< < Optional Stage Objective > >
< Find the Treasure on Garden Isle >
Seen from above, Garden Isle looked like a wild jungle of trees and vines, but they were just able to glimpse a labyrinth below the canopy. Unfortunately, an approach from above was a treacherous prospect, since many of the vines were actively defending it against an approach from above. As such, Adam landed them on the old dock of the island. It was just a few tres of moss- and weed-covered stone in front of an untad ss of hedges.
Like the quest they’d gotten from Jasper had said, it was one giant hedge maze, with, apparently, a treasure found at its end.
Sothing Adam hadn’t anticipated though, was that he could see the mana that perated the plants, so while there were three entrances for them to pick between to enter the maze, he just went through the middle one, using his Mage Aspirant’s Cowl to reach out and absorb the mana, forcing the walls of the hedge maze to open for them.
“How are you doing that?” Kat asked him.
Adam pointed at his cowl. “It’s a Relic from Stage Six that lets
manipulate mana. I used it to interrupt the Patriarch’s illusion spell when we fought him.”
“I was wondering what happened there,” she admitted.
As Adam absorbed the magic of another plant wall, he felt the energy as it stored itself into his sigils. He wasn’t sure if there was a limit to how much he could shove into his spell catalysts, but he wasn’t eager to test it, since they were literally wrapped around his hands. An explosion from mana overload would absolutely end his loop prematurely.
After creating a third opening, Adam returned to the entrance and fired a hastily-constructed Heart Lance spell into the water that lapped against Garden Isle. The beam was tinted green as it pierced through the waves, and it left behind waterborne plants floating on the surface, which was peculiar.
Since he had to repeatedly discharge the mana he absorbed, getting through the maze in his unconventional way likely wasn’t that much faster than navigating it normally, but once they reached the end they at least had an easy way out. After the last wall was undone with Adam’s cowl, they walked inside the ground floor of an old villa.
Waiting for them in an overgrown and dilapidated lounge were two upgrade chests and a wooden mask. Adam lifted up the mask, thinking it was a special relic, but it had no description. It wasn’t even a collectible.
< < Optional Stage Objective Complete > >
< Found the Treasure on Garden Isle >
< < Quest Complete > >
< The Hidden Treasure on Garden Isle >
< Navigated the hedge maze and located the treasure >
“I thought we’d get so unique relic out of this,” Adam muttered.
“You ntioned a masked ball,” Kat said. “Maybe it is related to that?”
“Possibly. Jasper was quite interested in it, so maybe we can bring it back to him and see if he has anything to say about it.”
“Should we split the upgrades?” she asked.
Adam nodded. “I don’t see why not.”
Kat opened the right chest while Adam looked down at his hands, removing his two gloves to focus on his sigils.
“Which weapon am I currently ‘wielding’?” Adam asked his cube.
[Due to the nature of both your Blood Sigils and Bone Sigils always being equipped, you must manually select which one you wish to upgrade. Currently, this choice has been defaulted to the Bone Sigils, since your Blood Sigils have been fully evolved. Would you like to change this?]
Strange, but I’m glad I at least get to choose, since it’s not like I can unequip the sigils of either.
“Until I have fully evolved my bone sigils, please ensure all my weapon upgrades apply to those.”
[Understood.]
Adam pushed open his upgrade chest.
< < Upgrades Available > >
< Sigil Efficiency (Rare) — Reduces sigil activation cost by 15% >
< Invocation Power (Rare) — Increases invocation effectiveness by 45% >
< Antivenom (Rare) — Reduces the effects of afflictions suffered by 15% >
< Venom (Epic) — Attacks inflict venom slowing target by 25% for 10 seconds >
< < Upgrade Selected > >
< Invocation Power (Rare) >
17 more upgrades to go, then I should be able to fuse these two weapons.
Just to ensure that the upgrade had actually been applied to the bone sigils, Adam brought up his armant information.
< < Weapon Status > >
< 1 >
< Blood Sigils >
< Epic Quality >
< Level 20 >
< Stat Upgrades >
< Sigil Damage
10% >
< Sigil Efficiency
50% >
< Sigil Effect
175% >
< Invocation Range
135% >
< Invocation Speed
140% >
< Invocation Power
190% >
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
< 2 >
< Bone Sigils >
< Epic Quality >
< Level 1 >
< Stat Upgrades >
< Invocation Power
45% >
I haven’t looked at this in ages, he realised. I’m surprised I only picked one damage upgrade for my sigils, but it just goes to show that it’s not as powerful for this weapon, at least based on how I use it.
He of course also got a 25% damage boost to blood magic from his Blood Mage Choker, but he really didn’t think it mattered anywhere near as much as invocation power and speed, nor sigil effect.
