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He’d left Turin’s house in the middle of the night so he could practice his rituals without worrying about the danger of being caught, but all he’d done was replace that threat with the new danger of being mauled to death by the nine-fingered claws of a Torogorn or pierced through the back by a Vorathede’s stinger. Still, he preferred the latter to the former. At least he could fight back against monsters; the strong arm of the law was too overpowering compared to his current strength for him to do anything but run away.

Traversing through the wilderness, Zeth replayed over and over his memory of his narrow escape, hiding behind the shed and eavesdropping on the investigation, trying to extract every bit of information he could from what he’d heard. That blue light seemed to show all the places Zeth had done his magic—but what counted and what didn’t? It hadn’t illuminated any path leading away from the shed, only the interior, so it seemed like the residue wouldn’t follow Zeth around or stick to him after he finished and walked away. Rather, it seemed to specifically only care about the location he physically drew his ritual circles.

That meant, as long as he did the actual drawing out here, he’d be safe from detection. He still didn’t know if it would be okay to bring an already-completed circle with him, so for now, he’d avoid doing so unless he found it absolutely necessary to have one. But he’d have free rein to do whatever he wanted while he was out here.

Zeth glanced around himself. He was in a clearing a good distance away from the town’s borders, and with flat enough terrain that he felt this would be a perfectly fine location for drawing. So, eager to waste no time, he knelt on the ground and placed his finger on the dirt.

First would be protection. As he was now, if any monster showed up—or even some of the local mundane animals—he’d have no defense against them and would be forced to flee. He needed to set up something to help him fight off danger, and currently, his only option for that was Hellfire Ritual. Ideally, he’d be able to surround himself with the circles, that way he could devote full focus on his work without having to worry about checking around himself for danger. Even if a monster snuck up on him, the moment it got too close, it’d step on one of the circles and roast itself alive without Zeth even needing to lift a finger.

The only problem was, he wanted to draw a forty-eight inch Empowerment Ritual circle out in this clearing. Which meant he’d need to surround that entire area with small, five-point-three inch hellfire circles that took fifty minutes each to draw. He didn’t need to do any math to know it’d take days of work to accomplish that. And what happened if a monster stepped over the line of circles he made to get to him? Ideally he’d want to double or even triple up on them in order to ensure nothing could come close without stepping on one. No way that would be possible.

So what else could he do? Just make a single Hellfire Ritual circle off to the side somewhere and hope he’d notice any coming monster while he worked so he could trick it into stepping onto it? That sounded unreliable.

It was a frustrating situation. Ironically, Vile Focus’s effects were actually a detriment to his plans currently, as the Skill lowered the required diameter of his circles. With each Rank, his hellfire circles would grow smaller and smaller, and therefore become even harder to step on. It was strange; typically, any Skill with a potentially detrimental effect would allow you to disable it at will to avoid situations like this.

Zeth frowned. Maybe I can?

He glanced over the descriptions of his Skills once again, and this time, something caught his eye.

They keep talking about a “required ritual circle diameter.” Is that the specific diameter it needs to be, or is it just a minimum? Can I make them as big as I want, as long as they aren’t smaller than the number?

Immediately, he got to work tracing a circle with a diameter of a full foot—over twice the “required” size of Hellfire Ritual. If it was truly a specific requirement, then he wouldn’t be able to use it for the Skill. But if he was able to…

After spending an hour drawing it, meeting the minimum time requirement, Zeth gazed down at his work. Since the circle was larger and inherently took longer to draw, he didn’t need to do as much work on the internals of the circle than he normally did for Hellfire. Typically, he quickly finished the outer ring with upwards of forty minutes to spare, meaning he’d have to continue drawing intricate designs within the circle to fill the time requirement. But since this one’s diameter was so much wider, not only was there much more space to fill in the same amount of time, but it took longer to draw the outer circle to begin with.

Once it was done, he breathed. Okay. Moment of truth. He already had plenty of rags covering his body that were soaked in blood, so he simply unwrapped a few of his bandages and pressed them against the circle, the wet blood quickly getting sucked into the dirt and leaving the once soaked bandages far whiter than before. Once he did this with enough of them…

[Ritual complete: Hellfire Ritual

Sacrifice given: Moderate amount of weak human blood.

Hellfire Ritual circle has been armed.]

