After getting kicked out of Gladwyn's dimension for the mess they'd made, Adam had talked for a bit longer with Beck, asking for advice about how best to use the Vanity mirror.

Beck had argued that, since Adam already knew what he'd get from Yenna and Thea, it was a better idea to try out a denizen he didn't know the reward for, since it was impossible to make the best decision without having a complete overview of all the options. He'd suggested Lucca, but Adam was honestly more curious about trying it on Weaver. A silk-based weapon sounded cool, after all.

Once he'd said goodbye to Beck and Gladwyn, Adam went to the Player House and started practising on something he'd been dreading but knew was important to master: self-manipulation.

He didn't want to accidentally fling himself off the side of the island, so he stayed inside the house as he took the first steps.

It was extremely uncomfortable.

His first attempts tried to just lift all of the blood in his body at once, but his vision immediately started flickering and he felt like he was about to have a heart attack, not to mention his sense of balance got totally screwed up and a primal panic flooded his mind.

Despite only doing it for a split-second, it had him on his hands and knees for a while afterwards.

Okay, I should have thought a bit more about this…

Lifting my blood means I'm stopping it in its tracks. And if I do that, then it won't send oxygen and nutrients to my organs… like my brain.

Which means…

Adam swallowed.

I have to lift my flesh instead.

But before that, he tried the most basic thing he could think of, which was creating a floating platform of blood under himself, similar to the way he'd used Warder's barriers to fly.

Unfortunately, it wasn't quite that simple, since he was dealing with a liquid that would shift and move even when under the lock of his control sigil. He could get a couple metres off the ground, but he wouldn't trust his life with it, since it felt like treading water and his body kept sliding around in its grip. Not to mention the fact that it ate up all of his concentration.

Another idea had a bit more merit, but it required a lot of blood to pull off and it made him look like a psycho. It involved coating himself completely in blood and then lifting all of it together, like carrying an Adam-sized plastic bag made of water with an invisible hand. It had the same issue of the liquid slipping around his body, but since it was coating him completely, it was less precarious as a result.

Regardless, it wasn't very comfortable and it required him to have an almost full reserve of blood, plus it also used up most of his concentration since he was controlling three separate spells in order to manipulate all of the blood necessary to lift his body weight.

Shifting away from blood, he tried to replicate the floating platform idea with flesh magic, but it didn't work at all. Then he realised that it was because the strength of the magic was connected to how complete the flesh creations were. When he created three thick arms that grasped each other to form a platform, it was able to lift him quite easily, but the problems with this method was that sourcing all the required material wouldn't be easy and he had to spend at least a full minute shaping to get constructs of a high enough quality that they would hold him.

Since using all three spells simultaneously maxed out his concentration, Adam attempted to make just one big limb to carry him, like a demented magical broom. The main issue there was the manipulation limit for the volume of flesh he could control with just one spell, and since the creation wasn't that big, it was quite unsteady to fly atop. Using two spells with a maxed-out amount of flesh under their control and then weaving them together to form a large flying limb worked a lot better, but it still had the downsides of taking a lot of time to set up and requiring a lot of material.

Adam sighed and finally tried to lift his own flesh.

Unlike with the blood, it didn't immediately make him feel like he was about to die and his organs were shutting down, since he stuck to lifting his muscles, fat, flesh, and skin. However, it was extremely painful even before he tried to lift up off the ground.

Within moments, Adam's skin was bruised all over in a motley of ugly colours, and he was shaking uncontrollably.

He gritted his teeth and tried again.

Despite preparing himself for it, Adam let out an intense groan of agony as his feet lifted off the ground. Every nerve in his skin felt like it was being pulled apart, even though he wasn't warping his own body at all and simply exerted a lifting force upward.

After only a couple of seconds he had to release the control, and he collapsed to the floor of the Player House, shaking violently as phantom sensations rolled over him, making it feel like every part of his skin and every fibre of his muscles were splitting apart like fraying rope.

He fished the Hobgoblin Pendant out of his pocket where he'd kept it since Stage Two, but he couldn't get it over his head because his hands were shaking so bad.

"Equip!" he shouted.

[Understood,] complied the Eye and the necklace appeared around Adam's neck, banishing all the pain in his body from one second to the next. The Blood Mage Choker he'd been wearing dropped to the floor.

It was scary how numb the pendant made him feel, but he would rather feel nothing at all than what he'd just been experiencing.

Trying to control my own flesh like that was a mistake.

"My Health, what's it at?" he groaned to the cube.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

[You are at 170 Health or 100%.]

It didn't damage me at all?

That means it was all just in my head…

But I'd have to be insane to be able to endure that normally.

Adam hadn't seen how other blood mage Players fought, but the guy from his fourth loop, Riccardo D'Alia, hadn't used the Hobgoblin Pendant.

He gritted his teeth as he got up.

Since he couldn't really feel anything, moving around was extremely uncomfortable and weird.

I have no idea how Lenard used this thing so easily.

Adam hadn't truly realised how much he used his sense of touch to do really basic things, and it was weird to feel nothing at all from his body.

Although he knew it wouldn't be feasible in Stage Four, Adam once again tried to lift himself with the flesh magic.

He was able to rise several metres into the air and put his hand against the ceiling, but then he saw something red running down his body. He lowered himself back down and ran the back of his hand over his face.

It came away covered in blood.

"Did I lose Health doing that?"

[Yes. You have 105 Health or 62% remaining.]

"How?"

[You seem to have applied your Flesh Shaper evolution's unique power to tear open holes inside your own body.]

Adam blinked, horrified that he hadn't even noticed.

