Blood Magus

Chapter 22

As he walked down the street and prepared to cut into the forest to find his clearing-turned-ritual site, Zeth glanced over the requirements to conduct Demonic Covenant.

[Strength of sacrifice required: Moderate

Required ritual circle diameter: 8.81 feet (originally 10 feet)

Time required to draw: 4.41 hours (originally 5 hours)

Upkeep time required each day: 3.52 hours (originally 4 hours)]

They were pretty strange. To begin with, the required strength of sacrifice needed to activate it was the highest he’d seen—Empowerment Ritual had only recently risen up from ‘Low’ to ‘Moderately Low,’ and even that was getting difficult to manage at this point. So something all the way up to what he assumed was the next level, ‘Moderate,’ was almost certainly going to take quite a lot to activate.

On top of that, the diameter was also gigantic. Once again, when compared to Empowerment Ritual’s now-4.41 foot requirement, Demonic Covenant doubled the size of the circle. At least the smaller time requirement was nice—though, four and a half hours still wasn’t exactly a breeze. The strangest part of it all, though, was the upkeep time requirement.

Zeth finally understood precisely what it meant—the circle would effectively undo that many hours of his work each day, meaning he’d need to spend that much time repairing it if he wanted to keep it ready for activation from one day to the next. For all of his other rituals, that upkeep time was always a small fraction of the total time needed to draw the circle. But here, it was almost fully equal to the initial requirement.

Effectively, this meant that, unlike a Hellfire Ritual, he wouldn’t be able to do something like draw a few of these and keep them prepared for when they’d be needed in the future. Rather, if he wanted to summon a demon, he was likely going to be drawing the entire circle that very day. Which meant it would be basically impossible to summon a demon on short notice. And, with its massive diameter requirement, he wouldn’t be able to carry something like this around with him to activate whenever he needed to. At least, not unless he could reduce the diameter of his circles by an insane amount. Maybe that would happen eventually.

For now, though, he just needed to draw the circle, and he needed to acquire a sacrifice to activate it. The circle was simple enough; he’d just need to draw new rings of Hellfire Rituals that would be wide enough to protect him while he drew the larger circle. But before he could do that, he’d need to acquire a sacrifice. With Demonic Covenant’s extreme upkeep cost, he wanted to be sure he had a sacrifice secured before he did all the work that may have been erased if he took too long finding one.

And that sacrifice was the harder requirement by far. He doubted he could rely on a strong enough monster just coming to him. Instead, he’d need to go out in

As carefully yet quickly as he could, Zeth crept up to the back wall of the shed, where he found the bucket of blood resting innocently in the grass, a spout coming from inside dripping the occasional droplet into the pool of liquid.

He grabbed it, taking care not to make any noise, and hurried off, away from the building.

It was only once he got to his typical ritual site in the forest clearing that Zeth’s heartbeat steadied. Walking around with a bucket of human blood in his hands wasn’t very good for his attempts to look inconspicuous, so he was forced to sneak into the forest and run through there, hoping the smell wouldn’t attract any monsters.

Once there, he fell to his knees and began preparing according to plan—first, expand the protection of his Hellfire Ritual circles, then get to work on the massive Demonic Covenant circle.

Zeth wasn’t sure what to expect from the ritual, if he was being honest with himself. He knew demons were powerful, to the point that he’d heard tales of them single-handedly taking down massive swaths of soldiers in the past. However, his information was extremely limited. Who knew if only certain demons had capabilities incredible—maybe he’d just get some random weakling. Not that anything that came from a realm as deep as the Thirteenth would be truly , but still.

Looking at the description as he worked, he tried to glean as much as he could.

[Demonic Covenant - Cost: 15 Skill Points

Uses a ritual circle to attempt to summon a demon from the Thirteenth Realm. The demon will be bound to the caster’s word, and can be dismissed at will.]

The phrase ‘attempt to summon’ made him worry. Could the attempt fail? Would he need to do something to ensure it would succeed? He hoped the effort and resources he sank into this wouldn’t be wasted. At the very least, though, he did feel like, in the case he did successfully summon a demon, he’d be safe. The Skill seemed to give him two safety valves to use against the demon—he could make them do whatever he wanted, and could get rid of them if necessary. At the very least, it was unlikely that summoning a demon would carry with it true danger. Worst-case, it would just be a waste of time.

Though, even in that worst-case scenario where it ended up failing, Zeth still wouldn’t have gained nothing from the ritual. After all, there was more than one reason he wanted to use this Wicked thrall woman’s blood to conduct it.

Supposedly, she had stated to the guards that she was a Blood Mage. And supposedly, that information was reliable because they had tricked her into saying it. However, Zeth wasn’t convinced at all that she was the Blood Mage he was looking for. In fact, he was all but certain she wasn’t the one. But that didn’t necessarily mean what she had said was total falsehood. There was still a possibility that this woman was Blood Mage.

The only way to actually read a person’s full Status was locked behind a specific Skill exclusive to the Inquisitor Class, and a group as powerful as the Inquisitors would have no reason to stick around these parts, so Zeth wouldn’t be able to do something like genuinely confirming her Class for himself. But what he could do was use her blood in this ritual and see what the System called it.

If it was ‘weak’ human blood, then chances were she didn’t have a Class. But if it called her blood ‘strong?’ It wouldn’t mean for certain that she truly was a Blood Mage, but it at least meant she had sort of Class. And if it turned out there really were more Blood Mages crawling around this town than just the one he’d scuffled with, chances were they were connected. And if they were connected, then that meant all Zeth needed to do would be to catch a single one of these Blood Mages, and that one would lead him straight to the one he wanted.

Thinking of these other Blood Mages, his mind wandered to the question of whether this Demonic Covenant Skill was different from what a normal Blood Mage would get. It seemed like they had a Skill called ‘Fire Ritual’ instead of his own Hellfire Ritual, and he knew his Ritual Circle Mastery Skill was different from theirs, too, since it let him move his circles around while theirs had to stay stationary. So then, how was Covenant different? Was it just cheaper and easier to obtain? Or was there some key difference—a limitation built into theirs that he didn’t have to deal with?

he thought with a smile.

Once he was finished with his hellfire circles, Zeth crouched down at the edge of the ten-foot section of ground he’d cleared out. It was time to cross the point of no return. He took a breath, staring at his sum of Points and his list of available Skills.

[UNLOCKED CLASS-EXCLUSIVE SKILLS

Otherworldly Excellence - Cost: 17

Resonant Whispers - Cost: 9

Demonic Covenant - Cost: 15

Secure Rites - Cost: 12

Speedy Rites - Cost: 12

Compact Rites - Cost: 12

Forbidden Knowledge - Cost: 25

Unholy Strength - Cost: 18]

Now was his last chance to decide to save up and purchase Otherworldly Excellence instead of Demonic Covenant. Or he could’ve gotten almost any other of the Skills offered to him. Though, he was still notably far off from being able to afford Forbidden Knowledge—if he even wanted it. Still, he had plenty of options. Was Covenant really the correct one?

He took another breath.

After the moment of hesitation, he placed his finger on the ground and prepared to start drawing.

[You have purchased Blood Magus Skill: Demonic Covenant.

-15 Skill Points. You have 1 Skill Point.]