20 "Battle preparations"

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Oriana pov 

Oriana made her way through the forest. She pushed aside smaller branches and broke away the larger ones to make room for herself. Although she could have flown, she decided to walk to think about the battle that was about to come her way. Luckily, Ainz had realized how serious she was and had given her the right to fight Shalltear because she didn't feel like arguing with him about something like that. 

He was her friend, so it was good that he understood and let her do it. Besides, she was a better option for the fight anyway. Since Shalltear was a vampire, she had a natural advantage against her. Her stats were another advantage, because of the uniqueness of her race, she had slightly higher stats than normal level 100 players. Unfortunately, that's where her advantages ended.

Like Shalltear, she was a battle mage. However, while Shalltear's build was more balanced, she focused more on magic, giving her an advantage in ranged combat but a disadvantage in close combat.

However, she was a blood mage, which gave her another disadvantage. The blood mage class was very unpopular in YGGDRASIL and for good reason. The biggest problem was that casting used your own blood instead of normal mana and the mana bar was no longer available, which made the blood mage class completely incomparable with all other magic classes. Big spells not only used your own blood but also consumed it, which with a high damage build quickly brought you to the brink of death.

In short, even if you did damage to the opponent, you would hurt yourself, since it was impossible to heal yourself with spells because the blood mage class had no healing spells and it was not possible to learn other magic with this build, you were faced with a big problem. The only races that used this class well were those that had good self-healing abilities, which at least made the class playable.

Of course there were some advantages, too. Because blood magic worked differently than tier magic, it reacted differently as well. It was for example not possible to block teleportation spells that worked through blood magic. Shield spells created by tier magic were also unable to block blood magic due to the difference in the magic systems. In addition, as a blood mage, you were not able to learn super tier magic. which was considered a magician's greatest trump card.

Luckily, blood magic had its own trump card. A blood seal art that used one's own blood as a catalist and thus manipulating people and objects by exchanging, deleting, or adjusting their data by adapting the laws of the world. Of course, this method was not invincible either; it always depended on how significant the target was that you wanted to influence. Like blood control, the strength of the opponent played a major role here. 

...to change the data of something be it an object, a body or someone's mind...

At least that's what it said in the description. In the game, you could only choose from several options what you wanted to influence the target with. This could range from depuffs, forced teleportation, the sealing of areas to complete control of one target. You could also give objects properties and create powerful traps but in the end, it was just a cheap imitation of the super tier magic.

At least that was the case in YGGDRASIL in the new world, you could freely choose the effects, but they still had to work. A target that was too large or powerful could still cause the seal to fail or not work at all.

Oriana looked around. She had reached the point where Shalltear was. She stood with her head bowed in a small crater, completely motionless, just as she had seen in the divination spell. She approached it cautiously, but Shalltear's stillness confirmed her suspicions. Since she did not attack, it was likely that Shalltear had received no further orders from her new "master".

"Tsch she only has one master.", Oriana thought possessively. 

She stretched her arm and then dragged her nail across the pale skin. Blood oozed from the fresh wound and dripped down her arm. A quick movement with her finger ensured that the precious red liquid wasn't wasted. Then she knelt and began to paint symbols and signs on the floor with her blood. She quickly created works of art that looked like abstract pictures. After she was finished, the symbol slowly faded, and she set about painting another one. After a few more 'pictures' she sat up, stepped back and looked at her work. She actually wanted to paint some seals directly on Shalltear, but this would probably count as an attack and negate the valuable chance of the first strike.

She got ready by taking out her red scythe [Vulnus], her trusted weapon with a very unique play style. Despite its flashiness, it offered poor offensive stats, that was because her physical damage stat was very low to begin with. That's why she as a battle mage couldn't do enough damage in close combat to make a difference. For that reason, she completely neglected the attack damage stat while upgrading her weapon and was therefore able to add three special abilities to it, which she used to find a way around her dilemma.

The most important ability was [Bleed], that allowed her to turn a small scratch into a fatal wound and slowly inflict more and more damage on the enemy. [Corrosion] offered even more damage over time and finally... Because her weapon offered little attack damage it was easy for the enemy to resist her attacks. [Lucky Hit] presented a way to circumvent such a case by granting her a hit now and then if she was lucky. Of course, this build had one major weakness: most bosses in the game were immune to such abilities and players could still completely remove their negative status effects, which is why she didn't use the weapon often.

To further strengthen herself she started to cast some of her blood spells.

[Blood Echo], [Greater Blood Echo], [Vampiric Power], [Prey on the Weak], [Terror], [Noble blood], [Pure Blood], [Blood Drain], [Greater Blood Drain], [Blood amplifier], [Vampires Heart], [Blood Barrier], [Greater Blood Barrier], [Vampire Vision], [Blood Seeker], [Blood Thorns] and at last Blood art: [Ancestral Blood]

"Now then Shalltear, I am ready when you are. Prepare yourself.", Oriana said out loud. 

She cut another deep wound in her arm. But instead of dripping to the ground, the blood floated into the air and began to form a ball. More and more blood flowed upwards and joined the dark red sphere, which quickly grew in size. A feat considering that all the blood came from a little girl's arm. After some time, the sphere seemed to have reached its maximum size. Oriana's arm had healed, and she threw a glance at Shalltear and then...

"Take this powerful spell Blood Sacrifice: [Blood Sphere]" she shouted, and the sphere was launched...

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