1% Lifesteal

Hellen screamed as she jumped to her feet, nearly running out of the room. Some sort of strange, ethereal light had appeared above her unconscious son, and a moment later, a small pouch dropped on his lap. She instinctually lunged for the bag and grabbed it. Something clinked inside it, almost sounding like a handful of coins.

Still panicked, she ran up to the window, opened it, and threw the pouch outside with all her strength.

"What happened!?" Freddy's voice rang as he stormed into the room.

He saw the frazzled Hellen and scowled at her in confusion.

"Some… Something appeared!" she said. "I threw it outside!"

Freddy deflated. "Was it a… pouch of coins?"

Hellen froze. "Coins? I… I don't know. I saw the light and I…"

Freddy chuckled. "Relax. It was probably only a few silver coins. It's related to the dungeon."

She pouted and humphed, turning away from Freddy. "I'm never letting him go back there!"

With a chuckle, Freddy turned around and slowly closed the door. As soon as he turned around, he seemed to deflate slightly. The last sixty seconds were some of the most overwhelming he'd ever lived through in his life.

Slowly, almost fearfully, he reached into his pocket and pulled out an item.

It was a shimmering pendant.

As he saw the weapon and felt its power, he gulped. "Bloodshed… what is this?" He already had a pretty good idea of what the object itself was.

It was a circular, silver medallion hanging on a frayed, brown string. It looked shoddy quality-wise, but he could tell that just the string alone was insanely tough. Even if he tried with all his strength, he wasn't sure whether he could snap it.

But the string wasn't the thing that got him so disturbed. He pulled the medallion closer and took another look at it. It appeared scratched up as if it had seen many years of action. On its surface was the carving of two men locked in mortal combat. And this carving shifted.

The two men repeatedly lunged at each other, exchanging moves, blocking and striking, never able to get the upper hand no matter how hard they both tried.

Cursed items weren't particularly unusual. They were imbued with an aura, but it was usually impossible to tell whether an item was cursed without taking a look in the Netherecho.

There was, of course, an exception to this rule—unique cursed items. They usually exhibited some sort of supernatural phenomenon that made them relatively easy to identify.

Freddy's Blood Ring, for example, was made of what appeared to be dried flesh. Whenever he put it into water, it would shift a bit, subtly squirming. It took him a long time to even notice this. But even then, just the fact that the ring had dug into his bone was already proof enough that it was unique.

This pendant was the same. It was a unique cursed item.

Bloodshed thought momentarily and then offered, "Would you like me to tell you what the announcer said at the end?"

"The announcer?" Freddy asked, frowning. "Oh! Do you mean that bearded old guy? Yeah, tell me."

Bloodshed went silent for a moment. When it started speaking, its voice was identical to that of the bearded old man, almost as if Bloodshed had recorded the man's voice and was playing it back, startling Freddy for a long moment. He never knew Bloodshed could do that.

"Great defenders!" the old man said. "On this glorious day, our kingdom had not only defended from our attackers, but we had purged them entirely! Our great name will resound through every land, and our glorious deeds will be passed down for all eternity! Moreover, the merit for this grand achievement falls almost entirely unto a single hero—Slave! Not only had he stood facing an army by himself, but he had done so despite the overwhelming superior power of his opponents!

"Thus, in recognition of his glorious deeds, Slave will be granted a most exquisite heirloom of our ancient kingdom: the necklace worn by the Great King who established these immortal lands through his unstoppable conquest—the Warrior King's Pendant!

"And now, my brave, loyal people, following this auspicious day, as we have conquered our greatest enemy, our kingdom shall surely enter a period of unseen peace and prosperity!" That was the end of the speech.

But Bloodshed wasn't done retelling all that happened. "Master, after the end of the speech, the dungeon had transformed."

"Hmm!?" Freddy yelped in bewilderment. "How so?"

"The castle was repaired, and the surroundings blossomed into wheat fields. Numerous peasants appeared to tend to these lands."

"What? What does this mean?"

"I do not know… but I believe that the Fortress Dungeon is now useless."

Freddy winced at that.

Thankfully, there were no witnesses as to what exactly happened, so it was likely that people wouldn't presume Freddy had defeated the whole dungeon himself. Whether he'd be blamed for what happened or not was uncertain. But losing the Fortress Dungeon would hurt pretty much all of Repentawa, from the weak beginners to the bigger factions.