[Do not worry. You will be healed back to full here on Interim Island, but proceeding with this manner of self-destructive spellcasting is inadvisable.]

I must be relying on my sense of touch to know what part of my own body I'm targeting, I think.

Losing that sense might've made me unable to target my internal flesh correctly…

Fucking hell.

I think I'll be sticking with using some flesh construct to fly with for now.

Adam waited until he had healed back to full before he switched back to the Blood Mage Choker and put the pendant into his pocket. It was definitely too dangerous for him to try to lift or shape his own body without the senses of touch and feeling to guide him, but the pain was too immense for it to be doable. Even an hour after his training had concluded, Adam still felt random jabs of pain, despite the Eye assuring him that he was in peak condition.

The pain is lodged into my mind…

He leaned back in the bath, sighing deeply.

After drying off, he continued practising for a few more hours. This time his objective was not his own body, but rather the bodies of his enemies.

He quickly found that he didn't need to actually drag the blood out of the target dummies he was using in order to control the rest of their blood. In fact, it was far easier to send his Mana-infused blood into their bodies through their skin and veins, and then mixing it with their bloodstreams to take over their entire system.

In Stage Four, where he'd be fighting against big groups, he'd been speculating about using the enemy soldiers as puppets. And since he could control both the flesh and blood of anyone whose body he'd permeated with his Mana-infused blood, he would be able to control up to three enemies at once, using them to fight on his behalf.

In order to fully test this, he had the Eye add more target dummies, shaping three into imps and the fourth into an ogre.

Once he'd taken over the three imps, which took about 10 seconds per imp so long as he already had energised blood ready, he made them attack the ogre. He tried his best to puppeteer them in the same way that they normally fought, but it was awkward and required quite a lot of concentration to do with just one, let alone all three.

It was far easier to simply fling their bodies at the ogre and then release their energised flesh and blood like bombs, using it to coat the big dummy and then be able to overtake it.

When he was controlling just one of the imps, he could make it do the spring leap and deal horrific damage to the ogre using its claws, but it required all of his attention to pull off, and it would easily leave him exposed.

But… it would be useful for an ambush. If I could for example takeover a pirate aboard an enemy ship in Stage Seven, I would be able to use him to create confusion.

That might be a useful way to sneak on board the Golden Slug and get to the captain without being spotted.

It could easily be applied in the same way to other Players of course, but that's not a route I'm willing to explore.

When I fight the other Players in the Altar, I'll make sure they don't suffer. It's too cruel to puppeteer a living person like that. I can't imagine a more horrific experience than to lose the control of your own body.

I wonder how many blood mage Players realise the power can work like this. After just a bit of consideration, it must be quite an obvious conclusion.

Besides being able to create nasty traps, this must've been the reason why Emelia was so wary of this weapon type.

Adam had one more thing he wanted to practice before he called it quits, and that was using his new Relics to give himself a bunch of magical materials at the start of a Stage. His absolute biggest issue was that he needed to summon blood, which was Mana-intensive, even with his several cost reduction upgrades. Otherwise he needed to harvest it from corpses or drain it from himself. None of these provided him an easy way to get the resources he needed to be able to fight at the start of a Stage, which he thought was important if he ran into another situation like with Riccardo in Stage Seven, who'd been just about to attack him before Emelia had exploded his head with a punch.

Adam started off by activating the Fetish of Sloth, summoning the Slothling Imp, which immediately flew at the ogre dummy he still had active.

Before Adam could even try and harvest it for blood and flesh, it hit the ogre and disappeared.

Normally the Fetish had a 1-Stage cooldown, but on the island it was just one minute. Still, it made it annoying to test.

Next he tried the Blood Bolt Ring, and it was way easier to convert the bolt spell it fired into his own, since it came out already energised with his Mana for some reason. The same was the case for the Blood Fist Ring. The bolt had a 90-second cooldown, while the fist was half that, making them quite efficient to use to refill his reserves of blood. Although neither created a ton of blood out of thin air, when they were combined it was enough to at least get started, and the main benefit was that it cost him none of his Mana and Health to do.

When he resummoned the imp a second time, he immediately reached out and grabbed it. The moment his hand touched the summon, he could feel how it was full of his Mana as well, and he was able to immediately pull its flesh and blood to him, making the rest of the summon disappear without managing to get off its attack.

I hope the imps aren't sentient, because I can't imagine I get to go to heaven if they actually comprehend what I'm doing to them.

Although, to be honest, I'm sure the chance to go to heaven was kind of lost the moment I became pseudo-immortal. And even if I beat the Trials and get rid of this insidious looping power, I've already worshipped 'false Gods', so that probably means no dice.

Adam tested the Relics until there was a knock on the door. He opened it to find Yenna waiting outside, her everchanging instrument in hand.

They talked for a bit about music before he felt ready to go to sleep. One of the things she mentioned was that she preferred playing the violin, even though she was proficient in so many wonderful instruments.

I really want to give her the Vanity mirror, but I think Beck was right.

I can't make the best decision about who to use it on, if I don't check out all the options.

There are quite a lot of denizens though, so I can't imagine checking them all will be very quick… Unless I get more Vanity mirrors, of course.

Adam yawned and readjusted himself in the bed. The light in the Player House was dimmed but not completely gone, just the way he preferred. Belamouranthe was still out there somewhere, but he was sure she'd find her way to the Player House when she became tired, or maybe she was sleeping in the Tavern, watched over by Charlie.

Despite the occasional twitch of phantom pain from using flesh magic on himself, Adam quickly dozed off as Yenna's lullaby filled the Player House.

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