Plans

Sera strolled into the tavern like she owned the place. Well, she partly did- less than one-third of a bar stool, to be exact. She and three other Adepts were given shares of a bar stool when they passed the hellish initiation tests conducted by Raylee, one of the members of the Red Hornet.

The tavern's layout was not atypical for social establishments of its size in the lower ring. To the left of the door, there was a large bar with several stools occupied by mercenaries and regular folk. Giant barrels of ale, beer, and bottles of colored liquids adorned high wooden shelves behind the three bartenders who served. The rest of the tavern floor was dotted with round and corner tables. High on the stone walls hung, preserved game heads and battle weathered weapons with distorted blades and weapons heads.

Sera walked up to a grey-haired, sharp-faced bartender with an earnest smile. He wore a large, nearly transparent cotton shirt that firmly wrapped around his muscles.

"Are they back yet?" Sera asked with an impatient tone as she and Seth settled in two free seats at the large bar.

"They are, though I doubt they will be glad to see you if you carry that disrespectful tone up with you," the bartender answered with a frown and turned to Seth. "Who is the pale one you have with you?"

"His name is Seth. Seth meet Mazi, war hero and barkeep of the Red Hornet," she said, slightly irritated. "I'm heading up, keep yourself out of trouble, and order a drink while I talk to the team, " she said as she strolled off.

Seth watched her climb the stairs and disappear behind large wooden doors that opened after she muttered a soft spell. He turned to Mazi, who watched him with curious eyes, and with a tired sigh, he asked,

"Could I bother you for a bowl of your finest Pheasant stew, it has been a while since I've eaten."

"Was it a quest or a woman that kept you from a proper meal?" Mazi asked, with an amused smile.

"A little bit of both, I'm afraid," Seth masterfully dodged.

"Say no more," Mazi said, "I'll have the kitchen bring you a bowl of our finest stew." He disappeared behind a set of doors and left Seth alone to his thought on the lonely bar stool.

[Would you like to claim the rest of your rewards?]

The system screen popped up before his tired, hungry eyes. Seth bit back an outburst, and fumed in rage, "Oh, there are more rewards are there?"

[Yes, there are exactly four more rewards you have yet to collect. They are- Spell acquisition tree, Powerpoint system, blood siphon, and blood refinement skills. Would you like to claim?]

His nose flared, 'the stones on this thing.' There was no doubt in his mind; the system was mocking him. If he had full control over his mana core, he'd have purged his core of the cheeky bastard, but for now, there was nothing he could do. As soon as he rescued his sister, he planned to tell everything he'd experienced. With her connections in Alpheus, he was sure they'd could figure something and purge himself of the system and all of its 'gifts.'

He looked up at the screen and stifled a frustrated groan. 'Yes,' he thought, 'But before that, tell me the right way to balance out my elements?'

[To balance out your tainted light element, you will find a grand mage or senior knight with near-complete mastery of a path of light or darkness, and ask them to completely purge either element from your core. The process would take months. Or you can find a saint and ask for their aid.]

Seth frowned, neither options were remotely possible, Saints were legends at this point. The last known saint was Malum, and even his status as a saint was debatable.

The heart of Malum, his family, so famously forged from the core of a dying saint, was most probably some random artifact, loosely connected to the story of how his grandfather and his mercenary party bested a Wyrm.

He'd have better luck finding a Grand mage or Senior knight willing to help him with what little time he had left, which if he remembered correctly, less than three years because he idiotically shaved half a year worth of time off of. 'What are my realistic options, system,' he asked.

[There is a tome authored by Ranok in the libraries of the black crypt of Wershe, get it. In it contains spells that could help you partially seal off your tainted light conduit, to buy you more time. If you become a Grand mage of the dark attribute, you should have enough skill and mastery to completely stave off your dark conduit influence on your light conduit and cure yourself.]

Seth's eyes went wide. 'Why didn't you tell me all this before I shaved off nearly a year off my life.'

[You didn't ask. The system cannot access your mind and predict what information you require. It can only provide information when the situation demands it or the host makes requests. Also, you've only lost approximately three months of life by accidentally expanding your tainted light conduit.]

Mazi planted a mug several inches on the surface of the bar in front of Seth, startling him. The mug sloshed with ale. "You look like you need it," he said as he pushed the mug closer,

"But I didn't order it," he said, slightly protesting. "It's on the house, "he said with a smile. "Any friend of Sera's is a friend of mine. I would do the same if I saw her with that same look you have on your face."

