1% Lifesteal

Freddy extracted a small piece of paper from the envelope and unfurled it to take a look. Inside was a message from Thor, written in messy handwriting:

HEY THERE, PAL. BEEN A WHILE!

I HOPE YOU'VE RECOVERED FROM THOSE INJURIES!

ANYWAY, ABOUT THE REASON I'M CONTACTING YOU… SOME PEOPLE HAVE BEEN GOING MISSING LATELY, SO WE'VE TAKEN A CLOSER LOOK AND FOUND A SHADY ORGAN TRADE ON THE WEST SIDE OF THE CITY. WE'RE GONNA BUST IT TOMORROW. I WANT YOU TO JOIN US.

IT SHOULDN'T BE TOO DANGEROUS FROM WHAT WE CAN TELL. TO BE HONEST, THE ONLY REASON I'M INVITING YOU IS THAT I WANT TO SEE WHAT YOU'RE MADE OF.

YOU'LL FIND AN ADDRESS WRITTEN ON THE BACK OF THE ENVELOPE. MEET US THERE TOMORROW AT 6 P.M. DON'T FORGET TO BRING YOUR GEAR WITH YOU.

SIGNED, THOR.

The man had signed the letter with an essence-imbued ether signature, which felt exactly the same as the man's aura, verifying the letter's legitimacy. As written in the message, there was an address on the back of the envelope. Freddy sighed and folded the paper before storing it in his ring.

The message said nothing about compensation. But given the fact that he had to be there at 6 p.m., they would likely have a meeting to prepare before setting off sometime during the night.

If he was being entirely honest, this was so cool. Come on, they were going to bust a criminal operation in the middle of the night? That was badass as fuck.

His more pragmatic side was a bit worried, however. He didn't know what kind of people he'd be going up against and he had no idea what kind of role he was expected to play.

Not to mention that this would be it—once he joined them on this operation, that would be the point of no return. He'd officially become tied to Valhalla, and that could spell all sorts of trouble for him.

He spent the rest of the evening meditating and tempering.

Lucas returned a few hours later. He had a small smile on his face. Clearly, the date had gone well.

Before heading to sleep, Freddy wrote down his progress:

GATHERING:

Second star—199% essence capacity

2-star satellite

TALENT:

1% Lifesteal: Dynamic-quality healing

SOUL CONSTRUCT:

Scythe: Essence Extraction

TEMPERING TECHNIQUES:

Blood affinity:

Lake of Blood: Stage 2—1% Progress

Crimson Mercury: Stage 1—50% Progress

Crimson Spring: Stage 0—11% Progress

Water affinity:

Adaptive Water Body: Stage 1—Complete

Thousand Wet Hells: Stage 1—48% Progress

Abyssal Depths: Stage 1—92% Progress

ACTIVE ABILITIES:

Blood affinity:

Gore Knuckles: Stage 1—84% Progress

Blood Javelin: Stage 0—63% Progress

Absorb Blood: Stage 0—2% Progress

Accelerate Blood Projectile: Unfinished ether shell

Water affinity:

Flowing Strike: Stage 1—94% Progress

Hydraulic Flex: Stage 1—81% Progress

Create Water: Stage 1—53% Progress

Purify: Stage 1—0% Progress

Pressure Jet: Unfinished ether shell

Hydraulic Throw: Unfinished ether shell

Perished water affinity:

Perished Water: Stage 0—8% Progress

Ghosts of the Drowned: Stage 0—8% Progress

SPIRIT ABILITIES:

Blood Sacrifice

Leviathan's Fury

UNIQUE CURSED ITEMS:

Blood Ring: -6% essence cost, +5% power for blood-affinity abilities. Can be used to release Bloodshed. Attacks inflict minor bleeding.

As he looked through and compared his progress to the last time he wrote it down, he couldn't help but sigh a bit.

This was starting to become a little problematic. A few of his tempering abilities were starting to encounter bottlenecks, and the sheer number of abilities he had to keep up with was staggering.

While his rise to the peak of the second star had been meteoric, going up so quickly in gathering had left the rest of his progress lagging way behind. If it weren't for his abnormal physical power and spirit abilities, he'd be far from being able to contend with anyone at his level.

This was a problem that needed to be fixed. The sooner, the better.

He was already getting into a groove with his delving habits, but he needed to cut out a stricter schedule for everything else.

