7 Paths of Progression

The moon disappeared beyond the horizon and became the harbinger for dawn.

Yesterday, when Aka returned home tired and sweaty with tinges of blood on her lips, Aka's mother became instantly worried for her.

Aka, with the calmest attitude she could muster at the time, reassured her mother she was fine and uninjured. She just needed to sleep in early today. She explained that hunting had really knocked the wind out of her, and that she failed to capture any game.

She washed herself and went to bed, despite it just becoming evening.

Aka was going to ask questions to Red Lotus but when she dropped into bed, she felt a heavy sensation of relaxation befall her.

Both her body and mind gave up as they both desperately cried for rest. She was initially sleep deprived, but then she went hunting, expending more energy than she usually did. She learnt that she had to drink blood, expending her mentally, and felt extreme feelings of betrayal by Red Lotus. Excitement, rejection, acceptance, anger, betrayal… So many feelings and emotions she had experienced today.

The only thing that kept Aka awake despite all of it was the situations and issues she had to face. Now that she was safe and in the comfort of her bed, she couldn't resist the sweet taste of sleep.

And just like that, she had fallen asleep.

When Aka woke up from her dream, her eyes were barely open when she had faint tears. She corrected herself, "I may be Akai Tamashi in this life, but I'll always be Wu Qiao to myself."

Aka turned her head towards the window, and judged by the light that it was dawn.

"How long did I sleep for?", Aka internally calculated the number of hours.

"11 and a half to be more precise.", Red Lotus corrected her answer of '12'.

"...Who asked?", her tone turned sour upon hearing Red Lotus. She didn't magically forget that he had scammed her yesterday, but at the same time, she didn't feel like spitting out profanities straight after waking up.

Red Lotus ignored her sourness and replied, "You did. Anyway, I can speak to you now that you are safe and mentally rested."

Aka gave a 'hmph' as she snarked, "This is going to be good. Why then, pray tell, did you lie to me? You said that you could unlock my mana potential 'easily', and that you would do it after I feed you blood. I need answers."

Red Lotus took a moment and confessed, "I will not lie to you: I have deceived you. The purpose for this was to break your mental barrier to do, what is in your view, the heinous action of drinking blood. Doing something is easier after doing it once. Breaking this barrier would've been more time consuming if the rewards were not great enough to trigger your greed."

Aka softly laughed. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Breaking her mental barrier? Would've been more time consuming if the rewards were too small? Triggering her greed? What was she, a pig trying to eat a massive carrot on a stick?

"There are a few reasons why I can't, or don't want to, unleash your magic potential. It is within your best interest to hear me out."

Seeing as Aka was silent, Red Lotus continued.

"As you are aware, 'monsters' such as myself rely on certain substances relating to our paths to become stronger and 'evolve' after a certain threshold. Water path monsters rely on water based substances, fire path monsters rely on fire based substances, so on and so forth."

"Blood path, of course, requires blood. You already know this, which is why you weren't surprised when I asked for blood as food."

Aka butted into Red Lotus' explanation impatiently, "Okay, so what are you getting at? Get to the point."

"My point is that I am incapable of modifying your body to grant mana potential because I am too weak. I need more blood to grant myself enough power for the operation."

Furrowing her brows, Aka responded, "So you have complete control over my body but you can't activate my mana potential? How do I know I am not being scammed by you? You already lied to me once.", she was rightly suspicious of Red Lotus. To her, she was just a parasite who's trying to scam her.

"I understand that this mistrust has a basis from your point of view. But you should understand that I am not aiming to drink the blood of hares and cattle for the rest of my life. It is within my best interest to support your strength so that I can drink better quality blood from the stronger beings that you kill. This is how this feedback loop works, for the both of us."

Aka was not buying it, "And what if you're just bettering me as your future body for that eventual day you take over me? You can disable my brain in a heartbeat, I cannot trust you."

Red Lotus sympathised, "I also understand that, and I cannot refute it. In cooperations like these, both parties would have a hold on one another to ensure security. However, you don't have a hold on me."

Aka and Red Lotus both stood mentally and awkwardly silent for a few seconds. With a difficult expression, Aka sat up from the bed.

"...What are the other reasons?", Aka sighed hard. She did not trust Red Lotus, but at the same time, she had no choice but to trust him. Just like Red Lotus said, she didn't have hold on him, meaning that she was still, put pessimistically, a slave.

