Zeth stared at the flood of notifications as they came in, the several repeated messages each combining together.

[Otherworldly Excellence’s Rank has increased three times to 5.

+15 Dexterity. You have 35 Dexterity.

+3 Skill Points. You have 9 Skill Points.]

[Empowerment Ritual’s Rank has increased to 6.

+1 Skill Point. You have 10 Skill Points.]

[Blood Magus’s Level has increased three times to 11.

+9 Endurance. Your Endurance is 39.

+15 Dexterity. Your Dexterity is 50.

+3 Awareness. Your Awareness is 11.

+6 Poise. Your Poise is 22.

+21 Shaping. Your Shaping is 77.

+9 Skill Points. You have 19 Skill Points.]

As his Stats each increased by such an incredible amount in that single moment—especially his Dexterity, which more than doubled—he felt his body and mind reinvigorate with newfound power. His skin hardened, and the stab wound that was slowly killing him felt like slightly less of an issue now—though, just slightly. His mind was sharper and more resilient. His mana sense skyrocketed to new heights, allowing him to see the residual light these rituals were giving off. And, of course, his entire body suddenly felt far more limber and quick to respond to his commands. He felt like he genuinely may have been able to move two or three times faster than he was only a couple days ago, back when he had a zero in Dexterity.

And then, of course, there were Skill notifications. Since they all came in at almost the same time, the last one to appear was the first one Zeth read.

[Requirement fulfilled: Blood Magus Level 11.

You have unlocked Blood Magus Skill: Massacre’s Boon.]

That one, he wasn’t totally sure about. ‘Massacre’ certainly was a distasteful word to put in a Skill—it felt like it was talking about the killing of helpless innocents, rather than genuine enemies. But perhaps it was speaking more generally about any type of combat?

After that, though, he saw the next Skill notification.

[Requirement fulfilled: Blood Magus Level 10.

You have unlocked Blood Magus Skill: Ephemeral Bloodforge.]

That certainly sounded interesting. Like, a forge that was powered by blood, or something? Maybe he’d be able to craft weapons and armor for himself without needing to set up a whole dedicated area for it, or needing to take a dedicated crafting Class.

And the Skill came at Level ten, a big milestone for the Class, so he knew it’d be powerful; at Level five, he’d gotten Demonic Covenant—something that had completely warped the way he operated. What would come of this Skill?

But the one that he saw after those two was what really caught his attention. Just the name alone was enough to cause his eyes to widen like saucers.

[Requirement fulfilled: Blood Magus Level 9.

You have unlocked Blood Magus Skill: Hell Portal.]

Hell Portal. Hell Portal?

He repeated the name over and over in his thoughts, as though running it by himself one more time would make it make sense. Surely, this couldn’t do what he thought it did, right? He’d heard of extremely high-Level Classes getting the ability to forcibly open up temporary Realm Portals, but typically they’d only reach the shallower Realms. If this really did what he thought, and opened up a portal to reach the Thirteenth Realm, truly allowing anything to pass through without restriction…Even if it only did so for a few seconds, this Skill could genuinely lead to the end of the human species.

He had to be wrong about it. He had to be making an incorrect assumption regarding its effects. Maybe it was just using the word ‘portal’ as some sort of metaphor for what it truly did?

Just as he was about to open up the Skill descriptions to see what they did, he heard another shout from down the hallway.

Astrys looked at him. “Are you done here? It would be risky to stay any longer.”

“R-right,” Zeth said, resolving to see what these things did later. He ran over to the doorway and joined up with Astrys and they hurried to the exit, heading back where they came from.

As they went through the door at the beginning of this hallway, finding themselves back in the smaller, pitch-black hall that would lead them back to the surface, Astrys held out a hand and used her Skill to light a small fire above her palm, allowing them to see once again.

He looked over at her. “I heard someone in plate armor coming down this hallway, I think. And I believe I know who it is. We don’t have time for me to explain, but she has some method to harm demons, and she’s hostile. How quickly do you think you could dig a tunnel from here that’d go back up to the—”

He stopped talking as he saw a shimmering light appear from up the hallway, where Garon’s destroyed house would be. Astrys instantly shut off her flame, but the light was so bright, it illuminated them anyway. And before they could do anything, the creator of that light appeared.

