Blood Shaper

Chapter Seventy-one

Raising an eyebrow, Eleniah stared at Kay. “You want to do what?”

“See if I can figure out a new skill by experimenting with a concept from Earth,” Kay replied.

“No, I understand that part. I want you to repeat the other part.”

“One of the ideas I have is making my blood flow faster in my body so that I can boost myself.”

Eleniah slowly turned to look at Chitel, “And you think that’s safe?”

“No, not at all.” She shook her head, “I don’t think he should try that idea for a while longer. I can think of multiple problems right now, and there are probably more I can’t think of.” She looked at Kay, “You should set that idea aside for now. Let’s just do the adding blood idea and have you mess with your body in potentially fatal ways when there’s more than one healer available. Or if you get enough skills that we’re sure you won’t die.”

Kay shrugged, “You’re the healer. I think that I’ll get two different skills from this, so it’s fine if I wait.”

“Alright.” Eleniah stood up from her seat and gestured at the door, “Let’s go see what we can do for you.”

Eleniah stopped and turned around once they reached the training ground. “So, what are you going to do?”

Kay looked at Chitel as he started to gather blood, “You have a spell that can check my health, right?”

She touched his arm, and her hand glowed for a moment. “There, it’s on.”

“Alright. We don’t have any needles, but I can make one, so…” Kay focused on the pooling blood in his hand. A thin spire of it rose up, forming into a thin needle. Kay floated it up to his arm and slid it into one of his veins. “Alright,” He started narrating what he was doing as he connected the blood needle to the rest of the blood he was controlling, “I shouldn’t just leave a floating lump following me around because that’s easy to target, and it could get ripped out. So instead, I’ll cover myself in armor and flow the liquid blood underneath that and see if it works.” He quickly turned his words into actions, and moments later, there was a suit of blood armor covering him, slightly thicker than he usually made it. “Alright, I’m going to start pumping it into me.”

He could feel his blood start to thicken as he added more and more to his system. A normal person back home probably wouldn’t be able to notice this clearly, but with his magical sense tuned to blood, he could almost watch as he flooded his body with increasing amounts of blood. It took a few minutes to get to a level where he felt the new blood had spread evenly across his body, but when he felt ready, he turned to Eleniah. “Alright, I think I’m ready. What should I do first?”

“I don’t know; it’s your test!” She called back.

He rolled his eyes, “Should I attack or defend first?”

“Oh, neither! Just try and run around a bit, get your body used to any changes!”

Kay mentally smacked himself. Duh, of course, I shouldn’t just run into combat training with something brand new. Dumbass. He did a few stretches, then started jogging towards the opposite end of the training yard. His eyes widened as he moved noticeably faster as he put in the same amount of effort. He stopped at the end of the yard and looked down at himself, flexing his muscles as he tried to get a grip on any changes. Frowning, he turned around and started sprinting as fast as he could, working as hard as he could to run faster. He wrapped around the area, doing laps and taking his time to get used to the feeling.

After a few laps, he stopped next to the two women. “I don’t think this is acting like blood doping on Earth,” He said as he slowed to a stop.

“What do you mean?” Eleniah asked. Chitel just stood there, looking over his body in long sweeps of her gaze.

“I’m not a medical professional, so I can’t say if I’m totally right, but blood doping works by allowing you to get more oxygen to your muscles, so you can do hard labor or exercise for longer periods without getting as tired. I don’t think I’m supposed to be able to run faster by putting in the same amount of effort into it.”

Eleniah looked at him with a confused look on her face, “Isn’t that the same thing?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well… whatever. Just go with it.” She turned away for a moment and muttered something he couldn’t hear.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She walked over to one side of the training yard. “You feel like you’re ready for some light sparring?”

Kay shrugged and faced her. “Sure, let’s do it.”

“Alright,” She shifted her stance, “You attack me, and we’ll see gauge how much stronger you are before I start hitting back.”

“Weapons?”

“Sure, there’s no way you’re boosted enough to kill me in one hit or anything.” She pointed at Chitel, “Plus, we have a healer.”

“Cool.” Kay made a blood halberd and spun it around flashily.

