Book 4 Chapter 36 (Patreon)

“Right.” Kay laid the stylized droplet onto the table with a quiet thud. The reddish-black object looked more like a paperweight than anything, shaped like an upside-down drop of blood with a flat base. It was almost a foot tall, with almost seven gallons of blood compressed into its form, that large quantity necessary to hold the magic Kay’s imprinted into it.

The small gathering of Blood Guard members, with Lauren at their head, stared down at it.

“What is it?” Tyuah, second in command of the Blood Guard, asked. While Lauren was in overall command of the Blood Guard and spent the majority of her work time running the organization and the rest with Kay, Tyuah had taken charge of the “personal troops” section of the organization. The Blood Guard as a group were technically only Kay’s personal soldiers, but with the limited size of the “nation” he ruled versus the number of people they’d recruited, it was a waste to have them sitting around waiting for him to have something for them to do, so most of the time he had them out supplementing the army, the Sentinels, and in a few cases the Wardens. Tyuah’s main duties were to oversee the completion of missions that the Blood Guard undertook for Avalon as a whole and to make sure everyone else was training to eventually be Kay’s instrument to exercise his will upon the world. Whatever that would end up looking like. The last year or so, she’d been mostly outside of Avalon City, hunting monsters, finding bandits, or helping to escort new settlers to the places Avalon wanted towns and villages. With a war coming, though, the Blood Guard had been recalled and pushed into even greater training to get ready for open battle.

“This is the culmination of quite a bit of work.” Kay replied with a grin, “I’ve successfully managed to take an enchanted item, duplicate its enchantment into blood, and then tweak it into something that we’ll find a little more useful.” He tapped the mass of blood and looked around the room. “Who’s good at being stealthy?”

“Shane,” Lauren called over her shoulder, “You’re the best for this out of the people we have here.” Kay had already talked to her about what he’d been attempting, and it was easy for her to fill in the blanks.

“Alright,” A slender gnomish man stepped around and beneath a few people to get up to the table. He pulled blood from a spatial storage item and used it to make a platform to see over the top of the table. “What do I do?” He asked quietly.

“Blend it into your armor and then activate it with a bit of mana.” Kay picked up the droplet and glanced from it to Shane. “I was going to tell you that you can’t dilute it too much with unenchanted blood, but the amount I was going to recommend is for my body. We’ll have to experiment with exact amounts for everyone, but the general ratio I’ve figured out is roughly five to one.”

“Easily done.” He silently asked Kay’s permission with a look, then broke off a chunk of the blood with his Skills. He stared at it for a moment before gathering more out of storage and mixing them together. “I can feel the outside magic in it. It’s a bit strange.”

“Yeah, it is.” Kay agreed, “I’ve done some experiments with drawing the magic out of blood from magical beings, like when I make the Skill gems, and this is a lot more obvious. It might be that it’s ‘outside magic,’ like you just said, and the natural magic in someone or something’s blood blends in because it’s natural to it.”

Shane was a quiet person who’d joined the Blood Guard in the second wave of applicants after the first few, including Lauren and Tyuah, had finished getting a hold of the basics. After more and more people had gotten to tier three with Blood Shaper and then other derivative classes, Kay had delegated the training of new recruits to people who already had or wanted to gain teaching Classes. Training directly with Kay had become a reward for excellence or a potential draw to bring in people they really wanted to recruit. Training in Blood Manipulator would eventually become more and more public until it was eventually available to everyone like “normal” Classes, but the next step was to allow soldiers, Wardens, Sentinels, and healers who could be counted on being loyal to Avalon to learn it.

Kay briefly detoured in his thoughts to wonder about that Adventurer’s Guild healer who’d wanted to learn Blood Manipulation to eventually get Bloody Healer or something similar. She’d never contacted him after Avalon had become established, neither personally nor through the Guild. Since he’d sort of promised, there would be a guaranteed slot for her once they went public with the training if she ever showed up for it.

Shape Blood and Manipulate Blood, like a multitude of other Skills, worked based on what you imagined. Many people’s blood armor looked different just because of how they imagined their armor would look, and in a lot of cases, it could be affected by Skills as well. People who had Skills for heavy armor would generally end up in heavy armor, even if they didn’t specifically picture that as they formed their armor around them. Shane’s armor was thin and form-fitting, looking a lot like a full-body latex covering with extra padding around vital areas. Instead of stylizing his face and head covering like a helmet, a monster, or something else to look at, he left it entirely blank, copying Kay’s “I’m a creepy red robot” look.

“Can you still feel the magic in it? Does it feel stretched or diluted at all?”

Shane nodded and then shook his head in answer.

“Then push some mana into it.”

A moment passed, then Shane’s red armor shimmered like a heat mirage before vanishing.

Multiple people gasped and either took a step back or a step forward.

There were a few more heat-mirage-like shimmers, and Kay could faintly make out the edges of an arm as Shane inspected himself.

