Blood Shaper

“Melee weapons?” Kay asked, looking around at the multiple weapon racks in the back yard.

Eleniah nodded. “Right! Since your range is only a few meters right now, you’re probably never going to be much of a medium or long range combatant. If you need to be close up to use you magic, we might as well add some weapons into your arsenal.”

The automatic translation effect had decided to change the units of measurement of this world into the metric system, which made sense seeing as how both were base ten. Each “tementrel”, which had taken a few minutes of speaking very slowly to get it past the translator, was about one and a half meters long.

“And they’re all bladed or piercing weapons to give me more blood to work with.” Kay stated as he looked over the various pieces of metal, all pointy, sharp or both.

“Right.” She waved a hand at the racks. “Pick one up and lets get started.”

“What exactly is the plan here?” Kay asked as he he walked through and inspected the various weapon options.

“We go through all of these, and see which skills you pick up the fastest. The faster you pick up a skill, the higher your affinity. We then take the ones you have high affinity for and train you in one or more until you get a class, then upgrade it to tier two to help hide your Blood Manipulator class.”

“All of these?”

She shrugged one shoulder as she stood there watching. “Sure, it’s not like having extra skills you won’t need will hurt you. And if you leave a skill at level one for long enough you lose it, so…”

“Alright.” Kay decided to start with something simple. “Then… this one to start.” He grabbed a normal short sword.

“Great, come here and I’ll run you through some forms.” She guided his body into the proper position and had him start practicing swings.

It took them three days for him to get all the skills and figure out what his rough affinity for each one was. In the end, he had a pretty good affinity for most of the almost forty weapons. The three he was best with they set aside on the third day, and discussed.

“So.” Eleniah looked down at them. “This is actually really good.”

“It is?”

“Sure.” She pointed at each weapon in turn. “The halberd is a good polearm that offers variety in how you attack. Most of your attacks are going to be based on drawing blood to give you magical options, but having a spike or hammer end will let you hurt various enemies that are resistant to slashing or stabbing. This bastard sword is good for slashing or stabbing, and it’s just the right length to switch between one and two handed grips as needed. That’s a big thing for most spell-sword classes, which there’s a good chance of you becoming. Finally, this,” She tapped the blade of the interesting weapon, “…It can be useful if you’re good at it, or in the right situation.”

“It seems a bit impractical.” Kay commented.

“Honestly, it can be, but for you it could be really useful.” She picked up the push dagger and looked it over. “There’s a couple different kinds, and having a close up weapon for backup when necessary is always good. If your affinity for this one wasn’t so high I’d recommend you use a regular dagger, but lets have you use this one.”

“Alright, which one am I going to class in?”

“If I have my way, eventually all of them.” She smiled at his look. “Really, and maybe a few more of them that you have some talent in. The glaive was a pretty close second to the halberd, and there were a couple other interesting ones you might be pretty good at.”

Kay took the punch dagger from her and practiced holding it the way she’d taught. “Why get so many classes?”

“A couple of reasons. First, we don’t know what Blood Manipulator or other branches of it might synergize with. Probably all of the weapons to some extent, but which ones will form new classes?”

Kay grunted. That part still confused him. Every weapon in the world had its own skill and class line. Crazy, right? So was every kind of magic, which made a little more sense to Kay, but then you got to different combination branches, where two or more classes folded into one class of higher tier. At that point, sometimes entirely disparate classes combined into the same thing! A water mage combining with a whip sword class was the same class as combining it with a lightning or wind mage! The magic used was still the same kind as from before the combination, but it was considered the same class. And there were more examples than that.

Eleniah had convinced him that looking to find new classes was the best idea, so they wanted to focus on finding new classes, not new ways to get to old ones.

“The other thing is that there are a few different classes that combine multiple weapons into one class. I’m thinking that with so many weapons you could be good at, aiming for one of those would work, and it might synergize well with Blood Manipulator.”

It didn’t sound like a bad idea. Kay wasn’t sure if that was his title-based intuition into developing new branches, or if it was just his opinion, but he wasn’t sure how it could hurt.

“For now though, I say we focus on the sword. I can’t train you too well in any of these, since I don’t use them,” Eleniah’s style of fighting was martial arts based, “But I can get you pretty good with the sword, and we can look for more trainers for the other two later.”

