He couldn't even bring himself to flail as the message appeared in his vision again. He just slowly got up, stretched, and began heading down to the creek. He stopped after a few steps, remembering what had happened yesterday. He sat back down and wondered what he'd do. "I've lost my only source of water, and a significant source of food to my stupid attempt to help some random fisherman. What the hell was I thinking?! Of course he'd be freaked out! It's blood magic! It's always evil!" He kicked at a tuft of grass in anger, ripping it out of the dirt and knocking it into the air.

Seeing the little tuft uprooted like that made Caine feel strangely guilty. He picked it up and planted it back in its original spot. "I'm sorry, little guy. You had nothing to do with that. You didn't pull a knife on me when I was just trying to help. I shouldn't have done that to you." He packed the dirt firmly around the roots and said, "There! All better, I hope." He got up and turned around, only to fall back down when he saw Maven practically inhaling him.

"Gah! What the hell are you doing here?"

She stood over him, arrow nocked in a metal bow. Caine wondered how the hell she could even draw that thing. "Bloodmages are supposed to be evil, all-conquering, scheming tyrants. A pair of them are supposed to be able to raze a city in a fortnight. And they're supposed to be gone. But you're here, and you're nothing like that. You cured my mother's illness. You didn't even come close to our village after my father chased you out. I saw what you did to those Giant Crabs. You could have easily done the same to us. And yet, you're here apologizing to grass. Why?"

He shuffled around a little on the grass, getting comfortable, and gestured for her to sit down as well. She obliged. "Maven, I'll be honest with you. I have no idea what's going on. I just woke up here a few days ago, in the middle of this field. I killed a Giant Crab, and now there's this whole thing where I have skills and stats and levels and it's all so confusing. I took a few Bloodmagic skills because they looked interesting and practical, and now I'm apparently evil? What is going on with this world?"

She let out a long sigh and replied, "I don't know anymore, really. All my life, I was told about the Dobridian War. About the Bloodmages who carved a bloody path through the continent. About the brave Holbordenian Adventurers who hunted them to extinction. I was told about the evil inherent in all Bloodmages, of the twisted nature of their Awakening. And then I see you, just trying to help. I followed you after you ran. I saw you crying when my father kicked you out. Even then, I could feel your sorrow. I've always been told Bloodmages were conquerors, but you apologized for knocking out a clump of dirt."

"I'm not from here."

She couldn't help but laugh. "I guessed as much."

"No, I mean I'm not from here. Not from this world. Not from Holobordenia or Dobridia or-"

"Dobrid. Not Dobridia."

"I love that that's the part you noticed the most."

She blushed ever so slightly, unnoticed by Caine's oblivious eyes. "I understand. You're a Bloodmage. It'd be stupid for you to reveal where you're from."

"It's the truth! I'm really not from here!"

She laughed. "Well, assuming what you're saying is true (which I still don't believe), where are you gonna go from here?"

"I've been hearing a lot about Adventurers. You think I could make it as one?"

She thought about it for a second and replied, "Well, Adventurers are mercenaries for hire. They take on the jobs so dangerous and outlandsih that the normal military forces can't handle them. There's an Adventurer's Guild, headquartered in the capital Brury. Anyone can join if they're Awakened and are at least of the 5th Level, meaning they've acquired a Discipline. What's your level?"

"I'm close to Level 3. I'll probably get it as soon as I kill another Giant Crab."

"Well then, what are you waiting for? Let's go kill a crab! I've been wanting to see how you fight for a while."

"Ah, yes. About that...I don't actually have any Combat Skills or combat skills."

"Well, now I want to see it even more. Come on, it's not like you have anything better to do."

There was a certain infectious quality to her enthusiasm for hunting, and before he knew it Caine was already grabbing his knife and bucket. "Come to think of it, I never actually checked the description for that new skill." He pulled up the menu and navigated to Crafting under Bloodmagic, but it was nowhere to be seen. He scrolled through, looking for likely candidates, and eventually found it under Summoning.

Tier 0

Blooded Ward:

Cost: 5BP Initial; 10/point blocked

Casting Time: 0s

Description: Create a ward which acts like a solid wall for Mana and Health. Deflects 10% (RE) of energy.

Tier 1

Sanguine Inferno (1/10):

Cost: 50BP

Casting Time: 3s

Duration: 5s

Description: Summon a pair of flaming arms which mimic the movements of the caster.

""Arms" is a rather liberal description of it. 50BP."

"What's "Bee Pee"?"

"Sorry, I forgot you don't speak English. In one of the languages of my homeland, B and P are alphabet. The word for blood is "Blood", while the word for point is "Point". My Skill's description shows the cost as 50BP. 50 Blood Points. That means 50 Health."

