Blood Shaper

Book 4: Chapter 27

Kay tried not to sigh as he deflected another attack from Quenrev’s sword, once again pushing the blade upward and past him before throwing a few blows of his own out at his opponent. They were all deflected or dodged with varying levels of ease, and Kay started to get bored. The duel was developing into a pattern, with Quenrev making very similar attacks in a series and reacting to Kay’s counters in repetitive ways as well. It wasn’t hard to see what his opponent was doing, trying to hide his own capabilities and trump cards while drawing out Kay’s. In a duel that was as much about the audience as it was the fighting, doing things in a showy way was just as important as winning. At least, that was what Kay thought the motivation was.

Personally, Kay wanted to just go ahead and finish this. It would only take a moment since Quenrev’s cautious approach made it easy to take him out with one overwhelming attack. But that would mean disregarding Eleniah’s instructions to limit himself and work on growing and learning. He wasn’t gaining much for his Punch Daggers Skill since they were just trading the same few blows over and over again, so he settled in for learning concepts. What was the best way to work around what his enemy wanted? Quenrev wanted to keep this attrition-based fight going until Kay got tired or made a mistake, and then he would capitalize on that opening. The first step, then, was for Kay to make sure he didn’t allow himself to give that opening. Step two was not showing off anything new, mostly because fuck this guy for interrupting his day but also for the learning experience. Some day, he could end up in a fight where he really did need to keep his secrets until the last moment. The third and final step was beating this arrogant dick.

Time to take some risks, I guess. Kay waited while the cycle of attacks repeated. It wasn’t ever exactly the same, but there were overall themes that kept occurring. Big step forward and plant his foot to add power to a reaching slash, followed by a sharp pull backward to try and cut Kay’s neck, tank some of Kay’s strikes, bash with the shield for distance, then go for a downward slash. That combo kept appearing over and over, which meant somewhere in it was a trap. Get too used to it, deal with it by rote, then get his ass handed to him.

Of course, sometimes, the best way to deal with a trap is to trigger it. The way he slowed his downward slash for just a moment mid-swing looked like a move to change the trajectory, but it was also a moment to grab the sword and hold it in place to get a good hit in while one of Quenrev’s arms was disabled, so that’s where the trap was. Kay let the repetition go through a few more times to get the timing down, then waited for the slash. He’d jump into the trap, see what it was, then use the opening where Quenrev thought he’d done something to take him out. Was it a little foolhardy? Yes, it was, but it was better to learn in a somewhat safer environment than to do it in a true battle to the death. This was only a maybe battle to the death, much safer.

There was some shouting coming from one side of the raised stands that Kay tuned out as he kept waiting for the opportunity. He saw Quenrev’s eyes flick in that direction, and suddenly, the pattern was gone; the duelist leaped forward with a series of straight thrusts and short slashes, keeping Kay moving within a small radius of the floor. A commotion in the stands immediately followed by a change in tactics by his opponent had Kay’s instincts screaming “danger”, so he let his sense expand, keeping an ear and an eye out for trouble from elsewhere instead of focusing completely on Quenrev. His caution was vindicated when a group of people wearing bandana-like face coverings jumped to the floor opposite where the commotion had come from.

A distraction? Easily deciding that keeping himself safe was a higher priority than following Eleniah’s directions, Kay empowered his legs with Blood Boost and prepared to leap away from Quenrev, keeping the duelist between him and these newcomers. He wasn’t going to automatically kill the duelist as an accomplice to an assassination attempt, but he wasn’t trusting the man either.

A flash of light along Quenrev’s curved blade had Kay tensing to deal with his attack, and his eyes followed the movement. The snake beastkin drew his sword up beside his face like he was about to thrust forward, and Kay automatically glanced at the man’s eyes. As soon as they made eye contact, Quenrev smirked, and his yellow eyes glowed bright, his slit pupils contracting to a razor's edge.

Kay’s entire body tensed up, freezing for just a second. He threw off the paralysis immediately, but a mere moment was enough for what the assassins had been planning.

A sharp pain ran through Kay’s torso. He looked behind him and down to see a rapier ran through his body sideways, from just below his arm out the other side. He could feel the cold metal piercing his insides, drilling a hole through both his lungs and clipping his heart. That would have been a killing blow to anyone of a lower tier, and even for a tier-five, it probably would have been crippling enough to leave them open for a deathblow, but Kay wasn’t your standard tier-five. Two different sets of regeneration started pushing back against the wounds as soon as they occurred, and Kay would be back in fighting shape as soon as he got the weapon out of his body.

The assassin who stabbed him either relaxed because he thought he was done or was completely stunned at Kay tanking the stab, but he didn’t move as Kay pivoted, flooding mana-enriched blood through his arm as he backhanded him away.

Damn, should have cut his head off. Looks like reacting appropriately immediately after being injured is still something to work on. Kay ripped the sword out of him and tossed it to the side. The tiny drips of blood that leaked out of the twin holes on either side of him were used to patch up his armor, and he took a deep breath as his lungs sealed back up.