With the strange wooden mask in their possession, they flew back towards Moonport using Adam’s boat, landing on the docks of the Wine district when no one was looking. From there they moved into the district until they reached Gilded Gillian’s Guesthouse.
The mont they walked into the tavern and spotted the proprietor, their quest updated.
< < Quest Complete > >
< An Eye to Behold >
< Found Gilded Gillian's glass eye >
They both stared at the old man in disbelief as he stood there in his gilded white suit, his glass eye ho safe-and-sound inside his right eye socket.
Are you fucking serious…
I bet he had his glass eye this entire ti.
“Should we kill him?” Kat asked, clearly thinking the sa thing.
“Honestly, he deserves it,” Adam said.
They stomped across the floor to where he was talking animatedly to a handso younger man.
As the young man saw Adam’s face and Kat’s expression, he quickly scampered off.
“Hello there!” Gillian greeted. “What can I do f—?”
The proprietor froze.
“Oh,” he said.
Adam reached out and pulled the glass eye from his head with a hollow slurp. Then he turned to Kat. “Look, I think I found Gillian’s glass eye.”
“So you did,” Kat replied.
“I swear, I—!” Gillian started.
“Zip it,” Adam said, placing the glass eye into his open mouth. “Here’s what you’re gonna do, if you value your life. You’re going to point us towards where your bloodfiend benefactors are so we can pay them a visit.”
Gillian nodded quickly.
“But first, our reward.”
Gillian pulled the eye out of his mouth and cleaned it with a white gold-embroidered handkerchief pulled from his chest pocket. “Now, listen, I can’t just give you—”
He was interrupted by Kat grabbing his lapels and lifting his feet off the ground.
“What do you think happened to your friends in the Blue Pavilion?” Adam asked. “You’re in no position to make any demands here.”
“I don’t believe you could defeat them,” Gillian said, his tone defiant despite his precarious position.
Adam pulled off the silken backpack and opened it so the proprietor could have a look inside. He scooped a hand into it and lifted out dozens of fangs they’d collected. “I don’t need to explain to you what these are, do I?”
Gillian audibly swallowed.
“What I ant to say was, I already have your reward!” he corrected himself, speaking quickly.
Kat set him down and he patted the wrinkles on his lapels, as though his biggest concern was the integrity of his suit.
They followed him to a small office where he quickly scrounged together 4,000 Shillings. He was about to wriggle himself out of pointing them to whoever pulled his strings, but then Adam and Kat blocked him from leaving the office.
“It’s not that easy to get to him!” Gillian insisted.
“Is it the Maestro?” Adam asked, recalling the na that the laboratory fiend had given him.
“How do you know his na??” Gillian asked in surprise.
Adam floated a bit of blood out in front of his right hand. “I’ve got ways of making people talk.”
The proprietor clearly got the ssage and rummaged around in a drawer of an old wooden desk until he found a crinkled parchnt flier.
“The Maestro is always in hiding. They say he’ll show up for this event inside the Marquis’ Estate tonight.”
They looked at the flier. It was an old invitation to a masked ball.
< < Quest Unlocked > >
< Protect the Ball >
< Protect the guests attending the Wine District Ball >
< < Optional Stage Objective > >
< Participate in the Wine District Ball >
I’m sure he’s not literally impossible to find, Adam thought, but he kept this to himself.
“Where is the estate?” Adam asked.
“It’s the largest building in the Wine district,” Gillian said. “It’s located right on the edge near the Market district, facing the water of the canal and the lagoon.”
“Who is the Marquis?” Adam continued.
“He’s long gone,” Gillian replied. “He died childless, leaving Moonport without a true leader.”
“How do you get in contact with the Maestro if he is in hiding?” Kat asked.
“At tis I receive shipnts on his behalf, and his son cos here to collect them. He has been absent lately though, I have a shipnt he was supposed to pick up two days ago.”
Adam laughed. “Is it a bloodfiend pretending to be an aristocrat’s servant?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s right,” Gillian replied, looking confused.
“We killed him,” Kat said. “Two days ago.”
“Show us where the shipnt is,” Adam demanded. “It’s ‘wine’, isn’t that right?”
Gillian looked poised to argue, but then quickly thought better of it. He bent down behind the desk and pulled out sothing heavy, knocking the back of his head against the underside as he tried to stand up. Then he dragged a wooden box with eight flasks out so that Adam and Kat could see it.
“Where does the Maestro’s servant bring these?” Adam asked.
“I don’t know,” Gillian lied. His lody was full of fear, but despite that he was being defiant.
“I know you’re lying,” Adam told him. “Tell us where he brings this.”
