Chapter 16
The Months After
A month, that was how much time I spent in and out of consciousness after my battle with the Blood Mage. During this time, I realized a few things, first the spell that the Blood Mage used was a ritual and not exactly a spell.
Of course, I didn’t realize this distinction until much later in my time when I continued to heal slowly from the wounds I suffered. During that time I just read in dark corners of the Mage Guild and hoped I didn’t get caught.
The distinction was the way that the ritual was a consistent attack. Or rather a drain would be more accurate. Essentially what the mage did was found some blood, constructed a spell circle to try to absorb the energy of the blood and then absorb it as essentially free experience. My guess is that this guy did this for all sorts of things, as his personal journal seemed to state.
Day 11
Culled the energy from the blood of four chickens and two goats.
Day 12
Consumed culled energy and achieved one Strength and one Willpower.
That was impressive, as it meant that he was forcefully increasing his attributes by first boiling the blood of an enemy and then taking the remaining essence and consuming it. We were caught up in the first ritual, which was the blood boiling phase, where it took all energy, even energy that was sympathetically linked and began pulling it into be synthesized.
I of course messed up his little ritual when I had his own blood get added to the ritual. From that point on he was bound to the ritual. This had apparently happened to him before, where he was caught up in his own ritual.
Day 5
A portion of my own blood was added to the ritual by accident. I felt the effects, but continued on with the ritual regardless. In so doing I not only killed the chicken I had been sent to kill for the order, but I found that the contributions were far greater thanks to my own additions.
While I do not recommend self-sacrifice as a means to improve my attributes, I cannot deny the initial results.
Day 111
I killed my first humanoid today. A fellow mage had made a papercut on a book that still had residual energy left. I managed to take the book that was bled upon and create a ritual circle around it before anyone noticed. The mage who had already left the guild hall died in the streets a few minutes later as his own life force was drained completely.
Of course, there were also his last few entries that made the guy seem like a serial killer.
Day 141
Getting desperate. I have already been scolded for killing off more chickens than needed. I think management is becoming aware of my activities.
Day 148
I killed my first street urchin. They were suffering from the plague and I gained a sample of their blood which I said I would take back for processing. Of course, I only took the sample to see if I could attack both the disease and the carrier. Unfortunately the carrier was the only one I could gain energy from.
Day 153
The spread of the disease has blessedly stopped, but unfortunately I am now out of possible subjects to pull energy from.
Day 162
It has been multiple days since my last fix. I can already feel the stolen powers waning. Each day that I wait, the more attributes I seem to lose.
Day 163
I think I might try to find another traveler if things don’t go smoothly soon.
I assume that was when the Blood Mage found me. I mean I almost felt bad when he died from his own incompetence. I even thought that I had spurred him on to continue attacking even when it was not feasible for him to survive. But apparently I was completely mistaken, the ritual would have continued on indefinitely so long as the Blood Mage continued supplying energy to the ritual site.
I almost wonder about the fact of how overpowered such a power could be. I mean think about it, if the mage was smart they could have gotten the blood of a dragon or equally powerful beast, maybe even the behemoth that was the moving tower. They could have found that blood and conducted a similar ritual to kill them. As a ritual the range would have to be close, or else the mana costs to maintain the effects would be astronomical. That was another thing I noticed, had I run away I likely could have gotten away as the cost to run the ritual would have increased. So that was on me being blinded by pain and not being able to tell the difference between a spell and a ritual.
Case in point, bleeding onto a spot, ritual.
Casting from nothing a spell. Of course, I blame my lack of education in rituals. Most people try to avoid rituals as such they aren’t covered as well as they should be.
Effectively they are like magic but take a lot more time, and resources to initiate. But the pay off seems to be that rituals can go further, last longer and will effectively only be stopped if you die or the components you are working with burn out.
Still I took a full month to recover after that attack.
Not that I needed to, I was fairly close to full health within a week after the event. Rather I used the time to practice my skills, well all but Blood Magic Resistance for obvious reasons. While I read up on the differences between spells and rituals.
