When one thinks of a criminal organization, one expects it to be like the shadows. Silent and efficient in their work, with a certain amount of creepiness added to the boot.
What one does not expect is for people to be screaming at each other at the top of their lungs like this. I am supposed to be focusing right now, but in this infernal racket I can't even hear myself think. Well, I can't blame the organization for this, though. They seem to be the quiet sort. (You could call them pretty creepy, too, if the atmosphere was right.)
It is the people that they are rescuing who are not able to keep control of themselves. You see, the organization has been smuggling the many merchants that are in the city out of it. Naturally, they are doing it to save the people from the Bloodfire gang.
The Bloodfire gang is going to be looting the city. There is nobody to stop them. (The Mayfires are locked in the inner keep.) The Bloodfire gang makes the organization seem way cheaper right now. The organization is naturally charging quite a bit for smuggling a person out. I guess losing a majority of your wealth is still better than losing all of your wealth.
That is why it seems that all the merchants that have spatial storage are already down here. More are making their way here each day. They have made this place into a market with how they are haggling with each other.
The people here are essentially swapping their positions on the line to leave this place. A person who is closer to being extracted can charge a king's ransom to swap it with a person farther along the line.
At this moment, there are so many people here that the organization is struggling to smuggle them all out. The more frequently that you use a route, the quicker that you are going to get that route discovered.
That is why everybody is waiting here. With nothing else to do, the people here have reverted to their usual work. That is, trading with each other. Just like a normal market, the people here have been making bargains with each other. With every deal struck, the arguments just seem to be growing in this place.
Well, putting them all in one massive room is going to do something like that. Maybe that was even the purpose of putting them here. It will distract them from their present state.
My bad luck is that my room is pretty close to this storage room, which is why all of it is so audible. Now, I am not one to care much about noise or chaos (I can tune it out usually.), but it is undesirable when I am about to do something so vital.
Today is going to be the first time that I am going to be making use of the fusion spell. I would have preferred to have done it at a better and more peaceful time. I have a feeling that I am going to need every iota of my strength to be able to survive in the coming days. Already, the strength of our enemy seems so great and we haven't yet seen the reason I came. The blood moon means that somebody from the court is involved. Who and how is a question for later, though. (I personally feel it must be the void.)
Today, I am going to achieve the primary linkage to the core. The process of linking a foundation slab to the mana core has three stages.
The first stage is the primary linkage. In this, a bond is formed between the primary formation and the foundation slab. This is supposed to be the weakest connection. This link is supposed to break quite easily.
This primary linkage will then act as the foundation for creating stronger bonds. These are known as the minor bond and the major bond, respectively. The minor bond will make sure that even if I am far away from the formation, the bond won't break. The major bond should mean the bond is unbreakable by most means. My master claims that even he won't be able to break it.
For now, I have to achieve the primary linkage with my mana core. If my master's notes are to be believed. Doing this will result in a bunch of benefits. Which exact benefit is something even he is unsure of. He has, after all, never seen a formation used like mine used as a core before. He has a few guesses about what could happen.
Well, I have procrastinated on the matter for long enough. The further that I delay on the matter, the harder it is going to be.
(After about a day.)
I have finally done it, though I would rather not speak about it. Screw it, it feels like somebody is pulling all of the bones in my body out of me, while still connected to my nerves. Then the person was using those bones to play a drum.
Even now, when my second foundation slab is settling, it pains. It is kind of like that pain that you get when somebody is pulling out one of your teeth. (If you could feel it all over your body.)
Well, at least my master was correct about the benefits of this spell. Already, I can feel the cycle form in my body. Well, how do I explain to you what exactly the cycle is?
To explain it first, I will have to explain what exactly this fusion spell was supposed to do. The spell essentially creates a channel between my mana core and my core. The only thing that will be able to travel through this connection is my mana.
In my master's case (at least as he explains it.), this connection is supposed to be one-way. His ninth class formation, called the wolf's skin, allows him to cover himself in a storm wolf's skin.
All he can do is send the mana from his mana core to the formation. Without having to do it through the usual process. The only benefit that it gives him is that it is way more efficient than the usual process. It also allows him to control the formation with a precision impossible with any spell. Even the best user of formation control will never be able to achieve such control, it seems.
In my case, this bond formed is a two-way connection. Even now, I can feel the vital mana in my mana core flow into the formation that I have built into the bloody fang. It is not a pleasant sensation to have your vital mana moving like that. It kind of feels like my teeth are wiggling whenever I focus on something else, only to stop when I focus on it.
