On the streets people were already starting to put the boneless corpses on wagons to be sent off somewhere to be burnt but i paid them no heed as i simply ignored the smell of iron and the puddles of blood and corpses covering the streets.
Once home i just locked the door and went to sleep since neither Winston nor Eva were present and most likely were dead or looking for me outside, i didn't really care Which option would turn out to be reality but it would be beneficial to me if at least one of them survived, so long as they weren't maimed since that would be a drain on resources.
...
I woke up a few hours later "guess they are dead" with nothing else to do i decided to look at the damage that was done to the slums while trying to recall my memories since that seemed to somewhat help, though i would usually get dizzy if i overdid it.
<3rd pov>
Soon after Blake began to to walk around the slums it began to lightly rain, making it Impossible to not step into water mixed with blood.
Blake was quite surprised as today it seemed like his memories were being restored quite quickly, what he didn't realise was that the blood in the water was slowly disappearing as he walked through the streets.
As his memories were slowly restored he slowed his pace before stopping completely right besides a manhole cover where the bloody water was being drained into, and all of that water had to flow around Blake's boots to get to the sewers.
98% of Blakes memories have been restored by this point.
'i used to venerate some streamer' Blake thought as tears slowly began to well up in his dull lifeless eyes.
99% restored.
'it was a wonderful and kind person who made my heart skip a beat when they laughed' the tears began to run down his cheek and fell to the ground mixing with the water and blood.
99.5%
'i used to pray to them daily and created a shrine for their greatness' Blake began laugh slightly while crying even more intensely.
99.9%
"She was the light of my life, my muse, the thing that kept me from turning into a heartless monster" Blake mumbled as he began to weep and laugh at his pathetic sense of self that was built over multiple years around delusions of a person who didn't even know he existed.
100%
Blake suddenly stopped laughing and wiped his tears that were like an unending river, a new light was ignited in his eyes, a light that has been missing for his whole life in this world.
"Mozzi, i will make sure to be a good person in this life, i will try to make this world a better place just for you. Even if you don't even know about my existence i will try to make you proud" unknowingly Blake said this in english and not the native language of this world so any passerby's nearby would have thought that Blake was mumbling nonsense.
I stood in place for a moment to calm my emotions and smiled as i looked at the clouds 'i wish i knew the reason why i regained these memories today of all days'.
After a moment i became confused as some vague information was starting to take form in my mind 'blood sacrifice, What's that?'
Moments later more information began to form 'Blood sacrifice, the ability to sacrifice blood in exchange for anything so long as enough blood is used...' my mouth dropped open in surprise at this.
'i have to take advantage of this situation' i walked off a couple of streets away from sight and entered the sewers and hesitated for a few second 'Mozz give me strength, i want to increase the range of my blood sacrifice'.
I put my hand in the sewer "river" that was red and contained some less than pleasant materials, the blood started to disappear near my hand while the radius slowly got bigger, while i had to keep myself from gagging.
In 20 minutes the radius was large enough to intercept the entire stream so i changed the focus of my sacrifice to start enhancing the rate at which my blood regenerates at, since it felt like the best long term option since there wouldn't be a chance to gather a lot of blood anytime soon unless another massacre happens.
In a couple of hours i couldn't see any blood so i went back home and thoroughly cleaned my body along with scrubbing my hand for a good hour.
10 people were seated around a round table, 9 bishops and archbishop Zola, these were the strongest people in the city, the minimal requirement to become a bishop required a person to be able to destroy a small house in a single attack, to be an archbishop you needed to at least be able to destroy 10 large houses in a single attack.
"-and those are all the reasons i believe we should mobilise all our forces and strike the cult of Ulna before they recreate another one of those bone behemoths" proposed bishop jun, a 50 year old man with an arm made of stone that moved and acted like a normal arm made of flesh.
"What if some outside force realises that we are gone and decides to attack. The city would be destroyed before any of us could return!" disagreed bishop Emilia with a scoff.
"We could use the cave tunneler, if we are required to return we will be back within 2 minutes" countered Jun, gaining the disapproval of multiple bishops.
"Preposterous! An artifact of that level requires an year worth of accumulated faith to activate!" Interjected a rank 3 bishop as others bishops began to tell their opinions before the discussion slowly turned to pointless bickering barely related to the matter at hand.
"Silence!" Demanded archbishop Zola "in the past 5 years the biggest and only real threat to emerge is the cult of Ulna, we can still activate the diamond golem in case of an emergency. Bishops Numai, Arko, and Sult will stay guard at the city, we can't let these savages come to out homes and do as they please, we will march to their base at sunrise and eradicate them from the face of this dimension!" Finished Zola, his tone descending into a purely hateful tone due to the fact that the bishop who died was his son.
"But-" a bishop was cut off from speaking as Zola changed his faith to mana and unleashed it, completely supressing all rank 3 bishops preventing them from movement while the rank 4 bishops felt as if they were moving through water.
"This decision is final" Zola stopped unleashing his power and stood up to leave.
