Blood Mage Empire Book Two: A Cultivation Gamelit Litrpg Harem Adventure Read online

  Blood Mage Empire

  Book Two

  By C.S. Darknight

  Copyright © 2022 by C.S. Darknight

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  More From C.S. Darknight

  Chapter One

  Mother Fae

  The scene inside Nindor’s Castle had been one of slaughter, blood, and death. The wicked little one was more powerful than Mother Fae had first believed.

  Indeed, the wicked little man might have been cultivating a power greater than that of Kyle Hunter, the blood mage.

  Mother Fae emerged into the castle, all but ignoring her other enemies, and dragged the wicked one back into the Fair Lands.

  It was only a few seconds after closing the portal behind her that Mother Fae felt a pang of regret.

  The council that controlled her many rebellious enemies had all been gathered in one spot. Even more importantly, the wicked little one had grievously wounded the blood mage.

  Mother Fae’s anger flared yet again. Had she been more focused, had she not been so driven by anger and humiliation, she might have thought of killing the lot of them, decapitating the Northern Alliance and thus be done with this troublesome war.

  Alas, she hadn’t been thinking clearly.

  But it had been the wicked little man who had surprised her, who had humiliated her in front of her ghostly subjects in the Fair Lands.

  That transgression could not stand.

  She flung the wicked little one into the dirt. He was back in his mortal guise now, a young human man, scared and confused. Whatever blood magic power the little mortal had unlocked proved to be temporary.

  Or so Mother Fae thought.

  The blood mage’s little brother scampered away from her, whimpering in fear, but not for long.

  As Mother Fae walked toward him and summoned her Blade of Fire and Righteousness, the wicked little man stopped trying to escape.

  He was still on his hands and knees, but then he looked back at her, and Mother Fae saw that the little man was smiling.

  Mother Fae was unimpressed.

  “Wicked one, a god stands before you,” Mother Fae said. “Do you have anything to say for yourself before your punishment begins?”

  The whiteness of the wicked one’s eyes quickly filled with blood, as if all the capillaries had been broken simultaneously.

  When he spoke, Mother Fae realized that his voice had become considerably deeper.

  “A god stands before me?” he laughed, his smile growing more ominous.

  “I am Mother Fae,” she said. “I am the heart of the Triarchy. I am the unopposed god-king of the Fair Lands.”

  The wicked one spit at her feet. stand before Lord Scourge,” the young man said as he rose to his feet.

  The wicked one’s skin rippled and danced. Bit by bit, his skin peeled and receded then vanished until a flayed man stood in front of her.

  Mother Fae could smell his rotten blood sizzling. She could feel the palpable energies swirling around him.

  She would not be taken unaware again.

  Mother Fae raised her fiery blade, summoning the full force of her divinity, and the Fair Lands shook beneath her as she rained her power down upon the wicked one.

  A telekinetic blast from the firmament above struck the wicked one. He grunted, with blood weeping from his exposed muscle, but took only a tentative step backward.

  His smile remained.

  As Mother Fae narrowed the focus of her power, she gripped her fiery sword tight then slashed the burning blade toward this self-proclaimed ‘Lord Scourge.’

  Moving far quicker than she anticipated, the wicked one opened his palms and bloody hooks attached to chains emerged.

  Four of them, just like the hooks she’d seen the blood mage wield, shot out from his palms and wrapped themselves around her blazing sword.

  “You’ll be the god-king of a void,” Lord Scourge said. “You’ll be Mother of Ashes.”

  “You’ve done it now, child,” Mother Fae growled. “You’ve succeeded in angering the realm’s most powerful Triumvir.”

  His smile was both ominous and petulant, amused yet threatening. “Show me your wrath then, woman,” Lord Scourge answered.

  She clenched her free fist, summoning the soul-energy of the Fair Lands, then thrust her fist toward him.

  Hurricane-force winds blew down from the heavens, upending trees and flattening hills and blowing the unfortunate souls of her nearby subjects into oblivion.

  She summoned lightning. She struck him with missiles from the heavens, chunks of cosmic ice and raw minerals, blowing a small crater in the very hide of the Fair Lands.

