1% Lifesteal

A few snowflakes fluttered through the air. The middle of the woods was quiet and dark, with the only exception being the flickering headlights of a crashed car and the cursing of the men trying to escape it. Freddy watched while he walked right past Bloodshed.

“Master,” the skeleton called.

He turned to face it.

Bloodshed raised a clawed hand. The aura Bloodshed’s body was made of was mostly stable, but on the bones of its palms, it was starting to look fuzzy, with streaks of color flaking and fraying as if it were about to begin unraveling. “I overexerted myself.”

Freddy clenched his jaw. This could be a tough fight without Bloodshed.

But he’d live. “Go back in for now,” he told the skeleton. “I can handle this myself.”

It nodded and evaporated into a thin, bloody mist that floated over into Freddy’s ring and seeped back into his soul.

He raised his fists and slowly moved forward.

“Bastard!” Jason shouted as he pulled a crystal out of his storage ring. It was a communication crystal.

Freddy’s pupils narrowed. The man was going to ask for help! He didn’t have the time to construct a javelin, nor did he have the accuracy to hit the crystal. He immediately started running forward as he released blood into his hand and immediately coagulated it into an irregular, messy shape. Then, he threw the shape into the air in front of him and struck it with a double-star Flowing Strike.

The impact was loud, sounding like metal smashing into glass as his Gore Knuckles crumbled and the chunk of blood shattered into shrapnel-like shards.

Before Jason could react, the tiny shards reached him, many of them cracking against his rock-hard skin, leaving nothing but superficial injuries, but a smaller piece also struck the crystal, cracking it and causing it to flicker a few times before shutting off.

“Fuck!” Jason shouted as he threw the crystal aside and growled. “You’re gonna regret that!”

Freddy charged, preparing a crude javelin.

Judging by the way the shrapnel bounced off the man’s skin, he had the earth affinity—that probably meant he had the metal affinity, too. Just as Freddy made this conclusion, the man extracted a shortsword from his storage ring. It was made of white metal, and it even had a few inscriptions along its surface—they were glowing slightly, indicating that the weapon was imbued with a small amount of tzenekite.

One of the two guards finally crawled from under the car and jumped in front of Jason.

Freddy didn’t even slow down, simply ramming into the guy at full speed—the momentum of the body slam was enough to break several of the man’s bones and knock him over the car. The second guard leaped onto the car and jumped at Freddy, only to receive a crude javelin right into the throat. The man’s neck was shattered, and he crumbled to the ground, unmoving.

At that moment, Jason grasped the chance and jumped forward with impressive speed, almost as if his shortsword was carrying him forward. His blade vibrated intensely, and a second later, it stabbed right into Freddy’s stomach, embedding into it.

The man grinned and pulled the sword up, cutting a large gash up Freddy’s torso.

The feeling was profoundly itchy, with the buzzing blade tearing through flesh and ripping skin apart. Freddy felt a flash of panic at the nasty cutting power of the weapon, yet Jason’s smile dimmed, likely because the cut wasn’t as deep as he expected—it was barely bleeding. “What the—” His curse was interrupted by Freddy’s kick. Jason showcased excellent skills as he leaned back and jumped away from the strike.

From the way the man seemed to be moving, his shortsword was indeed carrying him around. The trick behind this was revealed once the man extracted several dozen smaller blades, and with a thought, made them levitate and point towards Freddy.

Telekinesis! Freddy shouted internally.

The blades flashed forward at the speed of flying arrows, far too fast for Freddy to dodge. Rather than try to avoid them, Freddy pulled out the spark of undeath and threw a Flowing Strike at it.

The blades sank into his body, and Jason grinned as he prepared to thrust again. Then, Freddy’s fist landed.

The burst of healing pushed the embedded blades out of Freddy’s body. A moment later, the spark of undeath returned back to the storage ring.

Jason’s eyes widened, but he was already fully engaged in a forward thrust.

Freddy couldn’t count on his resistance alone. He thrust his arm forward and allowed the blade to sink through his hand. Then, with a double-star Hydraulic Flex, he pinched the edge with his fingers.

Two stars flashed within Jason’s soul as he cast Vibrating Blade again with twice the power.

Freddy felt his grip on the sword loosen as his fingers went numb, but the power of his pinch was enough to embed his fingers into the metal, keeping the sword in place.

Jason, who had clearly been counting on getting his sword out, was now forced to abandon it as Freddy threw out another kick. The man’s eyes bulged as he channeled his Telekinesis, desperately trying to pull the sword out of Freddy’s vice grip. The telekinetic force was enough to pull Freddy forward by a few feet, causing the soles of his shoes to scrape along the asphalt, but it wasn’t enough to get the sword out of his grasp.

Jason stopped using his talent and roared in anger, clenching his fists and staring with bloodshot eyes. The wind picked up, blowing snowflakes past the two men. Their hair played in the gale, twirling and dancing to the tunes of dry, icy air. The cold was intense at this time of hour, harsh enough to bite through their clothing and send shivers across their skin. The forest whistled, the headlights on the mangled car flickered, and the darkness of the woods thickened.

