Experimentation

Lucian received a response through the platinum badge, alerting him that assistance was on the way. Now all he really had to do was survive, but as he stared down the monstrosity before him, his gaze locked with the four white pupils of the creature, he couldn't help but feel challenged.

'I wonder how long I have? It will take them a while to find us given the fog.'

The fiend did not wait for him to consider his options, assaulting him once more as the battle raged on.

The longer they battled, the better Lucian adapted to the strange methods of the creature. Its white drool was caustic, while its blood and claws carried that miasmic taint, and the voices of the dead that emanated from its jaw assaulted the mind and soul. But Lucian grew more proficient at resisting mental attacks through his will and domain, and the saliva could be neutralized easily enough so long as it hit his shell and not Lucian directly.

As for the miasma, Lucian learnt more about how it worked with every clash and was getting increasingly better at resisting it and neutralizing its effects. From what he'd learnt, the miasma seemed related to lifeforce, as if a twisted variation of the energy.

As he cut into the body of the fiend, its red blood, filled with black fog splattered across Lucian's shell, the red plated armor. Immediately the taint began to spread and to his surprise, Lucian realised what was happening.

The taint was not 'spreading', so much as it was transforming his lifeforce. Like inverting its properties, the resplendent life force became a force of death and decay.

Defending from a further assault by the fiend, Lucian neutralized the foreign energy and continued his battle, delivering one strike after another, his golden flames burning the creature and destabilizing its negative energy.

The fiend was stronger and faster, but it was simple minded and acted on instinct, this was something Lucian took frequent advantage of, forging two more bloodbonds on the fly using his own blood.

With all three arms equipped with weapons, Lucian managed to take control of the fight quickly. The Unhindered Motion technique included many martial forms, including some two weapon fighting styles. He had trained in all of them, though to call him an expert in two weapon fighting would be a vast over-exaggeration, he had specialized in unarmed and single sword combat.

Against an untrained monster though, his control and agility attributes were plenty to make up for the lack of experience, and soon Lucian found himself getting struck less often, cutting and stabbing the fiend at every chance.

With a thrust of his left arming sword, Lucian took an eye from the creature, brilliant flames exploding within.

Avoiding a snap of its maw, and resisting a breath of miasma, Lucian severed two clawed fingers and cut its underbelly.

Moving at high speeds, circling the creature, he cut again and again, before finally, with every bit of strength he had left in his overexerted body, Lucian sent a shortspear through the empty eye socket of the creature and pushed off, jumping into the air away from it.

With a flare of his will, the shortspear embedded in the fiend expanded abruptly, stabbing in every direction like a sea urchin as the fiend flailed its head and shrieked a hissing cry.

When finally the great serpentine monstrosity ceased its struggle and flailing, its head hit the ground so hard it shook beneath Lucian's feet as he landed.

Panting, Lucian rest his hands on his knees as the third arm and its weapon sunk back into his plate armor shell, strengthening it.

Before he let himself rest or catch his breath, he pinched the platinum badge still in his satchel.

"Tess, I'm done. How are things on your end?"

It took a second or two before a panting, exhausted voice sounded in his head.

"I'm… I'm fine. The elder's dead, barely. I can't find the younger one, did he show up on your end?"

"No. No interruptions here, thank you."

A great, relieved sigh could be heard and Lucian suspected she had just now let herself sit.

"Help is on the way. If you can, keep the body of the elder, we'll find out who they were."

"I've got it here. Wait. You called for help?! Why didn't you get me?"

Lucian winced at her shouting. While he had successfully resisted the mental and spiritual assault of the fiend, he was enduring an incredible headache.

"Relax, it wasn't that bad. I just took a precaution" He lied.

Tess' only response was silence, causing Lucian to worry.

"Tess?

Hey, are you okay?

Tess!"

Too late he heard the breath of an almost silent attacker behind him. In a panic, he spun to face the intruder, only to be struck in the chest by a powerful palm.

Lucian bent as he coughed and gasped for breath, but relaxed realizing what had happened.

Tess, now standing before him, had an expression of anger and disappointment.

"Just a precaution? You recoiled so much even within your shell, and you dare say it was fine?"

He could only force a smile beneath his faceless mask as he looked down at the girl before him.

The part of his shell that covered the head receded to reveal his pale face as he grabbed at her waist gently.

"Sorry, I'm sorry alright? I got carried away."

With a hug, Tess rested her tired head on his chest and murmured quietly:

"I told you. This isn't the estate anymore. We should be fighting together, we're good at that."

Lucian noted that the clothes on her back were torn open, blood staining them and the pale skin revealed beneath. Evidently, she had just healed from a grave wound when he called her.

"Alright. We fight together." He said gently.

Like that, the two exhausted warriors leaned against each other, eyes closed as they recovered.

Lucian felt her head shifting on his chest as she eyed the body of the large fiend, a joking smile spreading across her face.

"Aren't you going to eat that?"

He chuckled, and with a soft pat on her back, separated from Tess to approach the monster.

He tried to reach out to the bloodbond that had pierced every inch of the fiends head, but found he no longer had a connection to it.

'The taint!' he realized too late. It had transformed the lifeforce within his bloodbond, severing his connection with it.

Lucian sighed at the loss of one part of his cultivation, and conjured another bond, using another lifeblood as its core.