  Yet, when the dust settled, the one who called himself Lord Scourge remained.

  He’d been hurt, that much was true. Her attack had driven him down to one knee. He dug his red fingertips in the scorched soil beneath him, then shrugged off his pain.

  His smile was wider than before. As if the full force of her wrath had only managed to delight him in some perverse way.

  Mother Fae felt something strange running through her. A sensation she hadn’t felt since…well, she couldn’t recall when she last felt it.

  Perhaps this sensation had been alien to her since those final days of her mortality, those days she couldn’t recall, either.

  That sensation was pure terror.

  “You are an abomination!” Mother Fae roared.

  The wicked one called Lord Scourge just started laughing. The sound of his petulant laugher filled Mother Fae with rage.

  “BE GONE, WICKED ONE!” she screamed.

  She struck the vile creature with a telekinetic bomb that could have leveled a city. The invisible weight of it came down upon Lord Scourge…and yet he rose to his feet anyway.

  She made him pay for every inch, of course. The weight of her telekinetic force was impossibly heavy, and would have flattened any other being, but somehow the wicked one managed to stand against her might.

  She screamed again, pouring every last bit of her divine energy into her attack, and yet the wicked one nevertheless took a step toward her.

  Then another.

  His blood hooks danced and spun. Mother Fae felt a flash of pain in her left shoulder, then her right.

  She looked at her shoulders in disbelief. The wicked one had driven his hooks into them
.

  Then there was another red shock of pain, then another, as his hooks drove through the flesh of her thighs.

  Mother Fae cried out in anguish as the red blood-metal scraped against her bones and drove her down to her knees.

  Her attack fizzled out. Her strength waned. Lord Scourge walked toward her slowly, patiently, as if she were no threat to him at all.

  “Your divinity smells delicious,” Lord Scourge said, then brushed his fingers against her cheek.

  Mother Fae opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out.

  Her vision flared white. She felt the very essence of her soul straining, as if Lord Scourge were trying to steal it from her body.

  Then: CRACK.

  The white fire in her eyes split and bloomed like a flower. She saw herself, the way she’d been ages ago.

  She saw herself as a young woman, good and innocent, with a beauty that masked the might of her magic.

  She stood beside Nindor and Kalaban, two mortal men who also wielded immense strength.

  Kalaban grinned his cunning grin and raised his hands. Blue magic swirled around them both.

  “One day, we shall know what it is to be truly timeless,” Kalaban said in these dreams, in these echoes of a half-remembered moment.

  The young mortal woman that she had been felt a surge of fear rush through her. Within a heartbeat, she realized that Kalaban’s intentions were not as pure as he’d let on.

  “We seek divinity for the good of the realm,” she said to Kalaban. “The way you speak, it makes me worry, Kalaban.”

  He smiled at her. The energy from the meta stones powering his half-mechanical body burned bright blue.

  “You have no reason to worry, young Lexica,” Kalaban lied.

  Then he waved his hand and the world turned into blue fire and Lexica was back in the Fair Lands, on her knees before Lord Scourge.

  Through the pain, through the agony of the blood hooks digging into her flesh, Lexica gasped.

  “Lies,” she said, then she wretched.

  Blue mist spilled from her lips, some wretched influence that had been residing within her for hundreds of years, and Lexica, for the first time in a very long time, saw the truth for what it was.

  The young human who had become Lord Scourge was never wicked, at least not on his own.

  Lexica had toyed with him the way a puppeteer would toy with a marionette…but she’d also been toyed with.

  While she had plucked the boy’s strings, someone else had been plucking her strings.

  “Kalaban,” she growled.

  “Your family squabbles are none of my concern,” Lord Scourge said.

  “Ronny,” Lexica said, remembering the boy’s name. “That’s it. Ronny. Can you hear me?”

  Lord Scourge flinched at the sound of his mortal name. Fear and confusion shot through his blood-red eyes.

  “Ronny, we have to find your brother,” she said. “You’re in trouble. You’re being manipulated.”

