“Why the hell didn't they destroy it?” I complained. My boot squelched with every step and I suppressed a full-body shudder every time that happened. The place was a mess. Blood painted the walls and it looked like a lot of the people here were physically ripped apart. Judging from some of the expressions, some were even alive while it was happening. It was, however, almost a total wash for us. No gene traces were left, all the mana was scrubbed and my divination just resulted in my knives making a star with equidistant points. Whoever had done it was very careful. But not perfectly, I could still see the last moments of these people and from that, I had a face and here my Sketching

  “They were slowly selling it themselves but you didn't hear that from me.” Agitjin muttered, gingerly using mana strands to move a particularly brutalized corpse without getting blood on him. Personally, I thought that was a bit of a fool's errand at this point. The floor was still very wet.

  Novas had dislodged a piece of his armor, the left arm specifically and tendrils of lime slime were lightly grazing over everything from walls to furniture to the bodies as he stood unnaturally still. I didn't know what he was expecting to find but I left him up to it.

  With nothing else to actually do, I activated Blood Sense

  \\[LESSER HEMOTHEURGIST] is now level 14!

  \\Blood Sense is now level 12!

  I jumped at the notification. So much death and blood was getting to me and Medea's instincts were not helping matters. Still, I was not one for rejecting cheap levels; it wasn't like I was the one doing the killing. I fired another pulse of Blood Sense

  Medea was not even allowed to eat the bodies because they belonged to the council. Just a resource. For me or for them. I didn't even know the names of these people until I went over and used Ossific Communion

  Despite otherwise not accomplishing much, I had gotten us a face to look for and that was enough for me to get my 200 crystals, which were close to but not quite what two whole days of venom were worth. My original estimation had some extra crystals left over, even accounting for rent and protection money so it rounded off nicely. Money was money and I had done my part to earn it, profoundly unglamorous as it may be. It was not my job to actually apprehend anyone. And this time, only my colleagues knew of my involvement so I knew who to blame for another wannabe Kitch. Speaking of whom, he did come, trembling and scared out of his mind, he may be, but he collected what was promised. I could respect him for that, almost.

  And so when finally I returned home to wash off the blood I was splattered with despite my best efforts, I was confident that the only direct consequences of the trip for me were going to be the levels and the crystals. I was once again proven wrong in one day.

  The first time I noticed something was wrong was when my Blood Mana Blood Mana Blood Mana

  Medea couldn't dislodged it without hurting me. Hell, I doubted I could. Still, I experimentally tried to pry one of the flaps off by sliding a fingernail underneath but the creature only coiled tighter in response. No response to my Hivemother's Crippled Dominion Fauna Archive was indeed a leech of some kind. A mutant variant that feeds only on mana rich blood, like the blood that follows a slaughter. Or my own blood. Evidently, it had somehow latched on to me when I was trailing bloody footsteps all over town. I didn't think I went anywhere near the Nyrum river though. Could it have leeched (heh) on whoever was responsible for the deaths? I didn't think so but I'll let Tiamim know just in case.

  At least, my skill was reasonably confident it was harmless. At least if I didn't try to force it off and cause it to regurgitate all the blood and gunk it had. That was all nice and all but how do I get it off? It didn't look like it was going to be done feeding anytime soon and I would rather have my mana for the egg experiments than this. Maybe afterwards I could feed it again to keep levelling Blood Mana

  Fire would work. It would let go if I brought a flame close to it but I was not a fire mage and didn't have anything like a lighter. Ice had a similar issue. I didn't have a fridge or anything like that. No wait, maybe I had an ice mage.

  I knocked on the door and waited patiently. The wretched creature, otherwise known as my landlord, opened the door with an expression like I had come up to show up something stuck to the bottom of my shoe, which to be fair, wasn't that far off but I wasn't there for him.

  “You know where Fim and Vinny are?” Surely they had to live somewhere close enough. It wasn't like they were actually protecting us but there was no way they lived hours away or something and still came regularly to collect the money.

  “Top floor.” I blinked. I expected somewhere close, not that close. I thanked him and he grunted back and then I was soon knocking on another door.