"There are two more reasons: one is that we need mana cores of monsters to make the opening up of magic potential worthwhile. Opening it up right now without cores is a worthless investment…"

"Of course, mana cores!", Aka came to a sudden realisation hearing Red Lotus. How could she forget about them?! Was she simply that tired yesterday or… was it Red Lotus' doing?

Anyways, she absolutely needed mana cores that were in the bodies of monsters if she wanted to be able to use magic. They were essential.

"...as for the last reason, it is a 'don't want to' reason rather than a 'can't' one. It is because of your blood sibling's, Ao's, arrival in a week.", Red Lotus finished.

Aka was confused, "Ao? Why Ao?"

Red Lotus explained, "Since you are not a magician, you don't understand. As a monster or magician, we can intuitively sense others who have activated magic potential. Ao is a magician, and a very strong one according to your memories. She would see through any disguise we could put up as if it were silk. I am confident in my ability to hide myself, but I cannot say the same for you. There would be too many questions if you suddenly had magic potential several years after birth."

"Though it is not an instant death nor failure if it is found out, the fact of the matter is that we would have too much attention drawn to us. It would hinder our development too much."

Aka took some time to internalise all this information and stated, "So I can only activate my mana potential after Ao leaves?"

"Assuming all other conditions are met, affirmative. We can deal with disguising your magic potential to normal mages after the fact, but with Ao and others similar to her? Not yet."

Feeling the immense disappointment rushing in, Aka sat in her bed motionlessly. She didn't think that she would have to wait for so long just to start her path as a magician.

It took some time before Aka got out of bed. She moved to the window and pushed it open, feeling the light from the crack of dawn and the chilly morning air touch her face.

"It'll be winter soon.", Aka judged, with no relevance to the current conversation.

Red Lotus followed, "Affirmative. It is going to get difficult for all races during these months."

Aka stared out the window for a moment, thinking to herself, before saying out loud, "As long as we pass the harshness of winter, the warmth of spring will come."[1]

Shaking her head, a calm tranquility formed in her mind. She closed the windows to prevent the cold air from seeping in anymore and sat on her bed.

"Alright. I can barely accept your explanation, and I don't trust you much either, but you are my only ticket to strength. So…", Aka trailed off. She didn't know what to say next.

Red Lotus would've nodded if it had a head, speedily moving on to the next topic, "Although I can't activate your magic potential, I can do a variety of other things that will be extremely beneficial to you! My strength as a blood path monster lies in changing your physical body."

A chill ran through Aka's spine when she heard 'changing your physical body'. What if she grew horns? Or metallic skin? She didn't want any of that!

Red Lotus almost laughed in it's thoughts as he assured, "Human, what do you think I was going to do, turn you into a hideous creature? I am talking about increasing talent, aptitude, improving various brain and motor functions, making you stronger, quicker, smarter, all-round better. I can better your senses, better your metabolism, shorten sleep times, and other useful improvements, even for vital functions you don't even know exist.", it spoke like it was a salesman trying to advertise itself.

"Wow, that does sound good.", Aka raised her eyebrows at the revelation and agreed. She had thought about changing her own body in the most negative light possible, but then she thought back to Red Lotus calming her down and completely stopping her from vomiting as an off-hand change.

"Is there a way for me to not drink blood?", this was the first and immediate inquiry that Aka had. After all, she did not want to drink blood from corpses everyday.

Red Lotus answered, "I will rephrase this question to allow more possible answers. I can edit the taste region of the parietal lobe for you to enjoy drinking bloo-"

"No."

"..."

Aka absolutely did not want to enjoy drinking blood. She didn't want to become a monster…

A monster, was it?

This was the source of her fear from the changes that Red Lotus could make to her. Whatever happened, she wanted herself to remain human, and human only.

Red Lotus expressed his understanding, "You value your qualities as a being of your own race. In that case, the only option for not drinking blood orally is to construct an organ in your body that can absorb blood through the fingers. It is hidden from view and would be treated as an ability more than anything."

"Sure, then let's do that!", Aka would prefer this change to her best.

"Not enough blood.", Red Lotus replied flatly.

