Chapter 67

It took a while, but eventually Zeth finished drawing his Empowerment Ritual—all eighteen and a half hours of it. He worked in silence as Astrys slept in the bed across the room, thinking about all the implications of the fact that not only was she going to stick around in this realm presumably forever—or, at least, until either one of them decided to forcefully unsummon her—but also the fact that any demon he summoned would have the same ability to remain in this realm.

So far, he hadn’t discovered any other demons that seemed like they’d want such a thing, but perhaps he’d be able to find more. Or, if not demons that would want to remain in the First Realm forever, at least demons that would be willing to make long-term deals that involved large payments in exchange for extended stays.

Once he finished the Empowerment Ritual, though, Zeth realized just how much blood it would need to activate. All of its requirements climbed as he completed more and more of them, and the necessary sacrifice strength was not exempt from that. So when he emptied out a container of blood from his dwindling storage, only finding the entire thing having filled a fraction of the cost, he realized his days of being able to Level up as much as he wanted as long as he had enough time to draw up a circle were over.

Sure enough, it took every single drop of blood in his storage to bring the percentage up above ninety-five. And he had to scrape the barrels clean of each and every drop to squeeze those last few percentage points out of his stockpile. By the time it finally hit one hundred, he had completely run dry.

But he didn’t let that news get to him as he read through the notifications that came with the completion of his ritual.

[Otherworldly Excellence’s Rank has increased to 6.

+5 Dexterity. You have 55 Dexterity.

+1 Skill Point. You have 10 Skill Points.]

[Blood Magus’s Level has increased to 12.

+3 Endurance. Your Endurance is 42.

+5 Dexterity. Your Dexterity is 60.

+1 Awareness. Your Awareness is 12.

+2 Poise. Your Poise is 24.

+7 Shaping. Your Shaping is 84.

+3 Skill Points. You have 13 Skill Points.]

And after those two came another.

[Requirement fulfilled: Blood Magus Level 12.

You have unlocked Blood Magus Skill: Ring of Plague.]

He frowned at the new Skill unlock. Ring of Plague? That sounded pretty sinister. Curious about this new Skill’s effects, he went ahead and opened it up.

[Ring of Plague - Cost: 28 Skill Points

Completely exclusive to the Blood Magus Class.

Uses a ritual circle to establish a ring of plague, which requires a sacrifice each day to maintain. All disease within 25 miles of the ring is greatly strengthened, both in its ability to spread and its ability to kill.

All other beings within the ring’s area of effect have their Endurance Stat’s ability to fight disease reduced by 5% per Rank in this Skill. This portion of the Skill’s effects can be resisted if a being has a higher Endurance Stat than your Shaping Stat.

Strength of sacrifice required: Moderately high, once per day

Required ritual circle diameter: 77.6 feet (originally 100 feet)

Time required to draw: 42.7 hours (originally 55 hours)

Upkeep time required each day: 7.76 hours (originally 10 hours)]

Zeth stared at the Skill.

That was completely insane.

This thing would give him the ability to enhance all disease within such a massive radius? And on top of that, it’d reduce people’s ability to fight that disease off. Chances were, if he drew it and kept it active for a couple months—even just a couple weeks—it’d end up killing off almost every single person within that radius. If he set it up near a populated city…

Sometimes, Zeth forgot what type of person this Class was made for. People of genuine evil. Theoretically, the Skill offered an amazing solution to the problems faced by a Blood Magus: you needed blood, and you needed to stay hidden. Those two goals were normally in conflict with one another, considering the fact that people were quite opposed to having their friends and family slaughtered for resources. However, with this Skill, you could simply set it up out in the middle of the woods, or in some hidden underground complex, and wait around for the people to die on their own, without you ever needing to see them. Just wait for the mysterious plague to kill off everyone in town, then go over and collect the bodies.

Combined with that other Skill he’d unlocked, Massacre’s Boon, which would make his sacrifices more powerful if they came from a large number of humans, Zeth could see a certain strategy the Class was encouraging. Kill the weak, and use them to make yourself strong.

It was evil, in the truest sense of the word. He was almost disgusted to even be using the Class at all, even if he knew he’d never stoop to that level.

But at the very least, for as long as he was using it, nobody else would be able to. So at least he was protecting the world from a more malicious holder of this absurd power.

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So then, Level twelve’s Skill unlock wasn’t particularly useful. No matter, though—he was still spoiled for choice with his existing options.

Now with thirteen Skill Points, Zeth could afford Speedy Rites if he wanted to take it. However, now that he was out of blood in his storage, he’d have to figure out a new source to fuel his rituals before he could start powering through Empowerment Rituals like he had been before. If he anticipated blood being his bottleneck, he could even instead purchase Incendiary Intensification, which would dramatically increase the power of his blood sacrifices as long as he conducted his rituals around large sources of fire.

He didn’t have to make any decisions for now, though, so he held off on picking one of them for sure. Things were extremely uncertain between the Inquisitors’ arrival and Astrys now staying, so he’d want to wait until he had a little more information before making any decisions. For now, he could just go to sleep and figure everything out tomorrow. So he walked over to the bed, preparing to get some rest.