"Wait, 50 Health?! How much do you have that you can afford that much?!"

"I only have 100, so I can't use it more than once a day without going dangerously low. I'm assuming you die if you hit 0 Heatlh, right?"

"Well not necessarily, but you still shouldn't be using that! It's dangerous! You could die!"

"Wait, if I don't die when I hit 0 Health, what happens?"

"The way you say that makes me think you're going to bring yourself to 0 Health if I don't tell you. It won't outright kill you, sure, but it means that your body is so badly broken that it can't keep going much longer. You're teetering on the brink of death, and if you don't get some healing fast you'll die."

"So not something I want to experience?"

"Definitely not something you want to experience."

"I wasn't gonna go that low anyway, but now I'm definitely not doing it."

"Good"

"Still, I can use it once without falling too low. I just have to draw some blood first."

She winced as he clenched his fist till it burst open the scab. "Are you sure there's no better way to do that?"

"None that I've found so far."

She shrugged, writing it off as The Bloodmage's eccentricity. "I wonder if I can turn this into a sphere like I did for Artisan Vitae? I carried it in a bucket last time so that I didn't have to draw it again, but since it's all for one Skill maybe I can just do it?"

She was still just as lost and confused as before. Or she would've been if she wasn't busy staring slack-jawed at the blood flowing out of Caine's hand forming a perfect sanguine sphere in front of him. "Haha! I knew it! That means that if I can get enough regeneration, I could just throw blood into this thing indefinitely with no loss."

"Your leisurely attitude towards using your own vitality to power your magic is very disturbing."

He sarcastically frowned at her. "I don't need you judging me, I need some Experience! Let me know if you see any of those crabs."

"Ooh, I actually have a skill for that!" She was grinning ear to ear as she said it. Caine assumed it was because she'd finally get to show off (something he was more than happy to abide), but she was just glad to see him cheered up. "It's a wonder how much happier you can make someone by just being there for them when they're down. I guess even all-powerful Bloodmages need a friend sometimes."

Maven put her bow off to one side, placed her hand on the ground, and focused. The wind blew fast, but within it she discerned a second flow. This flow, indetectable to all but her, showed her the very essence of her being. The intensity of the flow showed her her Stamina, not as a numerical quantity but as a feeling of pressure on her skin, in her nostrils, and in her lungs. The pressure lessened as she focused on a single word, a single feeling. She felt it resonate within her soul. "Omnisense".

It felt like her eyes, her ears, her nerves all flew off of her body and spread around into the air around her. She could feel far beyond her own body. It wasn't like she was actually floating, nor like her organs were actually above her. More like her senses weren't anchored to her body anymore. She could hear the distant flow of the river and see the fish swimming. At the same time, she could hear the butterflies flapping their wings as they moved between blades of grass. All around her, she could see the monochrome grasslands, and below her she could feel the ground shaking.

"There's-. Wait, what the hell? Something's not right! I can't see or hear anything, but I feel the ground shaking. Something's headed this way, and I think it might be buried underground. Whatever it is, it's fast. Very fast."

She quickly ripped herself out of her trance and grabbed her bow. She was disoriented, but she was hoping she'd be fine by the time she had to do anything important. She really hoped that'd be the case. Once again, she focused and felt the pressure around her. One more word, one more feeling. The pressure lessened again, coming down to barely even pressing down on her. "Oakbend." Her fingers were filled with an inhuman rigidity and strength. She pushed down on the bowstring, the crescent arrow still nocked from when she'd followed Caine. The bow was tough, but unable to show resistance in the face of her unimaginable strength.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Caine had already made all the preparations he could. Now, all he could do was wait. Wait for something he knew was coming, but couldn't see or hear or feel. All he could do was wait. What would it be? Maybe some kind of giant mole? Or a weird sandworm, but in the grass? No, sandworms only moved that fast because they were moving through loose sand. But if this thing was moving that fast, that meant it had the strength to rip through solid, packed Earth.

It came out of the ground blindingly fast right between the two of them. Time seemd to slow down for both of them as Caine heard the sound of the ground rupturing and saw dirt flying. He jumped back reflexively, just barely avoiding the rest of the creatures body. Maven didn't waste time staring. She let loose the arrow as soon as the giant gray monstrosity exploded out of the ground, and then rolled backwards to put some distance between them.

