1% Lifesteal

Chapter 51 - Clear Mind, Sound Decisions

Standing in his ethercosm, Freddy stared at the dark blue part of his core, mesmerized. And afraid. There was a reason why he hadn't tested this affinity yet—because it felt dangerous. And not in a good way.

It gave him a sensation of both being unable to tear his eyes away from it and desperately wanting to look behind himself to ensure nothing was there. It was suffocating and anxiety-inducing, sort of like diving into the ocean and taking a look down into the darkness below, only to see squirming shadows closing in. His ethercosm, the center of his soul, was safe… but even that bit of common knowledge fell apart when facing the ominous affinity.

He gathered himself.

Floating through his ethercosm, he approached the shell that Leviathan was trapped within. The same deep blue color forged the runes that kept it contained, and, just like with Bloodshed, the cage was shaped nothing like any of his other ether shells.

It growled at him as he approached, and he had to force himself to calm down. It was trapped with no way of escaping. Probably. Still, he knew that there wasn't much reason to panic.

"Leviathan," he called. "Do you…? Do you know what that deep blue affinity is?"

"No," it said curtly, doing the bare minimum to answer his question.

That made him pause. It didn't know? Wasn't this supposed to be its affinity?

So he asked, "Isn't that your affinity?"

"No. My affinity is to water," it declared. "My nature might have helped twist it, but it is your soul that formed that thing. Now get out of my sight!" it demanded.

Twist it…

His mind flashed back to something Madame had told him once. Upon absorbing a unique, you will acquire the affinities it holds a connection to, and if you already have one of the affinities, it will evolve into a unique affinity.

His eyes traveled to the discolored blue in his stars. So, that was a unique affinity?

He left the ethercosm and breathed out slowly. Then he raised his hand. His essence poured through the layer of dark blue and converted into whatever affinity that was. But it couldn't leave his body. Well, that wasn't unexpected. To manipulate something with essence, he needed a target. And if this was a unique affinity that was created from water…

With a burst of will, he used Create Water and manifested a bucket-worth. With his essence control, he kept it afloat and then tried to imbue it with the other affinity. He felt like his manipulation would collapse for a moment, but surprisingly, he found it just as easy to manipulate water with this other affinity.

But something immediately changed once he did. Apparitions akin to morphing shadows flickered within, and he reflexively dropped the water. It splashed over his legs and the ground.

"Ow!" he screamed. "What the f—"

Something stung his legs. Not only that, but the futon seemed slightly torn after what he'd done.

Taking his pants off, he found several thin cuts, stings, and scrapes, as if he'd spawned a rabid cat and a nest of wasps directly into his pants. Thankfully, there was only minor bleeding. But that didn't stop him from feeling incredibly confused.

Creating just a tiny bit of water again, he imbued it with the strange affinity. Yet again, blurry, floating shapes manifested within. He carefully brought the water closer to the wall and pressed it against it.

What looked like numerous tiny stingers, claws, jaws, and other nasty appendages attached to phantasmal, ghoulish creatures crystallized and started attacking the wall. He observed it for a few moments, mesmerized, and then allowed the water to evaporate. The wall had thin, shallow cuts, bite marks, and cracks.

"What the hell is that?" he whispered.

He sank back into his ethercosm. Having used manipulation with a brand new affinity, he expected to see an entire backdrop of dark blue specks in his soul. There were many red ones already since he tested the blood affinity. Those were the seeds of ether shells, still unformed and attached to an idea, a singular, specific function that the affinity could perform.

But what welcomed him was something that he hadn't expected at all. Instead of a scattering of tiny, undeveloped specks, he saw two dark blue ether shells, already nearly fully formed, that shone as brightly as any he had seen. They were highly complex and intricate, with countless shifting runes along their surface.

There was no clue as to what those were, so he tried his luck by asking Leviathan.

It snarled at him with an evil sneer. "If those are the only two shells to have appeared," it proposed, "then that is all your affinity can do."

That was… He floated back to the two shells. That was it? Those two shells were the entire power set of a whole affinity!?

He left the ethercosm and grabbed his head in frustration. So… basically… they did… what exactly? With some more experimentation, he pushed the limits of his new affinity.

Apparently, the bigger the blob of water he held up, the greater the attacks and the exponentially larger the essence consumption needed to infuse it. The huge maws, stringers, and claws were not something he wanted to test against the walls—or anything in this room. Not that there was much else there. So he washed the water out with ordinary water essence to make the spooky phantoms go away.

What surprised him the most was that, no matter how much he tried, this affinity seemed limited to a single function. It just turned regular water into… whatever this was. Spooky water? Dangerous water? What about abyssal water? While that seemed fitting, it made for a confusing overlap with Abyssal Depths, which was tied to the regular water affinity.

