Kay stared in concentration at the breastplate sitting on the training dummy, staring in concentration at it. The blood in his veins flowed smoothly through him, the power within held tightly in his grasp, waiting for the moment of release. His muscles tensed as he focused on the flow of mana through his blood. In one smooth motion, he drew together his lessons on footwork from Eleniah, his low-level Punch Daggers Skill, and the power he derived from his Blood Boost Skill and drove the small blade hooked between his fingers into the front of the breastplate through the wooden dummy, and out the back of the armor with an explosion of noise, the twisted metal shrieking as it erupted like it’d been hit by a cannonball.

“Not bad!” Eleniah leaned in and looked closely at his arm sticking out of the training dummy-turned debris. “Can you get it back out?”

The armor surrounding Kay’s arm swelled up, pushing the hole even wider until Kay could just pull his arm out without an issue.

“Alright! I think we’ve got a working style for you to implement punch daggers in combat! That gives you that balance between longer, medium, and really short-range melee weapons like I had wanted you to get back in Tumbling Rapids.” She inspected the damaged armor again. “And you’re doing pretty good damage without even having your tier five Class to really boost you up.”

Kay glanced over at the row of training dummies on the opposite side of the courtyard out of the corner of his eye. Eleniah had turned all of them into splinters, including the armor on each of them, with almost lazy strikes. I’ll take the compliment, I guess? He thought, saying nothing out loud.

Eleniah spun to face him suddenly. “You’re pretty close to hitting the cap for your Blood Enhancer Class, right? Want to spar and see if we can get you there?”

“Sure.” The gauntlet covering his arm spread over his body like red frost covering a suddenly frozen pool, and the pole of a halberd grew from his hand. He walked to the other side of the courtyard and turned to face her as the halberd blade grew into being.

“Are you ready?” She stood there, slightly bouncing on the balls of her feet, her arms loose at her sides.

He waited until the blood grew up to cover his face, and it solidified into a helmet. “Ready.”

She grinned and then blurred in place, shooting forward using one of her movement Skills to launch herself at him. She seemed to appear in front of him in a single second, and she casually threw a straight punch at his abdomen.

He tensed his abs as he flexed his Blood Boost Skill as best he could to send mana through his blood to strengthen his core while simultaneously hardening the blood armor covering his stomach. As Eleniah’s punch began shattering the layers of blood, he swung down, turning his halberd into a sword mid-motion. Eleniah backhanded the blade, shattering it into pieces just like his armor, and went for another punch.

Kay sent the fractured spines of blood flying at her eyes while bringing his other hand up, a punch dagger forming in front of his fist. She jerked her head out of the way of the flying projectiles and tilted her head just enough that the tip of the blade hit her cheek, leaving only a tiny cut. His leg came up as he “this is Sparta” kicked her away from him, and she rolled with the force, turning it into a flip as she repositioned.

They danced back and forth across the training area, her movements smooth and sure in their simplicity, contrasting directly with his much more complex series of attacks and defenses as his weapons and armor shifted forms over and over as he sought to gain any advantage he could and exploit any openings he saw. Kay sent waves of mana pulsing through him as the fight drew on, simultaneously keeping exhaustion at bay and empowering himself to greater heights by using Blood Boost constantly.

Despite all that, the fight was completely one-sided as they sparred; Eleniah had so much more experience to add to her side of the considerable power imbalance that it felt like Kay was barely holding on as he did his best to find one key moment that might turn the tide.

That moment never came, and between one sweep of his blade and the next, he left the tiniest opening that she decided to exploit. The rushing air displaced by her unbelievably fast jab pushed his arm up and away and shattered the thin sheet of blood he was trying to turn into a temporary shield before he could reinforce it. The punch sent him tumbling ass over teakettle, and only his quick thinking in the split second he had before he smashed into the wall kept the masonry safe as he turned his armor into a massive airbag that bounced him off the wall.

“Shit!” Kay cursed as his armor deflated around him. “I was doing pretty well there!”

“I could tell you were starting to flag,” Eleniah said as she grabbed his hand and helped pull him up, “Did you start running low on mana?”

“It’s so expensive to continuously buff myself,” Kay complained, “But it’s the only way I can keep up with you at that speed; I just don’t have the time to spare to think about reinforcing just a part of myself at the moment I need it.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll do better when we’re the same tier. And isn’t that a comment to make,” She muttered.

“Huh?”

“It’s only been what, a bit more three years since you landed here, and you’re already pushing for tier five. That’s not the fastest anyone’s ever done it, but it’s impressive.” She smiled down at him as he caught his breath. “I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks.” He grinned at her as he straightened up. Slowly he started reforming his armor from the scattered bits strewn across the area and what was still left on his body. “The bonus to leveling my Skills that comes with being a Class Line Progenitor definitely helped, but I feel like I’m doing good.”

“You are. But don’t get complacent. I can still kick you all over this training hall.” She waved a finger under his nose.

“And if I don’t miss my guess, you’re about to do just that a few more times.”

“Damn straight I am! Two-minute break, then we’re going again.”

The next few matches could be summarized the same as the first one, Kay held on decently until he started to run out of mana, and then he got whooped. Here and there, he had some highlights that stood out, a trick that let him get a solid hit in, a feint that actually worked, but mainly he spent all of the matches on the defensive, using Blood Boost as much as possible to keep him going as opposed to making big attacks.

One attempt after another, he slowly began making progress at getting better timing down. His bursts of Skill powered enhancement became more and more in line with what he was actually doing or reacting to, and soon enough, he began to actually hold his own for a moment or two before being overwhelmed again.

