“Why is it doing push-ups?”

“Uhh…” Kay snapped out of his staring-at-the-wall trance and looked over to where Cindy was pointing at one of his simulacra, which was doing push-ups. “Oh, I was working on making giving them detailed muscles, and then I needed some way to tell that I’d done a good job without having red clones of me flexing in my face.”

“That sounds like it would be amazing.”

“For you, sure. Anyways, what’s up?”

“Eleniah told me to come train with you? Something about being good for both of us.”

“Oh, yeah! Gimme some blood.” Kay made comedic graspy hands at her.

She squinted at him and took a step back. “What for?”

“I’m gonna make clones of you and have them beat you up.” He stepped closer, still making graspy hands. “It’ll be great! You can get some self-defense training in, and I can make more simulacra out of someone that’s not me.”

“I get enough self-defense training already! Stephen and Leaf kick my ass all the time!” She scooted around Kay’s arms and dashed further into his training room.

Kay slowly followed her, enjoying the short break of playing with her as he tried to force her into a corner. “Yeah, but that doesn’t help me. And really, as lord of the city you live in, that should be your main focus. How is your team, by the way?” he asked, shifting from a mock imperious tone to a more regular one, “I haven’t seen them in a bit.”

“Aha! Your true self as a malicious tyrant has shown itself! And they’re fine. They were actually right behind me a second ago…?” She peeked around Kay’s shoulder at the door. “Weird, where’d they go?”

Less than a second later, the doorway was filled with Stephen’s muscular bulk as he entered the room. “Sorry about that! Your guards were doing a little search.”

“What?” Both Kay and Cindy frowned. “What for?”

“Spying magic. Apparently, the two of you get checked for it daily, but us regular people have to get checked whenever we end up in secure areas, just in case.” He glanced around the training room and frowned slightly. “There isn’t much in here…”

“Oh. Well, thanks for being cooperative. And yeah, I’ve mostly been practicing straight Blood Manipulation in here, so I bring most of what I need with me.” Kay patted the bigger-on-the-inside storage container on his belt. “Did Eleniah draft you to help me train too?”

“Yes, she said something about variety being more helpful, which is always true; I just don’t know what specifically she was talking about in this case.” He glanced behind him and frowned when he saw no one behind him. “Where…?” He leaned around, so his head peaked out the door. “What are you doing?”

“We’re getting some tips on finding spy magic.” Kay heard Claudia respond, “No point in letting it sit on us if we can learn how to spot it and get rid of it.” She appeared a moment later and pushed against Stephen’s chest. “Move out of the way.”

“Sorry.”

Chitel and Leaf followed her a moment later.

“Hey guys,” Kay waved at them from where he was still boxing Cindy in, “It’s been a bit since we’ve seen each other; how’s it going?”

“Not bad.” Leaf replied, “Been getting some good jobs and making some good money, moving our way up the ranks and all that. Meten’s a good boss, so happy there.”

“And Claudia’s getting married!” Chitel cheered, throwing her arms in the air.

“No, I’m not!” Claudia snapped back at her before turning her head to the side. “Yet,” She muttered.

“Congratulations! Finally going to make an honest man out of David?”

“Oh, shut up,” She rolled her eyes back at him, “I love him and the kids, okay? Thankfully they understood pretty quickly that I wasn’t trying to replace their mom or anything, so things are good there too.” She looked off to the side with a gentle smile on her face before turning back to Kay with a stern look. “Anyway, I don’t need you poking fun at my engagement thank you, these shits are giving me enough of that.”

“I’m just so happy that ‘Claudia the perpetually single’ is in a real relationship!” Chitel exclaimed with a smile, “I was worried you’d be alone for another few decades!”

“Stop acting like my mom!”

Leaf shrugged, “I would have married you if we’d both been single for a few more years.”

“Oh, thank you,” She spat at him with acidic sarcasm, “That’s so big of you.”

“Alright,” Stephen pulled out an imaginary notebook and started pretending to take notes, “With that, Leaf’s finally even with you for that stuff back in Cork, so that puts you-“

“Can we just train!?” Claudia cried out.

The rest of her team laughed and sidled closer to give her side hugs or give her a few pats on the shoulder or back.

“Sure we can,” Stephen answered and turned to Kay, “What exactly are we doing?”

