NOVEL NEXT 51. Blood Poison Cultivation
Eventually the celebrations had to end. The food ran out and everyone had things to do. A version of me was busy surveying my old home. At this point I didn't even consider it weird that I was thinking about multiple versions of me so casually. I glanced morosely at the now empty bedside table. Entirely different cultural mores but even I was disappointed that I had no presents.
Dellish people didn't believe in birthday presents. People got presents and huge parties on their first level 30 class being mastered and then level 60, 90 and so on. Mine happened during the party and no one really knew that it was my first 30 level. I did have a present for myself though.
Before the party, Medea could fill three bottles of venom per day and its drones could do two. Each bottle was worth approximately 30 emporium credits. That was around 150 credits per day or a bit over 720 crystals if I hadn't been saving my credits. Not enough to be rich or even well off but now I could move out to an actually decent place to live. Even the guild work was negligible now if not for the contacts it gave me.
That was before the party. Now? Now I could surgically remove venom sacs and all supporting organs from Medea, graft them to a drone and heal Medea with a Molt to do it all over again. Five drones (the maximum Medea could handle without them getting feral) and Medea, each producing three bottles of venom every day. That was 18 bottles. Every single day. Sure it took some finangling to prove to the Emporium that it was truly me who was selling it through Medea who had received my old discarded tendrils, including the mouth one but I was making some serious money now. The neat thing about classers was that they always needed whatever resources they were working with. Be it iron, blood, poison or whatever. No risk of deflation because of overproduction here. I was becoming, well, not rich, but comfortable. Enough that even with Mitria's charges, I had enough to buy the Blood Poison Cultivation skill gem from the Emporium. I was still not even close to earning the right to buy things from the second floor, of course. Every Emporium member eventually ended up buying one or more of the poison cultivation skills according to Shiena but I was sure that I was probably one of the faster buyers in Delport, not counting classers that were already powerful poison users in their own right before joining the Emporium. That was my present to myself. But first, I had to fix myself.
My hand rippled. The red fleshy thing turned pinkish as new skin formed over it. It was not human skin but more like the dense hide I was using, just with a surface layer that looked human. It wasn't good skin, it was flaky and made me think of old men but it was human-looking skin. As I fed mana into it, the thing turned smoother and started resembling my actual skin. I flexed it experimentally.
"Good. Now let the mana go." I did as Mitria said and the biomancer touched the tip of one of the fingers. They didn't say anything.
"How is it?" I asked impatiently when the silence grew uncomfortably long.
"Good, I think? It is not regressing anymore but I'll have to check it again in an hour." Yay for progress. I couldn't use Swarm Aspects or turn into a combat form any time soon without undoing all that I had accomplished the past week but it was nice to see some improvement. I still couldn't walk and needed help from the attendants to use the washroom but honestly? It was actually nice. Low stress environment and I didn't have any real obligations that I couldn't put off. I could get used to this if I regained my mobility.
"Alright. You have been making excellent progress so far so let me ask you, do you think you are ready to move forward?" Suddenly the usually smiling face of Mitria was dead serious.
"You mean the face?"
"Yes."
I nodded hesitantly, what was I supposed to do? Not get better? They didn't look convinced.
"No, seriously. We still have your entire lower body to deal with. We can do that first."
"No. We'll start with the face now." I didn't even know how bad it was but with how slowly Mitria was insisting I take it, I dreaded knowing how it was after days of regression. Still, the band-aid, or in this case, the mask had to be ripped off. I didn't even remember it that clearly but I definitely remembered asking, rather tearfully, that Mitria make me a skin mask that I could wear when Fahria first came to visit.
Mitria walked out and returned with a huge mirror and some aetherite crystals. I saw me with my limbs all lumpy but a normal face. My face. Then Mitria leaned that unnaturally tall body and gently touched the sides of my face. I closed my eyes in expectant pain but all it felt like was removing a facial mask. Air grazed my face in a way it hadn't in days and I opened my eyes.
Finally, I looked at the unrecognizable mess that I was and cringed internally. Most of my body was covered in a sheet but the face was bad. An asymmetrical face that looked like it had been skinned and then the skull had been beaten in. Mitria smiled encouragingly but I was thinking that Fahria, Agitjin and so on could have seen me like that and might not have said anything (well Agitjin would have but it was obviously not serious) because of politeness. What would they even think? Even I was disgusted with myself. I looked hideous. Dead Quiraion below, what if someone had a skill that let them see past that mask? Maybe I should leave this city forever once I was done?
"Hey, hey, relax." Mitria's calm drifted in and I blinked.
"Sorry, it was just surprising. I'm alright now." I blubbered something like that.
