
"Lily (Bella), enough."
One voice was from Dante, who gently patted his wife's voluminous backside with a stern expression, causing her to rapidly calm down and seat herself, harrumphing without looking towards the other side.
On the other side, a similar action was done by a man who was almost a carbon copy of Dante, but with slightly more tired and rugged features, not from age or anything, but simply stress and fatigue. Isabella also snorted and sat down without retracting her full-on glare towards Draco. She resembled a predator who was ready to pounce on her prey, looking forward to the act of chopping him into pieces.
Both men looked at each when their wives sat down, then stood up themselves, walking from their positions to come and stand face to face with one another.
Immediately, a surge of tension emerged within the clan as the elders began to tremble with sweat forming on their brows. Even the clueless young ones became silent and fearful, knowing exactly who those two men were and what it would represent if a conflict emerged from them.
Heck, even Isabella and Lilith, who were previously hostile, became worried and hesitant, wishing they could defuse the situation they had created somehow.
"Dominic…" Dante greeted the man opposite him who was only a quarter of an inch shorter than himself.
"Elder Brother Dante…" Dominic returned the greeting as he stared at the man he used to follow behind day and night, having once looked up to him, now estranged like enemies.
Before both men could make any sort of move, Draco who was nonplussed by the entire show, interrupted them with a sharp tone.
"Father, Uncle Dominic, there is no reason to fight anymore. I've come here to achieve two things apart from taking up my position, which are simultaneously announcements and promises to you all."
Oh?
Both Dante and Dominic tore their eyes off each other and turned to Draco, whose calm and serious demeanor indicated that he was not joking around. As such, despite the tension between them, both brothers shared a look and nodded, with Dante addressing Draco.
"You may speak, son."
Draco slowly cast his eyes over the crowd of arrayed clan members, noting faces that would perish in the upcoming years, that would disappear into obscurity, and those who would rise like rockets.
"As a result of my explorations, I have found a way to simultaneously activate my bloodline and heal my cousin, allowing her to roam the world freely."
BOOM!
Draco's words almost literally caused an uproar as most of the elders stood up from their seats, their faces a mixture of excitement and disbelief.
The younger ones were overwhelmed and confused, half understanding what was being said.
But the most extreme reaction came from four people, being Dante, Dominic, Lilith and Isabella, who showed slightly different expressions in response to this declaration.
Lilith froze and trembled with joy, her eyes misting over. "Is this true my son? Can you really resolve your biggest source of pain and be free?"
Dominic was stunned then pensive. "You… Can you really achieve your words? Can you really heal my daughter?"
Dante breathed heavily, his face flushed. "Son! Can you really achieve your full potential? Can you live up to the prophecy?!"
Isabella trembled with shock and hope, her voice cracking. "You can heal my Gremory? Hurry up, save her! Save her now!!"
Draco watched everyone react like this and finally showed a smile.
Indeed, directly dealing with the issue at its roots was the fastest way to resolve all problems, as well as its entire tree of minor sub-problems usually hidden at the back.
Draco Morningstar, 21 years old and the son of the clan leader Dante and the matriarch Lilith.
A young man like this should be living an idyllic life, pampered beyond measure with such an overly protective pair of parents, probably arrogant and insufferable, not meek and reclusive.
How did he even end up that way?
To answer that, we would actually have to go back to Sigurd and his long speech about the genealogy of the universe.
Because you see… this was something a select part of humanity already knew.
Draco, Eva and Shuangtian knew about this and even more, and so did their clans.
Because they were the inheritors of the humans who escaped the Gerdo Galaxy!
Well, indirectly and very loosely.
Sigurd stopped after stating the outcome of the final battle between races and humanity fleeing to this corner of the universe to repopulate on earth, but he didn't know the details from there… but Draco did.
The escape had not been a safe flight, but rather a calamitous event as the damaged space ark carrying humanity came tearing through the young planet's sky like a dying star, its hull already shredded from the last clash in the Gerdo Galaxy, its interior packed with corpses, fragments and remnants that still carried the echo of terrifying power.
When it entered orbit, gravity raised its sleeves and said 'hold my beer', taking the wheel and pulling the gigantic Death Star-like ship towards the planet.
Pieces sheared off the damaged mothership as whole sections broke away and became fire in the atmosphere.
The main body of it slammed down with enough force to write itself into the planet's memory as an extinction event.
