Julius knelt on the ground as he looked at his arm. That black fireball was incredibly painful. It was corroding the insides.
Julius' arm was burning, and that pain felt like reality itself was tearing his arm apart. It was such intense pain. It burned, and it burned.
Holding his shoulder as the black flames ate his flesh, he carefully didn't touch his left arm as to not spread to his right one. Julius had noticed that the flames had a weird property. It didn't just burn normally, it also spread quickly.
Looking at the end of the parking lot, opposite the elevator where he currently was, he was looking at his car.
Deciding to run, he arrived in moments, his speed faster than when he punched Claude, making him become just an afterimage.
Arriving at his car, he opened the door and reached for a secret space inside the glove compartment.
It had a small flask filled with a blue liquid, this blue liquid if put to be sold in the magical world at any place around the globe, it could be sold for a country. Julius would bet that it could settle the USA's debt if added two more. Maybe even just one would do.
The reason for that was because the blue liquid is actually liquid mana.
Mana.
A rare type of energy used in 1 BC and before. The passing from 1 BC to AD 1 was the mark for when mana stopped being produced. It didn't completely vanish, but the magical creatures started to die faster. Like plants are able to transform some types of matter and gases into oxygen, the magical creatures are responsible for transforming the world's mana.
But differently from what plants do, magical creatures generate mana by working in the balance of things. As they need to use mana to generate more mana.
It used to run free in the air, people breathed it and became stronger, witches and wizards could draw it directly from the atmosphere and execute spells. A time almost forgoten by most, but that every magical creature craved for.
No one knows what really happened to the world stopped producing mana, magical creatures didn't die all at once. They still exist in some parts.
Like Nicholas, Claude, and other types of creatures are all spread across the world.
Nowadays mana was never seen, the last time someone saw or used mana was before the first World War. Well, not seen in public, that is.
Mana actually got so rare, that indeed, if the USA offered to pay their debt with liquid mana, even in a small amount like inside the flask, people would seriously cogitate the matter.
Mana can be used in diverse ways. Spells, vitality restoration, incantations, etc. All nice things in the magical world.
In Europe, where magical beings were more concentrated, people had to sacrifice magical creatures to create new enhanced weapons, or to gather energy to fuel spells. It was a barbaric sight, to see the ritual.
Though people rarely resorted to those means, and others would severely punish those who did, as in doing so would scarce magical creatures. New ones couldn't be made, as the new artifacts created could replace a magical creature in the balance between the races, or that energy lost.
What made it inevitable to restore the balance, is the fact that not always, creating more magical creatures will give a good result. When Vampires tried to create others to restore this balance, the world entered in chaos, examples were the World Wars, they were both results of experiments to try and restore the magic.
But Vampires that were created, as the easiest to reproduce due to their bites being able to transform normal people, started to wither. They couldn't last weeks after being turned.
Vampires were also the main race that lived after the balance broke. That's why they were the ones who got to try to restore the magical world.
The withered Vampires became ashes in the sun, that's how legends were born about a Vampire's weakness being the sun when it wasn't quite the case.
'Fun' fact; Nazis were experiments that didn't quite work out. Nazis actually had a partially good plan, it was to kill every other race, magical or not. This way they could create their own balance, a one-sided balance, as if there was only one race, it wouldn't need to divide equilibrium other races. And it wasn't just blacks, jews, and homo$exuals they killed. It was anyone that didn't fit their criteria.
Of course, the other races didn't like that, so war broke loose. If Nazis won, most would be wiped out from the earth. Then there were those in the Allies and the Axis. That's how it all went.
'Well, that's what people told, at least.' thought Julius.
He had already drank the flask with liquid mana, his magical energy, which is different from mana, was already combating the black flames.
The difference is that his arm was not in its original place. He had already cut it off as to not allow more flames to spread through his body. The small sparks that penetrated his bones, though, were almost on his shoulder, so he had to cut it short, and it still was left with places for his magical energy to fight with.
The part of his arm that Julius cut was left on the floor, but without the magical energy from the main body to supply its energy to keep burning, the black flames had already disappeared, leaving a piece of burnt meat, muscles, and bones.
Reaching for a shirt in the back seat, Julius covered the piece of meat with the clothe and threw it in the trunk.
Looking at where he last saw Claude, Julius stared at the floor that still had burnt footprints.
"What the hell made you go crazy like that?" Julius wondered out loud.
Claude had actually disappeared after firing that black fireball. Julius only saw a blur as Claude did so.
After staring at the spot for a few minutes, Julius got inside the car as he started the engine. His car a black and white Mustang GT, roaring loudly.
When Julius had set the gear shift for a reverse, he remembered something.
Demetrius.
What happened to that dude?