1% Lifesteal

Behind them, Jacob, Rachel, and Karen stood, discussing the situation and planning their next move.

It hadn\'t been even fifteen minutes since a panicked guard ran up to them to report the terrorist attack. When they heard what was happening, they rushed to the passage leading back to the gorel realm.

They arrived just in time to spot a grievously wounded guard closing the door in the second lobby as four figures wearing black cloaks stood right outside the passage, one of them launching attacks at the man.

Ever since then, Phillip had been doing his best to maintain the integrity of the door the terrorists were trying to tear down. Their attacks weren\'t too powerful. But that only made the situation that much more serious.

Their enemy was methodically assaulting the barrier, reserving their energy while rhythmically wearing Phillip down with time. Jacob\'s party didn\'t have too long before they would be forced into a fight, and the more time passed, the worse Phillip\'s condition would be as they started the assault.

Theodore poured every bit of essence into his holy affinity, drowning the severe gash in the guard\'s side, trying desperately to help it seal. He cast Heal repeatedly, trying to make progress, but the situation was desperate.

The way things were looking, he would also be weakened when they started the fight.

Every affinity that had access to healing spells healed differently. Water could prevent, or even entirely stop bleeding, and it could significantly accelerate long-term natural recovery.

Life could grow tissue back and fuse it together, even reaching a supernatural healing quality at the upper end of power—in some cases, supreme quality, but that could only be self-directed.

Nature drastically sped up natural recovery, cutting weeks of progress to mere minutes.

The holy affinity was special. The healing quality was entirely stuck at supernatural, from the weakest spells to the strongest, but most of the effect was focused on purging foreign essence from the target\'s body. The man\'s wound was already pure—and supernatural-quality healing was expensive. Not to mention that Theodore was newly ascended, making all his holy spells stage zero.

Thankfully, they had plenty of healing resources at hand, lessening the burden on their support.

After a few minutes, Theodore dropped down, pulled a handkerchief out of his storage ring, and wiped his sweaty forehead. "He\'ll live," he said, shaking his head. "I can\'t keep this up if you want me to help in the fight."

"You did well," Jacob said. "What\'s your name?" he asked the wounded man.

"I\'m…" He winced at the pain as he spoke. "My name\'s James."

"What\'s your talent and affinities?"

"I… I have enhanced strength," the man said. "And my affinity is air."

Jacob sighed. "Close your eyes and rest," he told the man, deducing that the guard wouldn\'t be of any help against their enemy, not in his current state.

"Thank you, sir," the man said as if he\'d been waiting for permission, and he promptly passed out.

"So!" Jacob shouted, clapping his hands together. "Do we let the nerd pass out from exhaustion or fight back immediately?"

"I can buy you ten more minutes," Phillip said, gritting his teeth. "I think we need at least that much for Theo to recover."

"Make that five," said Theodore as he popped a pill. "I\'ll be deadweight if you can\'t protect me. I have enough essence for a Holy Blessing to get you back up to speed."

"I\'d appreciate that, but…" Phillip shifted his legs, bracing himself harder against the next attack. "Save that for Jacob," he said. "I\'d rather take a hit than—"

"No," Jacob said, denying him. "Give the blessing to Karen."

"What?" shouted Rachel, seemingly insulted at the suggestion. "Uhm… I\'m sorry, but like…" She looked at the curly-haired woman, glancing at the saber at her waist. "No offense, by the way, but, uh…" She turned back to Santorio. "She\'s new to the team. I trust you with the blessing more than I do her."

"Rachel…" Jacob sighed. "Do me a favor and shut the fuck up." He massaged his neck, relieving some tension. "She\'s both more skilled and powerful than I am," he admitted. "Besides, I think I have a good plan for what to do."

Everyone in the room focused on him.

For all the man\'s shortcomings, Jacob was an excellent strategist. The man was a born leader, and even though he was a colossal prick, he never let his nasty personality or pride put his party in danger.

First, he asked Theodore for an assessment of their enemy. Even though they had seen their opponents briefly, Theodore had collected an impressive amount of information. "Four were visible, but the way they were positioned indicated the presence of a secondary ranged attacker, likely hidden somewhere in the canopy," he deduced.

