1% Lifesteal

As Freddy walked into the gym, Mark greeted him, "Hey, man, what's up?" Then he asked the dreaded question, "So… did that guy come after you?"

"Nah," he lied. "He must have pussied out."

"I see…" Mark said, his voice drifting off. "Honestly, I thought about it a bit, and I think the smartest thing to do would be to just apologize."

Freddy remained quiet.

Mark continued, "It's much better to take a small hit to your pride than deal with trouble that isn't worth it."

Freddy looked at Mark with a distant gaze and a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Yeah. I'll… I'll keep that in mind."

***

It didn't take Freddy particularly long to rationalize his actions. That guy was a dumbass, and he could have gone after someone else. If that had happened, the roles could have been reversed.

No matter how he thought of it, that idiot was a hostile maniac who should have been taken out. In fact, he was willing to go as far as to say that if placed in that situation again, he'd make the same choices, even knowing the results.

But… his excuses didn't change anything.

Every time he woke up in the morning, his essence reserves would be topped off. The morning after that incident, he woke up and checked his essence reserves—they were at 28%—1 % more than the day before.

Every time he struck out with a technique, a shred of its power felt borrowed. Stolen. And it would forever be a part of him.

By day, when around people or training, he was fine. Things were different at night. Repeatedly, he would wake up in a cold sweat, nightmares ravaging his mind whenever he closed his eyes: images of how easily a neck snapped, the visions of a body appearing before he could tell what happened.

Every time he trained, every step forward he took, and every bit of progress he made… suddenly, it felt so heavy.

What exactly was he preparing himself for?

Days passed, and eventually, on one evening, just as he was about to take the collection of medicines…

His doorbell rang.

Freddy walked over, expecting it to be Mark. But as he looked through the spyglass, he spotted Matt Canstone, the assistant, instead.

He couldn't keep a breath from escaping his lips.

With quite a bit of hesitation, he turned the lock and opened the door.

"Hello," Matt said. "May I come in?"

Freddy's mind froze when he heard the question. "Uhm… sure, feel free. I'll uh… Yeah, do you want me to order something to drink?"

"No need for that, but thank you, regardless."

The handsome auburn-haired man sat on the couch in the living room, and he sat across from him, shifting awkwardly.

"You can relax," the man said. "I'm not here for business. I just wanted to have a conversation with you."

Regardless of what the man said, there was no way in hell he was here without Madame's knowledge. And if she allowed him to come here, it was because she was playing at something. He showed no indication of his suspicion outwardly, instead feigning relaxation.

"I'm… Am I in trouble?" he asked.

"No, you are not," the man said. Before long, he added, "You don't have to worry. The situation has been dealt with—officially, it would be concluded that Hilbert died during a delve."

Although it made him feel ashamed, Freddy couldn't help but feel a sense of relief at that. "I see… Thank you, and I apologize for the trouble I caused."

Matt simply smiled and nodded slightly. Then, with a swing of his hand, a large bottle of alcohol appeared, and two glasses appeared next to it.

Ah, okay… he thought. So that's what he meant by no need.

"Do you want to have a drink with me?" Matt asked, shaking him out of his thoughts.

"Uhm… I'm not personally in the mood for it. Thank you for the offer, though," he thanked the man. Truthfully, he wanted a sip but was afraid that it was spiked with something.

"I see. That's all right," Matt said as he poured himself a glass and took a swig. With a deep sigh, he turned to face him. "That was similar to how my first happened."

"What did?" he asked.

"The way that man died by your hands."

The bluntness of the man's statement was like a punch to his stomach, but he just nodded in response, waiting for the man to continue.

"I'm a single father," Matt said. "When my daughter was two years old, I took her everywhere since I couldn't bear to leave her alone." He poured more of the pungent drink into the glass and downed half the glass in one gulp. "One night, I had some late shopping, so I took her with me. I put her down briefly at her request to walk by herself. That was when that man appeared.

"He looked homeless and disheveled. With sure steps, he approached my daughter and reached to grab her. I reacted instinctively, kicking him in the head. His neck broke, and he fell to the ground."

Freddy sat silently, then said, "Seems fair enough to me."

"The court said the same thing," the man added with a lethargic chuckle and another sip. "I was never punished for my actions, but… I've never made peace with what I've done.

