Epilogue III

  Sojan floated in a state in between consciousness. The ichor he absorbed wasn’t blood, so he lacked a complete awareness of his surroundings, but it also wasn’t nothing. Unlike every other hibernation, he was keenly aware of the passing of time around him and his mind remained his own.

  When he first arrived in the jellyfish while embedded still between the ribs of the Warlord, he’d struggled in an attempt to find a way out. Both he and his host had been of a singular mind as they tried to claw their way out of the aquatic beast. But after the massive creature crushed the body of his host and absorbed its subsidence with an acidic internal digestive liquid, Sojan remained. Lodged between membranes of the monster, he lacked control and escape in equal measure.

  His insatiable bloodlust wasn’t entirely quenched, it was still there, gnawing on him and urging him to kill, but it had faded to the point of being easily ignored.

  As he floated in the abyss, he thought about what his last wielder had once asked him. What would he do if he had enough blood? At the time, Sojan had scoffed at the question. Who had ever said ‘enough’ and ‘blood’ in the same sentence? He constantly resisted the urge to rip apart Kizu and his companions. Even now, when he thought too much about the warm blood under their delicate skin, he felt a vicerale urge to tear them open. His metal blade slicing through their flesh to bathe in the cozy blood within their bodies.

  He had tasted a lot of blood across the eons of his existence. Despite the many varieties of exotic species, the simplest and most common of them was by far the best. Of the blood he’d tasted, humans had the cleanest. Followed by Gnome, then Tainted, then Kemon, then wild animals. At the bottom of that list, was Kizu’s niece Anata. Below even most monster blood. It was foul. Not immediately, but the way it lingered, like an illness. It was the primary obstacle that kept him from tearing apart Kizu on several occasions. Which was good. Because Sojan actually liked Kizu. Unlike other mages, the boy had fulfilled his promise to find him a body. And done so in a spectacular fashion. A gnome body that was entirely his own. That had been a life unlike any he’d ever expected to experience.

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  And it was gone. Part of the past. Now Sojan just had the numb embrace of a gelatinous underwater blob.

  Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks. Time passed by and allowed him a luxury never before afforded to him.

  The jellyfish creature was nearly immortal. Its body never showed signs of aging. Sojan suspected it to be at least half a millenia old, but that was still guesswork due to its flawless body. But eventually someone would kill this creature holding him. It might take decades or even centuries, but Sojan understood humanity well enough to know they would seek it out to kill it eventually. An alchemist looking for rare ingredients, a combat mage longing for a challenge, a gourmet seeking for a new meal. Humanity was drawn to killing. He himself was an instrument of that desire.

  Surprisingly, it didn’t take him as long as he thought it might to discover what exactly he wanted beyond the urges of food. He liked his friends. He liked chatting with his meat puppet’s teeth and voice. He liked killing.

  If he had those things, Sojan was fairly confident he’d be happy.

  But he also wanted answers. He wanted to find the person who’d stuffed his soul into a metal slab. After hundreds of hours assisting Aoi, he now grasped the idea of necromancy a bit better. He revealed nothing about himself to her, allowing her to believe him a construct like a golem. But, unlike him, constructs didn’t have souls.

  Now content with his decision. He entered a meditative trance. His awareness spread out as far as possible.

  The jellyfish’s tentacle twitched.

  END OF BOOK III - FESTIVAL

  ALSO! If you want to reread BCA2, now is the time to get on that. A reminder that it will stub on the 21st!

  Ten Blood Curse Academia chapters (5 weeks) ahead of Royal Road on Patreon!