It was an excellent place to train fighters and gather funds.

Now that it was gone, people would undoubtedly look for someone to blame.

He sighed at that.

Given the speech Bloodshed shared with him, this was most likely the first time this dungeon was fully cleared. To be honest, that was quite shocking. But it also made sense.

He didn't know exactly how difficult the sixth wave had been, but given the appearance of a three-star general in the fifth wave, it was definitely pretty overwhelming.

From what little Freddy knew of many of the local three-stars, he suspected that, in direct combat, Thor was most likely at the very top in Repentawa. This kept him and his faction safe from the wrath of the others.

Given how much even Thor had to struggle in the fifth wave, it was hardly shocking that the sixth wave wouldn't be beatable. Perhaps if all the three-stars got together, they could do it, but… would these people really be willing to risk their lives and cooperate like that? Absolutely not.

But that was irrelevant.

Freddy looked at the Warrior King's Pendant and gulped. From that speech, he guessed that the reward was no doubt influenced by the fact that he did most of the work himself and by the fact that he was only at the second star. Given the difficulty of accomplishing this and the theoretical merit he gathered…

What exactly did he get?

A unique cursed item was already an insane reward. But not all cursed items were made equal. Depending on what exactly this item did, it was no exaggeration to say that it could change his life.

He gripped it tightly and sent some essence into it, connecting with the item. He received vague impressions in the form of bundles of concepts. Unfortunately, at just the second star, it was pretty damn difficult for him to unravel the exact details.

He had some practice with the Blood Ring, but even then, he relied on Bloodshed to tell exactly how the item was progressing.

But he was making some progress.

The first thing he realized was that it had two separate effects. This was excellent news. His Blood Ring also had two separate benefits, both a boost to power and a cost reduction. Well, it had three effects after that asura fused the dagger into it; but even just two was already exceptional.

As for what exactly these benefits were, all he could tell was that they somehow referred to weapons.

Weapons…?

This was strange. Once he equipped the pendant, it would have some sort of effect on any weapon he was wielding at that moment.

There was an easier way to check, he supposed.

He slowly pulled the pendant over his head. As soon as he placed it around his neck, he immediately felt his pride soar, as if his heroic spirit was influenced by this item.

He used Blood Javelin. His metallic blood poured through the skin of his hand, quickly forming a crimson weapon. He gripped the javelin in his hand. As soon as he held it, he felt some sort of energy rush from the pendant and seep into the weapon.

Freddy watched with eyes wide open as the energy formed intricate patterns of parallel and perpendicular golden lines all across the javelin. In a single breath, the weapon went from a dull-looking shape of blood metal to a dignified, royal form of red decorated with shimmering gold.

"Holy shit," he muttered. "Hey, Bloodshed," he called.

"Yes, Master?"

"Could you help me figure out what this cursed item does?"

"Hmm… It will be difficult since the concepts within aren't related to blood. But now that it's connected to your soul, I can read into it. It will take a while, however."

"No problem," he said with a giggle. "I have all the time in the world."

For a long half-hour, Freddy waited for Bloodshed to unravel the mysteries of the pendant. He twirled the spear in his hands, unable to take his eyes off the beautiful shapes across its surface. This shit looked fancy as hell. And while it was hard to get an exact read on what was different about the javelin, the more he played with it, the more confident he got about his guesses.

Bloodshed finally finished digging through the concepts and spoke up. "The item affects any weapons Master uses while wearing the pendant. It has two separate effects—the first makes the affected weapons deal 101 parts damage, and the second increases the item's durability to 101 parts."

As he heard Bloodshed explain it, Freddy's hand clenched, nearly crushing the javelin in his grip.

+1% to damage and +1% to durability.

This was incredible.

The concept of "damage" was a pretty damn powerful thing to alter through a cursed item. The main reason was that damage wasn't a linear concept. Not at all. People's bodies, armor, and abilities had breaking points. If one did a hypothetical "100 damage" against a shield that could tolerate "101 damage," that made the difference between breaking through the shield and being blocked.

And this was a unique item. It could grow.

And that wasn't even the whole effect. It also affected durability. This was effectively the opposite of damage.

His Blood Ring already affected the power of his blood abilities. "Power" as a concept referred to the expression of the primary concept of an ability. For any weapon Freddy created, the primary concept was hardening the blood into a shape. Increasing the power, in this case, made his weapons… well… harder. This was already an incredible advantage for a practitioner of Crimson Mercury.