He'd been sleeping in a bit too much lately, mostly because he was too lazy to get up earlier. This was inexcusable. While his talent couldn't remove the need for sleep, it could allow him to get away with very little of it. He needed to know just how far he could push this.

He'd start with 6 hours to see if there were any adverse effects and then slowly cut it down until he noticed that he couldn't go further.

Other than that, he had to continue physical training, he had to start buying training resources to help speed up his progress, he had to find a proper place to train using his abilities, he needed to find a way to learn how to fight better, he had to start trying to make money through means other than delving, he had to—

One thing after another rushed into his mind, nearly giving him a headache. He sighed and pushed these thoughts aside.

He didn't even own an alarm, and he knew from experience that he needed a really aggressive one to force himself to wake up early.

This schedule stuff could wait one more day. For now, he'd get a good night of rest and mentally prepare himself for tomorrow evening.

To his surprise, he woke up rather early.

He went delving and wrapped up before noon, then spent the rest of the waiting time meditating to make sure he completely eliminated all the reflux essence in his body.

Before he even realized it, it was already 5 p.m.

It was time to get ready to go.

***

The day was slowly coming to an end. The skies were a gloomy grey and clouded over. A number of snowflakes twirled through the air on their path down into the forests below.

Suddenly, a flying carriage flew by, sending the snow into a chaotic storm as it whistled away into the horizon.

In the northeastern part of the American Empire, not too far from the border to the Northern Belt, five people sat inside the carriage that was heading straight towards the Northern Spine.

Mark sat in silence while tempering. Faint traces of numerous metals slowly seeped into the calcium structure of his bones, slowly morphing it into an alloy that was harder and tougher than steel.

Nahar sat across him, also tempering, while Basilisk lounged in the front, reading a newspaper and smiling to himself.

On the other end of the room sat two strange people.

One of them was a short, black-haired man. And the other was a tall woman with similarly dark hair. They sported faint scars across their skin, and they sat in quiet with their eyes closed.

Mark finally couldn't bear the effects of the tempering technique and had to take a break. As he slowly breathed out, he opened his eyes.

They looked normal. He had nothing but an ordinary pair of round pupils. Well, that was what they looked like. In reality, he had undergone a very expensive surgery. Lenses covered his eyes, creating an illusion that nothing was wrong.

Slowly, he moved to take a look at the two people sitting in the back.

They immediately noticed that he was looking at him.

In complete synchrony, they opened their eyes to stare back at him. Their square pupils were a piercing reminder of their identity and Mark's deal.

The two of them had also been subjected to the same surgery as Mark had. However, it simply didn't work. The lenses refused to bind and stay in place, no matter what the doctors did.

While Mark's pupils were allowed to be concealed, it seemed that the square shape had a unique significance to the two of them.

They gave him a questioning glance, but he simply shook his head slightly and looked away.

Back when he made the deal, he didn't care about a single thing. He was at rock bottom.

But now, when things were slightly calmer, he couldn't help but worry.

He had received something truly remarkable in return for rescuing them.

Either the being he had forged a deal with was so unfathomably powerful that it could give away such gifts without a problem, or these two were so important that it was forced to make a sacrifice.

Both possibilities were terrifying in their own unique ways.

Mark couldn't stop himself from shooting a glance at Nahar as well. The young master had also been there with him when they visited that strange realm. The being most certainly had a connection to Nahar the same way it had a connection to Mark.

As for why it chose to make the deal with him instead of Nahar, he couldn't tell. But the possibility that it was still planning to use the man wasn't off the table.

He couldn't help but chuckle at himself. There was no point in trying to see through that thing's plans. He was already playing a pawn. The last thing he wanted to do was make the wrong move and get eaten up.

"Well boys," Basilisk suddenly said as he slammed the newspaper shut and got up into a seated position. "We're getting close."

Mark squinted at the man. "Are you finally going to tell me what the plan is for the two of them?" he said with a head gesture towards the two in the back. "If you don't tell me how you plan to get them across the border, I'll be forced to take them over the Northern Spine myself."

"Don't be an idiot," Basilisk said, shaking his head and sighing. "That is simply suicide. Even the empress would have to risk her life to go over the peaks. But I guess I should come out and say it," he said with a mischievous smile.

He dug into his pocket and took out a necklace. Then, he threw it at Mark.