  Fim opened the door. Unlike his normal well kept self, he looked haggard and tired. His face twisted into a familiar mockingly courteous smile before it gave way to a weary resignation. It looked like he had been drinking.

  “Alright, what do you want now? I can't reduce the fees even if I wanted to and I don't, so don't even try.” He grumbled.

  “I wanted Vinny’s help with something. Is she in there?”

  Fim’s eyes narrowed and he took a step forward. No need to be an overprotective boyfriend or brother or whatever!

  “What do you want with her?” Instead of explaining, I just unwrapped the cloth around my arm and showed it to him. He leaned in and then jumped backwards with a yelp. I suppressed a snicker before looking at my shoulder and seeing that it had grown noticeably. That sobered me up real quick.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “I need the cold to get it off me. Now can I see Vinny?”

  Vinny, it turned out, was just passed out on a couch with empty bottles of liquor on a table. A dirty white tank top that looked like it too had been drinking clung to her and I could see what looked like ancient scars through it.

  “Hey Vinny, the annoying bug brat is here.” Annoying bug brat? I held my tongue. Fim gently shook her awake and she moaned before turning over. This repeated one more time before she blearily rubbed her eyes and noticed me. She raised a hand in greeting before her eyes fell on my unwanted passenger and she closed them again. After presumably counting to five, she reopened them and gestured for me to sit beside her on the couch. The temperature noticeably dropped as her hand inches towards the worm latched on to me.

  “Wait, can you try to make sure to not kill Cam the first? I think I might keep it.” Both Fim and Vinny gave me a . Fim even muttered something like “I told you she was crazy.” but that was surely me mishearing stuff! No one would call little old me crazy.

  Ice formed words in the air.

  “You named it?”

  “Yes. Just now actually.” Cam, short for Carmilla the vampire, the first because I was not going to keep it but I liked the name. Vinny shook her head like I was insane.

  Still, Vinny obliged and when the leech loosened up and fell, I scooped it into a bottle and then, because I was blessed with delayed foresight, I borrowed a knife and cut open a vein and bled into the bottle. The leech was weird and I wanted to study it before feeding it to Medea and that meant not starving it. It very obviously didn't have the slow metabolism of regular leeches. That was my logic here, totally not that I found how freaked out Fim was, hilarious. I was not that petty. Maybe slightly?

  A quick Coagulate

  No more getting random people killed if I could help it. No more making others pay the price of me being a shitty Godtouched.

  “Now let's see what you are.” I murmured while dropping a dead rat in the bottle. Cam wrapped herself around it and I could see the small mammal shrink and dry up, even through the now very red bottle. Cam was big, it was already slightly bunched up in the bottle but it simply didn't have the capacity to exert the physical force necessary to break out. That was not a concern, what I was watching was how the mana flowed around her. Unlike spider-scorpions, a leech was a mundane creature and Cam’s growth was not very impressive, even though not mundane. Unfortunately, her growth dramatically slowed down after she was separated from me. I couldn't tell if it was because she needed live prey, she was hitting her limits or just that my mana-empowered blood was necessary. I could control for one of those factors by getting her live prey, another by giving her my blood but I didn't want to do both at once because I had a feeling Vinny wouldn't help me again.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon alternating between working on the eggs and watching Cam until the eggs hatched. I filled my two bottles and dropped them off. Still I bought another second hand book, this one about leeches.

  And it was bad news. Cam had hit her limits precisely because of my own blood’s quality. Well, not her hard limits, Cam's kind of magic leech just had diminishing returns until they were too big and starved to death. Or if they were really lucky, they could end up evolving into an active ambush predator. That predatory leech was also not that impressive, really just a hunter of small rodents and birds like a housecat. No magical blood absorption that Medea could use or anything like that.

  Instead of going back home and just pumping mana or blood into my increasingly weird roommates, be it mosquitoes or leeches, I decided to make a quick detour over to the New Delport Regency.

  “Oh! Hi Anya, how are you now?” Nerry bubbled when I finally found her before cringing. “Uhh, I'm sorry but I don't have time off right now. I just took a minute to say hi but I've to go now. If you wait then we can catch up in twenty or so minutes.” She said all that in a single rush. Well, that was anticlimactic.