Having even more durability on top of that would have a priceless impact on the quality of any weapons he created. This was a huge deal. His Gore Knuckles had a habit of shattering pretty often under the stress of the power behind his strikes. The value of extra durability could be imagined.

He suddenly remembered something and scoffed. He pulled out the tattered clothing from his storage ring, the rags that his grueling mountain hike turned into a material for a cursed item.

Sighing, he put the filthy clothes away.

Unless cursed items were part of a set, equipping more than two was impossible. The effect of the third item wouldn't kick in, and it could even potentially cause soul damage.

With two unique cursed items, Freddy had filled his quota. There was no more room for the clothes. But he didn't necessarily mind this. Now that he was really thinking about it, cursed armor wasn't suitable for him at all. Leviathan's Fury was the main culprit. Using the spirit ability in a bind would mean destroying any cursed armor he was wearing.

Hell, it was extremely destructive toward any type of armor he tried equipping. While he was still a poor bastard, this was hardly an issue, but the richer he became, the more of a problem this would be for him.

There was just one more thing to check out. "Bloodshed…" he called hesitantly. "What do I have to do to develop this pendant?"

Unique cursed items could grow in power. But to make them grow, one had to fulfill some sort of requirement. This almost always meant defeating enemies. But it was never that simple. Even with the Blood Ring, it wasn't just beating enemies; it was spilling blood. This might seem like an irrelevant detail, but it mattered a lot.

For example, if Freddy fought against golems or some form of undead or maybe even elementals, the Blood Ring just wouldn't grow. His targets needed to have blood. On top of that, the ring responded a lot better when he spilled the blood of many different enemies in one massive fight.

Bloodshed quickly reponded. "The item seems to grow through triumph."

"Triumph?"

"You must defeat enemies that suppress you for the pendant to grow."

Freddy's expression turned ugly at that. "Mmmh… yeah… that sucks."

He knew that the weapon's effect seemed too good to be true. While Freddy had managed to beat enemies stronger than himself before, it was always in dire life-or-death confrontations. Beating enemies more powerful than oneself was a very strict requirement. But for the effect this weapon provided? It wasn't unreasonable. Both of the bonuses were immensely valuable.

Sighing, Freddy tucked the pendant into his shirt and got up.

It was time to kick the mother-son duo out of his apartment.

***

"New recruits?" Thor asked. "Hell yeah! Keep 'em coming. We're always short on staff."

"Thank you. I really appreciate it."

"No, Freddy, thank you!" Thor said, chuckling as he got off the office chair. "But how about we talk to them directly first?"

Thor walked out of the office and invited Hellen and Lucas, who were waiting in the lobby.

Lucas still looked a bit ill. His skin was pale, and he looked exhausted. He'd lost quite a bit of blood, and that wasn't even mentioning the fatigue from all the fighting he did. But he was awake, and time waited for no one.

Lucas was offered a position as a recruit trainee. It would be a long while before he saw any real action, and he wouldn't be paid much until then, but his living costs would be covered in full by Valhalla. Naturally, this included his mother, too.

Most Valhalla members had close relatives living at headquarters, even if they weren't employees. It was extremely common for close ones to get kidnapped when someone was an archhuman. Keeping a few mortals fed was far cheaper than having a member betray the faction because of blackmail.

The talk didn't last long. Lucas accepted the offer, and his mother reluctantly agreed to stay at Valhalla. Today's incident had really disturbed her. Given how her other child ended up… well… yeah.

Once they were both signed up, Thor got up and suddenly seemed to realize something. "Oh, yeah, Freddy, I've never really given you a tour of the whole headquarters, have I? You've been training here recently, too, but I don't think I've seen you use all our facilities. How about it? Want to go check things out?"

"Oh, yeah, sure," Freddy agreed. "We can take Lucas along."

"Uh… yeah," Lucas muttered. "Thank you."

"Sure thing." Thor chuckled. "As for you, Mrs. Black, you're also invited to come. But if you want, we can escort you to your new residence instead."

"I'll go with the second option," she said, sighing. "I need a nap."

Freddy and Lucas followed Thor as the man gave them a detailed tour.

