I look at Mr Oliver, who looks at the marble-shaped module in wonder. He looks at me and the module with a distant gaze. I asked him, “ So how much is this module worth on its own? Your ability should be telling you that.”

After hearing my question he looks at me and starts to laugh. He says, “ My friend was definitely talking about you, I am sure of it after seeing you work. As you were working I was assessing the materials with my ability. That mixture of blood slime, spriggan wood dust and ghoul claw shavings doubled their value just by being mixed by you. Not to say of that monstrous rose you constructed. I have not seen someone make a mix of plant and animal parts this quickly and improvised without an ability for it in quite some time. And I cannot price this module, my ability only says that its value will come out with the right materials. So why wait then? Move the show on, Mr Prodigy.”

I chuckle a little from him calling me a prodigy, though I guess he does not know of my past or my hardships. I shake my head to get rid of those thoughts and concentrate on the inscribed dagger.

The dagger is a simple wooden dagger with a leather grip. It is sharper than normal and has weird scripts written on it that are dormant while it lies on the tray. I pick it up and send a little bit of aether in it. As soon as my aether touches it, the inscription sucks it up and starts to glow slightly in a bloody colour.

I take the module in my hands and put it in the dagger. As the module enters the dagger, the dagger starts to change. Its wooden colour fades to that of yellowish bone, the leather becomes as pale as a dying man. And some thorny vines sprout from its guard and wrap around it. The scriptures begin to move, they flow in frenzy as if looking for blood, but there isn’t any, so at last they wrap around the end of the hilt in a picture of a rose and its vines that wrap around the edges of the blade. Then it stills, the transformation complete.

“ So are we testing it? I can tell you that this dagger has some kind of blood poison type of ability, but further information requires testing it against something.” I say to Mr Oliver, a bit excited about testing this dagger. Mr Oliver looks at Taylor who nods his head but remains standing there. Mr Oliver asks me to sit while they fetch the test targets. I oblige and sit in my chair. I see him looking at the dagger in a distant gaze.

We wait for a couple minutes, the beep returns and the door opens to an athletic-looking girl in a whole-body leather suit which makes looking at even her face difficult. As she walks in I see that she is dragging a big cart filled with cages with sleeping monsters behind her. She looks at Mr Oliver and nods her head. Mr Oliver tells her to take a target out. She then opens the cage and takes out a large rat the size of a big cat. In a hoarse voice, she says, “ This is a feral giant rat, I will control it with my ability.” Then the rat suddenly wakes up and walks up to me like a puppet on strings. I shake my head and say, “ Making this took a lot out of me. Can someone else test it, please? I can guarantee that it will not have any adverse effects on its wielder.”

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Taylor then walks up to me and takes the dagger. I see the briars on the dagger writhe slightly so I think he connected with it. He then walks up to the still rat and cuts it across one of its arms. After cutting blood begins to trickle out. The blood on the dagger gets absorbed into it and slightly loses its pale colouring.

We wait while looking at the wound on the rat. After some seconds we see that the blood of the rat which has come out of its wound now lying on the ground begins to coagulate and comes together to form a thorny vine. As more blood begins to flow the vine begins to move slowly. The vine starts to climb up nearest the leg of the rat. As it climbs its thorns cut into the rat’s flesh, from these wounds more blood begins to flow. As more and more blood comes out, more vines start to grow. We see the rat start to move its front paws to rip the vines off itself. The vines easily get ripped off. But as it grabs the vines its paws start to bleed from which more vines begin to grow. In this couple of minutes, the first vine has reached the dagger’s cut. It begins it force its tip into the cut and drink from the cut. The other vines start doing the same from which wound they were born. Slowly over half an hour, the vines cover the rat entirely in a cocoon. At its peak, a bud forms and starts to bloom. When it fully blooms it creates almost the same as seen in the module, the difference was that the briars were crimson-coloured. A couple minutes after the flower bloomed the briars and flower started to shrivel up and turn pale.

I take my eyes away from the shrivelled corpse covered in pale wilted briars to look at Taylor and ask, “So what will you say about this dagger as its wielder?” He looks at the dagger and says, “ This whole time the briars were connected to me via an aetheric tether and consuming my aether, I could have controlled them slightly. It felt like if I had cut the target with this dagger more I would have had more control over them. I think if something else were to cut themselves on those thorns the thorns would have propagated but used more aether as upkeep cost. A minute after the flower bloomed I had stopped sending it aether but it felt like after it bloomed it could have sustained itself on aether mixed blood.” The woman in leather armour then said, ‘ The briars started to form after they were outside of the rat’s innate aetheric field. When the first vine forced itself into the wound it caused a lot of pain and made the blood thinner.”

I look over at Mr Oliver and ask, “You gave me some quality materials for this show. I think I also have a name for this creation of mine, ‘ Blood Bloom’. So how much am I getting to craft this?” Mr Oliver looks at the holographic screen by his side for a moment and says, “ I will give you 6000 credits for your time, ability and aether. In total, I will give you 55000 credits for now and your non-generic items will be held at auction and if they are sold for more you will get how much more it is sold for after we take the cut. Do we have a deal?” He then takes out a contract from his desk which has all our previously agreed deals written on it with his sign. I also take it and sign it. I look at my wristwatch and see that it is already 12 pm so I excuse myself and get out of the building. I was almost late for the visit...