Sylver Seeker

Blood holds a special place when it comes to dark magic.

And while many would preach about the versatility, the symbolism, the “artistry,” the variety, and the history, the real reason blood holds a special place in dark magic is because of only one reason.

It’s cheap.

Although cheap might not be the right word for it.

Abundant.

Blood is cheap because of how easy it is to procure.

Most human adults produce a little under 1 liter a day, with some simple magic, that number can easily be bumped up to an unhealthy 4 liters, but that isn’t to say 1 liter is something to laugh at.

A liter a day, is 4 cups worth of blood, every day.

That’s 28 cups a week, 112 cups a month, and 1,344 cups a year.

Blood is vital to the living, in fact, it’s one of the few things that keeps the living, the living. You take their blood away, and to no one’s surprise, they die.

It’s an odd way of thinking about it, but the only purpose of the body is to consume enough nutrients and calories to keep the brain alive. Frankly speaking, the brain is the only part that’s impossible to replace.

A person can stay alive without their arms, their legs, or even their heart, as long as the brain gets a steady supply of blood, the details don’t matter.

But, again, all of that isn’t what makes blood so “special.”

And don’t go thinking those arrogant bloodsuckers have anything to do with it, they didn’t invent blood. Just because their diet consists solely of blood, doesn’t mean those pale cunts are responsible for blood being as crucial to dark magic as it is.

No. The reason is much simpler.

And obvious if you’ve ever attempted any kind of dark magic ritual.

See, the thing that’s so special about blood is how easy it is to give. A needle prick on the finger, a small blade across the wrist, a large blade across the throat, and voila, blood.

It’s easy to give, easy to take, and once again, abundant.

You have blood, your parents have blood, your wife, husband, son, daughter, your pet cat has blood, the neighbor’s sheep has blood, the butcher shop is overflowing with blood, they’ve got so much of it, they’re just throwing it away.

Most people won’t even notice some of their blood missing. You might have to get creative with where you stick the syringe, but if you know what you’re doing, they won’t even know what hit them.

Because, once again, blood is cheap.

Now, flesh, on the other hand, yeah, people notice when you steal their flesh very quickly. A man wakes up with a chunk of belly missing, and he understandably kicks up a fuss.

There isn’t even a good place to harvest flesh, the limbs are out, too many nerves and blood vessels, not to mention most people need their muscles, and you really have to know what you’re doing to not fuck it up. The head is out, and that leaves only the torso, and even then, people complain when you tear a strip of their skin off.

And bones?

It is a nightmare to take someone’s bones.

If you think people get pissy about having their thigh meat cut off, just wait until you try getting a rib from them.

And it isn’t as if it’s easier with a corpse.

Human bodies go bad quick.

Unless you’re able to preserve it, a corpse is worthless after… Even if the monsters and insects don’t get to it… 1 week is sort of the point where you stop bothering.

That sort of goes back to the main point, of blood being cheap and easy to procure.

Now, not all starting dark mages are lucky enough to find a fresh corpse, and while there are some rituals where animals can be used, the vast majority require a corpse belonging to an intelligent creature.

Especially the low-tier rituals.

So, you may ask, what is a dark mage to do?

Stab themselves in the heart and hope whatever scrap of human skin bound tome they copied the ritual framework from works?

Chop their leg off and hope the ritual is genuine?

Dip a finger into a pot of boiling acid?

The problem with all of those rituals is that regardless of whether they work or not, you’re permanently crippled. Limbs don’t grow back under normal conditions, especially if dark magic is involved. Once you sacrifice a piece of yourself, you are never getting it back.

As a result of the vast majority of aspiring dark mages being, well, cowards, they inadvertently ended up using their blood to practice. This in turn meant that, regardless of the amount of strength the dark mage ended up attaining, they always had a special appreciation for blood.

Sylver did too.

The glass half-full part of him quite honestly couldn’t stop smiling, as he watched the puddles of blood forming in the garden outside. Even if it was all corpse blood, it was still blood. Admittedly, it was oddly sterile, which was strange, but then again, a 3 headed dragon is the one who made it rain.

“Is this everyone?” Sylver asked without looking away from the window.

A piece of him felt utter revulsion at the liquid gore pummeling the various flowers into the ground. The feeling was mostly due to Ria, and the people all around him, but still. It was a bit gross, and he hadn’t even told anyone that the blood was all preserved corpse blood.

Sylver turned away from the blood-covered window as if he was turning his back on a work of art.

He looked down at the soaked in blood people standing slightly below him, and with a single clap of his hands, silenced the panicked murmuring.

“Alright people! Good news first! The liquid raining down on you is neither toxic nor corrosive. If you get some in your eyes or swallow some, do not be concerned, it won’t do anything, and will wash out with some water,” Sylver said, just a bit louder than his normal speaking volume.

The group standing closest to him were the cultivators Sylver had conquered, and Faust had trained. From where Sylver was standing, the specks of red on their white masks looked almost like painted on rose petals.

