NOVEL NEXT 48. A Night to Remember X
We still had five minutes before the teleporter, whoever they were, would try to break out, and that meant that I had to close down all of my Night Empress experiments. I could either keep all my acquired biomass within me and risk it being damaged, or I could make a rudimentary ball of living meat and stick the moth and every other thing I had taken samples of into it like some kind of inverted teratoma and carry it around. I didn't even know what teratoma was earlier but I was used to just knowing things about biology at this point. Gross ball of flesh and half formed organs! In the end, I probably trusted myself to keep myself safe rather than something external to me that wasn't animated like Medea. It was simply less risky to keep it all within me. A new cavity in my increasingly tiger-like body was required to hold it all securely.
But first, I had to pick a new class.
Let's see. I didn't have any 30s (or 33s for that matter, considering my new racial status). I had a level 25 upgrade to [BONEWARRIOR] that promised me a bone armor that I could materialize over myself. If I had the active slots to spare, I would have picked that one because I already had a skill to empower bone constructs. Pass for now. A [SIMMERING BLOODRAGER] with an ability called Bloodrage that temporarily boosted my stats by 'igniting' my blood. Again, it would be nice if I had any active slots because of the synergy. Pass.
I supposed I could drop the Swarm Aspect since it had a stupidly long cooldown for a very short period of use but it had potential. Better to lower my standards and take another low level class. Bone Shaping merging into Chimeric Grafting would solve everything and I was frankly surprised it hadn't yet. There was almost nothing that it could do that Chimeric Grafting couldn't for a much higher mana expenditure. The only exception to that rule was that Bone Shaping didn't care for something being alive or at least attached to a living organism. There was one last 25er left before I was down all the way to the 22s. [BLOOD DRINKER'S THRALL] was a straightforward upgrade to Blood Absorption but I simply couldn't tell what the hell it actually did from the class description. Maybe.
Oddly enough, I didn't have any level 11 classes but I did have a level 22 called [INFERIOR MANA GESTALTEE] that seemed to operate under the assumption that my body had multiple consciousnesses alive in it, each with their own mana and skills. I guess it was because of my blood mana tank being separate from my regular one? Too many unknowns to risk at the moment. I didn't want to accidentally become a mental amalgamate too.
Ultimately, just to not waste my time agonizing over the decision, I picked [BLOOD DRINKER'S THRALL].
\\\\BLOOD DRINKER'S THRALL (0/25)
You have seized and consumed the blood of your enemies. Their strength will echo within you as you make the rivers run red to slake your eternal thirst for the nectar of life.
When the world was young, the First Calamity converged and spilled forth countless horrors from beyond. One became the progenitor of all vampires. One became the great leech that feasted upon the gods. And one was that whose name was lost to time when she drowned in a lake of her own blood.
From that lake rose the Blood Spire and now you too are worthy to see the ineffable construct that is the first peak of the Eternal Ziggurat. Be as she who is without name was and master blood, but beware that you don't succumb to the Spire's endless passions like she had.
At higher forms of this class, BLOOD DRINKERS can empower themselves permanently with each victim they drain of all blood like the hemophages of antiquity. Every wound you make will sap and steal the strength of your foes to further empower you as you evolve into an ever greater entity.
MASTERY BONUSES:
+8 to VITALITY, +4 to STRENGTH and CELERITY
\\\\Class [BLOOD DRINKER'S THRALL] selected
\\\\Blood Absorption is now level 35!
\\\\Skill Blood Absorption has evolved into Blood Fortification!
\\\\Blood Magic spell list expanded
\\\\Blood Magic Spell list
Induce Bleeding: 35 mana
Dilute Blood: 20 mana
Coagulation: 20 mana
Blood Shield: 60 mana
Blood Drain Touch: 30 mana
Blood Bolt: 70 mana
Laceration Lattice: 40 mana
Blood Sight: 10 mana
It was worse than I expected. The new spell was what the skill that my class required already did. And the skill upgrade was just a temporary stat boost based on the amount of blood I absorbed and from whom. I could only take solace in that the future upgrades of this skill would give me something more permanent. One thing that slightly alarmed me was that the wording seemed awfully familiar.
"The hemophages of old were without form, without power, without purpose. And yet they drank deep from the well of life and grew. Grew without limit and without hesitation until a thousand and a thousand more new forms of life burst forth from them." The description of my class said.
