EFB Chapter 353: The Right Mindset
Chapter 353: The Right Mindset
Thalion stood before the kneeling man, a wide grin hidden behind his mask. The curse was beyond anything he had imagined. The most surprising revelation was that it did not merely infect a host through blood. It carried through his flames as well. That alone was utterly insane. Even more mind-bending was that the effect extended to flames altered by his divine skill. The man before him was a grotesque testament to that truth. Already he had killed a few comrades and was feeding on them in a way that made Thalion’s skin crawl.
For training, Thalion needed to master his divine passive to control its range. That the curse spread through fire reminded him of Nathaniel’s old tricks, where wind skills and sand served to ferry effects across a battlefield. Perhaps that property had transferred to this malediction.
If the curse could travel via elements, even resurrecting hosts by converting blood to vitality, its implications were enormous. These were only hypotheses but Thalion intended to test them on bodies that had been dead for longer. The man kneeling now seemed like the perfect guinea pig. A bloodthralled husk that obeyed without question. Thalion had already made him sit and vault into the air twice.
A few others had attempted to feed on the fallen, but Thalion had ended them swiftly with Bloodharvest. He had underestimated that ability at first. Empowered by his bloodline, Bloodharvest allowed him to choose the source of blood extraction with precision. The bloodline affected only the pull’s force, not the targeting. With a little practice, his human form handled it well. Two things still troubled him. His movement skills, Mistform and Telekinetic Dash. He had avoided using them in the recent skirmish, and doing so had worked to his advantage. He was nimble enough with his upgrades to weave through spells without them. It was a promising start for a system event that had already caused so much chaos, but the next step was more testing with his first bloodslave, or whatever the creature was now.
“Hey you. Did your class or race change?” Thalion asked, watching the man look up at him as if pleading with a god.
“No. It is still the same,” the man rasped, eyes locked on Thalion.
“How about skills. Any new ones?” Thalion probed, though he expected the same answer. Why would the man gain a skill?
“No, nothing changed on my status screen, except my health, speed and strength skyrocketed. Wait—there is something. Bloodsense…” The man described the skill in a ragged voice. Bloodsense allowed him to see and smell blood with eerie clarity.
Increased stats and a new sense. That was borderline absurd. Thalion began to wonder whether the curse was, in net terms, beneficial. While the initial battle between host and curse seemed agonizing, once the bloodlust was quelled the host gained enormous advantages, if the host lost its individual will and subsisted only to serve the curse, that was one matter. But what if a strong mind could resist the hunger? Would that person gain a monstrous mid-battle buff? So many questions remained unanswered.
“Here, drink that.” Thalion commanded, summoning roughly twenty liters of blood he had siphoned from the attackers minutes earlier. He threaded extra mana into the pool to potentiate it. He wanted to see how further consumption changed the man. The first liters took time for the thrall to swallow, but with each gulp his aura swelled and his eyes began to glow with red light. Muscles bulged in seconds; his bones densified and hardened. Fingertips thickened into talon-like shapes and teeth sharpened. A thin red mist seeped from his pores. Thalion watched in cold admiration as possibilities unfurled.
The tactical applications flooded his mind. Face a powerful commander with dozens of weaker fighters? Infect the underlings, feed them blood to empower them, then send them at the leader. The commander might be none the wiser if the blood were hidden in otherwise destructive mana waves. No one would suspect that what looked like indiscriminate devastation had secretly been nourishing supposed corpses. With the crimson eidolon, Thalion could even apply the curse from a distance. He could field entire squads of bloodslaves that would turn the tide of battles, even against leaders of extraordinary strength. The more he tested, the more obvious it became. This curse could let him clear dungeons, topple garrisons, and harvest loot and influence in ways few others could.
Once satisfied with the experiment, Thalion finished it. He drained the man’s blood with a vine that pierced the thrall’s heart. The victim felt little pain. He stared at Thalion blankly as life faded. Death, in that form, was almost peaceful.
