1% Lifesteal

Freddy's meeting with the two men went rather smoothly.

His only real requirement was that he wanted to be more of a partner to Valhalla than a subordinate, and Thor agreed to that without much trouble. There was an air of healthy distrust between them—while they were willing to work together, neither side had enough information on the other party to say without a doubt that they weren't up to no good.

In the end, they settled on a simple deal: Valhalla would contact Freddy whenever they needed help with something, and then they'd agree on how to pay him for his services. Freddy could do the same thing.

Neither side was obligated to listen to the other's request, but saying no when help was really needed would naturally strain their relations, as was to be expected.

After a rather eventful hour of chatting with the two men, Freddy excused himself and left the cafe.

As he stepped out into the snowy streets of Repentawa, feeling cold air moving across his skin, he could barely believe that it had only been eight days since he arrived here. It felt like an eternity had passed in a bit over a week.

Yet, the next week passed in the blink of an eye.

Freddy delved every day while staying away from the dungeon. He wasn't afraid of going there necessarily, but the place had proven itself capable of pushing him to reveal cards he wanted to keep hidden.

Thankfully, there was plenty of other realms he could use for his purposes.

To his surprise, most of his income came from foraging. He kept underestimating just how good his perception was after gobbling all those dangerous pills and just how useful his talent was for this purpose.

Unsurprisingly, his proficiency was soon noticed by the traders.

He was given several offers for any type of information he could provide about the plants he was foraging. Of course, information that others could use.

He had plenty of such information. By using his talent, it was trivial to poke a plant and then write down any stand-out characteristics that tied to that level of quality.

But he had zero intention of selling the info to the local traders.

Depending on who owned them, he'd be helping possible future enemies. Besides, without knowing how much such information could be sold for, he was likely to get scammed.

But he still wrote down a lot of the information he collected. Once he gathered enough, he'd make an offer to Valhalla.

Monsters were still a notable part of his income, though. The more information he gathered, the better that side of profit competed with the foraging. If his only goal was to get money, he'd stick to collecting plants, but he needed to grow his abilities, too.

His main focus at first wasn't the throwing combo but Crimson Spring and Blood Absorption. He should have developed these two abilities a long while ago, but given how quickly he had been moving through the ranks, he simply didn't get the opportunity to do so.

Getting the blood affinity at the second star was not a common thing, obviously. Because he didn't have the affinity at his first star, he was still catching up to where his abilities should be.

Blood Absorption was super easy with his talent's help. Usually, he'd have to be careful with the type of blood he absorbed and how much he took in, but with 1% Lifesteal and his undeath, both issues became irrelevant.

The standard method for practicing blood absorption was to take in a tiny amount of blood and then slowly hack away at it with blood essence, gradually converting it into one's own blood.

It was a slow, dangerous process; especially if one tried absorbing rotten or poisonous blood.

Freddy went at it in a much less restrained way. This allowed him to produce a highly advanced shell for Blood Absorption. An enviable one, actually.

As long as the substance was blood, whether it was mixed with random crap, a blend of several different types of blood, toxic, or whatever, he had absolutely no trouble sucking it up through his skin and into his body.

This was almost impossible without a specialized talent.

Yet again, the overwhelming superiority of 1% Lifesteal shone through.

As for his newly-minted Blood Absorption, although impressive, the ability still sucked balls at stage 0. It cost 5% blood essence to absorb just one liter of blood. As it was, it was only useful as a training tool. The reflux essence wasn't worth it during combat.

Next up was Crimson Spring. This one took a few days of dedicated work. He had to meditate for long periods of time, slowly seeping blood essence into his marrow and collecting the pieces of information to puzzle out which concepts he needed to produce more blood.

Surprisingly, his talent was quite helpful here yet again. His bone marrow couldn't possibly be any healthier. There were no imperfections or imbalances to pollute the meditative process.

Soon enough, he had Crimson Spring. It would slowly speed up his blood production up to twice the speed at the peak of stage 0, then it would go up to three times the speed at stage 1, then four at stage 2, and so on.

He could take two different paths: he could continue down the ordinary Crimson Spring route or convert the ability into Purifying Crimson Spring at stage 1.

The regular route would continue speeding up his production of blood, while Purifying Crimson Spring would actually help slowly purify reflux blood essence from within his body. Both would only have a use outside of combat, as their effect would be way too slow to make a difference during a fight.

At first glance, this seemed like a no-brainer—the second option was better… right?

But it wasn't that simple.

Throughout the ranks, his blood reserves would increase at an exponential rate.

But his blood recovery wouldn't.

Even the ordinary Crimson Spring path didn't double in speed with every subsequent stage.

With Purifying Crimson Spring, his blood recovery would be painfully slow. It was tempting to think that Blood Absorption would be able to make up for this, but that wouldn't always be the case.

