Blood Shaper

Metal sheets, rocks, uncut gems and crystals, and other materials, raw and processed, clanked and rattled against each other as faceless red humanoids carefully held samples of various resources up to their eyeless faces and inspected them before dividing them up into different categories and sorting them. A number of different materials were tossed unceremoniously into bins and piles, creating a continuous discordant harmony of percussion. The simulacra weren’t featureless copies of Kay this time since he hadn’t used his own blood as the base material to form them. Instead, they were shorter and, while it was hard to make out since the simulacra tended to lack definition, a little curvier in the hips and chest.

“I’ve gotten used to it, but having almost copies of me trying to do my job is a little unsettling,” Murunel commented as she watched the simulacra continue to try and sort materials that Murunel’s subordinates had gathered up.

“Try?” Kay set down the massive metal weight he’d been trying to lift and turned to look. “Are they not getting it right?”

“They’re not getting it wrong, but they’re not doing great either. If they’re copying my Skills, they should be a lot better at this. Like that right there.” She pointed out a simulacra that had tossed a rock laced with shining lines of ore into a bin of similar stones. “That shouldn’t go there. It should be over there in the special materials bin because it is a metal, but it doesn’t act like a metal in certain cases.”

As they watched, one of Murunel’s subordinates in the Ministry of Materials fished the rock out of the bin and put it in the correct one. Murunel nodded in appreciation, then turned back to judging the red clones of her.

“The simulacra do have your Classes and Skills, but they’re incredibly watered down and weak compared to the real you. Once I get one of the tier-five Classes that take Create Simulacra (Blood) and give me one of the stronger versions I think they’d do better.”

“I don’t remember all the details, and I don’t even know if I was given all the details, but weren’t all of those Classes based on creating clones that fight? Do you think they’d still be good at this?”

“Yeah, I do. They’ll be better at copying fighting Skills, but I think they’ll still be able to copy non-combat Skills better than these baseline simulacra.”

“Sorry to interrupt, Murunel, ma’am, my lord.” Another one of her subordinates walked over with some papers. “We got back the report that you wanted from last week’s survey.”

“Nice.” Murunel took it from the taller woman and started reading it, asking questions here and there as she paused at specific sections.

Kay went back to trying to lift heavier and heavier weights as he focused on narrowing down his control of Blood Boost. He was trying to only use it in spurts, strengthening himself with momentary explosive power instead of just flooding his body with strength. He was getting better at it over the last few hours, using the burst of power to lift the weights and then switching to his own strength, magnified by hitting tier five and the mana that had flowed into his body, and using Enhance Blood to streamline the flow of oxygen to his muscles in a more passive way than Blood Boost did. He was getting a great workout out of it, and with the simulacra working at new tasks that he hadn’t used them for before this, he was training more than one Skill and more than one Class simultaneously.

Technically, it’s training to get back more than one Class, but that’s being a bit pedantic with myself.

There was an army coming to Avalon, and even if they weren’t actually coming to attack Avalon directly, they were after Kay, which was almost the same thing. Even ignoring the separate motives of the people marching in this direction that Isla had real information on. Most of them were greedy glory hounds, and a few of them she was convinced would try to loot the villages they stomped over or even Avalon City itself; the explicitly stated goal was killing Kay, who was both the leader and founder of Avalon. He had no real heir or setup for his dying; they were just too early in the process of building Avalon into a real nation, which meant that if Kay went, Avalon would fracture and disappear. Kay’s death would put the people he had sworn to protect in danger as their leadership and the people dedicated to protecting them would crumble.

Kay had thought about turning himself over to save his people and country, mostly as an intellectual exercise, not in any real consideration of it, and it just wasn’t worth it at any point. Lauren was one of the people that he wanted to protect as a citizen of Avalon, and she was a person he personally liked and thought of as a friend. Even if he turned himself in, they’d try to kill her, too. And Alice, too, and even if they weren’t friends yet, she didn’t deserve to die just because other people couldn’t believe that the world had changed.

At the end of all that contemplation was a decision he’d already made: he was going to fight. And what better to bring against an army than another army?

He set down one of the weights and then pulled open his status.

