Rosalie sighed in relief when the man and his demon left. She’d recognized that hood and mask—they were the same as what the person fighting the mannitor had been wearing. Perhaps it had been a mistake to let him go, but the way he was talking, her instincts told her to believe him when he said he wasn’t her main enemy.

Besides, from what she’d seen in the past, and especially from what she felt coming from that demon, it likely wouldn’t have been a good idea to engage them alone, anyway.

If he truly had been evil, it would have been a moral failing to let him go regardless of how powerful he was. It was her duty to kill an enemy like that. But that demon’s fear aura had been incredibly strong. As a Paladin, her Poise Stat was raised quite high, which helped her operate in spite of fear, but even she had been filled with the desire to turn and run at the sight of that wretched thing. It was strong. At the very least, if she had made a mistake in letting that man go, making that mistake probably spared her life from being taken by the monster. If she just waited a day and came after him later, backed up by Alfon and Erza, maybe then they’d be able to do something about it.

But she was still down in these tunnels. He’d said they were owned by a group of other Blood Mages, who were his enemies. At the very least, she needed to see if such a thing was true.

So, holding her hammer out in front of her to illuminate the way, she hesitantly crept forward, keeping an eye out for traps.

But as she went, she didn’t see any. That was unusual, if this place truly was being used as a Blood Mage’s lair, but not impossible. Especially considering these tunnels were kept secret, it could have been that they didn’t want to spend the time managing traps in areas that wouldn’t see intruders. Or there were enough Blood Mages collaborating with each other that they didn’t want to get caught in each other’s Fire Rituals. Those things wouldn’t attack their owners, but anyone else was fair game. If there were a large number of Blood Mages all working down here, it could’ve been for their own safety that there were no traps.

She hoped such a thing wasn’t the case, though. The man she’d just confronted said there were a few colluding with one another, which was common with Classes like these—often three or four of them would work together to make a base and watch each other’s backs. But if it was a whole camp of them, with numbers of seven, eight, nine? That would be a significant problem, especially if the man was also right in saying they had the town guard in their pocket. Her mind went to a more disastrous possibility—what if the number of mages was in the teens? She doubted her little three-person group would ever be capable of handling something like fifteen Blood Mages, even if they were all lower in Level.

She tried to calm herself down. Maybe this hallway was originally trapped, and that man had just cleared them all out already. It certainly looked like something that would only be made for a small number of people. Perhaps this situation wouldn’t be as disastrous as she’d feared.

She arrived at a door with a knob that’d been smeared in wet blood. Seemed like this had been where that man had come from.

Taking a breath, she gripped the knob, herself. He’d come from some sort of fight, and said he’d killed that new mayor. If he was telling the truth, presumably she’d find a body right through here.

So she cracked the door open, and peered through to see what was inside.

It was a wall of fire. Smoke billowed from the torched walls up to the ceiling far upward in the much, much larger room. Corpses littered the floor, all either burnt to a crisp or…was that person beaten so hard his skull had been caved in? The brutality was so horrific, it made Rosalie feel physically ill.

And, of course, those corpses weren’t alone. Several people were running around the area, trying their best to put out the fire. About twenty people. They each wore identical robes, some carrying buckets of water which they uselessly tossed over the raging inferno.

“—not gonna be able to handle this,” one was saying to another.

“They already killed off the nearest thrall squad,” another responded. “Not many people are down here right now, and they already killed the two nearest demons, too. We’re the next best thing until one of the higher-ups arrives.”

“Do we even have someone who can extinguish this much fire? What do the upper Levels of Blood Mage give you?”

“No clue. But if they get a couple demons in here, they can at least rip up the nearby wood so it can’t spread. We just need to delay until—”

Rosalie shut the door.

Twenty people. Entire squads of Wicked thralls. Apparently even more people who weren’t currently present. High-Level Blood Mages. Demons, plural.

She was entirely out of her depth.

And that man she’d just seen didn’t even look bothered by all that. How many corpses were there? Six? And they said him and his demon had killed multiple of their demons? And he was walking away from this insane disaster with a single stab wound that he didn’t even look too bothered about.

She backed away from the door. This was not a job for her. It wasn’t a job for Alfon, or for Erza. This was far, far bigger than them. They needed reinforcements. She hated working with Inquisitors, but maybe they’d be a necessary evil in this case. Or, maybe, if that insanely powerful man truly had been the one to cause all this destruction…

No. No way she could work with a Blood Mage. She just…She just needed to get out of here. It was too dangerous. She needed to warn everyone she could about what was present in this town. She needed to get the citizens to safety.

So, she turned and ran.

***

By the time Zeth returned to his own underground base, his blood seemed to run out, and the rapid healing of Sanguine Renewal stopped. He felt lightheaded, his vision just barely bordering on blacking out, but the Skill had done its job, mending the holes in his body enough that they’d fully stopped bleeding, and even the burn on his face was no longer visible, according to Astrys when he pulled off his mask and asked her.