"I don't know who he was or why he did what he did. Perhaps he was on drugs and saw something that made him reach for my daughter. I don't truly know if his intent was to harm or take her… He didn't jump at her. He didn't have the eyes of a predator. He simply reached out with his hand," he said, gesturing the motion. "Maybe he just wanted to pat her on the head, and I judged him by his appearance before he could prove his innocence," he confessed, tearing up a bit. "And my lovely angel…

"She claims she doesn't remember seeing that happen, but I see it in her eyes. She jumps when I show up beside her without her noticing. She averts her gaze when she holds mine for too long. Even if she doesn't remember, I'm sure the experience still haunts her, lurking deep in a long-forgotten corner of her early childhood memories."

Freddy listened with rapt attention, nodding slightly at the man's words. "Yeah, I… I definitely wouldn't want to trade places with you."

The man chuckled a bit. "Indeed. And I'd trade places with you in a heartbeat."

"So, you're the one observing me?" he asked the man, but the assistant stared at him with a mysterious smile.

Then, ignoring the question, Matt said, "I wanted to give you a few words of advice. First, never get into a fight unless you're prepared to kill your opponent. Never." He let the word sink in for a moment. "Let me ask you something. Would you wield a knife if you wanted to fight someone but didn't want to seriously injure or kill them?"

He frowned at that and shook his head.

"Obviously not," Matt said. "A knife is a weapon. Weapons injure and kill, by definition. While being unarmed seems less hostile, that is nothing but a misconception. A punch can have serious consequences even between mortals; killing someone takes a lot less effort than people think. With archhumans, it becomes much worse. Special constitutions, talents, techniques… These are far more dangerous than a mundane knife," he declared.

"You might believe you can learn to hold back or control your strength. But when you're about to lose, instinct takes over."

Freddy took the words in and couldn't help but ask, "Sir, do you… Do you think I'm at fault here?"

The man scoffed at the question. "Fault?" He laughed a bit. "There is no such thing as fault among the powerful…

"There is only shame," the man stated, his expression darkening, "and not everyone has it."

***

The days passed, and Freddy made steady progress.

He felt he'd never get anywhere with how he split the techniques. So, for the time being, he kicked Create Water out of the schedule. It was an essential ability, yes… but for creating spells. And with his many abilities, getting more was far from his biggest priority.

He had also paused Abyssal Depths. This only left him with Flowing Strike, Hundred Wet Hells, and his work on creating Hydraulic Flex. He did Hundred Wet Hells one day, Flowing Strike another day, and worked on Hydraulic Flex on both.

Although meditative gathering was considerably faster than manual gathering, it was only so if there were enough wisps of his affinity around. Since it didn't take long to exhaust an area, he often had to swap to manual gathering.

On a rather ordinary day, having finished his gym work, he went to the forest to work on his techniques and martial arts. Draining all the water wisps didn't take long, as usual, so he entered the Netherecho through his projection.

And when he appeared, he finally noticed the sensation he had been waiting for. While meditative gathering could only be used through one's actual body, there was a one-time exception to this rule.

Ether constructs could exist in several forms, but they all needed to be attached to an anchor. Personified ether constructs were attached to a concept; ether shells were attached to a soul; prime vestiges were anchored to reality; and non-personified ether constructs were either attached to a representation of a physical object, a personified ether construct, or a projection.

In the first case, that was how cursed objects were created. The second case was when vestiges, for example, had a weapon or a piece of equipment. And the third option…

Every ascended had a latent soul construct they could manifest and use through their projection. Knowing what one would get until one got it was impossible, so it was mainly down to luck. Still, one could make a rather good guess, depending on the nature of their talent.

And this was where that one-time exception came in.

His little projection sat on the ground, and he put his palms together. When he focused, contemplating not the concept of water but rather his prime talent, a few nearby wisps reacted to his call.

Uh…

Several metal wisps were popping out of the ground and tumbling toward him, which was a good sign, but something unusual happened. The patch of marsh he trained close to bubbled, and small balls of what looked like molten masses of skulls bounced toward him.

Death wisps.

Metal and death, it seemed, would be the ingredients for whatever his soul was about to manifest. It didn't take a genius to guess what it would likely be. A weapon began taking shape as the wisps gathered and concentrated between his little, gloved palms.

In seconds, a metallic clang ran out, and a large armament appeared in his grasp.

Of course…

He got a damn scythe.

Shimmering with a blue gleam, the scythe was a menacing piece of equipment, arching over in a large half-moon with a shaft twice as tall as the body of his projection.

Soul constructs could be a myriad of different things. While getting something like a bundle of flowers seemed horribly underwhelming, one must remember that fighting was far from the only option one had when dealing with vestiges. They had no such thing as a "desire to live" unless they were explicitly attached to such an idea.

