Scarlet Asger

The moment I activate the skill, I feel a faint stabbing pain spread throughout all of my body before blood literally drains from every single pore I have and flies to the ground next to me, building a faint copy of me, albeit covered in shadows and made up of blood so you can’t see any of my body’s features clearly.

I barely manage to keep on my feet as the stabbing pain slowly fades, leaving me feeling weakened quite a bit from blood loss.

“Looks like that skill took a lot more of your blood than we both expected,” Tar mutters, and I can’t help but nod rather weakly.

After a few seconds of wobbling, I decide to just sit down for the moment as I watch the shadow clone, who is simply staring at me without moving an inch. And somehow I get the instinctive feeling that I can order it to do stuff with my mind and it’ll just somehow understand exactly what I want it to do.

So I do just that, and the thing immediately reaches for the remaining blood spear I have that had fallen to the ground after I activated blood clone. It then starts to spin it around rather clumsily, obviously showing that it’s using my skills to do so seeing as I have no skill with a spear. Never even touched one before. But then it eventually moves over to the machine and stabs the spear of blood straight at it, making the spear dissipate just like the sword did.

Then my eyes are drawn to the number that appears, pleasantly surprising me in the process.

[2003 arc]

Ooh, that’s pretty good! Better than the blood weapon alone, but still worse than my own strength by a large chunk.

Now then. I close my eyes and focus on the blood shadow for a few seconds, trying to see if I can use its senses or something like Michael can his summons, but nothing ever happens, leaving me disappointed.

I open my eyes again.

Well, it was worth a shot, I guess.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you get that ability in a later level of the skill,” Tar says, and I can’t help but nod at that.

That would certainly be nice. For now, the blood shadow just works as a decoy though. Because unless I summon it at the start of a Fracture, then it won’t be much help, since it’ll end up draining what must be almost half of my blood just from summoning.

“That’ll probably end up improving as well when you level the skill,” Tar adds, making me purse my lips for a second before deciding to level the skill one time. Which costs me 4 SP to do.

[Skill ‘Blood Shadow’ has leveled up to level 2.]

Then I focus on the description and find a pleasant surprise there.

{Blood Shadow - This skill can be used to create a clone made out of shadows and blood. It uses the user’s own blood and their shadow in the process of the skill’s use, and when the clone is destroyed, the user loses the blood and takes mental damage as backlash. 1% of the blood used can be substituted through skills or mana.}

Nice! That last part wasn’t there before!

Tar gets off of me, likely noticing that his weight isn’t helping with my current feeling of weakness. Even if I am starting to feel a bit better thanks to Blood Regeneration, which doesn’t just regenerate wounds, but also, like the name says, regenerates blood.

In fact, I feel like it might regenerate my blood faster than my wounds, if the other day was anything to judge by.

“Wouldn’t be surprised,” Tar comments, his voice ringing in my head while he’s flying around my blood shadow and seemingly inspecting it. “Blood is one of the most important parts of a blood lycan, seeing as they’re so often metallicizing it and using it in battle. So being able to regenerate it faster than normal wounds sounds like a must.”

True.

I order the blood shadow to do various things including bare handed combat drills that were taught to me by Sylver and Allen, sparring with a dummy, testing its aim when throwing a blood weapon, and of course testing the strength behind when it throws a blood weapon as opposed to when I do it myself with the actual skill – the blood shadow being stronger – and lastly, testing what happens when the thing leaves my sight. Which isn’t really anything. It just continues following my orders, only with me not being able to see where it is or what it’s doing.

Good enough for me. At least, for now it is.

Would be better if I could share its senses, but I’ll be patient.

I climb back to my feet, feeling good enough to stand and even fight again before glancing down and noticing my shadow. Or rather, my lack of a shadow.

Huh. So the Blood Shadow skill really did take my shadow.

How’s that even possible? Is a shadow really something that can just be taken?

“It’s magic,” Tar says as if that solves every question in the world.

And I guess it does?

I test a few things with the two skills, such as if I can use my own blood or other types of blood such as the blood in the blood shadow in the creation of blood manifestation – which I can’t yet apparently – and if I can use the blood in the blood manifestation for other things as well. Then I test using the blood manifestation myself, and while they are stronger when held by me than my regular punch, I also try punching the device with my arm shifted without using blood claws and find a rather startling result.

[3815 arc]

And when I do it again after activating blood claws on that hand, I find an even more startling result, one that is higher than grabbing a blood weapon and using it myself.

[4001 arc]

Very nice results overall.

Although it does delegate the blood manifestation to a pure ranged focused skill. Or one for my blood shadow to use.

Anyways, I unsummon my blood shadow, making an incredibly uncomfortable sensation run through me as the blood begins reentering me through my pores. But then a sizable chunk is left behind – nearly half of what was making the blood shadow – so I just store it in my blood storage, seeing as it’s likely the excess blood that was already regenerated in the time I was using blood shadow.

I adjust my magi-tech jacket and shirt that had been a tad displaced by the blood before turning around, using the clean skill, and leaving the training room.

Time to head to bed.