Anzu dashed sideways as soon as the bandit moved his weapon. It was immediately clear how the situation should be dealt with. Unsheathing his dagger in a practiced way, he made a tiny cut on his left index finger, extended it, and pointed at the bandit. [Corrupt blood] was his spell of choice in situations like these, as it dealt massive damage in a short amount of time. To execute it, he channelled mana into his staff and shouted:
"Umun!"
At the same time, as Anzu started squeezing his left hand into a fist, he used his staff as a conduit between the mana flow and the blood on his finger, transforming it into a thin stream of energy with a fluorescent shine.
When the bandit was struck by the stream, his eyes widened in surprise, and he fell to one knee right after, shouting disconnected words in agony.
"Aah, you… bastard… evil…"
Anzu continued squeezing his fist and also began twisting it, which visibly increased the damage to the bandit. All of a sudden, the damage spiked, and the target's health plummeted to 20%.
DING! [Blood spike] for 60% damage on target triggered.
That was new. Nothing like that had existed in the game a few years ago. Mixed feelings about this invaded Anzu's mind, not knowing quite how to react to the situation. But he shook them off. There was no time for this now, since his focus was needed on the bandit.
For scum like this, he had an established routine, involving a quick death and then checking their corpses for loot. But even regarding this simple routine, a small lump of doubt began to emerge in Anzu’s stomach, the closer the bandit got to 0% health.
There was a distinct clash between the in-game Anzu and the real-world Anni. The real-world version of himself would never consider harming, let alone killing, another human being. So, what if this is the real-world now? It certainly seemed like it. He didn’t know how death functioned here, meaning it was very possible that this bandit would die. And he certainly didn't feel like being a judge, jury and executioner right now.
If he were a low-level, things would be very different. Killing somebody in combat would just be self-defense and nothing more. But being an Archsage meant a position of supreme power from which a flick of a wrist was all that was needed to end someone's life. In other words, he could choose. Ending a life should never be taken lightly.
Anzu upturned his fist and released it, which abruptly ended the stream of blood that was striking the bandit. Walking up closer to the man, who was still kneeling down at this point, Anzu just pointed to the desert.
"Go. Get out of here."
The man obeyed and swiftly walked away with a stagger, since he was too badly hurt for sprinting, without saying a word.
Anzu sucked on his bloodied finger and stuck his staff in the sand, looking around to check where Itani had landed. At this point, a minor tingle at the back of his head reminded him of a new system notification:
DING! You have just increased your Bounty Karma.
Bounty karma? What on earth was that? Anzu had never heard of anything like this back when he still played the game regularly. It had to be something new. But whatever it was, it didn’t sound good. Karma would usually refer to PK-ers, but surely he was just defending himself. And there was no way of checking how much of this Bounty karma he had. The system just wouldn’t give that information even if he tried expanding and focusing on the notification.
Another tingle announced itself in his head.
DING! [Debilitating Blood] effect triggered. Mana levels and regeneration
reduced for 60%.
The second one looked very much like a debuff that significantly affected his mana-related abilities. This was more serious than the damage spike he encountered before. He could control that one. But mana reduction? That was serious.
What annoyed him most of all was that the system gave no countdown for this effect. It was imperative he got rid of it, but he was again clueless about how to do that. He needed to study his spells, one by one. Except that wasn't something he could do here, out in the open.
"Oh, gods! Where did he go?"
Itani had just managed to get up and make her way back to Anzu.
The fight only lasted a few good seconds, so she probably didn’t see much, if anything.
"He got what he deserved, and then I let him go."
"But wait." Itani’s brow furrowed. "He must’ve been at least Level 70 or more. And you defeated him?"
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"Yes. Let’s say bandits like that are my specialty."
"You’re not a Tier 5 adventurer, are you? You must be, well, between 60 and 70, at least. But I don’t get your clothes. Were you attacked before and someone stole your gear?"
It seemed that Itani liked to think out loud, which was very convenient for Anzu at the moment. That was the perfect excuse he could use. It would also explain why he had no money.
He could hardly explain that he'd been transported into his game character and landed in the middle of the desert with an empty inventory. Ironically, the system had shown him a notification that all of his non-equipped items had been sent to his stash. But the latter was too far away from his location to be of any immediate help.
"You got me there. A bunch of them attacked me and took everything."
He extended his staff to cast [Minor heal] on the she-elf.
DING! Not enough Mana to cast [Minor heal].
Right, the [Debilitating Blood] debuff. It would take ages to regenerate mana at this rate.
His build was glitchy, to say the least. Could this day get any more confusing? He needed to get more information on all of it, as soon as possible, but he wasn’t willing to spill any beans about his situation to Itani just yet.
"Ah, sorry. Out of mana."