Seth tried to hide his look of worry, but it was clear the bartender saw through it.

"Your meal is on its way," he added. "I'll leave you to your pining. He said as he walked towards a cluster or neophytes on the other edge of the bar. Seth opened his mouth to protest but chose to let him go. What good would come of convincing a man he barely knew.

He sighed, and lifted the mug to his still cracked lip, wetting them with the sweet sticky liquid. His eyes widened in surprise as taste bud lit up. It was one of the better ales he'd had. Far better than whatever he drank at the borderlands.

He turned his attention to the system, with a slightly improved mood. 'Three years is barely enough time to do, well anything. How long will the seals give me after placing them there?'

[Double the time you have after you activate them. Longer if you stack multiple seals.]

His heart welcomed the good news, and his eyes shone with renewed hope, but he was still skeptical about this convenient seal.

'How much mana do I need to perform the spell, and what else do I need to know about it?'

[You need to be at Lesser mage or 3rd class intermediate mage capable of chantless casting and you will need about five hundred times the amount of mana your mana core currently occupies.-]

Streams of ale sprayed from his nose as he read the requirement. No one in the room noticed his blunder as he quickly searched the eyes of his fellow tavern mates. He mentally exclaimed, 'five hundred.' He knew his mana core had shrunken since the attack a few days ago, but five hundred times the amount of mana he currently had, that was incomprehensible. How would it all fit in his tiny core?

[Your current mana core has about 100 units of Mana or mana points, so you will need 50,000 before you'll be able to perform the spell.]

His eyes dulled, 'damn it. I knew it wouldn't be easy.' It took his sister nearly 12 years of constant training and devotion to reach 1st class junior mage or the mage equivalent of an adept; he didn't see himself surpassing her in three years. 'How can I hope to reach that level in three years?'

[With the aid of the system. Your other rewards provide background information about tools and abilities that allow you to absorb mana and improve in skill and power]

'A short cut?' he asked, with his first genuine smile of the day.

[Wold you like to claim your other rewards?]

'Yes'

The system screen extended and unfolded with lines of texts, paragraphs, and columns outlining his new abilities and physiology. After slowly reading and re-reading it, Seth was sure he got the gist of how the blood born system worked.

His growth was quantified in numbers that increased whenever he killed his enemies, drew their blood into his mouth, and subsequently into his blood core with skills aptly-named blood siphon and blood refinement.

After absorbing a fixed quantity of blood, or blood points, he will 'level up' and be given stat points to strengthen himself further and skill points that he could use to learn various blood spells from the blood spell tree.

The blood spell tree was a complicated network of blood-powered abilities that allowed him to control blood and use it to fight, and heal.

There were hundreds of spells and techniques. Some were mild upgrades or variations of each other. The spells or techniques were divided into long-range, weapon modification, healing, invasive control, body enhancement, and spell enhancement.

There were darker, more complicated spells and techniques he didn't quite understand, but all of them seemed like combinations of two types of spells or techniques or more.

Finally, he could directly absorb pure mana from the core of an enemy or beast he defeated with an innate ability called mana synthesis.

Since he was still a relatively young blood mage, his control over the amount of mana he could absorb was severely lacking, but it was possible to absorb a fraction of the mana from a dead being's core before it all goes back to Gaia.

After reading this, a wide grin formed on his face. It was more honest and toothy than the smile he had on his face when he learned of the 'short cut?' the system offered.

The absorption values were dismal, and most of the mana went to waste, but it was much faster than any breathing and mana accumulation technique he'd ever heard of.

With mana synthesis, permanently increasing the size of his core and gathering 50,000 MP points wasn't nearly as impossible. He wasn't unfamiliar with mana, while he wasn't confident he could attain the title of Lesser mage in three years, it was certainly as hard grasping the basics of the element.

His bowl of stew came a few minutes after he received his other rewards, and he tipped the waitress, even though he wasn't supposed to pay for the meal quite yet. With 75 silver marks left in his purse, and his mood lifted, he didn't mind parting with an extra mark or two since he was in such great spirits.

A plan formed in his head as he ate, and by the time he mopped up the plate and gulped the last of his ale, he had a solid plan in his head.