But just as he was about to lie down, Zeth heard a noise. It was faint—the barest disturbance of the typical silence in his underground complex.

Voices.

They were coming from the entrance hallway, where the staircase to the surface was. People were talking.

He couldn’t make out the words. But at the very least, it was clearly not a normal animal walking around up there.

Zeth rushed to grab the few Hellfire Ritual cloths he had still prepared. Once he had them, he ran back and returned to gaze down the hallway, listening closely. The voices were still speaking, not sounding particularly closer or further away than they had been before. Who were these people? What were they doing?

As he slowly crept closer and closer to the hallway, he determined from the sound of the voices that these people weren’t currently inside his base—they were too muffled and far-off sounding. And, at the very least, they weren’t shouting out or anything, instead mostly relaxed in tone. Maybe they were just random passers-by? Hunters looking for a monster to Level up with, or travelers taking a detour—anyone who wasn’t looking for him would be good news.

Still, he couldn’t risk not knowing. So he began moving through his hallway over to the staircase that made the base’s entrance. He couldn’t bring Astrys along with him—in the case that he’d gotten lucky and these people had no idea he was here, the sudden fear aura would obviously increase their suspicion.

It was as he climbed up, step by step, that Zeth just barely began being able to recognize what these people were saying. It sounded like two people, talking as they walked around up in the clearing.

“...sure you saw a footstep?” one was asking.

“I thought so,” the other responded. “You saw it—it was hard to make out, but looked like boot tracks heading this way. No idea what else it could be.”

“Yeah, well I don’t see anyone. And I haven’t seen any more footsteps around here, either.”

“Maybe it’s further along.”

“If we haven’t found whoever it was so far, we’ve definitely lost them.”

Zeth frowned, climbing further up. These two people were looking for someone, following footsteps. Had they seen one of his? He always tried to ensure he didn’t leave any tracks when he walked out here, but it was possible he’d accidentally left something to let these people track him out here.

After a moment of silence between the two, one of them spoke up. “Maybe we should just cut our losses and head back.”

“What do you mean? We have confirmation that there’s someone out here. We can’t leave now.”

“We definitely can leave. And we don’t have ‘confirmation’ for shit. We have you swearing up and down that the smudge in the dirt came from someone’s boot.”

“I don’t care. Leave, if you want. I’m gonna get that reward.”

“Oh, like they’ll actually keep their word about that.”

“They’ve paid us in full the last few times we did a job for them. I don’t see why this time would be any different.”

“Maybe because they’re offering twenty times what they usually do? Listen, they barely gave us any info to go off of. Those little hit jobs they asked us to do, they were simple and straightforward. Find this person, off ‘em. Now, they’re asking us to search the forest for…what was it again?”

“A base or a lair, or a person or a monster or other evidence of a person or a lair.”

“Yeah, see? That’s fucking stupid. They don’t know what they’re doing this time—they’re just grasping at straws, hoping we’ll find something when they don’t even know what they’re looking for.”

“Listen. If you wanna keep robbing caravans, feel free to do that. But I’m trying to make it big.”

“Oh, make it big, like you’ll move up to running a whole encampment one day. You’re a fucking idiot.”

“Nah, nah. You know that one noble lady from that city our old base was near?”

“...From two years ago?”

“Yeah. I’m gonna get rich, get some nice clothes, pay for some travel to go back over there, and convince her to marry me. And she’s rich, too, so I’ll just be able to live off her money for the rest of our life together.”

“I’ve already told you—she wasn’t giving you ‘the look,’ she was afraid you were planning to kill her. Which you were.”

“But I let her go, right? She’s gotta be super grateful.”

“Didn’t you kill her husband?”

“Yeah, so she’s single, too. Perfect opportunity, right?”

Zeth was able to slowly piece together the situation from listening in on their conversation. These two were bandits, paid by the cabal to search the forest for him. They must’ve figured Zeth was hiding out here somewhere, so they’d just get people to consistently search around until they found him. But it seemed like his disguised trapdoor was working—neither of them had realized they were standing right on top of the thing they were looking for this whole time. If they just left without noticing anything, that’d be ideal. So hopefully…

Suddenly, one of the two shouted out.

“What is it?” the other asked. Zeth heard the sound of a sword being drawn.

“W-what’s going on? We’re under attack!” the first one yelled.

“What do you mean? Where?”

“You mean, you didn’t get it?”

“Get what? Explain, dammit.”

“The notification. It said I failed an Influence check, and suddenly I just felt this intense fear. But the moment I stepped away, it ended. It was right about…Woah! There it was again! Look, if I step right in this exact spot, I get the notification. You try it, too.”

“What are you…Holy shit! Good gods, you’re right. What is that?”

Zeth’s heart sank as they spoke. A demon’s fear aura expanded outward in a spherical radius. He’d tried to ensure his base was deep enough that the fear wouldn’t reach anyone if a demon was down there, but apparently it was just barely not deep enough for Astrys, and a tiny bit of her sphere escaped from underground. And these bandits had just happened to stumble across it.

Seemed like he wouldn’t be letting them go, after all.

But hey, it wasn’t all bad. At least he’d found another source of blood.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om