A Sinner’s Chance

The rest of the week slowly passed by as I dealt with my newfound fame, though it was more like infamy as those who watched the fights spread slightly exaggerated tales which snowballed into turning me into some beautiful yet brutal monster. My Night Fairy had been completely lost and in its place was Alluring Blood Fiend, a title dedicated to my physical appearance and the brutal bloody slaughter I'd caused. 

There were also rumors going around that I was a Dhampir, or a sun resistant vampire as I'd been seen licking the blood from both blade and claw while fighting. Where the others in the top of the combat rankings were respected or idolized, I was feared, though there was a minority that would seek me out for all sorts of reasons.

I however had refuted all requests and practically went into seclusion for the rest of the week, only appearing for morning classes. The first couple of days I used Vision of Seshat on my Affinities, which revealed some surprising statistics.

'Fire Affinity: Denotes one's ability to convert white mana into red mana, used to control or manifest physical energy. 29% Affinity.'

'Earth Affinity: Denotes one's ability to convert white mana into brown mana, to control or manifest physical solids. 3% Affinity.'

'Water Affinity: Denotes one's ability to convert white mana into blue mana, to control or manifest physical liquids. 30% Affinity.'

'Air Affinity: Denotes one's ability to convert white mana into green mana, to control or manifest  physical gases. 7% Affinity.'

'Vibro Affinity: Denotes one's ability to convert white mana into purple mana, to control or manifest physical oscillations. 100% Affinity.'

'Life Affinity: Denotes one's ability to convert white mana into golden mana, to control or manifest the energies of Life and Death. 59% Life Affinity, 125% Death Affinity.'

'Space Affinity: Denotes one's ability to convert white mana into silver mana, to control or manifest physical representation of Space and Time. 85% Space Affinity, 6% Time Affinity.'

'!@#$ Affinity: Denotes one's ability to control or manifest black mana, used in necromancy and charms. 200% Affinity.'

There was the obvious description that I assumed was what everyone's view on magic came from, after all the most basic thing when it came to learning magic was knowing your Affinity, or your efficiency to convert and ability to manipulate certain colors of mana. At first I thought it strange that no one had managed to discover that rather than elements, the elemental affinities represented states of matter. But with misleading names and the remembrance that many major scientific advancements on Earth were due to accidents or sheer luck it made at least some sense.

Even if someone had, there were always those who disagreed and pushed the discovery as heresy or other nonsense, only for their discovery to come into light a few hundred years later when someone had complete definitive proof, and even then, people could easily be influenced by others.

There were plenty of perfectly good examples of this in Earth's history. I still remembered being in high school when the plague started spreading, and how even when the infected were dying off in droves some people refused to believe it. It took nearly five years before it was under control, and before anyone could recover war broke out which some people claimed was faked and simply government propaganda to give more funds to the military.

I spent much of those two days remembering my past, I remembered being in a mentally dark place and volunteering for some military project, mostly because it sounded like a good way to killed, something called the Vanguard project. My memories of what happened for that was hazy as I was mostly just going through the routine of living and doing whatever the researchers wanted. The battlefields were the thing I remembered best yet the thing I wanted to forget the most, especially once the war ended.

I stopped thinking about the life of Velen once I started working on my equipment, though I did manage to recall some of the blueprints from back then which I had hurriedly sketched out. There were many unusable things, as I simply wasn't able to produce or get the material needed, but some were able to be put to use in my armor and sword.

The rest of the time was spent working on improving my equipment. Between the mass battle and the modern blueprints I had many places to improve. One of the most important things I was trying to do was find a way to defend against Spacetime magic. Probably due to the shake up that I'd caused the people that cared about the combat ranking seemed to have gone into a frenzy and were challenging those above them frequently.

It was one of the rare times out of the workshop that I was able to watch a fight between prince Taylor and an Elvish man I didn't recognize. Taylor fought nearly identically to how I recalled from the first assessment, though now he dodged via teleportation or with inhuman speed and accuracy. He'd draw his blade and use it as a medium to cast fatal Space magic before sheathing and doing it again whenever he wanted to attack.

The Elvish man was able to persist for a few minutes, which I thought was rather impressive but in the end he was bisected despite no one being able to see what had cut him. I had a few plans in mind, but prince Taylor was looking to be a harder opponent then I imagined, and above him was my sister Gabriel, I couldn't imagine how she had beat him, but it might be a case of her being able to counter his fighting style rather than actual combat prowess.

The day I promised to meet Ellie soon arrived, and as I had last time I ditched school and made my way over to the Adventurer's Guild, this time with a slightly more packed bag.

Author's Note: There is a public poll on my Patreon for potentially increasing chapter lengths. Go vote if you're interested. https://www.patreon.com/Tyboneous