Book 6: Chapter 25
An oblong, egg-like shape floated in the air. It was red, since it was made out of blood, and it slowly expanded until it was about the size of a human head. Pieces of it began to stretch out and twist, becoming branching structures that pointed in multiple directions with smaller pieces branching out even more as they traveled outward. Then in one smooth motion, the object shrunk back in on itself and became a cube. That grew another cube from its side, then both of them together extruded two more. That repeated over and over until the one singular cube became dozens that all formed together into one massive cube, before it too changed its shape. The cycle of starting as one shape, growing in some way, then shrinking down and starting as another shape repeated over and over.
Kay stared blindly at the floating , twisting, changing shape as he perceived the blood he was manipulating with his Skills with his magical senses and not his eyes. He made it into ridiculous shapes that would only work in zero gravity or with magic that defied gravity, repeating the same process but with different shapes and patterns of growth over and over again. More than once some part of the mass he was shaping and forming with his magic grew too large, hitting the ceiling or walls or even running into him and that was when he started shrinking it instead of the original limit he’d set for himself.
He had done his best to take Eleniah’s well-meaning and completely correct nagging to heart and let himself relax. Kay was disappointed in himself that he had needed her to come and poke him about it. He wasn’t sure if it was a perfectly normal thing to do, if he just hadn’t grown as much as he thought he had, or if it was just a personal failing, but whenever crisis seemed to come around he felt like he started backsliding and reverting to a much less useful version of himself, the version that had fought against the idea of being a leader. That older state of himself didn’t fight against it out of dislike for the position or the idea of it, although there was some dislike for some of the additional factors, most of which he still hated, like sycophants and ass-kissers, but out of a fear of failure. That was what he realized the more he looked in at himself and learned who he was and what he stood for. Fear of failure was certainly standard among everyone Kay had ever met to some extent, but letting it overwhelm you and dictate your choices was cowardly and served no one.
Now that he was in the position that he had originally fought against as the leader of many people, the fear was even stronger than before. Before he’d become mayor, then lord, and then king of Avalon, the idea of failing and letting people down was merely a hypothetical. It wasn’t a hypothetical anymore, it was a real possible consequence of his choices and actions. Even more than just disappointment, there was a chance that people could die, that everything they had built and sacrificed could be destroyed if he failed. He wasn’t just their leader, because of how Torotia’s System and the nature of society here worked, he was also their champion. He was the strongest man around as far as anyone was concerned. He was their king, their guardian, and their champion all rolled up into one and if he failed the fallout could be terrible.
That was the fear that drove Kay in the complete opposite direction from his previous behavior. Instead of running from the problem and the conflict, he dove into it at reckless speed, so concerned with doing everything he could for the people he’d sworn to protect that he never stopped to consider if he was going too fast or doing too much. Eleniah was right, he was once again driving himself unto the verge of burning out, of becoming a lifeless husk with no more to give long before he was needed most. His fear was driving him into desperation instead of making a wise, considered, and balanced choice.
He was thankful that he had people in his life who didn’t fear standing up to him and could tell him he was being an idiot, and he refused to be someone that refuted those voices and kept being stupid against good advice. So he was taking a break and working on a personal project. Originally Kay had gotten two map-making related non-Combat Classes just to fill in slots. Even if they didn’t have Skills suited to killing monsters or other foes, they at least pumped a bit more mana into him every time he tiered them up and they increased his overall total tiers as well. One of the two Classes he’d ended up with also did come with a nice Skill that helped in fights, Stable Footing, which helped him keep his balanced in all kinds of terrain. Later on after working on them to tier up the Classes, he’d found he actually enjoyed the work. Making maps was important in a world that couldn’t just use satellites to take pictures of what the ground looked like and it was also relaxing, so by making it his hobby Kay got to kill two birds with one stone.
He’d set it to the side because it didn’t immediately help him kill vampyr, but now that he was taking a break he’d decided to try and make something new that involved his Expert Cartographer and Expert Mapmaker Classes. He didn’t have anyone to teach at the moment, no decisions had to be made, and as much of a break as it would be to flirt with his girlfriend, so trying to make a modular, changeable magic map out of blood was his goal for the moment. He’d never heard of anything quite like what he was trying to create being made on Torotia before, Ahthia hadn’t found any stories or documents about it and no one else he’d asked had ever heard an inkling, so he was working purely on instinct and guesswork. He wanted his blood-map-artifact thing to be able to morph itself and show off any layout, so he was trying to imprint the blood with all kinds of shapes as he slowly pumped mana into it, all while using Blood Manipulation, Shape Blood, Create from Blood, and Meld Blood simultaneously. The first two were doing the actual work of changing the blood’s form and shape, the third was what he was using to try and make it into a System recognized item, and the fourth he was using to try and connect his two map making related Classes to the item and make it a map as opposed to some kind of blood based shape memory substance.
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Once he’d changed the mass of blood into every variation of every shape and configuration he could think of more than once he pulled out some maps he’d made before this, including paper maps with regular ink, paper maps with blood as ink, maps made out of blood in their entirety, both two-dimensional ones and three-dimensional topographic maps, and some weird experimental things he’d tried with various media. Carefully and making as few mistakes as he could Kay shaped the floating mass of blood into copies of those maps as he thought carefully about what each one represented and what they were trying to convey.