"Their aura," he continued, "was a deep red—they\'re experts, all peak two-stars. Judging by the distribution of weaknesses, I spotted one person with Hundred Wet Hells, one with Stone Skin and possibly Metallic Bones, and a third had all their major arteries muted, likely indicating the blood affinity. The essence in the wound I healed was of blood affinity, and the attack most likely came from that individual.

"Judging from what I\'ve seen, one has the water affinity, no visible weapons, likely an unarmed martial artist; another has earth and metal, probably their tanker; a third has the blood affinity with Crimson Mercury, possibly a ranged attacker. I don\'t know about the hidden person, but the fourth had no visible irregularities in the pattern of weaknesses, marking a lack of notable defensive tempering techniques or talent." He took a deep breath and squinted his eyes. "They\'re all wearing the same clothing, making differentiation difficult, but I remember their respective builds. I\'ll mark them blue, brown, and red for the first three and purple for the untempered one."

"Thanks for the run-down," Jacob said, turning to the others. "We don\'t know the full scope of this attack, but I think it\'s safe to assume that they most likely know who we are and what we can do."

Everyone nodded at that.

"With that in mind," their leader continued, "they likely know plenty about our style and party composition. Rachel, Phillip, and I had been together for a while already, and we cooperated with enough other parties that a leak can be confidently accounted for. However…" He turned to face Karen. "She\'s new to the party. And so is Theodore. The two of them are wild cards to our enemy, and it would be wise to center our strategy around their skillset."

Jacob swiftly detailed a loose strategy for their approach. There wasn\'t enough time to hammer out a detailed plan, and the more time they spent discussing it, the more exhausted Phillip became. After less than a minute of talking, they got into position.

"Everyone ready!?" Jacob asked.

"Yes!" the others chanted in unison.

"Phillip!" he shouted. "Fall back!"

The armored man jumped aside, clearing Jacob\'s path.

With a severe expression on his face, Jacob rushed forth and slammed a Tectonic Strike at the metal door, and immediately after, a thick shard of blood fired straight at his head, but he leaned to the side, avoiding the attack.

As soon as he created a clear line of sight, Rachel vanished into his shadow and out into the woods, and Phillip raised his shield and defended Theodore, who proceeded to fire several high-speed, nearly undodgeable lasers at their opponents. The blasts of light did no damage, but they left clear marks on their opponents, allowing them to quickly identify the attackers.

When he was done marking their foes, Theodore raised his arm and placed it on Karen\'s back. With a burst of holy essence, a faint light enveloped the woman.

Karen rushed forward, bursting past Jacob and into the opening like a cannonball as she swung a powerful attack at the man marked in brown, who proceeded to defend himself rather skillfully, orienting his body in a way that would easily deflect most attacks. Unfortunately for him, Karen\'s talent—Sword Saint—wasn\'t something that made her attacks easy to deflect.

The man\'s arms were cleaved right through with close to no effort, and his entire face was chopped clean off, starting from right under his jawline and ending right above his forehead, allowing the man\'s brains and blood to scatter through the forest. Karen appeared to flinch at the sight, but she recovered her composure immediately afterward.

Jacob threw a fireball beneath the feet of the mysterious attacker marked purple and rushed at the one marked with a blue patch. His talent excelled at destroying defensive opponents, and he expected his target to fall apart into pieces as soon as he landed an attack on him.

But the momentum of their assault had fizzled out, and their opponents had finally reoriented themselves.

Several thick vines wrapped around Jacob\'s leg, and he cussed at the thorns tearing into his calves. "Shit!" he yelled as his attack lost most of its momentum, but he extended it anyway, doing his best to start his confrontation off with an upper hand.

Just as his fist was about to reach, his opponent vanished into thin air.

As a well-timed Flowing Strike slammed into the back of Jacob\'s head, he realized that his opponent had an instant teleportation talent. The world swam before his eyes, but he wasn\'t so weak as to fall from something as small as this.