And, in the process of that healing, it’d even Ranked up a third time, up to three. Its progress was extremely rapid, especially when compared to the other similar Skill he had, Self-Destruction. That one was still stuck at zero; it’d probably only progress in Rank when he continued taking life-threatening actions against himself. He probably wouldn’t be doing that too much. Though, now that he had a new healing Skill, perhaps he’d have more of an opportunity to work on it.

For now, however, he was far too busy.

He’d dealt with the most pressing issue of Garon escaping. It seemed like he’d at least dealt a decent blow to the cabal in the process, too, so hopefully whatever their retaliation would be wouldn’t come for at least a while. At the very least, they didn’t currently know where he was, so a counterattack would first require them to find him.

Still, he felt himself running on quite the high after finally accomplishing so much. And he had a new long-term goal: destroy the cabal. That would require far more strength than he currently had. Even with his own ability to summon demons and use them to combat his enemies, they could do the exact same thing. And, considering how much they outnumbered him, they’d likely have far more than he did. What he needed, then, was the ability to beat the demons, himself. Getting there would take a while.

But he’d made a lot of progress getting there today. Counting the Empowerment Ritual he’d conducted before summoning Astrys, he’d gotten four Level-ups all in a single day.

He collapsed to the floor, wishing he had more proper furniture in this place to rest on as he felt the natural exhaustion lacking a significant portion of your blood would bring. That healing Skill was powerful—extremely so—but came with a pretty clear downside.

Though, that wasn’t the only Skill he’d gotten. And now that he finally had a moment, he was eager to go over the rest of what he’d received.

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To start with, there were the Skills he unlocked when he’d completed the ritual to summon Astrys, and Ranked Demonic Covenant up to five.

[Friend of the Unhallowed - Cost: 7 Skill Points

The natural fear-inflicting effects of the demon species have a diminished effect on you by an additive 10% per Rank in this Skill. By Rank 10, the effect will be completely nullified.]

[Empowered Summon - Cost: 14 Skill Points

Residual mana from the summoning process provides temporary power to your demons. Demons you summon have the natural effects of their Strength, Endurance, and Dexterity Stats increased by 50%, plus an additional 5% for each Rank in this Skill, plus an additional 5% per 25 points you have in the Shaping Stat. This effect decreases by 10% for every hour they remain outside of their home realm.]

[Unstable Anatomy - Cost: 12 Skill Points

When demons under your control are killed, their bodies explode into an inferno with strength equal to the flames of your Hellfire Circle, plus an additional 20% strength per Rank in this Skill.]

Naturally, all three of these Skills had effects dealing with demon summonings. His mind wandered to Class Evolutions as he read through their descriptions—most of the time, as a Class Evolved, it would grow more specific in focusing on a single thing the Class was capable of, which would be determined by which Skills you purchased while using it. He wondered if there was a Blood Magus Evolution specializing in demons, unlocked by taking Skills like these.

Out of the three of them, he was relatively skeptical of the usefulness of most of them. In his case, he really didn’t want to be fighting by summoning a demon every single time something went wrong so he could rely on their strength. Sure, they were useful, but he didn’t want to depend on them forever.

Of course, that was different with Astrys—she was an entire topic in and of herself, and he had quite a lot of talking he wanted to do with her after he looked over his Skills—but Empowered Summon and Unstable Anatomy would both be borderline useless unless he was going all-in specifically on the idea of constantly summoning new demons.

However, Friend of the Unhallowed was not like those two. It looked quite good, in fact—and made him glad he hadn’t chosen Influence with Otherworldly Excellence in order to resist demonic fear, if this would do the job for him. While he had gotten used to operating under their fear auras, he certainly didn’t like doing so. Normally, the only way to entirely negate it would be to build up a truly insane amount of the Influence Stat, but this Skill seemed to do all of that for him. And at a rate that would profit him Skill Points, no less. The way he could just pick up some Skill that would completely turn off their ability against him, it almost felt unfair to the demons. Almost.

The fact that it was a profit Skill was what really sold it for him. Anything that would give him additional Skill Points over time was something he wanted to take. The only restriction, of course, was that he’d have to Rank it up by spending a large amount of time around demons, meaning conducting a large number of costly summoning rituals, but he wasn’t sure he’d have to worry about that.

Once again, he was getting off-track. Next, he’d gotten three more Skills, and these three were the big ones. Not given by just Ranking up a Skill he already had, these were given through his Leveling. These were what had been really consuming his thoughts ever since he’d seen them.

So he opened up, looking through in the order he’d first seen their names.

[Massacre’s Boon - Cost: 13 Skill Points

Blood sacrifices provided to ritual circles that come from at least 10 different human sources are treated as though they were 100% stronger, plus an additional 10% for each Rank in this Skill.]

That was…certainly interesting. It seemed like it encouraged him to primarily source his sacrifices not just from humans, but from a large number of humans. His mind went to the mentions he’d heard in the past of Blood Mages doing things like slaughtering massive swaths of villagers to use their blood to fuel their next Level-up rituals, rather than taking the risk of fighting a monster for its blood. Really, that was pretty much exactly what the cabal had been doing all this time.

Zeth wasn’t sure if this was something he’d want. Currently, he had access to a decent bit of human blood from the thralls he’d been sacrificing to his demons, but he didn’t have many left, and their blood was running out, too. He imagined in the future, monsters would likely be his primary source—completely unaffected by this Skill.

