The Demon King’s blood held its undying power. That was a well known fact.

The reason Johan choose to gamble into becoming a demon, was to gain access to that power.

That was much easier said than done.

Johan’s only avenue of research, was Inner Cleansing. He had made the card hoping to eventually evolve it into a proper healing skill, but its power was limited to remove foreign objects, it had nothing to stimulate the power of the blood.

Grubber laid on the ground, paralyzed by the demonplants’ dust. A snake shadowbeast laid next to him, also paralyzed.

Johan’s old power set was plant affinity, and a relatively large amount of blades. His vines allowed him to control many weapons at once, and he could raise wooden barriers as well as heal, using the vitality of his contracted plants.

Reincarnating erased his affinities, and, while he could still cast spells of different elements, having an affinity heavily increased the fulmin-to-mana control.

Because, the main use of his plant affinity, was to control plants with different abilities and resistances, to expand his repertoire. Soul affinity was great and everything, but fire affinity had mostly destructive potential, and Johan was more of a versatility fighter.

Rectifications had to be made.

Now, there was a skill old Johan was proficient at, a plant skill that could be useful now.

Grafting.

Johan cut pieces of the snake’s muscle, then cut a muscle of the same size and shape from Gubber’s body, and exchanged them.

Both bodies rejected the muscle, treating them as foreign objects, as expected.

Cards inside the Mind Deck were also called “Skills,” powers a person could use with relative ease, while cards on the Hearth Deck were meant to be used in combinations.

Under regular conditions, mind cards could be used as a support, to create and better use heart cards, but they could not be combined directly.

Johan used Inner Cleansing as a template to create a Cleansing card.

Then, applied the Cleansing effect on Grubber’s implanted muscle.

Grubber’s own fulmin slowly flowed into the muscle, replacing the areas in which Cleansing had expelled the snake’s mana.

Johan repeated the process several times, using his own fulmin to map the changes in energy flow. As his own card has cleansed the muscle of monster mana, he could trace Grubber’s fulmin slowly taking it over.

A day later, Grubber’s natural regeneration had absorbed the muscle as his own.

Johan repeated the process on Grubber’s legs, arms and upper back, each time increasing the size of the implanted muscles. In order to map the way in which grubber’s fulmin stretched itself, to assimilate a higher muscle volume.

Johan reached level twenty, and made a card.

-Regeneration 1.

*Stimulates natural regeneration.

“Not bad.”

Johan killed the snake monster, and tried to process a bone pile he had ready. He activated Regeneration, and used Soul Affinity to stretch its effect into the whole bone pile. Then activated Compression.

It worked, the bone pile shrank into a ball the size of Johan’s head. A mass of harder bone.

Grubber tried to stand up, but his new muscles janked his body with too much strength. he twitched and convulsed, and finally settled for crawling towards his boss.

Johan tried the process with individual bones, but every time he could only produce a compressed ball. It was a decent starting point, but hardly useful.

Johan knew for a fact that demons could evolve, and it was known monsters could evolve into more powerful forms, the more powerful they were, as compared to their level before evolving.

“I have to squeeze as much potential as i can from this imp body, before i reach level twenty five.”

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“Oh well, no pain, no gain.”

Johan grabbed a random imp, and stabbed his heart with a lance. As the imp died, Johan tried to use his fulmin to influence the imp’s own fulmin.

Nothing happened.

“I know there is blood magic, it has to be a way.”

*****

Days went by, and Johan killed a few imps every time the collector arrived with new recruits.

He bathed in their blood, ingested it, had Grubber ingest it, and inject fulmin into his belly. He combined imp and monster blood, but whatever blood power laid hidden, remained hidden.

But Johan knew it wouldn’t be easy, and he still had a lot of methods to try.

Eventually, he got a hunch he felt comfortable about.

Johan killed another imp, and this time, he gathered the blood on an improvised bowl, fashioned from a bunch of rocks covered in leather. Then he cleaned the body of muscle, and extracted the bones, dumped them in the blood, and tried to compress them.

To his surprise, the bones compressed, but they did so following the shape of the blood, creating something like a bone bowl.

“Not bad at all. All is left is to find a way to move and control blood flow, and this can be a pretty decent crafting ability.”

*****

Obviously, Johan felt his own blood should be a better medium for his personal use, rather than any other source. But obviously, draining himself of more and more blood to craft was a terrible idea.

