Bloodbond

Sitting in the cold dark, Thirteen kept his eyes closed as he focused on his surroundings. He didn't risk doing any mental exercises or cultivating, focused wholly on his task. Sleeping was going to prove a problem. He could go a few days without sleep and still perform basic tasks normally, but he needed to be capable of far more than that in battle. He needed to be able to observe and react to every factor of a battle immediately. He needed the finest control over his body and mind.

He probed Ron once more with his lifesense and confirmed that the man was not yet asleep. He hoped that at least Ron would sleep this night, rather than both of them being tired the next day.

Thirteen's thoughts came to a pause as he smelled a unique scent in the air. It was faint, and he couldn't quite make out what it was, so he continued sniffing at the air until it came to him.

'Smoke? Oh no.'

"Ron!" He hissed quietly.

"What? I need to sl–"

"No time, fire. Get up."

"What?! Where?" The man shouted as Thirteen grimaced at the loud noise.

"Shh. I don't know, but be ready to move."

Thirteen tried to extend his lifesense further out to look for feeling animals or dying trees, but was interrupted as Ron scrambled to his feet and ran.

"Come on! 13 yeah? Let's go!"

Ron started fleeing south, and with a small curse under his breath, Thirteen had to follow. He had been cursing more lately, it was something he had to work on.

"Where are you going?" Thirteen asked.

"Anywhere, just away from the fire!"

Thirteen again extended his senses as he ran, this time he confirmed that the fire was west of them, and spreading quickly. In his mind he did not see the scenery burning or wood turning black, but saw it as hundreds of lives, rooted in place and unable to flee as they were burnt alive. It was harder to consider flora as nothing but scenery when you observed them solely as living things.

"Stop! The fire is to our right, we need to move east!"

"East will take us back to that old man, are you trying to get me killed? If the fire is west then we'll just keep running south!"

Thirteen felt the muscles in his hands and arms tightening. He had been raised among people like himself, children who from a young age had to abandon any overly stubborn attitudes and consider the most optimal path to success. His only role models were the Royal Instructors and proficient Helpers who were all veteran warriors with strong mindsets.

He had met people like Ron on his missions outside but he could always ignore them. The inability to do that now left him entirely confused and frustrated at the man.

But he had to follow. Until the moment Ron was put in direct danger or Thirteen was rendered unable to protect him due to his orders, he had to obey. Otherwise he could ignore the man and the challenge would be meaningless.

Ron was not proficient at running through the woods, and he often tripped on roots, or got snagged on low hanging branches. Thirteen had offered to carry him but was vehemently denied.

As Thirteen ran, he confirmed that the air was becoming increasingly hot, and the smell of smoke was now impossible to miss, even becoming overbearing.

"We have to move east, now!"

"We, we have to go south! That old man, he's waiting for me east! He's flushing me out!"

He had a point, but the fire was large and Thirteen doubted they would escape it heading south.

Ron's breath was becoming labored, unused to the stress and physical exertion, the smoke in air affecting his breathing. When Thirteen caught sight of nearby trees erupting in flame, he grabbed Ron and spun him around, using his own back to shield the man from a wave of heat that rushed past them, lighting fires and throwing debri and embers everywhere.

Thirteen, in that final moment before the heat wave collided with him, extended the domain of his lifeblood aura. This domain was a unique presence, capable of expressing his will externally. To use the qi cultivator's analogy of air carrying vibrations from before, it was like creating a pocket of air within outer space in which he could speak and make his intent known.

The domain shrunk fiercely as it came into contact with that wave of infernal heat, and Thirteen realised what was wrong. There was Qi in the air. Qi that belonged to someone.

His domain of life held strong only in the very immediate surroundings of himself and Ron, and even then did not entirely stop that oppressive heat from burning through and searing their clothes and bodies slightly.

After the wave of heat and fire subsided, Thirteen released Ron to look around them. Fires were burning along every tree and the air was quickly being filled with smoke.

"Okay, that's my cue. We're going east, now!"

