Bloody Mary, from the name alone, one can deduce that her power must be rted to blood.


    When Yu Chen and Hiromi Jounouchi first came into contact with Queen Mary and her pce, the power she exhibited, although full of ghostly spirits, distortion, and mutation—including the sweet and luxurious enticement from Marie Antote, and the fantasies of Mary Shelley turning into reality—at the end, the source was still blood.


    Those ghostly spirits and twisted mutations were merely the impurities in blood, the sweet enticement was nothing but the essence of fresh blood, and turning fantasy into reality was simply growing the flowers of dreams with heart''s blood.


    In the subsequent battles, Queen Mary never used those two faces that symbolized the Vampire, but whether it was the blood light brought by the mutated insects of Mary Tudor, the pink of Marie Antote''s luxurious pce, or the deep red in front of Mary Shelley''s tranquil desk, their power manifestations varied, but their essence was still blood.


    Considering that the Human Skin Book Queen Mary always sought from Yu Chen was filled with knowledge of the Blood School, it was apparent that her powers must alsoe from the Blood School of the Necromancer.


    Obviously, the inheritance Queen Mary received was very fragmented and even mixed with a bit of the Mysticism School, otherwise, she would not have spent four to five hundred years on a resurrection ritual and still ended up in this ghostly condition.


    And speaking of the Blood School, Hiromi Jounouchi became a Blood Knight of the Blood School, part of theplete tradition of the Eight Great Factions of Necromancy, thanks to the luxurious and enhanced inauguration ceremony arranged by Yu Chen. Perhaps in terms of power, she was not as strong as the hundreds of years of umtion under Queen Mary III, but when it came to the mastery and understanding of blood power, self-taught skills couldn''tpare to the expertise of the Schools of magic.


    Indeed, Hiromi Jounouchi''s promotion to the Crimson Empress on the battlefield did put Yu Chen in a tough spot, but as the ceremony proceeded and Hiromi Jounouchi began to absorb the essence of blood from her own Blood River to strengthen herself, the part of Hampton Court engulfed by her Blood River, which belonged to Queen Mary, was also drawn in, integrating into the ceremony.


    Even because Queen Mary herself was within the range of the ceremony, her essence of blood was absorbed by the ritual, bing the nourishment for Hiromi Jounouchi''s promotion.


    This was the real intent behind Hiromi Jounouchi''s so-called gamble: by employing the promotion ceremony of the Crimson Empress, she sought to plunder the essence of blood power from Queen Mary, aiming to weaken her.


    As the ritual progressed, the essence of blood belonging to Queen Mary was constantly being extracted from her domain and gradually merged into the altar below.


    The magic array on the altar was now filled with Hiromi Jounouchi''s Blood River, but even the Blood River, vast enough to engulf the entire Hampton Court, couldn''t fill these grooves at this moment. That''s because the Blood me burning around Hiromi Jounouchi had already consumed most of the essence from within her Blood River.


    This was the reason why Hiromi Jounouchi was taking a gamble since her umtion was not enough toplete the entire ceremony. If she failed to sessfully plunder the primal matter from Queen Mary, she could very well end up incinerated by the Blood me, with not even her soul remaining.


    As a Blood Knight who had never killed anyone and even assembled her Blood River from the blood of ughtered animals, Hiromi Jounouchi might be the Blood Knight with the least umtion in the entire Multiverse to ascend to the Crimson Empress. Without the blood from the ughter of countless beings, without the resentment from the spirits of innumerable ughters, and merely with blood collected from ughtered animals—which she didn''t even kill by herself—such a Blood Knight was indeed the first of its kind since the birth of the Multiverse.


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    If nothing unexpected had happened, Hiromi Jounouchi would have had no chance of being sessfully promoted to be the Crimson Empress.


    Her greatest likelihood was that she would copse during the ceremony and be saved by Yu Chen, lucky enough to keep her soul intact. But her strength, and even her body, would have been burned to nothing by the Blood me; even Xiao Lan, bound to her soul, would have had a great chance of being affected by the Blood me, facing a dilemma between life and death.


    But she won the bet.


    The Primal Matter from Queen Mary replenished the ceremony''s needs, reigniting the Blood me that was about to burn out. Moreover, due to Queen Mary''s centuries of umtion, as well as the worldwide spread of fear and belief owing to the terrifying reputation of "Bloody Mary," even a golden hue suffused the originally pure Blood me, enhancing its effects.


    The golden-red Blood me burnt Hiromi Jounouchi''s body, which seemed terrifying, but in reality, it was refining her essence.


    Perhaps because of her shallow umtion and her transfiguration aided by Yu Chen''s help, she had obtained the Dragon Bloodline. Though it held deep potential, Hiromi Jounouchi clearly had not yet fully excavated it. Now, under the smelting of the golden-red Blood me, this portion of potential was fully unleashed.


    The impurities in her original flesh and bones were removed, the weaker parts of her human nature and the chaotic and redundant parts of her genes were cleared, to be reced by the pure essence ignited by the Blood me from the giant dragon''s gene pool.


    If someone could see Hiromi Jounouchi''s DNA at that moment, they would have found her original double helix DNA being destroyed, with the vast amount of junk information left by human evolution being deleted. Instead, the dragon genes, refined by the Blood me, were taking their ce, reconstructing into a triple helix gene structure.


    With an additional helix, one can imagine how much more information the genes could carry, and these pieces of information were the source of the Giant Dragon n''s might.


    Based on these triple helix genes, a new body was reconstructed ording to Hiromi Jounouchi''s previous form. Rather than saying the current Hiromi Jounouchi was a human with a Dragon Bloodline, it was more fitting to say she was a giant dragon in human form.


    And the real benefit Hiromi Jounouchi obtained from this ceremony was not the ascension from Dragon-descent to a true giant dragon, but the transformation was meant for her soul.


    The pages of the "Crimson Hymn" separated from the main body, bing sheets of paper wrapping around Hiromi Jounouchi''s soul. The text on the pages was being imprinted onto her soul under the action of the Blood me, which also injected the essence of blood into her, making her soul lean more towards the root of the blood until a qualitative change urred from the quantitative changes.


    This is also why when the Eight Great Necromantic Schools obtained the Book of Inheritance, they could learn the knowledge of other Schools of magic, but in the end, there were still divisions between Schools because the root and Primal Matter were different.


    And with the advancement of the ceremony, a refined body, a purified soul, when these two created a perfect bnce, they would serve as the cornerstone of power, building thedder of ascension, and thus would enable mortals to step on the path to godhood.


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