“Camouflage blood,” Kay announced with pride, gesturing at where Shane appeared not to be. “Took me ages to work it out, but here it is. While the enchantment is active, any blood connected to it starts taking on the color and appearance of the surrounding area. I think it can detect incoming light and then projects what’s coming from one side onto the surface opposite that so it looks like you’re not there, but that’s not anywhere near my area of expertise so take it with a grain of salt. Try moving over to the wall, Shane.”

The shimmers continued to follow the movements but completely vanished after Shane pressed himself against the wall and froze.

“It works better when you’re up against a surface since there’s less work to do, and it doesn’t have to deal with multiple points of view. It also consumes less mana that way. Also, as you could probably see, it flickers a bit when you move, so it's easier to make you out then.”

Everyone tried to pick out Shane, a few people pointing at where they thought he was. After a few moments, he popped back into view as he let the enchantment shut down, multiple feet away from where he’d been before and far from where anyone guessed he was.

“That is an excellent addition to our toolbox,” He commented quietly as he stripped the armor from his body and separated the enchanted blood out.

Kay took control of the blood and fused it back into what had been left sitting on the table, shaping it back into the droplet shape and hardening it back into a solid. “It took me a few days of testing and then working at it, but I’ve got a total of four of these ready for our sneaky types to start practicing with.” He pulled the remaining three from his Inventory Skill and set them next to the original. “Priority is for people with stealthy Classes or Skills. Then, if there’s enough left over, other people can take a shot. Lauren will handle distribution.”

Lauren snorted at the multiple pleading gazes sent her way. “I’ll make sure it goes to the people who can use it best.”

“Damn, you’ve been working hard,” Lauren commented. “My lord,” She quickly added.”

Kay concealed the grin he had for the generally informal second in command. She knew it was okay to drop most of the formality in private and was significantly better at keeping it up in public than she had been before. He was pretty sure the extended period where they hadn’t interacted directly had gathered some rust, but it wasn’t worth scolding her over.

“Could we do different enchantments?” Someone asked, “If we could get some that would be useful for fighting and then form it into our weapons…” An excited murmur broke out at that thought.

“Probably, but I haven’t had a chance to test it that thoroughly.” Kay informed them all, “I also can’t spend the entirety of my time working on this, although a good chunk will be devoted to upgrading as much of our fighting potential as I can.” He turned to Lauren, who had started muttering names to herself as she figured out who would get some of the camouflage blood. “How many people do we have with Meld Blood?”

“Five at the moment with Blood Melder as a Class, two people trying for the Class that have the Skill, and a few more in training I’m fairly sure will get it.” She replied instantly.

“This is enough of a game changer that we can loosen a restriction or two to speed things up. Schedule some time for me to take them through an intensive training schedule. As long as it's possible for them to start doing this at their level of the Skill, we’ll get them to start producing as much as they can for various enchantments. They probably won’t be as strong as what I make, but something is better than nothing. For the rest of you,” The gathering of Blood Guard stiffened as he started addressing them directly, “Work together, talk to everyone in the Guard, and find out what enchantments will be most useful for everyone as a whole. We’ll work on custom enchantments for individuals once we have the time and manpower to afford them, but for now, we’re focusing on upgrades that help everyone. Make a list, and run it by Tyuah and Lauren, who will figure out what we’ll focus on.” He nodded at the two officers, “Once that’s done, bring the list to me, and I’ll have Amanda work on getting the best versions of the enchantments we can use. We’ll either pull them from the vaults or buy them when necessary.”

“My lord, what if we have enchanted items we’d like to donate?” Lauren asked, “I remember you saying that you changed the enchantment to better suit us in the process. Could you potentially increase the power of one? I know of several weaker items I possess that could be useful if powered up.”

“It takes more time and effort, but it’s possible. Anyone who wants to volunteer items will be compensated for them, and so far, we haven’t destroyed any, so as of now, you’ll even get them back. Actual volunteers only, though; we have the budget to acquire a lot of items if necessary.”

The attentive troops divided into smaller groups as they began discussing what magics would be best and if any of them had useful items to donate.

“Lauren, you’re more involved in training right now; you focus on setting up that training session so we can get production moving. Tyuah, you take care of distributing this camouflage blood and figuring out what others would be best. I’ll start going through items we already have that might be useful and processing those.”

“My lord, what about our members that have… been seconded?” Lauren nodded at the four droplet shapes on the table.

“That’s been taken care of,” He replied. He’d already made another two droplets of camouflage blood for the sneaky types from the Blood Guard that were training under Isla. Officially, there were only four droplets worth at the moment, but having a secret group of troops that could mostly go invisible seemed like a good backup to have for later.

“Right, let’s get moving. The more we can make, the better off we’ll be for what’s coming, and hopefully, I can get that level I need to get Blood Melder back and maybe another after that. If I can get another tier-five Class before the enemy shows up, that’ll be worth as much as a few sets of enchanted gear, or maybe more.”