  “And then the giant rat skeleton roared. Well not roared, I am pretty sure it didn't have the bits for roaring but it certainly made a sound.” I retold the story while editing out everything I knew about what the rat skeleton actually was. And I spared her the body details too. Nerry, it turns out did get lonely endlessly dealing with much older guests. I mean, she didn't say it to my face but it was obvious even to me and I was not the best at picking up cues like that. And that made me feel guilty considering that she had she had shared her books with me when I was the one who was bored and lonely.

  “And Medea?” She asked, her eyes wide. I took a sip of my cup of fisjoui before continuing. Friends aside, maybe I should come around her every so often just for the food?

  “Well, it was pretty roughed up in that earlier fight and it couldn't move. And because it was right in the way of the giant rat, I was terrified that it would be crushed. I did have a spell to teleport it back to me and I cast that.” The story followed what had actually transpired closely from then. Thankfully it was not considered weird for people to not get into their classes and skills, otherwise I wouldn't have stuck around.

  “Speaking of Medea, where is it?”

  “Out hunting. But enough about me. What were you up to?”

  Nerry downed her cup of fisjoui before answering, a grimace marring her face.

  “Same old. It's just that we have a ton of foreign guests so it's been a proper pain. And a lot of them wouldn't know what being decent is if it ate their firstborns”

  “Any reason for the influx?” Nerry nodded.

  “Yep. The upcoming guild contracts. Everyone is just terrified of something going wrong.” At that moment, Medea flew back to me on its four wings with the accompanying sound of something that sounded like a helicopter.

  “Woah. It flies now?” Nerry nearly jumped out of her seat, her earlier exhaustion evaporating. I smirked.

  “More than that. It is sapient like humans now.”

  “Cool. In that case, hello Medea. I'm Nerry.” Medea extended a leg and traced letters in the air.

  “Hello, Nerry.”

  Nerry had come a long way; from the girl who was terrified of Medea to one who was holding a conversation with it. But eventually, that too had to end.

  “Gods above, thanks a ton for visiting! I needed the break.” She exclaimed before visibly deflating. “But I've got to go now, can't take any more time off. You take care, alright?”

  Cam, the first of her name and leech most extraordinary, was fed to Medea with no real changes to the latter once it became apparent that Cam was not the answer I sought. Thankfully, I had other ways to get answers.

  My class should hopefully be mastered soon too and I was expecting another level 30 at the minimum. The experience requirements increase was no joke and unlike Hivemother's Crippled DominionBirth Drones

  \\[New lifeform brought to life: Daywalker Mosquito. Due to the successful conscious creation of a form of life that has not yet existed in creation, increased experience was awarded.]

  \\Fauna Archive is now level 26!

  \\Class experience incompatible. Class selection improved instead.

  \\New Skill learned

  \\Lesser Life Creation: 1

  You know how to use mana to nudge biology in subtle yet improbable ways. You can force similar creatures within a given clade to have successful cross-breeds and you can control what traits get inherited and expressed. This is one of the most vital skills for monster breeders everywhere.

  Mana Cost is variable. Cost increases exponentially with complexity, power, inheritance control, and how dissimilar the creatures are.

  \\New Skill learned

  \\Lesser Reproduction Control: 1

  You can use mana to stimulate the reproductive capabilities of a willing or tamed subject. You can speed up gestation of offsprings and the hatching period of eggs. You can also temporarily increase fertility or halt reproductive processes of your subjects. This is one of the most vital skills for monster breeders and medicians everywhere.

  Mana Cost is variable. Cost increases exponentially with gestation period, hatching period, power, complexity of the organism and further genetic anomalies.

  Both of the skills were active but looked like they were meant to consolidate together. But they were separate and so I had to slot out SketchingFauna Archive

  Lesser Reproduction Control

  But I digress.

  I was reasonably confident that the Daywalker Mosquito, a mosquito that was neither nocturnal nor diurnal but had an adaptive schedule, created by feeding mosquitos my magically enhanced blood and Cam's own weird blood and then breeding them over and over again, was worth at least a level 30 class by itself. To be honest, I had every single one of the Daywalkers fly themselves into Medea's mouth, and they didn't exist anymore but that had to count, right? I had created a new species and I had given unto them extinction. That should be notable. It had to be.