“Well, about that…” Using the distraction provided by her team Kay pulled out a small needle and poked Cindy’s finger while she was distracted. “I need some blood.”

“Ah, dammit!” Cindy jerked her hand away, but it was too late.

Kay chuckled and floated the one drop of blood that welled up to his hand. Using a bit of focus, he started mixing it with blood from his flask while he talked. “I know Stephen and Claudia have seen it, so I’m assuming you two know about my Blood Simulacrum Skill?” He asked Chitel and Leaf.

“The one that makes blood clones, yeah? We heard a little bit.”

“Good. So Eleniah thinks that since it clones people and the clones can use weaker versions of people’s Skills that making more of them based on multiple people instead of just using myself a lot will help level the Skill faster. She also wants me to see if having the simulacra use a bunch of Skills does anything for my leveling speed. So I was going to make some and then have them beat up Cindy, then heal her, and so on. With Chitel here, I can make simulacra that heal her instead!”

Stephen’s mouth stretched into a wide grin as he listened, “Eleniah really is-“

“Lady Selthoran.” Leaf corrected him.

Kay shrugged, “Eh. Casual is fine in private and all that. You guys are Cindy’s team, and the way things are going, we’re going to have to find her a fairy godmother, a pumpkin, and some mice, so getting you used to being in the halls of power ahead of time and all that.”

Cindy glared at him as she pushed herself out of the corner he’d cornered her in. “Stop that!”

“What, Cinderella? You need to get to the ball somehow.”

“Asshole.”

“What are you two talking about?” Chitel asked.

“Cindy’s going to end up a noble of Avalon at some point, mostly because of the newer thing we don’t talk about,” Leaf told her.

“Oh, that makes sense.”

Kay frowned. “Wait, why aren’t you being scanned for spy magic more often?” He asked, wondering aloud as he realized that they were potential targets to get the currently secret information from.

“We’ve already got tons of practice at not talking about Cindy’s secrets,” Stephen replied, “But you’re right; maybe we should be?”

“We can deal with that later; let’s fight some blood clones!” Claudia interrupted.

“Right, I was going to say that Eleniah is quite the good trainer. With all of us here, you can not only make more kinds of clones, but you can also get used to using them against a practiced team that knows what they’re doing, and we can get more practice with fitting Cindy in with her new role.”

“Oh!” Cindy visibly perked up as she pulled a small pistol from somewhere, “That sounds a lot more fun than getting attacked by myself!”

Kay brandished his needle, “Well, this one of Cindy is cooking. Let me get some more of your blood, and we’ll see how it goes for us.”

╩╦╩╦╩╦╩╦╩╦╩╦╩╦╩╦╩╦╩╦╩╦╩╦

“Hold!” Kay shouted, pulling back all of his simulacra at once as a small light began flashing in the corner of his vision.

Cindy’s team dropped their weapons or harmlessly released their magic as what remained of Kay’s forces pulled back from them.

“What’s up?” Stephen called, still keeping his shield up. “You were getting close to breaking us this time!”

“And it only took a few weeks!” Cindy mocked.

“Got a notification!”

“Oh, hell yeah!” Cindy cheered and started pushing through the still ranks of simulacra, her teasing forgotten. “What leveled?”

“Well,” He started thinking about it as he willed his notifications to open, “Meld Blood has been stalling out for a while, and I’ve been focusing on that and Create Simulacrum (Blood), so probably one of those.”

“It could be Leadership, too; you’ve been doing some of that while you practice formations and stuff with the clones.”

“Maybe.”

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

- Skill: Create Simulacrum (Blood) has reached level 40!

- Workable Class Confluence of Minimum Two Tier Four Classes Achieved!

-Tier Five Classes Available!

- Class: Blood Pawn Originator Available!

- Class: Blood Rook Originator Available!

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

He quietly shared the names of the two available Classes with Cindy and the rest of the team.

“Oooh, Chess references! There’s probably stronger versions of those Classes available then.” Cindy leaned forward like she would be able to see Kay’s screen, “What’re the descriptions like?

“That sounds probable,” Stephen commented, “You know what that means, right?”

“Yeah, a certain dark-haired elf beat it into my head. Tier five combinations that share the same ‘overall style and purpose’ can interrupt each other if I get offered more than one of them, and I should only take the most powerful ones since they can lock each other out sometimes.”