Before his opponent could pull his leg back, Jacob grabbed it and swung the man down, but the figure contorted their body in a way that allowed him to wrestle his leg free from Jacob\'s grasp and land a powerful punch straight into his midsection, just in time for the figure to teleport again, slamming a mighty kick into the back of his knee while a sharp shard of blood embedded itself deeply into Jacob\'s cheek, cracking a tooth.

He spotted a fifth, unmarked figure fall from a nearby branch wrestling with Rachel, who kept her thighs wrapped tightly around their head as she stabbed away at the cloaked attacker\'s stomach. This only occupied his attention for a fraction of a second, and, predicting an attack to the right of his head, where the shard of blood was waiting to be embedded deeper into his skull, he raised an arm to defend himself.

Unfortunately, his opponent seemed to have predicted this possibility and had attacked his side instead, which was now entirely exposed.

Karen rushed at the blood caster, flicking their projectiles out of the air as she inched closer. The purple-marked figure suddenly flew out of the mass of fire Jacob had created, covered in a thin sheet of water protecting their body from the heat. As soon as the attacker made their way past the fire barrier, they launched a rain of ice shards at such speed that even Karen took several blows to her torso before she could defend herself, allowing an opening for the blood caster to pin her leg to the ground with a blood javelin.

The Black woman pulled her leg back with cold efficiency, allowing the javelin to mangle her calf as she balanced on the other foot and cleaved right through the massive boulder of ice flying at her, but just as the two pieces of ice fell to her side, a bloody projectile shot at her neck, only allowing her enough room to stop it from piercing her throat or cutting her jugular vein.

Jacob wanted to finish his fight and step in to help Karen as soon as possible, but his opponent was proving too effective against him.

While Shatterstrike was excellent against heavily defended foes, it was powerless when he couldn\'t land a direct attack. He cursed the shortcoming of his talent as he took another blow to his other side and a kick straight to his face, one that broke his nose and sent blood flying into the air as the world spun before his eyes.

Suddenly, Jacob raised a leg and slammed the ground with a Tectonic Strike, lighting up both his stars. The attack split the ground beneath him, shifting his opponent\'s footing for a second.

The cloaked man was going to teleport. Jacob\'s mind whirled as his eyes shot wide open. His mind rushed as he contemplated the possibilities. Where would his opponent go? Would he move behind him as he had several times already? Would the man fall back, creating distance between them to disengage? Soon enough, he realized that it didn\'t matter.

His face contorted, widening into a manic grin as he ignited an explosion beneath his left foot. The man teleported somewhere, likely expecting an attack, but Jacob flew to the side, instead launching himself toward Karen. The skin on his foot was burned, and his leg was wrought in agony, but he grinned nonetheless as his massive body flew forward.

Karen seemed to sense his approach, and as he neared, he shouted, "Out of my way!" And the woman complied.

He barreled at the blood caster, turning his back as he got into position to slam into them. The blood caster conjured a shield of bloody spikes, but that was useless. 156 kilograms of muscle, tempered with Hundred Wet Hells and Stone Skin and empowered with Tectonic Strike and Shatterstrike, broke through the spikes like a thin sheet of glass. As the force of his form slammed into the cloaked figure, their body exploded into a shower of bloody pieces, fracturing like a statue of glass.

The ice caster didn\'t hesitate, preparing to execute him on the spot, but a brief flash of light blinded them at the right moment, allowing Jacob to throw a quick fireball at their legs. The figure screamed in a woman\'s voice as Karen dashed at her, propelling herself on a single foot as a flawless saber swing decapitated her opponent.

The water-affinity martial artist was the only person left standing, and seeing his comrades defeated, he turned around to run.

A second later, a Piercing Beam fired from Theodore\'s palm, but the man dodged with insane reflexes, teleporting forward before the ability could touch him. But just as he reappeared a mere three meters away, Rachel, bathed in blood from head to toe, rose from his shadow.

From her left arm, a thick chain of darkness appeared and whipped around the man\'s neck, and she pulled back with all her strength as she punched a katar of blood right into his back, penetrating through his rigid body just deeply enough to reach his heart.

The man broke the chain with a Flowing Strike punch and teleported forward again, but a few seconds later, his steps slowed as he tumbled to the ground, dead.

A deathly silence descended upon them, but nobody dropped their guard.

