Blood Shaper-Chapter 49Book 6:

Kay stared in shock at the single line of text immersed among so many others.

-King Arthur (Outworlder)

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"What is that doing here!?"

Outworlder Legends That Are Known By Enough People Or By Powerful Enough Individuals Gain Some Weight Of Their Own That Leads To Them Being Classified As Potential Legends Under The System. However, Most If Not All Of Them Are Restricted Or Controlled Due To The Potential Of Unknown Consequences On Multiple Levels.

Kay quickly read a few more sections of the list and saw a few more names he recognized, including mythological figures and real people from history as well as a few different versions that seemed familiar but weren't quite right, likely from other versions of Earth or other worlds out there. His eyes almost immediately dropped back down to look at King Arthur's listing though. He wanted to chose it, right then and there. That legend was the one that drove him in many ways, one that helped shape the life he was living. It's connections to his family, especially his sister, where both why he had tried to become a politician back home and why he'd dropped that idea. His name way Kay because of those stories, and the way he tried to comport himself in this world of magic and individual power was also modeled partially on the idea of King Arthur. He wanted to pick that option and see what Class he would be able to wield with that legend coursing through him.

But that would be the wrong choice.

He tried to shake his head and remembered partway through he was thinking way faster than his body could move and stopped. "It won't work. That legend is as much about being a good king as it is about being a warrior, and I need fighting power more than leadership right now."

It Is Possible To Slightly Tweak The Resulting Class That You Receive To Match Certain Facets Of The Legend You Choose. Was King Arthur Not Seen As A Peerless Warrior With Incredible Weaponry?

"Sure, but the main focus was on his personal interactions and his rule. He fought, but in the legends they were mostly duels and other pieces of 'honorable' combat. Plus, he lost in the big dramatic battle that shaped an age thanks to his own poor choices. Even if you're tweaking things to go my way, I'm not adding anything like that into the mix." With more than a little sadness in his heart he told the System fragment to filter the list again. "Let's aim to build on my strengths. For now, remove anything that isn't overtly related to blood."

Hundreds of entries vanished, once again leaving a few dozen to look through. About a third of them were legends he didn't recognize with names he couldn't pronounce, and about half of those had the Outworlder tag next to them. He skipped them and moved onto ones he could read, although if there wasn't anything great in those entries he'd have the System summarize the unreadable ones. The rest were of a mixed lot. Some where restricted or controlled because of the inherent danger that they represented. The System was a very hands off pseudo-deity for Torotia, it let people make their own mistakes and deal with their own consequences. However, legends that involved plagues and curses that could span an entire world were obviously too large in scope to be allowed out into the world without any oversight. Whatever the System was actually after it needed the world to be populated.

Kay quickly dismissed those kinds of options, including "Living Blood Plague", "Cure Master That Destroys All That Bleeds", and "Bringer Of The Bloody End". Those and a few others would probably make the problem worse, not solve it. After dismissing several other options that were either not powerful enough or just didn't mesh with Kay properly, including one that seemed focused on blood-drinking insects like mosquitoes, Kay had a short list to pick a candidate from, including a couple of surprises.

Legend Options Filtered For Criteria:

- Blood Sage

- Garmr (Outworlder)

- Dracula (Outworlder)

- End Of The Fourth Sun, Rise Of The Fifth (Outworlder)

- He Who Sheds Blood

- Emoch's Chalice

One of the options Kay recognized instantly, another was familiar, and the rest were unknown to him. He quickly had the System fragment summarize each one as best it could. Blood Sage was an old legend, or perhaps one that had never been fully realized before on Torotia. It involved a sage, a great magic caster and knowledgeable figure, who focused on blood in both knowledge and magic. Said in some places to be the one who had created or uplifted many species into sapience and who had cured plagues and ended curses, the opposite of what had made Kay dismiss many previous options, they were also known for destroying their enemies in ways that sounded a lot like Kay, including tidal waves of blood and creating constructs with it to battle.

Garmr was the one Kay only vaugely recognized the name of, but he remembered a bit more as the System fragment talked. His friend Noah had been, no, he was, a folklore and mythology major and had shared many stories with Kay's friend group. Garmr was a either a hound or a wolf from Nordic mythology, one often represented as covered in blood, though the System seemed to think Garmr was made of blood, pointing toward a different Earth or different legend. He was said to guard the gates of Hel and would be the being to usher in Ragnarök, either via his howl or by killing Tyr or both.

Dracula was Dracula, although the version the System knew was entirely focused on the vampire aspects and the fragment poke very little about the actual historical figure. The most powerful of all vampires, and in many legends the origin of all vampires. Undying, unkillable, able to always return from any defeat no matter how seemingly final it was. A master of magical powers, including transformation, hypnosis, blood magics, and more, he was an awe inspiring and terrifying figure from the nightmares of the human psyche.

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"Okay, that is either not from my Earth or is some kind of cobbled together version. Dracula dies a lot in the stories I know, and they all tend to ignore each other so that they can have him as a character. Or they're derivative works."

Perhaps The Legend Has Been Modified Here On Torotia Due To The Existence Of Vampyr. No Matter The Cause, That Is The General Direction Choosing That Legend Will Take.