"Consume! Consume oh my beloved! Consume without pause, without thought, without rest, without any hesitation. Eat a thousand worlds and devour a thousand more, until all is one within you, until all evil is vanquished, until suffering and torment become strangers to life, until death has met itself in your belly." That was what the woman had told the Third Calamity in her memory.
'Hey, 'Dea? Does this mean anything to you?'
'No, mother. This one is not privy to the First Mother's past. The heavenly ones are strange. This one would advise you to not look into something you are not ready for.'
And with that, I was back at making last minute adjustments on my form. Layering and compressing skin into a protective hide, flattening a few extra ribs to make armor plates and thickening my skull and rib cage for additional security. After that, I created a thick tail out of a tendril but this one had a lump of meat and spiked protruding bones at its end to bludgeon kobolds. A crocodilian mouth to bite nearby things with a slightly smaller second set of fangs nested within the jaw. These were hollow and meant to mess up whatever was on their receiving one while extracting blood like a hypodermic needle. The mouth was only for me to move a couple of extra eyes over and to bite things but otherwise disposable; my skull protecting my brain was safely right in the middle of my multi-layer rib-cage. Finally, I took some inspiration from Cam the leech and recreated those petal-like sucking structures I had studied so much and lined them along my tendrils to make them harder to dislodge, opening up yet another way for me to absorb blood while restraining kobolds. I was not really the close combat type even now but if push came to shove, I could hopefully hold my own until Medea could help me.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
With all that taken care of, I fixed up whatever minor injuries Medea still had left and used up all the crystals that were yet to be emptied. There weren't many left. My new skills demanded a ton of mana that my regeneration couldn't even hope to keep up with. That was another reason why I had taken the class that I did. Even after that, I had enough for one last thing.
My new skillset allowed me to do fun things like store mana to empower my own skeleton now instead of depending on external bone. The crystals emptied while my outer and inner skeleton hardened and grew denser, bone spikes became sharper and less fragile until I was reasonably confident that I could almost match Medea in a fight. Of course, this was not counting what I could do to it to upgrade it now with enough biomass and mana.
Minidea flew to my shoulder and started birthing fast growing drones that then lined behind their mom on my back. I didn't even feel the weight. I walked back to the central gambling room on six legs.
The place was much more crowded than before and I could see several classers further reinforcing the door blockade. Mud climbed up walls and hardened while metal burst forth and grew like fungus over it. The man who had guided me to the crystals before was distributing even more crystals.
Two familiar heads of orangish blonde hair were making massive rings of molten glass with whirling blades over the barrier. I prowled over to one of them.
"Hey."
Fahria jumped and for a second, I was sure that she was going to set me on fire. She took in the tendrils, the mottled flesh, the rippling musculature, and the irregularly arranged eyes and I was sure that she was thinking that I was a freak now. Then she noticed Medea perched on my shoulder in its shrunken form with its drones and blinked.
"Anya?" I nodded with a tentacle. She hesitated for a second before carefully grabbing it and giving it a rather tight squeeze. I was pretty sure I didn't have the requisite mechanisms for blushing anymore but whatever, I was sure that she could tell that I was embarrassed. She probably just didn't care.
"Holy shit. I was sure you were dead. What the fuck happened to you?"
"Long story." She nodded and then an ugly look flashed on her face for a moment before smoothing out.
"Yes, same."
The old man cleared his throat and we fell silent. Some classers who were drawing runes on the floor that I hoped were targeted traps and not explosives finished their work and stood up.
"We will start the teleporter ritual in a moment. Remember that we will be moving all at once so that we don't get picked off one by one. We don't know what is happening in the city out there but those big ones came from out there so it can't be anything good." He took a breath and summoned what looked like a metallic recreation of our shelter.
I knew what this was. Positions. Pillars of iron and stone rose from the ground and the model reflected the change. The Illustris Palace was resistant to damage or alteration but just materialising matter on top of things was fine. The pillars were so that the longer ranged fighters had a nice vantage point without getting in the way of melee ones. Medea and its drones jumped off me and grew to their full size. Not for the first time, I regretted my failure to integrate the Night Empress moth. I leapt and sank my claws into a medium height pillar to climb it. My tendrils and tail were long and the higher point of view let me better coordinate my swarm. Seeing some of my mana had regenerated, I cast Summon Swarm. A sickly yellow portal shuddered to life and four smaller but true spider-scorpions flew out of it. I was a coward so all that suited me.