"No, it's fine. I promise we'll fix it, together. Now try to align your eyes. I'll help you with it." Mitria leaned in and touched the side of my face. They didn't do it themselves, that wouldn't stick. They only helped further refine things along the way. My left eye slowly floated through flesh upwards until it was at par with the other. I overshot it slightly and then had to lower it but eventually they looked vaguely level. That alone took all of my mana. I tuned out Mitria's words of encouragement and sulked, the ugly creature I had seen in the mirror swimming before my eyes. It was strange, on one hand I despised how inhuman it was but on the other hand, a part of me insisted that it was how human it was that was the problem. And a third grafted hand insisted that those two positions were contradictory and I was truly irreparably insane.
I thought about the birthday party and how it could have looked to an outsider if not for that mask. Me looking like that surrounded by otherwise normal people. Laughing, smiling with them as if I belonged. One could argue that Novas was not normal but not really, he looked fine and normal for a slime. I just looked like something you would find on a poster about a victim of some psychotic biomancer.
"Anya. Anya!" Mitria was waving a hand before my face. I blinked. Huh. Apparently they had been trying to get my attention for a while. Wait, attention? Had I been ignoring everything around me? I quickly switched over to the flies following Novas, Agitjin and Fahria. They were fine. Everything was fine. I returned to my main body.
"Sorry, I didn't get you. I was using the swarm." I lied effortlessly. The neat thing about my Hivemother's Superego skill was that I didn't have long term hang-ups anymore. I had a panic attack and now it is done. I wouldn't have it again. I hated it and would prefer to have my face fixed at least but I would not shut down again. It still made me want to cry but only in a numbed way.
Dinner was a somber affair after the events of the morning but I was feeling better than before. Mitria had confirmed that my skin wasn't regressing anymore and now I could start the long process of recreating my skin all over my upper body. The warped legs and the tail were a different issue though. And then I had to learn to walk for the third time in my life.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
And then it was time for me to go to sleep. Dolphins did a weird thing where only one hemisphere of their brain slept at a time and between my parallel swarm thought-streams I was doing something similar to myself at the moment by possessing something and sleeping through them to get my parallel streams rest so that they could be awake when primary-me was sleeping. Absolutely nonsensical when I thought about it like this but basically I was always half-awake.
"Where is Kalist?" I asked my brand new bone-charms and as usual, they fell in an even circle. With my nightly ritual done, I closed my eyes and drifted off.
"Uhh, I don't think this is a good idea." I protested the next day, my mask firmly in place.
"Well, if you really don't want to then I won't force you but it would be good for you to get out of here for a bit." Mitria said while Tegfin, one of their assistants helped me on to a fleshy wheelchair. I wasn't going outside in a crowd, no, I was just going to take a stroll through a small private garden that the patients here could enjoy without being stared at. I didn't know what I was expecting but the idea of just encountering anyone at all was painful. I had somehow managed to avoid getting a look at myself before between how many different things I was juggling but now I actually dreaded seeing anyone at all.
"Fine. But I want to get back here when I say we are done." I relented.
"Of course. This is just for you after all."
The garden was nice in a very generic institutional kind of way. White marble and plants that were unnaturally green and vibrant, flowers that seemed to be without any flaw. No buds still to bloom, no flowers drooping sadly, fragrance that was neither overly subtle nor overpowering.
There was a wide path that snaked around patches of flora. Wide enough to accommodate anyone irrespective of their body-plan. Tegfin showed me around
I took a big breath in, that was what people were supposed to do, right? Catch a whiff of fresh air and let go of worries. It didn't work. I was trying, really trying to enjoy it, or at least relax but the niggling feeling that I was wasting time never left me.
"So, like, how long am I supposed to spend here?" In the end, I couldn't actually relax.
"We can go now if you want to. Do you?" I nodded.
I hate to admit it but Mitria was right. That did help. I mean I didn't relax per se but I was at least not so much on edge. It wasn't any belief that things would be okay. No, it was more like the awareness that there was a place that was still open to a freak like me if things did not become okay. And that made me curious while doing self biomancy instead of treating it as a chore or spiralling about my appearance. And that moment of genuine curiosity, of interest, gave me a notification I was long waiting for.
Mitria knew about the skill crystal. I mean I couldn't exactly hide it from them in their clinic but they were sure that it wouldn't be a problem to learn the skill right away. It was all internal and didn't really affect my self-image. Still, they suggested that I get slightly better at biomancy before I use it. I was inclined to agree for a different reason. [BLOOD DRINKER'S THRALL] was yet to be mastered because I was simply not using blood skills that much. I had been, however, extensively using Chimeric Grafting on both myself and Medea and I was sure that it was on the verge of getting merged with Bone Shaping and freeing up an active slot. Blood Poison Cultivation was a passive but it would almost certainly cause my class to max out. And so I waited.
Until now.
\\\\The skills Bone Shaping, Lesser Life Creation, Lesser Reproduction Control, and Chimeric Grafting have consolidated into the Active Skill Chimerism
Honestly three of the skills here were made redundant by the fourth so this merge was overdue. The name wasn't even that much of a change. Basically I had slightly better control if I read the description correctly. It wasn't even anything unique or interesting, just a less grandiose version of what [LIFESHAPER'S ACOLYTE]'s had been.