Aka's calm state almost faltered as she wanted to rip her hair out upon hearing Red Lotus' words.

"It is an entire organ with special suction veins built in. It would not even be formed instantly. A few drops of a hare's blood is not enough for this trade.", Red Lotus' cheapest trades involved working with already existing organs and systems. Asking for newly constructed organs and such were simply another tier of trade.

Closing her eyes, Aka gave up on the idea, "Then what do you recommend?"

Looking at only improvements to mental and physical abilities, Aka didn't know what to do. Instead of picking one upgrade at random, it would be better to ask someone who was knowledgeable and worked for her most efficient improvement.

"My least favourable recommendation is for you to save your… let's call them 'points' from now on. You can store your points to save up for your much desired blood-ingesting organ. This isn't the best option because it would take too long with your weak ability to collect blood. Using hares as a unit of estimation, about 230 hares would be required. If we assume that you get one or two a day, that would take half to three quarters of a year."

Aka was shocked at the number of hares she needed to kill and drink the blood out of for the ingesting organ. 230! She just might go insane even with the interference of Red Lotus.

"Do not fret, because my next recommendation is to go after more high-quality blood from beasts and monsters. While monsters do not stay nearby, beasts and other life-threatening animals still roam the inner parts of the forest next to the village. With these beasts, there is greater quality and quantity, making point collecting much more effective. My recommendation for this strategy is to forcefully configure the cerebellum[2] to improve your bow skills. There will be auxiliary improvements like sight and stamina to add to your survivability."

Aka nodded. While it was more dangerous than the first, it would allow for quicker progress. What was amazing was that Red Lotus could change her ability with the bow! This would be absolutely impossible for anyone else to do without naturally practising the skill.

"Though this does have it's problems, primarily the matter of the magicians around the town's outskirts. We would have to wait for the matter of the blood path monsters to calm down before we could execute this plan."

With the magicians secretly protecting those who leave the village and enter the forest, there was no way Aka could covertly drink the blood of the beasts if she was being watched by a magician. She couldn't just casually carry it to town either.

Even so, Aka was quite satisfied with this recommendation, "If I chose this, all I would need to do is wait for the matter to settle down. Then there would not be much worry."

"I have one more recommendation. Would you like to hear it?", Red Lotus wasn't finished yet.

"Go on.", Aka was more or less set on the second recommendation, but would at least hear out the third.

"My third recommendation is to drink the blood of humans within the village."

"...", Aka couldn't even express how dumbfounded she was.

"Of course you would suggest that, wouldn't you? But I am not going to go around committing murders. That's my answer.", Aka didn't want to entertain the idea.

"Human, aren't you going around murdering hares? Anyway, I never suggested to 'murder' humans. I only suggested drinking their blood... like a vampire.", Red Lotus quickly amended his sentence with the term 'vampire' to get the message across.

Hearing the term 'vampire' made Aka imagine herself, jumping around rooftops at night with a black cloak that'd concealed her features. She'd look around, finding an open window and flying in with silent footsteps. She'd enter and sneak into the bedroom, where she would strike her fangs down on an unprotected neck...

Red Lotus appraised Aka's imagery, "Though quite dramatic, what you're imagining isn't too different from the path of progression I'm recommending. The greatest benefit of this recommendation is the efficiency. Each time you drain a human's blood, I estimate that it will equal roughly 30 to 70 hares depending on how much you drink."

"That much??", Aka sat up straighter in shock upon hearing that. A non-lethal outing against a human was worth 30 hares at the minimum!

"Don't be too excited, this method has obvious downsides. If you are caught sneaking in homes and drinking blood... I don't need to say anything, do I? It is a high risk, high reward strategy. If you choose this one, each outing must be done in careful preparation, investigating certain humans and their habits. See if they are trained in fighting, whether they leave windows open at night, whether they have any family living in their residence, and so on. As for upgrades-"

"Okay, that's enough. I have decided.", Aka cut into Red Lotus' explanation.

Red Lotus momentarily paused before saying, "Alright, you have made your choice. Your choice is…"

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Author's notes:

[1] Metaphor for gaining and being rewarded for passing through tough times and tribulations.

[2] Cerebellum: the dense 'ball' region at the back of the brain. It is mostly responsible for learning and bettering motor control (e.g learning how to walk or how to ride a bike).