Blood Shaper - Book 4: Chapter 39

“This is…” Eleniah gazed around the training area with pure amusement and a little added spice of amazement at the varied simulacra all performing different tasks, “So cool!” She eventually cheered before rushing off to thoroughly trounce one at chess. The specific one practicing chess moves was a copy of Meten, and since he didn’t have any Skills related to chess, the simulacra was only as good as Kay at the game. Which wasn’t very good. Even when they played the version he was familiar with, which was identical to chess from Earth, except the king was called “the ruler,” and the queen was “the champion,” Eleniah could beat him with little trouble.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying my training,” Kay called out to her. He himself was trying to do complicated acrobatic moves and feats of strength to level Blood Enhancer’s Skills. After getting both Simulacra Creator (Blood) and Blood Enhancer back, he had decided to just keep training those and focus on the rest after that, especially since he was now trying to speedrun getting two tier-five Classes as fast as he could. The earliest the incoming army would arrive was in around six months or so since they’d apparently had a delay somewhere between the Isermani Concord and Avalon that Isla’s spies had reported back. Getting two tier-five Classes in six months wasn’t a record; there had been some incredible geniuses in the past, but it would be impressive. Kay was determined to be impressive so that he could protect his people as best as possible.

Eleniah quickly got bored demolishing the simulacra at chess and wandered over to Kay. She stood out of his way as he practiced doing back flips with more and more complete turns in them, something he was still tickled he could do more than a year after figuring out he could, and watched the motley crew of variously shaped simulacra do dozens of different things simultaneously. Some were playing games, like the one playing chess, others were practicing martial arts, some were trying to dance, and a few more were trying to partake in various arts and crafts projects, most of which were turning out pretty bad. And that was only a handful of them.

She waited until he’d landed his most recent flip and looked over at her before speaking. “You should do a carnival!”

“I- Wait, what?”

“This is so fun! You should do a one-man carnival for the citizens.”

Kay looked around, a smile growing on his face as he thought about it. “Once this is over, I totally should. That’s such a good idea.”

“Right? There’s a bunch of things that you’d get out of it, including what’s basically a one-man army Skill into something for peace, but also, it’d be so fun for everyone!”

“One hundred percent. I’ll let Amanda know and let her figure out when to best schedule it. We can make it a yearly tradition.”

Eleniah did a little fist pump. “That’s so exciting. I love events like that.” Her head tilted back, and she groaned, “Uh, and now I have to transition from fun idea to training.”

“Don’t you love training?” Kay asked, giving her a bemused look.

“Sure, but I can train whenever I want; we don’t get to do cool events whenever I want to.” She complained.

“I could just make up some holidays to do interesting things on.”

“No! That’d ruin it; part of the excitement is that it’s either spontaneous or a real tradition.”

“I guess I’d better tell Amanda to work, making it an interesting tradition in the scheduling then?”

“No,” She waved a negative at him, “I mean, sure, if you want to, but if you made holidays just for me to do things, that’s a waste of a holiday, but if you make one specifically for everyone to have fun and then it becomes a tradition, that’s fantastic. Anyway!” She suddenly exclaimed, “Here to talk about training. We had that quick talk yesterday about wanting to get two of your potential tier-five Classes in time to use them for the mini-war that’s coming up or whatever the history books will end up calling it, so we need to push you to the limits.”

“Do I need to walk along the razor’s edge?”

“…What?”

Kay chuckled, “Sorry, it’s a song.”

She rolled her eyes. “How close are you to getting the last Class you need back? You have to level Leadership to get Blood Lord back, right?”

“Actually, I think I should save that for last.” He started ticking off Classes on his fingers, “I need Blood Manipulator, Blood Shaper, Blood Enhancer, Blood Melder, and Simulacra Creator (Blood) to get Blood Champion Originator, which is one of the two I want to get first, and I’ve gotten all of those. Since they’re all at forty, I just have to get enough experience to level one of them to get the Class Offered again.” He gestured at the milling simulacra. “If we look at it that way, I’ve spent the last few months working on getting one tier-five Class, and now I have enough six or so to get another one.”

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Eleniah nodded along as he explained, “That is a lot less work, true. Are you sure you should prioritize the champions over an army, though?”

Kay nodded firmly. “I do. On Earth, the quantity of soldiers is a lot more important in battle since one individual, no matter how well trained, can’t overturn an entire battle without some exceptional circumstances. But here, you can have one fighter overwhelm an army or shift a battle entirely. Elites are a big deal, and I think that being able to create pseudo-elites will be just as impactful, if not more impactful, than having another small army added in.”

“That’s a change from your previous stance,” She noted.

