Freddy peeked through the rocks barricading the tiny cave where he and Sophia hid. Through the tiny hole, he witnessed a storm of dark-furred bodies, their red-speckled chests the only way to tell one apart from another. The outside sounded horrendous—the screams were loud and ever present, and the stampede was causing the ground to vibrate; small chunks of stone rolled down the barricade.
The horde had arrived in the middle of their training—they were both quite exhausted, and before stepping out into the swarm, they would rest and regain their strength.
First, they had to eat. Sophia was doing her best to make the gorel paste look palatable, but no matter what she did, it wasn't going to happen.
"What's this?" he asked, eyeing the fake chicken Sophia was shaping. It looked cartoony as hell, and its surface had a plastic texture.
"This could be our last meal," she said, trying to look serious but failing miserably. Unable to resist, she started giggling at the ridiculous display before them. Her hand clasped over her mouth, and her eyes glanced at him.
He also started giggling like a dumbass. "Bone apple teeth, I guess," he joked as he bent over and grabbed a fake drumstick. It tasted like the same old crap—sickeningly sweet, metallic, earthy... but... warmer, somehow.
As they ate in silence, the mood grew more severe. They ate a big meal, forcing as much food as possible down their throats. Then, with Bloodshed standing guard, they took a nap to let the food settle.
They fell asleep more effortlessly than ever, with plenty of space between them.
Freddy woke up first, finding a shivering, frightened Sophia hugging his bulky arm. Rather than push her away, he slowly moved her blonde hair out of her face, revealing her pained expression.
He felt his heart tighten. For a long moment, he nearly wanted to delude himself into thinking that... he had something with her. That there was something between them. And perhaps he wasn't wrong—but he knew it wasn't love.
In different ways, they were both broken. There was a kinship in their shared struggle. Within her, he saw not a lover but a long-lost sister he was starting to warm up to. A close friend.
But a wall still stood between them.
A lot depended on how she reacted to confronting the cult.
If she managed to overcome her demons.... he could see himself wanting to keep her by his side.
She opened her eyes and slowly looked up at him. After staring at him for half a second, she violently pushed him away and jumped back. "Oh no..." she said as she buried her face in her palms. "Don't tell me I just did that..."
"Don't worry, Sophia," he teased. "I, too, am sharting my jorts. Brrr." He mimicked shivering as he hugged his arms and mockingly sneered at her.
She punched his shoulder.
"Ow!" he yelped.
"Asshole," she spat as she shook her head and turned around. "So... are you topped up?" she asked, changing the topic.
"Almost," he said. "I'd like to meditate a bit to let myself settle. You?"
She sighed, looking down. "I'm full..."
They had done all the preparation they could, including fighting within the Netherecho to grow their stars. Freddy had made it to 162%—a monumental jump forward. Unsurprisingly, she had reached 99% progress on her star, but to their disappointment, she had failed to break through. It was a letdown, to be sure, but it wasn't a massive surprise. Her failure to go up a star could be attributed to many things, but it was most likely because she had rushed it too much.
There was the elixir in Freddy's ring, and despite the agony that caused him, he had suggested she take a dose to help push her along. But according to her, consuming such a treasure at just the peak of the first star had a tendency to backfire and even a good chance of making the user's talent worse, completely negating the value of going up a star in the first place.
It was a shame, but that was life sometimes. At any rate, running out of essence would most likely not be a problem for her. Killing gorels would replenish around 1%, and there would be plenty of those around. Freddy was more worried about her body than anything else.
As a one-star, she wasn't that much more durable than an ordinary human. Even putting undeath and her talent aside, exhaustion would eventually catch up with her.
The two meditated, settling their minds, bodies, and souls.
As a final touch, Sophia split one of the sparks of undeath and burned one half each to top them off, just to ensure they were in peak condition. The last remnants of Freddy's fatigue vanished, and he felt ready to go.
Sophia was wearing a torn, filthy shirt, and he was shirtless, with only his heavy-duty pants, their sleeves torn from the knee down, and the metallic boots protecting his body. He had cast away all the heavy armor pieces, listening to Sophia's advice. It wouldn't do him much good other than slow him down.
