The ceremony ended very quickly after it began, the pope gave a closing speech talking about the importance of their mission and wishing us luck, soon after they returned back to the castle where they met up with the king and the other nobles who were waiting for them, a round of celebration was started as the king and his followers congratulated the kids for their successful initiation of their blessings, every single of the kids had gotten a rare blessing some of which were never even heard of before with this revelation the asset the young heroes represented couldn’t even be imagined, well almost everyone that is.

As they were celebrating, chatting, laughing, drinking and eating, the king Charles Von Redria sat on his throne watching the banquet with a bright smile on his face, sipping a glass of wine he couldn’t feel any more happier than he was right now, but suddenly one of his followers came beside him.

Wearing a white formal robe which was similar to the religious wear of the pope only slightly toned down, the man whispered something into the kings ear as the celebration took place, the king listened without a change of expression before his smile slowly started to decay replaced by a confused expression as he looked at his subordinate seeming not fully understanding what he just told him.

-Are you sure of this? Could there have been a mistake?

-No, your highness the Divine Orb clearly showed him to have the blessing of the [Monster Tamer], the pope himself double checked just to be sure, the result was the same.

-But…but how can that be? He is a hero from another world, he may not be as exceptional as the others, but he is still a hero!

-That is why we are also troubled about what to do; my king please tell us what to do.

Charles Von Redria momentarily was lost in thought as he looked down pondering to himself, glancing towards Avian he looked at the boy as he sat on a lone chair watching the others have fun while he just ate the delicacies on the table with a content look on his face, Charles couldn’t understand why a hero summoned by the ancient magic circle would have such a weak blessing, he personally knew this shouldn’t have been possible, or at least he thought so, considering it for a moment he started to think that maybe an error occurred, but regardless of what it may have been, Charles immediately understood the core issue as a [Monster Tamer] was no blessing befitting a hero as the [Monster Tamer] blessing was almost synonymous with the word conman, cheat or swindler in this world.

If it was known that of the heroes to save this kingdom from the demons was a [Monster Tamer] the king didn’t know how the public would react, other nobles would likely scoff at the idea of such a hero, it didn’t matter how excellent everyone else was, the king feared that one bad apple could spoil the bunch, not as in corrupting the heroes but rather the perception of the public had about the heroes.

Most importantly how their current alliance would react.

While it didn’t look as such, the human kingdom of Redria was actually under extreme pressure from the alliance, in reality the heroes were not just solely meant to save the human kingdom but also the other allied races, they all had scrounged up resources together to make this summoning possible, the amount of rare and mythical items used in the process was so much that it was enough to bankrupt the entire kingdom a few times over, this itself showed how dire everyone in the alliance felt about the threat of the demons that they would rely on something as ancient and unknown as a hero summoning to save them.

They essentially made a bet to save themselves and were lucky enough to get something as they had instantly gained a lot of incredible soldiers through their bets.

Once the young heroes became full-fledged heroes they would be send all over the alliance territory to accomplish their mission and essentially be divided amongst the alliance as agreed upon from the very beginning.

But now with the existence of Avian who had the [Monster Tamer] blessing, when the time to divide the heroes would come no one would want a hero like that, an argument would without a doubt spark as people with [Monster Tamer] blessings were universally despised no matter which race you considered, the already intense air that surrounded the alliance could turn into a full-blown explosion, the king wanted to avoid that by all cost, but he simply wasn’t sure how to go about it as he looked at Avian who ate with quite a bit of gusto.

-Let me think about it, until then make sure no word about this gets out, I will tell you my decision after tomorrow.

-Yes, my king.

And with that the man stepped away as he left the king to ponder by himself.

Avian meanwhile simply continued eating as he focused on his second blessing.

The blessing of the [Hemomancer].

Every living creature in this world lived through their flow of their blood.

Blood represents many things, from offspring to nourishment, without blood life is simply not viable as it holds the body and lets it flourish.

To explore the secret of the blood is the aim of the blessing of the [Hemomancer].

Avian understood, as he focused on his second blessing gaining a better understanding of it as he explored his mind.

The celebration had been finished giving a final heart felt congratulations to everyone they all went to their separate quarters before calling it a day.

Avian too followed suit, waiting until deep into the night before getting up from bed and starting to explore his second blessing.

So far he had been more than a bit surprised about this second blessing of his, figuring out its name, he at first assumed it to be something akin to a vampire or a wizard that uses blood as its medium to cast spells.

But after really focusing on the blessing and trying to understand it he realized that it was neither of those things, the blessing of the [Hemomancer] was actually more akin to that of a researcher compared to anything else.