For a long moment, Jason looked hesitant. He glanced behind his back.

The road stretched into absolute darkness. The man’s jaw clenched. He turned back around, briefly looking at one of the dead guards, staring deeply into the javelin of blood stuck deep in the man’s neck.

Freddy maintained eye contact, and he could almost see the numbers running through the man’s eyes.

Jason cursed under his breath, clicked his tongue, and pulled out another shortsword, this one clearly less fancy than the one Freddy slowly pulled out of his wounded hand and placed into his storage ring.

The two men stared at each other for a long moment. Then, they charged.

Freddy swung a spiked fist, while Jason deftly dodged aside, slashed a deep gash right under Freddy’s rib, and continued running behind him until he jumped over the car.

The man braced himself on the other side, combining a Tectonic Strike with his Telekinesis to kick the entire car at Freddy, then he dashed forward, bracing himself to jump over the car and strike his opponent, who he expected would be busy blocking the vehicle, but he clearly did not expect for the entire car to suddenly bounce back and nearly twice the speed he launched it at. “Wha—” he shouted as he jumped, but he wasn’t fast enough; the car hit his leg just above the ankle and tripped him.

Freddy saw the man trip and charged forward, throwing a punch, only to miss as the man spun in the air and slashed at his stomach, landing a strike that would have disemboweled him if he weren’t so tough.

But rather than reel at the strike, Freddy ignored it as he grabbed the man by the leg. Hydraulic Flex activated with both stars, causing Freddy’s grip to bend the man’s metallic bones and crack his skin of stone.

Jason screamed as he flew through the air as Freddy slammed him full force into the asphalt. Surprisingly, the man was only stunned for a moment by the strike.

His eyes sharpened with a primal determination. His stars flared in his soul as he swung his sword with a Tectonic Strike, sped it up with his Telekinesis, and imbued it with the horrifying power of vibration, sending it whistling through the air with a sound that made the skin curl, vaporizing any snowflakes it came into contact with, and with a loud thud, it impacted Freddy’s wrist, sending an intense burst of pain up his arm.

But the sword didn’t cut through. Jason’s face slowly morphed into the picture of panicked despair as he witnessed his most powerful attack fail, and saw his blade merely embedded in his enemy’s arm, just barely touching the bone with its apex. “What are you made of!?” the man shouted as he tugged on the sword to pull it out.

Rather than reply, Freddy grabbed the man’s knee with the other arm and then, using leverage, pushed and pulled at once, creating the sound of metal bending to the breaking point as the man’s knee finally failed to hold out and snapped with a deafening crack.

Jason screamed bloody murder and slashed again, leaving another gash in Freddy’s arm, but Freddy grabbed him by the other leg and threw him into the asphalt again, and this time, he swung a lot harder.

The wind was knocked out of the man’s chest, and he fruitlessly gasped for air as he was thrown again, slamming into the asphalt once more, this time slamming head-first as he had no time to brace himself. His sword clattered across the road as it left his grasp.

The man muttered something as his deformed head bled.

Freddy raised a leg and brought it down with a Flowing Strike.

Cracks and brains spread across the asphalt with a loud crunch that echoed through the nearby woods, and then, it all went silent.

Freddy took a deep breath and stepped back, shaking a bit from the adrenaline rush. Although the man was much stronger than he expected, all told, that was a relatively easy fight.

He had suffered a few surface injuries but wasn’t even really tired, and his essence reserves were going strong.

While Freddy’s abilities and overall skill were definitely far behind where they should be, his raw physical strength and toughness were enough to brute force a victory against most melee fighters around his level.

He couldn’t rely on just this, though. Someone with enough speed and ranged power could toy with him and destroy him without giving him a chance to fight back. His opponent seemed to have been wary of his javelin, likely presuming that it was far more lethal than it really was.

But to be honest, Freddy wasn’t sure whether his javelin throw could pierce the man’s Stone Skin. Most likely, anything but his most powerful throw would have just bounced off, but his most powerful throw was about as accurate as a fortune teller’s forecast of someone’s future love life. And that was when it wasn’t windy as hell.

Taking a deep breath, he calmed himself and waited to feel the click in his soul. A moment later, the spirit ability unlocked. “Blood Sacrifice.”

The three dead men were drained of all color as their blood pooled into a blob above Freddy’s head. Then, the blob turned into raw blood essence and conjured a skeleton right about the same height as Freddy.

“Make the scene look like a wild spirit attack,” he told the skeleton.

“Whatever Master desires.”

It proceeded to leave claw marks on pretty much everything in the area, including the corpses, the trees, the road, and the mangled car, and it even cut down a nearby speed limit sign.

