Too Stubborn to Die

Fighting against blood magic was a new experience for Aaron. Unlike most attacks he had faced up until this point, the demon’s blood magic directly assaulted his vitality.

Interestingly, the demon didn’t move a whole lot. Instead, it just stood there, sending out streams of blood that sapped at Aaron’s life energy.

Despite the fact that this made the attacks supremely difficult to counter, since the attacks passed straight through his defenses, there were some upsides.

He had little doubt that attacking life energy directly could quickly kill someone if they had no answer to the annoyingly persistent attacks. But on the other hand, they caused no real physical damage.

Because of this, Aaron wasn’t using his health to heal his wounds and broken bones as he usually was, nor did he slow down from such injuries. Combat was often a swinging pendulum between taking damage and one’s health healing said damage.

Health wasn’t entirely about healing, though. But it wasn’t a measure of one’s toughness, either. High HP both made you more durable as you could soak up more damage, and healed the body.

There were limits to this, though. Beheading somebody usually resulted in death, if their name wasn’t Aaron Dober. That said, it wasn’t easy to land a one-hit killing blow against someone with full HP, as that life energy would come to their rescue.

Landing critical hits against vital body parts was still helpful and would cause far more damage than strikes landed elsewhere. But regardless of where you struck, you needed to be striking with enough power to cut through the target’s life energy.

For example, even someone with near to no toughness—an attribute mostly provided by the Fortitude Stat, although it was also strengthened by Strength—were to take a direct strike to the head, it wouldn’t instantly kill them if the attacker didn’t have the power to overcome their health.

Because blood magic attacked health directly, it bypassed toughness and defenses. But on the other hand, it couldn’t take advantage of weak spots, nor disable attacks. Despite having its benefits, he thought that blood magic honestly had quite severe downsides, but that wasn’t to say that the monster wasn’t strong.

Even now, it was obvious to Aaron that he couldn’t just let the demon continue to siphon his life energy unchallenged. Even consuming food and cycling his Vitality Heart couldn’t keep up with such an unfair exchange for long.

Powering his Skills, Aaron closed the distance between them, firing [ Spectral Fist ] several times and reading the threads of fate. He desperately needed to put it on the back foot so he could regain some momentum.

The demon was actually some kind of caster, he realized, as it relied almost solely on spells and didn’t appear to have much in the way of physical traits.

Still, it was a momentous task to bash through the several layers of blood magic defenses, but when he did, reading fate and powering up a haymaker to land on the demon, he landed rather easily.

Unfortunately, he also learned of the second upside of the demon’s blood magic. All that blood he had been stealing, he had also been hoarding, and when the empowered haymaker opened a gash across its chest, the blood rushed in to heal it within seconds.

It was immediately obvious that taking this guy down was going to be no easy task, and if he didn’t come up with a better solution soon, it was going to drain him.

However, since he wasn’t actually fighting back with regular attacks, and just reforming his barriers, Aaron could also attack relentlessly.

If he was going to beat this demon, he realized all he had to do was outpace it, and so his barrages became a blinding mess of endlessly pelting down against the reforming barriers.

For a moment, a kind of equilibrium was found: the demon stealing Aaron’s life energy, and Aaron forcing it to use said life energy to heal itself.

The only thing slowing down his attacks was that this costly way of fighting was forcing him to continuously eat. And whilst he could eat faster than any non-ogre, it still slowed his attacks.

He realized he needed something extra. If the battle continued like this, he was going to die soon. And since the demon was constantly recovering energy by drawing it out of him, outlasting it wasn’t an option.

Luckily for Aaron, he had an idea. It was a crazy one, but that was par the course for him.

Drawing all of his life energy, he used it to strengthen his body, and then leaned on his ability to cling to life. This basically turned him into a walking corpse, and any normal attack would have absolutely devastating consequences for him. But the demon hadn’t been making normal attacks.

Even then, he still required a tiny amount of health to keep himself alive. This was more of a stopgap than a technique that truly overcame the demon’s abilities.

Springing forward, he leaped into a combination of railing fists and kicks against the demon’s barriers until they collapsed.

It was impressive just how much he was able to empower himself by pushing energy into his body, even if he put himself on death’s door by doing so.

He was onto something with this technique, and it was definitely something he would continue to work into his style.

A strange look came over the demon as it no doubt felt the lack of energy it was drawing from Aaron.

At that moment, clawed hands swung for him, but this was a caster attempting to melee. Perhaps against others, it could land a lucky strike, killing them instantly as they had no health remaining. In such a situation, it wouldn’t take much to finish the job.

But against Aaron? He had dodged attacks from powerful beasts, monsters, and most impressively, Yendal. What was some caster attempting to hit him with flailing claws?

The attempts were almost laughable. Even at level 99, this thing would have struggled to hit Aaron with his eyes closed.

Effortlessly dodging the claws, Aaron continued his barrage, and soon his strikes were making it through the flickering barriers every other second.

