54 – Instinctual Abilities

As had become routine, my morning began – after a quick breakfast – with physical training in the entrance hall.

After I was done with my warm-ups, Lars and I stood in an area that had been lightly padded with some cloth. Not nearly enough to dampen a super-speed fall, to be honest, but we were still at the stage of learning basic moves and slow pretend-fighting.

Instead of beginning immediately, Lars looked at me seriously and asked a question.

“If you ever get into a situation where you face an armed opponent while unarmed yourself, what do you do?”

I considered the scenario for a moment.

“Run away? And if that’s not possible for some reason, try to find a weapon myself?”

Lars looked at me in surprise. “That is an unexpected answer. To be honest, if you were a trainee knight, only the second part would have been ‘correct’. We are trained not to run from our enemies if at all possible. But in your position, running away would indeed be the best option.”

“Because bringing fists to a knife fight will get me stabbed, even if I ‘win’,” I added. “Not to mention if it’s anything with even more reach.”

“Yes, that’s correct…” Lars looked a bit lost for words. “I honestly didn’t expect you to be so level-headed. No offense, Lord Steelheart. But I remember the bravado of young men, especially nobles. Doubly so if they already have a taste of power, as you do.”

I could understand that. I had read more than enough people online on Earth who were sure they’d win a brawl against someone with a knife, so I could only imagine enhanced strength might make it worse. Entitled noble upbringing as well.

Gods knew it gave me a feeling of invincibility, to move as well as I did just a few minutes earlier. One Lars always quickly disabused me of in our ‘spars’.

“Now, I’m not saying it’s impossible to win against such a foe without grievous harm to your person. If your enemy is a normal human, you might be able to outmaneuver them enough to achieve that. But it really is not worth the risk to try unless you actually have no other options. Always remember, it does not take great strength to split skin and muscle with a sharp blade.”

His eyes bored into me to make sure his point got across.

“Even if the only thing you can grab quickly is a stick or a chair leg or anything, it would give you much better chances.” Lars paused a moment as if he just remembered something.

“Actually, in your case, magic might be the weapon of choice for such a situation. But just keep this in mind for when you are inevitably exhausted of mana and still need to defend yourself. Always carry a back-up weapon if you can.”

“That’s what I’m learning the staff for,” I smiled at the knight. “And hand-to-hand for absolute emergencies. Or tavern brawls, if I ever get involved in one of those somehow.”

Lars snorted a bit at my comment. “I pity anyone who tries to brawl you. Well, anyone who isn’t a knight as well. Otherwise I pity the tavern owner.”

I chuckled in response. The amount of property damage two empowered people could cause was undoubtedly astronomic. And what was a normal human to do in order to get one of the participants to pay for the damages? A scenario that would surely haunt quite a few innkeepers’ nightmares.

While Lars’ advice was a good guideline and I’d try to keep it the best I could, he still wasn’t aware of my regeneration. Unlike most people – even most knights – I could actually just take a stab wound and walk it off without issue.

It would still hurt and use up blood, so I’d rather avoid it if possible, but it was another card up my sleeves.

Since I wasn’t entirely sure yet how well my claws would perform, those were more of a last resort. I didn’t consider it very likely that I’d be able to effectively parry a weapon with them, for example. They were only a centimeter or so long at most. Probably decent to disembowel someone with, not that I wanted to try that any time soon.

Our training continued mostly as usual, with the exception that Lars would occasionally use a small piece of wood as a ‘knife’ to demonstrate some potential counters. I didn’t succeed a single time, which reinforced his point. He wasn’t even moving faster than me, so the failure stung more than the small taps I got every time.

Once I was a bit freshened up, I reclined in my comfortable chair in the study.

Twenty interviews were left, so I’d be busy for a while. Guard schedules had been adjusted between the manor and town so all twenty were available.

The interviews themselves weren’t anything noteworthy really. Ten to fifteen minutes at most, not very interesting over all. One change I implemented was two days’ back-pay on the raised wages, so no one felt screwed over by the schedule. Plus one day for everyone who went yesterday, issued retroactively.

Upon hearing this ruling, whatever guard I was interviewing usually went from slightly disappointed to happy. For the first few anyway, after that it had been spread around.

Much more interesting to me than the hours of time spent on basic interview questions and influence-assisted interrogations was all the blood. Only a single cup’s worth from each person, as usual. But with the sheer amount of people it quickly added up.

About four liters of the delicious nectar, spread out over five hours or so. I felt positively bloated by the end. It was nice.

Between interviews was where the really interesting – as in, mentally engaging – part happened.

Using the fresh cup of blood to refill my reserves, I worked on The Art of Magic’s mana shaping tests.

I’d had to restart again since I closed the book, but just like before the early shapes were a breeze to fill. I was even growing faster over time.

Only after the weird pointy oval did things get more complicated. It started with various stars. Not too complex, all things considered, but they had a lot of corners to fill. In addition, the inner corners were new, so I had to adapt my method a bit. But I managed fine.

Then came the irregular shapes. Apparently-random collections of corners, curves, straight or bendy lines and so on. The third of these was the first time I actually failed another puzzle since I figured out how to manipulate my mana. One side of it ended in a looping spiral that took me so long to carefully coax mana into, earlier filled areas started to fade.

From there, it went downhill and I quickly ran out of mana.

Slightly frustrated, I placed the book aside for the moment. Intellectually I knew this was a skill I would need to invest countless hours into to master, but that didn’t stop my annoyance from growing.

So, instead of souring my enjoyment of learning actual magic, I did something else with my time.

This was about halfway through the interviews, so I still had plenty of blood to go.

Instead of just drinking the next cup of blood immediately, I tried to influence it with my will, similar to my own blood. Needless to say, I failed. There was no connection between us, so I didn’t have any control either.

Which couldn’t be the end. There were ways of manipulating external mana after all. The book hadn’t taught me any yet, but it had hinted at them in several places. Among a few others, the techniques to regain mana quicker apparently worked on these principles. Which made sense.

Siphoning mana from a well – actively, not just through proximity – had to take control of the well’s mana somehow, right?

Unfortunately, no sudden enlightenment came to me with this cup, so I downed it and called the next interviewee.

With my next cup, I tried something different. Similar to how I’d manipulated my own blood before, I created skin contact. In other words, I stuck my finger into the cup. Mia, who had been watching with more or less concealed interest so far, grimaced.

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There was something I’d forgotten about. Again. This was happening to me regularly in recent times. And I wasn’t happy about that in the slightest.

Trying to jog my memory, I absentmindedly stirred the blood with my finger. Unfortunately, the memory still eluded my grasp.

Even with direct skin contact, I still couldn’t control the blood. I did get the slight impression of mana from the liquid, but nowhere near as clear as my own blood. Though that might just be an issue of concentration?

As far as I could tell, my body refined the blood I drank somehow. That was how it gained a different flavor to before – the one I identified as me – and probably also improved its density, for lack of a better word. Plus all the vampire-related functions it carried, like the ability to form blood bonds. The amounts of blood taken in versus how much I had flowing in my veins varied wildly.

Human blood like what I was drinking right now was pretty close to one-to-one, but the animal blood was ‘compressed’ down a lot. Less so for the mana-rich rat blood, from what I remembered. Not that a few drops were a good sample size.

Honestly, I didn’t really understand the mechanics of how my body treated blood. I could apparently store it somewhere, since even if I was over what should fit into my veins like back with the tower sacrifices, I didn’t feel like I would burst from the pressure.

Emptying the cup – and licking my finger clean as well for good measure – I did my best to feel for what was happening to the blood as it passed through my body.