When one thinks of a criminal organisation that makes their base in the sewers one expects them to be like the shadows. Silent and efficient in their work, with a certain amount of creepiness added to the boot.

What one does not expect is for people to be screaming at each other at the top of their lungs like this. I am supposed to be focussing right now but in this infernal racket I can't even hear myself think. Well, I can't really blame the organisation for this though. They seem to be the quiet sort.

It is the people that they are rescuing that are not able to keep control of themselves. You see, the organisation has been smuggling the many merchants that are in the city out of it. Naturally they are doing it for the purpose of saving the people from the bloodfire gang.

The bloodfire gang is a pirate gang, naturally they are going to be looting the city, which at the moment seems to be primarily under the control of the bloodfire gang. If the situation was more of an even split, where the mayfires had managed to keep control of even a small section of the outer keep, things would be more calmer down here and the organisation would have way less business.

The bloodfire gang makes the organisation seem way cheaper. The organization are naturally charging quite the bit for this smuggling process but losing a majority of your goods is still better than losing all of your goods.

That is why it seems that all the merchants that have a spatial storage are already down here. They have made this place into a market the way in which they are haggling, bargaining and most annoyingly, screaming at each other. While I haven't yet to confirm it I think that these people all are waiting to be extracted.

The people here are essentially swapping their positions on the line to leave this place. At this moment there are so many people here that the organization is struggling to smuggle them all out. After all, the more frequently that you smuggle something out, the quicker that you are going to get that route discovered.

That is why everybody is waiting here. With nothing else to do, the people here have reverted to their usual work. That is, trading with each other. Just like a normal market the people here have been making bargains with each other. With every deal struck the arguments just seem to be growing in this place.

Well, putting them all in one massive room is going to do something like that. I think this is supposed to be some kind of a storage that has been retrofitted into housing for all these merchants.

My bad luck is that my room is pretty close to this storage room, which is why all of it is so audible. Now, I am not one to care much about noise or chaos, (I can tune it out usually.) but it is something that is undesirable when I am doing something that is so vital.

Today is going to be the first time that I am going to be making use of the fusion spell. I would have preferred to have done it at better and more peaceful times, but I have a feeling that I am going to need every iota of my strength to be able to survive in the coming days.

Today is going to be more a practice run, as I achieve the primary linkage to the formation. The process of linking a foundation slab to the mana core has three stages, requiring the spell to be cast three times actually.

The first stage is the primary linkage in which a bond is formed between the primary formation and the foundation slab. This is supposed to be the weakest connection.

This primary linkage will then act as the foundation for creating stronger bonds, known as the minor bond and the major bond. The minor bond will make sure that even if I am far away from the formation, the bond won't break and the major bond should make it unbreakable by most means.

That all is meant for the future though. For now I have to achieve the primary linkage with my mana core. If my master's notes are to be believed. Doing this will result in a bunch of benefits, though which benefits exactly is something that even my master is unsure about.

Well, I have procrastinated on the matter for long enough. The further that I delay on the matter, the harder it is going to be.

(After about a day.)

I have finally done it, though I would rather not speak about it. screw it, it feels like right now somebody is pulling all of the bones in my body out of me, while still connected to my nerves. Then the person is using those bones to play a drum.

It is kind of like that pain that you get when somebody is pulling out a teeth of yours, just that this is all over your body. No, all over your body is still not enough to describe the fucking pain that I am feeling at this moment.

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Well, at least my master was correct about the benefits of this spell. Already I can feel the cycle form in my body. Well, how do I explain to you what exactly the cycle is.

To explain it first I will have to explain what exactly this fusion spell was supposed to do. The spell essentially creates a channel between my mana core and my formation. The only thing that will be able to travel through this connections is my mana.

In my master's case (at least as he explains it.) this connection is supposed to be one way. His ninth class formation, called as the wolf's skin is supposed to allow him to cover himself in storm wolves skin.

All he can do is send the mana from his mana core to the formation. Without having to do it through the usual process. The only benefits that it gives him is that it is way more efficient than the usual process. It also allows him to control the formation with a precision that even the best user of formation control will never be able to achieve.

