Eleniah pushed open the door and walked into the house she was renting. She still didn’t think of this place as “home”. She knew she would leave Tumbling Rapids someday, and she just wasn’t attached to the building. If she never saw it again five seconds from now, it wouldn’t be that big a deal.

“Kay? You here?” She called out, to no reply. She shrugged and walked into the dining room, where she’d left her note a few days ago. There was nothing on the table, and a quick look around a few other rooms showed no note for her anywhere.

He probably didn’t know exactly when I’d be back. Or maybe he just didn’t think of leaving me a note. She settled in to wait for Kay to return.

As she sat in the comfiest chair in the living room, she mentally examined what evidence she had from her last two days of investigation. The Nelamian from the Illuminators had been a lead, yes, but a mostly pointless one in the end. He wasn’t doing anything of note, just bribing various public figures that had mild importance. Like most places, bribery was an accepted practice, as long as you didn’t get caught at it. But even then, exposing a minor figure bribing other minor figures wasn’t going to impact the Nelamian plans in Tumbling Rapids.

Why did I let Alahna get me in this mess? She asked herself for what must have been the hundredth time. I’m not a damn Investigator! I’m a Teacher! Why the hell do I care about some random city being annexed by another country!? She seethed at the memory. “Hey, Eleniah! I’ve got a great job for you to do in this city called Tumbling Rapids! It’ll be a big favor to me, and it’ll get you some good will from the Adventurer’s Guild too!” And then I show up and they’re expecting me to deal with this mess! Last time I read a letter from her. She sighed and stood up. Bygones were bygones. Her cousin had once again mousetrapped her into some complicated scheme that she hadn’t wanted to have anything to do with. That’s the real reason she’d left, she admitted to herself. She loved her cousin, but the bullshit she kept pulling her into turned out to be too much.

She decided to head out back and do some shadow boxing. It would be relaxing and useful all at once and it would pass the time till Kay showed up. That was at least one good thing from ending up in Tumbling Rapids. She’d met Kay here, and they were becoming really good friends. She might not be the best personal mentor, but she didn’t think she’d been doing that bad at it. She probably shouldn’t have approved that first solo job he went on though. Letting him go up against a random unknown enemy? Not smart on her part.

She was about to open the back door, when she heard knocking from the front.

At the front door was a young woman wearing traditional messenger gear for this side of this continent, a leather harness built to hold several message tubes, and a strange, flat hat with a brim. “Message for Eleniah Selthoran?”

“That’s me.”

“Here you go! Already been paid for!” The messenger ran off as soon as Eleniah had the tube.

I’d hope so, I sure as shit aren’t going to pay for a random message. She pulled out the roll of paper and looked it over.

The thin tube made of cheap metal squealed as she crushed it in her fist. She glared down at the message in her other hand.

“We have your student. Your looking into our affairs has gotten aggravating. Once you sign an Agreement to leave our interest alone, he’ll be released.” Underneath that was a location in the city, and a time the next day that they demanded she meet them. The message was unsigned.

I’m a Teacher dammit! Fear and rage danced through her. What the hell am I supposed to do here? Thoughts of her unsuccessful investigation, her cousin’s expectations, the wants of the local Adventurer’s Guild branch, and more all rolled through her head as she debated what to do. Eventually it all clarified down to one thing. Her student was in trouble. Good teachers didn’t leave their students in bad spots, and she was a damn good teacher.

She stomped back into the house to grab her gear. She knew that Graceful Success and The Illuminators were Nelamian fronts, everyone did. Proving it was an entirely different matter, but she didn’t care about some investigation anymore. She just needed to find some of their members and make them tell her where Kay was. Then she'd just have to hit anyone in her way until she got to him. And even though it was a skill, and a Skill, she’d picked up later in life, Eleniah Selthoran was very good at hitting things that were in her way.

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Kay was bored. His friends had accused him of being easily bored multiple times, but being stuck in a cell for the last two days would bore anyone! There were guards watching him throughout the entire day, and none of them would talk to him! He almost wished Coultron had actually tried to torture him. At least them he would have had an exciting fight.

Coultron had wanted to torture Kay, but the more talkative of the two guards had come back in and gotten into a shouting match with him. The other guard had brought Director Kurtis Nel back, who’d shouted even louder at Coultron while expounding about how stupid it was to use a knife to try and torture someone known for Blood Manipulation. The reveal that they had managed to see his Blood Manipulator class was disappointing to Kay, but they hadn’t acted like they knew he also had those important titles he had. At least he didn’t think they knew about them, he wasn’t really sure how anyone would react to that. Eleniah was sure people would attack him or try and entice him into joining them, which no one was doing. So he assumed that no one knew yet.

