Blood Magus Chapter 77

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The first thing Zeth did was try to make a knife.

With the little bit of practice he had with Ephemeral Bloodforge, he drew a larger quantity of blood out of the slice on his arm, feeling a distinct cold spread through his body as he slowly drew blood out of it—something he was relatively used to already, with how Sanguine Renewal did something similar. It was far more difficult to control the big glob of liquid suspended in the air, taking all of his concentration, but he managed to at least hold it still for a few moments as he tried to figure out how to go about the next step.

For whatever reason, Zeth hadn’t really considered that when the Skill said he could shape the blood to his desires, he’d have to do the shaping. He wanted to make a knife, but what exact motions would he have to go through to turn this big, wobbly ball of liquid into one?

Pushing his mind to its limits, he attempted to push one side out to make a cylindrical shape in order to create a handle, but it didn’t really turn out the way he wanted. A part of the suspended ball of blood did extend outward now, but it wasn’t a clean cylinder he could hold on to—rather, it was a bent, wobbly, mess of a shape that looked more like a tumorous growth than the handle of a knife. And as he worked, little droplets of blood kept breaking off from the main ball, floating through the air like they were completely unaffected by gravity, and Zeth had to turn his attention to them to pull them back toward the main sphere.

It wasn’t turning out all that great, but he’d just have to deal with it. So next, he turned his attention toward forming the blade—which would unfortunately be much harder.

Thankfully, though, as he did, Zeth received a notification.

[Ephemeral Bloodforge’s Rank has increased to 1.

+1 Skill Point. You have 5 Skill Points.]

Instantly, controlling the blood felt significantly easier. Glancing over the Skill’s description, he saw that Ranking it up would increase his control by ten percent, and he’d also get a bit extra from his Shaping, so hopefully it wouldn’t stay this difficult to create things out of blood for long. Plus, even with this little bit of practice he had, he already felt like he was getting used to the new system of magic he was interacting with.

So he redoubled his focus on trying to form a blade for this knife. The glob of blood wobbled in the air, his ‘handle’ threatening to break apart as he manipulated it, but he managed to keep everything together as he thinned it out and tried to form something that could at least be considered a blade.

Once he got the basic shape down, he worked on trying to sharpen the edge. He thought at first it was surprisingly easy to do so, simply mentally pushing on both sides to make the blood as thin as it could be in a single area, but when he tried to do that same trick further up the blade, he saw that the spot he’d just sharpened slowly began fattening back out, losing the sharpness he’d just given it. It would be borderline impossible to make this entire blade able to cut into something if, every time he stopped focusing on one portion of it, it thickened and lost all the effort he’d put into it.

He tried for a while, only seeing marginal progres as he slowly became more used to how the Skill worked, eventually just giving up and deciding to solidify the implement and see how it looked.

So, after spinning it around in front of him to make sure it didn’t have any major flaws, Zeth pushed around in his mind until he found the mental movement to turn the blood into a rigid object, doing so and watching as the liquid quickly stopped wobbling under his flawed telekinetic force, and instantly dropped, clattering to the ground.

So it wouldn’t still be considered his own blood after he turned it solid. Good to know.

He bent over and reached down to pick the knife up.

“Zeth?” Astrys called from the other room. “What was that noise?”

“I’m practicing a new Skill,” he called back.

She came walking out from the hallway as he grabbed the knife, feeling its strange surface. It felt completely hard, not even slightly wet, and still warm from being inside his own body. The material was almost similar to the smoothness of steel, only, his knife was certainly not smooth. It was covered in bumps and warps from his imperfect forging, not to mention the natural constant wobbling of the blood even when he wasn’t trying to move it around. Looking at the blade, he found it snaking back and forth as it ran upward, tipped by a dull point. The whole blade was dull, for the most part, aside from a couple sharp points that seemed like they may have been able to do some damage.

“What is your new Skill?” Astrys asked as she approached him.

He showed the knife to her. “It’s supposed to let me make things out of my own blood. Though, I’m not very good at it yet.”