A middle point had to be reached.

“Maybe that’s why the imp had a big claw, that should be something a person can safely work on, over a long period of time."

Little by little, Johan broke monster bones, cut his flesh open, and grafted small pieces of bone, compressing them into himself. Making his bones denser.

It was only by a little, on his skull and forearms. More than that, and the weight would drag him down. At least until he developed a decent understanding of blood magic

Meanwhile, he had a stop gag.

Johan arranged several stones into a triangular shape the size of his hand, and covered them with leather. Then he made a cut on his forearm, and bleed himself, just enough to cover the triangular shape. And held a bone touching the blood

With an use of Compression, the bone compressed into a lance head, one more resistant than any other bone he had crafted so far.

Johan arranged more bones into a horizontal indentation, and filled it with the blood of another freshly killed imp. Then placed the spear head at one extreme, and compressed more bones.

Once again, it worked, his spear head could not be compressed any more, but it fused with the rest of the newly crafted lance. This, paired with a club he made before for practice, meant he and Grubber had some decent equipment.

Time to tail the tax man.

*****

The next time the imp arrived, Johan and Grubber followed him at a distance, using his golden eye to keep track of the convoy.

The contingent travelled across a relatively large area. Or large for a lesser imp, in any case. Their movement clearly going alongside one specific direction. That’s why it was easy to determine when they were moving back, not only because all the extra lesser imps had been left behind. But because the sled moved into a direction perpendicular to the previous route.

This time, they travelled a distance around five times bigger than the distance between settlements. The terrain showing some clear changes.

Not only there were bigger boulders, and bigger vents of magic steaming from the ground. But the withered trees disappeared completely, and instead, animal bones could be found in the ground. Mostly skulls, spines and ribcages, with the occassional upper legs.

Bulls, goats, moose, all kinds of ruminants.

And just like the trees, the bones crumbled to dust whenever Johan tried to take them. Only to regenerate in the ground a while after.

“Reflections again, much more complex than before.”

A large boulder formation rose ahead, and it was obviously circular in nature. Not only that, but it also emanated magic, allowing Johan and Grubber to see it from a distance.

The boulders were huge, maybe ten times his size. As for width, Johan had no idea, but it was very large, an intense smell of blood could be perceived from it.

Next to the formation stood huge white structures. Bones, the skeletons of several large creatures arranged together. Each bone four times as tall as Johan. Looking at the white lumps that could be skulls, there may be forty skeletons or so. A small bone forest laying next to a huge stone circle.

Johan detected a group of shadowbeasts, one at level twenty four, and several others below level fifteen. Frog types, more than twenty. He grabbed Gruber and they hid between a grouping of boulders.

The beasts advanced towards the circular formation, and the magic inside it stirred. Something rose inside the rocks. Something big.

Blood.

A giant blood bubble arose, forming into a swirling pillar.

The blood descended, overflowing from the sides of the formation. Flooding its surroundings and then retreating back inside.

Large amounts of red blobs could be seen on the areas where the blood receded, the blobs squirmed. They were demonic larvae. Worms the size of Johan’s leg, with small stumps in the places that may correspond to limbs, and large mouthy teeth and pointy ears, that resembled imps.

This was a spawning pool. An active one, unlike the dead pool Johan had resurrected on.

The shadowbeasts rushed at the larvae, gobbling them in a single slurp. Not even bothering to chew them.

Then the blood rose again, this time not forming a pillar, but simply overflowing. At this sight, the boss shadowbeast ran away. But only a couple other beasts followed after it. The rest remained, too focused on the feast.

As the blood rose, the larvae became able to swim, and swarmed the shadow beasts. This time they finally began to run away, but five of them were still caught by the larvae. Covered in squirmy grubs from head to toe.

The beasts were eaten in no time, not even the bones remaining.

As the blood retreated, the larvae returned to the spawning pool, and Johan could see some of them, bigger and fatter than the rest, stopping at the edge of the pool, curling into a ball.

Before the blood receded completely, it enveloped those big grubs, and they grew into full-sized lesser imps, who groaned and growled disoriented.

Around fifty lesser imps were born in this way. A very small amount considering the pool’s size.

Four imps arrived from the bone forest, carrying clubs, and herded the lesser imps into an area hidden between several skulls, where they got outside Johan’s view.

Upon seeing the spawning pool, Johan realized he had found the power source he required, to truly begin his path.