During this time I also realized that the reason so few people knew about rituals was because most of the information about rituals and their creation was housed at one location, Arcanarus University. The only problem was, they didn’t just accept anyone. In fact of all the millions of regressors who went the magic route, only six people had ever been selected to attend. Of the six, three died, or at least they have not exited the university. The university is of course a black site, meaning nothing can be recorded or streamed by people inside the university. For me, this is even more reason to go. For people who make a sizable portion of their income from outside endorsement deals this would be catastrophic for their revenue services. This is the main reason why many of the truly top tier mages have not tried to attend. Also, many of those mages have made their own ground breaking advances on magic and feel that going to the University would be a waste of time for unwanted or unnecessary validation. For the three that did graduate, all three are now considered masters of their chosen fields. Each is able to create many new spells related to their unlocked schools of magic, and many have gone on to do great things. They are the reason why the university is considered to be great for those that do not have an outside revenue as after that everyone wanted to have them as a champion of their products. Of course, I will never have this opportunity, as I took the Dark Horse flaw a long time ago. Which essentially means I can only make money in game on things I do, and not make money from outside endorsements. Of course, I could still get free gear and clothing, but most would be little more than designer clothes that look nice but serve no true function or purpose. By the higher levels everyone is expected to wear gear and apparel that both compliments the build they are going for, and to sure up any weaknesses they might have.
Of course, all this is a long way of saying that I wasted my time reading. Well let me rephrase that, reading and learning is never a waste. I learned a lot during that month of down time. I even had the option of learning about Blood Magic, which could have easily led to my having Blood Magic as my school of magic that would be unlocked at the end of this year. It was solely because I didn’t want anything to do with Blood Magic as a possible future calling of mine that I declined all skill options related to learning Blood Magic. Though I did learn a bit of Occult, and Ritual Lore. Both of which were skills that helped with Intelligence an attribute I did not need help with currently.
Then once my month was over and I was well and truly over the four days of being hunted. I made my way bac to the Maltese Empire. How I did that was simple, I just hoped a ride onto an airship heading west and hid.
From my previous time, I realized that most large transport vessels had wards to prevent teleporting in, but none that prevented Traits like mine. Also, most ships tended to save on alerting runes figuring that warding runes, or runes that prevented unwanted effects would be enough. Meaning that once I was safely on a ship, I could freely bounce around without much fear of reprisals.
Once I was back, I met up with Hector and Golum at our mutual meeting spot, right in the middle of the park.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“So you survived your little run?” Hector said, excitedly as he held out his arms to hug me.
“Yeah, you think a few little hounds could stop me?” I reply.
“HAHAHA. It’s a good thing you stopped when you did. The Legrand Empire is looking for any reason to go to war. Your little stunt could have been what started a conflict. What was that by the way?” Hector asks.
“That was a Behemoth, believe it or not. Judging from how old it is, I think it was one of the original ones for the world. One that people never really interacted with.” I respond.
At that Hector strokes his beard in contemplation, while Golum looks a little confused. At least his posture and energy seem to make it seem like he is trying to form a question, but can’t quite figure out what it is he wishes to ask.
“A Behemoth?” He finally asks.
“Yeah, I am guessing it is something like a Behemoth is associated with every major expansion zone.” I say, repeating a favorite theory of the outside world. It was also one that seemed to be confirmed if my first day in this game was any indication, as the death of the sky behemoth led to the death of the sky zone. With that, it almost seemed to follow logic that the zone related to a seemingly never ending tower would also be related to a Behemoth.
“So what happened?” Hector asked.
“I apparently impressed him so much that he gave me a quest to complete before my magic awakens.”
“So, you have to go back?”
“Yeah, but not until a week to a day before I turn 13.” I respond, as I reread the timer.
“So, a minimum of a day before, and at most a week?” Hector clarifies.
“Yes.”
“Any idea why?”
“Something about a blessing.” I respond.
“Oh, that is bad.” Hector begins, but then continues. “That will likely mean you will have to do some type of run within its tower to find something.”
“I’ll be fine. What’s the worst that could happen?”
***
So, the time came till I was exactly seven days and four hours early for my appointment with destiny. Seven days was the absolute earliest I could get to the Tortoise Dragon Behemoth, and his body that was also one of the original towers of the game. A tower that had since moved thanks to my sharing a story of how I slew an upstart of a Behemoth with the beast. After all this time I realize that the behemoth only made it half the distance I had originally asked. Half the distance of course being from where it started in the Maltese Empire, and where I originally asked for it to end up at the capital of Miltan in Legrand.
Looking back one subtle detail that I missed, or at least that seemed to be glossed over was the fact that the story I used for the Behemoth was already used once to get into one of the guilds. Realizing that, I can’t help but wonder if the reason the Tortoise only went half the distance was because I could only offer half of the full story? That was something to consider, also it spoke about the subtle nuances of this game, where keeping onto a badge, or rather keeping onto a good story might help pay huge dividends in the future. I still had the two badges I earned from my first interaction with the Tortoise dragon, badges that I now intend to keep until a good enough time exists to cash them in. of course, there are still many different things I can do between now and then, but the most important thing right now is for me to make it across the border, through the enemy lines of troops and then straight to the Tortoise Dragon tower.