Sitting in silence for two days had made Kay introspective. Mostly, he focused on things he could, or should, have done differently during his time in Torotia. Some where easy, or things he’d thought of before this, like combat mistakes or small decisions that could have gone better. But there were bigger miscalculations he’d made that he now realized, and analyzed.

He’d been much too trusting, his first few days especially. He’d just went with random people, then did everything a random gnome had told him, and agreed to thing after thing after thing. He really should have thought about his decisions more before making them. In some of it, he still felt like he hadn’t had a choice, like going with the Oaken Five to the city. But he could have, and probably should have asked for a lot more information before signing a magically binding agreement with a powerful group like the Adventurer’s Guild. And when Douglas told him not to tell anyone about Class Creator, and then immediately told people about it! What was that? Kay was pretty sure that one hadn’t been his fault, but still like what the hell?

He also had time to think about how he was reacting. Fighting and killing non-sapient monsters was one thing, but he’d gotten over killing bandits really fast. He’d thought really hard about it, and still had them same feelings. People who killed and raped didn’t really deserve to keep living. Maybe that was a morbid or brutal way of looking at things, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t something that would be accepted back home, but it was the way of the world here, and he’d embraced it a little. Maybe it was something he’d always felt and now it was just coming to light, since he actually had control over it now, but he didn’t regret that choice.

Of course, he also promised himself that he needed to make sure he didn’t become some kind of cold blooded killer either. Killing a bandit in the middle of combat was one thing. Murder, in any form, was a complete other thing, and he needed to make sure he didn’t go down that road.

Kay also liked fighting. Not the killing part, that was just something that needed to be done, but the actual fighting? Pitting himself against an opponent and pushing himself to the limit of his skills? That was exhilarating. Kay had never thought of himself as an adrenalin junky, but maybe he’d just been missing a particular kind of rush?

A faint rumble rolled through the building. The guards looked up at the ceiling, as did Kay.

“What was that?” One of them asked.

“I don’t-” A louder rumble came, and dust and pieces of stone flaked from the ceiling. “Maybe-”

A deafening boom shook the building and one of the guards staggered. The sounds of screaming came distantly from above the cell.

“I think we’re under attack! Let’s go!”

“What do you mean ‘Let’s go!’? We need to guard him!” The other guard insisted, pointing at Kay.

“It’s not like he can get out! And what does it matter if the building is under attack! Let’s go!”

Apparently it didn’t take much to convince the one who wanted to stay, as they both ran out of the room, leaving Kay alone.

He stared after them, then glanced around the cell. It couldn’t be Eleniah up there, could it? I mean, a tier five could make something like that happen, I think? He decided a moment later that it didn’t matter what was happening when another blast shook the room again, this one dropping a piece of the ceiling down next to him. I don’t want to be here if something bigger falls!

He grabbed the piece of stone that had just fallen and tested the edge. It’s better than biting myself at least. Kay used the edge of the rock and made a small cut in his arm. He slowly gathered blood from the cut as he approached the bars of the cell. Just like he’d done a few days ago, he concentrated both his will and the blood into an even smaller sphere, then unleashed the pressurized blood in a thin steam. It managed to cut a tiny gouge into the metal bars before he lost concentration and the blood flopped to the ground.

Well, I don’t know what this stuff is made of, but it isn’t normal metal. It’ll take too long this way.

He started inspecting the door and the lock, hoping to find a weak point. Maybe… Kay glanced at the floating blood as an idea came to him. In his imaginings of various paths he could take when he grew his classes, one of them had stuck out to him. An image of him with a sword and shield in hand, both of them made of deep red blood.

Didn’t the Class Progenitor title say it would give me instinctual understanding towards possible class upgrades, or something like that? Why don’t I try…

Keeping the blood a liquid, Kay filled in the keyhole in the lock until it was completely stuffed with blood. Then he concentrated on making the blood as dense as possible, while keeping it the same shape. As dense as it could be, as if it were a solid and not a liquid. Minutely, and then more and more obviously, the blood began to crystalize bit by bit, until there was a shiny red key sitting in the lock.

Kay reached through the bars and turned it. With a clank noise and the squealing of metal, the cell door swung open.

“Huh.” Kay said as he stared at the open doorway. That actually worked.

The light of his notifications flashed in the corner of his vision and he stopped to look at them.

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- New Skill!

- Skill: Shape Blood gained!

[~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~]

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Skill: Shape Blood

- With your magic and your will blood becomes more than just a means of life or death, it becomes a medium of creation. Form blood into solid objects. The complexity and size of the form, as well as the durability and strength of the objects will increase as the level of this skill increases. Created blood objects will last longer the more mana that is infused into them during the creation process.

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The building shook again and yet another piece of the ceiling broke against the floor. Kay jumped and put away his menus. Time for that later!

He walked out of his cell and slowly peeked around the door the guards had left through, into the room beyond.