There wasn't time to discuss the changes and how they might have happened, although Kay knew Noah would have been fascinated by the topic, so they moved on. The fourth legend was completely foreign to Kay, but once again as it was described Kay got the faintest inkling that he'd heard it before. It was part of a creation myth that told of five ages, each marked by five suns as the gods tried to create the best world. Each god was the creator and the sun but each world failed due to some meddling or jealousy from on or more other gods, leading to the world ending and being built anew with a new creator and sun. The fourth age ended with the god who was the fourth sun crying tears of blood and drowning the world and the fifth age started with the god who was the sun using blood to bring back the people who had died in some manner so that the world would have people in it.

He Who Sheds Blood was a killer. That was all. A killer who walked through the world and killed. There were apparently variations of it that were more or less completely evil, but at a base level it was all about cutting, stabbing, crushing, and killing things that bled. It was directly suited for combat and seemed quite powerful, but Kay dismissed it immediately after hearing the summary. Violence was good and necessary when it came to battling the avatar of an indescribable horror from beyond reality, but he really didn't want something that sounded so bloodthirsty and evil becoming part of his Class, even if it was temporary. Violence for the sake of violence was useless. Also, the avatar didn't really bleed which made him think the legend might be useless in this battle.

The last one was confusing. Emoch was some powerful figure from eons ago on Torotia, apparently and had done some supposedly amazing things that sounded incredibly simple, or even stupid. There wasn't much detail there but having grand achievements involving walking in a straight line and drinking water after a celebration seemed to describe an alcoholic more than anything else. The main focus was on their chalice. Which was a person? But also a thing? It was blood, but he drank blood out of it, but it gave him something valuable but also killed him? The entire thing was a confusing mess and it didn't help that the System fragment was apparently translating it across three different languages because the culture the legend came from was dead.

Emoch's Chalice went out the window first, if you didn't include He Who Sheds Blood not even making it onto the decision list. It was confusing and weird and he had no idea how it would interact with his Class to make a tier six Class. End Of The Fourth Sun, Rise Of The Fifth and Garmr went out next at the same time. Both seemed powerful but both had too many elements related to the world ending, which had similar if not exactly the same problem as all the curse and disease related options from before, making the problem worse. Or just as bad. If he defeated Hungering Void's avatar but the world ended anyways, what was the point?

That left Blood Sage and Dracula. Kay debated with himself and asked questions of the System fragment for what felt like several minutes but was probably only a few seconds. The Blood Sage, whoever they had been if they had been real, had been a terribly powerful figure, but a huge amount of the focus of their legend seemed to be on their generosity, problem solving, and medical discoveries. Their combat ability was mentioned, but not talked about in the summary too much. On the other hand they were a complete powerhouse with blood, which was something Kay really needed from this temporary tier six Class if he was going to destroy the avatar.

On the other hand, Dracula. A powered up Dracula with a focus on him being completely immortal and able to recover form any damage or defeat with a lot of talking about how he was powerful in a fight and in magic. There was also a few small mentions about his planning and stealth, but those were muted, which added weight to the idea of vampyr in Torotia having shifted the legend a different direction after some Outworlder had introduced the story in the past.

Kay turned his attention to the surface of the blood sea he was floating in and watched the massive eldritch monstrosity tainting the world move in slow motion, with bits of ti trying to get to him to crush him and other pieces fighting against the simulacra assaulting it's body. "What's the goal here?" He asked the System fragment. "We've got two choices here and whichever one I pick needs to be headed in the right direction. Do I want to take on the legend of a scholar-mage known for healing or a vampire that caused suffering and death with his incredible power?"

The fragment didn't respond immediately. Eventually it's reply came.

The Goal Is To Destroy The Avatar. Severing The Connection Between It And Hungering Void's True Self With Force It Back From This World Enough That Combined With My Freedom From It's Corruption And Machinations Will Give The Full System Time To Repair Itself And Muster Defenses Against This Threat. Healing And Repair Can Be Handled By Many. What Is Needed Now Is Destruction Of A Foe.

"That's my answer then." Kay mentally selected "Dracula (Outworlder)" from the list. Quickly, he selected the three potential paths to tier six he didn’t see himself choosing as the sacrifices necessary for the next step. Consort of the Fist was about being an accessory to someone else more than having his own power, and was discarded. Legendary Outworlder would require him to kill all other outworlders with any fame, which he wasn’t doing. Finally, Vampyr’s End was the most arrogant of all paths he could take and he wasn’t going to take it. He was not the sole figure that created a world without vampyr, he was just a catalyst that had combined with generations of hard work and his own luck to end a scourge on Torotia. His choices were quick and easy, and he felt no pain when he saw those three listings vanish.

Acknowledged. Legend Selected. Beginning Synthesis Of Temporary Sixth Tier Class.

I Apologize. This Will Be Unpleasant.

"Oh, I was expecting it to be. Do it."

It was entirely in line with Kay's expectations that the mana that flooded into his body, similar to any other time he'd tiered up a class, was painful. It didn't burn it had weight to it and it felt like it was slamming into him as it filled him up. He'd also expected it to get worse before it got better. What he hadn't expected, what was totally beyond his expectations, was that he didn't scream. He'd expected it to be excruciating, not merely painful.

A harsh, discordant scream filled Kay's ears anyways, but it wasn't him. What was truly outside of his expectations and what completely shocked him was that the fragment was screaming a terrible, awful wail of pain and suffering.