Kay shrugged. “Works for me.” He picked up the sword and started getting used to the weight of it. Back when he’d first gotten here, he’d been so pissed about not having any choices. Now that he had Eleniah as a teacher and friend, he felt much better about it. Sure, his choices were limited thanks to his circumstances, but that wasn’t anyone’s fault. He did tend to go with what she recommended in most cases, but he was the one making the decision to do so, he wasn’t forced into it. So, he was much happier about it than he had been a few months prior.

“Alright.” She started picking up the various weapons. “Lets go return these, and finish up another errand.”

Kay set down the sword and started gathering various kinds of daggers, being careful of the edges. “What are we doing?”

“You still have that collection of stuff that got brought with you, right?”

“My things?” He glanced towards his room. “Yeah, why?”

“Well I’m sure there’s some of it you aren’t particularly attached to. There’s demand for Outworlder stuff among certain rich collectors, and a merchant who specializes in that just made it into town this week. I thought maybe we could see if there’s anything you’re willing to part with, to make you some extra cash.”

Kay paused, a shortsword dangling from his grip. He didn’t hate the idea. There was some stuff he wanted to keep, just to remind him of home, but there were things from inside his pockets he didn’t need to keep. “Uh, yeah, we could try that.”

“Cool. Once we get these out front I’ll run get the cart from the guild. Should only take us a trip or two to get everything back to them.”

It ended taking three trips, because Kay was sure that stacking the racks up as high as Eleniah had put them would be a bad idea. She grumbled about him not trusting her on the last walk to the guild, but he just rolled his eyes.

After dropping off the last of the racks and the cart, they made their way towards the “market” section of the city. There were businesses of various kinds spread throughout the city, but one section near both the cliff face and the lake held a larger number of stores and businesses, including most of the large or wealthy ones.

“Hey, lets stop here for a second.” Kay stopped in front of a particular store and looked at the display.

“An enchanter’s? Sure, looking for something specific?” Eleniah asked as she pivoted towards the door.

“Yeah, but mostly just price shopping right now.”

Steeping inside, they heard a jingling noise coming from farther into the shop. A young woman stepped around a corner, smiling at them. “Hello! Welcome to Enchanter Dorine’s Magical Emporium of Delights! How can I help you today?” The woman’s bright red hair and the pointy ears on the top of her head made Kay think she was some kind of fox beastkin, but he still wasn’t very practiced at identifying them.

He stepped up to the counter. “Well, I was hoping that if it wasn’t much of a problem I could get a price for something so I can figure out if I can afford it, or if I need to keep saving.” Kay knew he couldn’t afford it, but he wanted to start budgeting a portion of his earnings towards it now. He didn’t have any earnings yet, but he’d start working on Adventurer’s Guild jobs in a few days or weeks, and he’d rather be prepared than uncertain.

“That’s not a problem at all!” The woman’s smile didn’t dim a bit. “Happens all the time. What are you looking for?”

“I’d like to get a portable container capable of storing blood and keeping it fresh.”

“Hmm…” She picked up a book from underneath the counter and started flipping through it. “That… isn’t one of our standard items… Ah! Here it is. I’ll need a few more details, then I’ll run it back to Enchanter Dorine and she’ll get a price for it. What size are you looking for when you say ‘portable’?”

“Canteen sized maybe? Or similar. Something I can carry one me.”

“Would you want it to be a spatial item? Larger on the inside?” She made note on a small piece of paper.

Kay hadn’t thought about that, but it would be useful. “Can I get a quote with and without? I don’t need that but it would be useful.”

“Sure! Last two questions: how long do you want the blood to stay fresh, and do you want it to retain preexisting magical properties?”

“The longer the better for the first one, but…” He tried to do some figuring based on how often he safely could go on jobs, from Eleniah’s lectures. “At least a week. For the second one…” He trailed off again, thinking about it. It would probably be more expensive if he made it so it retained the magic already in the blood, but while he couldn’t do anything with magic that was in blood now that didn’t mean he never would be. “Can I get both options again? I’ll probably buy one without that option at first, but after I tier up a time or two…”

The worker made two more notes on the pad then looked up with a smile. “I totally understand, it happens often.” She took the pad and told them she’d be right back. As she stepped away Kay noticed her wink at Eleniah.

