Chapter 8

Once Zeth was finished with his Empowerment Ritual in the shed, he went back to the house. It was late, and he needed to sleep soon.

He crept through the dark rooms, trying not to wake anyone up, but as he did, he found everyone wasn’t asleep yet, after all. His mom was sitting in the living room, knitting something with a pair of needles.

“Oh, you’re up late,” he said. “What’re you working on?”

“Sophie needs some warmer clothes for the winter,” she said, not looking up from the piece. “This’ll be her first cold season out in the fields.”

Zeth took a slow, deliberate breath. Don’t start an argument, you’re not gonna convince her no matter what you say. He wanted nothing more than to yell at her for stealing his money, breaking her promises, for siphoning potential from Sophie’s life into keeping this dying farm running for another few months, but it would serve no purpose.

“You were out late too,” she continued. “Working hard?”

“Yeah,” he responded. He’d properly butchered the pig after the ritual and taken the meat to the far-too-expensive magic coldbox they’d bought back when they first started making him work as their little slaughterer. “Did some renovations which took up the majority of the time, but I did get the pig killed and put away.”

She smiled, still looking at the cap she was sewing. “It’s good to see you finally coming into your proper role, rather than continuing in that little mining phase.”

He bit his tongue.

“Anyway,” she said, “you should probably go off to bed. You’ll need to be up early tomorrow to work on that pig.”

“Right.”

He turned and walked off to his bedroom.

Opening the door and walking in, Zeth glanced around. He still wasn’t used to living here again, after spending all those years working for the guild and living in the same-y member housing. This old room was full of memories, compared to those places. His bedside table, notches cut into it when he first got a pocket knife as a kid and wanted to test it out on something, the floorboard that could just barely be lifted up where he used to stow away snacks to eat later…

The only thing that’d changed since he’d left it were the contents of his closet. The door cracked open, he could see it was chock-full of old shirts and coats and pants—none of them his. He recognized them as his late father’s. His mom must not have been able to handle seeing them in her own bedroom every day once he was gone, so now they were here. Though, his dad had always been bigger and taller than him, so all of these would be completely oversized for him.

He walked over and flopped into bed.

Closing his eyes and glancing over his Status, Zeth was reminded that he’d just gotten three new Skills from his most recent Level Up.

Yeah. Yeah, fuck yeah! he thought, mental energy naturally building back up and a smile spreading across his face. Three new Skills, that’s absolutely awesome. I never looked too much into Classes other than Miner, since that was what the guild wanted me to pick up, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a Class dropping so many unlocks so quickly. So, let’s see…

[Compact Rites - Cost: 12 Skill Points

Improves your ability to tightly weave mana into the crevices of your circles, decreasing the required diameter of your ritual circles by 5% per Rank in this Skill, as well as another 2.5% for each 25 base points you have in the Awareness Stat.]

[Speedy Rites - Cost: 12 Skill Points

Improves your ability to quickly trace mana into the world, decreasing the minimum time required to draw your ritual circles by 5% per Rank in this Skill, as well as another 2.5% for each 25 base points you have in the Dexterity Stat.]

[Secure Rites - Cost: 12 Skill Points

Improves your ability to make your mana sustain itself in the world through sheer force of will, decreasing the upkeep time required each day to maintain your ritual circles by 5% per Rank in this Skill, as well as another 2.5% for each 25 base points you have in the Influence Stat.]

The three were pretty similar to one another, each affecting a different requirement for his rituals and each being boosted by a different Stat. They were somewhat similar to Vile Focus, as well, except, where it boosted all three of those requirements by a small amount, these would boost a single one by a much larger margin.

Zeth was immediately drawn to Speedy Rites as the best out of the three; the minimum time required to draw a circle was his current main bottleneck in how quickly he’d be able to Level Up, and cutting it down by so much after bringing the Skill to Rank ten felt like the best option out of those choices.

However, that was assuming he’d be getting any of these at all. Currently, Zeth had nine Skill Points—not enough for any of them. But it was enough for Vile Focus, which only cost eight. And the difference between the prices of Skills that cost below ten and above ten Skill Points was massive; one would end up gaining you Skill Points when it got to max Rank, while the other would only end in a net loss.

So then, for now, Zeth would want to go with the all-rounder Skill Vile Focus, go ahead and start training it up, and reap those profits sooner rather than later.

[You have purchased Blood Magus Skill: Vile Focus.

-8 Skill Points. You now have 1 Skill Point.]

Now, he just needed to figure out how hard it would be to Rank up. He wasn’t too tired just yet, so he figured he’d go ahead and try drawing a couple ritual circles and see if that would be enough.

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He grabbed an old shirt and flattened it out on the floor, then started drawing a six-inch circle on the cloth. There was something he wanted to try.

After working for about half an hour, he felt a new notification enter his mind. Sure enough, Vile Focus had Ranked up to one, bringing him a Skill Point, and causing the Skill to start imparting some benefit. At such a low Rank, it only offered a two and a half percent discount, but Zeth felt even that seeping through his rituals and changing their very nature. Empowerment Ritual’s minimum diameter went from four feet to three feet and eleven inches. Hellfire Ritual’s required time went down by a minute and some change. A single Rank wasn’t much, but as he got more, the changes would quickly add up.

He continued working on the same circle for another half hour to finish it, and then he was done. He’d drawn a Hellfire Ritual circle on the fabric, completed in just under the hour it would normally take because of Vile Focus. All it needed to become armed and ready to annihilate anything it touched was some blood.

Now, Zeth took the shirt and carefully folded it up. The circle itself would need to be six inches in diameter, but if he could put it on a more transportable surface like this, maybe something he could shove into a pocket and then take out when in trouble, then…

Once it’d been folded a few times over, he unfolded it again, hoping to see the circle undisturbed and still ready to be activated.