The creature seemed to be disoriented, so Caine and Maven both took the time to take a good look. It looked like a centipede, but grey and shiny and metallic? With a glowing yellow orb in the middle of its head. It was missing quite a few legs on one side (still a drop in the bucket for how long it was), seemingly taken off by Maven's crescent arrow. It looked around itself once it got its bearings, glaring (or the metal centipede equivalent) at both of them. Then it charged at Maven.

Maven didn't panic. She calmly sprinted in the opposite direction so fast you could've sworn she was using a Skill (when in fact it was just the result of regular aerobic exercises and running practice). The centipede began sprinting after her, and Caine decided he might as well take his turn. "I've always been way too vulnerable to peer pressure." Meanwhile, a certain Mechanolich was sitting on a hilltop thoroughly amused. "Leon would kill me if he found out I'd sent a Level 13 monster at his little protege, but my spare bodies were getting rusty anyway, and this one's no spring flower either. I'll let him have his catharsis, since he's letting me have mine."

Maven looked behind her at the seemingly angry, but actually emotionless, arthrobot and her new, supposedly fearsome and almighty, actually horribly out of shape friend chasing after her. She couldn't help but smile. "I spent so long looking after mother that I'd forgotten the simple pleasures of hunting and being chased by monsters."

Caine was barely able to keep up with the disabled machine. "Alright, that's it." He put on one final burst of speed, almost collapsing from the exertion but fast enough to be able to spend 3 seconds opening his Sanguine Inferno. The orb of blood that had been following him all this time exploded into flames. The flames turned into "arms", but as they did something strange happened. The centipede began getting pulled towards the flames as they rearranged themselves. As did Maven's metal bow.

"What the hell? Why is it-wait. It's fire, and it's being contained. That's probably magnetic, isn't it? Oh no. Oh yes? Whatever the case, I think I've just discovered an unintended side-effect to my power. Wait, Maven's bow is made of metal! Oh shit!"

It was too late by the time he realized. In spite of her best efforts, the bow was pulled out of her hand and straight into the blazing inferno, along with the centipede whose eye had turned a bright and panicked red (matching Maven's bright and enraged red), and heated fast enough to completely ruin both of them.

"My baby!" The Mechanolich and Maven cried out in unison. Maven turned around and sprinted to the pile of cracked, broken, and fractured steel. Caine didn't know what to say except, "I'm sorry. I didn't kn-"

She raised a hand. "Please. Let me grieve. This bow was a gift from my Uncle Adrian. He gave it to me when I had my Awakening. And now it's ruined." Tears began rolling down her eyes. Caine placed a hand on her shoulder. His guilt was obvious in his eyes.

"Maven, I'll make it up to you. I promise." She had no reason to believe him, but something about the way he said it, the way he looked when he said it, convinced her. He may very well have been magically charming her as far as she knew (he wasn't), but she saw honesty and honour in him. That was enough for her.

She wiped the tears from her eyes and got up. "You promise?"

He smiled. "I promise."

"Alright. It's strange. Even though I haven't known you for any significant length of time, I feel like I can trust you."

"I guess I just have one of those faces. Speaking of faces..." He bent down over the still glowing pile of metal and looked at the orb. It wasn't lit up anymore, as though it was dead. "What the hell is this thing? It looks like some kind of robot."

"What's a rowboat?"

"Not a rowboat, a robot. It's...how does your language not have a word for automaton?"

"Otamatans don't come up in conversation a lot."

"Well, it's a machine that moves, acts, and thinks on its own. It follows simple instructions based on the information it can gather from the environment."

Destroyed Dungeon Core [Level 13]: Cteel Centipede

"And now, your regularly scheduled reminder of why the English language is garbage and we should bring back Ancient Latin."

Caine's Contribution: 50%

Maven Honningdoter's Contribution: 50%

Form Party? [Y/N]

"Hey Maven, how do parties work?"

"Well, you can form a party if you kill a monster with someone. Once you do, you're able to see their Health, Stamina, and Mageburn at all times as well as sense their location, to an extent. There's also some spells that relate to your party."

"Well, you wanna form a party?"

"Oh! That's...umm...okay. Yeah! Sure!"

Caine clicked on "Y" and saw another element pop up on his HUD. It was Maven's name, and underneath it 3 bars (Red, Yellow, and Blue). The Stamina bar was a little less than a quarter empty, while both Health and Mageburn were still completely full. "The running couldn't have done that much. I spent three hours bashing in a giant crab's head in with a rock and it only took of 65. I guess that explains how she managed to draw a metal bow."

"Oh, wow. I've never felt another Awakened inside me. It feels strange. I feel like I should have a hard time keeping track of both, but I'm really not."

Caine bit back a snicker. "Not now! The joke doesn't even translate into her language. Keep it together. Wait, what does she mean "inside"? Doesn't she see a HUD too?"