Fahria took up flight and landed on a platform close to mine. That was perfect. We knew how to work together. I understood what angles suited her glass glaives and how to expose them and she knew to be a distraction for my swarms when the need arose.
Fahria nodded to me and I waved a tendril in acknowledgement.
"The moment the ritual starts, they will sense the mana build up and try to break their way in. We are not going to let them have that. We shall wait until the barricade is about to collapse before blowing it open. When you see a purple flash, cover your ears and brace yourselves. The blast will be big. Are we ready?'
"Ready!"
"Ready."
"Yes."
More and more voices spoke in affirmation. And then we all fell silent.
I felt it. A tingling heat from the bottom of my four to the tips of the cilia on my back-tentacles. The air started getting heavier and I could hear heavy running footsteps outside our corner of safety. Spatial magic became exponentially more mana-hungry with each extra pound of weight and each extra mote of magic involved. That's why things like the labyrinth had teleporter arrays instead of just teleporting classers escorting us around.
Something crashed against the barricade with a thump. The barricade shook. If we were just one floor down, we could have put up the palace's own security gate and that was just as impervious as the rest of it. Another thump. Louder this time. And beyond it, the thundering of heavy footsteps. There were too many legs. I think I was fairly experienced in having too many legs at this point, but what was coming seemed excessive to even me. A crash followed by another. I could just imagine one of the bigger kobolds swinging mill-like arms with all the might of a dragon's servant. By the third crash, I was sure that I saw the barricade vibrate for a second as if something had come loose. Too soon. We wanted as many kobolds in the blast radius as possible.
We waited in tense silence while the heavy mana built up in the air around us and blows rained on the barricade that kept us safe. One thundering blow made the room shake violently and I almost wobbled on my perch. Almost. On the other hand, some others nearly fell. Pieces of rock fell before the pillars were hastily repaired.
The barrier had a massive golden crack shining through it and with each new blow, it spread out and widened. We waited with bated breaths until sure enough, the barrier flashed purple. I closed my eyes and covered my ears with tendrils immediately. Even then, my vision went white for a moment as the shaped mana-charge exploded outwards. Kill notifications rained down my vision and my ears rang.
I slowly opened my eyes to see the barricade gone and dismembered kobolds strewn outside. One of the kobolds seemed to be on the brink of death and I sent Medea and a few drones over to put it out of its misery. Elsewhere, others rained hellfire on the still alive but dazed and injured kobolds. By unspoken consensus, it seemed that we had mostly all agreed to pick off the middling kobolds first instead so that they couldn't swarm us once the real battle began. The larger titans were still trying to clear dead kobolds out of their way but it wouldn't be long.
Most does not mean all however and I could see a group of classers in matching military-style uniforms focus firing on one kobold that seemed to be four giants fused at the back so that each face, well, faced a different direction as it shambled over its dead kin on eight long legs.
I lashed with a tendril and took out a bunch of flesh from another. The flesh sizzled and I shook it off with disgust and attacked another. We had a small window and I couldn't afford to waste it. With each kobold taken out, my attacks grew just a bit stronger as temporary status bonuses stacked.
We had taken out a decent fraction of the weaker kobolds when the four faced finally managed to breach into our sanctuary. It froze for a moment as black chains of energy emerged from the ground. Right where the classers had been drawing runes. A moment later, it pulled and the chains shattered and dissipated into light. And then the close combatants fell upon it like a swarm of locusts. I let them deal with it while I jumped down to finish off more weaker stragglers (and maybe absorb some of the blood on the ground).
I bit down on a kobold and felt sweet blood fill my mouth. I definitely needed to buy that blood cultivation skill now. A whoosh behind me made me turn a tendril around to see a kobold being slashed in half by Fahria's sword. Judging from how close it was, it was probably going to jump on my back. Whoops! Focus! I let out a hissing slow breath, sweat and blood steaming around my definitely too hot body and Superego squashed the literal bloodthirst that had taken over me. Power was intoxicating, especially since I had no intention of forever staying a monster and knew this was all temporary. I had to be careful. I would be careful. But tonight? Maybe I could let loose. I let out another steaming, hissing wisp of air. After all, that's what parties are for.