“This System is weird.” Cindy complained, “But whatever, read the description already! I want to see if I have any visions later about what your second tier five is going to be!”

“Wait.” Kay stopped in place and slowly turned to look at her, “You know what my first one will be?”

“Like, the name of it? No clue. But it’s dope as fuck, and I could tell you put a lot of Classes together for it. You just had that vibe, you know?”

“I really don’t.”

“Like in a dream, where you know something, but you can’t explain why? It’s like that.”

“Oh, sure.”

“I do most of my looking into the future in dreams, remember?”

“Yeah, but most of the time, you just say stuff without trying to explain anything.”

“I’m trying to cut back on that and be more open instead of all ‘Oracle of Delphi speaking in tongues’ stuff. It’s a lot easier when I don’t have to be paranoid about anyone overhearing me. I’ve already got the most influential dude in for miles backing me up!” She smacked him on the arm, “Now get with the reading!”

“The names are getting more complex,” He muttered as he pulled up the first one.

[————————————————————]

Class: Blood Pawn Originator (Combination of Blood Manipulator + Simulacrum Creator (Blood))

- Blood is as much an identifier as it is a source of life, as much a font of creation as it is a vital flow. Take both identity and creation, and together create fighters that bend the strength of others to your will. These pawns will be duplicates of any ally or enemy you gather the blood of, loyal to you as combatants for your cause.

Class Skill: Create Blood Pawns

[————————————————————]

[————————————————————]

Skill: Create Blood Pawns (Level N/A)

- Fighters born from the blood of friend or foe. This Skill allows the user to create a set of slightly stronger simulacrum from blood that copy the Classes and Skills of any individual whose blood is used as part of the creation of the simulacrum. The blood of only one individual may be used, the individual being copied must be of the same species as the user, and the Skills and Classes of the individual being copied are reduced to one-fifth of the copied individuals Skill level and Class tier. Higher levels of this Skill increase the number of soldiers created and slightly increase the strength of copied Classes and Skills.

[————————————————————]

“Huh.” He opened the next one beside the first and compared the two.

[————————————————————]

Class: Blood Rook Originator (Combination of Blood Manipulator + Blood Shaper + Simulacrum Creator (Blood))

- Blood is as much an identifier as it is a source of life, as much a font of creation as it is a vital flow. Take both identity and creation and shape them into staunch warriors that bend the identity of others to your will. These rooks will be duplicates of any ally or enemy you gather the blood of, loyal to you as combatants for your cause, who will crush your enemies underneath.

Class Skill: Create Blood Rooks

[————————————————————]

[————————————————————]

Skill: Create Blood Rooks (Level N/A)

- Staunch warriors born from the blood of friend or foe. This Skill allows the user to create up to two sets of stronger simulacrum from blood that copy the Classes and Skills of any individual whose blood is used as part of the creation of the simulacrum. The blood of up to two individuals may be used to create the two sets, with each set using a single individuals blood per set or the blood of one individual being used for both sets, the individual(s) being copied must be of a similar body type and size as the user, and the Skills and Classes of the individual(s) being copied are reduced to one-fourth of the copied individuals Skill level and Class tier. Higher levels of this Skill increase the number of warriors created per set and increase the strength of copied Classes and Skills.

[————————————————————]

“Okay, I can definitely see why I need to wait to get the best one of these I can.” Kay commented, “There are noticeable differences between the two Classes and Class Skills that clue me into one being stronger than the other.”

“Time to focus on more Skills, then?” Cindy asked.

“Yeah, although there’s going to be more direct training for me for at least one of them. I need to level Blood Melder more, which is being aggravatingly slow, so I guess the next Class to focus on is Blood Enhancer? There’s Blood Lord as well, but Leadership is slowly leveling just from me working towards tier five right now, so I’ll focus on that one last. No point wasting free experience.”

“Well then!” Stephen clapped Kay on the shoulder, “Time for some actual fighting yourself instead of standing back and letting your disposable creations beat on your friends and loyal citizens.”

Kay sent a burst of highly oxygenated blood through his veins with Blood Boost and threw Stephen’s gravity-magic-assisted arm off of his shoulder. “Bring it!”