Bloodshed sat on the ground, surrounded by the five vials.

Freddy waited a bit further away from it, quietly watching the process.

After a few minutes of focusing, Bloodshed finally raised its head. It lifted its bony arms, and with a burst of its will, the vials cracked apart, and the blood floated out from within.

The viscous, shimmering liquid washed over Bloodshed’s bones, absorbing into them. Freddy momentarily witnessed runes of all sorts forming on Bloodshed’s bones as the blood absorbed, and he could even glimpse a few valuable truths about the nature of blood from within.

The moment the blood finished absorbing, a massive, uneven shell of runes manifested into the air around Bloodshed. The inside suddenly became blurry.

With pure shock, Freddy realized that this shell was an exact replica of the ether shell holding Blood Sacrifice—it was the naked transcription of everything Bloodshed was—and it was rapidly changing. The runes along the surface shifted, deepening in their profundity, and the shape of the cage shuffled slightly, like a cloud of bloody truth slowly moving with the wind.

Suddenly, the shifting stopped, and the shell began to shrink, taking the form of a roughly humanoid figure the same height as Bloodshed.

With a gentle yet sinister tinkling, like the sound of drops of blood dripping into a lake, the runes slowly shattered and absorbed into the figure.

And with it, the shape beneath slowly started to form.

A deep brown cloth was the first thing that took clear shape. It appeared profoundly filthy and drenched. It slowly shifted until it was hewed into a hooded shawl. Beneath the hood, he could vaguely make out the formation of a skull. Starting from the head, a skeleton dripping in blood grew into the shawl, revealing nothing but the feet, hands, and the face.

The changes stopped. And finally, the skeletal head’s empty eye sockets started to glow with a dim, sinister crimson light. The light formed two red rings, appearing like pupils in a pool of absolute darkness.

Freddy grinned. “Looking scary as shit there, pal.”

Bloodshed raised its hands, admiring them. “I feel… good… Comfortable.”

“Glad to hear it.” He smile widened. “So… what can you do now?”

It flinched, turning its head to look at him. Suddenly, with a loud metallic clang, a bloody blade formed starting from its left hand. It raised the blade to admire it. Then, it lifted its right hand. The bones on its palm appeared to sweat out sizzling blood. Then, with a swing of its arm, it sent a splash of acidic blood into the nearby wall.

The blood sizzled and smoked, melting some of the stone as it dripped down.

Next, Bloodshed formed a whip of blood. It had the quality of rubber. Bloodshed swung it at the wall. It smacked against the bare stone, leaving deep marks and cracks where it struck.

And finally, Bloodshed appeared to… dry up. The blood along its bones appeared to vanish, and a sinister red light replaced it, smoking out of the shawl like a crimson miasma. In an instant, Bloodshed vanished from where it stood, running around the chamber at incredible speed as it jumped and hopped, spinning in the air with ease. It did also trip a few times, but that was expected, given that this was the first time it was attempting to move like this.

All this time, Freddy watched with eyes wide open.

There were three main paths for the blood affinity—Crimson Mercury, Red Venom, and Rich Blood. But there were other paths, too, although they were significantly less popular.

One of these paths was called Sanguine Gum, and turned blood into a rubbery substance. It wasn’t commonly seen among blood users, but it was by far the most popular non-main path.

Bloodshed appeared to be capable of utilizing all of these forms of blood.

That was utterly insane. This wasn’t a small upgrade to its utility. In fact, it was fair to say that it had reached a completely new level.

With a satisfied smile, Freddy chuckled to himself. “I guess my investment paid off.”

Suddenly, Bloodshed tripped again and fell to the ground. This time, it didn’t get back up.

“Bloodshed!?” he yelped as he jumped to his feet and ran to it.

“It’s all right,” it said as it slowly pushed itself back up. “I appear to have spent my reserves. Apologies, Master.”

“That’s okay, it’s cool. You did good, Bloodshed.” He lifted it, patting it on the back. “You did good. Now go to sleep.”

