Zeke sat in his study, staring down at the box before him. This was the present Tristan had given him. Even with his spacial awareness, he could not tell what was inside. There must have been a Mana-repellent layer somewhere in that container.
The thought made Zeke's imagination soar. If such a measure was necessary, the present was most likely something valuable. With growing excitement, Zeke stripped off the first layer of cloth, then the second. The delicate fabric was soft to the touch and clearly expensive, heightening his excitement further.
With trembling fingers, Zeke lifted the top off the box and looked inside. His brows furrowed. He hadn't quite known what to expect, but it hadn't been this.
Inside the box were a couple of unbound pages. A quick glimpse revealed that they weren't neatly penned either. Parts of the writing had been scratched out or scribbled over. There were small doodles and illustrations all over the place. For Zeke, who had learned the art of drafting proper research papers from Maximilian, this unorderly creation looked extremely offensive.
Swallowing his disappointment, Zeke grabbed the first page and began to read.
Blood Magic: Mysteries of the Crimson Essence
Perplexity One: Boundaries of Vital Fluids
In the labyrinthine pursuit of solving the puzzle that is Blood Magic, the main challenge manifests itself in the lamentable scarcity of procurable resources. In my relentless quest, I have found three two remedies to assail this unfortunate frailty.
The first method relies on the augmentation of blood. It is imperative to augment the very liquid, imbuing it with an unprecedented density…
A second approach tries to dismantle the shackles of temporality. We must exalt the velocity of its regeneration…
Thirdly, the conservation of fluids via reintegration after usage…
[…]
…After painstaking iterations, two spells of profound intricacy have been devised to address this frontier in different ways. For maximum effect, they should be inscribed upon the core at an early age. I have learned that the body needs time to adapt to such drastic changes...
[…]
Honor and glory to my house and my descendants!
Marlon Bloodsword — First of his name.
Zeke gasped. This was it, this was the basis for the original spells Tristan's father had developed. These documents could be called the foundation of the Bloodsword household's Magic. From what he just saw, these papers were from an early stage of the research. It was still far removed from the result he had seen today. However, for somebody like Zeke, this knowledge was invaluable.
This gift was absolutely perfect for him… so much so that he wondered how much Tristan knew about his abilities. For anybody else, this foundational research would have been nothing but an interesting bit of trivia. After all, it wasn't hard to find out what the spells did just by observing the Bloodswords fight.
These documents didn't state much more than the motivation and thoughts behind their creation. The only real purpose for them was to recreate the spells from scratch — or develop an own style of them.
Did Tristan know that this was what he was trying to do? Or did he merely guess it after seeing his approach to Blood Magic?
It hadn't escaped Zeke's notice that Marlon, Tristan's father, had also conceptualized the reintegration of blood. For some reason, he had discarded that path, however. Zeke was more than curious to learn for what reason he did not pursue this course further, but focused on the other two instead. In his opinion, the reabsorption of blood was superior to both [Blood Compression] and [Blood Generation].
With a voracious hunger, Zeke dove into the documents. After reading them once, he read them again, and then a third time. After having gone through them a couple more times in detail, Zeke sank back into his chair, a thoughtful expression on his face.
Luckily, Zeke's fears had been dismissed. The reason Marlon had not chosen that third path wasn't because it was inferior or had some deep-seated flaw. No, it was because he couldn't get it to work.
This discovery had initially baffled Zeke. However, after thinking about it a bit, it made sense. The only reason this was so easy for him was because of his [Perfect Body Control]. Zeke had been unable to reuse his blood in the beginning as well. Only after changing his spells in a subtle but fundamental way had it become possible.
The missing piece was actually something incredibly simple: He had tweaked his intent. Instead of creating a projectile, or weapon, his spells were still considered a part of his body. He didn't focus on creating something extra, but to extend his blood flow outside his body.
Zeke hadn't realized until today how much of a brilliant discovery that had been. He had seen it in the [Bloodsword] spell: Despite being incredibly sophisticated, far more so than his whips, the spell had a crucial weakness. The blood used to create that weapon would gradually lose its sharpness as a natural consequence of Mana decay.
This was the same reason enchanted weapons needed to be socketed with an affinity crystal. They couldn't just be enchanted once and remain sharp forever. The mana would decay over time, and even faster with use.
However, Zeke's [Bloood Whip] was different. Instead of casting the spell once and be done with it, the spell stayed active. Blood would constantly flow in and out, cycling through his entire reserves. This had the effect that the weapon would never grow dull unless his entire Blood had lost its Mana. Though, at that point, he would be completely helpless anyway.
A smile spread across his face. Zeke liked the idea of treading new ground, developing a style that nobody had seen before. He could hardly imagine the elation Marlon must have felt upon developing those spells. The feeling of breaking new ground during research was exhilarating.
However, this didn't mean that Zeke would go out of his way to avoid using Marlon's findings. [Blood Generation] and [Blood Compression] were fine spells. The problem was that they came with their own sets of problems — just as his own style did.