This made Avian immediately understand that the blessing wasn’t an offensive blessing at all as the things it provided were not much better compared to his [Monster Tamer] blessing meaning right now he still couldn’t kill a horned rabbit as easily as someone with a [Warrior] blessing could, if anything currently he was simply more durable, if it came down to a fight between him and a horned rabbit he would at most get lightly injured instead of getting heavily injured when he only would have had the [Monster Tamer] blessing.

The reason for that is because of the line of growth and bonuses the [Hemomancer] blessing provided, for a blessing that sounds magical and may be focused towards intellect or wisdom, it actually entirely focused on constitution which is why he was so durable at the moment.

Figure all of this out made Avian immediately feel like he got duped as what he assumed to be a great blessing was not that big of a deal at all, but luckily it wasn’t all that bad, the [Hemomancer] blessing while not offensive in nature still had some unique methods of self-defense as he looked at the 2 abilities he had because of the blessing.

[Blood Sense] and [Blood Control].

Closing his eyes, Avian momentarily concentrated as he tried activate his [Blood Sense] ability, soon enough the darkness within his eyes immediately started to change as his surroundings instantly started to light up with movie red dots.

Avian immediately realized that these moving dots represented other people which was the blood flowing through their bodies, in fact he himself was also present in this sensing of blood, looking at his hands with his eyes closed he saw his hands fully covered in what seemed like a spider web or more precisely the interconnected canals of his bloodstream, it was disturbing to look at but Avian wasn’t bothered by it as he felt more entranced by this ability than anything else.

On further inspection, Avian realized that he could see more than just his blood, his organs bones and other important body parts were plain to see if he focused enough and if blood was present in those parts.

This wasn’t only limited to himself either, looking towards the entrance of his room, he saw a guard making his usual patrols as he passed by his room, Avian obviously couldn’t see him with his own eyes as they were closed, but he saw him through the [Blood Sense] and as soon as he was close enough Avian noticed that close up he could see into a person’s body just as well as he could see into himself.

As the guard started to distance himself, the detailed blood figure of the guard quickly started to get smaller and smaller before returning back to a dot eventually the dot completely disappeared entirely as the guard had walked out of Avian’s detection radius.

-I need to check how far this radius goes, but until then this ability ain’t bad at all!

Avian muttered, pretty happy about it as he soon switched to the other ability he had.

Since his blessing was revealed by the divine orb he didn’t need to experiment to understand how his abilities worked, opening his palm and looked at his hand, Avian watched as blood started to gather on his palm into a small puddle, he physically felt the drain of his blood as he momentarily felt sluggish and watched as the blood was transported from his hand onto his palm through his skin, but he endured it and stopped the moment he gathered what he assumed was a teaspoon of blood.

Looking at his palm, he saw his crimson blood gathered atop his palm like a still pond, reflecting on it was his face as the blood was almost crystal clear making him feel slightly enamored, next he started to imagine things inside his mind, moving the blood with his will using his [Blood Control] Avian tried to sculpt the blood with his thoughts, succeeding as the blood transformed into something resembling a small shiv you would see hand-crafted.

At the end of it all, Avian held a small crimson shiv in his hand while he momentarily couldn’t help but start panting and sweating as he felt mentally exhausted while his vision started to get blurry.

Avian felt as if he had just ran a 10 kilometer marathon but after resting for a couple of a minutes he immediately felt much better, he only now started to understand why the blessing was so focused on constitution compared to intellect or wisdom, without the constitution Avian would have likely instantly passed out after trying this stunt, but either way he started to inspect his work as he look at the small shiv he just created with his blood.

It looked like a crystal instead of some metal, it was also hard and solid but not uncomfortable to hold as it was a part of his body, his blood, in its current state it was stuck to his palm, Avian didn’t necessarily need to hold it to keep it in place but a moderate force could still fling it away if he wasn’t holding it and once it fell the solid and hard form would immediately turn back into liquid blood losing both the shiv and his precious blood.

-It doesn’t have an edge even though I wanted it to have one, looks like my imagination wasn’t good enough, I think I need to practice more, but other than that the tip.

Avian raised the shiv holding it in a reverse grip he swung it down onto his wooden cupboard, the blood shiv penetrating the wooden cupboard with ease as it didn’t even make much of a sound.

Avian was slightly astonished by that as he didn’t think that offensive strength of his little blood shiv would be so much at least not the penetrative force, even though he failed in giving it an edge it still boasted some impressive strength even if it was used against some wood.

After doing some tests, Avian finally felt satisfied enough to stop, concentrating he absorbed the blood shiv back into his body feeling slightly more energetic in return as he got his blood back.

A few hours passed since he started doing this, the sun hadn’t come back up yet but it was slowly starting to get brighter, feeling tired Avian finally decided to sleep, but while he went back to sleep in another place located in the kings private quarters, the king sat as he thought about what to do before pulling out a piece of paper writing up an official order.

================================================

Up to 18 more chapters on https://kakemonoko.wordpress.com/