He was still leaning a bit towards that option, simply because he always had the option to abuse blood recovery pills since he could heal the damage to his body. He had plenty of time to finalize his choice, though, so he put it aside for now.

After finally settling on a design, it didn't take long to finish the shell for Blood Javelin.

When he felt he was close, he hid in the corner of a small realm and kept working on it until he was done.

Every time he produced the same shape, he got a bit faster and better at doing it until, eventually, he gathered all the microconcepts he needed and finally crystallized the shell.

He simply raised his hand and willed it, and almost instantly, his blood rushed out of his hand and formed the perfect Blood Javelin. Its tip slowly narrowed into a point. Its shaft was smooth enough to see part of his reflection in it, and at the bottom, there was fletching made of thin layers of blood. It wasn't too heavy due to the low density of blood metal, but it was comfortably thick in his grasp.

He didn't need to think. He didn't need to focus. He just willed it, and the weapon appeared in his grasp.

He grinned goofily at it and caressed it slowly.

It was short enough to easily fit into his storage ring, so rather than simply throw it away for no reason, he stored it and raised both hands. Activating the ability with both stars allowed him to create two javelins at once, one in each hand.

The act nearly made him cry in joy. Having a throwing weapon ready in the blink of an eye felt incredible.

While he did have the option of storing weapons in his storage ring and then taking them out, that took a few moments of focus, and it was quite distracting during a fight. An ability was far quicker and more reliable.

The realm he was in had only a single type of monster—these rat-like creatures that grew up to about his knee and reproduced incredibly quickly. They were also surprisingly valuable.

He proceeded to test his new ability by throwing loads of javelins at every rat he spotted. He could land a hit from quite the distance, even if it was a bit unreliable without a finished Hydraulic Throw. More often than not, either the fletching or the tips would chip off, making it pointless to try to reuse the javelins. His Blood Absorption couldn't absorb hardened blood either, making that blood impossible to recover.

But he could suck the rat monsters dry, which recovered more than the blood needed for a single javelin. He didn't resort to that due to the reflux essence penalty, however.

With his throwing skills, Blood Javelin progressed quite quickly, which was hardly a surprise. Not only was he a peak two-star, but he was incredibly strong, allowing him to get a lot of use out of the ability.

Through Blood Absorption, he could replenish his blood and keep going for quite a while, but the time needed to meditate the reflux essence away kept increasing as his soul fatigued, and he finally had to give it up.

Within just one day, the ability progressed to stage 0—63%. He might be able to upgrade it after another day of work.

He gathered as many of the rats as he could and walked back to the passage. It was already nighttime, and the number of people there was quite low. All the stalls still worked, however—those were open 24/7.

There, he sold the corpses and headed back home.

He'd earned a good chunk of money during the last week, especially given how much time he set aside just for growing his abilties. He was nearly 300,000 dollars richer. And this was after spending a good chunk of cash to repair and replace the equipment that was damaged during the dungeon run.

Speaking of the dungeon run…

He pulled out the katar he won as his prize for the contribution he made. The weapon was quite nice, and if he put it up for sale, he was sure he could get a good sum for it.

Sighing, he put the weapon away.

That dungeon was a truly excellent way to both make a lot of money and to grow his abilities. He was earning money way too slowly through his current methods.

But it was risky.

A stray thought passed through his mind as he walked back home.

What if he went alone?

It wasn't uncommon for the dungeon to have "empty runs" as people decided that there were too few delvers to take the plunge. If he could go in there during one of these empty runs, he'd be all by himself. With Blood Sacrifice, he had a good amount of confidence in his ability to pass the waves up to the one that nearly wiped them out last time.

Maybe even that one, too.

He shook his head and put those thoughts aside.

That was a still a bit risky for the time being.

Once he returned to his apartment, he was greeted by a familiar sight. Lucas sat on the couch, watching the BC and looking rather bored. "Hey," the boy greeted him. "How'd the delve go?"

"It went well," Freddy said.

The doors to the guest room where Hellen was staying were closed, and presumably, the woman was inside, sleeping. It wasn't that late in the day yet—it was only 7 p.m.

Hellen had been suffering quite a bit over the last week.

Although it wasn't as bad as withdrawal from drugs, withdrawal from gambling wasn't easy to deal with, either. The woman's sleep schedule was royally fucked, and she was always eating something. Headaches, irritability, and wild mood swings appeared on a daily basis. Funnily enough, she didn't seem to know why she was feeling like that—well… she wasn't willing to admit it.

"Hey, your date is tonight, right?" Freddy asked the young man.

Lucas nodded, but frankly, he didn't really look in the mood for a date. Or anything, really.

Freddy chuckled and walked over to him. He sat beside Lucas and put a hand on his shoulder. "Your mum will be fine," he said, tapping him on his back.

