The only material required for Zoe’s chosen advancement technique was someone else’s blood. That was easy enough to come by, and Zoe wouldn’t have to leave her house. “Hey, Sasha! Come in here!”

  The so-called music from the organ ceased, which Zoe considered a positive side effect. “Okay! Coming!”

  Meanwhile, Zoe rolled up the rug and started scratching grooves into the floorboards. She paid for the whole floor so she was going to use the whole floor—and this part was normally covered by the rug. Waste not, want not.

  The shape Zoe needed to make was a five pointed star. It was crude work, and ended up noticeably lopsided. When she finished, she sat back to examine the results of her hard work. This seems way too cliche.

  Realization struck but a moment later. There are five core stats, and I needed to bind elements to each of them to get this whole process started. It sounds like each advancement through the next rank involves the stats in some way, even if each rank requires a different mechanism. So I don’t think I’m getting ahead of myself to assume the five pointed star is going to correspond to the five different core stats.

  Sasha peered at the star from over Zoe’s shoulder. Zoe hadn’t noticed the wolf-eared woman’s approach. “Huh. Are you summoning something? Wait.” The Lycan took note of Zoe’s undisguised, demonic form. She’d dropped her disguise to work on the symbol. The claws helped with that part, and Zoe wasn’t going to be using her human disguise during the advancement itself. Sasha’s eyes zeroed in on those claws. “Uh, what do you need me here for, again?”

  Zoe grinned. She took care to ensure her now-exaggerated canines were on full display. “I’m not summoning anything, well, not unless you count an advancement. Metaphorically speaking.”

  “Uh huh.” Sasha didn’t look convinced. Or maybe she didn’t follow Zoe’s weak metaphor. “I don’t know if human sacrifices are your thing, but uh—it’s fine if they are, but it’s not really my thing, so…”

  Rolling her eyes, Zoe stood up and grabbed her furry roommate’s hand—paw?—using it to drag the poor woman into the circle before she could react. “Chill out. I don’t need to kill anyone. I just need a bit of blood.”

  In a shocking and unforeseeable twist, this did little to change Sasha’s reluctance. “Can’t you just use your own blood? Why does it have to be me?”

  “You think I didn’t think about that? The book was very specific about needing blood that wasn’t my own.” Zoe held up a claw. “I just need to borrow a little bit.”

  To Sasha’s credit, Zoe’s favorite wolf stepped forward and held out her forearm. “Ugh, fine. Don’t tell me there was also a restriction about not leaving your house to get it from someone who isn’t me.”

  “Not from the book,” Zoe admitted. She prodded at Sasha’s arm, prospecting for the optimal spot. “That restriction came from me being lazy. Oh, this spot should work well.”

  Zoe wasn’t concerned about hurting her housemate. Her current healing abilities were more than enough to cover any accidents. What she was looking for was the spot and angle such that it would come out nicely. It was more of an art than a science, like tapping a syrup spigot into a maple tree. Zoe’s claws were sharp and hard, much in the same way Sasha’s skin wasn’t. “Oh, fuck.”

  The blood was supposed to fill the grooves of the star, but now it was squirting on a bunch of places it wasn’t supposed to be. Rather than waste mana healing her screw-up or let Sasha make more of a mess while she searched for a cup, Zoe seized the opportunity.

  Blood Siphon!

  It was one of the skills she’d gotten when she upgraded her Bloody Devotee class to Sanguine Disciple. It had, like the skill reap, remained unused and unleveled. It wasn’t hard to guess how it worked, though—and maybe it worked a little too well, because it took Zoe all of two seconds to make Sasha look like she was about to faint.

  Oh, shit. Gotta be careful about that. Cutting off the flow, Zoe directed the accumulated orb of blood into the grooves in the floorboards. At the same time, she caught Sasha before the Lycan could topple over.

  Mending Touch!

  Rejuvenate!

  Using the former skill took a chunk of Zoe’s own blood to repair the damage. Zoe had a regenerative trait on top of high Vitality, though, so it affected her less than it did her friend. The system also rewarded her for it—and for using the previous skill, too.