[Hellfire Circle’s Rank has increased to 3.

+1 Skill Point. You have 12 Skill Points.]

Zeth felt his mouth spreading into an excited grin. That was very, very good news.

These monsters don’t stand a fucking chance.

About five hours later, Zeth was calmly drawing the circle for his Empowerment Ritual in the ground, having partially let Vile Focus take hold, removing the boring monotonous feeling of the task but still ensuring he kept his wits about him, when he heard a sound from behind him. He allowed Vile Focus’s effects to wear off of him, suddenly feeling much more present in the world, and glanced back at the source of the noise.

For a moment, he didn’t see anything, but then he spotted a barely dissonant piece of the scenery outside of the clearing. A coat of camouflaged scales sat perfectly still behind the bushes and trees, waiting to strike. From the simple glance, Zeth wasn’t able to identify what those scales belonged to—and, chances were, he wouldn’t be able to identify what the monster was even if he could see it clearly. There was such a large variety of species in the different realms that it would take years of dedicated study to memorize them all.

A pang of fear struck Zeth’s heart as he fought his urge to flee the clearing and run back to town.

Ignore it, he thought to himself. You have things under control.

Still keeping the monster in the corner of his eye, Zeth continued drawing the Empowerment Ritual and pretending he hadn’t noticed. He traced the complex lines, feeling mana seep from his finger into the ground as the monster began to creep forward. The slightest crunch of leaves, the barest shake of a bush’s branches told him it was gaining confidence, preparing to strike.

He took a shaky breath. Just keep working. Just keep—

The creature lunged. It flung itself straight at Zeth from its cover, finally giving him a clear view of what it looked like during the split second it was exposed to the open air.

It was horrifying, standing on four legs, a mass of sinewy muscle that was barely covered by slick scales. Its open jaw reached out eagerly toward its prey, unhinging like a snake’s. Zeth flinched back, away from the beast’s charge.

But the moment its foot touched the dirt around him, the ground lit up in bright red and pink, a flash of electricity danced across Zeth’s vision, and flames burst out in front of him.

The monster didn’t even have time to take another step before it collapsed to the ground, dead. Its corpse continued burning five or six feet away from him as the lines beneath its feet burnt out and went inert. The entire clearing dimmed.

Zeth stood, looking around himself, and let out a held-in breath. It worked.

He hadn’t just gotten lucky that the monster had stepped in the right place to roast itself, of course. And there weren’t rows upon rows of tiny Hellfire Rituals protecting him, either. In fact, there were just three.

Zeth had found that not only could he make his ritual circles as large as he wanted, he could also put circles inside other circles—as long as there was space. He had to detail the inside of the circles only if he’d finished the outer ring and still had required time remaining. Which meant that, if the outer ring was large enough that just finishing it took an hour, then he wouldn’t have to draw a single line on the inside of his hellfire rituals.

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So, he’d simply drawn a twelve-foot diameter Hellfire Ritual that surrounded him and his entire workspace, then another that was eleven feet in diameter inside the first, and then another that was ten, the three rings surrounding him on all sides and protecting him from anything that dared approach. And, judging by their performance here, it seemed like they wouldn’t need their targets to specifically touch the lines themselves—just be within the circle.

Zeth still wasn’t sure exactly how the “minimum time” requirement worked in terms of how he could and couldn’t get around it. It felt pretty arbitrary; who cared how much time he spent drawing the thing? What difference did it make if he could get it done in one hour or two? The instinctual knowledge granted to him by his Skills told him there was something more technical being abstracted by it, but what exactly was going on, he wasn’t sure. He knew, for example, that he wouldn’t be able to intentionally slow down his drawing in order to get the circle done without needing to put down as many lines. It would simply not count some of that time as being spent drawing to compensate for his slower work. But he couldn’t tell why.

Either way, he’d figured out a way to utilize the mechanics effectively. And in the process of drawing those three circles, he’d even gotten another Rank-up on Hellfire Ritual, up to four, which meant he was only two Skill Points away from being able to afford the fifteen-Point cost of Demonic Covenant.

With the monster dead, one of the three overlapping circles was spent, which meant that after two more monsters came and died, he’d be left with nothing more to stop his enemies from getting close. So he probably needed to go ahead and redraw the spent circle so he’d have maximum protection. He didn’t want to get caught defenseless against a group of pack animals.

