Blood Shaper

Book 5: Chapter 48

A tidal wave of black rose up behind the blue light and crashed down on the island of Sel, sweeping defenders and warriors under the roiling tide. Kay responded with a wave of his own, red crashing against black as he pushed out more blood, more protection to everyone he could reach. People fell and were sucked beneath but waves of red peeled the eldritch corruption back and threw them away. There were dozens, maybe hundreds that Kay couldn’t save, who vanished beneath the evil that mocked the beautiful waves of the ocean with its semblance, but those he could save threw themselves back into the fight with a vigor.

Kay began twisting and spinning his blood sea in a wide circle, creating a whirlpool that rasped along the layers of nanomachines that added abrasion to the disintegration and sped up the rate at which the blob was stripped away and destroyed. A maelstrom of red battled against the swelling black waves that tried to crash down on the shore and drown Kay in their inky depths. A storm battled against the ocean, and bit by bit the storm was winning. A second storm, a true storm, joined is as clouds burst from ground level and a miniature hurricane began wreaking havoc wherever it could reach. Alahna floated in the center of it, directing gale force winds, bolts of lightning, cutting rain, and bombarding hail to push the black tide back from the weaker combatants.

The mass of nanomachines responded with a volley of attacks. The two massive limbs extruding from the tower stopped trying to batter through Kay’s defenses and aimed at the Queen of the Seramist Isles instead. They swung through the spiraling storm and tried to knock her from the air. She dove under one and over the other, swirling winds carrying her through the sky. The tentacles split into hundreds of smaller pieces tipped with weapons and devastating extremities that began chasing her. She danced around, through, and past them as the extending tendrils began weaving a net to surround her. Alahna responded with chain lightning that jumped in all directions, creating a web of lightning inside the web of nanomachines.

The blood champions and blood soldiers were forced back in a shrinking perimeter around Kay. They hacked and slashed at the encroaching mass, but there was always more of it to pierce them through and drag them off or just crush them into splotches on the ground. The pressure was mounting, and it was beginning to look like they were going to lose. A smashed blood champion became many-sided blades under Kay’s control that dug several feet into the mass before being overwhelmed. The area he controlled was destroying nanomachines permanently and keeping back the enemy overall, but it shrunk in increments as the unending tide pushed him back.

Clenching his teeth beneath his helmet, Kay activated another of his most powerful Skills. “[Lord’s Bloody Domain].” He could feel the limits of his reach expand as he paid the mana cost to turn on his Sublime Skill’s active component. Lord’s Bloody Domain wasn’t near the top of his list of best Skills because of it’s direct combat potential but because it let him hit things in a much wider area. A geyser of blood burst from inside him and fell back down in drops across every inch of the writhing black abomination. Each bit was only a drop, burning away a pinch of nanomachines as they impacted, but millions of tiny drops make rain, and rain that doesn’t end makes a flood. Billions of gallons flowed out of Kay’s veins, stored there by his Expanded Veins Skill and built up over may years not only through his own sped up biological production of blood, but by donations from his people and stripping it away from his defeated enemies.

All of the enemy’s attention came down on Kay and with that attention came a multitude of attacks, dwarfing its attempts to crush him before this. Wave after wave of nanomachines, tall enough to wipe buildings off the map, slammed down on him and broke against his protections. He threw shields and barriers in front of him to blunt the attacks and destroy as much of the sludge as possible. The bits that remained pulled back into the mass to be part of the next attack and still Kay didn’t falter.

“[Mandate to Blood Spilled]!” Kay pushed his mana outward and metaphorically back through time for the first time in a real battle, pulling at events at the past to provide himself with more ammunition. He didn’t know of any gruesome battles that had taken place here or massacres committed on this island, but people had lived here for millennia and people bled all the time. Portions of the black carpet that covered the ground began to sink as pools of blood were brought into being, dissolving the underside of the eldritch monstrosity. Drips, drabs, splashes, pools, they all came into existence from times before and began fighting back against the corruption trying to stain the world.

The blue light that resembled a singular unblinking eye glowed bright for one moment before dimming as trails of it spread through the monster a second time. Streaking and branching throughout every inch, the loss of nanomachines slowed, then stopped, the reversed. Kay could feel the blood under his control start to get ripped apart where it touched the nanomachines, and more black mass began to spill out and attack him. The nanomachines ate the blood that burned them away, creating more of themselves even as they died, unbound by whatever restrictions slowed their reproduction under the power of the blue light. The unnatural energy empowered them even as it dimmed, the powers of otherworldly and corrupted creation battling against a force of stability, crimson lifeblood that washed away the black tide, screaming “You do not belong here!” as the tide sought to eat and consume all that it touched so that it could grow so large nothing could unseat it.

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A frothy sphere of water detonated from inside the tangle of wires holding Alahna in, scouring away the ties trying to restrict her. She soared even higher into the air, exhaustion and rage on her face as she raised one hand toward the heavens. “[Call the Storm]!” She screamed, and the sky turned black. Where a balmy blue sky had been, contrasting so completely with the battle for survival below, there were now pitch black clouds as far as the eye could see, which rumbled with thunder and sparked with lightning. Sheets of rain began to fall, immediately cutting visibility as the wind picked up and began carrying spray in all directions. Kay’s blood, broken clumps of nanomachines, and other debris got caught up in the wind and started pelting back down as projectiles.

