“Research!” Ahthia cried as she bustled into the room excitedly, carrying a notebook and waving at them. “Isn’t this exciting?”

Kay shook his head and chuckled, “I guess making you an archivist really was a great idea.”

“I do love it,” She grinned up at him as she took a seat across from him, “So thank you. Now, let’s get researching! I’ll be making the preliminary notes now while you make Skill boost gems for people, then a group from Eleniah’s schools will be looking in on the various people we end up giving them to and will run some tests and such.”

“Alright,” Kay took the list of names and Skills that Eleniah held out to him and slid the box containing vials of people’s blood in front of him. “Alright, it’s mostly Blood Guard people first, right?”

“Right, after that, it’s government people who could use a boost, like our Construction Ministry people.”

“Cool.” He grabbed a vial and floated the blood out of it. He read the name and began to focus on the Skill they wanted a boost for.

A few hours later, he had a neatly labeled pile of slightly sparkling red gemstones that a couple of Ahthia’s helpers were packaging for transport.

“What are we calling these anyway?” Kay asked, holding up one of them and gently turning it in the light.

“Well, we need to think of an official name,” Ahthia told him, looking up from her notes, “But colloquially, people have been calling them ‘Blood Rubies’. A little on the nose, but workable. Once you let people who aren’t part of the Blood Guard become trained in Blood Manipulation, and they start tiering up, those are going to become a huge part of our exports. Items that boost Skills are rare. The only people who can really output them are from the Rune Master’s island. And now us! Or, we will be able to at least.”

“Huh.” He handed the gem to one of the helpers. “Alright, now-“

“Now you sit back down, and we start trying new things!” Eleniah insisted, speaking up for the first time, “That’s the best way to really level your Skills at this point!”

“Okay…” Kay glanced down at her curiously blank page of notes, “What have you been doing while I made all those?”

“Waiting for this part! Ahthia’s in charge of the boring studying parts; I’m in charge of getting you to try new things!” She pulled another sheet of paper out from under the blank sheet. She pointed at the first thing she’d written on the list of ideas. “First, we’re going to do more tests with magical items! You managed to do something interesting with that seal that gave you your Noble Title, so we’re going to play with that some more! After that, consumables! Can you make things that boost Skills that are temporary boosts?”

Kay sat down under the pressure of Eleniah’s excitement to learn more and watched as the two people carrying crates of Blood Rubies walked out past a much larger group of people carrying a lot of magical items. He glanced between the growing piles of weapons, armor, and other magical items. “This is going to take a while.”

“Blood Melder is one of your lowest Classes at this point,” Eleniah replied to his complaint, “You’ll need to work on it more than the others!”

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“Alright, that should do it for you,” Kay told the trainee, “Don’t put too much strain on it until after a real healer confirms it’s better.”

The trainee nodded absently while he watched the slowly closing cut on his leg. “Thank you. Uh! My lord. Thank you, my lord,” He corrected himself hurriedly after remembering who Kay was.

Kay waved it off, “Take a break, then check in with a healer before you head back in there.” He gestured at the marked-out areas filled with sparring trainees.

“Yes, my lord.” The young man glanced down at his leg again while he quickly walked away. “That felt so weird!” He muttered to himself.

Kay’s higher tier let him easily hear the kid say that, and he stifled a laugh.

All of a sudden, a gray hand shoved a glass bottle with a few red drops in it in front of Kay’s face. “Greatsword.”

Kay sighed and grabbed the bottle. He held one finger above the opening and cut himself from the inside with his Skill. A small trickle of blood flowed into the bottle as he concentrated on it, and a few moments later, the bottle was filled with dark red liquid that slowly swirled in place without any force on it.

Kay held out the bottle for Meten to grab. “Here.”

Meten took it back and handed it to a trainee who was waiting beside him. “Alright, drink it.”

The young elven woman grabbed the bottle and drank the whole thing like a shot. She grimaced as she handed the empty container back. “Ugh, that’s… Ugh.”

“It’s straight blood with magic in it; it’s not supposed to taste good. Now get your ass in there and level your damn Swordsmanship (Greatsword) Skill! I want you to be within reach of tier three by the end of today, at a minimum!” Meten snapped at her.

‘Yes, sir!” She nodded respectfully at both of them and jogged off to find a training partner.

“Get a level?” Meten asked as they watched her leave.

Kay pulled up his status and glanced at it quickly. “No, but it feels like I’m close to hitting thirty-five. It’s only been three months of training it every single day.” He glanced over his full status before closing it. “Only need one more for my healing Class too.”

Meten grunted in acknowledgment as he very closely watched a pair of sparring trainees. “That’s good. Let’s see if you can hit it today.”

Kay unsuccessfully suppressed a chuckle at Meten’s ‘training master’ tone. Meten oversaw both the organization of adventurers who worked directly for Avalon and the training of new ones who were interested in joining. He wasn’t always on hand for every moment of training, but he did his best with a number of capable trainers and administrators helping him out.

“How’s our relationship with the Adventuring Guild going?” Kay asked, prompted by his thoughts, “In regards to you all.”

“It’s fine. Not much to comment on, negative or positive. We’re not the only nation that has our own group of problem solvers, whatever name they get given, so the Guild is used to it. It definitely doesn’t hurt that we let our people moonlight as long as they’re focusing on our jobs first.”

