Balance

After recuperating, Lucian extracted his bloodbond from the withered, desaturated frame of the dead elder and began to employ Sanguine Control, changing the properties of the blood and lifeforce within to match Lucian's own.

Once he was done, Lucian withdrew the lifeblood he used as the core of the bond, and then condensed what remained, the stolen blood of the elder, as much as he could until 5 drops of golden blood hovered in the air before him.

With a slight smile, Lucian absorbed the five new drops of lifeblood and felt his connection to the properties of life deepen. He held his arms out and absorbed some of the sunlight that pierced the dense fog here, feeling it's warmth briefly, before stopping to look at the large body of the fiend.

'Okay. Let's do this.'

Again, he conjured a bond, a spear this time, and stabbed it into the body of the long, dragon-like fiend.

Absorbing the vast amount of blood held in the huge creature's body, the deathfog within it quickly polluted Lucian's bloodbond, and he had to strain himself in battling the death, forcing it to transform.

Gradually, the deathfog-infused blood he stole from the body lost the black miasma within it, gaining a golden sheen across the red liquid. Bit by bit, his bloodbond absorbed tainted blood which Lucian transformed. Once it had become lifeforce within the blood, and not deathfog, it lost the aggressive, transformative nature it once held.

This was working, but Lucian felt incredibly strained as he forced the transformation onto foreign blood. If he could just refine the blood and make it his, turning the deathfog into lifeforce would be so much easier. But his ability to refine foreign blood as his own relied on his control of life, he could not refine blood filled with death.

'Wait. Does it have to be that way?' A crazy idea formed in Lucian's mind, one he dared not test on the fiend's blood first.

He hastily put an end to the long and straining transformation process, withdrawing his bloodbond and setting it aside.

Extracting a drop of lifeblood from himself, Lucian made it hover in the air before his eyes as he tried using the transformation technique he'd invented, only in reverse this time.

It was surprisingly easy, and the golden blood dulled immediately, becoming a pale grey as black fog swirled within.

Paleblood.

Lucian gulped in anticipation, but his expression was determined. It was better to test this with his own blood so he could reverse it easily if need be.

If he could use his own paleblood to control deathfog, like he did with lifeforce, would he be able to refine the fiend's blood without having to transform it first?

Slowly, the paleblood came closer to Lucian before he absorbed it back into his body, braced for the worst.

Immediately, Lucian felt something change within and almost destroyed the paleblood on reflex before stopping himself. It did not attack his lifeforce or aggressively transform it into deathfog. Rather, the paleblood did nothing. It simply existed within him, like the lifeblood within his heart.

What changed, was something less obvious, something Lucian didn't understand immediately.

It felt like his body was a set of scales, tilted to an extreme on one side. The paleblood had disrupted the scales slightly, acting as a counterweight to…

'To my lifeblood' He realized. 'Of course. Ever since the 2nd stage when I accumulated a great amount of lifeforce, I had already been at the extremes. So much so that I had to shatter the core of my life, the baseline, and reform it into something more suitable.'

As the idea formed, Lucian realized that he had been ignorant of the state of his own body.

'No human is supposed to have so much lifeforce within them, but the core of my life is already something unnatural, possessing no baseline. I guess it's to be expected that my body was teetering on the extreme end of things. The question is whether that is a bad thing or not."

Lucian tried feeling for that sense of scales once more but could not find it. After a moment of thought, he transformed two more of his lifeblood into paleblood, and tried to absorb them. This time, he again felt the scales tipping towards balance, but something else pricked at him.

A feeling of instability.

He frowned at the sensation and ensured his body was calm and safe before allowing himself to delve into thought. He suspected that the instability came from the coexistence of lifeblood and paleblood, that was something he could intuit as he focused on the feeling. But the feeling of balancing scales...

'What if…' His eyes went wide for a moment. 'What if the end of the lifeblood stage has nothing to do with how much lifeblood one's body can sustain. What if there is no limit. What if… the limiting factor is balance! It's not that the scale can only bear so much weight, but rather, if one end gets too lopsided, then it hits the table and cannot drop further. It's balance!'

Taking a moment to calm down, Lucian pondered this theory for a long while before deciding to test it carefully, remembering the unstable feeling.

Separating his lifeblood into two groups, he extracted one group from his body, and turned them into paleblood, hovering in the air. Then, one by one, he reabsorbed the drops of paleblood, testing the sensation of balancing scales and instability.

When finally his body contained 14 lifeblood and 14 paleblood, a strange mix of relief and nervousness crept through him. Like he had stepped out of an extreme temperature, to some place lukewarm, only to have the ground start shaking, threatening to collapse beneath him.

He started trying to find ways to remove the instability, to allow the Lifeforce and Deathfog to coexist, but was making no real gains quickly.