Jacob and Karen had suffered debilitating injuries.

Rachel had lost tons of blood, but her blood affinity ensured she had plenty to spare. Most of her skin had been lacerated by thorns from her confrontation with the figure hiding in the trees. "Fuck me," she said. "Who the hell were these freaks!?"

Jacob took a deep breath.

Theodore tumbled forward, looking quite exhausted. The man had consumed a lot of essence. Usually, this wouldn\'t leave someone in such a condition. But the holy affinity was different. Both the light and holy affinities came with massive strengths and weaknesses.

As for the holy affinity, it had, by far, the most tremendous backlash among all common affinities. Using Holy Blessing twice in a single day and healing that guard had wrecked his body, and the quick and dirty method through which he replenished his essence wasn\'t helping either.

Jacob pushed himself off the ground, wincing at the numerous bruises scattered around his body. "We\'re in no state to go anywhere," he said. "Go back into the intermediate realm lobby. Phillip, wall the passage off as best as you can…

"I have a feeling we have a lot more work to do."

***

Latent aura was the most critical resource for securing long-term growth. The best way to acquire more latent aura was to embrace risk. However, not all risk was equal. And not all risk mattered the same.

For example, fighting a more powerful opponent was excellent. On the other hand, fighting an opponent of the same or similar power while there was a risk that a more powerful opponent might appear… wasn\'t particularly impactful.

Uncontrollable and unpredictable outside variables didn\'t matter because they were no indicator of skill or good decision-making—they were entirely dependent on pure luck.

The Netherecho in the interspace was an excellent example of such an environment. There was constantly a risk that a powerful remnant or spirit would just pop up out of nowhere and obliterate an archhuman\'s projection, and, often enough, they could attack from entirely outside their range of view, making reacting to the threat almost impossible.

Or, even worse, the threat could simply pop out of the ground. Sentient ether constructs could move through obstacles in the Netherecho.

Freddy had often used Bloodshed to help in the Netherecho, but it had never been an exceptionally reliable way to grow his star.

Well… not until Sophia came in.

He didn\'t necessarily feel stupid for failing to recognize Bloodshed\'s utility, but damn was he humbled by Sophia\'s wisdom.

Their projections stood side by side, his blue reaper holding a massive scythe as her projection took the form of a… princess? It was a small, doll-like projection wearing a fluffy pink dress, and her golden hair draped over one eye, covering it entirely, while her second eye was a massive, crazed orb of purple with small veins along the edges.

And her soul construct… while his was quite peculiar, hers was beyond bizarre. She had four fleshy tentacles growing out of her back—two hung above her shoulders while the other pair went around her waist, almost looking like freaky spider legs.

These tentacles could stretch far and exhibit quite a bit of power. Their unique ability was Bind. If she used it, all four tentacles would wrap around her target, making them an excellent way to restrain foes.

The two of them looked on as Bloodshed pummeled the head of what looked like a friendly earthen bear as it begged for mercy.

The plan was simple—the spirit would scout the Netherecho in the immediate area, making sure that no threats were lurking nearby. Then it would drag a remnant over to them, placing it in the middle of an improvised arena. It would assault the remnant long enough to reveal how it fought and to show if it had any special ways to attack.

This way, both outside interference and hidden powers were utterly ruled out of the equation, making their confrontation with the remnant a function of pure skill and strategy.

It was such a simple yet brilliant way to accumulate latent aura. It irked him, but he had to admit that she knew what she was doing. Granted, it was still quite dangerous, but with Bloodshed nearby, the odds of either of them dying to their foe were much lower than they would be otherwise. That did impact the reward in latent aura, but not enough to justify going against such creatures without insurance.

As Bloodshed finished the scouting and cleaning, it dragged forth their first opponent. It was a massive, hunched figure of black, flaky skin, taking the form of a dog-like creature that stood on two legs. Both its jaws and claws were a forest of sharp, fragmented spikes, and its wild attacks could even lightly damage Bloodshed itself.

Freddy winced. "By the way," he started, facing Sophia\'s projection. "How long do you think we should go at this?"

Her mouth widened into a creepy, wicked, toothy grin. "As far as it can take us, of course. Now, let\'s begin."