In the same vein as many other countries before them, Avalon had its own adventurers solve any actual pressing problems instead of relying on people to hire adventurers through the Guild. If some village, which Avalon actually had villages at this point, was getting savage by monsters, Meten sent his people in. Working directly for the government meant that they had an actual pay scale instead of getting whatever reward people posted for jobs, but the certainty and reliability of actual pay versus dealing with posted rewards balanced out the fact that there weren’t any huge scores to hit. And letting people moonlight when they had time probably helped with that as well.

“Merchants and individuals still have things they want done that the government doesn’t care about or care enough about,” Meten continued, “So the Adventurer’s Guild is still making money.”

“Good, that’s-“

Someone screamed in pain from deeper inside the crowd of trainees.

“Healer!”

Kay and Meten took off running, trainers and trainees diving out of the way. One of the “real” healers got to the woman lying on the ground clutching at her bloody torso a moment before Kay did.

Kay grabbed her blood and started feeding it back into her as the healer started pumping a light blue, glowing magic from his hands.

“What happened?” Meten demanded from the other young woman standing nearby with a blood-covered axe and a shocked expression.

“Sir, she was doing her regular shielding Skill, and I swung at her, and all of a sudden, it vanished, and I hit her!”

“I was trying something and fucked it up.” The injured woman croaked out.

“You shut up!” The healer snapped at her, “Don’t talk till we’re done!”

Meten sighed and slumped his shoulders for a moment in relief. “A standard training accident, then.” He patted the shocked woman on the shoulder, “Don’t worry about it. This is why we have healers on hand, and people posted all over. Accidents happen, and this is also why we train. You need to get ready to deal with injuries in the field.”

“I’m alright!” The woman on the ground reassured her sparring partner, “It’s just a flesh wound!”

The healer glared at her for talking but didn’t contradict her as the gash slowly closed. A moment later, the healer and Kay both pulled their hands back, and the trainee slowly pushed herself up to sitting.

“See? I’m all better!”

Her fellow trainee and obvious friend glared down at her, “What were you even trying to do?”

“Well, you see, my shields only come from my hands right now, right? So I was…”

Meten and Kay walked back over to where they were before as the two trainees started discussing Skills, and the healer went back off to his own station. Once they were safely off to the side, Kay opened his notifications, which had a familiar blinking light.

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

- Skill: Blood Transfusion has reached level 40!

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

-Tier Five Class Available!

- Class: Sanguine Regenerator Available!

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

“Nice!” Kay quietly cheered, “Finally got the last Skill for Bloody Healer to forty!”

“Good job! What’s the Class?”

“Sanguine Regenerator.”

“Never heard of it, as expected.”

Kay skipped the warning, already knowing he wasn’t going to be taking this Class until he could come back to it after getting the best combination possible. Being a Class Line Progenitor made a lot of things easier, but with the exception of Blood Manipulator, he would still lose Classes to tiering up to tier five, so he had the same limitations there as anyone else. Eleniah had already started a list of every combination he got to decide which ones to come back to first, so he’d get them all eventually if they were good enough, but for now, he was pushing for that best option.

[————————————————————]

Class: Sanguine Regenerator (Combination of Blood Manipulator + Bloody Healer)

- Blood is an aspect of life and health, both literally and conceptually. Push that to the extreme and use blood to make anyone as healthy as possible, removing containments, sealing wounds, and even restoring what’s been lost in more ways than one. Bring health to the bloody and regeneration to the bleeding.

Class Skill: Sanguine Regeneration

[————————————————————]

[————————————————————]

Skill: Sanguine Regeneration (Level N/A)

- Blood as health and health as blood. This Skill allows the user to provide a massive amount of healing, similar to the Skill Healthy Blood, but with added benefits. This Skill heals physical damage, removes foreign bodies from blood, destroys blood-borne pathogens, heals diseases related to blood, and can regenerate recently lost limbs. The more effects attempted at once with this Skill, the higher the mana cost, with each subsequent effect in the previously listed order costing more mana individually. At higher levels of this Skill, mana costs decrease, and each effect increases in power and ability.

[————————————————————]

“This is going to the top of the list,” Kay said immediately after reading both descriptions.

“It’s only a list of two things for now,” Meten commented, “But I do agree that that sounds like you should aim for it early.”

“I could have saved a lot of time and pain if I’d had this earlier on.”

“But you didn’t, and most of the people with your prosthetics are not only okay with it but are actively using them to make themselves stronger. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Now,” He said, holding out a small vial with blood in it. “Make me a simulacrum of this person without knowing who the blood is from.”

“I’m a guinea pig and a training fiend, huh?” Kay complained as he grabbed the vial. “What’s next, trying to meld my simulacra with magical items?”

“It’s on the list,” Meten confirmed, “Oh, and I sent a runner to get Eleniah; you don’t really need to be here now that you’ve hit the threshold with your healing Class.”

Kay groaned. “This is not as much fun as I thought it’d be.” He paused for a moment, then shook his head, “No, I’m lying. It’s just as much fun; it’s just also way more tedious than I was expecting.”

Meten rolled his eyes, “The terrible burdens of being a leader.”

“Why are you sassing me? Don’t I control your pay?”

“Go away and come back when you’re tier five. We can have a real fight then.”