In my case, this bond formed is actually a two way connection. Even now, I can feel the vital mana in my mana core flow into the formation that I have built into the bloody fang. It is not a pleasant sense to have your vital mana moving like that. It kind of feels like my teeth are wiggling whenever I focus at something else.

The only reason that I am not panicking at this moment, is because the mana is also flowing back into me. Through the same connection, the sword is sending the same mana back to me. The only thing is that there is a little trace of blood mana in the mana that is being returned to me.

Do not ask me the exact theory behind this, but it seems like the formation is now passively active all the time. The sword is now taking on the role that it used to take in the body of the grunt that I have taken it from, at a much lower level though. The sword is acting as an extension to my mana core, converting my mana to blood mana at a steady rate. It is not a particularly high conversion rate. It will take a year just to convert one percent of mana stored into blood mana.

Now you might ask me why that is such a wonderous thing. This is going to allow me to adapt to blood mana. The biggest disadvantage of using my sword is the fact that this much blood mana is like a shock to my body, causing serious side effects each time that I use it.

With the sword always active, it is going to be way less of a shock to me. It is still not going to be pleasant, but I will be able to use it way more, maybe even permanently after long enough.

This is going to do wonders for my tolerance of blood mana. If before I could use my sword for fifteen minutes each day (it is not the correct amount, but I am also not willing to state it in such a public record.), now I will be able to use for sixteen minutes. It might seem a bit less, but within a couple of months this is going to reach thirty minutes.

The second benefit is that my physical strength is going to be enhanced from now on. After all, vampire grunts have easily ten times the strength they had pre transformation. While my strength won't be enhanced that drastically it is still going to be nothing to sneeze at.

Well, now that I have spoken about all the benefits of this formation, I might as well describes the limits of it. Naturally, if there are so many benefits it is going to have costs.

The first cost is going to be the fact that I cannot have the sword physically far away from me. Having it on my body at all times would be the best case scenario.

The farther that the sword is from me the harder the cycle will be to maintain. If it is far away from me the cycle is going to collapse. (This is going to be the case until I achieve the minor bond.) Right now, neither me nor my master know what is going to be the consequence of breaking the cycle.

The best case scenario is going to have me lose all of the enhancements that would have happen to my body. The worst case scenario is going to be that I will become a blood addicted idiot. You see, this is the major disadvantage of using blood mana. All of the benefits that it provides come at the cost of a dependence on blood.

Even leaving the matter of physical dependence on blood, there is the problem of getting addicted. When you have seen vampire grunts scream in despair, begging, threatening and selling themselves for just a little bit of blood, you tend to realise just how dangerous such a dependence can become.

This is something that I have too much experience with actually. The general strategy while dealing with a vampire (especially the grunt) is to lock them up someplace and then starve them of blood. Fighting even a well fed vampire is considered to be tantamount to suicide.

I have seen gentle men that cannot hurt an ant become like mad dogs in their pursuit of blood for me to realise just how dangerous such a dependence can be. After all, we also have to deal with the few grunts that manage to escape their prisons. Each and every time that has happened, it has been a hard and drawn out fight that took an entire team.

The other disadvantage, is that I have to keep using my power regularly from now on. There is a chance that my sword might cannibalise my own blood to keep itself running if I were to keep it starved of blood.

vampire grunts literally have to drink blood every few days or their body will literally drain itself to sustain itself. That is actually one of the reasons that vampire grunts are so easy to find. A vampire grunt might be able to control his instinct and keep himself from attacking a person and draining them.

How is the grunt then going to hide it when he goes from a physically fit person to a living skeleton in a matter of weeks. Thinking of all this actually causes a chill to travel through my spine.

Well, whatever happens my side effects are not going to be that extreme at the very least. After all the benefits that are recieved by a vampire is way more than I am ever going to get. All of their abilities guzzle through their blood mana reserves.

At least that is what I am telling myself. Fuck it, I am shutting this record. This should have been a moment of victory. How the hell did I manage to convert it into another worrying session?