I tried testing the blood gem ritual on smaller creatures, which ended... rather poorly. You see, there is a certain requirement to the amount of life force one needs in order to get the stone, and from my findings, five humans, or about a thousand and five hundred health, is the minimal requirement to make a stone, though the said stone might be different each time you use the ritual. Like I got three tiny blood gems after I was done with the humans in the trade caravan, that was traveling through the quite well developed road, about a day walking from the village I sacrificed.
Anyway, the results were rather annoying. Not all stones had the same mana recovery to mana storage ratio. One of them had about seven hours needed to recover mana, while another one needed about fifteen hours. Their sizes varied as well, just as the capacity, but still, I got myself tiny blood gems with three hundred, five hundred, and six hundred mana capacity, while the one with three hundred had the mana recovery rate of twenty mana per hour, and the five hundred had the seventy two. Six hundred had sixty though, and was almost on par with my initial stone in terms of the recovery efficiency. As for the drawbacks, I don't get any experience from the ritual, but I do get some points, and I can easily convert the stuff that was left after the ritual.
“I'm getting tired of all this exploration. Need some rest.” I yawn after saying that, because I got really bored and tired. I haven't been sleeping for almost a week already, while before coming to this world my record was about two days. Also I'm starting to feel hungry all of a sudden. “Minion! Fetch me a game from the forest.” I order my elemental and it disappears in the forest. Commanding elementals are fun by the way. Now, to recharge the big diamond, which is as easy as guiding mana from myself to it, so I could summon another elemental in a day, and drop it into the inventory, while getting the smaller one from there, and start fiddling with it. Eventually I manage to place a small glowing rune on it, which takes about five mana per hour, while providing quite a dim light, like one of those phosphorous sticks you could find on certain carnivals. Must say, it's quite efficient. Now I can't add a trigger to it, as the surface area is really small, but hey, it's just a tiny stone that is useless anyway. Status.
Alias:
Jack
Race:
Homunculus
Variant: Prime
Class:
None
Titles:
Inquisitor
UP: 3
SC: 101862
ST: 0
Level:
1/10
Experience:
4%
HP:
18000/18000
MP:
10500/10500
Traits
Stubborn, Unbreakable, Legendary Regeneration, Esper*, Survivor, Perfect Physique, Primordial Entity, Lesser Immortality.
Abilities
Inventory, Grimoire*, Evil Eyes*, Soul Siphon, Elemental Possession, Transform*, Auto-Map, Minion Master*, Creation.
Bloodlines
Primary: High Human; Secondary: Dragon; Tertiary: Primordial Phoenix;
Superior Strength
100
Superior Constitution
100
Superior Vitality
100
Superior Agility
100
Superior Dexterity
100
Superior Perception
100
Superior Focus
100
Superior Willpower
100
Superior Attunement
100
Charisma
100
Psyche
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
100
Luck
100
Spirit
100
Resilience
100
Fire
Water
Earth
Air
Light
Darkness
Life
Death
100
35
35
35
35
45
35
35
Summoning
Time
Void
Space
Soul
64
30
30
30
30
I allocate 127 points to the summoning, bringing it to sixty four points, and muse on the long process of leveling up my affinities. Killing critters is a pain, but they provide some experience, you don't get experience from increasing skills, though you might get some from increasing stats or affinities, but I guess that won't be possible for me. I wonder if you could actually increase affinities through dedicated training in the first place. Whatever, I sense that the my summon managed to acquire a... deer, I think? And now it carries it towards me.
I move out of the road and go into the woods, to establish a small camp, where I might get some rest, while being protected by the elemental. Here it is by the way, good elemental, good. Now to get some meat from the... I'll do that later, instead I'll get the pizza and orange soda, haven't drank it since the behemoth killed me.
----------------------------------------
I wake up in the middle of the night, with... mild headache. At least I'm somewhat rested, I hope. Head is going to kill me at some point. I access my inventory... only to find that I'm unable to use it. Wait... Status... Nothing? What happened?
“Glad you asked.” some... thing appeared? “I'd like you not to call me a thing.”
“Yeah, great. Who are you then?”
“Ghost.”
“Cool. So what do you want?”
“Please, don't trap the souls of people in these unholy items.”
“Unho... what?!” great... and I wake up. Let's see, I get the feed from the elemental, and it's not far from me. Hm... “What was that anyway?” I shrug off the weird sleep and check that my mana is full. “Whatever, let's summon another elemental. I need about... four more after that, I guess?” I grab the blood gems and crystals, and prepare to summon the elemental... Only when I try to do that, instead the gems disappear... how? Wait, why would these gems disappear?
Lesser Elemental gained infused core.
Infused Core
The core of the elemental becomes more refined and tangible. It results in greater mana capacity and recovery.
