Blood Shaper

The Shatterplate War Chapter 31

The meeting that Kay wanted to have to discuss his plans for the future of their government and to get everyone else’s ideas to refine his planning didn’t happen that day. It didn’t happen the next day or the day after that either. That was mostly due to Cyrus and Darten. As the newly named Ministers of Finance and Construction, they had the two most demanding jobs in Avalon’s current climate of growth. Kay finally managed to wrangle a time for all of his Ministers and other adviser types to meet over the weekend. Darten’s building crews had staggered shifts to keep the work going as long as possible and also let everyone get enough rest, but there was also one guaranteed break day that everyone had off. Kay had had to track down Cyrus and hold him still long enough for the older man to understand that, yes, Kay was really serious that this meeting would be as important as Cyrus’ obsession with making a perfectly streamlined economy.

So, with an actual scheduled meeting in a few days, Kay was free to work on other things. Specifically, to actually spend a decent amount of time working on gaining that pesky Skill that seemed to be taunting him with his inability to figure it out. The last two days had been spent trying to actually get a meeting to happen, and when he hadn’t been doing that, he’d been meeting with Crucius.

Kay had to admit, the man really was as driven as he’d said he was. Crucius had managed to tier up three of his Classes by the end of the day with a little help from Kay. They’d sparred for a few hours once they’d heard back about Cyrus and Darten being busy, and Crucius had gotten his Swordsman (Shortswords) up to Expert Swordsman (Shortswords) and his Shield User Class up to a Class that Kay hadn’t heard of called Roundshield Soldier, a tier four Class that could only be upgraded from Shield User if the person had a Class from the Soldier line. Before any of that, though, he’d marched around inside Kay’s training ground, moving and stopping as if he was in a large formation of soldiers doing marching drills. After an hour, he’d leveled his Marching Skill to thirty and tiered up Soldier to Captain.

Talking about Crucius’ Classes with him had revealed some surprising new information to Kay. The first that there even were Classes like Roundshield Soldier, with dependencies on having another Class. He knew that there were Classes that depended on achieving certain things or having certain positions, but he’d never really thought about how many damn Classes there must be out there. Talking to Crucius about just the ones he knew of from training soldiers was eye-opening to Kay. Now the Rune Master’s eighty or more Classes didn’t seem so far-fetched.

The other thing that Kay learned that surprised him was that Soldier was a non-combat Class.

“What?” Kay had blurted out when Crucius told him. “But being a soldier is all about combat!”

“It is, and it isn’t,” Crucius had replied, “There are all kinds of Skills that are part of the Soldier Class that are important to the job of being a soldier, and while they’re technically related to combat, they aren’t in and of themselves combat. For example, marching. The Marching Skill and being able to march are very important to a soldier, but you don’t actually use the Marching Skill to hurt your enemies.”

“What other Skills are there?” Kay had asked, still mostly agog.

“There are Skills related to setting up camps or basic fortifications, Skills for working as a unit with fellow soldiers, some people even get Skills that point them in the direction of being an officer, like Command Presence, or towards other jobs like becoming a quartermaster, although most people that have that path opened up for them are encourage to get the Quartermaster Class, then to tier up the tier two Apprentice Soldier to the tier three Military Quartermaster.”

Kay had put his head in his hands. “There’s so much to learn!” He’d groaned.

“Which is why it’s good that Miss Eleniah is setting up the academy like she is, and Miss Ahthia is gathering so much good research material whenever she can.” Crucius had paused and then shrugged, “Also, not to brag, it’s lucky that you have me since I’m bringing so much knowledge.”

As far as Kay knew, Crucius was now in some often used gathering location, making himself available to potential military recruits. Kay wasn’t one hundred percent sure of the details; Amanda was handling that. Or someone on Amanda’s staff. He wasn’t sure how, but Amanda already had at least four people working under her.

The story she’d told him about planning to lead a coup against the town that had been harassing her home village, which the starting population of Avalon were refugees from, by using her position as one of the town leader’s secretaries and the people she’d recruited to help her that had eventually joined her in Avalon was slightly alarming. It did explain how she had a working, if small, intelligence agency almost immediately, but she’d also been planning a coup. Thankfully he believed her when she said she had no plans to overthrow him. Also, the Agreements he’d made her sign as a member of Avalon’s government were very specific. “No coups” was one of the many rules she was bound by.

Now, with nothing else to do and everyone that he’d be doing anything with occupied, Kay was finally alone and ready to keep training. He’d spent some time earlier in the morning just repeating his ideas and experimental techniques for that tantalizing Skill, just in case he hadn’t done something exactly right or for long enough, but now he was trying something else. He was going to meditate like Ahthia had suggested.

Sitting just in front of his pool of blood, and the part of him that still wasn’t one hundred percent used to being in a fantasy world cringed at that; he closed his eyes and tried to let his thoughts slip away.

No, that’s not right… What was it that one girl told me… Was her name… Kayla? We had like three dates, and it was years ago… Wait, no, that’s not the important thing! If I try and remove all my thoughts, it will just make them worse, right? That sounds like it. I need to just let my thoughts do what they do and just be.

Kay was not good at meditating. He had never considered himself easily distracted, but he tended to allow himself to head off of the trail of his thoughts when something interesting gathered his attention. So he spent a while just trying to clear his head.

After spending at least fifteen minutes debating with himself over the mechanics of her transformations between her two forms, one time she’d been naked and the other time she’d had clothes on, he realized he’d been sitting on the ground with his eyes closed getting nothing done.