"The meeting is over, i will see you in the morning" Zola closed the door behind him and disappeared to his quarters.
"Bishop Uren, Irwin, and Teku retired? That doesn't seem right, in a world like this even 90 year old bishops are forced to participate in wars or defense campaigns. Did they defect or something?" I laid down the newspaper as my arm began to itch again.
'ever since i upgraded my blood production i have started to have headaches and an itching body so i have to sacrifice a bit of my blood every few hours... Or do i?' i took out a cup and filled it with my blood by hovering my finger above it and dispensing it from my finger tip.
This was quite the useless ability i created yesterday in order to test a few things and especially to get an easy way to see how much blood it costs to gain some minor improvements.
'add new sub ability to blood sacrifice, auto sacrifice' next i began to imagine how i wanted it to work.
The ability was basically like a small toggleable program that i set to sacrifice any excess blood i have and in this case since i am almost 14 it meant i should have a bit more than 3 litres of blood in my body and i will try to keep it at that level while the sacrificed blood will flow towards "upgrade slots" which i designated to just upgrade my blood regeneration further.
"At least i won't wake up in a pool of blood from a nose bleed anymore" i said looking at the cup that was now halfway empty.
'hmmm, seems like the cost of changing or adding extensions onto Blood sacrifice is rather cheap, same as creating blood related abilities' since my awakening i have been testing and experimenting with Blood sacrifice and found a few peculiar things, such as the fact that the closer the intended effect of my sacrifice is related to blood the cheaper it is.
When i tried to increase my perception two days ago i was almost knocked out from the backlash of losing about 30% of my blood, on top of that the upgrade in my perception was quite negligible since i didn't specify which part of my perception i wished to upgrade and instead just got all my senses ever so slightly upgraded.
Putting down my mental notes i began to change my plans for the future, with three bishops out of commission along with about a third of the lower class being turned into jellyfish made me certain that there would be many problems coming up in the future.
The biggest problem being that this city will be viewed as vulnerable now that 4 bishops are missing, especially since one of them was rank 4 bringing down the amount of rank 4 bishops in this city down to 2, this means a whole lot of trouble ranging from raiders raiding, cultists capturing the people, or bigger religions coming in to take over our city which would be disastrous for the religion of Sol since in this dimension this city was the only big settlement that worships him.
The most common knowledge about the gods was that they were powerful, however their blessings could be only bestowed to people if they had enough followers in a dimension, with insufficient worshippers their connection to a dimension will dwindle and thus less people with a connection to said god would be born, causing a downward spiral that would eventually lead to a religion completely dying out.
As for how a god gains a connection to a dimension in the first place? No idea, as a peasant i had minimal education and the only knowledge about the gods was fed to me through the skewed vision of the church of Sol during the biweekly sermons, where we also had to pray to him for at least 5 minutes.
'i got sidetracked' shaking my head i focused on what was actually important, increasing my ability to survive.
There were a few paths i could start to walk down in order to have better chances of survival and while i did plan on having everything eventually, i had to focus on a single path for now since i couldn't walk in multiple directions at once, plus some paths would be too expensive since they are almost completely unrelated to blood in any way.
This left me with only a few plausible options: blood manipulation (multiple possible variations), enhancing already existing properties of my blood or organs, possibly creating new properties for my blood or new organs, using my ability to unlock both mana and faith, even the tiniest drop of both would turn me into a paladin whose status would be dozens of times higher than a simple peasant even if the difference in actual battle strength would be almost nonexistent.
All of these had their ups and down, blood manipulation would be extremely versatile and could be further build upon with additions like turning my blood solid or heating it up, however it would be quite intense on my body since i had only so much to spare before blacking out or worse.
Enhancing already existing properties of blood like the ability for wounds to clot over so i don't bleed out, improving my cardiovascular system for better stamina or straight up upgrading the way my blood cells carry oxygen and carbon dioxide. As far as i knew there was little risk in going down this path worst case i would have to sacrifice blood to undo any mistakes that might appear.
Creating new properties for my blood could be just about anything from making my blood acidic like a certain fictional alien species, having my blood act similar to hormnes like adrenaline and testosterone or some compound of steroids to enhance training quality. This was certainly a path filled with potential opportunities to make myself better however the risks were proportional to the rewards since a new addition might just kill me before i can undo it.
Unlocking both faith and mana would ensure i have a relatively good social status and an extra way to train myself along with the fact that i couldn't be mistaken as some unholy beast not reliant on magic or faith once i go down different paths, there was also a slim chance i might already have one or both of these energies but i am simply unable to use them as of yet, perhaps blood sacrifice was related to my faith or magic.
After much thinking i came up with a plan, i would try to unlock faith and mana as fast as i could, preferably within the next 4 months.
Afterwards i would start enhancing already existing properties and train my mana and faith without using blood sacrifice.
Once i am considered a rank 2 paladin i would start a religion with Mozz acting as its goddess, which i would eventually turn into reality but that was for the far future.
For the present i would get a job at some butcher shop in order to steal blood and speed up my plans.
(End of chapter)