With a shove, Thirteen forced Ron to start running eastward as he maintained his domain of life from behind, bolstering the man's lifeforce from a distance as he ran in order to keep fatigue at bay.

As they ran, breathing became increasingly difficult and their vision was impared. Thirteen felt his eyes becoming hot so long as they were open, his skin drying and prickling with heat.

Ron had the worst of it. His body was failing him, even with Thirteen subtly bolstering his ability to move on. His mind was not collected and his coordination was failing. Worse still, he was breathing too deeply and his throat was clenching at the inhalation of smoke, leading to coughing fits that impeded his running and increased his panic, in one big vicious cycle.

Thirteen saw Ron trip ahead of him and moved to support the man before he fell, but at that moment, he was filled with a foreboding feeling.

Following his intuition, Thirteen did not support Ron in standing, but threw him to the ground, Thirteen's whole weight pressing down on the man.

The distinct sound of wind whistling flew overhead, followed by crispy thuds as long arrows pierced through a burning tree behind them.

Again, Thirteen felt his hairs standing on end, and so stood quickly, pulling Ron with him as his bloody longsword melted and left its sheath, forming a translucent shield of blood before them.

With a series of thuds and cracks, over a dozen liquid tipped arrows collided with his hardened blood shield, half of them piercing through slightly only to be caught as the shield reformed around their shafts.

Thirteen peered through the semi-translucent half dome before him to try and spot the attackers. He focused his lifesense on that area and realised why he had not seen them earlier. The waves of heat and Qi were interfering with his senses somehow. They carried an intent he did not understand, and without focusing on their particular location, it was impossible to see the attackers.

Even now, he could see only flashes of them.

The blood shield reverted to liquid once more and hovered nearby as a sphere the size of a melon.

The blood that made up his new weapon—the Bloodbond, as he had called it—was not his own, but rather blood from monsters like the one that had attacked Ron. It would be refined over time by the drop of Lifeblood within it, but was not as potent as Thirteen's own.

As the arrows fell to the ground, Thirteen caught one of them by the shaft and pulled Ron to cover as he inspected the arrowhead. It was a uniquely made broadhead with an internal reserve for liquid. Poison.

Thirteen caught the moving of lifeforms ahead of them as bows were being drawn, while fires still raged and spread behind and around their position. In the end, he had to make a stupidly dangerous choice.

Thirteen grabbed Ron and threw him onto his back, ordering the man to hold on. Thirteen was a bit shorter than Ron, but had grown into an incredible frame over the last few years, his height rivalling an adult's already.

He willed the bloodbond to morph into a buckler on his left hand and charged forward at an incredible speed. Thirteen had awoken two attributes in the last two years, Intuition and Mental Speed. The latter did not change his way of thinking or make him more calculative, but allowed him to think as he normally would, just faster. This helped tremendously in his cultivation of Unhindered Motion, and he suspected that the mutations fit the requirements of their user.

The next volley of poison tipped arrows flew toward them as Ron yelled on his back, but Thirteen's senses were stressed to their maximum at the moment, and he was able to monitor each arrow as they flew at him.

He deflected most with his buckler made of blood, it's current form was smaller and so the blood within was dense and harder to pierce. His right hand stopped what remained, very carefully slapping them aside with his steel-like skin and avoiding the tips of the arrowheads. One arrow got past his defenses and stabbed him through the shoulder, but as a life cultivator, Thirteen did not fear small doses of poison, and willed his bodies incredible vitality to crush the harmful substance with ease.

Rather than himself, the poison was meant for Ron, as all the many arrows were aimed at him.

When finally Thirteen closed in on his attackers, he found a group of almost two dozen men and women, most wearing highly mobile armors like gambeson and brigandine. Half of the attackers dropped their bows and immediately drew blades of varying types, while the other half retreated, spreading out in every direction.

'They're organised, none are panicking. Most are second stage, but three are in the third stage like me. Are they daoists or augmentors?'

Even as Thirteen's mind considered these facts, his thoughts smoothly and rapidly transitioned between observing their weapons, their movements, their formations, and their emotions which tended towards cool determination.