“Whenever you’re ready.” Eleniah drawled.

Kay leaped forward as he slashed down, turning one of his spins into a surprise attack.

Eleniah narrowed her eyes as she punched his weapon aside. She leaned back to dodge the follow-up swing with the pole part of the polearm. She watched Kay as she dodged and blocked, weighing the increase in his combat power.

Kay felt light and energetic as he attacked relentlessly. He wasn’t getting a single good hit even with the increased number of attacks compared to his normal spars with Eleniah, but he felt that he was pushing her harder. He pushed through a well-worn combination of strikes, and halfway through, Eleniah was forced to block one of his stabs instead of dodging it as she usually did.

They moved back and forth across the area as Kay tried to attack her from multiple angles. Even with Eleniah only retreating, they still covered a lot of ground. Eventually, Eleniah lashed out at one of his attacks and knocked his halberd up with a blast of force.

“Alright!” She called out, “I’ve got a good idea of where you’re out now! Ready for me to fight back?”

“Ready!”

“Chitel, how is he holding up?”

Chitel’s eyes went blank for a moment as she stared at something only she could see. “He seems fine! He’s fluctuating in ways I haven’t seen before, but it’s similar to some buffs I’ve seen in the past, so it’s probably just that.”

“Awesome,” She grinned at Kay and started walking forward.

Kay leaped back, using the modification to his armor that he’d made in the past to get to the hydra’s head to gain extra distance. As soon as he landed, he started sending out blasts of blood at her. Using quick and dirty bursts of mana, he formed and threw blood at her at high speeds, not even trying to form them into more dangerous shapes.

Eleniah didn’t even bother dodging or blocking; she just let the attacks splash off her, her innate tier-five defense too strong for half-done attacks to scratch her.

Kay held up a hand and morphed the armor covering it into a large tube pointing in the direction of his arm.

Eleniah frowned and cocked her head as she kept walking towards her student.

Here goes nothing, Kay thought, then started spewing blood out of the tube like a fire hose.

Eleniah sidestepped the flowing liquid and started jogging. She watched as Kay dragged the blood spewing from his arm after her. He coated the ground as much as he could while she made her way forward. She started to slow and then stopped a few feet from him. “What are you doing?”

“Since we’re experimenting with one thing, I thought I’d try another new thing.” He grinned as he looked at her, surrounded by a lake of blood. “Like this!” With a mental command, he made the entire sea of crimson liquid rise up like a tidal wave and rush in towards Eleniah.

Eleniah grinned at him quickly before digging her feet into the ground and launching herself in his direction like a bullet. Kay threw up geysers and walls of blood in her path, trying to fuck with her footing as she maneuvered around and over the obstacles he made. During the literal second it took her to get almost entirely to him, the blood prison swallowed her.

Grinning, Kay stared at the now spherical collection of blood and started focusing on reinforcing it and solidifying it. He made it as tough as he could, the outside as strong as a blade that had punched through the scales of a hydra.

With the sound of rushing wind and the shattering of hundreds of mirrors, Eleniah’s fist smashed through one side of the sphere.

Dammit.

Kay grabbed at her arm with tendrils of blood and started trying to drag her arm out, keeping her off balance. She merely yanked once and destroyed the grasping tendrils with a single pull. A moment later, another hole formed from her punch, then another before Kay could react. The sphere collapsed.

Eleniah looked at him as blood rained down around her. “I thought we were testing a physical enhancement idea.”

Kay shrugged. “Can’t it be both?” He launched himself forward with his spring boot modification, keeping himself as low to the ground as possible as he slashed upwards, making a blood sword in his hand an instant before he started the attack. The blade of the weapon flew off as it broke against Eleniah’s knuckles. She lashed out in a retaliatory strike, and Kay tried to catch it with a gathered ball of stretchy blood. It slowed the attack down just enough for him to pull out of the way, and he attacked with twin punch daggers in hand.