Staring at the fiend on the ground, Lucian considered things deeply. He'd learned more and more about that strange energy in the creature's blood, like a force of death and decay. He had seen how natural the transformation of his own lifeforce into that decaying energy was.

If it could change in one direction, could he do the same in the other? Lucian paused as he considered the chance that he was pushing things too far, but soon his eyes grew determined. With his bond shaped like a dagger, he thrust it into the body of the fiend and felt for his connection to it.

Immediately, the life within his bond began to transform, but by holding the daggers handle and suppressing the transformation with his will, Lucian was able to slow it down incredibly.

Like this, he stayed, crouched by the body of what could only be described as a demon, as he studied the transformative properties of its blood. Tess sat on the ground nearby, recovering her strength as she eyed the surroundings, the elder she had managed to kill stored in her Knight's badge.

Within the bloodbond stabbed into the body of the fiend, a transition of energies was playing out clearly throughout the exaggerated amount of lifeforce. Lucian observed the changes and felt for the intricacies within as he supplied a constant stream of lifeforce to maintain the balance of forces.

After a while, the lifeblood in his bond had had been eroded so much that the golden lifeforce had vanished, leaving it a pale grey, almost white colour with black fog swirling within, and Lucian was forced to replace it, wasting another drop of his cultivation.

In total, he had 24 drops of lifeblood before the battle, but now, he had lost two to this transformation, and had now sent a third to be consumed for scientific purposes. His heart ached at the loss, but the knowledge that a sect elder was waiting for him, and the possibility of reversing the deathly energy in the fiends blood, and absorbing the resulting life kept him going on.

He wondered, is it perhaps wrong to view the corpse of another human as a cultivation resource? He had certainly heard many vile tales of cannibalistic demons born of men, or of rogue cultivators walking what was considered a demon's path in trading the lives of others for power. But no matter how much he thought of it, Lucian couldn't connect that to what he was doing.

It just didn't seem wrong to him.

When this drop of lifeblood was also transformed, and his connection to it lost, Lucian injected another.

And then another.

And then another again.

He began to feel like a high stakes gambler, and doubt flashed through his mind on more than one occasion, but he clung to the idea that the dead elder would reimburse his losses as he continued to satiate his curiosity.

If he wanted to achieve his ambitions one day, to move ever onwards and never grow stagnant, then he would need to take risks. Just as he had to risk his life, Lucian told himself that he would need to risk his cultivation and his time.

More lifeblood was supplied to the deathly energy which had now grown so very potent with the force of six drops of lifeblood. With that strange energy having grown so potent, it was harder to slow down, and so the lifeblood was devoured quicker. But as another consequence, the energy was easier to read, its unique qualities more exaggerated and the indistinct details growing clear.

He had decided to name the energy deathfog, as it appeared like a black, miasmic fog within red blood. He'd also named the transformed lifeblood as paleblood, for the pale grey hue it took.

After the 8th drop of lifeblood was devoured, Lucian's heart could not take it anymore. He began trying to reverse the transformation, to use what he had learnt to turn death to life, but the deathfog had grown too powerful and one lifeblood within the bond was not enough to enforce his will over the deathfog.

He would need to gamble again.

Taking a deep breath, Lucian sent 8 drops of lifeblood into the bond, making a total of 9 within to counter the 8 paleblood.

With the power of 9 drops inside the bond, Lucian began to fight back against the deathly energy, testing and experimenting on ways to reverse the transformation. His start was clumsy, and he lost a drop almost immediately, but he got better at it. Another drop was lost, but this time it happened slowly.

By the time the third drop was being devoured, Lucian had gotten a hang of the process and even managed to prevent any more lifeblood from turning pale.

Gradually, bit by bit, he began to fight back, taking back the paleblood within the bond. He took back one drop, then two, then three, every one of them losing the pale coloration and black fog within, regaining the resplendent golden hues of lifeblood.

Time passed until finally, every drop he had lost to the transformative death had been recovered. Of his 24 drops of lifeblood, he once again had 23, having lost only the one in the spear he used to kill the fiend.

Lucian extracted his bloodbond and inspected it once more, ensuring there was no deathfog within before absorbing it back into his body, his cultivation regaining its usual strength.

"You done? Your desert is growing cold" Tess jested as he turned to find the elder laying on the ground.

"Not even close, but I'll happily eat" He played along as he threw another bond at the elder, one lifeblood within serving as its core as the black veins of the weapon absorbed all the blood and life within the elder.

Lucian felt his legs shake as he let himself fall onto his rear next to Tess, relaxing with a sigh.

After a while, Lucian spoke to Tess while his eyes remained glued on the fiend, a smile stuck on his face.

"I won't be going to the Ghostly Pavilion. This will take me awhile."

Tess looked over at the long, dragon like body and chuckled "I figured as much."

'If I can reverse all the deathfog in that fiend's blood, what will it do for my cultivation?' Excitement swelled in Lucian's heart as he thought about it. The fiend was far stronger than himself, this was something he couldn't deny.

If it had been trained to fight, if it had any knowledge of martial combat, or if it had intellect beyond simple instinct, he would not have stood a chance against the thing. With that in mind, just how much lifeforce would be produced from the transformation of all that death in its blood?

He would know soon.