On Earth, later generations would call it a meteor.
Gravity then looked back at its beaten and battered allies then raised a thumbs up, saying 'no need to thank me', while they stood there speechlessly.
The Mothership had been full of more than technology… it had been full of cells, blood, pulverized flesh and bone dust.
All the biological residue of the Gerdo Galaxy Humans and the myriad races they had fought, trapped together in a steel coffin.
Now realistically, on a barren rock with no energy, those cells would have rotted and died.
On the newly born Earth back then, they met something else.
Worldly Energy!
Not to be mistaken for the fictional spiritual energy, though it had similar functions and abilities.
This was the basic energy of the universe, produced from the continued existence of all living and non-living things that constitute a world's operational ecosystem.
When this fundamental form of 'life' energy soaked into the organic remnants, it activated their vitality… because whether it was Sigurd and his ilk or the humans of the previous timeline, everyone utilized ambient worldly and other special energies to manifest their powers.
Continued washing by Worldly Energy kept the cells active, and the potent super powered cells of multiple high level races merged over time the way high pressure turned coal into diamond.
The footsoldiers of both sides fought near the exits/entrances of the space station, and as the weakest, their cells needed the least nourishment before they merged with the remnant of the young planets original species, the dinosaurs.
Due to being near the exit, these cells fell out and scattered into the deep oceans, mud, seeped into stagnant pools and even ancient forests. Over time, with the guidance of nature, they warped into new life forms that filled the empty niches of the planet.
Fish, reptiles, birds, beasts… all of them carried faint, diluted echoes of foreign blood, but no real inheritance.
The mid-grade remnants who fought in the key areas like the engine room, the medical bay, the container storage and so on, behaved differently.
These clumps of tissue had more intact strands of genetic information as they were pieces of lesser elites. Those fused where the impact was the thickest, in the wreckage that became craters and basins.
There, with enough structure left to grab onto, Worldly Energy pushed them into a new mold.
That mold became baseline humanity.
Soft skinned, short and weak, nothing compared to what the Original Humans had been… but far more than anything this world could have produced alone, with enough instinct for tools, language, for the almighty wheel.
That was the first generation of modern humans.
Yet, deep in what had once been the core of the ark, where the command decks, observation platform and control rooms had been located, the concentration of blood, will and inheritance had been greatest.
The pressure there, both physical and metaphysical, had been monstrous even before the crash.
When that part of the ark met Earth, it condensed into nine points, nine vortexes.
In each of those vortexes, the scattered cells did not dissolve into mere animals or baseline humans, but were dragged together by supreme power and saturated energy of life, forming nine unique beings from that process.
In later myths, humanity would call them gods, devils, saints, demons, ancestors. The names differed by culture and era, but the truth behind them was the same.
They were the Original Nine.
They looked upon a world full of weak humans who had inadvertently stolen a chance at existence from their enemies, and a planet overflowing with energy just waiting to be shaped.
So they claimed it and Earth became territory of the human race much later after humanity had already developed basic society past the tribal era.
The Original Nine wielded power near-limitless and akin to that of Gods, but they could not create from nothing. They did not have the numbers to rebuild an entire galactic-tier race alone, nor did they dare return to Gerdo Galaxy and declare themselves openly.
So they chose a different approach by codifying the parts of their inheritance that could be passed on.
They took the chaotic mess of traits and instincts that formed their powerbase and carved out organized frameworks from them.
These special genetic routes and embedded 'permissions' allowed certain descendants to utilize a fraction of the power of the Nine Godlike beings with their mere 'mortal' shell.
Those frameworks formed bloodlines, and those bloodlines came together to form the Lineages.
Each of the Nine crafted lineages according to their own concepts and personalities, either mating with 'normal humans' or carefully implanting their bloodlines in compatible options.
Unfortunately, power and scarcity walked hand in hand.
A bloodline was something that would dilute and vanish in a few generations, especially one with this level of power.
Their clans were the direct descendants of the Original Nine, and the blood in their veins allowed them to utilize special abilities and powers that ancient humans called magic, witchcraft, shamanism, and so on, but modern humans would call superpowers!
But with time and the exodus of the Original Nine from earth back into the Gerdo Galaxy using the repaired mothership, the power and capability of the lineages faded away.
That was why the tales of dragons, knights and wizards also faded away over time, becoming nothing but speculative fiction in the modern day.