Why do I need to make it through densely packed troops? Simple the Legrand military is making it blatantly clear that it intends to go to war. Even going so far as to prevent cross border transportation. Well at least land based transportation, so far they have not taken up too many resources against air based transports. Not that many transport ships go from Maltese to Legrand anymore, as the two nations have all but taken up embargo operations against the opposing countries. This of course has played right into he hands of Telgran to the North, and Balastion to the South who have effectively taken up the role of intermediaries of trades between our two nations. Both sides making sure to add on a 7% service tax to all transactions between the two countries. Of course since the final product comes from Telgran and Balastion neither side does anything to stop the movement of those goods, as neither side wants to also gain the ire of a second nation during these times.
The writing is on the wall that war is going to occur soon. In fact, many of my last few assignments have been related to the war efforts. Go find new war gear from the dungeon. Sabotage the nearby cities in Legrand and make it so troops cannot stay there, while not affecting the populace. These are open ended quests and ones that I particularly appreciate as they allow creativity on behalf of the quest taker.
Most of the time simple things like polluting water ways that the troops are using. Ruining or spoiling food supplies, introducing pests to eat the food supplies and so on. Still all good things must come to an end, which is why I make sure to say goodbye to Hector and Golum before I go.
“So this is it?” Hector asks as he gives me a hug.
“Yeah.” I manage.
“Well good luck. We will still have a place for you, once you get back.” Golum says as he too gives me a hug.
“My little cobra is all grown up.” Hector says, as he wipes away a fake tear. “Seems like just yesterday she was spitting venom and trying to burn down the world around her. Now look at her. All grown up.”
“Shut up.” I say, as I punch him in the ribs.
“OH! And she punches like a drunken orc. Ahh!” Hector says, wincing over slightly in pain.
“Oh, sorry.” I say.
“Nah, think nothing of it, this should be healed by the time you get back.”
“Oh, come on old man. I know you aren’t that feeble.”
“Feeble, you hear this?” Hector says in faux outrage as he turns to Golum.
“Oh, and you shouldn’t forget this.” Golum says as he hands over a backpack.
Picking it up, I feel the weight and realize there are a few things in there, but opening the flap just shows a lot of dark objects all tightly packed together, stupid blindness. “What is it?”
“Food and water. It’s what a growing girl like you will need to survive a week.” Golum answers.
At that, I feel my chest slightly tighten as I realize I had completely forgotten about food and water.
“Oh.” Is all I manage to say.
“Oh indeed.” Golum said.
“Thank you.” I say, as I give him yet another hug.
There is an awkward moment before Golum lets out a long sigh. “I do think it is time you should go. You don’t want to be late for your date with destiny do you?”
Shaking my head, I reply “no.”
I take one last moment to orient myself. I know for a fact that all new maps have the Behemoth’s location as northeast of our current location. Orienting myself I take one last breath. Then make three quick rapid jumps in succession.
Poof.
The idea is to put as much distance between myself and the two people who have become surrogate parents to me during my time here.
The movement puts me close to three kilometers away from the Maltese border and within a hundred kilometers of the Tortoise Dragon Tower.
By the second jump I see enemy troops, by the third jump I am past the line of enemy troops and well in a clearing. Then two more quick jumps just for safety puts me at what I consider to be well outside of enemy lines.
I am a little woozy from so much energy expenditure. I know most people would use this time to stop and eat and rest. Fortunately as these are my final few days of being a child I do not need to fully stop and eat. Though I know these feelings will slowly intensify over time as I come closer and closer to my thirteenth birthday. This is meant to make me subtly aware of the changes my body is now going through and the way I will need to change my play style going forward. No longer will I be able to run around constantly for days on end without food or water. Now I will need to focus on how to survive. In a way it was a good thing I did the manhunt while still a child. While I wasn’t able to last the full seven days or however long it goes, I still was able to earn a number of nice skills that will help serve me in the future. But part of why I was able to last for so long was the fact that I didn’t need to eat or drink. Basically, rather than worrying about starving or dehydration, all I had to worry about was finding the next resting spot an act that made the entire ordeal much more tolerable.
I am going to make it a note that others who take a similar path to mine should also try to initiate a manhunt. Of course, my man hunt was due to effectively using a Behemoth as a natural disaster on a hostile territory. Then resisting orders of officers who were called onto the scene.
The entire thing was a bit odd, especially the part with the random Blood Mage at the end, but it all worked out.
Still while I likely could push myself forward and get to the tortoise tower nearly instantly, I want to take my time. I want to listen to my body, and circulate my mana as needed.