Uh... what?! Wait, why is my elemental glowing?
“Earth Wall!” I shout as the elemental I summoned detonates and the explosion destroys my wall, and sends shards flying in my direction. I am sent flying into the tree and feel like bones in my body crack, and the armor gets set alight, and now I feel the gravity of the situation. Well, to be percise, I feel like I'm falling down, and I land quite clumsily face down.
Health is below 10%
Yeah, great... why the fuck I can't see shit? And how can I see the blue box? I try to move my arms, and they seem to be fine, only heavily damaged, as well as my armor. Well, it'll get repaired, I guess, but first, I need to remove my mask...
“That... hurts...” I remove the mask, but vision doesn't seem to get back. “Just great.” I move my hands around my face, and notice that it's covered in liquid, and a small spike coming out of... “Great, so I got my eye sliced? And the other one impaled? Damn, I should've never made that shitty mask.” I try remove the glass shard from my right eye, and it works... though it is kinda painful and totally not healthy.
Warning! Health is at 1%
“Shut it, I know.”... I lie down, with face to the sky, I think, considering that the back of my head fell to the ground, and check that my health isn't degrading. That's good. “If only I knew how to use life magic, I could easily... well, no, I couldn't, don't have mana.” I check the elemental feed and find out that it's alive. Lost about a thousand mana, but it's still there. I order it to come near me, to see how bad I look.
Now that I can see through elemental's eyes, it has eyes right? I notice that I'm not in a bad shape. Yeah, my face is slightly cut, and eyes are missing, but I'm no longer bleeding, and my armor wasn't affected that much, even my mask, which is on the ground, is only missing the shitty visor, which was made of saphire. Fuck, need better material for visor. How did I even... heh. I almost got killed by a glass shard... heh...
You managed to withstand an instant death effect, which is weird, considering the glass shard pierced your brain. And not only that, but you managed to survive after ripping said shard out with your eye, and part of your brain, proving that you are not a brainless fool, but just a Fool.
You gained 1 token.
System, your sense of humor sucks.
----------------------------------------
The healing process is long to say the least. Yeah, I managed to heal up rather fast in about... I dunno, few hours? Surprisingly, it wasn't the eyes that were the most damaged, but my entire body, due to the rampant death energy, which is also temporary reduces max health, at least not for long as on the day two the debuff on my health was gone. In the meantime, I decided to go with the normal practice of summoning multi-elementals, by summoning a few fire elementals, sacrificing them for mana, and then summoning multi-elemental. Takes a bit more time comparing to the other way, but at least I won't lose my blood gems. Though if we're being serious, I think that the issue with the elemental was that it absorbed every blood gem, got overdosed and exploded. So, if I don't want explosions, I need not to use the blood gems, but only get mana from them, which would be my next goal, asides from getting good enough transparent material to use in my visor. I thought maybe about using a diamond, which should be tougher nut to crack, but I don't understand why I went with saphire. Yeah, I know, it was used in production of the cell phones, but it was an artificial one, maybe even somehow strengthened.
Still, I found out that my regeneration is actually quite good, and can even remove the foreign objects from my body, considering that as I was regenerating, some glass shards were pushed out from my face, and eye holes. It was kinda scary experience, watching my own body from the perspective of an elemental, and see how tiny glass shards fall off my face. But that already happened, while now... now I look at how someone might have been a bit of a naughty boy while designing the city.
Let's start with something simple, like town walls. They are white. Not to the point of pure white, but white nevertheless. Then behind the walls I see a few towers and, I guess a castle or something, made of snow-white material, with the roofs glimmering in the sun... is it gold? Why would someone make a roof from gold?
“First time seeing Knightshade?”
“Shade my ass, this place is bloated with white color. I bet they also have streets illuminated even in daylight.” I answer to the guy who talked to me. “Still, yes, first time, I was going to the mountains, but going in a straight line is harder than I expected.”
“Sawtooth mountains? You're off the mark by a lot then. What brings you there?”
“Engraving. I want to learn engravings from this... beardbane clan?”
“Understandable. No one is as good in engraving as dwarfs.”
“I only need to practice engraving a bit more, and enchanting. After that, I need to learn healing.”
“You're in luck then. Knightshade is the headquarters of the Church, and they are the best healers. Though they don't share much unless you're devout to it's teachings.”
“Like kill non-humans and get rich?” the guy shrugs. “Well, as long as they can teach me magic, I don't mind.”
“Try Academy for the magic tutors.”
“I'll probably go back there after I learn what I wanted, and finally start learning whatever gramps teaches.”
“Interesting. Well, was nice meeting you.” I nod, but as I turn to face the guy I was talking to, he suddenly disappeared.
“Cya, I guess.” I shake my head and move on to the city.