During one particular series of exchanges, he felt like he got it down perfectly, blocking a kick by increasing his strength in his arm, then switching to the other arm to deflect a punch and turn it into a counterattack. The butt of his halberd swung up to take Eleniah in the temple, and that’s when she kicked things up another notch. She grabbed the handle and used it to pull him in close before grabbing him by the shoulders while sweeping his legs out from under him and driving him chest-first into the ground.

She mimed a punch at his head, then stood up and brushed her hands off. “Good! Noticeable improvement there!”

Kay just lay there silently.

“Kay?”

“…Ow,” He groaned.

Eleniah rolled her eyes. “Oh boo hoo, I know you can take that.”

“I was trying to muscle through your leg sweep, so all my reinforcement went into my lower legs.” He gasped out, “I didn’t have anything extra in my chest area.” He rolled over onto his back and tried to get his breath back.

“Well, now you’ve learned not to do that.”

“Whatever,” He lazily flopped an arm through the air, “I leveled.”

Eleniah grinned and did a little spin, “Fantastic! Let’s hear what you got!”

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

- Skill: Blood Boost has reached level 40!

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

-Tier Five Classes Available!

- Class: Vital Limit Breaker Available!

- Class: Sanguine Revivifier Available!

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

“…What?”

“What, what?”

“One of the Classes is called ‘Sanguine Revivifier.’”

“That sounds strong!”

“Why aren’t you more surprised or excited? You can bring back the dead!?”

“Oh.” Eleniah walked over and squatted next to him. “No, not the way you’re talking about based on that tone. If you’ve got the right Class, Skills, or knowledge, you can keep people from dying and bring them back right away under the right circumstances, but there’s no way to actually bring back the dead.”

“Well, that’s… comforting, I guess?”

“Comforting that reality hasn’t shifted out from under you in a fundamental way? Yeah, I get that.”

“I’m going to read about these Classes now.”

“Tell me all about them.”

[————————————————————]

Class: Vital Limit Breaker (Combination of Blood Manipulator + Blood Enhancer)

- Unlock the strength with which you would hold up the very heavens. Reach beyond what you could be and for a moment become more than the limits you are normally bound to. Your strength will grow more than tenfold as your blood seeps from you, full of mana and power.

Class Skill: Break the Limits of Your Blood

[————————————————————]

[————————————————————]

Skill: Break the Limits of Your Blood (Level N/A)

- A power unleashed through the force within your blood. This Skill allows the user to temporarily massively boost all physical attributes of the user’s body, including strength, speed, stamina, toughness, and more for a limited time at an incredible mana cost. This Skill causes damage the longer this Skill is active, with the amount of damage taken per second increasing cumulatively. Higher levels of this Skill increase the boost to physical parameters, slightly decrease the mana cost, and slightly decrease the amount of damage taken.

[————————————————————]

“First one’s pretty much what we guessed it would be, a big short-term boost at a high cost. Called Vital Limit Breaker.”

“Like I said earlier,” Eleniah replied, “That’s probably the easiest of your potential tier fives to guess. Classes with similar paths tend to follow patterns, and buffing Classes are pretty similar in general. I bet with some work you could tweak it, so it works on others like Blood Boost and Enhance Blood, but it would take some practice.”

“Lower down on the list, right?”

“Exactly. Worth taking, but not above most of the others you’ve unlocked so far.”

[————————————————————]

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

- Blood can be seen as two sides of the same coin, both the sustaining of life and the taking of it, healing and killing in one symbol. With this Class, you embrace the living aspect of blood, holding off the tithe of death that comes for the injured and hurting. Push death away from those at the brink and give them another chance to discover what this world will hold for them.

Class Skill: Sanguine Revivification

[————————————————————]

[————————————————————]

Skill: Sanguine Revivification (Level N/A)

- Blood as life. Bring life through blood. This Skill allows the user to transfer a massive amount of mana-laden blood into a grievously wounded or dying patient and release a similarly massive amount of healing into their body for a high mana cost, closing wounds, restoring blood loss, regenerating lost limbs and flesh, and restoring the patient’s body to the most healthy state possible. This Skill is able to resuscitate a dead patient if used within a very short window of their death. Higher levels of this Skill decrease the amount of blood needed, the amount of mana that needs to be infused into the used blood, and the mana cost of this Skill. Higher levels of this Skill will also increase the amount of healing given by this Skill across all effects.

[————————————————————]

Kay read over the Skill twice before reading it a third time out loud for Eleniah to hear. He stared silently at it for a bit more after he finished.

“That’s a really good healing Skill,” Eleniah eventually commented.

He sighed, “Yeah, and it’s on the list, but it’s not that high for a couple of reasons.”

“It’s single target, and the high mana cost for the Skill that’s separate from the mana you need to put in the blood to use it?”

He exhaled a tiny laugh. “Exactly.”

“Well, now that you’ve finally gotten Blood Enhancer ready to tier up, you can follow me to find Ahthia, where the two of us can give you the massive list of experiments and ideas we’ve thought of to help you level Meld Blood. Once you’ve done that, we can finish up Leadership, and then you can start getting more Classes after that. Then eventually, you can get this one!”

He stared at her with dead eyes. “You’re making all of this sound so much fun!” He cheered monotonously, pumping his fist a few inches.

“Stop being a pain; you know you’re enjoying this.”

“I really am, but your descriptions of what we’ll be doing need work.”