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BS6 C25
🕑 Added 2024-12-11 01:03:57 +0000 UTCAn oblong, egg-like shape floated in the air. It was red, since it was made out of blood, and it slowly expanded until it was about the size of a human head. Pieces of it began to stretch out and twist, becoming branching structures that pointed in multiple directions with smaller pieces branching out even more as they traveled outward. Then in one smooth motion, the object shrunk back in on itself and became a cube. That grew another cube from its side, then both of them together extruded two more. That repeated over and over until the one singular cube became dozens that all formed together into one massive cube, before it too changed its shape. The cycle of starting as one shape, growing in some way, then shrinking down and starting as another shape repeated over and over.
Kay stared blindly at the floating , twisting, changing shape as he perceived the blood he was manipulating with his Skills with his magical senses and not his eyes. He made it into ridiculous shapes that would only work in zero gravity or with magic that defied gravity, repeating the same process but with different shapes and patterns of growth over and over again. More than once some part of the mass he was shaping and forming with his magic grew too large, hitting the ceiling or walls or even running into him and that was when he started shrinking it instead of the original limit he’d set for himself.
He had done his best to take Eleniah’s well-meaning and completely correct nagging to heart and let himself relax. Kay was disappointed in himself that he had needed her to come and poke him about it. He wasn’t sure if it was a perfectly normal thing to do, if he just hadn’t grown as much as he thought he had, or if it was just a personal failing, but whenever crisis seemed to come around he felt like he started backsliding and reverting to a much less useful version of himself, the version that had fought against the idea of being a leader. That older state of himself didn’t fight against it out of dislike for the position or the idea of it, although there was some dislike for some of the additional factors, most of which he still hated, like sycophants and ass-kissers, but out of a fear of failure. That was what he realized the more he looked in at himself and learned who he was and what he stood for. Fear of failure was certainly standard among everyone Kay had ever met to some extent, but letting it overwhelm you and dictate your choices was cowardly and served no one.
Now that he was in the position that he had originally fought against as the leader of many people, the fear was even stronger than before. Before he’d become mayor, then lord, and then king of Avalon, the idea of failing and letting people down was merely a hypothetical. It wasn’t a hypothetical anymore, it was a real possible consequence of his choices and actions. Even more than just disappointment, there was a chance that people could die, that everything they had built and sacrificed could be destroyed if he failed. He wasn’t just their leader, because of how Torotia’s System and the nature of society here worked, he was also their champion. He was the strongest man around as far as anyone was concerned. He was their king, their guardian, and their champion all rolled up into one and if he failed the fallout could be terrible.
That was the fear that drove Kay in the complete opposite direction from his previous behavior. Instead of running from the problem and the conflict, he dove into it at reckless speed, so concerned with doing everything he could for the people he’d sworn to protect that he never stopped to consider if he was going too fast or doing too much. Eleniah was right, he was once again driving himself unto the verge of burning out, of becoming a lifeless husk with no more to give long before he was needed most. His fear was driving him into desperation instead of making a wise, considered, and balanced choice.
He was thankful that he had people in his life who didn’t fear standing up to him and could tell him he was being an idiot, and he refused to be someone that refuted those voices and kept being stupid against good advice. So he was taking a break and working on a personal project. Originally Kay had gotten two map-making related non-Combat Classes just to fill in slots. Even if they didn’t have Skills suited to killing monsters or other foes, they at least pumped a bit more mana into him every time he tiered them up and they increased his overall total tiers as well. One of the two Classes he’d ended up with also did come with a nice Skill that helped in fights, Stable Footing, which helped him keep his balanced in all kinds of terrain. Later on after working on them to tier up the Classes, he’d found he actually enjoyed the work. Making maps was important in a world that couldn’t just use satellites to take pictures of what the ground looked like and it was also relaxing, so by making it his hobby Kay got to kill two birds with one stone.