"I don't know about that," Lucas said with a dark laugh. "We're in a better position than we've been in… ever… but… She keeps talking about 'paying back the favor'. She tries to make it seem like she plans to do so through hard work, but… I can see it in her eyes. It's like she's just waiting for us to drop our guard." He shook his head. "I don't get it. How can she be like this?"

"It's a sickness," Freddy said, thinking back to some of his adopted parents' old friends. "She probably won't fully recover until we get her to a therapist."

Lucas winced. "Won't that be expensive?"

Freddy chuckled. "Nonsense. Compared to what I'm ready to spend on you two, it can barely even be considered an additional cost. Anyway, enough about this. Go get ready to go out."

Lucas sighed and chuckled. "Sure thing… I guess."

Freddy looked at him for a long moment. "Do you feel pressured to go out with this girl?"

The boy paused for a moment. "No… she's… I mean—"

"You don't have to go," Freddy said simply. "Sorry if I made you feel like you had to do it for my sake."

"What…?" Lucas muttered. "No, no, don't get me wrong! I'm—Well, I'm willing to go out with her—actually, I quite like her if I'm being honest, it's just…"

"Hmm?" Freddy hummed with a quirked eyebrow. "What's the problem?"

"I…" The young man hesitated. "I realize that…. to you it… The difference, you know, between a mortal and low-level one-star? It probably doesn't really mean much to you, but to me, she's… She's a freakin' archhuman! Like when I was talking to her, this didn't bother me, but now, you know, I think she only really gave me the time of day because I'm—"

"Because you're connected to me somehow?"

Lucas froze. Then, he slowly nodded. "Yeah. Exactly." He shrank in on himself. "I mean what can I even offer? I'm not good-looking, smart, strong, rich; I'm… I'm just a random loser. You know… I still have some pride! Getting a girl just because of another dude… Yeah, that doesn't sit well with me."

Freddy chuckled hard at that. "Oh, man. Yeah, I get you. That's valid. I wasn't really thinking about that. But try to think of it like this—your average good-looking, powerful, rich dude your age is only in that position because of their background. Do you think they think of their dad, uncles, grandpas, or whoever fought for the opportunities they were given and then think 'man, these women only like me because of other men'? They obviously don't give a shit."

Lucas chuckled at that. "Yeah, I… That's different, though."

"How so?"

"That's family," Lucas said. "That's part of who they are."

"Is it really?" Freddy asked, sighing and shaking his head. He thought back to his own parents, the people who gave him away on the same day he was born. He snorted. "You'd be surprised how little separates family from strangers."

Lucas gave him an odd look, so Freddy rushed to change the topic, "Anyway, there are very few people in this world who are entirely self-made. In fact, almost everyone in power is only there because the road was paved by their ancestors. You didn't get particularly lucky with your background, but what's wrong with relying on me? If anything, the only reason I'm really helping you is because I like you as a person. You're already a step ahead of your average young master in that sense.

"Their parents would have probably raised them no matter how terrible their personality. Meanwhile, if you had turned out to be a piece of shit, I'd have dropped you off on the street in the blink of an eye."

"Wow… That's not as encouraging as you probably think it is."

Freddy laughed. "Just don't worry about it. You'll get some help from me and then it will be up to you to pave your path forward. A year or two from now you probably won't even remember this conversation. Anyway, enough about that. Just go and have fun for tonight."

"Sure…" the boy said with an exaggerated sigh. "By the way… I was going to ask you… Can I pick which talent I want?"

"Of course," Freddy said. "We'll pick a prime for you together. Is there a reason you're asking?"

"No, I just… It's nothing." Lucas shook his head. "Wish me luck."

"Good luck," he said in a playful tone.

Freddy watched the BC for a while as Lucas got ready. Frankly, he was already planning to move the mother-son duo out of his apartment and into their own place. They didn't necessarily bother him here, but he wanted to allow Bloodshed to come out. Without privacy, that was impossible.

After Lucas left, Freddy had a dinner and started getting ready to work on his tempering techniques.

But he was interrupted by a knock.

He slowly moved towards the door and took a peek through the peephole. A strange man stood on the other side—it was someone he had never seen before. He was taller than the average man, and his hair had unnatural blond streaks through it. Freddy could tell that the man was a two-star.

Cautiously, he opened the door. "Hello there… Is there something I can help you with?"

"Hello, Mr. Cliff. I apologize for disturbing you," the man said as he raised his hand. There was a letter in his grip, and he offered it to Freddy. "Boss told me to forward this to you."

"Boss?"

"Thor."

Freddy's eyes widened. He nodded and grabbed the letter. The man nodded in turn and went on his merry way.

After walking back to his room, Freddy cracked the letter open and took a peek inside.