Charming them with flowers was a solid strategy for getting them to voluntarily crawl into one's soul or even forfeit their existence. In fact, as a soul construct, it would hold a supernatural allure or otherwise increase the odds of persuasion working in those circumstances.

But… well… he couldn't say he was disappointed. He focused on the scythe and tried to discover what it did. He focused, pushing his essence through it in trepidation, but no matter how hard he concentrated, it didn't respond.

Oh, come on!

Whatever its special power was, it was a passive effect. If he had to guess, he would say that it would likely cause vestiges to rot on touch. While this seemed great, it was common knowledge that soul constructs with an active effect were far superior to those with passive effects in at least ninety-nine out of a hundred cases.

While passives were great during sustained combat, actives were far better when dealing with a single powerful opponent. And in the Netherecho, well, there was no such thing as "sustained combat" unless one had a few screws loose and a death wish.

Personified ether constructs should always be tackled one at a time. In such cases, an active ability that imbued his weapon with a decisive, powerful rot attack would be infinitely better than a passive effect.

Either way, at least for the foreseeable future, it didn't matter to him. As soon as he was done with his contract and could go on an expedition somewhere, he could use Bloodshed to deal with vestiges and remnants.

The primary reason why he cared about his soul construct for now, and the reason why he was glad that he received a weapon, was because it could be used to harvest wisps during manual gathering.

It wouldn't be much faster than picking them up, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

Freddy took a few practice swings with his weapon and couldn't stop himself from getting a little giggly. The scythe felt weightless in his grasp, and every time he swung it, it left a black mist in its path.

So freakin' cool.

Now, then, it was time to test it with manual gathering.

He located a small earth wisp just a bit to his side and swung at it. The scythe cleaved through it effortlessly, and he felt the ether and essence move into his…

Suddenly, his little legs ran back toward his body, and once he arrived there, he blinked. He had just felt something unusual, and it shocked him enough to force him out of the Netherecho. Swallowing hard, he dove in again and carefully approached another wisp, taking a swing at it.

The wood wisp was sliced apart, and the tiny droplet of ether felt the same as always. But the amount of essence his swing extracted was far more significant than usual.

He had done quite a bit of reading on the topic, and he knew that using a weapon to do this increased neither the ether nor the essence recovery. It should just make the unraveling faster. Which could only mean one thing—

Don't fucking tell me… that this thing's passive is… The words didn't come to mind easily, but as he finally pushed past his incredulity, he realized what he was dealing with. Essence Extraction!?

That was absurd. There was no mention of anything like that in any of the books he'd read. One's soul construct mattered, yes, but it was exclusively due to how much easier or more challenging it would be to handle personified ether constructs.

Something that could affect essence recovery, however…

"Holy fucking!"

That was on the level of a talent. Not only that, but talents that affected essence recovery were easily among the most desirable.

Yet again, he returned to his body, and this time, he took a deep breath.

Relax, Freddy… it might not be that good.

The last thing he'd want was to get too excited and overreact. So, he returned to the Netherecho again and began the test run of his new soul construct.

Filling his essence back to total capacity was something he couldn't do even with several straight hours of gathering. But when nearly empty, his soul recovered essence faster. Usually, he would dive into the Netherecho for around fifteen to twenty minutes at a time, which would be enough to regain approximately 5% essence. Then, once he spent that, he would return and do the same thing.

He did as usual this time, spending roughly fifteen minutes in the Netherecho. But the longer he spent there, the more he felt the pull to go back to his body so it could process the shock.

Because by the time he was done, he hadn't regained a mere 5% essence. He had regained nearly 22%.

***

For the next few days, he spent most of his time not abusing his newly discovered cheat but contemplating how he would hide it. It didn't take long for him to land on the perfect solution. He just wouldn't.

There wasn't enough merit to doing so. Madame almost definitely wouldn't hesitate to snatch Bloodshed if she discovered it, but that was different. Bloodshed was something she could use. His talent wasn't.

On top of that, if he wanted to remain safe after leaving Madame's protection, using this advantage to become more powerful would serve him far better than hiding it.

He still didn't intend to advertise that he could do this, and he made sure to disguise it to the best of his ability, but if someone was keeping an eye on him, it wouldn't be long until they discovered that something was off.

As more days passed, his growth sped up even further. His star was, yet again, growing at a crawl, but his ether shells were developing rapidly. Hydraulic Flex was still far from being finished, but Hundred Wet Hells was at least 20% along with being able to upgrade to a stage one ability, and Flowing Strike was closer to 40%.

