Sanguine Paradise

∼ Day 60 ∼

With the days going by, I enjoyed myself quite thoroughly. Not only did I have a sex-starved alien beauty jumping my bones anytime I wasn't doing the rounds on the newly developed tribe, but I also was making great headway on my magical abilities and understanding. Especially with the magic of blood constructs.

How the magic of my blood puppets worked was with the fusion of both Golemancy and Summoning Magic. These two magics weren't magic schools like Blood Magic, Fire Magic, and Dark Magic were. They didn't rely on any alignment, only the use of natural pure mana, so the skill Mana Control was all that was needed essentially.

The basic gist of how Golemancy and Summoning Magic worked was that Golemancy used magical cores as the nexus of magical constructs; i.e. Golems. But Summoning Magic did it differently, where things such as magical cores or crystals were used as vessels instead of being the main focal point of the magic.

Basically, Golemancy utilized the power of magically infused cores to create golems while Summoning Magic used the power of the souls sealed within a vessel to create tangible apparitions and familiars. However, neither of these two magics really suited my capabilities or needs. Sure I could possibly create golems to watch over the tribe at some point, but according to the book with listed ingredients and such, I simply didn't have even a hint of the resources needed.

Instead, I created a confluence of four runes, two of which were from Golemancy and Summoning Magic, resulting in these sanguine minions of mine. The foundation glyph laid down the structure for the spell formation, the vessel glyph of Summoning Magic created the container of the formation, the animation glyph from Golemancy would allow for the autonomy of the puppets, and lastly, the magnet glyph from Blood Magic would allow the puppets to be constructed.

The magnet glyph was essentially what held it all together, the reason why I could fuse the two magics. By using those two glyphs, the vessel and animation glyphs, I forewent other glyphs since they would overlap or be incompatible. But to my immense joy, the magnet glyph perfectly complimented the two glyphs and my own skillset.

So by using my very own blood, meaning a very potent and precious material, I created the vessel for the blood puppets. At my current level of strength, I could create about twenty vessels; or blood orbs as I called them. But that didn't mean I had twenty strong puppets that could easily kill E-ranked humans as they did back at the Azure Claw mercenary group.

The puppets themselves were fueled by the mana within the orbs and not the power of the blood they use to form themselves. While the quality of the blood used to form their bodies could slightly affect how powerful the puppets would end up becoming, that was only slightly. Like when mind-controlling other creatures with the Sanguine Plague, I reserve mana. The amount of mana I reserve for each orb ultimately decides how strong they end up being.

And while I could only create about twenty orbs, there was also a hard-cap of around half my mana that I could reserve. I wasn't sure how or why this limit is imposed, but whenever I tried to go beyond it, the magic would just fizzle. I could only boil it down to me not having enough control over magic at that level, or that my lack of experience is dragging me down.

At this point, I could create either three very strong E+ blood puppets, one weak D- blood puppet, or just spread it all out and create twenty F+ puppets. While this was quite the arsenal, I still had to reserve more than half my mana to create them, which was the greatest source of my general power. So with that in mind, I had to be wary with how I spend my mana as it was what fueled many of my abilities and powers.

But that didn't mean I couldn't be just a bit frivolous with my mana as I've been getting so much of it recently. Also, I have the ability to restore the resource with Blood Conversion so I wasn't totally without options.

Actually, I believed that I could make the puppets even stronger by adding another glyph, however, that's just the problem. I couldn't. Before my evolution, fusing two glyphs was slightly strenuous, fusing three was hard, and fusing four was impossible. Now with my new evolution and magical relic that helped the control and finesse I had over magic and mana, I could barely construct a fusion of four glyphs.

If we followed the trend of how much more powerful and difficult spell formations became for each additional glyph added, it was rather self-explanatory what fusing and additional glyph to the four would do. This was actually something noted in all the three magic books I had gotten; the tiering of magic.

