Looking for trouble was an interesting activity. Given how sensitive Shattered seemed to be to Blood Magic, or rather to miasma, I had decided to try and use that to my advantage. Simply looking for Shattered on the road was well and good, but it wasn’t enough, I wanted more, wanted to find the higher-levelled Shattered, like those level six and seven Shattered that had attacked us two nights before. To continue my levelling pace, I either needed to kill an obscene, and ever-increasing, number of enemies, or I needed to find stronger ones, higher quality enemies.

Thus, my hope that such enemies might be attracted by Misasma and give me something worthwhile to kill.

To ascertain a good tactical position, Silva and I broke into one of the many apartment buildings, breaking the front door with Ice Magic before making our way up the stairs, carefully creeping until we reached the top floor. There, we began making noise, enough noise to attract a number of Shattered, drawing them all to the top floor and onto the roof.

Where we cut them off at the knee, the narrow stairwell creating a natural funnel that would have allowed us to kill hundreds, if not thousands of them, if only there had been enough. Not that killing was our aim, not in the initial stage. Instead, Silva let the first one through before blocking the rest off, allowing me to break that one’s limbs and begin the process I had envisioned.

Once the Shattered was broken, I carved the runes of Blood and Darkness into its body and immediately began draining its power, using that power to spread some Ice at the opening of the stairs. The escaping miasma drove the crowd of Shattered wild and I called Silva back, allowing a few of them to get through, only to break their limbs, forcing them to crawl towards me. Silva kept blocking the horde, the Ice I had spread making sure they were lacking purchase, while I broke their limbs as quickly as possible, all without killing them.

It was a messy process and Silva and I only managed to keep roughly a quarter of the Shattered alive for processing, the rest either died from our attacks, from the press of bodies or from going after Silva instead of the miasma I kept releasing in regular intervals. The release of miasma and the keening wails the Shattered gave off when I used my Blood Magic on them had attracted a few extra Shattered, adding to the total we had to fight but with the good position we were in, all worked out.

Finally, when all was said and killed, we had eight Shattered with broken limbs lying on our rooftop, all well and ready for the next stage of my plan. That all of those Shattered had gained a level during the process was a rather amusing side-effect, making me wonder if I could actually deliberately funnel miasma into individual, broken Shattered in an attempt to raise their level enough to make them worth EXP or if there would be some sort of penalty involved with such actions.

Either way, for now, my plan was a different one.

The first Shattered to be used as bait was the one closest to the edge of the roof and just like the other ones, I carved in the usual Blood and Darkness Runes into its flesh, only instead of simply draining it, I established a magical connection to the formation, activated Overflow to rip as much magic out of it as possible before shoving it off the roof. The moment it started falling, I used my Blood Magic and I even managed to keep the connection to my formation until the Shattered landed and, well, shattered. Or broke?

It died on impact but given that it had been gravely weakened by the continuous Blood Magic, it released a great deal of miasma into the air, enough to give me a small bit of backlash, despite the distance involved.

With that much miasma released, and the screams of it travelling quite far in the quiet night, it didn’t take long for a few more to show up, while I prepared the second of my bait to follow after the first.

Once the additional Shattered showed up, I attacked them from above with conjured hailstones. My shuttle would have been more efficient, but I didn’t want to use it at that range, it would take too long to call it back to me in case of emergencies. And hailstones worked perfectly fine when used from above as if they always had been intended to crash onto things after a long fall.

A pair of Shattered made it into the building, one of them joining my bait collection while the other was destroyed by Silva, before I sent yet another Shattered over the side of the building, Blood Magic ripping its essence from the fallen body while it screamed.

After the fifth Shattered went over the side, something new approached our fishing spot. It was easily visible, even compared to the fiery-eyed Shattered, for the thing reminded me of the burning Shattered I had seen on the first night. That one had, at least to my understanding, been set alight by spilling gasoline but hadn’t actually died from it. This one was similarly burning, but the burns were focused on its arms, giving it flaming hands, and on the top of its head, in an approximation of hair.

Curious how it would act, I lobbed a Hailstone at it, before trying to use the Observe skill the moment my attack hit. The level eleven Scorched, as Observe told me, managed to partially dodge the hit, instead of getting struck on the head, I only managed to get its shoulder, but that was enough to likely break the joint.

Only, for once, the height didn’t completely keep me safe. The Scorched waved its functional arm in something that might have worked as a throwing motion and a burning orb was lobbed towards me. Ducking down, I took cover behind the edge of the roof, before shooting more Hailstones at the Scorched, quite happy to engage in a shooting contest with it. I had covered, while the stupid Scorched simply stood in the middle of the road, getting struck repeatedly, until it finally keeled over.

Still, it took quite a few hits to get to that point and given that I had little idea about other abilities of the thing, I was glad that I had fought with the high-ground advantage and cover. Without those, fighting the Scorched would have been troublesome.

But, on the positive side, I was quite confident that I had gained quite a few EXP by killing it, so I kept trying to bait more Shattered, or Scorched. Sadly, the remaining six bait failed to draw further Scorched and only two more Shattered, a rather sad quota. But the entire experiment was rated as a success by myself and the continuous killing was enough to bump me up to level fifteen by the time I was done, while it also increased my skills. Mostly in Blood Magic, which gained two points and was now level six, one in Blood Rune Mastery, bringing it to nine and, amusingly, one in Unarmed Combat, possibly for kicking the Shattered off the roof. But given that the skill had only been level one, I wasn’t about to complain. Just laugh.

With the level up came another, important question. Did I want to risk things for the bigger reward, or did I want to play it safe and get the rewards I knew I would receive? If I decided to risk things, I could put the two attribute points into Intelligence, bringing it to twenty-two, while leaving Intuition at nineteen. If I gained another point in all stats at level twenty, I would immediately be bumped to twenty Intuition, while the two free attribute points I’d get at that level would be enough to bring me to twenty-five Intelligence, possibly giving me some sort of major ability. From the way the traits and abilities regarding attributes were worded, the lower your level when you reached the milestones, the bigger the benefit, at least that was my interpretation.

So, did I want to take the safe way and definitively get the benefit of twenty Intuition, my first parallel thought stream if I remembered correctly, or did I want to see what twenty-five Intelligence, an almost impossible-to-reach number at level twenty, would give me?

It was something I would have to consider carefully, both sides had massive upsides but potential downsides, too. I simply lacked the information to make an informed decision. Maybe a good day’s sleep would give me an easier time deciding.

With that in mind, Silva and I made our way back to our Shelter, ending a few more Shattered as we went. By now, killing them felt almost trivial and I had to remind myself that I always needed to be vigilant. That I didn’t know if there were equivalents to the Scorched around. Pride, as the saying went, came before the fall and I didn’t want to fall. I wanted to be the one to kick my enemies off a building.