Blood Shaper

“Does this count as something interesting?” Kay asked as he stared at the tower, overgrown with clinging vines. It was tilted to one side, a bit like pictures of the Leaning Tower of Pisa Kay had seen once.

“Ruins were on my list, so yeah, totally,” Murunel replied. Kay could see her stretching out in the sphere as she tried to get a better view. “Is there anything else?”

“All I see is the tower.” Kay turned his head to one side, keeping his eyes on the structure. “I’m pretty sure you’re over that way, and this feels like something we should investigate in a group.”

Eleniah stepped out from behind some trees, shaking her head as she approached. “Trying to skip out on training won’t help you in the long run.”

Kay scowled at her smirk. “Funny. I’m serious though, ruined buildings in the wilds aren’t something I want to investigate at anything less than full strength.”

She dropped the smirk and nodded. “Good decision. A thought though, is it worth investigating at all?”

“Um…” Kay scanned the area, “There are no signs of other people being here that I can see, and the wildlife seems to be acting normally. I mean, it isn’t weirdly quiet or anything. Since there aren’t any definite threats, and we don’t have a clearly defined goal, I’d say yes, because there isn’t really anything to lose, even if it turns out to be a bust.”

“Sound logic.” Eleniah smiled, “Let’s go check it out.”

With her in the lead, they walked towards the tower. It had been pretty easy to spot from the distance since the trees had been thinning considerably over the past few hours. Kay was grateful that they were starting to leave the forest. The last couple of weeks, being entirely surrounded by trees was kind of wearing on him.

Like, I appreciate trees and the woods as much as the next regular person, but I’d really like some open spaces to look at!

Thankfully, it looked like he’d be getting open spaces sooner rather than later.

Up close, the cylindrical tower was made of evenly cut gray stone blocks with the faintest hint of mortar holding them together visible in the seams. They circled around it, then stopped as they completed an entire circuit.

“There’s no door?” Eleniah muttered as she stared at it.

Kay shrugged and walked closer. “Maybe it has a hidden entrance?” He pointed upward, “Or you’re just supposed to go in the balcony up there.”

“Why would anyone make a balcony all the way up there the only entrance?”

“Maybe they could fly?”

“It would make more sense to put the entrance on the roof then; it’d be easier to land on,” Murunel commented.

“Maybe there is an entrance on the roof, and we just can’t see it from here.”

They shared a look. “I’ll go check it out.” Eleniah decided, and she began jogging off.

“Wait!”

She stopped and turned to look at him.

“Let’s stick together, please. Like I said earlier, it’s better to be at full strength in unknown territory like this.”

“Alright.” She walked over and stopped next to him. “Do we go look together?”

Kay glanced up towards the top. “It’s not tilted that much. Will we even be able to see it without walking for too long?”

“I was going to jump off that and see if I could get a glimpse.” Eleniah pointed at a tall tree in the direction of the tower’s tilt. “It’s almost as tall as the tower, and I can jump really high.”

“Before you guys do that, can you scrape some of the dirt away from the bottom?” Murunel asked.

Kay looked at her with confusion evident on his face. “Sure?”

“I want to see if maybe this is just the top, and the rest is buried. Many ruins and old cities have buildings or entire sections that are underground because dirt keeps piling up. If this is an old ruin, most of it could be beneath us.”

Kay frowned at the structure. “We’d have to dig down really far to see if it’s more tower and not just the foundation.”

“Or,” Eleniah gestured at the exposed balcony. “I could go look inside.”

Kay glanced at her and the balcony. “Can you jump that high? That’s almost thirty feet up.”

“No, but that incline is enough for me to run up it if I’m fast enough.”

Kay walked up to the tower and put his hand flat on it, then pulled his hand back to straight up and down. There was about an inch between his fingertips and the wall. “That’s like fifteen degrees at most. You can run up that?”

“With some fifth-tier leveled Monk skills, I can.” Eleniah took a few steps back and stretched her legs. “Ready?”

“Is this a good idea?”

“It’s not a bad idea. I’m just running up there real quick and sticking my head in. If there’s trouble in there or out here, I can just jump out.”

“I’m pretty sure splitting up is still a bad idea.”

“We aren’t splitting up. I’m going to be less than fifty feet away.”

Kay sighed and made sure he was out of the way. “Alright, I’m trusting your decision.”

“Thanks!” Eleniah stretched on more time, then sprinted at the wall. Moving fast enough to blur in Kay’s vision, she rocketed up the side of the wall. She pushed off and flipped over the edge of the balcony, landing easily on its edge. She spun around with one foot and stepped backward off the edge onto the balcony itself, bowing as she did so.

Murunel cheered as Kay clapped for her performance.

“Right! Stay there, obviously. I’m just going to peak inside.” She turned around and entered the tower through the open archway.

