[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 154 – Bloodline Horrors

Sam opened his Inventory and searched through the small extra-dimensional closet that was on the other side of his pouch’s opening. “Let’s see what we’ve got here… a [Golem Eye], [Faded Mana Cores], [Escape Scroll]….”

Sorting through the stuff, Sam realized that he had quite a lot of things that he might use one day, but none of them were immediately useful for his purposes. He didn’t have any ore or raw materials as such.

But something he had nearly forgotten tumbled away from one of the [Cliff Tiles] he had stacked to the side.

If the crystalline things hadn’t fallen, he would have forgotten they were there. Inventory wasn’t like a list of all the things you had, it was a small pocket in which you could lose things easily if you didn’t know where they were.

Sam wondered if he should create some shelving, something to set each of the items on, even if it took up more room just to be able to have a method of seeing everything at a glance instead of rooting around and hunting.

The [Dungeon Ingresses] had been one of the first items he picked up so long ago, before the Dark Vault even.

He plucked one free and looked at it with a critical eye.

[Dungeon Ingress]

(Vault) (D-Class)

(★★☆Limited)

All across the Shardrune Realms, there are Dungeons that exist in their own temporal pocket. Among these are Ingresses, entrances to said Dungeons that can be utilized no matter where you are. When used, they provide a onetime entrance to the Dungeon within. If placed upon a Tile you control, you gain the ability to anchor the Dungeon to the material plane.

Holy shit, that’s a D-Class Dungeon? The only other thing that he’d seen that was D-Class was his bloodline.

And despite using it extensively, it never seemed upgrade in rarity. That alone said volumes for its starting strength.

“If I’m F-Class, and I’ve seen E and D-Class, then I think it’s fair to say Il’dran uses at least 6 classes. Maybe more if there’s something weird like AA-Class or something,” Sam muttered to himself.

There was the X-Class he’d seen, but that appeared specifically on unique things that didn’t seem to fit into whatever grading or rating system the Shardrune used.

If I’m still considered F-Class with all of this HP and my ridiculous high stats… what the hell kind of monsters are A-Class?

Not that the Shard seemed to use class ratings for creatures. It seemed relegated to items and abilities, but it stood to reason that an F-Class creature had… well, F-Class abilities and spells, and an A-Class creature had A-Class ones.

Even his Breaker bloodline was only considered D-Class. Was that because that was the strength of the bloodline and its ability to utterly destroy things, creating weak points from nothing, or was it because that was its lowest starting point?

It was a question he had posed to Volquist, who only told him that he couldn’t answer any questions about his bloodline. In fact, he had been unusually somber about his question. Sam could recall his worried tone easily.

“Listen,” Volquist had told him, leaning forward on the table, “bloodlines aren’t exactly rare, but they’re far from common. Most of them do one thing really well, or alter things for their recipient, but you need to know that there are people out there who hunt those with bloodlines. And among those hunters there are two different types, neither of which you want to meet, but if you have a choice, I’d say it’d be best to run into the envious types.

“They only want to kill you, to prove that those without bloodlines are superior by way of training and raw gumption rather than gifted talent. You won’t find any of them using the term ‘natural genius’ to describe themselves, but they’re hardly pushovers.

“Now if you’re really unlucky, you’ll run into the other type. The covetous ones. These are the real sickos. I won’t scar you with the details, but they really want a bloodline and haven’t been given one. And they will go to any length possible to secure one.”

Sam had been confused, but he understood enough that bloodlines, as the name implied, were hereditary. “So somebody will try to baby-trap me,” he had said, half-joking and hoping that it wasn’t true.

The grim look on Volquist’s face said he was only partly correct. “Nobody likes to talk about it,” Volquist said. “But that is probably the least horrible thing that these degenerates will do. Your bloodline is inside you. Some bloodlines are located in specific regions. There are people who have bloodlines in their eyes. Take the eyes, transplant them, boom. You now have an inferior version of their bloodline.

“Now, the Shard doesn’t look fondly on this sort of fuckery, and for good reason. It actively discourages it in ways I can’t divulge, but that doesn’t stop these freaks from trying to find any loophole they can.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, more than a little unnerved, “but just because they have an eye or whatever, doesn’t mean that the bloodline is inside them, right? Like, their blood is still theirs.”

“Now we’ve come to the darkest bits.” Volquist shook his head. “You’re right. As far as most people know, there’s no way to get a bloodline without consensual relations. Like I said, the Shard protects the gifts it gives. However, there are a lot of ways to get around such protections.

“As you said, your blood is still yours… well, if you keep a person with a bloodline alive and transfer their blood into yours, now you have theirs. For a time, at least. Eventually the bloodline will weaken in them, and they’ll need a top-off as it were. Don’t give me that look, Sam. I told you this was dark shit.

“That’s why I told you that if you run into these types of people, pray it’s the ones that just want to kill you for being ‘superior’ by genetics or whatever and not the other type. Because they’ll do a whole lot worse than kill you. Some of them are no doubt out hunting right now, waiting for some fresh blood to rise through the Layers and into their waiting clutches. This is why you need to never talk about your bloodline. Got it?”