But as he walked over to the outer edges of the circles, he felt light glare into his eyes. The sun was rising, peeking through the trees. It was time to return to town, hopefully soon enough that Turin didn’t notice he was ever gone and he didn’t need to come up with an excuse for his absence.

He’d just leave all of this as it was for now. His Empowerment Ritual was about a quarter done, so he’d just have to come back later and finish it when he found more time. After dragging the corpse of the scaled monster into the center of the protected area—he’d want to keep it safe from scavengers so he could use the blood later—he let out a breath, then turned and headed back toward town.

Zeth got back to Turin’s in time before his friend woke up, and slipped back onto the couch so it would seem like he’d been sleeping all night. But after a few minutes passed as Turin snoozed away in his own room, he grew impatient, finding that pretending to sleep wasn’t the best use of his time, and decided he’d just head back home. He was obviously fine to walk on his own, so he just wrote a note explaining he’d woken up and gone to his mom’s house and left it behind for Turin before grabbing the book he’d bought for Sophie and walking off.

Upon reaching his destination, Zeth was surprised to see that nothing had changed. He’d expected it to be surrounded by town guards or something, considering the fact that the last time he’d been there, he’d witnessed an investigator confirm there had been rituals done on the property. But it looked like it always had—no law enforcement in sight. Maybe after he left, they decided it wasn’t actually as likely as they’d thought that it had been blood magic performed there, after all. That would certainly be good news.

Before he could reach the door, he heard an excited shout.

“Zeth!”

He turned to see Sophie running toward him wearing oversized work clothes, gloves flopping around on her fingertips. His mom trailed behind.

“Hey!” he responded, reaching out to catch her charging hug-slash-tackle. She collided with him and pushed him back as he let out a chuckle.

“You’re okay!” she said.

“I told you he’d be alright,” his mom said as she caught up with her daughter. “See? It was a good idea to get started on pulling weeds now. If we’d used up all the cool morning time walking down to meet him, we’d be stuck working in the middle of the hot day.”

“I’m sorry I made you worry,” Zeth said. “But, as an apology, I got you a surprise.”

Her eyes lit up. “Really? What is it?”

He held up the thick book he’d been hiding behind his back. Before he could even say anything, she squealed in delight. Behind her, Zeth could catch a glimpse of exasperation from his mom. He ignored it for now.

“Oh, oh, what’s it called?!” she asked, grabbing the book from his hands and holding it out to examine the cover. “‘A Traveler’s Guide to Magic and Combat.’ Woah…”

“You got her a book about fighting?” his mom asked in an accusatory tone.

“Uh, yeah. Don’t worry, it’s mostly self-defense and that sort of thing,” Zeth responded, not sure if what he said was true. He certainly hadn’t had time to read the thing after the librarian had randomly picked it off the shelf for him. “Probably good to know with the Blood Mage stuff going on, right?”

She frowned. “I guess.”

“Mom, can I please take a break so I can go read?” Sophie begged. “Please? I promise I’ll pull weeds twice as hard when I’m done!”

“You’d be wasting perfectly good morning hours.”

“It’s okay, I can work when it’s hot!”

“No, Sophie. Go back to pulling weeds. I’ll tell you when you can read.”

Sophie groaned in disappointment, then looked back at Zeth. “Thank you.”

Zeth forced a smile. “I’m sure the hours will pass in no time. Tell me what you think of it once you finish!”

That seemed to cheer her up. With a nod, she ran off to go continue with her weed-pulling, leaving Zeth and his mom standing in the field.

“You’re feeling okay?” she asked, eyeing the bandages covering his upper-body.

“Uh, yeah,” Zeth said. “Turin hurt my hand a bit, but I’ll be fine.”

“Oh? What happened?”

“Nothing much,” Zeth lied, ignoring the still-throbbing pain of the hole that had pierced through his palm. He was aiming to heal from that wound much faster than one normally would by picking up Self-Destruction after he bought Demonic Covenant, and his Endurance would accelerate his healing as well, so downplaying its initial severity would hopefully help make that more believable. “Just an accident. Anyway, he said most of my injuries were skin-level and stuff, so I’ll be good to go after some time.”

She sighed. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately. You’re too reckless.”

“I tripped and fell. Not sure what that has to do with recklessness.”

“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about all the time, lately.”