  The fear and confusion vanished in an explosion of anger. Lord Scourge tightened the hooks on her body and flung her into the dirt.

  “No one manipulates the Scourge,” he hissed. “And I quite liked that first taste of your essence. I think I’ll take the rest.”

  “Wait!” Lexica said, putting her hands up in surrender, but it was far too late.

  Lord Scourge released the hooks from her thighs. They rattled back into the slit in his one palm, but he hadn’t done this to ease her pain.

  No, he’d only done it so that he could lay his slick, bloody palm upon her face.

  “Ronny, don’t do it!” Lexica said. She might have cast a spell to defend herself, but that first touch – the fingertips he’d brushed against her cheek – had made her grasp on divinity tenuous.

  And now he meant to steal it from her.

  “It’s not what you’re expecting!” Lexica said. “It was poisoned from the beginning! It was all part of Kalaban’s—AGH!”

  Lord Scourge laughed, heedless of her warning, and stole the essence of Lexica’s fleeting divinity.

  It was violent, brutal, the mental and spiritual equivalent of having one’s skin torn right off the bone.

  Lord Scourge let her drop into the dirt and roared as her divinity flowed into him, then the cosmic landscape above the Fair Lands suddenly turned red.

  Chapter Two

  It had been two weeks since Ronny’s attack left several of my friends dead. Droggo and Blue Eyes, two of my closest allies from Ice Forge City, along with Rakklahn the vampire warrior, were all killed by my little brother, among others.

  Two weeks, and still I didn’t have any answers.

  Somehow, the United North Council had decided to trust me, despite Ronny’s actions. When I told them that Ronny’s attack had been due to Lexica’s manipulations, they accepted that answer.

  However, just because the members of the United North Council accepted that I had nothing to do with Ronny’s attack, there were small factions of the alliance that felt otherwise.

  The Ice Forge City folk, along with the Frostfang vampires and much of the Snowfire barbarians still backed me, but not all of them.

  There were whispers. There were those who doubted my motives. There were others who thought my motives were honest, that my allegiance to the alliance was still genuine, but nevertheless felt I was more of a detriment to the alliance than an asset.

  Truthfully, I didn’t care about my detractors. I had come to this realm to save my little brother. That was still my goal.

  I just had no fucking idea how to save him.

  I spent a lot of time in seclusion. Miranda, Dasha, and Rapture had come to my private quarters many times to check on me.

  Miranda, the red-haired blood priestess from Ice Force City, always made sure to tell me when the council was convening.

  Dasha, the fox-eared, dark-haired war mage that had been undercover in Nindor City for so many years, often came to me to discuss magic.

  Rapture Winterhollow, the vampire with the gold-silver hair and sun-kissed skin, would visit me to discuss military strategy daily.

  Yet I found it difficult to discuss these matters. They were trivial in comparison to what had happened with Ronny.

  True, getting Ronny back safe was still my chief concern, but he’d absolutely manhandled me during his attack.

  His powers with blood magic were beyond mine. Given his mental state, I wasn’t sure how long that would be the case, but if he retained that level of power, he would be an existential threat.

  So, I paced back and forth in my small, private room. I practiced my many spells to keep my skills sharp…but all while I continued to try to contact Ronny telepathically.

  As I attempted to communicate with Ronny, I practiced my alteration spells, one by one.

  BURDEN TARGET

  EFFECT: TARGET IS BURDENED WITH INVISIBLE WEIGHT (POTENCY DEPENDS UPON USER’S FOCUS)

  COST: 250 MP

  SLOW DESCENT

  EFFECT: USER FALLS AT A SLOWER RATE, NEGATING MOST FALL DAMAGE, FOR 30 SECONDS

  COST: 50 MP

  SHIELD

  EFFECT: CREATE TELEKINETIC SHIELD AROUND USER’S BODY (WITH FOCUS, USER CAN PINPOINT THE SHIELD TO ONE PARTICULAR AREA) FOR 60 SECONDS

  COST: 100 MP

  LIGHTEN BURDEN

  EFFECT: ITEMS PICKED UP BY USER ARE 50% LIGHTER THAN USUAL FOR 60 SECONDS

  COST: 100 MP

  IMPROVED LEVITATION

  EFFECT: USER CAN LEVITATE FOR 5 MINUTES

  COST: 200 MP

  Ronny had been able to contact me. I was hoping that he’d hear me trying to contact him, but I never heard so much as a whisper in response.

