[The Fifth and Sixth Citadels] Twenty thousand bodies and a few Mechs lay in small mounds, their remains stripped of salvageable metals for later use. As the Granians cleared the battlefield, the laborers on the fifth and sixth Citadels were ordered back to the mines and hunting beasts for labor and food for themselves and the soldiers. On the Sixth Citadel, Anya sat under a comically large boulder. In its shade, the Blood Knight reverted to her human form while her suit of Blood Armor dissolved into her skin. The combination of cloned blood, designed from Granian, Ethisian, Soxan, and Yrrejite DNA, created a durable substance perfect for armor and weaponry for the Blood Knight. Unfortunately, it wasn’t hard enough. "Good god, that hurts," Anya winced, holding her side. As she wielded the curved blood blades across the battlefield, one of the clones near her had struck a shard from the tip of their weapon into her side with all their strength. It was already established that these clones had the strength of Ethisians, so breaking into the armor was easy only when it burned all of its strength to do so. The shard didn’t pierce too deep, but it caused a small cut. Moreover, the tip was laced with some kind of poison. The poison brought so much pain that Anya found it difficult to stand. "What the hell was in that shard?" she muttered while tending to herself. One hand held her shirt up while another, tipped with long sticks of blood, moved in and out of her wound. The more she did so, the more shards of metal and black blood spilled out, along with traces of poison. Official source ıs 𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹·𝗳𝗶𝗿𝗲·𝗻𝗲𝘁 Anya coagulated blood into veins, arteries, and capillaries to stop the bleeding, directing the blood away from her wound and back into her bloodstream. Once that was done, she drained the excess poisoned blood from her body and formed it into a ball to study later. Once that was finished, she drained a bit of blood from her body and ignited it, burning her wounds closed until her body completed the regeneration process. However... "I’m not... healing?" she wondered, constantly checking the wound. An injury that would have taken thirty seconds to heal had remained for five minutes without any sign of recovery. Anya burned the wound again, sealing it shut for a while. The pain, however, was irritating and uncomfortable, causing her to wince angrily. "What kind of poison is this?" Anya wouldn’t waste time waiting for her body to heal on its own. It had been five minutes, and the flesh wound had yet to heal. Since she didn’t know too much about Blood Mutant healing, she opted to go to someone she hoped would be a know-it-all. With one hand hovering over her wound, Anya limped past the battlefield, walked straight into the fortress, and looked for the Granians she had arrived with. Finding them, she ordered a ship to be prepped for her, which they did. In another five minutes, the ship departed from the fifth Citadel with a course set for the first Citadel, where, according to her knowledge, Ace and Lord Grim was. Those two were her go-to experts on Blood Mutant matters, so hopefully, one of them could analyze her condition and find a way to treat it. Much like the Fifth Citadel, the battle truly began with the arrival of the female Blood Knight. Cherry, like Anya, charged in and attacked first, drawing attention away from the fortress to herself. Cherry took out the Mechs first, knowing well that they would be a thorn in her efforts. There were a total of five Mechs, the other four aiming at her while she leaped on top of the fifth. Like scenes from movies, all four Mechs blasted the fifth in hopes of killing Cherry, and just like in the movies, Cherry leaped off at the last second, scoring an easy kill she didn’t cause. Quickly, she jumped to the fourth, but the other three didn’t make the same mistake twice. Seeing this, the Blood Knight transformed, separating clones from her bloody body. Thirty identical versions of her Blood Mutant form, slightly smaller and shorter than she was, ran through mercenary clones. They moved through the mercenaries like a man moving through a waterfall. The result was bodies dissolved into the acidic bloody clones, a technique of her own, which she had learned with the help of her brother and the Granian she despised, Glissk. The Blood Acid Clones ran through the mercenary clones in a straight line, dissolving as many as they could without taking any damage themselves. When shot, the blasts remained stuck in their bodies and dissolved. Not even energy blasts were a match for the acidity of the Blood Knight’s clones. While the clones kept the mercenary clones occupied, Cherry dealt with the Mechs one at a time until they were all destroyed. Once she did, she ordered the Granians within the fortress to assist her and her thousand Granians. The result was mercenary bodies either blasted, cut in half, drained of blood, or dissolved in acid with no trace left behind. Of the three Humans, Cherry was the least confrontational. Her involvement wasn’t as much as the others, but she still managed to cause a great deal of damage for the Granians to complete the rest. "Blood Mutant," a report was made to Cherry since she was the one responsible for leading the Granians to battle and victory, "the bodies have been piled and salvaged of all usable armor. We have also pulled their ships to port and are taking them apart to add their important components to our ships. You should know that..." "I’m not the one you should be reporting to," Cherry interrupted, her mind focused on completely unrelated topics. "Tell Lord Grim or someone else. You should be reporting to them." The Granian gulped momentarily before nervously sighing, "All communications to the first Citadel have been cut off. We don’t know if it’s on purpose or... we fear that something bad has happened there. They could use our help, but we won’t go without orders. Should we go?"