Blood Magic

Lilian and the others had entered the forest. The trees were huge and covered all the sunlight, not a single bird could be heard singing, this place was deserted without any indication of life, after all it was extremely difficult for any animal to survive alone, usually they stayed in flocks to have a better chance of survival in case of an attack by a zombie animal.

"Uh! It's pretty quiet around here, it's giving me the chills...", said one of the children.

"Haha, don't worry we'll get deeper into the forest and by then it will start to get loud!", said Keito with a smile on his face.

Farther into the forest they spotted the first zombie.

"Look! A zombie wow, look at how ugly he is!", said one of the children, the zombie they spotted had a deformed human appearance with several lumps and holes all over his body, he had a grayish green color and was very slow, some of the children even threw up when they saw him.

"Oh that's a good zombie he's not very strong, and he's very slow, he can be found almost everywhere, he's one of the lowest rank zombies!", said Keito as he looked at the zombie.

"Would anyone volunteer to try to take him on? It's not too hard to beat him", Keito asked the children.

"I'd like to!", said a boy with a spear. "Great! What's your name?", asked Keito. "My name is Rick, I'm a spear user!"he said excitedly, wanting to fight the zombie.

Rick was a good looking boy. He had brown hair and was tall for boys his age, you could see muscles on his arms showing how hard he trained.

He took a step forward and advanced towards the zombie, stabbing his spear into its chest, but only making a superficial cut since the boy was only level 1 and the zombie still had some resistance, even though he was among the weakest.

More and more cuts were shown all over the zombie's body, until the zombie collapsed on the ground.

Rick looked at the other children feeling proud of himself and gave a smile to Lilian who had no reaction, she just reciprocated the smile.

Just as Rick was getting ready to return with the rest of the group, the zombie grabbed his leg, and the boy fell on his back on the ground and tried escaping in desperation as the zombie crawled closer and closer.

"You can never let your guard down near a zombie until you are sure it is dead!" said Keito as he swung his ax towards the zombie's head and decapitated it, "One way to know if it is really dead is the System notification, if you don't see the notification don't let your guard down!"

Lilian, who was watching Rick's fight and was impressed with how tolerant people were in this world, just seeing that zombie being stockpiled made her extremely disgusted. Of course people in this world grow up preparing psychologically for this, yet it's still hard to resist when you see it in person.

After Keito sternly instructed the children, they continued walking within the forest until they found another zombie of the more common ones.

"Well, who would want to go against that zombie? Remember the lessons you learned earlier", said Keito.

"I would like to try!", said Lilian raising her hand.

All the children looked at her in surprise, mages usually don't go in a fight, alone against zombies, they stay in the rear and support the vanguard.

"Oh, Lilian, it's okay, go ahead, I'm right here if anything happens," said Keito;

Lilian nodded and was heading towards the zombie when she stopped and spoke, "Can I borrow a knife?"Keito was surprised by her request, after all Lilian was a mage and would use her magic for attack, but he lent it anyway.

"Hmm... alright let's test that [Evaluation] skill", Lilian thought as she stared at the zombie, and then a list of information appeared.

[Race: Zombie Gorb

[Lvl: 13

[Hp: 135/135

[Mana: 0/0

[Power: 23

[Strength: 12

[Intelligence: 2

[Defense: 16

[Magic: 0

[Agility: 1

[Abilities]

[Pain Resistance; level 4], [Fortitude; level 3]

"Wow, I can see the zombie's System... so they can level up too, and this one is only level 13 I should be able to kill him, he doesn't have any attack skills!", muttered Lilian as she went towards the zombie and landed an attack on his arm with the knife.

Everyone watching was perplexed, "Wasn't she a mage? Why is she going melees with the zombie?"; "Isn't she going to use magic?", were the questions the children and even Keito were asking themselves.

After she landed several cuts on the zombie's arm Lilian stepped back and started circulating mana through her body; then Lilian used the [Blood Manipulation] skill and from all the wounds on the zombie's body started gushing blood and floating about Lilian's control.

She concentrated and began to mold the blood into solid, pointed shapes, then she flicked them all in the direction of the zombie that was torn to pieces.

Ding!

[Acquired Skill

[Blood Blade; level 1]

Ding!

[You killed a Gorb Zombie Level 13]

[+32 XP]

"I got the notification, I think he's dead!", said Lilian looking pure and innocent.

All the people were shocked at what they saw.

"What the hell was that?";

"What kind of magic was that? I've never seen it before!";

"Wow, what powerful magic!", the children whispered to each other.

Keito, who was perplexed, said, "Yeah I guess so... he's dead" as he looked at the pieces of the zombie trying to process what happened.

Lilian looked at what she did to the zombie and grew greener and greener with disgust, "Bleeh, I'll never get used to this", she said.

"Lilian, may I know what kind of magic you used there?", asked Keito a little curious, that was something he had never seen before.

Lilia didn't mind and said, "Blood Manipulation...", Keito was even more surprised, for, it was a magic he had never heard of, "Uhm... it must be some rare type of magic, for, I have never seen or heard of a mage who controls blood, but that's okay let's keep moving forward!", he said.

"A rare type of magic? Wow looks like I won the lottery", muttered Lilian with a smile on her face.

Lilian's group continued walking in the forest and each member faced a zombie whenever they found one wandering around; when they found two zombies together, Keito sent more than one child and put them to work as a team.

Everything was normal, until then...