For a long moment, Freddy stared at the storage ring on Jason’s finger. He was tempted to take it, but if he did, that would immediately make the scene suspicious. A spirit wouldn’t take a storage ring. He could get around this by making all the bodies vanish, but that would likely just link this incident with what happened at the loan shark, which would link it to Lucas and his mother.

And, ultimately, to him.

Briefly, he got the idea to just check the contents and maybe see if he could steal a thingamabob or two, but then he remembered the biometric requirement.

Storage rings could only be used by the owner unless that owner specifically permitted another person to use their ring. It was possible to override this slowly, but it took special equipment and days of work to do that. This requirement vanished immediately if the owner died while wearing the ring, which would make it easy for Freddy to override it instantly.

But if he did that, he’d leave his biometric data and lock the ring again. He could remove the lock if he wanted to, but that would make the ring ownerless, creating clear evidence that someone had tampered with it.

Sighing deeply, he decided that whatever treasure was in there wasn’t worth the trouble.

He also took out the other sword from his storage ring. After bending it a bit more to remove the visible finger marks, he made Bloodshed cut the sword into pieces, which they simply threw across the street.

Given that Blood Sacrifice had made all of their blood vanish, any remaining blood stains were Freddy’s blood. He made sure to remove them with Bloodshed’s help. The spirit also tracked down all the shards of coagulated blood scattered around the scene. Without its help, Freddy could never find all of them.

While it looked a bit over the top, the desired effect was achieved—the scene no longer looked like something a human had caused.

With that out of the way, Freddy healed his remaining wounds, changed into a spare set of clothes, and ran through the woods until he was back on the city streets. Soon enough, he was back in Lucas’s apartment, where he picked up the bags of clothes and then headed home.

He checked on the mother-son pair, finding both of them sound asleep. While Lucas’s mother was snoring quite loudly, Lucas himself wasn’t much quieter.

Freddy chuckled at the sight and left their things in the corner of the room. He piled the bags atop one another and carefully placed the sentimental stuff on the nightstand beside the woman’s bed.

Just as he was about to head out, he glanced at the sleeping woman. What would she think if she knew what he did that night? Would she be grateful?

Suddenly, his face darkened.

Even though he didn’t leave any conclusive evidence, the two incidents happening so close together would definitely be enough to spark suspicion. There was absolutely no way to prove that he was guilty of killing Jason. But with the man’s death, people would definitely look deeper into what happened at FinNado.

It was good that he had been cautious. The shark loan incident wasn’t enough for someone to risk angering a powerful two-star. But it could bring some trouble, nonetheless.

He left the two of them to sleep in peace and walked over to his room.

There, he jumped on the bed and looked up at the ceiling.

He should probably head to bed soon, but he wanted to let his beating heart calm down a bit. There was no way he’d be able to fall asleep like this.

But as his mind kept bouncing between the problems he’d created today, he didn’t feel stressed out or anxious about the consquences.

For some reason, he found himself grinning ear to ear. He clenched his fist and raised it into the air. “Bring it on.”

***

Right at the crack of dawn, several people gathered around a gruesome sight.

Surrounding the corpses that looked drained of all blood, with nasty claw marks all across their bodies, was a team of private investigators. They were constantly scratching their heads and shrugging—their confusion was apparent from a mile away.

Not too far from the site, three people stood side by side, two men and a woman.

The first man was muscular and of average height, with a rough face and an aggressive scowl on his brow. His black hair was interspersed with white locks. He wore a light jacket.

Beside him stood a tall man who appeared delicate. His black hair reached his shoulders, just brushing his fancy white leather jacket. His face was relaxed, and his gaze was disant, as if he couldn’t care less about the site before him.

To their side stood a woman. Her hair was also black, reaching all the way to her lower back. Her eyes appeared hazy; her gaze was soulless, but a light smile hung on her lips.

One of the investigators reluctantly walked over to them.

From what they’d deduced, this appeared to be a spirit attack. All the evidence pointed to that being the case.

But for whatever reason, the investigators all independently felt that something was off. Their intuition told them that something about the scene didn’t feel right.

The car seemed to have flipped over and then bounced around for some reason. Pretty much everything around the scene was scratched up with massive sets of claws. And yet, Jason’s body showed signs that blunt force had been used to kill him, as evidenced by the crater where his head had been smashed to bits, and the man’s leg, which had been broken by an incredible force that had bent his metallic bones out of shape.

While spirits weren’t exactly known for making sense, this was a bit too strange. Still, the evidence was clear—this had been caused by a spirit. Nothing indicated that that wasn’t the case.

But the investigators all agreed that there was likely also something else behind this incident.

The three people finished listening to the evaluation, and then they all shook the man’s hand. Once the investigator left, they turned to face each other.

The gruff man spat to the side and glared at the scene. “I don’t like it.”

The delicate man hummed with a finger pressed to his lips. “While it seems like a complete coincidence, we should still investigate the FinNado incident.”

“Yup,” the woman said in a cheerful voice. “This could just be a feeling, but I feel like we just made a very powerful enemy. Let’s alert Father of this.”