"A storage necklace?" Mark asked with a confused frown.

Basilisk grinned. "Not just any storage necklace. Take a look inside."

Mark took a peak. It was completely empty. The space inside wasn't too impressive, but it was stretched a bit, almost like his own storage ring which he had to adjust to be able to fit his massive sword in there.

This space, however, was a little bit bigger than the one in his storage ring, but other than that, there was nothing special about it.

"This is empty," Mark dryly said.

"An astute observation," Basilisk said snarkily.

"I don't see where you're going with this. Are you suggesting I stuff them in this space or something?" Mark commented sarcastically, but—

"Yup."

Mark blinked. "Huh?"

Living things could be put into storage rings, but the requirements for being able to do that were tricky. The living creature had to either fully consent to being placed inside or completely unconscious, and it couldn't be bigger than a small dog. And even then, things couldn't survive in there for long. Air was an obvious problem, but the bigger issue was that most living things produced heat, and the heat had nowhere to go inside the storage ring, resulting in the creature getting cooked alive.

"Indeed, that's a special necklace made specifically to be able to carry people within," Basilisk confirmed.

On second look, Mark noticed that the space inside was almost exactly big enough to store two humans inside. "Is this safe?" he asked.

"It's pretty safe for the most part," Basilisk said honestly. "Usually, the purpose of this treasure is to help someone with a highly specialized movement technique take others with them into spaces that couldn't otherwise be accessed by multiple people. The better they prepare, the longer they'll be able to last inside."

Mark frowned at that but didn't say anything. He had never heard of a treasure like this, but with advancements in etherology, new stuff was always popping up on the market. He made sure to check the necklace up and down to ensure there were no tricks of any kind. Once he was confident that it was safe, he simply nodded. "This will do."

"Brilliant. We're gonna be there soon. Get ready to load them up."

The border crossing did not go without trouble.

With a trio of three-stars aiming to leave the empire, not to mention with one of them being a recently demoted Lord, they were thoroughly interrogated about their intentions and asked to report where exactly they would be residing a week from then at the latest.

Mark was a bit nervous seeing how thoroughly they were being ribbed, and he was starting to fear they might ask to search their belongings.

But it never went that far, thankfully.

Basilisk's interviews lasted for quite a while, as was to be expected.

However, Mark was the one who they kept the longest. He had gone up to his current level of power at an insane speed. The only people who could compete with his rate of growth had achieved it through incredibly dangerous or costly means. Either that, or they had made a huge sacrifice.

On top of his freakish gathering speed, he was getting uncomfortably close to the peak of the third star—he was already at 287% gathering capacity.

He settled on the explanation Basilisk advised him to give—he had attained his growth through a method that cost him a massive portion of his future lifespan.

This was a lie, of course. But they had no way to prove whether he was telling the truth or not.

They kept trying to probe him for evidence or a more detailed elaboration, but he mostly kept his mouth shut.

While they might be allowed to keep him there for quite a while, they had no actual legal standing to refuse to let him through the border. He didn't break any laws. They had no evidence of wrongdoing.

He didn't have to worry about those two, either—they were safe in the storage necklace and had been equipped with a number of things that could keep them alive for days if not weeks.

Thus, he simply remained quiet and waited out the interrogation.

A whole two days later, they finally allowed them through.

Basilisk had been extremely stingy with the details of their trip. Mark suspected it was because the man also had zero clue where exactly they were headed. And while his guess wasn't necessarily correct, it wasn't far from the truth.

The first few days they spent there were mostly spent looking for details about the surrounding cities.

Basilisk was extremely proficient at locating reliable information vendors, and it didn't take them long to build an extensive list of cities they could choose to settle in.

The area they were in was close to where a major city used to exist back on Old Earth—Montreal. Unfortunately for the many people who used to live there, the Northern Spine hadn't been particularly considerate when it was forming.

Almost the entire city was caught in the formation of the mountain range, with the small part that wasn't finding itself flooding due to the formation of a new lake.

But there was another major city that had managed to survive—Ottawa.

It was a city that had survived total annihilation, even if the vast majority of the former population had perished in the first few years of the Rift.

There were a few smaller but notable cities in the surroundings, including Repentawa, which seemed to be growing quite rapidly, making it an optimal location to start a business empire.

And thus, that ended up being the exact place they went.