Chapter

A moment later, and after a strange pulling feeling emanated from within the slate, the greeting screen from before popped up..

Hello Mikel Raithson. This is your monitor - What do you need?

The sentence pulsed gently against the black background with a soothing pattern in stark contrast to the chaos around him.

“Um… I’d ask Librarian, but I can’t get in touch with her. Can you pull up a list of my Stamina? I’m exhausted.”

He wasn’t sure if the slate could hear him, but figured it was worth a try. The two spoke easily enough - why not this thing she’d given him?

He was rewarded as the screen pulsed black - Mikel thinking for a second he’d run the charge down already - only for it to flash back again, this time with a series of colorful charts and graphs all labeled with separate stats.

He whistled at what he’d found.

His name appeared at the top of the page, the letters stylized in a thick pattern he recognized from old books and scrolls. Below that, in the same style was his age, house affiliation, and something labeled Combat Level.

He grimaced when he realized there was no numerical designation beside the Combat Level line.

“That explains a lot,” He said as he pushed his finger onto the screen and gently scrolled up. No wonder he kept getting destroyed in fights - he didn’t even have a single level to his name.

Below Combat Level were the graphs he’d seen as the entire screen had scrolled into being when he’d pulled it up.

Stamina was listed first and a partially filled bar which glowed a healthy green glimmered up at him. The filled area, green in color, took up only one-eighth of the space, while the rest was black. A fraction displayed at the end of the bar - 30 / 250. The fraction pulsed a dull, slow red as if to draw attention to itself.

It didn’t take a genius to realize what he was looking at - he could feel what the numbers were telling him. Mikel was exhausted and only had about an eighth of his total Stamina left. If he pushed himself too hard by running or fighting, it might drop lower and he didn’t need to imagine what would happen then. He’d passed out after Celine had helped him engineer a single shred of Essentia - it was obvious he’d gotten better quickly, but if he pushed himself too much he’d pass out again, this time in much worse conditions than a friend's dining room.

For a moment he put the thought of total collapse out of his mind and scrolled down again and came across two more graphs.

One was labeled Health and showed a cheery red bar almost full. Only a sliver was black. The fraction at the end read 99 / 100. The fraction was a steady green color, different from the Stamina.

The final graph was labeled Essentia - and was entirely blacked out.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Mikel glowered as he pressed it and nothing happened. The fraction at the end of the graph read - / - and upon closer examination, a thin blue line ran through the blacked-out bar from left to right, as if to cancel it out.

“No surprise there,” Mikel said as he shook his head. Telgil had said as much when Mikel had broken his reading box. Celine had corroborated the fact that something was blocking his Essentia production - This just confirmed that fact once again. It was something he’d have to work on or through, but that could wait until later.

He scrolled again and came across a different screen, this time the black background held three crosses, all made of two lines - one running up and down, while the other intersected the middle of the vertical line. There were different labels at the end of each of the arms and in the center of the cross - although they were all blacked out, as his Essentia bar was, and were unreadable.

Again, further corroboration, not that he needed it at this point. He would have been frustrated if he hadn’t been so tired.

Out of curiosity Mikel pressed the first cross and was surprised to see it light up and a label he could read popped into existence above the topmost point.

It read: Ascendant Cross, and as Mikel watched a dull red blip formed on the middle left arm. Mikel almost dropped the slate when its label glowed to life.

Blood.

The Callisto Jewel shivered in response to the word Blood as the conversation he’d had with Celine came back to him in a rush. He’d thought he’d forgotten much of the talk but was relieved as something clicked within his mind and a host of images and facts came roaring back.

The Blood Node - the Node he’d be forced to grow towards the more he used The Callisto Jewel.

Mikel grimaced and scrolled down one more screen, putting the sight behind him. He didn’t want to think about all the memories that had bombarded him and didn’t want to worry about how his life would be impacted by the Blood Node.

He didn’t know enough about the subject to do anything anyway.

The final screen showed a chart with many horizontal lines which crossed the entire screen. All but the topmost lines were blank and Mikel was interested to see he recognized the listing.

Incarnadine Metafora.

He pressed it and the description came up, the same as before.

Incarnadine Metafora

Effect: Move your body from current location to location 20-50 yds. distant, you can perceive with some ocular capacity.

“You become Blood - As the Goddess traveled so shall you. On a tide of crimson wrath, ride into eternity.”

Essentia Cost - 50

Stamina Cost - 0

Health Cost - 0

Cooldown - 10 minutes

Another partially filled bar graph appeared to the right of the description, although this one was the least filled of the few he’d seen thus far.

The black bar had the barest sliver of red filled in on the right while the rest was black. The ratio at the end of the bar read: 1 / 1,000 Uses to Level 1.

He wasn’t sure what the entirety of the statement meant, but he did know that a single use had almost killed him - forget about using the Skill 1,000 times. Quick math made it clear he’d need a minimum of 1,000 hours to convert Stamina into the needed Essentia, barring any screw-ups on his part, and cooldown of the skill - although at his current rate of Essentia production, the small ten-minute window wouldn’t affect his ability to use Incarnadine Metafora.

“I’ll work on that later,” He grumbled, swiping the data away. His mind was too tired to do the math for how long it would take his body to regenerate the 250,000 Stamina he’d need to convert to Essentia - if the graph from before was correct, at most he would only have 250 Stamina available to use at any one time. He had no idea how quickly the resource recovered, or if his conversion rate would ever change. At most that was 5 uses a day, if everything went correctly - at that rate it would still take him the better part of a year to even reach level 1 of the Skill. He now saw why converting Stamina to Essentia this way wasn't the most desirable way to increase his aptitude.

“Too damn complicated,” He mumbled as he stashed the slate in the pocket he’d drawn it out of. He glanced below once more before starting towards the front of the library and the desk where he’d left the books. He hoped to find out what had happened to Librarian before too long.

He hoped she was okay.