He’d set it to the side because it didn’t immediately help him kill vampyr, but now that he was taking a break he’d decided to try and make something new that involved his Expert Cartographer and Expert Mapmaker Classes. He didn’t have anyone to teach at the moment, no decisions had to be made, and as much of a break as it would be to flirt with his girlfriend, so trying to make a modular, changeable magic map out of blood was his goal for the moment. He’d never heard of anything quite like what he was trying to create being made on Torotia before, Ahthia hadn’t found any stories or documents about it and no one else he’d asked had ever heard an inkling, so he was working purely on instinct and guesswork. He wanted his blood-map-artifact thing to be able to morph itself and show off any layout, so he was trying to imprint the blood with all kinds of shapes as he slowly pumped mana into it, all while using Blood Manipulation, Shape Blood, Create from Blood, and Meld Blood simultaneously. The first two were doing the actual work of changing the blood’s form and shape, the third was what he was using to try and make it into a System recognized item, and the fourth he was using to try and connect his two map making related Classes to the item and make it a map as opposed to some kind of blood based shape memory substance.
Once he’d changed the mass of blood into every variation of every shape and configuration he could think of more than once he pulled out some maps he’d made before this, including paper maps with regular ink, paper maps with blood as ink, maps made out of blood in their entirety, both two-dimensional ones and three-dimensional topographic maps, and some weird experimental things he’d tried with various media. Carefully and making as few mistakes as he could Kay shaped the floating mass of blood into copies of those maps as he thought carefully about what each one represented and what they were trying to convey.
After making the blood mimic every map he had on him Kay started the last stage he’d though of. He detached tiny pieces of the mass and floated them out of the lounge he was in, sending them off on what amounted to a scouting mission. Each tiny piece was smaller than a drop of rain and they flew through corridors and around rooms in the palace in unseen formations. An invisible red mist scoured every inch of Kay’s palace, sneaking into secret corridors and air vents, covering every inch of every room, and mapping out the palace section by section as they flew. The massive range of his magical senses which had been increased by his Classes and his tiers let him feel every time one of the minuscule droplets touched something and the map formed a three dimensional map of the entire complex as Kay moved it into the shape of the palace.
When every square inch of the palace had been mapped out and the mass was now a miniature floating copy of Kay’s domicile it began to twitch and ripple, solid parts becoming liquid again even under Kay’s control. The entire thing began to vibrate and Kay could feel the mana in it running out of control. He clamped down on it with all his force and slammed more of his own mana into it with Create from Blood in an effort to finalize the completed enchantment. The wobbling, vibrating, twisting, shaking lump of blood stilled all at once, then sucked in on itself. A small red orb the size of a golf ball floated for a few more seconds before it fell into Kay’s waiting palm.
He held the orb up to his face and used Inspect.
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Unnamed Enchanted Artifact
- A unique artifact made of blood. This mapping item constantly detects the region around it through the movement of blood. Any living being or other source of blood in its range serves as a beacon to constantly update its charts. If activated it will display a three-dimensional rendering of the area under its influence, with the ability to shit its form to that of any area, building, or location in its range. While it uses blood, including that of living things, it has no ability to display the location or movement of anything in its range that does not count as topography. As the creator of this unique item, you may choose to name it at any time. If you choose not to, a name may be applied to it by the System or by a large number of individuals calling it by the same name.
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“…Wow.” Kay was about to activate the orb, then realized how close it was to his face and held it farther away before sending some mana into the orb to activate it. It floated off his hand and unfurled like origami until there was a thing sheet of blood two feet wide hovering over his hand. There was a slight pause then the sheet began rising up in thin column that drew a detailed map of Avalon city and a few miles outside the city itself. Kay could see tiny, intricate details carved into the half-inch tall buildings, each one perfect replicas of the real thing as far as he knew.
There was a tiny feeling of presence inside of the map, around the section where the face of the palace was carved into the cliff-face that loomed over Avalon. Kay concentrated and the map shifted, becoming a rendering of the palace itself, just like it had been before he’d created this magic map. There in the room Kay was in was a floating orb that felt like the sense of “here” somehow. It looked like even the distance the map was from the floor was to scale. He spent a long time playing with it, just zooming in and out and diving into the layout of different buildings.
“This might actually be a game changer.” He muttered to himself as he started looking closely over a number of buildings to see if he could find any tiny homes tucked away in secret places that an illusive spymaster might live. “I wonder if I can make more of these?”
A small flash in the corner of his vision interrupted him and he looked at it in surprise. With help from Eleniah, Ahthia, and Amanda he’d spent a lot of time modifying when the System sent him notifications about things, because a detailed report every time he got a Skill from level one to two or eleven to twelve wasn’t really worth looking at every time. Only certain things would pop up now.
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- One or more of your Classes are ready to tier up!
- Tier V Classes Available!
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Comments
CHoobler
Nooo! The cliff