“What have I done?”

“A mother knows, Zeth. Something’s going on with you.”

“I’m just trying to acclimate back into normal life after the cave-in. Sorry if I feel different,” he said. Then, eager to change the subject, he brought up what he’d noticed earlier. “So, what happened with the investigation? I left before I could hear whether anything came of it. Half expected to come back to see the place crawling with guards.”

“Oh, that’s something I needed to talk to you about. You can’t go into that shed you were working in anymore.”

“Really? Why?” Zeth asked, already expecting the answer she’d give. They’d found evidence of ritual magic in there, so obviously it would be too dangerous.

“The guards set a trap for the Blood Mage. I don’t really know how it works, but the way they worded it, anyone who goes in there may as well be killed on the spot. I wasn’t too eager to volunteer my own property like that, but they didn’t give me much of a choice. Tried to tell them that we had nothing to do with it, but apparently finding any evidence at all on our property was grounds for them to do whatever they wanted. Still, it’s not like I don’t mind the protection. Just wait until you hear what they found inside. There was this test with a bright light—it really was very strange, I tell you.”

That was more than he’d expected. Suddenly, Zeth was extremely glad he’d stuck around to see the results of the investigation before he’d left the day before. If he had wandered into the shed to do his rituals last night…

She sighed and shook her head exasperatedly. “Well, I won’t get into it right now. All you need to know is it’s going to be a little dangerous here for a while. That Blood Mage fellow has been poking around our land for a while now, apparently. It’d be unwise to continue working the farm with someone like that around here.”

Zeth raised his eyebrows. “So, what? Are you going to be taking a break?”

“Oh, no, of course not. I was thinking, you still have that pay you haven’t picked up from the guild yet, so I’m going to use that money to hire mercenaries to guard our property and make sure no strangers come onto our land.”

He couldn’t keep his mouth from hanging open. “Mercenaries? You don’t really think you can afford that.”

“No, no, I went and talked with some people yesterday after the guards left, and I think I can get a good deal for their services. They had good combat Classes, they seemed competent…I mean, they weren’t extremely high-Level, but they’re in the high teens, so they should be more than enough to scare off this evil mage. With the coin from the guild, it should be enough to keep them around for a week or two, maybe.”

“There’s no way that’s profitable. Paying that much just so you don’t have to skip a week of work?”

“It’s not just a week of work. If we’re stuck in the house all day for that long, we’ll risk losing quite a lot of money’s worth of crops. We might even ruin the entire season’s output. That would be much more expensive than a small protection fee.”

“Okay, but how do you even know we’re even in that much danger? Surely there’s not that much risk of this person coming and attacking everyone. I mean, it’s not like they’ve done anything so far, right?”

She shook her head. “They were in the shed, Zeth. Doing magic and rituals and whatnot. I know you weren’t there when they found this, so you don’t know how big of a deal this is, but there’s no way that person isn’t up to no good. Maybe they didn’t attack us during the monster fight, but who’s to say they’ll stay that way?”

Zeth bit his tongue. How could he convince her that the ‘mysterious Blood Mage’ posed no threat without outright telling her that he was the culprit?

She sighed. “If you don’t want me to use your money to hire them, fine. But you can’t convince me this isn’t necessary. I don’t want you or Sophie getting hurt, and I refuse to let my mother’s farm die just because I was too cheap to protect it. I’ll find out some way to make a few extra coins and—”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Zeth rushed to say. This mess was all his fault; he wasn’t going to make her pay for it. “I’ll go talk to Garon and pick up my pay. I’ve been meaning to do that anyway.”

It felt too soon to go to the guild already, before he’d gotten powerful enough to repel an attack, but with all the heat coming down from this investigation team trying to find the identity of whoever was practicing blood magic in town, he’d need to figure out the identity of his enemy sooner rather than later. Chances were they’d be just as afraid as he was of getting caught.

The team was technically following Zeth’s trail right now, but what they didn’t realize was that there was more than one criminal in town. If they ended up chasing after the Blood Mage instead of Zeth, things could end badly. They could get scared and run off, which would make it almost impossible for him to chase after them, or they could simply get caught on their own, which would be just as bad. If that person died by the empire’s executioners rather than by Zeth’s own hand, he’d never forgive himself.

Even if he wasn’t ready for a fight, Zeth needed to start making moves.