He glanced over at his teacher who was watching him with a smile. “What was that?”

“You’re a totally new adventurer asking about his first piece of enchanted gear to save for with someone who is obviously your teacher watching over you and possibly grading what you ask for. She’s most likely sees this at least once a week.” She smiled again, her gaze going a little distant.

“Grading? How’d I do?” Kay asked.

“Hmm? Oh, full marks. What you’re looking for is incredibly synergistic with you class, and would be incredibly useful in more than one way. Plus, you’re right in thinking you could get the ability to use the magic already in an enemies blood at higher levels, it happens with a lot of classes.”

A few moments later the perky woman came back with a different piece of paper. “Alright! Enchanter Dorine says that those are all doable, and not too pricey, except for the keeping the magic bit. Standard time frame to keep it fresh would be about two weeks with the weakest enchantment, so you’re good there. With no spatial increase, and no retaining the magic, it’d cost you about seven hundred gold. With the spatial increase and no retaining magic, about thirteen hundred gold. She says that if you went with the enchantment to let it keep the magical potency she could throw in the spatial enchantment for free, so that one would cost you around three thousand gold.”

Kay did his best to keep his poker face in place and not wince at the prices. For enchanted items, those were pretty good prices. That was still a lot of money. He’d learned about the coinage in this world from Eleniah, and they were divided into three types, copper, silver and gold. One hundred copper was one silver, one hundred silver was one gold, and there were higher level coinages out there, but almost no one ever saw them. There were also slightly larger versions of each coin called large coppers, or silvers or golds, worth ten of their smaller counterparts. As far as Kay could tell based on faintly remembered prices from home, each gold was about fifty US dollars. He wasn’t sure how accurate that was, seeing as how a magical world with superpeople in it would have a slightly different economy, but that was the mental math he was running with.

“Not terribly far off from the first one, but the other two will have to wait.” Eleniah mused, startling Kay a little.

Not far off, what? I don’t have any money!

“Well, thanks for the pricing, and we’ll see you later to order that first one.” Eleniah told the worker before half dragging Kay out of the store.

“What are you talking about?” Kay had to regain his balance as she pulled him along. “I’m broke! I’m living on your suffrage!”

“You’ll be surprised how much random Outworlder stuff can sell for.“ Eleniah rolled her eyes. “And, don’t be a smart-ass. Taking care of your students is a basic part of teaching. The BOA paid me about a gold a day for three months to teach you, and you only used up three or four of those each month to feed you. You’ve got about fifty gold left after I take my half.”

“You’re giving me half the money?”

“Why wouldn’t I? I’m teaching you as my personal student. The benefits I’m going to make off of just teaching you alone are worth more than twelve large gold. That’s not even including what our relationship is going to net me in the future.

Each month was forty days long, with each day being a few hours longer than back home. The year itself was twenty one months, making the year last a whopping eight hundred forty days. “Our relationship will benefit you? What?”

She stopped in the middle of the small street she’d been leading him down. “Kay, I’ve been trying to get you to realize this, but as long as you don’t die early, you’re going to become someone important. I don’t know what kind of shape that’s going to take, but it’ll happen. Even if by that time we decide to go our different ways, the good will I’ll pick up from being your teacher will be worth more than a few hundred gold. And who knows? Maybe I’ll stick around and get some important position from you. Got a problem with that?”

Kay stared at her. “…No?”

“Great, lets keep going.” She grabbed his wrist and started pulling him along again.

Kay barely paid attention as they walked, his thoughts swirling around becoming someone important or powerful. It seemed like some kind of fantasy to indulge in, but it wasn’t actually too far-fetched for his life now. This world was massive, and there were a lot of unexplored or untamed areas. It wasn’t that rare for someone to go out and carve a decent place for themselves out of the wilderness, whether that was literally or figuratively.

“Here we are.” Eleniah suddenly stopped and Kay, not paying attention, bumped into her.

“Where are we?”

“The office that merchant I told you about rents while he’s in The Rapids.” She pointed at yet another building made of local marble, that to Kay looked like a million other buildings around the city. “Let’s go see what kind of money you can make.”

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