Feeling the blade with his thumb, he found that, as he suspected, only those few sections of the edge were very sharp. Though, the sections that felt sharp felt very sharp. Unfortunately, he still didn’t think a knife that was only sharp on tiny little portions of its blade would be particularly useful in combat. But it got him thinking.

“That is…your blood?” Astrys asked.

“Yeah,” he said, holding it out to her. “Wanna see it?”

She hesitantly grabbed the knife, looking down at it as she turned it around in her hands. “Certainly an interesting Skill of yours. You have to remove the blood from your body yourself?”

“Yeah, watch.” He held up his arm, flexing his mind to draw a few droplets of blood out from his arm. With the practice he’d gotten from the knife, doing something like this felt far, far easier. He held them suspended in the air, spinning them in a circle to demonstrate his powers. Then, he held out his hand under them and solidified them, allowing the three balls to fall into his palm. “I’m getting better at the small stuff, but making something actually useful is a lot harder.”

She looked back down at the knife. “That is gruesome.”

“C’mon, the knife doesn’t look that bad, does it?”

“No, the blade is fine. I am speaking of your Skill. Using your own blood to form weapons is…I do not know if I could do such a thing.”

“Nah, it’s not bad. Doesn’t hurt all that much.”

She stared at him for a moment. “I do not believe you realize how strange you are.”

“Hm?”

“Not in a bad way. But compared to everyone else…” She frowned. “...Nevermind. So you can make anything you like out of blood?”

“As long as I figure out how to. The stuff only lasts for a minute, though. Then it’s supposed to melt away.”

“I see. Do you mind if I test the hardness of your knife, then?”

“Go ahead.”

She adjusted her grip, holding the handle in one hand and the blade in another, and flexed her arms slightly, pushing to snap the blade in half. She clearly wasn’t pushing very hard at first, but slowly began straining harder and harder. Soon enough, cracks began forming in the blade, and after a few seconds, as Astrys’s biceps began straining under her skin, it snapped in half.

Damn, Zeth thought, staring at her. She is…

She held the two pieces of the knife up. “That seemed to hold up quite well.”

He blinked, the thought escaping from his mind. In its absence, the weakened fear aura that still slightly permeated his thoughts reminded him of the way she may use that strength to tear into his chest and rip his heart out. He pushed those thoughts from his mind, knowing them to be false, and nodded. “Um, right. You think it’d be good in a fight?”

“I am not entirely sure. I would say, from the experience I have in your world, this material is stronger than your wood, but weaker than your metal. Is that good?”

Zeth chuckled. “That’s not very specific. There’s quite a wide range between wood and steel.”

She frowned. “I am not sure I could be more specific. I can only feel a small difference between the two.”

“Ah. Well, even that much info is good.”

As he spoke, Zeth saw the two halves of the knife in Astrys’s hands begin to shake, like they were struggling to stay together. She glanced down at them, looking startled as they slowly began to melt, like ice left out in the sun, turning back into a liquid that dripped between her fingers and onto the ground.

Astrys bent over to try and set the melting objects on the stone, but within just a second or two, she was just holding a pool of blood, no solid objects in sight.

She allowed the rest to fall to the ground, leaving her hands stained a slightly deeper shade of red than they normally were. “As I stated before. Gruesome.”

“Hm. I guess it is kinda messy.” He crouched down, staring at the inert liquid. “I wonder if I could keep reusing this same blood to make more stuff.”

“...I feel that you are too comfortable around blood.”

He looked up at her. “Hm?”

“Does it not make you uncomfortable? Using your own blood in such a way? Using others’ to fuel your rituals?”

“I mean, no, not really. I guess I can see how it would gross some people out, but aren’t you a general? Shouldn’t you be pretty used to seeing blood?”

“Soldiers do not fight to the death every day. We do not even fight every month. If you are lucky, you may even go your entire time as a soldier not seeing a single conflict. Fighting and spilling blood is a rare occasion. I have seen blood many times, but when I have, it has been on some of the worst days of my life. You see it every day, as a part of your typical routine. You spill the blood of others, and rather than wiping it off of your armor in an unsuccessful attempt to erase all reminders of the horrible event you just witnessed, you collect it, store it, and use it in your rituals. And now you draw your own blood, your lifeforce, out of your body willingly, playing around with it and using it to create weapons which you will use to spill yet more blood.”