Freddy thought he heard a small scoff escape Bloodshed’s lips, and in the next moment, the skeleton vanished, melting into the Blood Ring and appearing back in its shell.

The shell had also changed quite considerably.

With a satisfied smile, he sat down and pulled out the power tablet. “Can’t let my pet outdo me, can I now?”

He had studied enough. There was no reason to postpone taking the ability anymore.

He took a deep breath, and focused on the inscriptions on the surface of the tablet. He could feel them respond to his attention, like a magnet trying to pull into his soul. This time, he gave them a push, and just like that, a number of runes flew from the surface of the tablet and rushed into his soul.

The power was far beyond what he expected. The ether he made contact with was so dense it almost felt like it held physical weight.

He groaned at the sudden pain in his eyes and soul, but he refused to pull away. He kept his attention at a maximum, making sure he didn’t miss even a single detail.

Slowly, the shell started taking form in his soul. Its makeup was far more exquisite than any of his other abilities, barring perhaps Adaptive Water Body, but that was a unique exception.

He could sense the intricacies of the ability prodding his comprehension. It was like a puzzle almost, and while he had the answer to most of the inquiries, some details eluded him. The parts he could comprehend flared and appeared accented on the shell’s surface, almost like bold writing on a paper, while the ones he couldn’t comprehend appeared dimmer and dormant.

While it was a bit of a shame, it wasn’t a permanent loss. The dormant runes would still work, just more subtly, and he could always awaken them when he reached the reforging threshold at stage 3—50%.

The whole process felt like it lasted mere minutes, but once he checked the time after finishing, he realized he had actually been sitting there for over thirteen hours. He gave the watch a lopsided grin as he slowly pulled himself up to his feet. “Time to test it out, I guess.”

He removed his clothing piece by piece until he was left in nothing but his underwear. His physique was no longer changing as quickly as it once had, but he could still see some minor changes every now and then. At this point, his muscles and veins were so well defined his body could be used to teach anatomy to medical students.

After finally being done with admiring himself, he focused on the shell. It was a defensive spell that would forge his blood into scales all across his skin. It would also be quite expensive, but that was a fair trade for what he was getting.

Without further ado, he tested the ability. Immediately, he could feel his essence being sucked out of him, at a base cost higher than most of his other abilities. It cost just under 24% essence to use.

In a mere moment, he felt the blood seep into his skin and crystallize. He winced at the uncomfortable, itchy sensation of the scales connecting to his nerves. The process was quick, however, and before he could even blink, he was already covered in red scales, from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.

He raised his arms to take a closer look at them and a small smile crept up on his face.

He looked like a damn freak.

The scales were packed quite tightly, but he could already feel that the small space between them would be something of a weakness. But even then, they were organized in a way that made it so that there were no long, straight seams anywhere. As he’d already glimpsed from the rune composition, the scales were bigger where less mobility was needed and smaller in places like his fingers and joints.

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As he got used to the sensation, he had to admit that it felt quite comfortable. He felt safe. Warm, somehow. He moved his fingers across the surface of his skin. He could hear the sound of metal scraping against metal, but it was soft and gentle.

He could also feel everything without a problem, which he had to admit he had been a little worried about.

Now, it was time to give them a little test.

He formed his Knuckle Blade and stabbed into his right arm. To his surprise, he actually couldn’t pierce through the scales with a casual swing. Of course, he expected the defense to be great, but his Knuckle Blade was specialized for stabbing, and he hadn’t exactly been gentle.

He was forced to swing at full power, and only then could he stab through the scale.

This was where he finally felt a subsection of the ability unlock.

Some abilities had several functions, depending on different requirements. This was one such ability.

As he pulled out the Knuckle Blade, he used the ability again. Given that he was already mostly covered in scales, the ability now worked to repair the scales that were damaged. It only cost him a little bit of essence, and the scale he’d pierced was reconstructed.

The wound beneath the scale remained, but it was at least covered.

While he could manually reuse the ability to repair lost scales, he also felt there was a “regeneration mode” he could trigger that would make the scales recover automatically whenever damaged.