The only reason that I am not panicking at this moment is that the mana is also flowing back into me. Through the same connection, the sword is sending the same mana back to me. The only thing is that there is a little trace of blood mana in the mana that is being returned to me. A blood vital mana, if you will.
Do not ask me the exact theory behind this, but it seems like the formation is now passively active all the time. It makes use of my bond to the sword to create a cycle. The sword is acting as an extension to my mana core, converting my mana to blood mana at a steady rate. It is not a particularly high conversion rate, though. It will take a year just to convert my vital mana stored into blood vital mana. (That is, considering I stop cultivating today.)
Now you might ask me why that is such a wonderful thing. This is going to allow me to adapt to blood mana. The biggest disadvantage of using my sword is the fact that the blood mana is foreign to my mana core. Using it puts a strain on my mana core.
With the sword always active and blood mana always present in my core, blood mana is going to cause less strain on me. It is still not going to be pleasant, but I will be able to use it way more, maybe even permanently, after a long enough time.
This is going to do wonders for my tolerance of blood mana. If before I could use my sword for fifteen minutes each day (it is not the correct amount, of course. I used a random number. You never know who is reading to be truthful about such things.), Now I will be able to use it for sixteen minutes. It might seem a bit less, but within a couple of months, this is going to reach thirty minutes. Within the year, it will become two hours.
The second benefit is that my physical strength is going to be enhanced from now on. A vampire grunt has ten times the strength they had pre-transformation. While my strength won't be enhanced that drastically, it is still going to be nothing to sneeze at.
Well, now that I have spoken about all the benefits of this formation, I might as well describe the costs of it.
The first cost is going to be the fact that I cannot have the sword physically far away from me. Having it on my body at all times would be the best-case scenario. Even after the major bond, I don't know just how far I can keep it from me.
The farther the sword is from me, the harder the cycle will be to maintain. If it is far enough away from me, the cycle is going to collapse. Right now, neither I nor my master knows what is going to be the consequence of breaking the cycle is going to be.
The best-case scenario is going to have me lose all of the enhancements that would have happened to my body. The worst-case scenario is going to be that my mana core might rupture. I might even become a blood-addicted idiot. You see, this is the major disadvantage of using blood mana. All of the benefits that it provides come at the cost of a dependence on blood.
When you have seen vampire grunts begging, threatening and selling themselves for a bit of blood. You tend to realize just how dangerous such dependence can become. Those in the court claim that such base desires don't affect them. When you have seen a count beg for blood, you realize it is all lies, though.
This is something that I have too much experience with, actually. The general strategy while dealing with a vampire (especially the grunts.) is to lock them up somewhere. They will starve to death pretty quickly. It is better than trying to fight them. Fighting even a barely fed vampire is pretty hard.
After all, we also have to deal with the few grunts that manage to escape their prisons. Every time that has happened, it has been a hard and drawn-out fight that took an entire team. I have seen gentle men who cannot hurt an ant become like mad dogs in their pursuit of blood. It is a dangerous sort of dependence.
The other disadvantage is that I have to keep using my power regularly from now on. My sword is consistently converting my vital mana to blood mana. To do this, it needs to absorb the lifeforce of an enemy. I don't need to feed the sword every day, since the blade can store a certain amount of lifeforce. My master estimates that I have to use the sword once every few months. While it might not sound like much, this time is going to decrease the more I link to the core.
If I don't use the sword, there is a chance that my sword might cannibalize my lifeforce to keep itself running. Well, if I am honest, that still puts me in a better situation than most grunts.
Vampire grunts have to drink blood every few days. Otherwise, their body will empty themselves of blood, trying to stay alive. That is one of the reasons that vampire grunts are so easy to find. A vampire grunt might be able to control his instinct. He might be able to keep himself from attacking a person and draining them.
Still, how is the grunt then going to hide it when the physical effect of such deprivation will hit him? How will he explain going from a physically fit person to a living skeleton in a matter of weeks? Thinking of all this causes a chill to travel through my spine.
Whatever happens, my side effects are not going to be that extreme at the very least. After all, a vampire produces way more blood mana than I will ever be able to produce.
At least that is what I am telling myself, as I feel panic take over. Fuck it, I am shutting this record. This should have been a moment of victory. How the hell did I manage to convert it into another worrying session?