“...You really sound like you hate my Class.”

She shook her head. “I do not hate it. But from my perspective, you seem like you are torturing yourself on a daily basis.”

“Well, I certainly don’t think I’m torturing myself.”

“Exactly. I fought because I had to. You fight because you like fighting. I have not interacted with many humans, but I feel that it is unlikely there are many more out there that are like you.”

“C’mon. You’re making me out to be some deranged serial killer.”

She shook her head. “I did not mean that to be an insult. It is…inspiring, in a way, to see someone derive happiness and enjoyment from the life I despised so much. In a certain way…In a certain way, I am captivated by the way you act.”

Before Zeth could think of what to say in response, Astrys nodded, setting her shoulders.

“Anyway. That was an interesting Skill. I am intrigued to see how you use it in battle. However, I should continue my duties in renovating the base.”

And with that, she turned and began walking away.

Zeth watched her leave. He couldn’t explain it, but he got a strange feeling after every interaction they had. And as Friend of the Unhallowed Ranked up, the feeling only seemed to grow more intense. He wasn’t entirely sure what it was, though.

Regardless, he needed to keep practicing. He looked down at the pool of melted blood as she disappeared into one of the rooms, and began trying to exercise his telekinetic control over it. However, nothing happened.

He frowned. So he’d need to use fresh blood for every creation. Disappointing, but not unexpected. In that case, it would probably be best to try and figure out what he could make during combat that would take as little effort as possible, and that would be a lot harder to mess up than an entire knife would. So, he got to work.

As the night stretched on, Zeth ended up managing to Rank Ephemeral Bloodforge up once more, bringing it to Rank two. It was nice to earn another Skill Point and make his work a bit easier, but the big milestone he reached was finding a way to make something actually useful with the Skill.

Sitting in the corner of the room, he held his arm up, continuing to practice it over and over in an attempt to perfect the process.

First, he drew a small string of blood from his veins. Considering how many times he’d made these things, he needed them to be small so he didn’t take too much. With the bit of liquid suspended in the air, he slowly pulled on either end, making it long and thin, like a straight, smooth twig. Once it was the right shape, he turned his attention to the tip, pressing on it with his full mental effort in an attempt to sharpen it like he did the knife.

The issue with sharpening the knife was how, right after he moved from one part of the blade to the next, the part he’d just worked on would quickly lose its shape and all his work would be undone. But with this object, there was only a single point that needed to be sharp. And, he remembered, the couple sections along the knife’s blade that had retained their sharpness had been extremely so. So…

Once he felt like this object was sufficiently pointed, he continued pushing on it to hold it in place, then made the mental movement to turn the floating blood into a rigid object. Quickly, it solidified, dropping down into his ready hands, and he finally let up his pressure. He looked it over, examining it for mistakes, and found none. In his hands was, essentially, a large needle, with a section to grab on to, and a sharpened point fit for stabbing. 

Slowly, he held it in one hand and brought his finger up to the point to test its sharpness. This was the real test. With the barest amount of pressure, he pushed his finger up against the needle’s point, and pain shot through his nerves. He pushed slightly harder, and the pain intensified. When he drew his hand away, he found a droplet of blood leaking from his finger.

Perfect. Barely any effort at all and he was able to draw blood—with a rather high Endurance, too.

He’d been timing himself making needles like these. The first time he made one, it’d taken a couple minutes. But with this newest one, he’d finally been able to finish in just under thirty seconds. Certainly still not fast enough to make mid-combat—especially with how much mental effort it required from him—but he was getting closer and closer with each attempt.

This Skill was really looking like it’d pay off. All he needed to do was keep practicing, and keep Ranking it up. It’d take some time, and it’d take some blood. But he was more than willing to pay both in exchange for power.

Alright. Let’s see if we can bring the time below fifteen seconds before bed.