Then the practical nightmare settled back onto Thalion’s shoulders. The system had demanded a ransom of fifteen hundred years of lifespan as the entry fee for this event. Thalion had accepted; when the teleport finished he was an old man with only seventeen hours left before the clock ran out.
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This was a last gamble. He had to place high in the system event if he wanted to claim a divine class. Everything was at stake. The biggest question burned at him. What would he do if he met Eric at the end of this event and still ranked high enough? What did “high enough” even mean? The system’s vague pronouncements had said he needed top placements across three events to succeed. Was he doomed from the start?
When the system balanced risk and reward, the price should equal the payout. Fifteen hundred years for one event ought to be worth at least three full victories, Thalion reasoned. That was his hope. The next practical concern was how to rise on the leaderboard. Millions of competitors had entered, and huge factions were fielding armies of material-gatherers. The only conclusion left was stark and simple.
Thalion would ascend by slaughter. If no superspecial ruby or unique cache of unimaginable worth turned up, there was no other viable route. He could not compete with a leader who had fifty people harvesting resources. To breach the top ranks, he had to find those powerhouses and eliminate them.
Should he kill Eric if it came to that? The thought sat uneasily with him. Eric seemed like an agreeable person, and gods liked him enough to grant a divine blessing. Eric’s patron promised knowledge and material support later. Thalion suspected Eric had drawn perhaps twenty followers to gather resources, and the god’s favor would repay them.
They had said they would help one another if they met, but what did that actually mean? Thalion doubted Eric would relinquish his position or share rewards. The chosen did not give up honors lightly. Survival meant ruthless choices. If push came to shove, Thalion resolved he would kill Eric to secure his own future. It was not desire; it was necessity. Eric, already ranked two hundred and three, must have spawned with a larger group and richer neighbors. The strong rose while the weak fell. That was the system’s iron law. Thalion was sure that Eric wouldn't hesitate to kill him.
Thalion refrained from looting the nearby corpses beyond a quick materials check. He found nothing of immediate use. It benefited him for others to underestimate his worth. Who would suspect an F-grade that had paid fifteen hundred years of life to enter a trial designed for E-grades? Normally he should have been dead without the extra life from the ant queens. While others rushed for treasure, Thalion aimed to play a different game. Most of his possessions remained on New Earth, everything except the scroll that would teach him ritual bloodmagic.
From time to time he would test his strength against elves, orcs, and vampires, refining skills and tempering his body. Whereas many funneled items into the amulet for points, Thalion would funnel resources into body tempering whenever affinities aligned. Treasure runs would still be necessary for such upgrades, but his final aim remained to find a chosen or an affluent target and remove them. Preferably not Eric. There were more profitable prey among the elves, which could allow him to bait them with his identity.
To summarize. This system event would determine everything. Staked against his remaining lifespan, the risk could not be higher. He still felt the aftereffects of swallowing the blue crystal. He had managed to bring it under control just before teleportation, but it had twisted his soul body into unnatural angles. That made him vulnerable for now. He needed time to mend and to shift occasionally into the Tidecaller Serpent form to check his condition. First he had to find a relatively calm place to train.
After mastering the curse, create cursed beasts and humans to roam the surrounding area as sentries, or unleash them as a tide upon survivors. He was unsure how much experience those minions would funnel back to him. He already sat at level 80 and all earned experience funneled into his evolution, but dispatched bloodslaves roaming the land and slaughtering everything in sight should still yield meaningful gains.
So Thalion planned to play this trial differently than the rest. He wondered whether others had accepted the tutorial’s cost—fifteen hundred years was punishing even for those who had reached E-grade. He had not seen many known names on the leaderboard. The rankings shifted too quickly to provide clarity and searching them individually would be futile. He did hope his friends fared well. The current difficulty seemed low for such a high-stakes event, which suggested surprises lay ahead.
For now it was time to move and train, to prepare for unleashing carnage later in the event or to meet whatever trouble arrived. Thalion breathed in, tasted iron on the air, and felt the curse at the edge of his intent. He had one plan and one certainty: he would exploit this affliction until it made him strong enough to survive, ascend, and claim what the voice of the system promised.