An almost endless well of life energy was healing the demon, but also, almost endless wasn’t endless.

Unfortunately, a level 99 had more than a couple of Skills up its sleeves, and blood daggers shot out in all directions.

Aaron was shot up. There were simply too many daggers to dodge, and since he had intentionally sapped away all of his health, it was instant death.

What followed next was not the usual script. The demon didn’t just stop once Aaron was dead. True to its word, it attempted to pull on his soul. But Aaron wasn’t having any of that.

Unlike others who would likely be at the mercy of the demon in such a state, Aaron could control his spirit. But perhaps more importantly, he had the willpower to resist such a strain against his soul.

Gritting his teeth, pain dug at his immaterial form, a sensation he didn’t even know was possible.

“You’re not getting my soul, you damn thief!”

He had already felt his affinity to aether within his spirit form, and when the demon summoned his soul, he called on that power to help resist.

His entire body felt as if it were falling apart piece by piece, like the demon’s pull was trying to break him down into pure energy so that it could absorb him and complete itself.

It was a harsh reminder of the hidden dangers within the trials, but the madman that Aaron was actually smiled.

Why was he smiling when faced with his true death? It was because resisting this power had led him toward something he hadn’t felt before.

A hum of energy deep within answered his call and grew stronger as he reached out for it.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Oh, I’m going to have to thank you for this, mate!

There was a reason his control of aether had been lacking compared to his other energies. The power was outside the usual purview of the living, and could only be tapped into in very limited means.

But when dead?

It was obvious that aether was directly linked to the soul, and with that knowledge, his growing familiarity with the energy, and the willpower to topple an empire, Aaron reached out.

Energy flooded out, and he could feel the core of energy growing stronger and stronger.

Frustration was etching itself across the demon’s face. It no doubt expected him to give in to its pull by now.

Meanwhile, as the energy grew stronger, the demon’s pull grew weaker, and soon Aaron barely noticed the tingling sensation.

Something had changed. He had taken a step forward in his spirit form, and whilst he did not yet fully comprehend what powers this path would lead to, an all too familiar goal was within reach.

There you are!

He felt the corners of his soul wrap around the elusive energy that permeated the entire multiverse, sharing the same plane of existence as the soul, and likely other powers did.

And with all his mental energy, he embraced that power.

Title acquired: Aether Wielder.

The legendary art of raw aether usage is known by few, and the paths to its power are limited. It is the embodiment of raw power and the energy that resides within the spirit plane.

Rewarded for successfully forming your aether soul.

Reward: New Energy Type: Aether

The eyes of Aaron’s spirit glowed with an azure light and felt at home in this spectral form. He even felt like he had some strength, where once he had been nothing but a shadow of himself.

“What is this?” the demon said, clearly sensing that something had changed.

Confusion turned to shock as Aaron jumped back into his body.

The demon was clearly not ready or willing to give up, and the tendrils of its blood magic began to sap at Aaron again. But this time, he was directly converting aether into what he needed, providing his body just a sliver of health so as not to give the demon anything to gorge itself on.

Not only that, but Aaron got straight back to eating. Except now, with his new control over aether, he was able to directly strengthen himself while converting minimal amounts of health.

His aether was still the weakest of his energy sources, but to have an entirely new energy source officially added to his reserves was an incredible breakthrough.

Grinning from ear to ear, he charged the demon. It was time to give his new powers a test drive.

The fight continued, and he could sense that the demon’s blood reserves were growing thinner, whilst he was only getting stronger with each passing moment.

This had changed the balance. The demon could barely draw any blood from him, and aether gave him another well of energy to draw from and convert directly into whatever he needed.

And yet, Aaron had a feeling that this was just the beginning of what he had uncovered. After all, aether belonged to the spirit plane, didn’t it? What other hidden abilities did it have?

He had a fight to finish, but this was definitely a question he would later search for answers to.

He noted that it was odd that the cultists just stood around looking terrified at the battle. But then again, maybe they figured if the demon couldn’t handle him, neither could they.

The dynamics of the battle had changed now, after all. And it was the demon who was on the ropes.

But once more, it proved that it was no pushover, shooting blood daggers and summoning leeches that it shot from its palm.

The leeches couldn’t do much as he already had essentially no health, but the blood daggers remained quite good at killing him.

The problem was that with his recent power upgrade, his aether reserves had increased, and with them, the number of times he could resurrect had increased.

Twice more, Aaron was flung back to the spirit plane, and twice more he brought himself back.

The demon was increasingly irate, but it was also increasingly weakened, unable to recover its blood reserves by draining Aaron.

As the demon’s well of blood energy dried up against Aaron’s endless attacks, the unexpected happened.

A burst of blood rushed out from the side of his periphery, and a gory cultist corpse fell to the ground. The demon had consumed the man’s blood and used it to recover some of its reserves.

This was problematic. Even with his upgrade, Aaron could feel his aether reserves dwindling, and he couldn’t keep dying forever. He needed to make this decisive.