Sam had a hard time coming to terms with it, but he reminded himself to talk to Raiko and the others. He needed to swear those who knew of his Breaker bloodline to secrecy, or at least impress upon them the dangers of talking about it openly.

As far as he knew, only himself and Raiko had bloodlines, and they would already be targets just by being Incarnates, let alone the rulers of Sil’mara.

There was a reason the term “a king’s ransom” was a phrase.

At least I’m worth more alive than dead? Sam thought to himself while he sorted through the [Dungeon Ingresses]. There were those that showed shimmering isles of lava, black expanses of starry nights somewhere otherworldly, and quite a bit more.

Not all of them were D-Class. Two were F-Class and three were E-Class. That left the remaining 3 D-Class. Altogether, a surprisingly even spread.

Despite their potential use, Sam stuffed them back into his Inventory, making sure they stayed out in front so he wouldn’t forget about them.

If they were like the Dark Vault—and they did consider themselves “Vaults”—then they might have that strange time dilation effect that the Dark Vault had.

Sam had spent a long time in the Dark Vault, but the many hours had only amounted to a few minutes passing in the First Layer.

They might be useful later on, and Sam wanted to keep them for just such an emergency.

Besides, even an F-Class Dungeon could probably kill them. He didn’t even want to imagine what a D-Class would be like.

The only things that seemed applicable to Blacksmith were the [Dullahan Greatsword], the broken [Charred Claymore], [Wind Crystals], and his [Thanas Cuirass].

Sam had other items at his disposal. Slag from precious metals, half-melted jewelry, and various items that Matt brought with him. Raiko had some gold ingots. And of course, there was the [Void Metal Slag].

However, none of those items screamed “Blacksmith” to Sam aside from the void slag, which expressly stated it needed a high level Blacksmith. Unless a Blacksmith was also able to use precious metals, he doubted the ingots and jewelry would be any use to him. He had no idea if Goldsmith was a class or not.

Having the items spread out before him, Sam considered each in turn. The greatsword was a gift from the dullahans… and it would feel wrong to destroy it by desynthesizing it, but at the same time he could incorporate its strength into a new weapon or armor, couldn’t he?

Wouldn’t that be more meaningful?

Setting that aside, Sam moved on to the broken [Charred Claymore]. It was his first sword, and the only thing he had managed to modify with the aid of the Archflame. It had a special place in his heart despite it being destroyed.

He put that alongside the [Dullahan Greatsword].

I’m getting too damn sentimental.

The [Wind Crystals] didn’t seem very useful at first, but even without the drip of information from Blacksmith, Sam knew that one of the key components of smelting ore and the like was to get the flames good and hot.

And the way you did that aside from using a proper fuel source was to use bellows. Well, [Wind Crystals] could serve as bellows, couldn’t they? They were crystallized Wind mana, and if he used them properly, he could make them function quite a bit like bellows but far better than such a simple tool.

While he had a lot of them, they were finite all the same. Eventually, he’d run out.

Still useful, and definitely worth pursuing.

Next came the [Thanas Cuirass]. He no longer needed it. The [Almorak Cuirass] was superior in every way that mattered, looked better, and was far more comfortable as well, which was something he had overlooked with the [Thanas Cuirass].

Like Raiko with putting off her rewards from the Dark Vault, Sam began to wonder if it would be best to wait to use his [Desynthesis] ability to break down pieces of equipment for their components.

It wasn’t like he’d already checked the [Barren Tile] up above. There could be ore veins and whatever else up there. He had a massive greatsword—two, in fact—that he could use to break free the ore.

Doing so wouldn’t be pretty or neat, but it would work. He was sure of it. It was just too bad that Blacksmith didn’t come with any ore sensing ability, or mining traits that allowed him to be more proficient at spotting ore seams and the like.

If he was being honest with himself, he didn’t have the first idea what an ore seam would look like. What the hell did raw iron look like? He’d never seen it. Even the information from Blacksmith drew a blank.

That left him with trying to [Desynthesize] old equipment in the hopes of getting some simple materials that he could then beat into a more appropriate form.

And that was when his savior appeared.

Matt stepped into the room and looked at Sam, then all the things he had strewn about. “Need some help?”

Sam looked up. “How do you mean? I thought you were an Alchemist.”

“I am,” Matt said proudly. “But, while I was gathering up [Demon Fangs] to use as poison throwing weapons—and a healthful snack—I also managed to strip them of any useful bits of equipment. Mostly it was just a matter of sorting through piles of ash, many of which had blown away to reveal tiny little coins.”

After digging around in his Inventory for a bit, Matt tossed a small heavy pouch to Sam. The contents clinked heartily as he caught it, but something in the noise told Sam that these were not gold coins like he expected. The tone was off, and that alone surprised Sam because he had no fucking clue what gold coins sounded like when they clinked, yet knew without a doubt that they didn’t sound like these.

Sam opened up the pouch and stared. He looked up at Matt. “Do you have any more?”

Matt grinned and took out three more pouches. “And there’s more where that came from.”