Once I no longer feel dizzy, I begin running in the same direction I had been teleporting. Then like clockwork every ten minutes I make a jump. I also make a double jump when I land and find that I am near or close to enemy monsters or forces. My goal is to avoid detection as much as possible while making this run.
At this rate I should make 12 kilometers an hour. Over six from running, and then six more from jumping, not including double jumps away from trouble. In the end I calculate that I am just over fifty-three kilometers into Legrand territory and just over half way to the tower by the time my timer hits seven days.
Realizing I can now enter the tower and begin my Tortoise provided quest at any time I try to push myself a bit faster. Aiming for just over seven jumps an hour, while still trying to maintain my constant speed of over six kilometers an hour. In the end, I find myself making it to the tower after three more hours have passed.
When I arrive, I know I am in the right spot as the entire tower seems to glow with an energy that is hard to define. It is bright, almost too bright for my Angel’s Sight to stand, as it feels like I am staring into the sun by experiencing just how brightly this tower that seems to stretch on into the heavens goes.
Still, I find the door, which seems to glow slightly more brightly than the rest of the area. Seeing that entrance, I jump to it, then enter the tower.
The moment I enter the tower, I once again feel the message run over me, letting me know that I am in here, but that I will not be stuck or allowed to move on until more people arrive.
“Great Tortoron, I have returned as you requested.” I call out mentally.
There is a long pause as I feel the mind of the great cave suddenly come to life. Then finally over time I feel the monster awaken.
“Ah, if it isn’t the little flea. You have been busy I see.” The great tortoise said in a melodic sing song cadence.
“Yes.” I reply back mentally, not quite certain how I am supposed to respond.
“Why have you returned so early? Didn’t we just part ways?” The tortoise asked, sounding a bit confused, much like an elderly grandparent would when suddenly awoken from a nap.
“I came, because you asked me to come before I awoke my schools of magic. You said you would help.” I respond.
There was a lot of thoughts, then finally tortoise condensed their thoughts in the form of a coherent statement. “Ah yes. Now I remember. I wished for you to free my friend.”
“What friend?” I asked, suddenly confused by the turn of this conversation, which was not going as I had expected at all.
“Yes, I can see the confusion. I am thinking ahead. I sense your talent and wish to offer you a unique class, but one that has sorely been missing for a time. With this class you can see my friend and offer her children a way to this plane of existence.” The tortoise said.
With that, I felt the quest prompt that had been dormant all this time suddenly come to life and flash before my eyes.
Quest Completed: Blessing of Tortoron: You have done as Tortoron the Great Tortoise Dragon has instructed, returning before your thirteenth birthday. Reward: You will now receive Tortoron’s blessing and a unique class. Do you accept?
Unique, at the sight of that word my eyes went wide. Unique classes were just that, individualized and only one. While I might be able to teach a variant of this class to future people, my class and its bonuses would forever be mine.
I was about to greedily accept the class, but then I felt a moment of apprehension.
“I won’t have to kill anyone or anything for this class, will I?” I ask, still feeling odd about killing things due to the way I can see the spirit of dead creatures and even feel their rage and hatred over their deaths.
“No little one. It is precisely because you hate killing so much that I offer this option to you. What I ask is that you become a conduit to the spirit realm. If you had wantonly killed like so many of your kind had, this class would be a death sentence to you. As it is, you will be the first of your kind. A person who is able to commune with those who died long ago. A person who can offer the dead one last chance to speak their peace. A person who can help spirits travel to the realm of the living, and vice versa by allowing your kind to travel to the realm of the dead.” The Tortoise said.
With that, I felt my heart pulse, as I could talk to my parents. At least that is what I was assuming he meant by this comment.
“Yes, little one, I mean just that. You can speak to not just your parent’s but all who have passed beyond.”
At that I froze, realizing what this meant. That there was still a chance for the dead, if I could talk to them, then maybe just maybe death wasn’t permanent? Maybe I could speak to all who chose to make this place their final resting spot.
Badump, badump.
With that realization, I realized there was no other choice but to accept.
“Sign me up!”
“Very well, then it shall be so.”
With that, I felt a burning take over my body as I was filled with a surge of power.
New Class Assigned. Magical Schools Awoken. Title(s) Gained.
There was so much information going through my mind. I felt the class awaken in me. Then I felt the force of not just one, but two unique schools of magic open within my mind. Then I felt titles getting applied, both of which had to deal with getting a class and schools of magic awakened earlier. Both of which had their effects linked.
Title Bonuses linked. Results forced to increase tier of Spirit Magic. New tier beyond normal starting parameters. Starting parameters overwritten by Title bonuses.
There was more, but ultimately my mind was flooded with pain an energy as I felt the world fade around me as I was surrounded by a sea of all-encompassing darkness.