1% Lifesteal

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."

He bumped her outstretched fist, and they turned around. The dagger in his hand gleamed under the light coming from the outside.

A large stone crumbled apart a moment later, and four gorels pushed into the cave.

With a flick of his wrist, Gore Knuckles appeared along Freddy\'s fingers, and with almost lazy jabs, he poked the rushing monsters in their faces. They supplied all of the momentum while he did the least he could get away with, ensuring he was conserving as much energy as possible.

None of the four monsters were instantly killed by the jabs, but all of them had received a poke to the brain through their eyes and were convulsing on the floor as a result, twitching and bleeding the last of their lives away. They bled profusely as their wounds leaked like open faucets, courtesy of the cursed dagger.

"Let\'s go," he said, moving forward and leaving the cave through the small hole.

The sound of gorel screams and hissing was reverberating through the realm at such volume that it created a constant background drone, akin to the howl of a million damned souls. Like ants between blades of grass, the ape sloth moles shifted through the forest, running around aimlessly and looking for anything to attack.

This was what happened when queens got slaughtered en masse—it brought forth pure pandemonium.

As they walked out into the clearing, several gorels noticed their arrival and turned to face them. But not all the gorels present realized they were there. There was a lot of infighting, and most of the critters seemed too preoccupied with fighting each other to pay much attention to the two of them.

Freddy swung a spiked fist at the head of a charging guard, and just as it became lights out for the monster—the fake sun above was also extinguished. He winced, seeing close to nothing in the absolute darkness. "It just had to go out now, didn\'t it?" he cursed as he swung a fist toward the second incoming gorel, predicting where it would go and smashing its head without any trouble.

"Wait," Sophia said as she got close enough for a whisper. "Isn\'t this a good thing? I can see in the dark by focusing on the life force, and you can also see at least something, no?"

He scowled. With two-star perception, he could indeed see "something." A very vague outline of the world around him was just barely visible. It was hard to tell any details apart, and all he caught of the black-furred monsters was the occasional shifting in the shadows.

They spent a good part of their time there in the darkness, but during those times, they usually focused on tempering, physical training, and gathering. He couldn\'t see well enough to fight in the dark.

His eyes slowly adapted to the darkness, but it wasn\'t enough to undo the disadvantage. He took a deep breath. "I\'m gonna try something. Be ready with a heal if it fails."

"Okay."

Swiftly, he brought three perception-boosting pills out of his storage ring. He still had quite a few of them.

He had never taken more than one at a time.

He swallowed them and washed them down with some water he generated with Create Water. The materialized liquid would evaporate before long, but it did its job by getting the pills to his stomach.

At first, he felt fine. But then it started. A piercing headache sparked in the back of his head and slowly moved down his spine. He groaned.

"What did you do? Are you good?" she asked.

"Yeah, I\'m"—he slowly breathed out through gritted teeth—"I\'m good."

It was terrible, but it wasn\'t enough to knock him out. He was already quite used to taking them, so he could tolerate the effect.

The sound of gorel movement was so damn loud in his ears that he couldn\'t hear his own thoughts. But as he focused, his sight grew slightly clearer. The pills couldn\'t give him night vision, but they could allow him to more easily differentiate the things he could see.

Within a few seconds, he could track where the monsters were, and after ten more, he could roughly estimate their silhouette and how far away they were. It was far from a perfect solution, but it was good enough to handle a couple of monsters.

He just hoped they didn\'t encounter any cultists. Thankfully, the darkness provided them with a cover. It would be far more difficult to spot them moving in these circumstances.

And, just like that, they proceeded forward. The gorels rarely relied on their sight, but their hearing and sense of smell were essentially useless at that moment. The smell of blood was everpresent in the air, and the sounds of screaming, rustling, and hissing were deafening.

Being thrown into near-total darkness on top of all that? They couldn\'t tell up from down or left from right. The chaos added to the disorientation, and as a result, barely any of the monsters caught wind of them.