His trusty serrated dagger rested in his palm, waiting to be used as a tool of slaughter.
He glanced at Sophia. She held her shortsword, polishing the blade with the hem of her shirt. For better or worse, she looked determined to go through with their plan.
They would go out into the forest and slaughter the gorels in their way, accumulating as much spilled blood as possible. Then once they gathered enough, they would summon Bloodshed and use it as a distraction to break through one of the passages and escape into the interspace. There, they would look for a place to hide and wait out the attack.
It was far from a perfect plan. It could fail on any of the steps. They could get overwhelmed by the gorels. They could be found by cultist scouts. They could even break through with no problem, only to get hunted down in the interspace, either by a mighty monster or one of the cultists.
But it was the best chance they had.
At that point, they were sitting there, stalling, both trying to think of anything else they could do to prepare. Before long, shifting and scratching came from the makeshift barricade keeping them blocked off.
Sophia looked like she was going to panic for a long moment, her eyes widening, pupils shrinking, nose flaring, shoulders tensing—but then she suddenly relaxed, a sense of resignation flushing her body. "It's time to go," she said softly.
"Yeah," he concurred, watching a large stone roll down the pile of rubble keeping them safe.
The sounds of growling and hissing grew louder, and one of the gorels screamed.
He slowly got up. "You want to wait for them to break in, or do you want to start the party on our terms?"
She grinned widely at him. "What do you have in mind?"
"A Flowing Strike to blast the rocks apart," he said. "Maybe with both stars active."
She raised an eyebrow. "What's the essence cost of that?"
"I think around 19% at this point," he shared with a shit-eating grin.
She whistled. "You want to start the fight by blowing your arm up?"
"Believe it or not," he said, "it would only injure me a bit."
She snorted at that, shaking her head. "You're a damn monster."
For a long moment, they stood there, smiling.
The gorels had heard them and were now frantically trying to dig them out. An arm appeared through the rubble, spoony nails clawing stone apart like ice cream.
"Whelp," she said, offering a fist bump. "It's time to go."
They survived each time, but the small costs of their overextension were beginning to accumulate. Sophia had used four sparks, and she had only managed to find enough time to replenish two of them, leaving her with three heals total and only half her essence.
She was struggling in ways other than that, too. She was exhausted. While Freddy had no problem with dehydration due to his reserves of blood and body full of compressed water, Sophia had no such fail-safes. She had a canteen of water in her storage ring—it didn't take long for it to run dry.
Freddy was doing a lot better, but cracks were beginning to show too. His body was starting to show signs of fatigue, subtle as they might have been. No matter how much he improved it, his body still had limits. Remaining tense and combat-ready for hours on end was simply too much. His essence reserves were fully topped off, but he had been using Hydraulic Flex more and more, and the reflux essence floating in his body was starting to accumulate.
He swung a fist at a huge guard, crushing its face. Several of the spikes on his Gore Knuckles broke off, and he had to reconstruct them. "I think that's enough," he said after several hours of fighting through the forest.
"You think?" she said, gulping for air. "How much are you at? You must be at least twice over what you did last time."
"Not even close," he said with a wry chuckle. "According to Bloodshed, we're only a quarter there."
"A quarter!?" she screamed, then anxiously looked around as she lowered her voice. "How big was that monster you killed!?" she scream-whispered.
"This is still a lot," he said, unable to restrain a grin. "Trust me."
At even just a quarter of the power of that titanic monster he summoned the last time? They were about to create quite the distraction, to say the least. Besides, he hadn't mentioned the influence of his ring—not only would it reduce the cost of the spell, it would also empower its effect. Given that cost reduction in this case simply meant that the blood would be worth more, the effect was pretty much just a double amplification.
Freddy kicked a nearby gorel in the head and turned to Sophia. "Are you ready?"
"Wait, shouldn't we get closer to the passage first?" she urged him.
"Nah," he said, dismissively waving a hand. "We're going to follow Bloodshed as it moves through the realm. Summoning it can take a while, and I don't want them to interrupt me," he said as he plunged his spiky fist into another monster. "Wait, can you move around with those tentacles on land?" he asked the skeleton.
