Allen’s Office in the Silver Association’s Base

Allen feels a smile reaching his lips as he looks at the picture of Aria and Scarlet sitting in the middle of a classroom full of students. Students that all look rather tense. Which makes sense, considering that Scarlet’s identity as White’s daughter has been confirmed by both the Red Knight’s son and White herself, and that’s not even factoring the psychopath’s daughter sitting in her lap.

They look just like a little sister sitting on her big sis’s lap.

Then there’s the fact that his soon-to-be daughter seems to smile far more often when the little girl is near her. Something that Allen can’t help but chalk up to her blood lycan instincts connecting her to her blood relative.

Allen honestly feels happy for both of them. Because long before Scarlet had met Aria, he’d felt pity for the girl. A girl who was born in a lab through her father’s genes mixed with a random person’s. Something that had below a 0.00001% chance of working when using the DNA of someone as powerful as a Knight, and always corrupts the blood of the parents when it fails. Meaning that if Blue’s specialty didn’t happen to be healing and regeneration, then they would’ve never gotten him to have a child.

But thanks to his magic, he was able to give them hundreds of thousands of gallons of blood to use for his DNA in which they simply tried over and over again for decades before succeeding after spending what must’ve been trillions of credits. And then immediately having the DNA reclaimed by Blue to stop them from trying again now that he’d fulfilled his duty by law.

Never once did the man ever actually care about his daughter, simply leaving her with the government before Blue’s own father took her in. For a price.

Allen shakes his head as he remembers the first time he heard about this. The first time the public heard about this.

Then there’s Blake…

Allen’s thoughts are interrupted when his terminal buzzes, following which Sage’s face pops up on it and she says, “We’ve been informed by the General of the Military that Satan’s forces appear to be increasing their activity. Both in and outside of their territory.”

That’s not good…

“Furthermore, the undead up north at the Arctic are starting to become more frequent, and there have been sightings of stronger undead amongst them,” Sage states, making Allen shoot to his feet and shout, “Shit!”

That means Damien is waking up from his slumber!? That damned ghoul is still alive after all!

Allen immediately begins to pace back and forth in front of his desk, unsure of how he should respond to this news. Because ever since half a century ago, when Black and Purple teamed up to go after the ghoul, he hasn’t been seen since. But now that he is most likely returning, the entire war effort will be turned on its head.

After several seconds of pacing, Allen stops and raises his arm to look at the screen again as he asks, “Has the General started making preparations yet?”

Sage nods her head on the screen and answers, “He has. But they haven’t been implemented yet. They should be implemented in two days.”

“Good,” Allen says before sitting down again, only to hear his terminal start buzzing with another call. So Sage nods her head and hangs up to let him take it.

But when Allen sees who it is that’s calling, his grimace only grows worse.

Seriously? Now? They want to try something now of all times?

After a few seconds of debating whether or not he shouldn’t just ignore the call, he finally accepts the call, making one of the very few humans not amongst the Knights with a Title appear on the screen. She has long red hair with glowing crimson eyes and skin as pale as the falling snow outside, and is wearing a mostly black set of armor with streaks of crimson red through it, the armor being made up of grand looking metal plating instead of the generally more modern styles of armor.

“Cipher. We need to talk,” the Bloody Valkyrie declares the moment the call connects as she glares at the man through the screen.

Immediately upon hearing her, Allen lets out a sigh.

This is going to be a pain.

The Bloody Valkyrie is the sole leader of the Garden of Blood Association. One of the very few gender restricted Associations in the entire world, with its only other counterparts being the Iron Mountain Association – an Association created to pursue ‘ascension of the mind’ through removing all desires for their all-male members – and the Golden Retreat – an all-male Association created purely out of spite towards the Bloody Valkyrie.

Allen personally thinks their feud is absolutely ridiculous as it began simply due to a massive argument between the pair of exes that are now the leaders of the two Associations. A feud taken too far. But what can he say? He’s just a Class IV Guardian, while the two of them are Class Vs.

Two of the highest leveled Class V Guardians in the world at that, the two being only a few hundred levels below the Knights.

At least the woman has gotten over her fear of men thanks to him. Now it’s just a discomfort. And the rest of her Association only goes along with it to keep her comfortable and because she’s their Association leader.

“I don’t think we do,” Allen answers while leaning back in his chair, wondering why everyone decided to make today hell.

Not that he hasn’t been expecting this call to come around sooner or later. In fact, he is rather surprised that it took over an entire month since Scarlet reached Class II for her to come calling.

The Bloody Valkyrie’s eyes narrow before she asks, “So you’re going to play that game then? Does this mean I’ll have to go ask her mother directly?”

Allen laughs at that and shakes his head while saying, “Good luck with that!”

There is no way White would ever consider having Scarlet go under an apprenticeship, much less have her join the Garden of Blood. Regardless of if Ava is the strongest human blood magic user in the world.

Ava’s eyes suddenly flash slightly with a bright red light before she coldly states, “We’ll see,” and hangs up the call.

A few seconds pass in silence, following which Allen pulls out a bottle of wine from his storage skill and pours it into a glass that’s sitting empty on his desk. Then he brings the glass up and takes a sip of the wine.

I get the feeling Scarlet’s going to be getting an unwanted visitor soon enough.

He takes another sip of the wine before putting it down on the desk and leaning back in his chair again, briefly thinking back to what he was thinking about before all this began. About the children of the Knights.

About Blake, whose biological mother he’d just gotten off a call with.

I’m not sure who I pity more now. The young girl who was basically abandoned by her father after being born artificially, or Blake, who was somehow born after a one-night-stand between Red and Ava. Purely because the two of them weren’t against having kids when they did it, not actually expecting it to happen.