Sacrifice

Daron saw the Burly man with the red tattoo ring yell loudly as he unsheathed his sword and struck towards Daron who was in the old man's hands, while the other two men also unsheathe their own swords and struck out at his unconscious mother.

The old man moved swiftly, faster than even Sirious could record, and blocked the sword attack towards Daron with a single hand while holding Daron in the other, and an instant later, the man with the red tattoo was death, his neck crushed into pulp by the old man.

However, the old man turned to look over at the two other men, who had already accomplished their task, and also dropped dead with crushed necks a moment later. However, their objective had been achieved.

Daron's unconscious mother had her unguarded head chopped clean off by one sword, while the other chopped off her left arm.

The old man yelled out in rage, grief, pain, and sorrow while holding onto Daron.

For some reason, while Daron was watching this in his mind, his body began to tear up and cry in reality. He had no control over this reaction, since even within his mind he was feeling a sense of deeper loss that even the old man was feeling, even without knowing who the woman actually was other than his mother.

After a few moments of grief, the old man steeled himself as he looked at Daron.

He took out a golden needle and placed Daron on the table by the side of his now dead mother, and began to mumble something, which Sirious could not record and just came on the recording as censored words, before poking Daron's left arm with the needle just enough to rupture a vein flowing precisely, allowing a large amount of blood to flow out.

However, he did not stop his words, and the blood did not spill onto the ground, but flowed around Daron's arm forming patterns similar to the tattoo around the arms of the people he had seen before.

He could see himself twitching, but being unable to move since the old man was holding him down while speaking censored words.

Soon, the blood red tattoo had filled up his entire left arm, even taking up half is chest on the left side, and moving up his neck all the way to his left eye. This even caused his left eyes to he covered in blood.

Suddenly, the old man smiled with deep satisfaction and care hidden within, as he pulled out the golden needle and shouted a single word, which just became a louder beep. All the flowing blood stopped moving and began to change colour. It turned from red to white in an instant, and then slowly changed colour as the seconds passed. From white, to light grey, to dark grey, to black. And it finally stopped at a black that was as black as his mother's.

The old man nodded as he let go of Daron and left the underground room in search for something. However, the changes to Daron did not stop there like the old man had expected, who was no longer there to observe the situation.

The deep blackness suddenly flashed with a hint of gold, which travelled in three droplets towards his left hand, the area just above his chest, and his eye, forming even stranger symbols than the tattoos, before vanishing from existence. Soon, the tattoos also settled within his body without a trace of their existence. Unlike the men, the old man, and his mother, Daron no longer had any trace of the tattoos, expect for the tiny hole from where the incredibly amount of blood poured out from, which quickly healed itself completely, leaving behind pristine baby skin.

Sometime later, the old man returned with a gloomy face and picked up Daron, walking towards the exit. At the exit, stood another person in a hood, who was also holding a child. The two people exchanged looks, and quickly exchanged babies, before the hooded person wrapped up the Daron in a cloth carefully.

Although Daron would normally not be able to see through this cloth, not to mention that he still could not see at all. But through the system's 5 m vision, he was able to see what the old man was doing. He took the man with the red tattoo's sword, and cut off the child's head. Next, he poured some liquid all over the room, before taking two swords and causing fire to erupt from the liquid he had just poured.

Then with a satisfied expression as he looked back at Daron, he walked into the flames and stabbed himself with the sword, dying silently, burning to ashes along with everything in the room while the hooded figure took him out of the underground tunnel, before waiting for the fire to reach a high enough point to begin to reach out of the tunnel.

At this moment, the hooded figure kicked a rock that went and hit a rope that broke and let a larger rock fall, and like an enchanting domino effect, a huge rock and large amounts of soil fell into the tunnel, collapsing it completely, erasing all traces of everything, including her own presence at the scene.

Looking more carefully, Daron could see that she was standing on a few leaves, making sure that no footprints were left on the scene.

She them leapt onto the trees and moved like a monkey, [1] swiftly leaving the scene.

[1] Monké, lol