He planned to put most of his points in INT. It was his weakest stat, and it was directly related to his mana capacity. The higher INT he had, the more mana he could gather. All that would be left was absorbing as much mana as he could.

He planned to hunt beasts while he and his new team journeyed to Grechit. He would volunteer to help them hunt meat each time they camped, or he would sneak out at night. Hopefully, his skills would've greatly improved by the time they got to Grechit, and with the help of his team, he would use his newfound powers, and blood spells if necessary, to assist his team and take down the mage.

After he rescues his sister, they return to Grechit and stay a few days, and a night before they leave, he goes back to the forest and finds the tome of spells the system spoke of. After that, he returns to the capital with his sister, and as soon as she is healthy, he leaves the capital.

He aims to journey to the monster continent of Etototh, where he can level up without prying eyes and hopefully gather enough mana and attain become a lesser mage before his two years and 8 months were up.

The plan wasn't perfect, and it could fall apart before it began, but it was a solid, mostly well thought out plan that could run by, at least for now.

With a wide smile still on his face, he turned to door the staircase at the edge of the tavern floor with the door at the top of it and waited for Sera to re-emerge so that he could meet his team, and finally put his plans into motion. The minutes turned to hours, and his brow wrinkled. 'She's been gone for quite a while,' he thought.

He talked to Mazi and asked about the door and when she'd be returning, but he answered with a shrug, and said, "She'll come when she comes." His aloof smile and relax demeanor soothed him and kept his smile from fading for the next hour or so, but it lost effect after the fourth hour or so. It was close to midnight now, and the tavern's floor had thinned out considerably.

Six hours after she disappeared, Sera walked down the stairs with weary eyes, and settled beside Seth, "They'll do it if you forfeit the reward for killing the blood mage, "she said with a tired sigh. She flagged down Mazi, who brought her a bottle and a shot glass.

"Leave the bottle."

"What do you mean they want all the rewards to themselves," Seth frowned, "I supplied you, and you told them with the information. I deserve some of the rewards, if not as much as them, but something all the same." He and his sister couldn't go back to having nothing after receiving no aid from the kingdom and nearly dying.'

"And I agree with you," Sera said with a sigh, "but masters Raylee, Ren, and even Brick don't see it that way. You are a borderlander who is shit at combat, it makes no sense to offer you a fair piece just like the rest of us." she met eyes with him. "Their words, not mine," she added.

"What!" he growled. He gave them the information they were acting on, and they were trying to cut him out. With the strength he had and the powers he could obtain from the system, it would take mere months to catch up to these so-called expert mercenary mages. "Let me talk to them," he demanded. "I want to make my case."

Sera shook her head, "I won't recommend it. They've said everything that is to be said, meeting them would change nothing," Sera said plainly.

"Perhaps. But, it was rude of them not to even lay eyes on me before they deemed me useless. If I am to work with these mages, I must meet them face to face, "Seth said, with determination in his eyes.

"They will not be so easy to deal with. You can't throw fancy words around and think you'll talk them into reconsidering. I still advise you against it," Sera said, with a hint of worry in her voice, as she downed another glass.

"Well, I want to," he said, will unbending. Sera grumbled, said something about Seth being an idiot, which he ignored, then she finally got up and led him up the stairs and through the doors. Before they entered, she pulled him aside and whispered, "Don't throw your noble status around. Forget that. You are going to be in the wild with these people for maybe weeks, try not to offend them," she warned.

"I really wanted you to meet them, but once they heard you were not even a knight yet, they said you were not worth their time and scolded me for bring you. Half of the time I was there, I was pleading with them for my sake and not yours. If you go in there, it's not just your neck on the line, its mine also."

The fire in his eye didn't burn as bright. He began to question the cost of his anger, and it could mean for Sera. "I'll won't or say anything that will put us both at risk. After all, my sister's life depends on it."

He shrugged off his doubts, steeled his resolve and marched down the crystal-lit halls filled with handleless doors with special engravings and crystals on them. They opened with a spell just like the one Sera previously led him through. They stopped at the last door. Crystal light leaked through the slit as the base of the door, and it swiveled open as soon as Sera reached for the handle.

Four cold faces stared at them from across a long table covered in ink. The map of the continent laid bare on it, and a bearded steel-eyed man with chiseled, muscular physique stood at the far end of the table. His hand hovered over squiggles of paint labeled the forest of Wershe,

"You must be Seth," the man said.