Moments passed, then a few more. Before a full minute had passed, she stepped back out. “Watch out below!” She stepped up on the ledge and flipped off it. She landed with both feet on the wall and slid down it like she was surfing. Right before the bottom, she jumped off and somersaulted forward, landing on her feet.

Kay applauded again as Murunel laughed excitedly. “That was so cool!”

“Thanks!” She jogged over to them. “I love getting to do stuff like that.”

“When I get out, I’ll show you guys some cool flying tricks!”

“I’ll look forward to that.” Eleniah looked up from Kay’s neck. “It’s empty. Remains of some furniture on the floor and a stairwell down. It’s definitely buried further down; good call Murunel. The lower end is blocked by rubble, and the stairs are all destroyed, but t definitely goes down further than the ground before it’s impassable.”

“There could be a whole town buried here!” Murunel swiveled in the ball to look down at the ground. “We could dig it up and find cool stuff!”

“Um, just the three of us?”

“Err, yeah, that would be hard. Oh well.” She turned around to look up at Kay. “On to the next adventure!”

Kay and Eleniah both chuckled. “Before we leave, I’m going to mark this down,” Kay said as he reached into their travel bag. “Someone with more time and manpower might want to unearth this, but even if they don’t, it will make a good landmark.”

He pulled out a flat piece of wood, some charcoal, and the map he’d started drawing a few days into the trek.

Eleniah stared over his shoulder as he started to draw. “That’s looking good.”

“Thanks, my drawing is up to level four now.”

“You get the Cartography skill yet?”

“Not yet; I think I need to make this more map-like.” He gestured at what he was drawing. It was mostly just a collection of landmarks with some distance markers measured out in days it took them to get there.

“I see what you mean. The actual drawings are good, though. You just need some time to turn it into a real map.”

“I’ll do that when we set up that base, you say we need.”

“Having a place to come back to is better than wandering around. Trust me, I’ve done both. Even if it’s just a hut we make in a hidden spot, it’s better.”

Kay shrugged. “Alright. I guess I haven’t gotten tired of the wandering around part yet.”

“You will trust me.”

“Well, let’s get back to the wandering until we find something interesting or a place to make a base.” He rolled up his papers and slipped everything back into Eleniah’s dimensional bag.

“Onward!” Murunel cheered.

“Are you wanting to get a class-based around making maps?” Eleniah asked as they resumed their travels.

“I wasn’t really thinking about it. Shouldn’t I focus classes that sync together for tier five?”

“No! That’s boring!” Murunel complained.

“How old are you?” Kay asked, laughing as he glanced down at her.

“Three hundred and fifty-seven!”

“You’re older than Eleniah!”

“Dragons mature pretty slowly. She’s uhh.” Eleniah did some math on her fingers. “She’s like nineteen or so? If you compare her to humans at least.”

“So ha!” The dragon girl gloated. “I can be as childish as I want when I declare that only spending your energy focusing on making ‘the best’ tier five class is boring!”

Kay chuckled. “How do you know what age she compares to if people on this world get their lifespans extended by tiering up?”

“Getting to higher tiers doesn’t stop aging; it just slows it down a lot. So if you’re experienced enough, you can look at someone’s body and tell roughly how old their body would be if they didn’t have all the mana from their class keeping them from aging.”

“And!” Murunel added, “She wasn’t talking about age or physical development; she was talking about maturity! Tiering up doesn’t affect how people mature mentally!”

“So you’re admitting you’re immature.” Kay rebutted.

“Back to the subject!” Eleniah cut off their teasing laughingly, “Some people focus entirely on making their classes line up fr tier five, while others don’t. And there isn’t some list of all the classes you can make, so no one knows what will or won’t combine. With your advantages there, I’d say don’t worry about it and take classes you’re interested in.”

“Don’t forget that when you hit tier five, the combined class only takes up one slot, so you have the freedom to start building the next one.” Murunel added, “Just because a class doesn’t perfectly fit in with the current build you’re working on doesn’t mean that it won’t work with the next one!”

Eleniah nodded in agreement. “That’s true. I worked on my tier five combat class and my tier five non-combat class at basically the same time.”

Kay looked over at her. “You know, you told me the name of your combat class, but what’s the name of your tier five non-combat class?”

“Influential Instructor. It’s a Teacher class, obviously. I get a lot of bonuses to help my students learn faster and remember more.”

“What’s the class skill do?”

“It’s called Influence Instruction, and it’s a passive skill that lets a student learn something significantly faster if I’m teaching something related to my own experiences. It’s my knowledge literally influencing the instruction that I give. It’s really useful for teaching skills directly.”

“Isn’t all teaching influenced by the teacher’s experiences?”

“I mean, yeah, but that’s not what the skill means.”

“How is it different?”

They continued talking about classes and skills in particular and generally as they continued to walk deeper into unknown territory.