Taking one drop of Lifeblood and Paleblood each, Lucian tried to push them together, to merge the two. It failed at first, but produced no negative effects so he continued trying. He had no idea how much time had passed as he sat working on this, but eventually, he was met with success.

Something shifted within him, something familiar that he couldn't put a name to, and the two drops of blood, one a pale grey with black fog and the other a resplendent gold, pushed into each other, merging within half a second to form something new.

A resplendent, golden drop of blood, within which a black, miasmic fog swirled.

An incredible wave of fatigue washed over Lucian's body and soul as every other drop of lifeblood in his body sought out it's counterpart, the two opposing liquids shooting at each other like high powered magnets before fusing into this new discovery.

Waves of power flooded Lucian's body as the great amount of dense blood in his body, that which was not lifeblood, but had been infused with its energy, greedily absorbed this new power, balancing itself to match the equal parts life and death of the new blood.

With tired surprise, a grin formed on Lucian's face as his body reached a perfect balance, no longer so tilted to the extreme of life, and the instability vanished.

Examining his body, Lucian confirmed that nothing was wrong, despite the incredible exhaustion he felt, and came to a conclusion.

'This is it. This is how I achieve my ambition.'

Lucian realized just how restricted he would be if he had never started experimenting with techniques and forging his own methods.

He'd never have developed the bloodbond, would never have learnt to mimic the extra arms of Tyr, would never have discovered the transformations of lifeforce and deathfog, and would never have developed Boundless Condensation–

Again, Lucian's eyes went wide. 'If there is no limit to lifeblood, only a balance to maintain, then does that mean…'

His inward senses inspected the vast amount of condensed blood in his body, every drop within being a pseudo-lifeblood, needing only the energy to complete the transformation.

"Hahahaha, I'm so glad I came here." He shouted.

"What's wrong with you? Did a fight after so many months of boredom make you mad?" Tess called in a surprised voice.

Lucian didn't reply, only shaking his head as he looked back at the body of the fiend. Since his lifeblood had changed into something new, and he housed as much deathfog as he did lifeforce, could he not directly refine the deathly blood within the fiend? To skip the conversion of death to life and simply sever the connection it holds to its previous owner, absorbing it as is..

Perhaps this wouldn't take quite as long as he thought, if he did not need to transform the fiends deathfog to life before refining it.

Soon, hours began to pass as Lucian refined and absorbed the deathfog and blood of the fiend, refining it into paleblood that, upon entering his body, immediately transformed into this new creation, the hybrid blood of life and death that he had still not named.

Alas, even at this pace, hours would not suffice, and soon he had been sat for days, lost in the process as he observed and learned about the properties of this new power, relating it to what he knew of lifeforce as he made startling advancements in his comprehension of its workings.

He realized that the familiar shifting of something unknown he had felt earlier, the change that made the fusion of paleblood and lifeblood possible, was likely Flux. Another precursor… he thought, only this was not a spike in power or a sudden evoking of powers beyond his means. It felt like his body had been changed, made to adapt to his desire as his body became capable of merging the two energies.

The biggest difference between this new hybrid blood and lifeblood, was it's capacity for power. Every drop of this new blood could hold twice as much energy as lifeblood, one half of life, the other death, and so his original 24 drops of lifeblood had shrunk to just 12 of these hybrid drops.

As he cultivated, Lucian never opened his eyes, never listened to his surrounds, and never stopped to rest or sleep. He found that the deep fatigue gradually vanished on its own. It was only when he could absorb no more from the fiend, having absorbed a total of forty drops of the new blood from it, that he opened his eyes and released a long breath.

"You truly do surpass all expectations, Lucian."

A male voice called out to him from very close by, emphasizing the name.

Lucian's eyes became alert in an instant as the 52 drops of hybrid blood in his body pulsed, bringing vast amounts of energy to every inch of his physique, ready to explode forth at a moment's notice.

Eudes Clarke grinned as he looked down at the youth before him, and felt the gathering energy within. He was sure of it now. He had not been hasty in betting on an early decision. Magnus was all too eager to let him gamble his once in a decade choice, but it had already proved itself a wise one, regardless of the final result.

"You've made some startling improvements in the few months I've not seen you. Though I must warn you to keep caution at heart when veering from the proven paths of cultivation."

Lucian calmed as he realized who it was, and his eyes surveyed the surroundings. He was where he had been before starting his cultivation, only, there was no fog near them. He thought he could see some at the edges of his vision, long past a nearby mountain, but it was too faint to know for sure.

"She's fine, the girl has simply moved on to find her own fortunes. Though I admire your youthful spirit." He said with a chuckle.

Standing, Lucian faced Eudes Clarke, who bore the same smile as always, and only now addressed him, realizing too late his lack of etiquette.

"I understand, thank you Mr. Clarke. May I ask, what you're doing here?"

"Oh? Did you not call for help?"