"What about perished water?" he mused. That sounded cool enough. "Maybe these are the souls of the things that perished at my hands? Muahahaha… God, I'm losing it." While that was a cool idea, it definitely wasn't the case. But it would be kind of funny to see old man Janny swinging his stick in there.

Even after all that experimenting, the status in his soul didn't change. The two shells stood there, the same as when they were first created. So… he crystallized them.

The first of the two was effectively the exact same thing as what he had been doing with essence manipulation. Upon using it, it turned regular water into perished water. But the exciting part of it was that it was really, really easy to use. It hadn't been difficult to use before, either, but now it required virtually no effort.

"Don't tell me…" He tried using the ability together with Create Water. Both shells lit up at once. With utter ease, he manifested a blob of perished water. The essence consumption was a bitch, though—at least twice as much as just using Create Water on its own.

Huh. Neat. That basically meant that he had received an augmentation ability of sorts. Realizing this made him breathe a slight sigh of relief. At least the affinity was going to be useful. While it would be far more valuable to him if he were a caster, he still desperately needed something like this. After all, he had no way to attack from range, barring, like, throwing a rock.

His attention drifted to the other ability. If the first one augmented external techniques, transforming the water… Did the second one do the same thing, just for internal abilities?

"Oh hell no."

There was no way he would test that out without supreme caution. There were too few targets for him to use his talent, so he'd be in a tough spot if he got severely injured.

Luckily, there was a relatively safe way to test it. He carefully focused on Hydraulic Flex. For all intents and purposes, it should count as an internal technique if this ability worked the way he presumed it did. He tried using it with his index finger. He failed. There were no muscles in fingers, after all, because the muscles that moved fingers were in the palm and forearm.

Thus, he focused on his palm, moving his thumb slightly and trying to imbue that movement with Hydraulic Flex and the other ability.

Nothing.

Well, Hydraulic Flex triggered, but there wasn't even the faintest response coming from the other ability. That made him frown. Perhaps he had to use a proper tempering technique.

The mere thought of that made him ill, but he wanted to go through with it. Even if it was a sort of tempering empowerment, he'd live. He had used Hundred Wet Hells enough to survive something like that. But he wouldn't try it with Hundred Wet Hells; instead, he would use Adaptive Water Body.

But again. Nothing.

It was as if some sort of prerequisite needed to be satisfied for him to use this ability. But what? He tried everything he could think of. Using it on genuine water didn't work. Using it on perished water didn't work either. It didn't activate when he tried using any of his abilities, even when testing it with Hundred Wet Hells.

Actually, calling that ability Hundred Wet Hells no longer seemed appropriate. A few seconds of use left him dazed and gasping for air. It had become genuinely frightening after the upgrade. Thus, he decided to rename it to Thousand Wet Hells.

After finally testing that, too, all he knew was that he had no clue what this ability did. Well… he'd find out eventually, he hoped. Perhaps he was missing the obvious but failing to see the forest for the trees or something.

Either way, although having a ranged attack was reassuring, that didn't magically solve his problems. He needed equipment. He needed money.

Worst-case scenario? He would have to go in alone and unequipped to get started. But he was only on his fourth day there. There was still time to figure things out. So, he got up again.

Freddy traveled the three-hour walk to the hub and stepped inside, sitting on the couches again. There, he waited, scouting the room for anyone willing to help him out. But he saw very few groups he hadn't asked already.

For most of that day, he sat there, hoping that someone would approach him with an answer. The fear and anxiety piled on him like a cave-in, and he walked back home with his head hanging low, unsuccessful in achieving anything but gathering information and testimonies that informed him of little that he hadn't already heard.

On the fifth day, he got desperate. He asked one of the parties whether they could possibly lend him some money, but the looks they gave him… The shame he felt at that moment killed all desire to try that again. In fact, he was so embarrassed that he left and spent the day in a cafe instead.

On his sixth day, he took a jittery walk around town. Numerous ideas floated in his noggin, most of them incredibly stupid. He thought of robbing someone. Hey, if he stepped into the back alleys and someone attacked him first, it would be fair game, no?

He even considered visiting loan sharks, but his former adoptive parents had warned him to never deal with loan sharks. Ever. Even if he seemed entirely out of options.

Maybe he could sell an organ instead, he thought, but where? How? To whom? The odds of getting himself into deep shit were too high.

Waking up on the morning of the seventh day, he was visited by the receptionist, who was more of a hotel manager than anything. He was supposed to leave that room by the evening. Begrudgingly, he paid for three more nights. For the rest of that day, he decided to rest. But that turned out poorly.