Rosalie approached, holding out her warhammer with its head letting out a silvery glow.

The moment her eyes landed on them, she stopped dead in her tracks.

Zeth, too, stared at her, unsure what to do. He certainly couldn’t pretend to be innocent, standing right next to a demon, wearing the same disguise he’d worn when he met with Erza on the battlefield with the mannitors.

The silence stretched on between them, the only noise in the dark hallway, the slight shaking of Rosalie’s armor.

Astrys was the one to break the standoff. She asked in a determined voice, “Shall I kill her?”

Rosalie moved to take a defensive stance, her hammer held back to counterattack the moment an enemy approached. But Zeth spoke up before anyone could move against each other. “No, don’t.”

Astrys frowned, but nodded.

Rosalie, on the other hand, looked bewildered at Zeth’s words. She scowled. “What is this? Some sort of trick? You won’t be able to lower my guard that easily, villain. What’s going on here? What is this place?”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Zeth breathed out, holding up his hands as a sign of peace. “Look. I don’t expect you to believe me—I know you won’t. You don’t have any reason to. But I am not your enemy. In fact, I’d say the two of us are just about as close to being each other’s allies as we can be.”

Her eyes went wide with rage at that last part. “I would never ally myself with—”

“No,” he interrupted. “Just…listen. I’m not with the other Blood Mages. I’m working against them. I’m trying to destroy them, in fact—same as you. I know it looks bad, with me using their same powers, but I’m not the same as they are.”

“Other Blood Mages?” Her eyes narrowed. “Give me names.”

“We don’t have time for an interrogation,” he said. “And I don’t have names, regardless. I can tell you I just killed Garon Orteenaz, who was someone you were looking into already, right?”

Her stance became more guarded. “How did you know that?”

“I just—” Zeth was interrupted by a chorus of shouts coming through the door behind him. It sounded like reinforcements had come across Garon’s body. Once they found a way through the wall of fire, they’d come upon him shortly. “We don’t have time. They’re after me, and they’ll come after you, too. If you like your chances against them, be my guest. I’d recommend against it if you’re alone, but please, just let me past you. You have my word I won’t attack.”

She didn’t relax one bit. “Why would I believe the word of a Blood Mage? Of a demon summoner?”

“Just—” Zeth groaned in frustration. If she continued to block his path like this, things could turn disastrous. Not only could his enemies catch up to him any minute, but he was still actively bleeding from his arm and stomach, and his newly-gained Endurance could only assist with that so much. “The guild. They’re the whole guild. The town’s leadership, the town guard, and the new mayor I just killed. They’re all either Blood Mages or working for the Blood Mages. Go after them, not me.”

She pointed her hammer at him. “I refuse to blindly follow words being uttered by someone who aligns himself with an evil Class. If you can’t—”

“In the guild offices, there’s a storage room,” he said. “It has a ritual circle in it. Find that. Capture and interrogate someone down here, if you think you can—they’ll tell you the same thing, too. Don’t believe me; believe them. I mean, c’mon. Why would I be trying to talk to you, if I were your enemy?”

“Maybe you’re just trying to avoid a fight because you’re injured,” she said, nodding to the blood dripping from his body onto the floor.

“And why would I be injured? I’m coming from a fight—a fight with the enemy Blood Mages.”

Another noise came from through the door he stood beside, like rushing water.

“Please,” he said, “just let me pass by this one time. We can talk more later. I don’t want a fight. And I doubt you do, either. So I’m going to walk past you. You can decide whether or not you’ll follow.”

With that, he began moving forward, putting a hand on the wall for support as he went. Astrys strode in front of him, putting herself between him and their potential enemy.

Rosalie stood perfectly still, with a conflicted expression that made it clear she was in the middle of trying to figure out whether to do nothing or to attack. He wasn’t sure if she really believed him, or if she was simply too cautious of his demon and his own unknown strength to instigate a fight. Whatever it was that made her hesitate, he just hoped that side of her won the internal battle she was having.

As he got closer to her, Zeth was forced to push himself against the wall to squeeze past in the relatively small hallway, with Astrys continuing to stand between the two of them. Rosalie faced them the whole time, clearly on-guard, waiting to defend against a surprise attack, but of course Zeth ordered no such thing.

The moment he was past her, he hurried back up the hallway, heading for the hole that would lead up to town. It looked like Rosalie had been reasonable, after all.