Lucian looked at the man blankly for a moment. "I did. Wait, if we call for help it's you that responds?"

Lucian's eyes widened slightly despite his efforts not to show it. He had always thought that Eudes was some highly regarded figure, the kind to stand side by side with the king! Did he misjudge that?

Eudes suppressed a mild chuckle as he spoke. "No, if the eighth generation call for help, it is not I who responds. But… Let's just say I had a feeling I'd meet a few surprises if I came. And look!" He gestured to the large, dead fiend. "I couldn't have been more correct."

"You know what it is?" Lucian asked.

"I do. It's a planesfiend, or planeswalker as they are sometimes known. A spontaneous life born where the border between realms is thinnest. Born more as a manifestation of the planes than as a real, biological life.

"Demian's call visitors from other worlds 'Outsiders', but truly the name would be more apt for these things, born beyond our own dimension."

Lucian nodded in agreement. He didn't know enough about Outsiders to determine whether the title of Guardian, used by the Toubians was apt or not, but he thought the word 'Patron' used by the Nalduri Dynasty was suitable. After all, it was they who gave the gift of advanced cultivation to the people three centuries prior, whatever their reasons may have been.

"Your blood. It has changed." Eudes spoke after a moments pause. "I need you to explain the process in detail so I can confirm you did not err in your cultivation."

Lucian was more than willing to have an experienced cultivator's opinion, after all, what he had done was truly reckless. If he'd taken a wrong step somewhere, he might be on his way to cultivation deviation, resulting in the inability to advance, or worse, horrible ailments and a loss of control.

But when he mentioned the shifting of something familiar, and mentioned his thoughts on it being a precursor to ascendance, Eudes only nodded, as if expecting it.

When he was done, Eudes remained silent for half a minute, a look of contemplation about him before he replied.

"I can't find anything that would endanger your life or limit your cultivation, but that is solely due to the precursor. You got lucky. If you had forced the fusion of paleblood and lifeblood without it, your body would only become more unstable. Remember that you had set a strong foundation to support your extreme towards life, enriching every part of your body with lifeforce and growing accustomed to the accumulation of it before advancing to the 3rd stage.

"You had done none of this with deathfog, as you call it, and had tried to imitate 3rd stage lifeblood without any foundation in the energy. Thankfully, your precursor reworked the foundation of your body, creating something even more unnatural to allow the coexistence of opposing energies. Without that, or extreme cultivation arts, it would be impossible."

As he explained, Eudes did not wear his usual smile, regaining it only when he saw that Lucian had understood the risk in his actions.

"That said, you did well, and your future self will thank you for it I'm sure. This new hybrid blood, if you haven't named it yet, I would make a suggestion."

Lucian nodded and Eudes continued.

"The further you cultivate, the more you define your own path in life. You have strayed from the proven path of the Grand Life Tome, and created something wholly your own, that will remain your own until the moment you die or, spirits forbid, lose your cultivation. Since that is the case, I would name it Trueblood. Your Trueblood."

Lucian thought on it before nodding. "Thank you, that will work just fine."

With a quick spin on his heels, Eudes began to walk away, waving at Lucian behind him as he called out.

"I recommend you make the most of the time you have left in the year. Leave the Pavilion to Tess, and strike out on your own. I hear The Shards at Heavensfall are wonderfully insightful."

With that, Eudes' form disappeared in a blur, and Lucian saw movement at the far reaches of his vision.

'The fog!' He thought in horror. It had been pushed so far back that there were a few mountains completely bare of it, but when Eudes disappeared, it began to rush back at an incredible rate.

He could see it reclaiming valleys, followed by mountains as it rushed towards him. Like a dense, wet wave of air, the mist blew past him with tremendous force, filling every area of this massive spiritual region once more.

'How… Was he holding it that far back all along? Just what realm has that man reached?'

Extending his life domain, Lucian repelled the fog back once more, but only by roughly 50 meters, and that was him thinning it to cover the greatest area possible.

'Sigh… there's still so long to go' He thought with a fleeting glance at the almighty sun in the skies above.

At that point though, he noticed something. His domain of life that filled the air with nourishing energy, growing plants and saturating colors, was drawing on only one part of his energy, the lifeforce.

He had deathfog in his Trueblood, as much as he had life. How could he draw on that as well?

It took only ten seconds of experimenting to fill his domain with deathfog too. Things did not die and wither as he had expected, but returned to normal, neither growing nor dying.

Curiously, Lucian began removing the lifeforce in his domain, and found that as deathfog took over, black miasma emerged from the plantlife as they hissed and died.

'And just like that, I have a million more things to try and a hundred more techniques to test. Why do the number of things always go up but never down?'

For all his complaining though, a smile hung on Lucian's lips.

Indeed, there was still so long to go before he reached the peak, and he would enjoy every moment of it.