[————————————————————]

Name: Kenneth “Kay” Davis

Race: Vampire

Age: 27

Highest Tier: V

Total Tiers: 33

Class Slots: 12 Combat Class Slots/7 Non-Combat Class Slots

6 Combat Class Slot Used/5 Non-Combat Class Slots Used

Classes:

Combat:

- Lord of Spilled Blood: Tier V -

Skills: Manipulate Blood - Level 40

Shape Blood - Level 40

Meld Blood - Level 40

Create Simulacrum (Blood) - Level 40

Blood Transfusion - Level 40

Healthy Blood - Level 40

Blood Regeneration - Level 40

Purify Blood - Level 40

Enhance Blood - Level 40

Blood Boost - Level 40

Leadership - Level 40

Domain of Blood - Level 13

Stolen novel; please report.

Create from Blood - Level 6

Identify - Level 10

Appraisal - Level 8

Inspect - Level 12

Mandate to Blood Spilled - Level 1

Folded Veins - Level 10

Lord’s Bloody Domain - Sublime

-Blood Manipulator: Tier IV -

Skills: Manipulate Blood - Level 40

-Blood Shaper: Tier IV -

Skills: Manipulate Blood - Level 40

-Blood Melder: Tier IV -

Skills: Meld Blood - Level 40

- Expert Swordsman (Bastard Sword): Tier IV -

Skills: Swordsmanship (Bastard Sword) - Level 39

- Expert Polearm Wielder (Halberd): Tier IV -

Skills: Polearms (Halberd) - Level 39

- Empty

- Empty

- Empty

-Empty-

-Empty-

-Empty-

Non-Combat:

- Cartographer: Tier IV

Skills: Spatial Determination - Level 32

Expanded Sight - Level 33

Sharpened Memory - Level 35

Stable Footing - Level 36

Drawing - Level 35

Cartography - Level 37

- Expert Mapmaker: Tier IV

Skills: Effective Communication (Drawing) - Level 32

Drawing - Level 35

Cartography - Level 37

-Empty-

-Empty-

-Empty-

-Empty-

-Empty-

Non-Class Skills: Punch Daggers - Level 5, Writing - Level 5, Reading - Level 5, Running - Level 5, Sprinting - Level 5,

Titles: Class Line Progenitor, Class Creator VIII, System Access (Minor), Blood Lord of Avalon, First Vampire

[————————————————————]

He only needed two more Classes back for the tier five Class he was aiming for Blood Army General. Meld Blood had finally leveled and he’d been offered Blood Melder back after creating a few more chunks of camouflage blood, as he was calling the enchanted blood that was to be mixed with blood armor. The two Classes he needed back were Simulacrum Creator (Blood) and Blood Enhancer, which is why he was training those two as best he could at the same time. When he had a chance, he’d aim for Blood Champion Originator as well, but only if he had the time. First was an army, then after that, he’d try and make champions. Both would enhance Avalon’s fighting capability, but holding down the enemy’s troops was the main focus.

He took a quick glance at a few Skills he’d been neglecting before closing his status. His map-related Classes had almost entirely stalled out as the focus had gone to his tier-five Classes, and he didn’t see a good chance to level them coming any time soon. As long as he lived, he’d have a chance to work on them, so he wasn’t too worried about it. The other two he felt a little bad about were his Class Skill Mandate of Spilled Blood, which he hadn’t leveled once, and Create from Blood, which had only gained a single level.

Create from Blood was super cool, in his opinion, but it didn’t do anything to directly increase his firepower, and he’d decided to work on it later for the same reasons as his mapping Classes. He’d tried a few things with it while working on the camouflage blood, but it hadn’t gone anywhere since he had no idea how to create blending magic or whatever you would want to call it. All his work up until that point had been on making prosthetics that worked with the body, something that seemed to come somewhat naturally to the Skill. He’d made a little moving octopus out of blood when he’d tried focusing on the “cephalopodic” part of the name of the original enchanted item he’d been using, which had gotten him his one extra level, but it was just a toy octopus made out of blood.

Mandate of Blood Spilled was a little different. It let him summon if that was the right word, blood from the past on places where blood had been spilled. After quite a few attempts to use it and practice with it, they discovered a few things. The first was that it didn’t count practice matches, even if blood had been bled by someone. There was a sensation that came with trying to use it as if something had been lacking. A similar, if not the same, feeling had risen in him when he’d tried to use it after killing some monsters; something was missing. A few theories had come up, including that it might only work at sites of big battles, executions, or massacres. One of those was coming up, so he’d have to test it when he got the chance. Until then, the Skill was sadly languishing.

Murunel finally finished up with her subordinate and walked back over.

“You know, you’re really good at that,” Kay commented to her.

“Good at what?”