They continued walking until they were out of her sight.

“Who was that?” Astrys asked “Why did you wish to spare her life? She seemed to not want to offer you the same affordance.”

“She’s just misguided,” he said. “She doesn’t know the whole situation. Definitely doesn’t deserve to be killed.”

Astrys looked at him. “But she was in your way.”

“What, you think I should just kill everyone who inconveniences me?”

“No, I do not,” she said. “But…Well, I suppose my impression of you was that you were the type of person to do such a thing.”

“What?” Zeth almost felt offended. “Why would you think that?”

She glanced back. “...You seem to be a violent person.”

He frowned. “Well, okay, maybe. But I only killed those people because—”

Zeth was interrupted by his own grunt of pain when he tripped over a loose plank and stumbled forward, a sharp sensation radiating out from his gut. He doubled over in pain as his body screamed out for him to do something about the gigantic hole that’d been torn through his organs. He had to get out of here first before anything else, though.

“Will you be okay?” she asked, looking at the blood dripping from his body.

“I-I don’t know.”

“Do humans have any healing Skills? Could you find help from someone in town?”

He grunted in pain again. “Not many people would help me for free, and they wouldn’t be able to do anything to fix it instantly. My only healing Skill is one that accelerates my natural healing—it works too slow.”

“Well, do you have anything unlocked?”

“No, I—” Zeth began to say, then he stopped. He’d almost forgotten about it in the swarm of new Skills he’d been getting recently, but he had unlocked a new healing Skill right before he summoned her—Sanguine Renewal. It was expensive, at fifteen Skill Points in cost, but he’d just Leveled up three times over, and increased his Point total up to a staggering nineteen. That one explicitly said it would heal his wounds ‘rapidly.’ Hopefully that meant rapidly enough that it could stop him from bleeding to death.

The optimizer in him wanted to take a moment to read over all the other new Skills he’d gotten before he spent his Skill Points on this one, but Sanguine Renewal would only heal him at the cost of his own blood, and so if he waited until he didn’t have enough blood in his body to spend on that healing, it’d be useless. And with him losing more with every second that passed, now wasn’t the time to double-check to see if there were any technically superior options.

So, without another word, he quickly reached inward and purchased it.

[You have purchased Blood Magus Skill: Sanguine Renewal.

-15 Skill Points. You have 4 Skill Points.]

Instantly, Zeth felt his body reacting to the new Skill.

He felt slight itching sensations in the holes in his stomach and arm and the burn mark on his face, like mana was being poured into them, rebuilding what damage had been done. Even his older injuries that had been mostly repaired by Self-Destruction reacted, tingling like they were waiting to be fixed once the others were done.

But the most intense sensation wasn’t the tickling in his wounds. It was the profoundly uncomfortable sensation of the blood being absorbed from straight out of his veins.

Coldness spread through his body. It radiated from his heart, from the arteries in his neck to the veins in his toes. It was like a leech had somehow wormed its way directly into his blood vessels, gorging itself on the feast that was his body.

However, he could also tell that he was that leech. It wasn’t being stolen, it was simply being…repurposed. Broken down into mana so that it could be funneled toward something more important.

As he felt the blood being stolen away from his body, those itching wounds began to repair themselves. He could feel them closing—hells, in the case of his face and the burn across his eye, he could literally see the difference in his own vision. And as he looked down at the laceration in his arm, he watched as blood stopped leaking out, the flesh rebuilding itself from the deepest parts outward.

[Sanguine Renewal’s Rank has increased to 1.

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

Astrys watched him as this happened. Despite the intense sensation that he was draining his own internal blood supply, he felt better, second by second. He stood up straighter, relishing in the sensation of the pain quickly disappearing from his body.

[Sanguine Renewal’s Rank has increased to 2.

+1 Skill Point. You have 6 Skill Points.]

“Oh, thank the gods,” he muttered, and moved to continue in their trek up the hallway.

“You found a solution?” she asked, following him.

He nodded. “I’d forgotten about a Skill I had unlocked.”

Before he could explain any further, though, the unmistakable sight of moonlight peering through a hole in a distant portion of ceiling appeared in his vision.

“I’ll tell you later,” he said, speeding up to reach the exit. “For now, let’s just get out of here.”