Frankly, with the man's position, Freddy knew for a fact that he had plenty of better things to be doing at the moment. And yet here he was, guiding them around.

Freddy finally got a decent tour of where everything was. They had some pretty nice equipment for physical exercise, too, which he would no doubt be using quite a bit. They also had gathering rooms and even rooms for meditation. This was all pretty ordinary stuff. But they had more than just that.

One of the facilities they had was just a large collection of isolated meditation rooms. They were intentionally made to be void of ether. As for what these rooms were made for?

Right next to the collection of small rooms was a massive library. This wasn't an ordinary library, though. That could be found on the other end of the building. Rather than mundane books, these shelves were filled with tablets.

These tablets contained strange runes all across their surfaces. These runes were ether imprints.

A lot could be gleaned through meditation alone. When Freddy sent essence into his blood, he received all sorts of information when he reabsorbed that essence back into his soul. But this information was far too raw and unfocused. It was a soup of extremely complex concepts embodying pretty much everything his blood was. Unless he knew exactly what he was looking for, trying to glimpse a profound truth was not an easy task.

These tablets, on the other hand, were a lot more focused. Some of them detailed the exact imprint needed to create a certain ability, while others were more general bundles of concepts intended to inspire someone when they were trying to create something original.

This was extremely valuable.

Freddy had already seen something similar in that book he bought all the way back in Pittersville. But the ether imprints in that book were extremely faint compared to these things. Those were cheaply produced references that barely even allowed a peek into the complex inner workings of essence.

These tablets were useful for more than just making new abilities.

From stage 0 to stage 2, abilities had no such thing as mid-stage bottlenecks. They simply grew until they were ready for an upgrade. Stage 3 was different.

At stage 3—50%, an ability would encounter a barrier, and the shell would become a little blurry again. The only way to make further progress at that point was to reform the shell with more advanced concepts. This was also an opportunity to fix mediocre abilities.

A similar thing also happened at stage 4—33%, and presumably at 66%, but Freddy had no idea whether anyone even had an ability that advanced. The number of people who actually knew what happened at that point was extremely low. Only characters on the level of the empress were privy to those secrets.

The ether imprints Valhalla had were probably not some particularly profound stuff. But they were still very valuable nonetheless. It wasn't possible to just draw the shapes. The process of forming these imprints was long and expensive, and some were probably found inside a dungeon somewhere in the interspace.

But that still wasn't all that Valhalla had to offer.

There was another facility for testing abilities and weapons other than the one Freddy was using. This second one was a lot more valuable.

In the middle of a large room, there were thick columns of pale gray metal. They were so big that even Freddy could only wrap his arms around half their girth.

This strange metal was a material called "impact alloy."

There were only five of these columns, and all of them were currently occupied.

Freddy watched one of the two-star fighters swing an axe at the metal column. The axe embedded pretty easily into the metal, and the metal rippled, showing how far and how intensely the force was distributed through the metal. The column remained distorted momentarily and then rapidly regenerated, erasing the marks as if they'd never happened.

That was a pretty insane property. If the metal wasn't so soft, such a material would make for essentially perfect armor.

The man pulled his axe back again, and this time, he used a Tectonic Strike. The impact was far greater. The axe embedded almost entirely into the metal, and the ripples were considerably more pronounced, clearly showcasing the difference between just swinging the axe by itself and adding an ability to the attack.

Freddy really wanted to test himself out, but it was considered extremely rude to interrupt people while they were actively using any of the facilities. For stuff like this impact alloy, the members had to reserve a time when they'd be using it. There were only five, and everyone could use a safe place to test their abilities, strength, or weapons.

While he was confident that if he asked nicely, any of the people there would let him take a swing, that was still a bit of a dick move, so he refrained from doing it.

And then, finally, they were brought to what was most likely the single most valuable facility Valhalla had access to—a puppet arena.

One could select up to ten puppets at varying levels of difficulty and practice fighting against them. These puppets were extremely resilient and capable of regenerating from anything that didn't completely destroy them. They were also brutally expensive to own privately.

There were only three rooms available, allowing for a maximum of three people to use the facility at the same time. It was also momentarily busy.

Once they wrapped up the tour, Lucas went to his new apartment.

Freddy and Thor waved to the boy, and as soon as he was out of sight, Thor turned to Freddy. "Yeah, I'm gonna need you to tell me exactly what happened today. Let's go somewhere private."