“Leading.” He gestured with his chin at the retreating back of the worker as he kept lifting, “You’re a really well-liked leader, and you’re doing fantastic as a minister. I know you said you didn’t want to be in charge of anything way back when, but you’re doing a fantastic job, and I’d hate to replace you in the future.”

She took a moment to watch the worker leave, then glanced at a few of them who were still helping the simulacra. “You know, this is a lot different than I thought leadership would be like. I haven’t even thought about dumping the job on someone else in a while.”

Kay watched her, watching her people for a moment. “Care to share some thoughts?”

“… I can’t really go into detail about it all; even if I’m one of Avalon’s people now, I’m not going to be sharing secrets, but my family is kind of a big deal back home. We have a lot of traditions about who gets what job and who’s in charge of what, but a lot of it is based on old traditions from our ancestors. My dad and my mom both have important jobs, and I was in position to inherit either of them. I didn’t want my dad’s job because that involves a lot of fighting, and I don’t really like combat or killing.”

Kay nodded. It had come up that she didn’t really use her combat Class at all and that she only had it because her family had insisted that she be able to defend herself. She’d never gone with them to hunt monsters or bandits and never seemed interested in sparring or having practice matches.

“It just doesn’t feel right.” She continued, “Don’t get me wrong, I’ll defend myself if I need to, and the people around me, but I don’t want to go jump into battle if I don’t have to, you know?” She gave Kay a look that was almost beseeching.

“I understand, and I’m not going to force you or anyone else to fight if they don’t feel they can. I’m certainly not going to risk my super productive Minister of Materials when I have me and the battle junky.”

“Eleniah isn’t a battle junky.”

Kay smirked at her, “I didn’t say it was Eleniah; you said that.”

“Anyway,” She said, rolling her eyes with a huff, “I tried my mom’s job and hated it for different reasons. She’s… she’s not technically a religious figure, but it's close enough. People just listen to her every word and trust her no matter what, which is fine, I guess, but I tried picturing myself in that position, and it just felt creepy.” She hugged herself and shuddered, “No one questions her or asks her if she might be wrong or if there might be a better way, and everyone holds her at this distance as if she’s somehow above them. The only people she can really relax around are family. I didn’t want that to be my future, and my family was pushing that hard, so I left.” She gestured at the floor of the warehouse, “This is different, though. I’m in charge, but I’m a leader, not some almost holy figure above reproach. People tell me I’m wrong, or tell me they know better, and it’s fine, because they do and we do it the better way, or they’re wrong and I tell them to shut up. I’m still a person even though I’m in charge, so it’s all good.”

Kay chuckled at her miming shutting someone up with an uppercut, but his thoughts went in a slightly different direction with her explanation. There had been some teasing and some light flirting between him and Murunel in the past, but that had tapered off over time as Avalon had grown and time passed. He still thought Murunel was very attractive, but they’d easily settled into a normal friendship. This new information filled in some information about why that change from there potentially being something there to just friends had happened. Being the wife of the future king of the nation of Avalon, assuming he lived and that came about, was probably too close to her unwanted future of taking over her mother’s job.

“Anyway, they’re doing alright still,” Murunel changed the subject, nodding at the simulacra, “As long as you’re getting the levels, I think pushing your limits with your Skill like this was a good idea.”

Kay leaned against the same railing as her, “Yeah, I had a few ideas for leveling it, but some of them didn’t work out, so we went with this one. I was hoping to copy some monsters and really make them into some completely different shapes to see if that would give good experience, but they only take the form of people. Imagine a hydra made of blood just stomping through an enemy army, completely unkillable as I just heal it by adding blood.”

“I don’t know about how good it would be against an army since I’m not a fighter, but you could try copying me and see how it goes.”

“What do you mean?” Kay pointed at some of the milling simulacra who were still sorting resources. “I’m copying you right now.”

“No,” She said, shaking her head. “I meant my other form. It’s not anything like the shapes you’ve made your simulacra into before, and I count as people in either shape so.”

Kay’s furrowed brow and frown melted away into a gaping mouth and wide eyes.

“What?” Murunel asked.

Kay grabbed her and pulled her into a tight hug. “You’re a genius!”

“I am?”

He stepped back and looked ready to rush off. “This changes things. I- No, should I… Will that work? Is there enough time?”

“Kay, are you okay…?”

Kay stepped in close, his eyes shining. “I need to do so much training now.”

“What? Why? What’s happening?”

“Blood dragons, Murunel! Dragons made of blood using create Blood Champion! They could completely turn the tides for us!”