Scarlet

I first start the battle by testing out the nightshade’s strength with a clawed strike directly meeting its fist, which ends up sending me flying away. But the difference is not insurmountable this time, and I left a single small scratch on the demon with my attack despite my wrist and arm bones kind of snapping.

“Only kind of?” Tar mutters, sounding like he’s starting to get back to his usual self. Albeit slowly.

My wounds heal almost instantly with my maxed-out Blood Regeneration, proving exactly why I’ve met the requirements to advance it to Lycan’s Regeneration. And at the same time, I transform my body into blood and reform myself instantly a few meters away, avoiding a powerful strike from the nightshade that causes the ash on the ground to rise.

Out of the corner of my eye, I find all the Knights and Satan all looking rather surprised at my use of Blood Transformation. But then the nightshade finally narrows its glowing red eyes at me and roars, making darkness spread out over the area as beasts of all shapes and sizes rise from the ground made of pure solidified darkness.

Just what I was waiting for.

Blood Thirst now resets after three minutes of me not killing anything, and the boost is an entire percent per kill. Although I don’t know if the limit on how many stacks I can get is the same as it was before. Which was about two hundred and fifty stacks at once.

I grin before immediately spreading my arms out and using Blood Manipulation on all of the blood in the area to raise it all into the air and form weapons with it. And immediately after that, I use Rain of Blood to pour plague-filled rain down around us that I merge with the weapons, giving each and every weapon every single plague in the set.

Everyone in the area except for the nightshade who is currently lost to his Pride Sin shows various different expressions of shock at the sight of me using a direct manipulation skill. One of the most powerful skills in existence since it lets you directly manipulate your magic to a degree. With limits obviously.

After filling the sky with hundreds of plagued blades of blood, I send them flying down at the army of creatures made from darkness, skewering them all. But since they’re made by a Class V, my attacks don’t kill them. They do severely weaken them though, and I take that chance to transform back into my quadrupedal beast form and attack, tearing them apart now that they’re weakened. And each and every one I kill raises my stats by a single percentage, making it easier and easier to kill the others until I’m on par with them in terms of pure brute force.

Although that wasn’t until after taking wounds severe enough to kill a normal person. Wounds that only end up being minor conveniences to my maxed-out Blood Regeneration.

So I continue slaughtering the nightshade’s minions, occasionally transforming into blood and reforming myself several meters away whenever the nightshade itself tries to attack me.

Good thing Satan sent it into a frenzy, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to kite it like this.

That aside, this is the most fun I’ve had in over a year!

“Well duh,” Tar mutters, sounding like he’s gotten over his shock at how powerful I’ve become. “But… uh… how?”

Or not.

Now isn’t exactly the time to be catching you up. Just know that I got two new legendary skills and can upgrade Blood Regeneration to the mythic skill Lycan Regeneration. Although I’m waiting on upgrading it till after the battle since it’ll make the skill weaker at level 1 even if it’s a mythical. Or at least it probably will.

“It’s hard to tell with mythical upgrades,” Tar comments, “I’ve heard that some do get worse at level one and significantly better at higher levels again, and others just get significantly better right away.”

Yeah. Best not to test which one Lycan’s Regeneration will be when it could make this fight a lot harder.

I continue to slaughter the nightshade’s summons as it summons more and more of them, seemingly never stopping. And at some point, I start using Blood Swarm – a skill I don’t use often – to summon manifestations of blood to fight them when I’ve killed enough that my stats almost equal the nightshade.

Almost being the key word as I still need to use Blood Transformation to get away from it.

It’s just too bad that none of these summons give me any EXP. Although I guess that is probably a good thing in the end, since if I did level up then I wouldn’t be one hundred levels below the nightshade anymore. So I’d lose my +100% bonus, along with any chance I had to not die.

I continue slaughtering the nightshade’s summons for a bit, racking up almost all of the stacks possible, only to be stopped when the nightshade finally loses its patience and sends a wave of darkness outwards from it, covering the entire wasteland and sending me flying. But I manage to grit my teeth and land on my feet, the various wounds I got from it recovering quickly enough as I sprint forwards and continue slaughtering more summons.

Five more.

A slash straight across the throat of a beast-like beast of darkness.

Four.

A head ripped off of another with nothing but my jaws.

Three.

One more head ripped off, but with my claws this time.

Two.

And another beast slashed across the throat.

One.

I grin and jump straight over a few humanoid creatures of darkness before landing smack dab on top of a beast-like one and tearing out its throat, finding the message I’m looking for appear in my vision. But this time with a surprise.

[Blood Thirst Effect applied. Stack is now 250. You have reached the maximum number of stacks you can have at once. Stacks will not reset for ten minutes regardless of kills made by the user.]

Oh? That’s a nice new addition to the skill.

My grin grows wider, and I finally focus my full attention on the nightshade. Only to quickly realize that there are too many summons to do that.

Then again, the thing is a summoning focused demon.

Annoying.

I sprint forward to continue the massacre.