Still, with that merger. It was time for me to unwrap and use my present.
The skill gem looked like any odd aetherite crystal, if not for an inner light that shifted between the colors of the rainbow before being refracted into a billion hues by the cuts of the crystal. Besides it, resting in a bowl was a dropper full of venom. It was Medea's but diluted several times over until it would only make me lightly sick even without skills. No risks of death here.
But even then, with the crystal right before me and waiting to be used, I hesitated.
Best case scenario was that I used the skill to improve my Blood Mana to solve my mana issues and then have enough excess to sell to vampires. I doubted even with several years of cultivation, I was going to become the provider of the best blood for them but becoming a cheaper kind of treat for vampire children or whatever had to be lucrative as long as I didn't flood the market. Worst case, the skill would have a weak effect and make my blood toxic to hemophages and I wouldn't have to worry about anyone trying to make me a blood slave or something.
Either way, there was no real reason to hesitate. Then why was I?
Probably because I was afraid of more changes to my body that were irreversible and made me feel gross. Ultimately I wimped out and sent a fly looking for Mitria. To their credit, the biomancer did wake up from their nap almost immediately after my fly drew close and came to check up on me.
"Anya? Everything alright?" They muttered while rubbing their eyes. Why hadn't that annoying feature been biomancied away already? Probably was and it was a show. A performance.
"Yeah. I just wanted to ask something." Mitria grew a flesh chair that hadn't been there before from the very flood and sat down.
"I'm listening."
"So, I think I want to use the gem now. Do you think you can ensure that I don't die or something i… if things do go wrong and I have to immediately remove my blood mutation?" I hated the stutter creeping into my voice but whatever, I was hating a lot of things about myself at the moment. Mitria sighed.
"Once again, I'll remind you that you don't have to hurry. You can take a break." I opened my mouth to protest but they continued on before I could get a break in. "Much stronger people than either of us are hunting that overgrown reptile. And I'm not as frail as I may appear. You may not believe me, it may not feel like it but as long as I'm here, you will be safe." A deeper sigh and Mitria continued. "That said, I'm happy you called for me instead of trying it alone. Yes, I'll ensure that you live through the night."
"Alright. Just watch me and if it looks like anything other than my blood is regressing, just yank it all away. I don't care if it is painful." A hand held mine and squeezed.
"Of course. Best of luck."
I didn't say anything more and slowly weaved my mana into the complex matrix the crystal already had. A new notification unfurled across my vision.
\\\\Blood Poison Cultivation
The dwellers of the land of waste and ruin were barred from conventional paths of ascendance owing to their corrupted nature. Those that could not exist outside of their home must not rise above it. And yet, strength was called for in that harsh realm of toxins. When all that one has is poison, it has to be poison that shall temper oneself.
The techniques of the denizens of Sitra Achra used the blight around them to build bridges to other paths. This technique was the bridge between Sitra Achra and its endless deserts of poisoned sand and the Blood Spire that rose above oceans of blood to create something that belonged to both and yet was bound to neither.
Use toxins to refine your blood to create Blessed Sanguinity. With each point of Blessed Sanguinity, your blood skills will be 0.1% more potent. This skill does not level up conventionally but will increase in level when your Blessed Sanguinity count reaches certain breakpoints.
Blessed Sanguinity: 0
Current bonuses: 0%
\\\\Learn Skill?
I mentally imagined saying yes and the new skill slotted itself in my status. It started at level 1 and didn't have any effect yet as far as I could tell.
"Any changes?"
"None whatsoever." I nodded and picked up the dropper with my free hand. Raising it above my tongue, I let a single tiny droplet fall. It mildly burned and I swallowed it. I didn't have eyes inside me and even if I had, they wouldn't have worked because of a lack of light but I could feel the droplet suspended within. I could let it spread and dissipate like normal or I could burn it as fuel. I obviously chose the latter and the moment I decided so, I could feel my blood flooding violently through my veins to an internal chamber that hadn't been there before.
Waves of blood crashed against the droplet and yet, they didn't mingle. Instead they annihilated each other. The droplet was being reduced but it was very slow compared to how much blood was being destroyed in the clash. My blood mana started plummeting and I began wondering if I should grab a crystal or ask for one of Mitria's fleshbanks. By the time the droplet was entirely gone, I had a little over half of my blood mana left. Then my blood heated up for a moment and the skill's counter ticked up to 2. A 0.2% boost. Slow and costly but it would get exponentially better with time.
"So?" I finally asked even though I already knew the answer considering that Mitria hadn't removed all my blood yet. My worry had been entirely unfounded.
"Well, your internals changed and so did your blood." Then they smiled. "But I don't sense any new regression anywhere so congratulations."