The bubble that had slowed her punch down burst under a wave of pressure from Eleniah’s fist, and Kay saw her fist covered in a glow the color of old pitted iron. She reached behind her head and grabbed the broken sword blade Kay had pulled back at her after it had flown behind her, crushing it into shards between her fingers. She turned herself a minute amount, letting Kay’s two thrusts pass by either side of her. With a palm strike that created a small back-blast, she launched Kay across the training yard.

He tumbled and rolled across the ground before coming to a stop. He quickly jumped to his feet and spun to face her, to find Eleniah just standing there, smiling.

“I’m calling it!” She shouted, “That was a death blow!”

“Awe.” He sighed as his shoulders drooped. “I was doing so well!”

“You were, but you put too much into that last attack and let me get the death blow in.” She strolled over to him and punched him lightly in the shoulder. “That being said, well done. You were definitely hitting at around mid tier four strength. That was a definite boost.”

Kay opened up his notifications.

[~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~]

- New Skill!

- Skill: Blood Boost gained!

[~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~]

[————————————————————]

Skill: Blood Boost

- Blood is a driving force for life. Oxygen and vital nutrients travel from place to place along the veins, giving strength and power. By increasing the flow of blood in your body, you push yourself to another level of strength. This Skill allows the user to increase the flow of blood in their circulatory system, buffing their physical capabilities. Blood used in this manner is consumed by the body at an incredibly increased rate.

[————————————————————]

Kay grinned as he read the description and quickly checked his status. “Looks like someone heard you because the Skill is called ‘Blood Boost’. I got it to level three in that fight too.”

“Nice!” Eleniah smacked him on the back and grinned at him.

He spent a few minutes after that cleaning up the area and recovering all the blood he could before thanking Chitel and saying goodbye to her. After she’d walked off, he turned to Eleniah, who was still hanging around. “I have kind of a random question I thought of a minute ago.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Why aren’t you suggesting any ideas for me to experiment with? Your cousin is a powerful Water Manipulator; isn’t there any overlap?”

Eleniah sighed and rubbed her neck. “I’m sure there is overlap. The problem is, I’ve been trying to think of any ideas you could try, and I’ve realized I don’t know any.” She chuckled at Kay’s expression, “I’m serious. My cousin used her Water Manipulation Skill to augment her spellcasting with Water Mage. I realized when I started thinking about it that she didn’t really use Water Manipulation by itself much, and she never developed a related Skill or Class from it.” She walked over and stood at his side. “At that point, I started doing some research in what books I have and combing through my memories, and I realized something.”

He kept his eyes on her and raised his eyebrows questioningly, “What?”

“Whoever the Class Line Progenitor for Water Manipulation was, they were either, so secret no one ever heard of them, or they died so long ago there are no records left. So no one knows what Skills or Classes they developed, or if they do, they’re hiding them really well. We’re in entirely unknown territory for finding new Classes in your Line, and I’m not sure how to find more. Oh, sure, there’s experimentation,” She waved off his protest, “But I mean…” She gestured in the air randomly, “Where does Blood Manipulation end and new Skills begin? Manipulation Skills are as broad as anything. Why doesn’t turning blood into a solid count as Blood Manipulation? Why is, is Blood Shaping? You make shapes when you’re doing pure manipulation. What’s the difference?” She sighed. “Sometimes I wish you’d never brought up your reasons to think that The System was created by someone because now it’s all I can think of. Why is something the way it is? Why make it that way? Why not some other option?” She sighed again and gave him a small smile. “So, I’m sorry, but I just don’t know what else to try right now. I’ll probably think of something, but right now, I don’t have any good ideas about what the creators of The System would think is a Skill or Class in the Blood Manipulation Line that isn’t Blood Manipulation.”

Kay stared off into space silently for a minute or two. “That makes a lot of sense. Everything I’m doing is technically Blood Manipulation. It’s all manipulating blood through manual mana use. What is the difference?”

They stared at each other for a minute, wrapped up in the thoughts they were generating between the two of them when they were suddenly interrupted by Leya running up with something in her hand.

“Sorry! But Murunel asked me to check it, and I think it’s ready!” She gasped out as she stopped next to them. She held the magic dispelling wand they’d sort of stolen from the Nelamians. “I’m pretty sure it’s charged enough to break Murunel out of the ball.”