He would keep that mode turned off. Probably always.

While it was a powerful function, it would no doubt be a massive essence drain during a fight. If needed, he could always use the ability to recover the scales manually. The automatic recovery was a liability, at least at his current level.

For him, taking extra damage was preferable to running out of essence.

“Oh, yeah,” he suddenly realized. “What’s this ability called?”

The power tablet didn’t have any name written on it, meaning he’d have to come up with one himself.

A cheeky, childish grin crept up his face as he immediately thought of a name. “Nah…” he said. But he couldn’t resist the urge.

Crimson Dragon Scales.

Naturally, putting “dragon” in the name of an ability was… a bit immature, admittedly. But in this case, he thought the ability deserved it.

The name of an ability was mostly irrelevant before the fourth stage, anyway. But at that point, the name of the ability had to be accepted by the eidolon that was trapped within. It was common practice to stick to names that were justified by the function and power of an ability.

There was a reason why Freddy didn’t name his Flowing Strike the “Water Dragon Punch” or some other shit like that. That being said, with the next upgrade, a rename would certainly be justified given the power of the ability.

He shook those thoughts away as he left and went to bed for the night. He was exhausted from absorbing the ability. He ended up sleeping quite a bit that night. The power tablet had exhausted him more than he expected. It made sense, too. It was spiritual exhaustion, not physical.

He had a particularly lazy morning as he finally took some time to properly rest from everything. His weekend rest was finally here. Well, he’d hardly have the time to rest properly given the organ extraction.

But still, he did put some time aside to take a break. He ended up taking a walk around Valhalla, greeting some people and trying to mingle a bit.

To his surprise, the members didn’t seem to be very… warm to him. They kept him at a distance, with some even shooting him dirty looks.

Granted, he did fuck up a bit during the last raid, but he didn’t think it was justified to get this sort of treatment. He had still handled two three-stars by himself, and had single-handedly ensured that nobody from Valhalla was injured or killed.

He was tempted to ask why people were treating him like this, but it was just a bit awkward coming up to someone to ask “Hey, why do you seem repulsed by my presence?”

Thus, he retreated to his room to read a bit, instead.

Eventually, he finally felt it was time, so he went back to his other apartment and got started. This time, he got himself seven sets of organs. Just like that, he earned 350-million dollars. It was hard to even fathom just how much money that really was. It was a sobering sum.

He finished his delivery before Sunday evening, and took the rest of the day to go shopping. He didn’t buy many things, but he was slowly starting to track down all the items he’d need if he wanted to enter the Century of Solitude dungeon.

The most important thing he’d need was remnants. Vestiges and remnants could be trapped and sold. Unfortunately, due to their ability to slip between reality and the Netherecho, spirits couldn’t be contained the same way. But that was alright.

Even with “just” remnants, he’d be able to bring up all of his abilities to the peak of stage 2. Well… probably. He might come across a bottleneck for a few of them, especially those that were meant to be grown primarily through combat.

That being said, some of the remnants he needed were… rare, to say the least. For his Blood Javelin, for example, he wanted anti-gravity at stage 2. Absorb Blood would need “efficiency,” which wasn’t rare, but it was in high demand. And for many of the other abilities, he was still trying to decide.

While he was in the process of collecting the resources he’d need, he wasn’t really… Well, he wasn’t exactly confident that he’d actually go through with entering the dungeon.

He was planning to. He would make sure he had the option if the need arose.

But a hundred years entirely alone… To put it nicely, it was bound to mess him up.

Granted, with the help of his talent, he wouldn’t go insane, but if his time with that therapist had taught him anything, it was that even healthy minds weren’t perfect.

People could even be “crazy” in a sense without anything concrete being wrong with them.

The human mind was inherently dangerous, even when, or maybe especially when it worked as intended. Hatred, anger, resentment, aggression. Violence. None of these were an exclusive product of illness.

And that made him afraid.

But that being said, he wasn’t naive. The Northern Belt wasn’t exactly the safest place in the world, even without four-stars. Whether he liked it or not, he might end up being forced into a corner.