Breaking from his engagement with the demon, he took to killing the cultists who just stood there.

After bashing in the first two, he realized that their predicament had been something of their own creation. The pentagram they stood on was still glowing red, and some kind of power held them in place. Probably the same power that allowed the demon to consume their blood at will.

Of course, the demon wasn’t about to just let him kill off its reserves, and started to desperately fire off attacks in the hope of overwhelming and killing Aaron.

The problem was that it only drew on its blood reserves quickly, forcing it to kill off another cultist just to use its Skills. Not only that, but at a distance, it was much easier for Aaron to dodge its area attacks, and most of them harmlessly passed him by.

He died once more before finishing off the last cultists, and felt he had very little aether remaining as he stared down the demon.

However, it wasn’t just the mechanics of the fight he was focused on, and whether or not he was winning. No, he was also thinking about how this would aid him against Mo’han, causing him to hold a distracted look that only served to infuriate the demon further.

He wouldn’t be able to fight Mo’han quite like this. With zero health, Mo’han’s punch would have been even more devastating and very well might have completely destroyed his body, possibly making resurrection impossible.

But being able to resurrect so easily, and having additional aether at his fingertips, was without a doubt useful. But what he really wanted was to see how far he could take it.

There was something else, though. He had a feeling that there might be a way to synergize his body-powering technique with [ Adipose Fusion ]. Both the infant technique and the Skill worked by infusing energy into the body, but one was a store for energy, whilst the other was to empower the body.

Not only that, but [ Adipose Fusion ] didn’t work with aether. On the other hand, [ Faux Core] converted it. He would have to look into both techniques and consider how this revelation altered his path going forward.

“You dare not take me seriously, human?”

At that moment, he realized how distracted he really was.

“Bah, human! Stand still and die!”

“Err, no?” Aaron said, dodged another rain of blood daggers, and closed in, weaving between the flailing claws that followed.

The demon had fought well, and being able to directly attack one’s soul was a scary ability he would have to warn the others of. But it couldn’t have foreseen what Aaron could do.

He suspected many would find it difficult to deal with the blood sucking spells of the demon, and had he not managed to bridge that final gap and truly unlock aether control, then he likely would have perished as well.

Not only that, but he had a feeling that this wasn’t even the demon’s full power. The demon clearly didn’t need a soul to live, but it didn’t make a lot of sense that it would be so angry with its followers for failing to claim his soul. That failure had probably weakened it.

It was a slight disappointment. Perhaps Aaron was already well and truly insane, but he couldn’t help but feel curious toward the demon. This had been a decent challenge and a great training exercise, but he would have liked to test himself against its full power.

Oh well, he thought. It’s a bit of a bummer, but you can’t have everything.

In the back of his mind, a tiny voice was screaming out and calling him an idiot. If it were at full strength, maybe the demon would have succeeded at stealing his soul.

But if fear of death was all it took for Aaron Dober to curl up and avoid a fight, he wouldn’t have gotten to where he was.

After a particularly long exchange of attacks, Aaron landed several haymakers in a row, and the last of the cultists were consumed for their blood.

“Grrr, I’m not finished yet, human! Die!”

“Blah!”

The demon staggered forward, spitting blood.

“Er, you might want to get that. Isn’t that your power?”

“Shut up, human! I will make you suffer for th—”

Aaron obliterated the demon’s head with a fully powered punch. It had drained all of its blood in the fight, and it hadn’t been able to absorb any of the power.

“Thanks for everything. This has been a massive help. Though I wish I’d fought you at your best,” he cracked his knuckles.

There was another bonus to this fight. Mo’han’s power hadn’t been the only obstacle to beating him. Aaron had already beaten many who had been able to one-hit him, and if that was the only thing asura had over him, he would have beaten his head against that wall that was Mo’han until he managed to win.

But that wasn’t it. Between his incredible speed and aura, Aaron hadn’t been able to avoid a strike he knew was coming, similar to how he couldn’t avoid the tendrils of blood magic the demon had used against him.

Learning to fight in situations where he couldn’t dodge was probably important. It was just a pity that the demon hadn’t been fully powered, even if he had only just barely managed to beat it.

Stage six of [ Trial of Endurance ] COMPLETED!

You have tested yourself against the powerful and ending rays of blood magic and survived.

Quest Rewards: Spacial Scabbard [ Epic ], Crafting Station upgraded to level 6!

Experience rewarded for completing a quest stage!

Ding!

[ Empty-Handed Energy Monk ] has LEVELED UP!

28 → 29

“Nice! Finally, another level! And just in time.”

Aaron grinned. He was looking forward to another Skill selection.

He also took a nice look at his scabbard. Delving within it, he was delighted to find that it had well over ten times as much space as his pouch had. It was a nice upgrade, although it felt a little weird and misleading to have a scabbard hanging from his belt when he was an unarmed combatant. But oh well. He wasn’t about to let looks get in the way of using practical items.

“Alright, time to go figure out what else aether is capable of.”