The flaws with [Blood Generation] were the most obvious. Blood would get stronger the longer it remained inside the body. The constant Mana saturation was exactly what gave Blood Mages their fearsome attack power. But newly created blood lacked that advantage. This approach traded a limitless blood supply for a severe reduction in attack power.
This was unacceptable to Zeke. Even the best [Blood Generation] Mage would not be able to compete with the output of a Water Mage. And that was still ignoring the fact that water was a plentiful resource nearly anywhere. Those Blood Mages were essentially crippled Water Mages, giving up their natural advantages to compensate for the weakness of range and volume.
On the other hand, [Blood Compression] was far more intriguing to Zeke. Increasing the capacity for blood within the body was something he was extremely interested in. However, the approach wasn't perfect either. They would run into the same problem he had faced long ago — the limit was merely extended. At some point, they would run out of blood. This would usually occur long before their core was at its limit, rendering a high affinity useless.
For Zeke, with his perfect affinity, this was even worse. He would have to increase his Blood reserves 100-fold in order to have enough blood to put any strain on his core. From what he had seen, this was not a realistic goal.
Mordred, as a True Mage, had about three times the normal amount of Blood of a normal person. Vanessa, as a Grand Mage, had around ten times the amount of blood. And finally Tristan, as an Arch Mage, had around 25 times the amount of blood.
In terms of mana density, the difference in ratio between those stages was roughly along the lines of 1, 10, and 100. Meaning that an Arch Mage had about 100 times more mana than a True Mage. This progression was significantly higher than their compression rate, which meant that the cost of this method rose exponentially.
This discovery didn't come as a surprise to him, in fact, it was basic knowledge. It was initially easy to compress most materials. But after a while, they became so dense that it was almost impossible to squeeze them even by the tiniest amount. Zeke figured that even an Exarch would not be able to get much more out of that spell.
None of this managed to detract from the spell's usefulness, however. Having even twice as much blood as he did now would already be an immense boon. He would have to find a way to incorporate [Blood Compression] and Zeke was eager to start. The combination of his recordings as well as Marlon's notes would certainly be a big help.
Zeke closed his eyes, focusing inward. His perfect affinity made it incredibly easy for him to feel his own blood. For a moment, he did nothing other than focus on the flow. He observed as each strong, rhythmic beat pumped the liquid through his veins. He could feel the slight radiation of attuned mana infusing his blood and body with ever more strength.
Suddenly, a question occurred to him, something he had never considered before. However, now that he thought about it, it was weird that it had not come up before. What did his space and mind affinity do to his body? He knew that his Blood affinity was strengthening his body all around, but what about those other two?
All of Zeke's knowledge on this subject came from books, which had proven to be an unreliable source at best. Many of them were written by untrustworthy researchers, and others were built on a false premise. However, by far the worst were written with the sole purpose of propaganda, making the content deliberately misleading. This was true, especially for Mind Magic…
Zeke grimaced. Now, it was up to him to discover which sources he could actually trust. He would also need to find a way to measure the actual effects of those two affinities on his body. Otherwise, it would be impossible to separate fact from fiction.
As far as Zeke could tell, his Mind affinity mostly nourished his brain, improving his thinking speed. Of this at least, he was certain. Did it have any other influences on his body? He couldn't rightly say. And the Geistreich family wouldn't have allowed such information to be circulated freely, making Zeke certain that he wouldn't find this knowledge in any book from the empire.
Zeke had read that a Space affinity adjusted the body to space, making it easier to teleport. However, he had never tried to teleport another person before and didn't know how much of a difference this actually made — if any at all. As far as he could tell, his space affinity did absolutely nothing to his body.
Zeke sighed. Why hadn't he devised better measurements when coming up with his [Analyze] spell? There was no crying over spilled milk. With a thought, he brought up the changes to his body from his very first measurement to now.
Strength: 18 —> 25 Constitution: 22 —> 27 Agility: 16 —> 23 Intelligence: 20 —> 24
His strength, constitution, and agility had risen by a fair amount over the past two months. Despite not having worked out as much since coming to Tradespire, his progress had been great.
This was probably thanks to his use of Blood Affinity crystals. Zeke could feel that he had already made significant progress on that front. If he only had his perfect affinity to worry about, he might be able to advance to Grand Mage in no more than a year or two.
His stats were already comparable to what he felt from Mordred… which was strange. No matter how good his affinity was, he shouldn't have been able to creep up on the young Bloodsword this fast. The other boy had been a Mage almost twice as long as him already, after all.
Zeke got a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. He could only think of one thing that could make up for this difference. His thoughts drifted to something else, something he would have rather ignored.
Zeke had been certain he had heard a voice when his heart had acted up. The fact that his recordings didn't contain any sounds only reinforced his theory. The noise had not come from a physical source but a spiritual one.
"Are you ready to talk now, Dragon?"