Blood Shaper

A blocky stone fist larger than she was crumpled against Eleniah’s own fist, crumpling like so much paper before the unmovable force that was Kay’s partner before it shattered outward in a wave of shrapnel. Losing a limb didn’t slow the humongous golem for even a microsecond and it’s second fist slammed down in like a hammer followed up by its third and forth fists doing the same. The core that controlled the Golem Army’s Citadel dungeon had at some point in its time designing monsters to kill adventurers discovered the holy truth of military robotics, which doubled as the most hated curse of mecha fans: autonomous weapons shouldn’t be shaped like people.

The first room’s monsters had all been humanoid, but that was a continuation from the less powerful sections of the dungeon where all enemies were humanoid with the exception of a boss or two. The room after that had been filled with squared off centipede golems with razor sharp pincers and had heralded the theme of the rest of their run, destroying absolute killing machines made out of rocks. The dungeon took inspiration from the natural world to inspire their golems with golem centipedes, tigers, wolves, and more animal shapes getting direct upgrades to make them even more dangerous. The easiest upgrade that all of the monsters got when compared to their animal counterparts was size, but they also received something extra on top of that, which was how Kay and Eleniah ended up fighting a pair of golem gorillas with six arms.

The gorilla attacking Eleniah had braced it’s cumbersome weight against its lowest pair of arms as it tried to pound Eleniah the uncooperative nail flush with the ground. Eleniah, continuing to be uncooperative, declined to be squished and moved out of the way before jumping back in to retaliate. Smart enough to know that it didn’t want the elven woman near it the injured golem hopped backward on its legs and slammed the palms of its lowest hands together, making a shock wave that pushed Eleniah far enough back to let it recover and get ready for the next round.

Kay turned back to his own fight as the gorilla that had come after him finished smashing the decoy Kay had left behind and turned around to face his real body. The golems didn’t have facial expression, their faces were carved into their stone heads and didn’t move, but Kay could feel the annoyance leaking from the monster. He felt like he should feel bad, but it was really his enemies fault if they weren’t paying enough attention to catch him slipping out of his armor and moving away. It wasn’t like he was going to give up a perfectly useful technique just because it made his enemies mad at him. They just needed to get good.

The distraction had bought Kay enough time to finish setting up his experiment and he dashed into the fray as the golem gorilla pounded a rhythm into the ground with all six arms and thin grooves carved into it’s body began to glow. He boosted his muscles with oxygenated blood and leapt over the first swing, landing on one of the other arms that were pulling back to swipe at him. Kay extended the floating pool of blood in his hand into a full halberd and swung the spiked end down into the arm, cracking the stone and tearing out a small chunk, which stopped glowing as it fell to the ground. That wasn’t enough to prove or disprove his hypothesis though, so he dodged the drumming sent his way to knock him off the golem and looked for an opening to get in another solid strike.

The golems starting to glow was a visible indicator of the one ability they all shared, a temporary boost that infused mana into their bodies making them tougher and stronger for a limited time. Kay had wanted the golem to spin up that power for his tests, because he wanted to see how his own, hopefully, augmented weapon stood up against the tougher monster. The Class Kay most wanted to level right then was Blood Melder, and he was trying to do that during this dungeon run. He’d gotten enough experience with the attached Skill to get the Class back, but he hadn’t been able to level it since then, which would get him the tier five Class he wanted to try out. After seeing the various abilities of the golems and their boost in action, he’d had an idea. As strange as it seemed to him, Blood Melder was a combat Class, which meant its primary use was during a fight. He’d theorized about melding blood from monsters into his weapons, armors, and magical attacks to add benefits or magical effects, but he’d never been in a position to try It out, either the battles he’d been in were stressful enough he didn’t think about it or he was facing people and not monsters. After facing the golems he’d had a thought, it wasn’t just blood he could meld, it was magical items, so why not try with bits of broken golems, that had to count, right?

He’d snagged some shattered bits from the fight in the last room and melded them into his blood weapon while the gorilla had been distracted by the decoy he’d left, and now it was time to get some tests in to see if he’d really powered up his halberd. He slammed the butt of it into a grasping hand and followed up by slicing with the axe head, leaving a jagged gash in the stone palm. He frowned while he grabbed the hand and held it still with tendrils of blood while simultaneously holding off attacks from the other arms. “Does this look like it’s doing more damage than normal?” He called over to Eleniah.

“What?” She looked up from where she was repeatedly punching at her golem’s topmost shoulder. “Come again?”

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He pointed at the gash with his halberd. “Does this look like it’s more damaged? I’m trying to see if melding golem bits into my weapon made it stronger of tougher.”