As his time spent here passed two months, he noticed something worrisome. He had to stop using the steroids because, simply put, he was growing too big. While his muscular growth was utterly insane initially, it had slowed down somewhat. But it was still going. He had already reached 91 kg. He had put on 11 kg of weight in less than three weeks.

While some of that mass was due to his limited use of Abyssal Depths, judging from what he knew of the tempering technique, with how little he had used it, it couldn't have added more than 100 grams to his total weight.

Even if his growth slowed further, another four months of development like that would put him way above 100 kg. Being at around that much mass would still be manageable, but if he grew much more than that, it would seriously compromise his mobility.

Freddy wasn't all that tall, either.

Mark, who was much bigger than him, weighed 115 kg. But his talent and weapon choice permitted it. He, on the other hand, needed to stay mobile.

Although he was quick to kick the drugs out of his schedule, he wouldn't limit his calorie intake. Because otherwise, he might just starve to death.

***

On another ordinary evening, Freddy was getting ready to go to bed until his doorbell rang again. He immediately knew it would be exhausting, but he forced himself to walk there anyway.

The moment he peeked through the spyglass, however, his stomach dropped.

Madame stood before his room entrance, wearing a loose, white dress, her hair tied up into twin ponytails, and her arms crossed right across her torso. Her nails were painted each in a different color, and one finger playfully tapped against her forearm. Although spyglasses were meant to only go one way, her eyes showed she was well aware that he was looking through the other end.

He took a single deep breath to calm down and opened the door. "Greetings, Madame!" he chirped.

"Freddy, darling, how lovely to see you!" she said as she walked into the apartment.

"Yeah!" he concurred. "So, to what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Please, cut the shit, young man," she said in the most polite tone she could manage with such a phrase.

The whiplash momentarily stunned him, and Madame patted him on the shoulder with a casual smile, causing him to jolt reflexively.

"You don't need to pretend to be happy to see me. Anyone can tell that you trust me about as much as a man with IBS trusts a fart, so let's not do this pretend play, okay?"

He nodded hesitantly, and Madame walked past him. "Let's go have a seat. We have something important to talk about."

With clenched fists and shaky steps, he followed her, and they sat in the kitchen.

It was as if she extracted some sort of sick pleasure from awkward silence, and she let it stretch on for far too long, simply observing him from top to bottom. And then, finally, she spoke up. "You're growing fast."

"That I am," he confirmed, still somewhat stilted.

"Lovely. You should have at least asked before dropping the steroids, though."

Freddy winced at that and wondered whether she would force him to return to taking them.

"I won't," she said, as if she could read his mind. "I was going to tell you to stop anyway since a freak who belonged in a circus is the last thing I'd want on my show." Then, with a dramatic sigh, she summoned a cocktail from thin air and started taking a long sip through the straw.

Then, the way an interrogator questioned a criminal, she opened her mouth and asked him, "How exactly did you manage to piss off the patriarch of the Kraven Clan?"

"Who?" he asked, genuinely confused, but Madame showed no indication that his confusion held any worth to their discussion.

"I will be straightforward with you. If I conclude that you knew he was after you and decided to trick me into taking you under my wing anyway," she said, leaning forward and freezing the smile on her lips, "I will kill you immediately."

He gritted his teeth. Rage boiled in his heart, but he took a deep breath and calmed down. After all, he was innocent. Even if he wanted to tear her head off her shoulders for the threat, he was powerless to do anything.

"Madame," he said, taking a moment to think through what he was about to say. "I have no idea who that person is, and this is the first time I've heard of the 'Kraven' clan," he answered honestly, holding her gaze throughout the ordeal.

She squinted at him and took another long sip of her drink through the straw. The cocktail ran dry, but she kept slurping it up, producing an annoying sound all the while. "All right, I believe you," she said, just like that, putting the glass back into her storage device with a pop of air rushing to take its place.

He didn't let himself relax.

"Well," she said, "I still have to ask you a few things. You've somehow made an enemy that is a pain for even me to deal with, and given that I have no choice but to defend you, I would like to request your full cooperation.

"So," she continued, "I guess I should clue you in on who we're dealing with. His name is Janhalar Kraven, and he leads a clan of blood-affinity warriors."

It all happened in an instant.

The moment she mentioned the clan of blood archhumans, he immediately thought of Bloodshed, and as soon as he did, her arm morphed, extending forward, and her rainbow-colored nails sharpened into pointy claws that grasped his neck, drawing blood.

Bent over the table, her arm stretching out of her dress, she struck an utterly inhuman picture, yet it was her expression that sent the fear of death into his heart.

With a murderous look of wrath on her face, she growled. "So, you do know something, after all."