Chapter 1:
“The first essential of life is blood,” said a young woman as she wrote on a board, “The second essential of life is bone.”
Inside of a cathedral sat a group of young children. They stared at the woman at the board with rapt attention.
“The third is muscle. The fourth is skin,” as the woman ended her sentence, she finished drawing a diagram.
The woman turned to the kids and smiled, “I am a bone priestess. Of the 100 levels within the ranking system, I am rank 32.”
Awe spread on the children’s faces.
One of the children raised her hand. The girl was petite with a lovely face and startling black hair.
“Are you going to test us Sister Wex?” she asked. Her big, brown eyes were opened wide in curiosity.
“Yes, Ferra,” Sister Wex smiled lovingly, “I’ll need to extract some of your essence first. It’ll hurt the first time, so you need to be brave, okay?”
The children nodded their heads in determination, already knowing what was expected of them.
“Get in a line and come on up then,” Wex laughed. The kids quickly shot to the feet and scrambled to get in front of her.
The first to appear in front of Wex was a brutish looking boy. Wex’s eyes lit up in appreciation as she grabbed his hands.
Before the boy could react, she placed a finger on his forehead. With a tug, conjured a tiny, pink-colored thread. At her gesture, the boy grunted in pain, growing pale.
“Muscle essence! As expected Cassus,” Wex grinned, giving the boy a hug, “You’ll make a fine knight or mage.”
After Cassus stepped aside, a big grin on his face, Wex called the next child up.
One-by-one Wex withdrew different colored threads from their foreheads. A white thread for bone, a red thread for blood, and a gray-colored thread for skin.
Last up was the girl who had spoken before.
“Come on up Ferra,” Wex said with a tender expression.
Ferra lightly stepped up with an expectant gaze in her eyes.
Wex reached out her hand and placed it on Ferra’s forehead. She grabbed her essence thread and began to pull it outward. When Ferra’s essence thread was finally freed, Wex recoiled and dropped it.
A look of horror and disgust appeared on her face.
“What’s wrong?” Ferra asked in a panic.
Wex pointed at the thread with a trembling finger. It was black and wriggled as if it were alive. Noxious fumes wafted off of it.
“You have tainted life essence,” Wex whispered.
Sister Wex closed her eyes and made a gesture of prayer.
“You need to leave at once and are forbidden from returning.” All traces of love were gone.
Ferra went pale. Confusion swirled through her mind.
“Get out!” Wex commanded, grabbing the other children and hiding them behind her.
“I-I…” Ferra stuttered.
Before she had a chance to finish her sentence Wex moved her hands. With a flash, a shield of pure white bones appeared in the air. With a flick of her wrist, the shield moved towards Ferra, physically shoving her towards the exit of the church.
The other members of the congregation backed away from her in fear. They held out charms and the book of the god of life in front of them, as if warding away a demon.
With a final shove of the shield, Ferra was outed from the house of worship. Her stomach churned in terror of the situation.
The clergy gazed at her from the windows of the basilica with eyes filled with dread.
Ferra’s face continued to lose color as she backed away from the church. Uncertainty filled her mind.
“I have tainted life essence?” She knew what that meant. People with tainted life essence were worse than lepers. They were doomed to die an early death and they could poison others that came in contact with their essence. Worse yet, the taint in their essence would drive them to a path of madness and insanity.
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Luckily, the church sat in a forest just outside of the city of Turah. If she had been discovered inside of the city she would have been quarantined or killed on the spot.
“What do I do now?” Ferra wondered worriedly. She was orphaned at a young age and was raised by the church. Now that she didn’t have their support and couldn’t enter the city, she was likely to starve to death.
Without much conviction and under the hostile gazes of the nearby people, Ferra set off into the forest, alone and hurt.
She walked randomly for what seemed like ages, miraculously avoiding the dangers that lurked within. Eventually, she came across a large rock next to a lake. After she sat upon it, tears began to fall from her eyes.
“What did I do to deserve this?” she sobbed. Her life was ruined. She knew it was likely that she would die here.
As she cried, unbeknownst to her, the taint of her life essence had begun to spread now that it had been freed. Slowly it changed her thoughts of sadness to thoughts of hate. The first traces of madness were already beginning to appear.
A deep, terrible thirst for blood ran through her body. She was just about to return to the church, when a whistle resounded through the air.