“Okay!” He slapped his cheeks a couple of times, shook his body out, and got back into it. Just letting myself exist doesn’t seem to be working. I’ll just focus on what I want and the feeling I keep getting when I’m working on my blood figure.

Kay thought about what he’d done that he felt was right, the things that had made that part of him that was connected to his Class Line Progenitor title stick up its metaphorical flag and wave him closer to the goal of a new Class. He was definitely on the right track of making a humanoid figure out of blood, and the mixture of shaping liquid blood directly and using shape blood to make certain parts solid also felt like the right thing. Bit by bit and moment by moment, Kay started to strip away the faulty bits of his creation, the ones that felt like he was traveling farther away from the goal. Almost unconsciously and without realizing it, the blood in the pool in front of Kay rose up in a ball.

As time passed, the floating ball of blood slowly transformed into a spindly figure that resembled a three-dimensional stick figure. As Kay concentrated on getting things right, the figure slowly began to fill itself out as more details were filled in. Letting himself be guided by his instinctual knowledge granted by his most important title and by his limited knowledge of anatomy, Kay made bones, muscles, ligaments, and organs out of blood. Joints took shape and began to move freely, its so-called “hands” became actual hands with defined fingers, and the stumps it supported itself on became real legs with feet.

As Kay concentrated, focused, and persevered and hours passed, the shape became more recognizable as a humanoid figure.

To Kay, it was a completely unknown amount of time later when he felt like he was on the final step. He’d done everything he could with shaping it, and now it needed something else. Something additional. A… something.

What is it that it needs? One by one, he let ideas drift in his head, then subsequently discarded them when his instincts found nothing useful in them. Eventually, a thought struck him. What am I doing? Or more like, what am I making? A figure of a person out of blood. What’s important there? The shape I’m making, or the blood itself? My class, my real basis for power, is all about blood. So what it’s missing has to be about the blood. It needs something… it needs… His thoughts ran silently until he had a small flash of inspiration. It needs direction. It’s all kinds of blood making a shape, but there’s no blood leading it…

With a quick flick of his nail to apply his tier three strength Kay made a small but on his thumb and mentally grabbed a drop of his own blood to toss it into the shape. As it touched the surface, right in the middle of the chest, the blood that made up the figure seemed to ripple away from the drop of Kay’s own blood before rocketing forward and grabbing it, dragging it into the makeup of the humanoid blood shape.

Kay opened his eyes, sure he’d succeeded, to see the bald and naked shape of a man with no genitals shake and shiver before suddenly solidifying in something more real. Even the magic of it felt more solid, and between one moment and the next, the mannequin-like shape suddenly had definition. The blank face had a nose and lips, with eyes that were flat sheets of liquid, hair grew out from the top of the previously bald head, and the naked body was suddenly clothed in clothing that was identical to Kay’s current outfit.

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New Skill Gained!

-Skill: Create Simulacrum (Blood) gained!

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“A simulacrum, huh?” Kay quickly used all three Skills for gaining information on the simulacrum. Surprisingly it was Inspect, the skill for gaining information from creatures and people, that had an effect.

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Blood Simulacrum of Kay Davis, Mayor of Avalon

-A living copy of Kay Davis, Mayor of Avalon, formed of blood through the use of magic. While not truly a thinking being and not as powerful as the being it copies, it is still capable of using much of the skill of the being it resembles.

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“Now, that is very interesting.” Kay quickly pulled up the description for the new skill.

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Skill: Create Simulacrum (Blood) (Level One)

- Blood is one of the keys to life and is a substance that holds the keys to the creation of new life as well. With enough blood to form the medium and blood from the creature they wish to duplicate, this Skill allows the user to create a clone out of blood in the shape of another living being. The simulacrums created through this Skill have access to the same abilities the original being do but at a weaker level. Some Skills and Classes require a higher level of this Skill to copy them, and some can never be duplicated. The strength of the simulacrums is higher the higher level of this Skill. Simulacrums will also last longer the higher the level of this Skill, with the caveat that simulacrums of more powerful beings will always last for less time than those of weaker beings.

[————————————————————]

That is one detailed description. Kay thought to himself. Was this description written by a different Administrator or something? Do Administrators even write any of the descriptions? I wish the damn System had a manual.

Seconds later, Kay’s simulacrum of himself collapsed into liquid that splashed down into the pool. Elated by finally succeeding and getting what seemed to be an awesome skill, Kay paid the blood that splashed onto him no mind. It wasn’t like he couldn’t just float it off of him anyway.

“Sir!” A messenger rushed into the room, Lauren right behind him. “Some of our scouts have reported a massive group of people headed in our direction from the south! They’ll be here in a few hours!”

“For fuck’s sake!” Kay shouted at the empty room, refusing to turn around and look at the messenger, “I just got the damn skill working!”

Lauren stepped up and set her hand on his shoulder. “Congratulations!”

“Thanks,” He turned around and started heading outside. “But now I don’t even get to practice with it!”

“You are in charge, sir.”

“Don’t you give me that shit!”

“Sir!” Another different messenger ran up. “Another report! A smaller contingent of the incoming group found and talked to one of our scouts! They claim to be here because of a letter from Miss Ahthia.”

“Oh.” Kay paused for a moment as he processed that, then started forward again. “So not bad news. Just more work.” He shrugged and turned to Lauren. “Hey, Lauren- Wait, no, let’s do it with Tyuah.”

“What about me?” Tyuah asked as Kay grabbed her wheelchair and started pushing her in front of him.

“Let me get a drop of your blood. I finally figured out that Skill, and if it isn’t the one we’re looking for to make you new limbs, then it's definitely related. I can get some practice while we walk and show it to you at the same time.”