Arthur was glad no one in the neighbourhood ever came around to visit his cottage. It would have been extremely difficult to explain why his bathtub was filled with blood without coming across as psychotic. And all the fifty-litre jugs he’d taken to filling that now littered his kitchen and living room. It was impossible to go anywhere in the house without running into some of the stuff.

  He’d been constantly draining himself for the last two days, so fast in fact that he actually started to lose health, his prodigious regeneration unable to keep up with the abuse he put his body through. Still, he was finally done. One thousand litres ready for use with seventy extra prepared just in case, over five times his body's weight in blood.

  Arthur suspected that if he’d done the same thing before gaining a class, he’d have earned his first negative title. Something stupid sounding like Edgelord Vampire that would make any injury he suffered bleed extremely fast. Arthur chuckled at the mental imagery, though it was an extremely implausible one even if he did ever gain a title to that effect. After all, it was almost impossible to make him bleed. No one would even know he even had the title.

  He had every ingredient he needed to perform the ritual ready, Wovan’s core, a thousand litres of ether-infused liquid, the Titan’s finger bone to serve as her new body and the space stone, phoenix blood and Earth’s blessing as miscellaneous items to ensure Wovan returned to the realm of the living a far greater threat than she’d been when she’d left it.

  He had less than twelve hours left before the protections on the cottage came down, already some of the stronger defences had begun to falter as their energy was gradually drained away. The safe haven he’d come to know and love was no longer so impregnable. Arthur wouldn’t be surprised if the more experienced bounty hunters had already started to track his position. It was time to level the odds.

  The soul splinter ritual after Iris’ modifications required a little under one hundred square metres of space, which suspiciously enough, was the exact same size as the cottage basement. The Seer always claimed she wasn’t ten steps ahead but then she went and did something like this. The cherry on top was the special wood laminate she’d installed as flooring, made from a mixture of Knotweed and Gray Resin that made for an exceptional foundation to perform rituals on.

  Cleaning out the basement had been a simple affair, what with him possessing superhuman strength and the cheat that was his special storage ring. Twenty seconds to place his workbench, two rickety chairs and three storage units in the ring and a quick walk upstairs to cram them into his bedroom. Arthur doubted he’d be sleeping here tonight, or ever again. Getting his blood down into the basement, however, was a far more difficult affair.

  The fifty-litre jugs were easy enough to move. His bathtub unfortunately wasn't. It was premium quality workmanship, perfectly built into the bathroom, more an intrinsic part of it than a mere addition. While it made for great room design, it made removing the bathtub to place in his spacial storage next to impossible. Eventually, he decided to generate a shadow blade and cut the porcelain tub from the wall. He was really doing a number on the cottage today and it was a shame that circumstances meant he wouldn’t stay here long enough to suffer the consequences of his actions.

  It made him feel like a vandal and stripped the cottage of the title of home it had taken up in his heart. Arthur sighed. Moving always made him feel sentimental and this was a place Iris had personally prepared for him, his first real girlfriend in the last three years and certainly the one he cared for most. Arthur groaned as he pulled his hair back for the twentieth time in half as many minutes. Usually, it was something that merely annoyed him, but his temper was closer to the surface today.

  Cutting it would be far too much effort with how high his Draconic Vitality was so he settled with putting it up in a ponytail, using a hairband he found in the closet- perhaps Iris’– to keep it in place. Ten minutes later, Arthur had everything he needed in the basement. He’d already brushed the place down and mopped the floor. Now he used Purify, pumping more energy into it than he had ever before, 1,500 ether. The room was instantly flooded with bright white light– the entire cottage would have been and the garden outside it too – but Arthur limited the aura of cleanliness to the basement, concentrating the purifying energies as much as possible.

  Iris had set up multiple arrays to help keep the house clean and dust-free but taking extra precautions never hurt anyone. The cleaner the ritual chamber, the better. It was the first tip beginner practitioners were given; a dirty ritual room was a fast track to ruining your magic. Once Arthur was happy with the state of the room, he began the inscription process. Using his blood here instead of the standard ether-infused water made this step far easier.

  For starters, his blood was far thicker than water, hence it wasn’t at risk of spreading too much or smudging when he started painting with it. He was using a standard uncommon ranked brush purchased from the System for 6,000 credits. It was about what you’d expect from a paintbrush, only it had an enchantment to keep its bristles in pristine condition and another to remove any lingering product on the brush without being forced to wash it every time.

  With his high stats, Arthur’s precision and steady hand were greater than anything an artist could aspire to pre-system. That didn’t mean he didn’t make mistakes. Three times he was forced to erase a part of his runic script because he wasn’t happy with how it turned out. That was the easy part. Painting a perfect circle, however, was enough to make a grown man weep. Some things were needlessly difficult, no matter how high your stats may be.

  It took Arthur a little over an hour and four litres of his blood to get the ritual circle penned properly. The basement floor was covered in what looked like red paint, three circles of red positioned in a triangular formation with a larger one in the centre. Dense lines of runic scrip connected everything together and it was almost impossible to move anywhere without stepping on something.