The group cowering directly behind them were the farmers, merchants, the people who paid tax, or something, in exchange for being on Faust’s land, along with the guards. Sylver still wasn’t 100% sure what the situation was with them, but they were basically civilians. They had been told to run towards the main sect building, and while a couple had the foresight to cover themselves with a sheet, the vast majority were soaked through in liquid red.

There wasn’t a collective sigh of relief at Sylver’s good news.

Probably because he said, “good news first,” and they were now waiting for the bad news.

“Now the bad news!” Sylver said and confirmed that the lack of reaction was indeed due to him prefacing his earlier statements with “good news first.”

“I don’t know what it does! I would like to think it’s there just to fuck with us, but I’ll be honest with you, I wouldn’t count on it. So, you know… let me know if something happens… In the meantime relax, and get some rest, we have plenty of food and water,” Sylver ended, and once again, no collective sigh of relief.

“That was terrible,” Ria whispered, as Sylver left the small stage that had been made for him out of a couple of tables.

“If I tell the truth now, they’ll believe me later if I need to lie. Right now, everything is fine. It’s raining blood, and apart from the odd person slipping and getting a bruise, everyone is alive and well,” Sylver whispered back.

The previously empty and useless rooms were now in the process of being cleaned and furnished. Sylver could have used his [Necrotic Mutilation] to make the people’s houses blood proof, but it would take a fair bit of time, and more honestly, he didn’t get the feeling the dragon was going to stop at raining blood.

The clouds didn’t appear to be dispersing, if anything, they looked darker and denser than they had 2 hours ago.

Sylver used [Fog Form] to travel through the holes he had made and materialized inside his workshop.

The various tables and chairs had been moved over to the corners and sides of the room, to give the thing in the middle as much space as possible.

It looked like an icicle of dark green congealed blood. With black pulsing veins running up and down the gory, admittedly slightly phallic, pillar.

The magical gore had formed a protective film around the building and was actively moving the congealing blood off the roof and throwing it down towards the ground.

Because of the blood being blood, it had started to congeal after a few minutes, which in turn meant that it had formed small stalagmites on the roof. The structure of the building was fairly solid, the wood they used for construction was as hard as stone, and presumably as strong, but there’s still a limit as to how much the wooden walls would be able to hold.

The congealing blood formed a sort of rim on the edges of the roof, and that then became a “bowl” on the roof, which was gradually gathering blood, and getting heavier and heavier.

Sylver had been too preoccupied with preventing his own house from being crushed under the weight of scabs to pay too much attention to the nearby sects, but he was fairly certain he heard the sound of a tall building toppling over at some point.

The fact that the architectural standard here was to use the roof as an extra floor really bit these people in the ass. Especially the ones that had gardens on their roofs, the soil alone likely soaked up enough blood to come crashing through the ceiling.

Sylver checked the bloody pillar, and after he confirmed that everything was in order, sat down in the corner, and waited for Spring to brew him some tea.

“Can they fix this?” Ria asked, as she came out of Sylver’s robe, and sat down on the nearby table.

There was a slight delay before she started to speak. What Ria really wanted to ask was “it’s raining blood outside, and you’re drinking tea?” but she stopped herself since she already knew the answer, given that that was exactly what Sylver was doing.

“I mean, if it stops raining, the blood will dry up, and should be quite easy to gather and dispose of. The plants will probably die from iron toxicity, or simply drown, depending on how long this goes on. Honestly, the thing everyone should be more worried about is the giant serpent’s head, that is responsible for the rain of blood,” Sylver said, and got to watch as Ria’s face lost any trace of emotion.

She had been slightly annoyed, and upset, earlier, but now she was just confused.

“That’s right… Everyone saw it…” Ria mumbled out.

“I mean, if anyone is insane and stupid enough to live on top of a living dragon, my money is on cultivators… But they’re probably going to evacuate,” Sylver said, as Spring handed him the cup of steaming hot tea.

“Where will they go?” Ria asked.

“My guess is south. They wouldn’t survive the winters up north, I believe there’s an ocean west of here, and everything on the east is the High King’s territory,” Sylver said.

Ria made that ticking noise again.

It sort of sounded like someone was tapping the tip of their knife against a glass window, but just barely audible.

He knew what she wanted to say.

“Aren’t you going to help these people? How can you just leave them to die?” and so on, and so forth, all while Sylver blankly answered that they weren’t his problem or responsibility and that he only came here to find Edmund.

This wasn’t to say he didn’t feel sorry for them.

And Ria could make the argument that he went out of his way to save the dark elves, so why isn’t he doing the same for these people?

Well, for starters, the locals here looked foreign to Sylver and didn’t remind him of Nyx every single time he saw their faces. That alone helped him not care too much.

The second reason was scale. A couple hundred dark elves was one thing, but hundreds of thousands of people? Sylver couldn’t even find a good spot to settle the dark elves, what the fuck was he going to do with a literal nation full of people?

The third reason, and the most important as far as Sylver was concerned, was that he didn’t owe these people anything. They had an emperor; it was his responsibility to handle this kind of bullshit.

Obviously, the cultivators Faust had trained were coming with him, but everyone else would just have to figure things out for themselves.

Sylver was in the middle of sipping his tea when the floor shook so hard that he nearly choked on it.

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