His face fell. Everywhere the cloth had creased, the red chalk-like substance had rubbed completely off of the fabric, leaving large lines missing in the intricate swirls and designs of the circle. That was ten, fifteen full minutes of work erased, at least. So pretty much completely unusable in the middle of a fight.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

So then, he couldn’t put the circle on a piece of parchment and fold or crumple it up; it’d need to be kept on a flat surface. As he tried to think of a way to keep something that large hidden on his body, he set to fixing the damaged circle. It’d make for good Vile Focus practice, at the very least.

So then, effects that reduce the required diameter would be pretty helpful too, huh? If I can get Hellfire’s circle from six inches down to something like a single inch or two wide, I could just fit a bunch of little scraps of cloth in my pocket without needing to fold them at all. Though, getting it down to a third of its original size is pretty much impossible for me currently.

For now, then, if I wanted to have something I could conceal…maybe I could hide a wooden board under my shirt? That would probably be obvious to anyone looking at me unless I wore really loose clothes, though. Could I find some way to carry the board around in my hands without anyone noticing what it actually is?

Soon enough, he’d fixed the circle, and even earned another Rank in Vile Focus for his efforts. Up to three Skill Points, and his ritual requirements were down to 95% of their original costs. Or, they were down to 95.06%, because of the multiplicative nature of discounting Skills like Vile Focus. Generally speaking, unless otherwise clarified, they wouldn’t add together, but would multiply.

With that done, he decided he should probably go ahead and sleep. Couldn’t stay up all night.

He didn’t want to destroy the circle and waste the hour he’d spent making it, so instead, he took the old shirt and slid it beneath his bedframe, taking care not to fold or crumple it and damage the circle, and covered it up with a pile of other old clothes to hide it. He didn’t anticipate anyone sneaking into his room in the middle of the night or anything, but with the Blood Mage out there, he couldn’t be too careful.

And with that, he lay in his bed, readying himself for another busy day tomorrow.

Zeth had closed his eyes for only five minutes when he heard a scream.

It was far-off, coming from the direction of the more packed-together residential areas, but hair-raising all the same. After that, a crash, like a building being demolished.

He leapt out of bed, hurriedly throwing on some clothes and grabbing his old dagger. Was there a bandit attack? Wicked thralls? Monsters from the forest? Hopefully the town guard would be able to take care of this.

Running to the door, he glanced over to see his mother, still wearing sleepwear and with clear grogginess in her eyes, also coming over to see what was causing the commotion. He opened the door and gazed out across the fields, where he could just barely see the town illuminated in the night sky. Some people seemed to be fleeing from the town, judging by all the silhouettes, dark figures moving across the lit up backdrop of the residential area.

Only, how was the town being illuminated? In the middle of the night, the moon would never be bright enough to…

He narrowed his eyes, trying to make out the source of the yellowish light spreading across the densely-packed houses in the distance. Was that…fire?

“What’s going on out there?” his mom asked sleepily.

“I think someone’s house caught aflame,” he responded, eyes locked on the area of the disaster. “It’s spread to the whole block by now, it looks like.”

“...What?” she rubbed her eyes, peeking out the doorway, herself. “That can’t be right. Water Mages would’ve extinguished it far before something like that could happen.”

“I don’t know what else could be happening.”

“Wh…” She gazed over at the burning buildings. “It doesn’t make sense. I haven’t seen a fire that bad in all my life here. Normally the Water Mages are much faster than this. There must be something distracting them.”

“What, like another fire on the other side of town?”

“I don’t know. It could be that the site of the flames is too dangerous for them to enter right now. Maybe they’re afraid of getting trapped under fallen rubble.”

Zeth frowned, staring down the road. “...Right. Yeah, maybe.”

His mom kept talking, but he wasn’t listening. What was that figure, walking up the road, away from the disaster? He’d originally thought it was just someone running away from the fire, but they almost looked inhuman in proportion. It kind of reminded him of…

His face drained.

Zeth’s memory of what had been going on as he’d escaped the cave had always been fuzzy; he was pretty sure he’d hit his head or something. But upon seeing this thing walking down the road, it all came flooding back. When he found the river he’d used to float to safety, a monster had been guarding it. The whole cave had been infested with monsters from the Sixth Realm—mostly just the weaker ones that served as prey to the true horrors. But one of those predators had been there, near the river.

A fleshtaker.

The blind monster hadn’t seen him as he’d entered that room, but with the countless ears and nostrils covering its head, it quickly sensed him regardless, forcing him to take a dive into the river and pray it wouldn’t follow him. And thankfully, it didn’t. The water had been enough to mask his presence.

However, the monster hadn’t given up chase. He now remembered—just before he’d been pulled under the water and hit his head, the monster had turned around to backtrack, following the trail of Zeth’s scent back through the cave. It would’ve gone to the mineshaft, where it’d be stopped by the cave-in. But if it was strong enough to break the rocks and dig its way through—or the guild had finally cleared out the cave-in and freed the damn thing in these past couple days—then it’d continue following his trail as it left. Out the mineshaft and into town, where it’d pick up the newest trail he’d left on his way through when he came directly to this house.

The silhouette of the monster shambled up the street, occasionally stopping to sniff the ground before continuing in its path directly toward Zeth. People fled from the sight of it, but it didn’t look bothered by them as long as they didn’t get too close. Seemed like it wasn’t about to let its prey get away a second time.

As he watched it come closer and closer, only visible because of the flaming disaster it left behind, Zeth had one thought running through his mind.

I need to kill this fucking thing.