NOVEL NEXT Chapter 88: Believe
"A walking summary of pure destruction," Blake muttered, remembering the system's description of Rehabab as the man approached him, his every step leaving cracked footprints that exploded into pools of larva as he went past.
"All this power only to be turned into a puppet by the mere words of a woman," Blake thought feeling pity for his fellow demon who had overstretched his hands wanting to control a mountain whose height he couldn't see.
[Hemokinesis]
Earlier, Blake had used this new ability to manipulate his own blood and match up against Rehabab and now Blake decided to get a bit bolder and use the ability on a grander scale.
Rather than just use the ability as a force multiplier, reaching into himself, Blake had his own blood rip a tear on his forearm and flow out, the blood rising into the air and forming a blob over his hand.
Blake stared hard at this blob, concentrating on it and then he opened his hand, watching as the blob instantly turned into a thick long red katana, a katana which he grabbed out of the air, immediately poured his mana into it and used to parry Rehabab's heavy strike from above, this decision nearly having him fall to the side.
"Damn it, I need to stop doubting myself," Blake said scolding himself at his decision to parry Rehabab's attack rather than clash with it head-on due to his fear of his katana breaking.
Sure, there was a chance that his weapon would actually really break if it collided with Rehabab's sword, but Blake recognized that the likelihood of that happening would drastically increase if he had no confidence in his own ability.
Though losing the armour of hell was a very big hit on Blake's strength, now that he thought about it, Blake reasoned that perhaps it had been for the best because had that not happened then Blake would never have recognized that he was handling his current life like a sort of video game.
Blake behaved like a player, looking to buff himself up as much as possible before heading into battle, forgetting that unlike video games where the next adventures and challenges were already preset, in the real world anything could happen at any time.
Though he had pathetically tried to push the question away, when Blake battled Rehabab the first time and was forced to learn how to use hemokinesis on the fly, he couldn't help but wonder to himself what would happen if he were to lose the system.
Unlike his other abilities and techniques which could be upgraded through the system and by using sin points, the abilities Blake had gotten from his evolution could not be learnt by simply spending sin points, as his experience had taught him, he actually had to practice them to become skilled with them.
Blake wasn't denying the deep value of the system, especially its shop, but with the several realizations he had made after his last talk with Mr Black, who was to say that the system wasn't actually a sort of stimulant to Blake, something to rapidly boost his strength while at the same time leaving his core foundation empty and in this way making him a huge scary beast with hollow bones.
If there ever came a time when the system left him, taking the knowledge of all its skills and abilities with it, then what would become of him.
These thoughts made Blake realize that abilities derived through his own hard work or bloodline were actually what he could rely on and that rather than thinking of what to buy from the shop anytime he came across a formidable opponent, he should instead figure out how he could use his current abilities especially his bloodline abilities to win, after all, he was a real-life character, he had to develop his own battle instincts and style.
"Well that's going to be really hard" Blake muttered when he thought about resisting the urge to just enter the shop and buy himself a water-related skill to combat Rehabab, though fortunately or unfortunately he was broke.
"I'll just have to cautiously make use of the system and make the most out of it while we are still chummy."
As Blake parried Rehabab's swing, his hands twisted and immediately he had his katana swinging towards the demon's chest his eyes firm and his expression bland as his blade clashed with Rehabab's titanic sword this time.
"Urghhh,"
Blake grunted as the clash with Rehabab sent him stumbling backwards after all to focus on supplying a steady flow of mana into his blade he had been forced to reduce his concentration over his own blood, the one thing that enabled him close the strength disparity between him and his opponent.
With a snort, Rehabab capitalized on Blake's backpedalling form and made a slash, his blade particularly turning a hot scalding red as he launched another strike, and Blake seeing this had blood flow out of his arm and quickly transform into a blood-red shield that floated above him.
"Now let's try this" Blake muttered as he cast another one of his new abilities.
[Blood curse]
A second after Blake cast this technique, Rehabab's sword collided with the shield, the heat from his blade actually making the top of the shield boil and steam.
A repelling force came from the shield as it pushed against Rehabab's sword, doing a good job of keeping the infernal demon's weapon at bay before eventually shattering as its integrity was quickly compromised by the heat pouring off the heavy sword.
By the time Rehabab's sword made it past Blake's blood shield, Blake had already safely retreated and began preparing an attack while Rehabab steamed, the demon paying no attention to pieces of the blood shield which flew up and lashed onto his body or perhaps he did but wasn't worried about them since the heat radiating from his body turned them to steam before they could touch him and consequently rendered Blake blood curse useless.
"Yep, I'm definitely a bad matchup against this guy" Blake thought as he swung his Katana at Rehabab who was still pulling back his sword after shattering his blood shield.