"That’s okay. I’m actually all out of potions. How about we head back to town?"
Potions were a good idea. A mana potion or two might help counter the effects of his debuff, at least partly.
"To Lagash? Sure, let’s do that."
As they moved out, something brushed against his leg. It was a plant with green spiky leaves and yellow flowers, perfectly adapted for growing in the semi-desert. He knew the species well: it was henbane, which could be used in a [Blood Meditation] ritual to restore mana, but only if harvested with a golden sickle. The rules of Blood Magic were quite strict here.
He had henbane but no golden sickle. So, mana potions in Lagash were his only option now.
After returning to the path, they first checked whether there were any bandits around. It was a good idea, given that he had an empty inventory and a depleted mana pool. He deeply disliked the feeling, though. It wasn’t really something a fully maxed-out Archsage should need to check in a Tier 5 region.
And then there was the [Blood spike] that occurred halfway through the fight with the bandit. Another novelty. In principle, it was handy because it increased his damage output even more. But Blood Magic was never about increasing damage. If anything, it was about containing it because its output was colossal to begin with. This could cause problems, especially for cases when he wanted to avoid killing people. His build definitely needed fixing.
After a few minutes of silence, Itani snapped off a twig from one of the nearby shrubs and began twirling it between her fingers.
"So, you weren’t here for leveling then, I guess?"
"You’re right. I wanted to take out a few of those lizards and skin them. My inventory’s completely empty, you see."
"Ooh, yeah, sure. But… how did you skin anything without a skinning knife?"
"Hah, great point! It hit me just after I accidentally pulled your lizard. I was hoping you could skin some of them for me."
"Oh, silly me, of course."
Itani stopped and, for a moment, assumed a somewhat distant and absent look in her eyes, which must have been what a character looked like when they were accessing their system’s interface.
A whole stack of lizard skins dropped into her hands, which she offered to Anzu.
"Here, we can get more of these later, if you’re up for it, that is? This is the least I can offer you since you fought off that bandit for me."
"Oh, well, I couldn’t possibly…"
"Nonsense! Here, mister Sage, I insist," she pushed the stack into Anzu’s hands, grinning all the way.
"Alright, that’s very good of you. Thanks!"
This stack would probably fetch at least 30 silver coins, which wasn’t a lot, but enough for some small mana potions. And hopefully a skinning knife. He mustn’t forget about that.
"I'm happy to help, really. But I do have to confess that grinding with you, at least for a bit, is a big motivator," she smiled widely, "Grinding is super slow these days, to be honest."
A sense of warmth began to slowly erupt in Anzu’s stomach. He hadn’t been shown kindness like this for a long time, even if the apparent rarity of his class was a factor in it. Back in his gaming days, he made sure to help newer or less experienced players himself, and now he was wondering if, perhaps, a small part of that kindness had come back to him. That was an encouraging thought.
After spending some time walking through the dry semi-desert, the town of Lagash was finally in sight. And not a moment too soon, since dusk had fallen, and the two adventurers didn’t feel like spending their night out in the open.
It had been quite a long time since Anzu had cast his eyes on the gates and walls of Lagash, both of which were brown in appearance, no doubt mimicking the actual mud-brick construction that Sumerians used to build their structures. The game was quite good at capturing details like this, so much so that he sometimes thought the developers hired a historian or an archaeologist to come up with these designs for them.
Anzu had been here numerous times, of course, but never in person. The fact that he would get to witness fully standing and functional Sumerian structures excited the historian in him to no end.
"The guards have been a bit grumpy lately."
"The guards? Isn’t their only job just to keep the bandits and such out?"
Itani looked at Anzu and rolled her eyes.
"Ha, sure. That’s the idea, but lately they’ve been conducting uncalled-for searches of people passing through the gates." She frowned at the notion of this. "It’s probably the bloody Mardukists looking for more victims again."
Mardukists? As far as Anzu knew, they were just a simple priestly sect that took care of the temples and organized public offerings to the gods. Some things have changed, apparently. Political stuff. He didn’t care about it too much, but it didn’t sound good, especially given his current predicament.
As they approached the town’s gates, two guards were indeed posted there, wearing the fairly usual guard attire: bronze armor, helmet, spear, and shield. But the guard to the right looked off somehow. His shield was dirty, though you could still make out its emblem, and he had bandages on several parts of his body. His face was also a little dirty, as was his long mustache.
Ah, the mustache. It was the very same man who attacked him and Itani in the open desert. So, a town guard with a part-time job as a bandit? A bent guard, just the type Anzu was thrilled to come across.
He didn’t go for the gates to pass into the town with Itani, but rather took a slight detour right, stopping at the familiar guardsman.
"Well, good evening… petal," said Anzu with a stern look.