"Tentacles!?" Sophia interjected, then slammed her mouth shut. "How does a skeleton have tentacles...?"
"Master..." the skeleton spirit started hesitantly. "I will not have the same form this time."
Freddy froze. "What do you mean?"
"When summoned through Blood Sacrifice, my form is random, partly influenced by the source of blood."
His mouth pinched into a tight line. "Why didn't you tell me that sooner?"
"I apologize, Master," Bloodshed said. "You never requested that information, and I failed to realize its importance."
He breathed out. "Okay, can you at least tell me what you'll look like this time?
"My form will be bipedal; that is all I can say for certain."
"Will that be enough to move?"
"I will manage," it said.
That was good enough.
With that out of the way, they were ready.
"Cover for me, Sophia," he requested of the woman. She was pretty exhausted, but Freddy had to stop fighting for his ability to activate.
Without further ado, he sank to the ground, breathing out and doing his best to relax. The seconds felt like they dragged on for hours, but less than two breaths later, he felt the shell in his soul click.
Unhesitantly, he activated Blood Sacrifice.
The world shifted.
Sophia nearly stumbled as her eyes bulged, and she looked around. "Why does it feel like the world is bleeding!?"
The gorels around them could sense the same thing, and in a single moment, the volume of the screams amplified exponentially as every monster in the surrounding area spun around, seeking the source of the horrible power.
Blood flowed towards them like a crimson river, washing over the grass, trees, rocks, and corpses on its journey to the center. Above Freddy's head, a large sphere of blood started to gather. It grew, going from the size of a watermelon to the size of a large carriage. And then it kept growing.
Drop by drop, cell by cell, the mass of liquid formed a spherical pool. It began to roil, glowing with a sinister red light. Once the final drop of blood landed on the surface, the sphere expanded, growing ten times in size as it slowly morphed into a massive skeleton.
With an explosion of bright red blood essence, the form of Bloodshed crystalized—slightly hunched with disproportionately long arms, the image of a hellish giant dripping in blood loomed over the forest, reaching over fifteen meters in height. Long, sharp spikes lined its spine, and its skull formed a bony construct akin to a crown. The essence slowly seeped into Bloodshed's bones, casting the skeleton and the surrounding forest into darkness yet again.
Sophia dropped her sword, her mouth turned as far down as it could go, as she quivered in terror at the sight. "It... It... It was fo-fo-four times bi-bigger last time?" she asked carefully.
Freddy cackled gleefully as he observed Bloodshed's glorious form. Their situation was still far from settled, but with his mind hazy from the fatigue, he couldn't resist the desire to laugh. It was hard to not feel invincible with something like this on their side.
"Let's go, Bloodshed!" he commanded. "Charge to the passage!"
But the skeleton didn't budge.
"Bloodshed?" Freddy reached tentatively.
Although he couldn't see the skeleton's form clearly in the dark, he could tell that it was just standing there. No... its head was turned up, facing the sky.
They felt a tremor beneath their feet as Bloodshed slowly raised a long arm, lifting it with the sound of trees bending out of the way and branches snapping as it reached for the sky.
"What the hell is it doing?" Freddy muttered while Sophia rushed over to him and aggressively pulled on his arm, urging him to run away. "Calm down!" he shouted at the woman. "It's under my control; it's just—"
His words were interrupted when a bright light flickered through the entire realm. For a brief moment, the night turned to day, only to plunge back into darkness almost instantly.
Now, either that was the shortest day ever recorded in this realm, or...
The realm brightened again. The false sun above started glowing, flickering like a faulty lightbulb as a deafening sound echoed through the realm.
Both of them could clearly see the image of Bloodshed reaching into the sky, its skeletal face turned up to face the false sun.
Its bony fingers slowly closed, clasping as if trying to pull something to itself. And pull something, it did. The luminous sun started flickering more aggressively as cracks spread throughout it, and like a sheet of glass, the sky ruptured, exploding into a collection of crumbling shards.
The sun began rotating, swirling into a spiral as it slowly fell apart, drifting away into a ring that slowly turned a shade of orange, then crimson. The entire realm glowed with red light, dimly illuminating the horizons.
An object slowly descended from where the sky had been and placed itself into Bloodshed's open hand.