He wanted to at least have the option.

While on his shopping trip, he also purchased a large sack of nutrient pills. They were pretty big beads, and they weren’t exactly cheap. But with his current financial power, he could easily even the most expensive ones the store could offer without breaking a sweat.

Well, that was a lie. Buying over a thousand nutrient pills that cost $10,000 a piece definitely made him break a sweat. But even that was just a tiny portion of his current net worth.

That was horrifying to think about.

The pills he bought were extremely dense. They contained pretty much every single basic nutrient a human needed to survive, as well as a good number of non-essential stuff that would give him a decent boost.

The clerk recommended eating only one every three days. They were a bit rough on the digestive tract and meant to only be used before long expeditions where having to eat would be a liability.

Naturally, he completely ignored the advice and swallowed five in one go.

He genuinely thought his heart would explode.

He also didn’t expect them to cause him to hallucinate.

But still, he pushed the urge to puke down and used Adaptive Water Body to help adjust to his new diet of five of these pills every day.

The reason why he insisted on doing this was because of his organ harvesting operation. He could feel that it was taking a toll on his body that wasn’t going away easily, even with his healing.

It was most likely that he was inducing a severe lack of certain nutrients. This was bad. Not only would it mess with his body, it would also reduce the quality of the organs he grew.

Thankfully, this was exactly the sort of stuff Adaptive Water Body excelled at. He could feel himself rapidly adjusting, even after just a single evening of work.

Naturally, this sort of diet would also greatly enhance his physical endurance, allowing him to train even harder than he already was.

Finally, Monday arrived, and he set off back to Valhalla.

There, he met up with Thor.

“So… you done with absorbing the ability?”

“Sure thing,” Freddy said as he handed the power tablet back to Thor.

“Thank you,” the man said with a chuckle as he stored the tablet away. “Are you happy with it?”

“Yeah, I sure as hell am.”

“Good. You’re gonna show it to me one of these days.” The man turned around. “For now, I’d like you to go and get started with the passage.”

“You need me to do anything specific, or…?”

“Yeah, actually. I’d like you to explore the first five steps, and to completely clear the first three steps.”

“Uh… Clear? What do you mean?”

“Just get rid of all the monsters,” Thor said, sitting into his office chair and leaning back. “Unless you find something super valuable, like a dungeon, I’d like you to clear it of monsters so we can slowly get started with using the local interspace.”

Freddy hummed. “Are you gonna tell the others about the passage?”

“No. I can’t. Its existence will be kept as a total secret. I’ll only allow a select few members to know about it at any moment.” The man grabbed a cup off the table and took a sip of coffee. “It's gonna be a rough road ahead. Ultimately, I’d like to be in a position to publicly declare the existence of the passage while also retaining full rights to use it privately.”

“Do you have a plan for how to do that?”

The man snickered. “Absolutely not. Well not yet. But you never know.”

Freddy snickered back. “Well then. You’ve given me a shit ton of work. First three steps—how many realms does that total? Did you even explore that much?”

“I don’t think I’ve found all the passages yet, but so far, I’ve counted 17 realms you have to clear.”

Freddy chuckled. “Well shit. Better get started then. What about the monster bodies?”

Thor shrugged. “Do with them as you please. Maybe just put them on a pile somewhere so we can use the bones for something one day. Remember, the passage is a secret. People would ask questions if we suddenly started hauling monster corpses from the basement.”

“Oh, yeah, right. Makes sense.”

“Anyway, that’s about it.” The man shrugged. “You get started on that for now, and I’ll see you around.”

“What about our training?”

“We’ll suspend it for now. I have been slacking a bit too much. Besides, you’ll get plenty of practice in the interspace. Just make sure you don’t get yourself killed.”

Freddy chuckled. “Sure thing. I guess I’ll get going then.”

“Go ahead. I’ll see you later.”

Freddy turned around and left the room, closing the doors behind him. As soon as he left, Thor’s smile vanished. He slumped in his chair and put his palm on his forehead. “What am I going to do about the others?”