Quenrev stepped back, mouth and eyes wide open. Kay had left his face showing as they fought, which gave him the opportunity to shoot the man a look. Kay wasn’t sure exactly what his own expression was; it was somewhere between disdainful and murderous, but he didn’t know where on that scale before sealing his face behind a mask of blood. It was smooth, featureless, and slightly reflective, which let both of them see the look of fear on the duelist’s face as Kay threw himself forward.

His former duel opponent and current attempted murderer pulled back, his weapon and buckler up in a defensive position. Kay just raised his arm once he was close enough to make sure he didn’t miss, and a fire hose blast of blood caught the man in the chest and sent him flying backward. Kay had wanted to slam him into the wall, but he bounced off an amorphous barrier of energy that had popped up at some point. He looked around and saw the original group that had jumped down onto the floor in a triangle formation facing him. The fighter in the front was heavily armored with a massive shield braced against the ground, another had a large crossbow pointed in Kay’s direction, and the third was a caster of some kind with a staff who was pouring visible energy into the barrier around them.

Two heavy bolts flew at him; one went over his shoulder after a slight movement, and the other he cut out of the air with a newly formed halberd. The blade swung down in a heavy chop with the cutting blade at the neck of the fourth assassin, who had gotten up and come for Kay’s back again with his rapier back in hand somehow. Kay had been expecting it, though, and moved to eliminate him from the fight. The cutting edge dug into the side of their neck, and Kay saw a pair of incredibly wide pale blue eyes turn into a thin black shroud that dispersed like morning mist.

A quick glance for a follow-up attack showed Kay, the shadow user, rolling out from behind their ally's tower shield, clutching at their neck. Quenrev was also moving, but it was away from the assassins and Kay, pushing back against the barrier like he didn’t want to be anywhere near this.

He couldn’t make out any particular features of the assassins apart from their eyes; they had masks covering their faces, and the squishier armor three of them wore had an interesting blurring effect around them, making it hard to see their bodies. He did learn a few things when they started talking.

“Right!” The caster ripped their staff down, their voice marking them as a man, and the energy beaming up into the barrier cut off. “It’s stable now. You good?”

The close-in fighter let go of their neck, the muscles around their eyes scrunching up as they flicked blood off their hand. Their voice was deep, gruff, and also a man’s. “Fine.” He tossed an empty potion bottle behind him. “This’ll be a bit trickier than we expected.”

“You think?” The caster pointed his staff at Kay, adding a few magical bolts into the steady stream of bolts being fired at him, trying to keep him back from their position. “He had your sword through him and didn’t even flinch. We’re going all out.”

The rapier fighter nodded once and dove forward into their own shadow, arms forward like an Olympic diver. The caster waited till two more bolts were fired at Kay and patted the heavily armored figure on the back. “Go.” The shield surged forward at Kay at ramming speed.

Create Simulacrum (Blood) was one of Kay’s Skills with the most potential. Being able to copy enemies of allies was a powerful weapon, and the tier-five Classes it gave him access to would make him a mobile army ready to spring up into existence at the drop of a hat. Conversely, it was one of his Skills that he’d had the least amount of time, and he hadn’t mastered every element of it yet. His biggest deficit with it was that he couldn’t start creating his simulacra instantly; it took a short amount of time to form from a source of blood.

If Kay had started growing bodies out in the open while the assassins discussed, they’d try to stop him. Kay had been experimenting with his Skills for months, though, and had learned something interesting. As long as he didn’t reduce their mass too much, his simulacra could be changed into different shapes with Shape Blood, as long as he was doing it to them. They couldn’t make big changes to themselves even when they were copies of him with his Skills, but he could make them look like anything he wanted to as long as he kept a portion of his concentration on them.

Which was how the shadow user of the assassination group found themselves face to face with another smooth faceless mask as a simulacra leapt out of Kay’s armor, two punch daggers in hand as it took a stab through the chest and ignored it, blades lashing out at his face.

Two more simulacra jumped out from Kay, one of them turning its arms into flat shields and the other bulking up in size as it rushed the charging shield wielder in turn. The simulacrum was unable to completely stop the heavy metal charge, but it got a grip on the shield and dug its feet in, slowing the rush down considerably as its brother knocked down a flurry of bolts, speeding Kay’s way.

Thanks to his teacher, Kay mostly ignored any attempts at battlefield banter. Talking to an enemy was just another way to give them information or get lead into their timing. Better to just kill them quietly and be done with it. But like all things, there was a time and a place, and Kay had an image to uphold, an image that was expected of him from outsiders and his own people. It was something baked into the basic layer of societies in this world, and while a lot of the “might makes right” leadership picking that seemed to run Torotia, there were a few things he could get behind. Like the image of an unflappable, confident leader who would weather the odds and come out on top no matter the circumstances.

“I’d say something like: ‘Let’s see how you like it when we even up the odds,’ but…” Two more simulacra stepped off of Kay’s sides and rushed to join the fight. “That wouldn’t really work for a line, would it?”