When using his Inspect skill, a clear picture of what the Blood gauntlet could actually do was revealed. It made Quinn wonder why Alex hadn't discovered its effects from his little test, but that's when Quinn could see in detail the exact reason why, and it was all in the description of the active skill itself.
[Passive skill]
[Blood drain: Whenever the gauntlet comes into contact with blood that is accepted by the gauntlet. It will begin to drain the opponent's blood, storing it in the gauntlet. The user may use the stored blood as he wishes.]
[3/10,000]
The first part was exactly as Alex had described. A nice thing to have, depending on the amount of blood that could be stored, it would allow Quinn to use Blood skills with no worry. The number underneath seemed to be the stored blood amount, but Quinn wasn't sure how much blood was equal to points to fit up the gauntlet.
Still, with the King's Blood armour, it seemed like a useless skill, that was until he read the second part of the gauntlet's abilities.
[Active skill]
[Equivalent upgrade]
[This skill can only be activated once the gauntlet's blood storage has been filled to its maximum.In exchange for the giantlets blood, the user is able to upgrade one piece of equipment up to the next tier. This is able to work on armour, blood weapons and beast weapons.]
[Attention: After every usage, the required blood amount will increase.]
Out of all the things Quinn had gotten before this seems to be one of the best items. In the past he had received an upgrade crystal, which had allowed him to upgrade an item up one rank. However there had still been a limit, so the best he had been able to do was to increase an Emperor tier item into a Demi-god tier one.
On the other hand, the Inspect skill didn't state that the Blood gauntlet had any such limits at all.
'This…I could upgrade my other gauntlet to the Demon tier! The unbreakable sword, and even blood weapons! There would be no need to hunt for Demon tier beasts.' Quinn thought excitedly.
However, before he got too excited, he started to wonder what possible downsides this might have. The first thing that came to mind was that an upgraded weapon might not be as powerful as an officially Demon tier made weapon. His reason for thinking this was due to the unique active skills that Demon tier weapons seemed to possess.
They tended to mimic the beasts they came from, and weaker beasts didn't usually have strong or special abilities, so perhaps the Equivalent upgrade would 'just' manifest itself in the form of a boost to the overall stats or power. Of course, every little bit counted, and he already knew what armour set would make for a perfect testing target.
'But why three? What could the three out of ten thousand mean?' Quinn wondered.
"Alex, say how much blood did you try to put into the gauntlet? And how much did you drain when you tried to use it?" Quinn asked the forger.
"I actually performed a few different tests." Alex happily answered. "So first I just used blood we had in storage on the weapon. If placed on the surface of the gauntlet it will absorb it but even after I emptied the whole bag it didn't seem to have done anything special, so I could only assume it was stored in the gauntlet.
"It's actually quite shocking seeing that the other blood weapons that I forged activated with far less. Well, I thought it might be a bit more special seeing as it was clearly a tier above the rest. As such, I asked around for a couple of 'volunteers'.
"After touching them with the gauntlet, they both reported a tingling feeling that was making them quite uncomfortable. I became a little worried what would happen if I continued, so I stopped after testing it on the two. Unfortunately, I never found out another effect after that."
Listening to Alex, Quinn thought he had figured out what it was, it was similar to how he gained stats.
"To summarise, you used the blood of three different types of people, correct?" Quinn wanted to make sure and the Blood fairy nodded in confirmation.
Although blood could be stored in the gauntlet and used as a power source, the number to use the active skill was different. Which meant to use the active skill of the blood gauntlet he would have to gather the blood of 10,000 different people, and this would increase each time he used the active skill.
'Well, there goes my idea of using the King's Blood amour to make up all of the blood to use the Equivalent upgrade skill. I guess it would have been asking for too much if things would really be that easy. Should I just ask for another blood donation?
'There are more than ten thousand people in the Cursed faction. There should be over a hundred thousand on all of the planets, and we should probably have more than ten thousand in storage. If I want to upgrade something first it will be the gauntlet.'
"Alex, you have created something truly amazing, thank you. I don't even think you know what you have created." Quinn praised him with a smile.
Of course, this made the Blood fairy curious and so the Vampire Lord explained what he had learned about the Blood gauntlet. After much discussion even Alex couldn't believe it. This item bypassed all the rules of a forger! It would just upgrade the weapon there and then, it was similar to an ability than anything else. Speaking, Alex had a condition for helping him create such a weapon, when he used the skill, he would love to watch how it would work.
The only thing the two could think of, was who the crystal had come from. Due to it coming from Jim, it must have had some type of influence on the Blood weapon.
"It looks like I'll need to contact Sam and get some work done, what about the other things I asked for?" Quinn asked.
"Ah, those, well that's why I came here, I thought maybe I could talk to some of the leaders to get something more personal for them. Honestly, that Blood gauntlet took a long time. Knowing how great it actually is, makes all those hours I spent on it truly worth it though!"
Quinn thought it wasn't such a bad idea, and decided that it should be fine for Alex to meet with the leaders, as long as one of the Royal knights were there. They already knew he did things differently, and they wouldn't dare harm Alex just because he was a Blood fairy.
Just as Quinn was about to make a call though, he could tell that his own mask was vibrating. It was a bit strange that he still used a mask to talk to others rather than a standard receiver or ear piece, but he was just used to it by now, and placed it on his face.
"Sach I wasn't expecting you to call me so soon." Quinn greeted the other.
"Neither did I." Sach replied, in a quite serious tone. Thinking back to what he had said not too long ago, Quinn would guess that this possibly had something to do with the Board.
"It's about the Board, they want me to invite you to something…" Sach nervously said.
——
At the same time, on one of the Graylash planets they had received a request for a ship from the Earthborn group to land. Naturally, Owen had granted it permission. It was only one ship, and they needed to work together. He was also curious to find out what could be so urgent at a time like this that it had to be discussed in person, when all groups were busy dealing with the Dalki.
When the ship landed, one of the old Head Generals, and now only a general could be seen coming off from the ship. It was quite the high ranking personal in the Earthborn group which came as a supers, and even the five around him were colonels who had their own squads.
Being escorted, they eventually reached down, and the general gave a polite sublet, before handing him an official letter with a seal.
"All this way, to personally deliver a letter? Are we still living in the past? I feel like this could have just been a call." Owen stated with an awkward smile.
"This is for your eyes only, sir." The general replied. "We couldn't risk such a thing getting out there, especially in case the Dalki might be able to listen in on us."
Owen accepted the letter, and could see a seal on the top. A seal he hadn't seen in a long time. Grim, who was by his side, also remembered it well, because it was a seal that he had seen when the Graylash family had been asked to become one of the Big Four, and be a part of the leaders table.
"So they have chosen to get involved, they are ridiculous." Grim complained out loud, looking at the General who seemed to be quite nervous. Grim turned his head as if he didn't care about the matter while his grandson opened it to read its contents.
"Oh…An invitation, and I can already guess who else got one of these. Well this certainly is interesting, very interesting indeed." Owen smiled.
*****
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