  Unfortunately, Arthur had made a mistake.

  Iris had described what a ritual of this magnitude should feel like, even while inactive. There should have been a palpable sense of pressure emanating from it, and while the ritual looked impressive visually, he could sense no such power. Arthur groaned. He'd triple-checked every line he'd penned, kept everything an even thickness and constantly cross-referenced with Iris' drawing, but clearly he'd missed something.

  Arthur went over everything again. And again. On his fourth attempt, he was about ready to pull his hair out in frustration. It reminded him of the one and only time he'd attempted to code something. He'd spent three hours trying to find the mistake in his work and had almost broken his laptop when he finally found the error in the first line. The ritual was shaping up to be a repeat of that experience.

  Cursing, Arthur decided to take a step back from the problem. He'd been at it for three hours already and needed a break. Going to his kitchen, Arthur made himself a cup of tea, splurging a little bit as he pulled out the last of his special blend. Twenty minutes later, Arthur felt well-rested and ready to tackle the ritual again. It turned out that resting did wonders for your brain. Not even five minutes into his fifth inspection, Arthur identified the problem.

  He'd missed a single line. A single fucking line. It was so small, barely a centimetre in length and one of the many connecting points between the runic script and the leftmost ritual circle. The second Arthur filled it in, he knew the ritual was ready. One moment, it was just a fancy pattern on his basement floor and the next, it was glowing with a dull crimson light that looked almost malevolent.

  The ether density rapidly began to rise, reaching the peak of tier 1 in less than thirty seconds. It didn't show any signs of slowing down either, jumping straight into tier 2 and continuing to push forward. Within two minutes, the cottage basement became the most ether dense place he'd ever experienced, so much so that the ongoing cost to maintain his existence on Earth- something he'd honestly forgotten about at this point- was mitigated for the first time since he'd left the Locus and he experienced his true strength in full.

  It was like he'd been wearing a weighted vest all this time and finally taken it off. His regeneration rates were no longer halved. It was honestly terrifying how much energy his body produced. That number would only continue to grow. Arthur still had 197 levels to go before he reached level 300, 197 levels worth of stats to invest. By that point, his healthpool would be measured in millions and he'd be regenerating more in a minute than most people's entire healthpools.

  Don't get ahead of yourself yet. You still have to live through the next forty days first. Unencumbered, his power was a dangerous thing. Not just to others, but to himself. The Shadow Panther's influence had been difficult enough on its own to deal with on its own. Since his refinement, however, there were no differences between them, he'd become the Shadow Panther, just as much as he was now a dragon, a hydra and every other monster that he had consumed. As different as all these beasts were, they shared one trait in common; pride. That arrogance had become his own and if left unchecked, would quickly grow out of hand.

  For the first time in a while, Arthur pulled up his full status.

  Arthur wondered how he measured up to other Originators. Were their existences as absurd as his own?

  He didn't have any more time to waste. The extra ether in his basement didn't come out of thin air. It had been gathered from his surroundings and there was no way any bounty hunter worth their salt would miss the sudden drop in ether density. With how concentrated the energy in his basement was, Arthur couldn't be surprised if the drop in ether could be felt across the entirety of Mossley Village.

  The ritual, at least, was primed and ready for use. Every circle he'd drawn with his blood was glowing ominously, the ether within them particularly concentrated, forming mini whirlpools of energy. In the central circle, he placed his Trusty IKEA bowl and started pouring blood into it. It stated it was far larger than it first appeared and Arthur was going to put that to the test today. Fifty litres went in with no problem. One hundred. Two hundred. Two hundred and fifty. Three hundred. Arthur decided to stop at the four hundred litre point because his blood was needed in other ritual circles too.

  The Titan's fingerbone was far larger than his bowl, but somehow, it was able to fit inside easily enough. This thing is kind of getting ridiculous at this point. Finally, Arthur placed Wovan's core on top of the fingerbone. He knew just how deadly his blood could be to monster cores, and so, he'd coated Wovan's core in a non-reactive gel on the off chance that it slipped from its perch into the bowl.

  The three smaller circles were for his miscellaneous items; the space gem, Earth's Blessing and the Phoenix Blood. Once everything was placed in their respective locations, Arthur started to pour his blood into the smaller ritual circles. Like hungry maws, they absorbed the liquid with voracious appetites. Two hundred litres went into each of them and he tried to distribute the remaining sixty or so as equally as he could.

  From start to finish, all of this had taken him less than twenty minutes. It was like a bracelet that had been cut. Once the first bead fell, everything swiftly followed. The other stones he placed around the ritual wherever he could without touching his script. He placed the tier 4 stones closer to the centre. Everything was ready.

  Arthur took a step back and admired his work. The pressure the ritual was emitting had gone up by a factor of ten. A mundane human standing in this room would die in a matter of seconds. It was time for Wovan to return to the world.

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  Etherious: Originator

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