"Hey, Maven, do you see anything in front of you that shows you your Health and Stamina?"

"Hmm? Oh, no. Some people do. A lot of people, actually. But personally, I prefer to feel it inside me."

"That's what she said. No! Stop it! Serious now."

"So what does leveling feel like to you?"

"Well, I feel this pressure on myself at all times. When my Health, Stamina, or Mageburn go down, it eases off. But when I level up it completely pounds me."

"I'm not even trying for these, they're just here! You're killing me, Maven"

"What is your level anyway?"

"That's rude."

"Is it? Sorry. I'm not from here, remember?"

"I believe you're a foreigner, but the other world thing still doesn't stick with me."

"Hey, wait! If it's rude to ask, why'd you ask mine?!"

"It was for your own good! Kind of. Okay, fine, I was curious about how powerful a Bloodmage was. What are you gonna do, call The Watch on me?"

"Well then, it's only fair you tell me yours."

Maven mumbled something under her breath. "What was that?"

Maven yelled something quite a bit above her breath. "I said 2! I'm Level 2, okay?!" She crossed her arms and legs and sat down, pouting.

"Level 2? That thing was Level 13! How did we even manage to kill it?"

"The bow you ruined was a masterpiece. Only someone with the Oakbend Skill could even hope to draw it. It had a draw weight of around 500 kilograms, ya know! I didn't cut through that thing's legs with magic!"

"Whoever introduced the metric system into this world, you have my undying gratitude."

"No, that wasn't a Skill. That was skill." Unsurprisingly, the two words were different in the language. "You didn't kill that thing cause you had a good bow, you killed it because you're an amazing archer."

She looked up at him. "You really think so?"

"Unless it was just dumb luck, I don't think most archers could line up a shot that perfect while jumping through the air. Unless you have a targeting Skill?"

"No, I never took any of those. I only had 3 Skill Points, so I used them on Oakbend, Omnisense, and Windrun. I didn't have any left for targeting."

"Well, good. You don't need it."

She was visibly proud and beaming now. "I haven't been honestly told I was a good archer since my Awakening. Ever since, everyone's just assumed it was the Levels."

"That reminds me! That thing must have given us a huge amount of Experience, right? It was Level 13, after all. Not to mention, it said it was a Dungeon." He looked over at the now coled pile of scrap metal, and picked the dull grey orb out from the indistinguishable mess. "What are you anyway? Hey, Maven, I'm planning on headed for Brury anyway. You think I could find someone who could tell me more about this thing?"

"A lot of the Adventurers I've met mentioned Beckett the Librarian, the Master of Archives at the Guld Headquarters. Supposedly, he's an eminent scholar on all things Awakened. If anyone could tell you, it's him. But did you just say you were planning on going to Brury? How? You don't have money, food, or even a map."

"Actually, I was hoping you could help me with that. Your father said you were planning on heading there when your mother got better, so I was hoping that, since we're in a party anyway, we could maybe head there together?"

She blushed, this time noticeable even to the airhead. "I'd really like that. Even if you are a Bloodmage, you're a great person. I wasn't planning on heading there once mother got better, I was planning to do it when she passed. But you cured her. I'm thankful for that."

"What are you blushing for? It's what any half decent person would have done in that situation."

She blushed even harder. "Well, it's just that you're the first really great guy I've met. I've spent my whole life in the village, which meant either old men, varied Adventurers, or the young village idiots. Ever since I was Awakened, it got even worse. From most people, it was quite reverence. From the idiots, it was hooting and hollering. I didn't really mind either, I just hated not having any friends anymore."

"Well, even if he's a Bloodmage, you do have a friend now. That's not illegal, is it?"

She laughed, making Caine quite happy. "No! It's illegal to work against the Diocese of Holobordenia, but using Bloodmagic isn't outright prohibited. And as far as I know, neither is being friends with a Bloodmage."

"Do you have anywhere to be right now?"

"No, not really."

"You wanna lay in the grass and look up at the sky together?"

"I'd like that."

Minutes turned to hours, day turned into night, and the clouds parted to reveal the moon and stars as Caine and Maven lay there, together. Both of them had found a friend. And as they dosed off on the cool grass, under the blanket of stars, they both understood what that really meant.

Experience Gain Summary

Health Expenditure: 50

Dungeon Core Destroyed: Cteel Centipede [Level 13] x1 [13,000]

Level Up! Level Up! Level Up! Level Up! Level Up! Level Up

Sanguine Inferno: 50

Level Up!

Attribute Points: 60

Skill Points: 6

Current Experience: 302