She turned her head at the sound and was surprised to see a red globule of liquid headed directly towards her. Before she could react, it crashed into her, sending her flying off of the rock.
The liquid surged as it attempted to open any opening in her body.
“Blood?!” Ferra panicked as some of the metallic liquid entered her mouth.
As the globule of blood entered her body, her life essence was slowly beginning to be overwritten.
However, the tainted essence struggled violently against the intruder. It pushed against it, forcing some of it back out of Ferra’s body.
The two forces intertwined, battling against one another. Waves of pain wracked Ferra as her blood constantly made its way in and out of her body.
After a few hours of struggling, night began to settle upon the forest. Ferra was still trapped amidst the two forces when something approached her fallen body.
A large black leopard with blue spots slinked forward. It circled around her body, sniffing at her. A look of confusion crossed its eyes. It didn’t understand what was happening to the girl.
After a moment of hesitation, it lowered its head towards her and opened its mouth. Large fangs glittered through the darkness.
However, just as it was about to bite her, a change happened within Ferra’s body. The two mingling forces had stopped fighting and were now resting in her body.
Ferra opened her eyes her eyes with a groan and was startled to see the beast in front of her. She backed away in a panic, mind filled with dread.
“Tainted life essence, attacked by a ball of blood, now a leopard?!” she screamed inwardly. Her luck was truly horrible.
The leopard, noticing her regained consciousness, let out a vicious snarl. It tensed its hind legs, prepared to pounce.
Right before the leopard moved, Ferra felt a tug in her mind. She immediately raised her hand towards the monster.
“Blood Cloud!” she yelled. Instantly, a hissing noise rang out as bloody particles filled the air. They shot towards the startled leopard, immediately entering its body through its nose and ears.
“Burst!” she ordered. At her command, the blood that entered the leopard exploded, instantly turning the leopard into a pile of gore.
Ferra looked at the remains in shock. After a few seconds of staring, she turned her head, vomiting all over the forest floor.
“W-w-what did I just do?” Ferra stared at her hands in horror. The attack had been instinctual.
“That was an Azure-spotted Leopard!”
She remembered a lesson from the church. Azure-spotted leopards were creatures comparable to a rank 20 knight or mage, and she had killed it instantly.
“What in the world was that ball of blood?”
Ferra was smart. She immediately concluded that the mass of blood from earlier must be responsible for her changes.
She stood up, immediately inspecting her body for any noticeable differences. After a few minutes of thoroughly searching, she sighed in relief. Everything was normal.
All of a sudden she paused, turning towards the remains of the leopard. Lying in the middle of the destroyed body parts was a small string. Its life essence remained! She walked towards it and picked it up. After a few moments of hesitation she popped it into her mouth. She felt a warmth as she absorbed it. She felt her strength increase too.
As the essence digested, she realized her mind was filled with new bits and pieces of information. However, the knowledge was incomplete. It was split into fragments.
As it stood, there were two strands of knowledge she was able to completely access. One was about how to use Blood Cloud. The other was how to check her own life essence.
She immediately set her newfound ability into practice. She reached up towards her forehead and withdrew a string of life essence. She held it beneath the moon, using the light to observe it.
It was no longer pitch black. Now it was a dark red, only slightly blacker than typical blood essence. In addition, it had increased in size.
“Does this mean I’m no longer tainted?” she wondered, furrowing her brows. She eventually shook her head, unable to come to a solid conclusion. Luckily her efforts were not completely wasted. Judging from the length of her life essence string, she was rank 15. Each centimeter of length represented one level.
Ferra sighed in tiredness. The events of today were too much for her young mind to handle. She walked over to the nearby lake to wash out her mouth. As she cupped her hands together over the water, she gasped in shock.
Her eyes were two different colors. One was pitch black and the other was bright red.
Ferra held her hands to her eyes in amazement.
“I guess there were some physical changes after all,” she thought with wonder.
She stood up and backed away from the lake’s edge.
“What do I do now?” she pondered.
She couldn’t go back to the church or the city of Turah. Her description would have been handed out by now. Although her appearance had changed slightly, it would only attract more suspicion.
The ball of blood concerned her. She needed to find more information about it, but she wasn’t sure where to begin.
“Maybe Pho Academy’s library would have some information about it?” she thought, thinking back towards the largest library on the continent.
Her mind was now set. She knew what she would do. She stared towards the exit of the forest.
She took a step forward.