Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Ah, so he did have to acquire the subpillars one by one. Or if he didn’t, he’d at least be utilizing these spells via the Unholy pillar and paying a greater price to cast them.

Riven immediately got to work. Now that he had a solid base of knowledge to work off in terms of spell casting, he was able to progress at a much more rapid pace.

Even without the Blood subpillar currently within him, he was still able to force mana out of his soul and into his palms along the mana channels that his initial pillar had carved into him. Though he didn’t direct it through the Unholy pillar itself, rather, this new flavor of related mana skirted along the edges of the Unholy pillar instead. The mana channels were still there and the energy of his soul began to accumulate...albeit it had a different feeling to it than pure Unholy mana did. It was a little more...translucent? He couldn’t really describe the feeling otherwise.

He’d bet on what the previous book had said, though. As long as he had a complete vision and a good understanding of what he wanted, the system should provide him with the correct pillar given his will. The system would find its proper match as long as his soul had enough space left for the proper pillar, provided he had the affinity for this blood spell type.Finnd new chapters at novelhall.com

He closed his eyes, sitting cross-legged on the velvet armchair as he concentrated on the vision of what he wanted while the timer overhead continued ticking down.

Visions of what had been drawn in the book entered his thoughts first. A spinning disc of serrated, sharpened, solidified crimson. A willingness and wantingness to hunt down his enemies, to cut them apart with the blades he would summon. A sea of red, a battlefield of the dead, a liquid that gave life, and a pack of leeches swarming toward prey. These images were merged into one to create the essence of what blood truly was. He lastly combined all this with what he knew of blood and cellular molecules from basic biology back home: the shape of the cells, the oxygen they carried, the other components such as platelets and plasma. They began to settle, forming a complex, flowing tapestry.

Much to Riven’s delight, the energy within his soul immediately began to respond. And to his utter bafflement, the Blood subpillar was incredibly easy to obtain. He was a downright natural—beyond natural, even, as it actually began to embrace his soul like a warm, long-lost cousin, and this blood magic seemed to be at home within his body, even more so than the Unholy pillar was.

[You have an impossibly absurd affinity toward the Blood subpillar, with a perfect affinity score of 100%, and it will accept your body as a conduit since you wish to utilize its power. You are now oriented toward the Blood subpillar, and your blood spells will cost far less mana and have much more power output than if you were to only utilize them through the broader-spectrum Unholy pillar.]

His mind went dark as warm tendrils of red light began to wriggle their way up and around his limbs, his chest, and his neck—creeping all the way into his eyes as he let out a silent scream.

He saw it again—the myriad of memories that were bits and pieces of his life. The memories that made him who he was—all jumbled together just as it’d been the first time when he’d received Blessing of the Crow and had acquired the Unholy pillar. Only this time, instead of a mixture of the crimson, green, and black lights that symbolized Unholy energy, this time the energy was a pure, bright red. The wash of crimson power slowly drifted through the pockets of memories that made up his life, casually forcing them aside until it entered the central pocket of his soul, where a bright-white orb of glowing light glistened in the very center. Attached to that brighter, larger orb was the conduit of the Unholy pillar—stabilizing the left side as it pulsed with ropes of its own energy connecting the two objects.

The Blood subpillar didn’t bother stopping. Instead it continued to drift slowly onward, passing the Unholy pillar and his soul core effortlessly until it came over to the opposite side of his soul like a snowflake coming to settle down upon a silent, red-laden hill.

Tendrils of crimson came out and connected the Blood subpillar to Riven’s soul a moment later, calmly stabilizing the connection between them as Riven’s pain faded away into nothingness. Looking at it, he sensed a supreme state of calm... a sense of assuredness, as if the Blood subpillar had been waiting to embrace him for his entire life just to let him know that it was where it was meant to be.

His eyes flashed red for just a brief second when they snapped open, returning to the normal green an instant later as mana surged out of his soul’s Blood subpillar and entered the energy floating above his outstretched hands. The energy immediately condensed, crystallized, and roared to life as two spinning discs of solid red bloomed before him. They blurred forward, orienting themselves on their own and adjusting course to make a direct impact with the clay dummy’s head. The head was ripped open, flinging bits and pieces of the dummy everywhere. It was like a knife going through butter, and Riven was completely taken aback by just how fast and easy learning this new spell had been.

[You have successfully learned the spell Bloody Razors. Congratulations! This spell has been added to your status page.]

They were pretty damn fast, and they left thin trails of red liquid in the air behind their blurring paths for brief moments until they slammed into the earth twenty yards away—leaving the grass there torn to shreds in little patches around an indentation the magic had cut into the ground before fizzling away into the air.

They were pretty brutal weapons, and he was eager to see what they could do. Even if it meant killing someone else, he wasn’t about to die here in this strange place. Not after just having his world open up with the potential for magic. No...he was going to live.

[Time is up. Your fight to the death is commencing now. If no winner is announced within ten minutes, both participants will die. If you have bonded companions due to your class choice, upon death your minions will be sent to the nether realm to try and find new masters for further exploration in Elysium.]

“BRING IT!” his Blood Weaver screamed when she saw the notification and waggled a red and black spider foot his way. “I don’t want to go back to the nether realms! We’d better win, you hear me?!”

“You’re damn right we’re going to win.” He gave her an encouraging nod and adjusted his stance to ready himself, but he hadn’t noticed the other looming island closing in until right before the two land masses hit.

The cliff faces made impact with a thunderous clap of noise. Rock slammed into rock with a huge boom, shaking both islands in a spray of debris. The ground shuddered and caused him to almost lose his footing, but he planted down firmly and waited for the shock waves to pass. When the dust settled, Riven found himself by some stroke of luck looking at the same bald asshole who’d shoved him and told him to move it in the second phase of the trial.

Why is it that bald people were always assholes?

Bald people are the worst.

Riven knew it was petty. He knew it wasn’t a good reason to kill the man, but his reason was already set. Riven wanted to live, and even that small amount of injustice, rudeness, and arrogance made it all the easier to grip his scythe more firmly with deadly intent.

The larger bald man had surprisingly enough chosen a caster’s staff...but he also had an amulet. Something that Riven didn’t understand. How could he have two choices from the items list? Riven had only gotten the scythe. His enemy’s staff was long, about five feet in length, and had a gnarled knob end to it. It wasn’t anything special, but what Riven found really odd was the necklace around the sneering man’s neck. It had a small circular pendant made of white ivory, depicting a carved dragon with emeralds for eyes. The pendant was held up by a black cord of some kind, and the artwork was rather ornate.

Was that really the Minor Amulet of Protection from the items list? Looked rather fancy to be minor.

Aside from that, the other man had chosen a minion that hadn’t ever been presented to Riven. Perhaps it was because the other man had chosen necromancer or something similar?

It was a huge, skeletal, zombie wolf. The creature was large, as big as any other wolf from Earth, but it had only patches of rotting flesh or fur with bright-white eyes on glistening bones. The breath from the creature’s decrepit lungs came out as a gaseous cloud of green through fangs as it was snarling at Riven with a keen hunger. It looked alien and formidable as it circled its new master protectively. Just by looking at the creature, he guessed it might be able to crush his own spider minion rather easily—being two to three times Athela’s size.

The older, taller, balder man sneered Riven’s way and spat on the grassy ground between his feet. “We meet again, pig.”