The tight walls felt like they were pressing against his body and squashing him. It made him feel like he was back in the cell they kept him in between torture sessions, waiting uncertainly until his fate was decided. His heart raged in his chest, and he felt as if every moment that passed was another moment where he sank further into a bottomless hole.

Thoughts of the massive head of the leviathan rising far into the sky flashed in his vision. These mole-sloth-monkeys, named "gorels," lived in colonies like ants or bees. Knowing his luck, he'd get eaten by the queen, who just happened to decide to take a stroll outside while he was there.

He knew it was stupid to think like this, but he couldn't help it. It felt like the entire world was conspiring against him, and just like so many times before, a single slip-up or another bout of absurd misfortune could cost him everything.

By 6 p.m. that day, he felt so goddamn exhausted and stressed that he was getting frighteningly close to running away into the woods.

"That's right…" he whispered. He had that milky pink alia root, didn't he?

Judging by what Spike had said, a single dose was roughly six thousand dollars. Should he just stop being a coward and sell it? What were the odds that this shit would be tracked?

Groaning in frustration, he left the room. After visiting the receptionist, he asked her for a cup of boiling water. She obliged, and he brought it back to his room.

He had already had a cup of this once. But he prepared it haphazardly—only cold water in a plastic bottle. This time, he wanted to have a dose properly. If it cost that much money, it'd better be good.

The first difference that he spotted was the color. While last time he prepared it, it looked vaguely green; now, it was a vibrant pink. And instead of smelling herbal, it had a sweet scent, like ripe fruit.

As soon as he took a sip, feeling the taste of warm milk, his eyes shot wide open. There was a vision of a stormy, downcast day. But the rain suddenly stopped, and a single ray of sunshine broke through.

Images of a comfortable bed, a warm soup, a motherly embrace, safety, and everything soothing he could think of flashed in his mind as if dragged up to the surface by merciful hands. Cold water definitely wasn't the correct way to prepare it. Perhaps it hadn't even done anything, and he had just been under the placebo effect.

Although it did taste milky, it was slightly bitter, which almost made it taste spoiled at first before he got used to it. It was possible that he had again prepared it somewhat incorrectly, but it was no worse than unsweetened instant coffee, even as it was.

All thoughts of gloom and doom were snapped away as if they hadn't even been there.

"Jesus Christ…" he groaned, feeling disappointed in himself.

It happened again.

Too many times did he get it into his head that he had to do something and then ignore all the reasons against it. Selling the prime he manifested, signing with Madame, fighting that guy from the gym, joining the Wastes arena; each and every single fucking time, he focused on the possible benefits of doing something while completely and utterly ignoring the consequences.

No more. None of that.

He couldn't enter a passage alone and unequipped. And he wouldn't.

After thinking that thought, it was as if a mountain slid off his back. He could finally breathe again. So what if he couldn't do it yet? He had been too eager to get started. As it stood, he was alive and well. Hell, he was basically immortal. His talent provided him with eternal youth. Just because he couldn't see a solution immediately, that didn't mean that one didn't exist.

There was no need to go play delver roulette and kill himself like a moron. Even if he had to live in the woods, be homeless, or move to a rural area where he could trim lawns or something while hiding his identity.

It wasn't even 7 p.m., yet all he wanted to do was sleep. So he did. He slept peacefully and dreamt of soft pastures and flowery fields. It was easy to tell why milky pink alia root was so popular among leaders dealing with a ton of stress.

Once he woke up, he felt well-rested and peaceful. He washed up, got dressed, and stepped out into the streets. There, he walked around, looking for inspiration. Walking past a bank, he noted that he needed to open an account again.

His steps halted.

He slowly turned, facing the building with thick glass panels in the front.

Then he walked inside.

***

Banks were quite strict with whom they gave money. It made sense, too; they had to ensure that whoever they provided with a loan could repay it.

A stray thought had crossed his mind. Two-star archs were generally considered to have their shit together. So, he entered the bank and made an account. Before he could even ask, the lady helping him open his account made him an offer.

Half an hour later, he walked outside. It would take a few days for the account to open, but once it did, he would be the proud borrower of 100,000 dollars. He had taken out a loan.

Two-star archs could get that much just like that; no need for credit scores or proof of employment or anything. Granted, that wasn't a particularly significant sum to a proper two-star, but it would be enough for him to get started.

After a few days of waiting, the day finally arrived. He received his card and bid the hotel goodbye, feeling like a new man as he stepped out into the streets.

"Well then," he said. "Time to go do some shopping."