At first, landing strikes was tricky. Freddy\'s perception of three-dimensional space was quite unreliable, dark as his surroundings were, but with time, he got better at it. With every gorel he snuck up on, his headache eased slightly.

Sophia mostly stood to the side, letting Freddy handle most of the combat. His endurance was several times greater than hers, so it was best to spare her reserves.

While he wasn\'t thrilled by it initially, the darkness was a huge help. The monsters were sitting ducks in these circumstances, and Freddy was a merciless hunter. His Gore Knuckles were no longer breaking apart unless he really abused them, so it rarely took more than a single swing to finish a gorel off. Even if they didn\'t die outright, the wounds his strikes left behind were like open faucets of blood, courtesy of the dagger he held.

The only thing he was worried about was the possibility of deviants appearing. A fear that was soon justified.

Freddy swung at one of the smaller workers and felt the spikes sink into its back. The creature screamed and turned around. Its maw suddenly lit up with orange flames.

Freddy\'s whole body was washed over with scorching fire, searing his skin and blinding him. Sophia jumped in a moment later, cutting the deviant\'s head off with her shortsword and healing him. The damage was substantial, but a single spark was enough to almost completely erase it.

"Your talent is bullshit," he chirped as he got back up to his feet, blinking away the blurry spots in his vision.

"Be more careful," she whispered. "Aim for the head next time."

"Aight," he said, gulping as they continued their advance.

They kept moving through the forest, and no matter how long he fought, he saw no reason to expend his essence. He wasn\'t even growing tired. His body was incredibly tense throughout the whole walk, but his training wasn\'t just for show.

The culmination of all the absurd methods he had used to empower himself was bearing fruit.

As one gorel after another died from his brutal assault, he started racking up quite the body count. He repeatedly consulted Bloodshed to ensure that all the blood he spilled up to that point would count towards Blood Sacrifice.

Before long, he encountered a beast he had never seen—a royal guard. Its form was almost identical to those of gorels, but it was far larger in size, and it stood upright, having a far less pronounced hunch on its back. Standing three meters in height, it tore rival gorels apart like they were made of tofu. Each of its claws was the size of a sword.

The two of them gave the monster a wide berth. Defeating it was by no means impossible, but it was a completely unnecessary risk. The darkness was stifling, and all it would take was one good swing to cleave through both of them, turning them into helpless chunks of undead meat waiting to be devoured in the tide of berserk monsters.

Surprisingly quickly, they reached the vicinity of one of the passages. All they had to do then was summon Bloodshed and rush forward.

Swallowing, Freddy eyed the direction they were heading in, taking deep breaths to calm his nerves. His heart was hammering in his chest, and sweat was pooling along his skin. "You know what?" he said as he turned to face Sophia. "I don\'t think we should go immediately. We have the darkness on our side, so getting as much blood as possible would be better."

Sophia winced at that. "What if the day returns?" she asked. "We shouldn\'t get greedy. Let\'s go while we have the advantage."

"No," he denied. "We can take our time. How long has it been? An hour? Even if we get really unlucky, I\'m collecting more blood than I thought I would," he said as he stepped forward and killed another gorel to ensure the blood accumulation wouldn\'t reset. "I can get a really good Blood Sacrifice going if we keep this up."

She remained silent for a long moment, then breathed out. "Okay then," she agreed.

He nodded, and they continued.

Their journey wasn\'t without hiccups. At one point, they came across a deviant with a nature affinity, which proceeded to douse his whole body with acidic poison. At another point, they assaulted a light-affinity gorel, which proceeded to use blinding flash, not only taking their vision away but also attracting a damn flood of gorels in their direction by acting as a beacon in the darkness.

Add another close encounter with a royal guard, a deviant firing shards of ice from an unknown location, and a sudden surge of gorels as they stepped too close to a hive, and they had quite the ride.

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.