At the same time, Thirteen immediately moved backwards to avoid the melee combatants surrounding him completely. He morphed his bloodbond into a sword as if to fight those who closed in on him, but then immediately dashed to his right, chasing one of the archers.

The melee combatants gave chase and Thirteen carefully positioned himself to ensure that they blocked the sightlines of the other archers, despite their attempts to avoid just that.

Before he had even caught up to the archer he was chasing, Thirteen deflected an arrow shot by the man with his longsword and then faced his empty palm at the man, still many meters away.

Red blood, featuring the barest hint of gold erupted from his palm and solidified into a spike that shot forth at incredible speed, the palm healing immediately after.

The archer he had shot at was loading another arrow when the small missile pierced a hole in his head.

Thirteen stopped charging forth and suddenly shifted his feet, twisting to face the group of pursuers, while at the same time he pulled Ron off him with his left hand and threw the man to the ground.

He threw the bloody longsword towards Ron, and the man tried to catch it by the hilt only for the weapon to melt back to a liquid form and morph into a hard dome around him, trapping Ron within.

"Hey! What are you doing?!" His muffled voice called from within the blurry confines of the blood dome.

Thirteen never stopped moving and the moment he threw the sword to Ron he also charged forward to meet his pursuers who were just about to enter striking range. They moved back immediately but he refused to give them enough time to spread out and surround him. With a sudden acceleration of speed, Thirteen delivered a powerful left fist to the closest, a woman in her thirties, and broke the arms she tried to guard herself with.

'Not a helper.'

As her arms recoiled, Thirteen got a look at the woman's face and confirmed he did not recognize her.

She was evidently a qi cultivator as she started to gather energy immediately, but Thirteen waited for no one. Extending the fingers on his right hand to resemble a five fingered blade, he stabbed his hand, tempered like steel, through the soft belly of the woman.

The defense of a qi cultivator always faltered if an augmentor managed to strike them directly. Calling on one of the four remaining drops of lifeblood within his heart, Thirteen willed it to rush towards his hand at an incredible pace, where it emerged from his extended palm inside the woman and he employed his self created technique.

The golden drop of blood shone as it became the core for a new bloodbond, exerting it's will over its surroundings as it featured withering properties, draining the blood and life of the woman in seconds.

To those others who saw this, they witnessed Thirteen dash forward, break the woman's arms with a strike, and then stab his hand through her, after which her body withered and a reflective, crimson gauntlet began to take shape, creeping up Thirteens forearm in the form of red metal plates.

Thirteen extracted his right arm from the woman just as a longsword stabbed at him from the left, and a sabre cut at him from the right.

The longsword stabbed incredibly swiftly, as if unaffected by the resistance of air, so Thirteen prioritized that, twisting left and catching the blade safely with his new bloodbond, the crimson gauntlet.

He then yanked the blade, causing it's wielder to release his grip and draw a dagger as Thirteen used a left palm to strike at the hand of the sabre-wielding opponent, before stabbing him with the tip of the longsword.

An onslaught of attacks were about to ensue, and so Thirteen pulled the still alive sabre user in front of him and used him as a shield as he stabbed the gauntlet through the man, draining him of life and blood.

The crimson plated gauntlet grew and stretched up Thirteen's arm further to incorporate a vambrace as the weapons and arrows of his enemies stabbed and slashed into the sabre user.

From there, Thirteen truly let loose, his armored right arm growing with every kill as black veins pulsed within. He used the positions and strikes of his many enemies against them, forcing them to interfere with each other as he moved unhindered through their ranks.

To the eyes of Ron, trapped within what he felt was a disgusting cocoon of blood, his protector appeared as if a fiend, born from the piled bodies of a battlefield.

Thirteen's retaliation soon became a massacre as he killed ten of the dozen armed melee combatants, before finally, he was forced to confront the man he had positioned himself to avoid throughout the entire battle.

The only man wearing dark plate armor, a weighty longsword so very close to what one would call a greatsword held in just his right hand.

This was one of the three third stage cultivators, and if he had to guess, Thirteen would absolutely pin him for an augmentor.