“It is, but I think it’s from my own blind spots more than any flawed logic. I was too focused on being able to copy myself, and I didn’t think that slightly weaker versions of me running around would be that strong compared to an army to go toe to toe with the enemy’s troops. But that’s wrong on two points. Not only am I a lot more impactful than I can always understand, but I can copy other people, too. This army that’s coming is gunning for me, which means they’re going to be trying to counter me as best they can with the information they have about me. So even if I am a bigger deal than I feel like I am, weaker clones of me wouldn’t be the best. But having a weaker version of you running around? Potentially throwing out slightly diminished versions of your Class Skills? That could change everything.”

“And you’ll get to make blood dragons,” Eleniah noted dryly, remembering how excited he was about that the day before.

“And blood dragons! Murunel doesn’t want to fight, but she’s fine with making a champion from her blood, so-“

“Yes, yes, you told me. Even with her limited combat Skills, we’d still have the shock and awe factor, plus we’d control the airspace.”

“It’s so cool!”

“And how much is the cool factor driving your new prioritization of which Class you’re getting first?”

“Like… ten percent?”

“So ninety percent of you think it’s a good idea.”

“Yes.”

“… Okay.” She nodded slowly, obviously thinking about it. “I agree that having three and a half or four-tier fives instead of three would be a big deal for us.”

“If you’re saying each champion is worth half a real tier-five, then it’s a lot more than that. Using the Skill lets me create four “sets” of champions, and each “set” has more than one champion in it.”

“Is each champion in an equal to a tier-five fighter?”

“… No, there’s no way. That’d be way too strong.”

“So we’ll get, what, a total of five tier-fives worth out of it?”

“Versus a semi-immortal army that the right tier-five could probably stomp into nothing.”

“Right.” Eleniah leveled both her pointer finger and a stern look at him. “As your teacher, adviser, friend, and a concerned citizen with the ability to make my opinion known, I’m in agreement with your planning. But I’m absolutely kicking your ass up and down this training hall every single second we can spare to make sure you get that army Class too.”

“Done.”

Right as he agreed, his notification light started flashing. He stared at it for a brief second before opening it up. “I’m going to call that a good omen.”

“What?”

“Got the Class offering.”

“Oh, that’s definitely a good omen.”

Kay skipped the other Classes that had also been offered and went straight to the one he wanted this time.

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Class: Blood Champion Originator (Combination of Blood Manipulator + Blood Shaper + Blood Melder + Blood Enhancer + Simulacrum Creator (Blood))

– Blood is as much an identifier as it is a source of life, as much a font of creation as it is a vital flow. Combine form, power, magic, gear, and ambition to become the originator of champions that will unleash destruction or bring order as you command. These champions will be in the form of your allies or enemies, born of their blood, and will be the strong arms that bring your ambitions into reality.

Class Skill: Create Blood Champions

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Skill: Create Blood Champions (Level N/A)

– Staunch warriors born from the blood of friend or foe. This Skill allows the user to create up to four sets of powerful simulacra from blood that copy the Classes and Skills of any individual whose blood is used as part of the creation of the simulacra. The blood of up to four individuals may be used to create the four sets, with each set using a single individual’s blood per set or the blood of one individual being used for all four sets; the individual(s) being copied must be a maximum of one tier higher than the user, and the Skills and Classes of the individual(s) being copied are reduced to one-half of the copied individuals Skill level and Class tier. All sets of simulacra are created with weapons, armor, and gear that are enchanted with magical effects that match the fighting style of the copied individual(s), with magical effects added that benefit said fighting style(s). The gear and enchantments may also be tailored as the user desires instead. Higher levels of this Skill increase the number of champions created per set, increase the strength of copied Classes and Skills, and allow the creation of stronger weapons, armor, and gear with improved magical effects.

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He mentally accepted the prompt and watched as his recently re-earned Classes vanished from his status and the data of the new one populated in their place. He also got an upgrade to his Class Creator title, giving him yet another combat Class slot. With a thought he stopped every simulacra that was toiling away, pausing for only a moment to make sure that any breakable items were carefully put away before gathering the blood that had formed them into a pool at his feet.

“Can I have a little of your blood?”

Eleniah held out her hand, and he made a tiny cut in it, siphoning some of her blood into the pool while replacing hers with some of his own with Blood Transfusion.

“I’ll make a set of champions based on you, then throw them at you to test them out. Then I’ll gather more blood samples from you, Meten, Murunel, and anyone else that could be useful to have minor copies of in a fight.”

“Then we train you till you drop.”

“We need to think of a good way to train Leadership quickly as well. I get some passive experience from just being in charge of Avalon, according to some studying Ahthia’s done, but it hasn’t been enough to tip me over and level me. We’ll need another level after that.”

“I’m sure there’s something we can find. At a minimum, we can have you lead teams to hunt stronger monsters in the wilderness and train your combat Skills at the same time.”