Even magic apparently had tiers. It was quite simplistic how the tiering worked since it was just based on many glyphs had been combined to form whatever effect of formation you wanted. So just one glyph would be 1st-tier magic, two glyphs 2nd-tier, three glyphs 3rd-tier; you get the gist.

I had been attempting to create 5th-tier magic, however, it just wouldn't work. But I could feel that I wasn't far from being able to grasp it, so I didn't give up in my pursuit. With improving my magical capabilities and understanding, being shown around the tribe, catching up with some old faces, and the occasional ambush from Mia, I had finally fallen back into life within the tribe once again.

***

Two huge and bulky figures were squaring off in the middle of the wide training grounds, barren of any other souls. One seemed to be made of gelatinous but solid crimson liquid with the shape of a humanoid creature, however, its featureless face said it was anything but human. The other was a dark-grey similarily large monster with hulking muscles rivaling that of even the bulkiest of orcs.

A huge crimson cleaver sword in hand and form-fitting armor that protected only the more vital areas, large tusks protruding from the mouth, and a grin that complimented the predatory eyes, Bob had truly become a lot more fearsome than his previous 'larger-than-ordinary' hobgoblin figure.

-Appraisal!-

[Appraisal - Bob]

Name: "Bob"

Race: Draugr

Sex: Male

Rank: E-

Level: 2/35

Health: 185/185

Stamina: 121/121

Mana: 0/0

[Attributes]

STR - 38

VIT - 42

AGI - 20

DEX - 22

INT - 10

CHR - 5

WILL - 15

MAG - 3

[Trait, Titles, and Skills].

Skills - 10

Traits - 5

Titles - 1

[Resistances]

Phy. Resistance - 12

Mag. Resistance - 5

Men. Resistance - 5

[Sanguine Champion]

Bob's choices for evolution hadn't really been all that numerous, only having four different choices to choose between. Two of them seemed to direct Bob in the path of true unliving, like zombies and liches. Another one went in the direction of some unknown race that I had never heard about which also didn't bring a lot in the description, only indicating a build geared towards agility and vitality.

Lastly was the next evolution of the Draugr path. I had once again asked if Bob wanted to choose himself, but he was quite adamant about having me choose for him since he didn't trust his own judgment. Having confirmation from Bob, I didn't have a hard time choosing since the Draugr path was simply much more promising and potentially powerful than any of the others.

Once he was done, I gained another decree prompt that flashed its tell-tale crimson hue.

∼ Sanguine Lord's Decree ∼

[The first champion of the lord of blood has been inaugurated]

[All hail, Bob the Revenant Destroyer!]

Both Bob and I were immensely happy that the system itself finally recognized Bob's name. Now that Bob had severely outgrown his blood dagger in both terms of size and power, I decided to make him a new weapon. It took me a whole two days to complete his weapon, simply due to its massive size and the limited amount of blood in my body.

I wanted to make him more weapons in the future for him to wield since his race as a Draugr was specifically attuned to wielding all kinds of weapons, but I had to put that on hold. The blood I possessed wasn't endless and for it to regenerate to the point of peak quality took some time.

But I did manage to create this masterpiece of destruction which also rewarded me another level in Blood Shaping, bringing me to level five. Its thick and heavy blade was almost as large as a fully grown adult human male and gave way to massive destruction whenever Bob swung it. Now equipped with newfound strength, armor, and a weapon made for destroying, Bob was positively itching to fight.

Indulging Bob in his wishes, I conjured an E-ranked blood puppet that was geared towards size, power, and health instead of being small, lithe, and agile. Big and beefy, exactly like his new self. It was a minor rank above Bob and also had the uncanny sturdiness nature of blood puppets that usually elevated them above their own rank, however, it was barely holding on against Bob's onslaught.

With his new evolution, his talent with weapons had taken a massive leap, his movements becoming rapid blurs and his sword delivering destruction to anything the blade touched. With his skills and mastery of weapons, Bob could easily fight above his own rank, similarly to how I could with my own abilities and advantages.

Bob the Revenant Destroyer?

Very goofy... but very fitting.