“Did you do a test before you melded the pieces in?” She absentmindedly ducked a punch from a stone hand and riposted with a punch of her own, shattering the shoulder joint and causing the arm to fall off the golem. Riding it to the ground, she peered at the gash.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Eh.” Matrix leaning under more blows Eleniah turned it into a reverse somersault and headed for the gorilla’s legs. “Kill these guys and try it in the next room.”

Shrugging at her easy recommendation, Kay moved to do just that. It was strange, his other uses of Meld Blood, which hadn’t been in combat, had all been accompanied by a sense of energy or power when he’d folded a magical item into blood but that wasn’t happening as blood began streaming out of his pores and gathering behind him like dripping red wings or a cloud of apocryphal ruin. There was a faint feeling of something but he couldn’t tell if it actually was mana from the golem bits he’d melded in or if it was just his hoping that it would work. Two gale force waves sprung from the floating mass of blood at his back and repelled the coordinated attack from six arms before slamming down on the gorilla’s chest and pinning it to the ground. A concentrated blast of pressurized liquid cut through the center of the golem, and most of the rest of it, hitting the core wherever it happened to be and causing the gorilla to become a large pile of dirt.

Eleniah’s enemy died second later as she ripped off another arm and sent a wave of force through the joint where it had been connected. That was enough cumulative damage to kill the golem and it too turned into dirt. She dusted her hands off and strode over to Kay, who was turning the halberd in his hands this way and that as he stared at it. “Did the Skill work in the fist place?”

“I’m not sure. It felt like it did, but there’s no sense of magic in it, except a really faint one I’m not sure if I’m imagining or not.”

“Make it into an item.”

“Huh?”

“Solidify it into an item so we can try to use Identify or Appraise on it. It might tells us something.”

“You have great ideas sometimes.”

“It’s why you keep me around. Now go on.”

Miri and the Blood Guard gathered around from where they’d been camped by the entrance to the room and hung out while Kay concentrated on his Skills. It took a combination of Shape Blood, Meld Blood, and Manipulate Blood to turn a volume of blood into something that could be identified or appraised, and it was a mildly costly activity. Turning something into a permanent item made it much more difficult for him to freely manipulate and every time he tried there was a chance he would break the item, turning it back into regular blood and rendering any work he’d done to make it more powerful or magical useless. The only creation of his that seemed to defy that rule was the camouflage blood derived from an enchanted item that changed colors. That was less of a magical item made out of blood and more blood that was magical, and he really wanted to repeat that kind of success.

“What does it say when you try Appraise?” Eleniah asked him after he’d finished.

Kay trigger the Skill and grunted when it bounced off the halberd. “Nothing, which means it is magical.” He followed up with Identify.

[————————————————————]

Reinforced Blood Halberd

- A halberd magically formed out of blood, it’s been reinforced with magic making it more durable and resistant to damage than it would be otherwise.

[————————————————————]

Kay hefted the weapon after he’d read out the description. “Going to need to experiment more then, because it says its been magically reinforced, but was that part of me making it or was that me melding the golem its into the blood first? And if I’m lucky and it is from the melding, do I get benefits like that with melded blood that doesn’t count as an item or do I have to make it into one to get the effects?”

“The camouflage blood would suggest otherwise,” Lauren muttered, trigger that same blood to make her arm blend in with the wall behind her before turning it back off.

“I’ll save you a little trouble and let you know that my higher level Identify says: ‘it’s been reinforced by fusing the broken remnants of a powerful golem into the material used to create it’.” Eleniah picked up one of the smaller pieces of dead golem thrown around during the battle and crushed it in her palm. “Since you got the pieces you melded after the golem died they might have been less powerful.”

“Interesting.” Kay gave the weapon another look over before tossing it into his Inventory. “I’ll try with other materials that have magic in them and from different kinds of monsters.”

“It might be worth trying non-dungeon monsters too,” Eleniah mused, “It could be that getting parts of monsters after they’ve died will make them weaker, it might be that golems specifically as constructs instead of living beings have their pieces stop working if they aren’t connected to the core, or it could be related to these golems being dungeon monsters. Dungeon monsters decay or corrode significantly faster than their natural counterparts in order to keep people flowing through the dungeon, so maybe these loose their potency quicker.”

“All good questions worth testing, but that can wait till we’re done.” Kay glanced around at the group. “Everyone good? Miri?”

His Blood Guard all nodded and Miri gave a small bow. “I’m doing quite well, thank you your majesty. It’s been quite enlightening to be able to watch you fight.”

“Right…” Kay watched her with narrowed eyes before reaffirming his decision to not deal with that at that exact moment. Turning back to the dungeon he gestured with one hand at the door leading onward and held his other arm out to Eleniah. “Shall we?”

Grinning, she hooked her arm in his and started toward the door. “We shall!”

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