So, feeling a bit unenthusiastic about this one, he moved over to the next.

[Ephemeral Bloodforge - Cost: 16 Skill Points

Grants you minor telekinetic control over your own blood, allowing you to draw blood from your body and shape it as you wish. At any point, you may turn a portion of your blood into a rigid object that can fit into a six inch cube. Objects created this way melt back into blood after one minute.

Your ability to exert fine control with blood telekinesis and the speed at which you can move your blood using it increases by 10% per Rank in this Skill, plus an additional 2% per 5 points you have in the Shaping Stat.]

His eyes widened as he looked over the Skill. That was quite the departure from the typical way his Class had operated thus far.

The Skill’s description was a little vague, but from the way it was worded, it looked like what Zeth would be able to do was pull blood out of his own body, and while it was floating midair, turn it into something like a weapon in the middle of a fight before he hardened it and was instantly able to start using it. It only said it gave ‘minor’ telekinetic control, so he didn’t imagine he could do something like firing an arrow made of blood at high speeds purely using that telekinesis, but it did look like it’d be enough to shape it into whatever he wanted. So he could make a sword that he instantly used to strike the enemy, a shield right as someone attacked him so he could block it, or even a tool like a lockpick or a needle if he ever needed one.

Of course, there were some limitations that would make doing those things difficult. First, from the way it was worded, it seemed like he wouldn’t be able to turn the blood into whatever he wanted with instant speed and perfect precision. And second—and more importantly—anything he made would have to fit in a six inch cube. That was pretty small; the length from the bottom of his palm to the top of his fingertips was only a bit longer than six inches. So, maybe he could make a small dagger, but not a sword. Perhaps he could make a little plate to deflect a blade off of, but not an entire shield.

And, of course, there was the fact that all of this stuff would need to be made out of his own blood. A resource which, now that he’d just taken Sanguine Renewal, was in very high demand. Additionally, the Skill didn’t actually say how tough the ‘rigid object’ would be. Was it the strength of steel? Or would it splinter like wood?

Still, it almost didn’t matter how many restrictions were laid out in the Skill’s description. It gave him the ability to create any object he wanted, all at will. That was worth any number of restrictions being placed on the ability. He already knew he’d want to take this soon.

And finally, after that was the one that he almost couldn’t believe was in his list of unlocked Skills.

[Hell Portal

Cost: 10 Skill Points

Uses a ritual circle to forcibly open a realm portal connecting the First and Thirteenth realms. Anything can pass through in both directions, and the portal will stay open until the ritual circle is disturbed, or until its opener wills it closed.

Strength of sacrifice required: High

Required ritual circle diameter: 15.53 feet (originally 20 feet)

Time required to draw: 77.63 hours (originally 100 hours)

Upkeep time required each day: 46.58 minutes (originally 1 hour)]

Zeth stared at the Skill description. Holy fucking shit. It actually does what I thought it does.

The Skill seriously just opened a genuine portal to hell. It’d allow anything to pass through, meaning demons could cross over to the First Realm without being bound to a summoner whatsoever. Not to mention whatever other horrific things lived in the Thirteenth Realm.

Actually, the Skill was even more insane than what he’d assumed from the title. Normally realm portals only stuck around for a limited time—from just a couple minutes to a full few days—before they dissipated. This thing could keep the portal open for an unlimited time. Unlimited. That was unheard of. It was genuinely world-destroying. It could annihilate the entirety of the First Realm.

And somehow, despite that, the damn thing cost a measly ten Skill Points.

Zeth had to assume it had something to do with the ritual’s absurdly high drawing time requirement, or maybe the fact that using it would naturally carry great risk of harming the owner made the System decide it deserved to be discounted. Maybe the Blood Magus Class was just so utterly ridiculous that this was considered a reasonable cost. But for some reason, this Skill would be free upon fully Ranking up.

He couldn’t even fathom what would be possible if he found a way to properly utilize it without killing himself and everyone else in the entire empire. His only solace was that, like demon summonings, he could at least end it at will, whenever he wanted to. So if things were looking bad, he could shut it off immediately. But would he have time to do so before something already came through?

Currently, Zeth had seven Skill Points—not enough to afford most of this stuff, other than Friend of the Unhallowed. That was probably a good one to pick up to start out, as a profit Skill.

But before he did anything, there was a conversation he needed to have with Astrys.

He stood up and walked over to where she sat in the corner of the room. She was simply staring at a blank wall, lost in her own thoughts.

He stopped in front of her. “Hey.”

She blinked, looking up at him. “Oh, hello. Do you have another task for me before the time limit runs out and I…and I disappear?”

“Actually, that's what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said. “...Alright, it’s probably easiest if you just let me give you the full rundown. I’m not a Blood Mage. I’m a Blood Magus. Really, I’m the Blood Magus.”

“W-what?” she asked, frowning. “What do you mean?”

“I mean my Class isn’t the one you’ve heard your demon friends talk about,” he said. “And I suspect that my demon summoning Skill doesn’t work like the others. I suspect that there is no time limit. You may be able to stay here forever.”