“Near the Marquis’ Estate is a guard post with a tower. I’ve seen him drop it off there, but there is never anyone inside. The place is abandoned.”
“Does the Maestro know that you stalked his delivery boy?” Adam asked.
Gillian froze.
“You don’t have to be scared,” Adam said. “We’ll get rid of him, along with every other bloodfiend infesting Moonport. But we’ll expect a proper reward when we return.”
Adam shot the blood hovering in front of him forward, stopping it a centitre from Gillian’s left eye, the one that was still real. Then he pulled a tiny sliver off from the ball and drove it right into his cornea, continuing until it was past the lens.
Gilian yelped, but didn’t dare move even a nanotre.
“The little worm I planted is more than enough to destroy your eye, brain, or anything else I will it to attack,” Adam said. “If I were you, I would think long and hard about how I could repent for my sins.”
Adam stooped down and picked up the box of wine. Kat followed him out of the office and tavern as he set off towards the easternmost part of the district. She didn’t question his behaviour at all, which for so reason made him reflect on it more than he normally would have.
I’m becoming soone the Flayed Lady would enjoy observing…
But it’s hard to say he didn’t deserve it.
I do feel bad about antagonising Jasper though. He didn’t repeatedly try to lie to
once I called him out, and he didn’t attempt to feed us directly to the Patriarch or so other bloodfiend.
After so minutes of spirited walking, they reached the place they were looking for. An enormous building with a dod roof and a fancy garden in front of its entrance backlit a tower with a one-storey building next to it. They hadn’t been to this part of the district before, since it lay out of the way of the bridge to the Market district, not to ntion, there had been no signs of bloodfiends to catch Adam’s attention.
He frowned when he realised why.
The guard post and tower were wrapped in a tight layer of orange mana. It was the sa type of mana that the Patriarch had used to disguise himself as the Good Drink’s proprietor and create clones during their fight.
Illusion magic…
No wonder I couldn’t sense anything.
Adam handed Kat the wine box and put a hand on the tower, absorbing the layer of illusions placed on it.
With the magic removed, nothing really changed about the building, neither did anything change when he repeated the step with the guard post. However, he could now sense what lay within.
“One second and two third gens,” Adam whispered to Kat.
They approached the door to the building and she knocked once.
The sound of a scraping chair ca from within and then one of the third-generation bloodfiends approached the door.
“Cirillo! You’re late!” scolded a male voice from the other side.
Kat improvised, doing her best to imitate the voice of the second-generation vampire they’d killed on their first day. “I brought it, did I not?”
“Leave it by the door.”
She set down the wine with a loud clunk and then exaggerated stomping away.
Based on the lody on the other side of the door, the vampire didn’t suspect a thing.
Adam pulled the blood out of his crimson shirt, and thanks to the illusion magic he’d absorbed, the nature of the material changed, becoming like a strange camouflage field imitating whatever was behind it. He draped it over them as they backed away from the door.
A minute later, a muscular bloodfiend pulled open the door, revealing a small room where two other n were playing so kind of ga, surrounded by empty wine bottles.
So much for the Maestro being so mysterious figure…
The second-generation vampire just looked like any other bloodfiend they’d encountered. There was a small glow of illusion magic in his eyes, but that was about it. He was generically handso just like the rest.
The lackey brought the box of wine inside, and Adam imdiately struck. With rapid and brutal movents of his control sigil, he exploded the eight wine flasks that he’d infused with his mana on the way here, flinging the blood into the three figures.
Kat charged forward at the sa ti, breaking the door off its hinges with a punch from her claws. The surprise and suddenness of their attack, especially given that the trio clearly assud they were hidden under so kind of glamour, made it all the more effective.
The Maestro and other vampire sitting down were both pumped full of the blood pulled from the flasks, and Adam didn’t waste a mont, tearing it through their insides and selectively crystallising parts of it. He used the rest to slice down the back of the lackey by the door, just as Kat gouged out his throat.
[Third Generation Bloodfiend defeated.]
[Second Generation Bloodfiend defeated.]
[Third Generation Bloodfiend defeated.]
“Their arrogance is their undoing,” Kat said, licking the blood off of her clawed right hand, before breaking open the bloodfiends to pull out their hearts.
They collected their fangs and Adam harvested their material, though he was running out of places to store it all inconspicuously, given that he already had layers of finely-spread bone, flesh, and blood coating his body like a second layer of skin.
“It is a sha I cannot attend the ball,” Kat said, biting into the Maestro’s heart like it was an apple.
“Sure you can,” Adam replied as he watched her shudder from the sensation that flowed through her thanks to the Fiend Tongue.
“How? I will turn into a beast co nightfall.”
“Have you forgotten about the Ballroom Mask?” he replied with a grin.
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