The jet of blood erupting out of Kay was swept up by the storm and his tiny rain storm of blood became part of something bigger, staining the rain red. Crimson drops of blood fell behind crystalline droplets of water that pierced through the outer layer of black and opened holes deep into the monstrosity for the blood to spread its deadly Skill-based payload. The eldritch nanomachines were pushed back as a second tier-fives might balanced the scales and turned it from a battle between eldritch expansion versus purifying blood to one of Torotia against that which would consume it until nothing was left.

“Kay!”

He couldn’t turn to look, but he knew that voice and he felt it’s owner run up next to him, pushing effortlessly through the spray and buffeting winds thats blew through the battlefield.

“That blue light is obviously some kind of core!” Eleniah shouted in his ears. “It’s what’s letting it eat the surroundings and grow so fast!”

“I can see that!”

“It’s not unlimited! You can already see it getting weaker the longer we fight it!”

Kay unleashed a blast equal to a thousand combined fire hoses, pushing back the assault against him long enough to look. She was right, the glow was fading as he watched, the rapid duplication of nanomachines consuming whatever that energy was as fuel. Waves of goop burst from the surface of the mass and the twisted blue veins dimmed as the energy was used, then they brightened again as the glowing spherical core pumped its payload out along the channels, refilling the lines of flow and allowing more nanomachines to be created en mass. Each wave it put out dimmed the core slightly and it wasn’t getting any brighter as time passed.

“Great! They don’t have an unlimited supply of whatever that is, but I don’t have unlimited blood and no one had unlimited mana!” He screamed back over the howling storm. “It’s a battle of attrition, and it might be able to outlast us!”

“So we skip the fucking attrition and go for the kill!” She stepped into his line of sight and pointed at the core. “Get me over there and I can turn it into another pile of mush!”

“Thats-“ He stopped himself from saying “That’s too dangerous”. Going right into what had to be the most protected part of the enemy was extremely risky, but the reward outweighed the risk. He was worried that the nanomachines could out endure them and destroying that core would turn the entire battle around, completely removing the enemies ability to replenish itself.

He didn’t want Eleniah to go though. He didn’t want to risk her of all people. They’d just been able to take the next step in their relationship, and tier five or not, this was a circumstance in which she could die. But there was no one else to send. The battle had expanded in scale and shrunk in numbers, with only Kay and Alahna doing noteworthy damage and everyone else still standing fighting on the fringes, cutting back a few cubic feet at most against an enemy with volume measured in thousands of yards. Eleniah wasn’t able to do damage over a wide area like this, but she excelled at hitting one thing very, very hard.

“Even if I can’t kill it directly, I can for sure distract it enough for the two of you to sweep in and back me up!” She added, stealing Kay’s next thought before it even finished spawning in his mind.

“Fine!” Kay shouted to her. The blood beneath her startled swirling around her ankles and climbing up her legs. “I’m giving you every bit of protection I can, though!”

Layer after layer of blood cemented itself to Eleniah’s skin, creating a smooth and flexible set of armor around her body that was pumped full of Purify Blood. Two bulky gauntlets formed around her fists, increasing the area she had to hit with and giving her a weapon that could kill the nanomachines she punched. A hand grew around her and began lifting up into the air, swiveling so that she was facing the glowing eye at the top of the looming black tower. The arm bent back like a catapult and got ready to throw.

Kay continued to grow more layers around Eleniah as he waited for the right moment. He used the ability he’d learned to vibrate the blood under his control to mimic speech and tell Eleniah his plan.

“I’m going to cover you in an outer shell that’s going to detonate outward after you hit. That should hopefully give you enough space to move and get to the core before it can reform its defenses. Just the threat of you should turn things in our favor, so try and kill it but focus on staying alive!”

He couldn’t hear her as she responded, he could only tell she said anything at all because he could feel her lips moving against the blood. He hadn’t learned how to read lips through touch through, so her message back to him went unknown. The layers of blood forming over her made a covering that resembled an artillery shell, and the giant hand cupped it in it’s palm.

He had no idea if she’d seen what they were doing or not, but Alahna made a perfect opening with a devastating lightning attack that burned away an extensive swathe of the writing tentacles that extended from every surface of the abomination they were trying to rid themselves of. The airspace was clear, and Kay launched his projectile. The shell didn’t arc as much as it flew in a straight line, blurring through the air as Kay sent it toward the enemy with both physical force and his Skills. The weapon impacted the tower, which bent back like someones neck after getting punched.

Then the weapon exploded. Hundreds of feet of the stalk-like extrusion were vaporized and the core started to fall, the slug shape at the top warping around it as it careened down toward the main mass of the monster. Kay could just make out a red dot above him as Eleniah landed against the still standing section of tower and thrust herself at the one weak point they knew the enemy had.

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