  I moved on to my blood magic spells, trying to keep my mind busy rather than falling into despair.

  SUMMON BLOOD CLAYMORE

  EFFECT: SUMMONS BLOOD-FORGED CLAYMORE (LASTS UNTIL WEAPON SHATTERS)

  COST: 150 MP

  SUMMON MINOR BLOOD MISSILE

  EFFECT: CREAT
E SHARP BLOOD MISSILE (USER CAN DIRECT MISSILE WITH THOUGHTS)

  COST: 100 MP

  RESTORE MANA

  EFFECT: MP RESTORES SLOWLY, BUT CONSTANTLY (PASSIVE SPELL)

  COST: N/A

  BLOOD ARMOR

  EFFECT: CREATE A SUIT OF WEIGHTLESS BLOOD ARMOR (LASTS UNTIL ARMOR IS BROKEN)

  COST: 800 MP

  MAJOR BLOODLETTING

  EFFECT: ATTACK USER WITH BLOOD HOOKS (POTENCY DEPENDS ON USER’S FOCUS)

  NOTE: USER CAN NOW SUMMON COST: 300 MP

  STEAL HEALTH

  EFFECT: STEALS HP FROM ENEMIES AND GIVES STOLEN HP TO USER (DEPENDENT UPON USER’S FOCUS)

  COST: 1000 MP

  ABSORB ESSENCE

  EFFECT: STEALS ESSENCE (XP, KNOWLEDGE, RAW POWER) FROM CERTAIN HIGHER LEVEL OPPONENTS ONCE THEY ARE SUFFICIENTLY WEAKENED

  COST: 800 MP

  NOTE: BLOOD MAGIC WILL HIGHLIGHT APPROPRIATE ENEMIES

  BLOODFIRE

  EFFECT: RAISE THE TEMPERATURE OF TARGET’S BLOOD FOR 30 SECONDS (POTENCY DEPENDS ON USER’S FOCUS)

  COST: 300 MP

  BLOODTRAP

  EFFECT: USER CAN RAISE SPIKES FROM SPILLED BLOOD (POTENCY DEPENDS ON USER’S FOCUS)

  COST: 300 MP

  Along with all my other spells, my blood magic spell inventory had improved considerably in both mana cost and effects. Some of the mana costs of my spells had, with my improved skills, been cut by as much as fifty percent.

  Next, I went through my necromancy spells, then my conjuration spells.

  IMPROVED REANIMATE CORPSE

  EFFECT: RAISES UP TO 5 CORPSES WITH EACH USE, WHICH ARE LOYAL TO USER; CORPSE REMAINS REANIMATED UNTIL DESTROYED

  NOTE: USER CANNOT CONTROL MORE THAN 15 REANIMATED CORPSES AT ONE TIME

  COST: 800 MP

  TURN UNDEAD

  EFFECT: HOSTILE UNDEAD BECOMES LOYAL TO USER; UNDEAD REMAINS LOYAL UNTIL DESTROYED (DEPENDS ON LEVEL OF TARGET)

  COST: 500 MP

  RAISE SKELETON

  EFFECT: RAISES SKELETON, WHICH IS LOYAL TO USER; SKELETON REMAINS REANIMATED UNTIL DESTROYED (DEPENDS ON STATUS OF SKELETON)

  NOTE: SKELETONS ARE WEAKER THAN CORPSES

  COST: 200 MP

  SUMMON DEAD

  EFFECT: USER SUMMONS 10 RESTLESS SOULS FOR 60 SECONDS

  COST: 1500 MP

  Onto my conjuration spells.

  SUMMON NETHER-VOID WOLF

  EFFECTS: CONJURES WOLF FROM NETHER-VOID FOR 60 SECONDS