  Blood Siphon has reached level 2!

  …

  Rejuvenate has reached level 20!

  Rejuvenate has reached Tier III.

  +10 Vitality, +5 Perception.

  You have leveled up! You are now level 37.

  +15 stat points.

  +1% core progression.

  Zoe grinned. She’d expected a token level for using blood siphon, but the rest was a welcome surprise. Getting her first skill to Tier III felt like a proper achievement. And yet, it was about to be overshadowed by her first advancement to a higher rank.

  Sasha brought Zoe’s attention back to her surroundings. “Whoa, did the system give you something just now?” Noticing Zoe’s blank stare, her housemate continued. “You’ve got, you know, the look.”

  Ah. I suppose that would be a common social cue in this world. “Yeah, it did. I got a skill level, a regular level, and also a skill tier up.” Sasha’s eyebrows rose, but Zoe didn’t waste time feeling smug. She didn’t want to let the blood get dry and crusty.

  She walked into the center of the star. After making the star and putting the blood in it, she needed to claim the blood as part of her own magic. As it turned out, Zoe had already accomplished that part. Controlling it with blood siphon did just that. Next, things got more—for lack of a better word—arcane. Zoe closed her eyes.

  Manasight!

  Mana Channeling!

  Mana Manipulation!

  Zoe seized control of her mana and guided it through the thread of connection between her own spirit and the blood forming the pentagram. She’d given herself a nasty bout of soul damage on her first day when she’d tried yanking her mana outside her body by force. She got better, though—both in terms of her soul and in controlling her magic. She didn’t yank or shove—she guided.

  Getting the full version of mana manipulation helped, as did the magic link that already existed. Nevertheless, Zoe took satisfaction in her efforts when the mana in her own channels connected to the artificial channel formed by the blood. Now it gets weirder.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  It didn’t take long for her personal, internal store of mana to saturate the ritual formation. Zoe’s own spirit—or what she could perceive of it—was a woven net of looping and braiding threads. This was like taking one of the patterns in her spirit and enlarging it until it surrounded her whole body. Aside from physical scale, the difference was in the comparative lack of complexity.

  Now that the bloody formation was saturated, Zoe had to get a current circulating. This was where she’d expected things to become challenging, and she proved herself correct. She could push and pull on the lines of mana a little bit, but not nearly enough to get proper magical momentum. Forcing it was only possible insomuch as she could force it to break.

  That’s obviously not what I need to do. But I don’t think my mana manipulation is developed enough to make external mana fly around at will, even if it’s my own. That means there’s some other trick to this that I’m not getting. The book from Stella didn’t go into detail on this. It was a tutorial on the whole technique, not the individual techniques needed to perform each step.

  It would be easy if it was a proper part of my channels and not an outside thing I shoved mana into. If it was integrated like all the knotted clusters near my core, I could basically just use mana channeling. Wait—I think that’s it.

  Zoe couldn’t get the external mana to circulate because it wasn’t a well-formed circuit. She made a single connection capable of filling it up, but it needed a return trip—or more likely, a pattern of ringed inlets and outlets. She needed to weave it into the rest of her web.

  Mana Manipulation!

  It was easier to add new attachments now that she’d established an initial one. Within thirty seconds or less, nine additional streamers of mana had joined the pattern. Five of them would push and five would pull, all synchronized in a radial pattern.

  Mana Channeling!

  This time, the mana began to spin. Slowly at first, it picked up speed. Allowing the current to extend back through her own, natural channels helped it along.

  Zoe felt the system touch her mind with a notification multiple times up to this point. She ignored it. They were probably skill levels—and while those were always beneficial, the most important thing now was to focus and complete her chosen advancement technique.

  The current continued to gain speed. It wasn’t long before it whirred around her, no longer traceable as a distinct motion but rather a constant flow. That meant it was time for the next step.

  If the last few stages seemed challenging and arcane, this one stepped things up to difficult and unfathomable. The text instructed Zoe to grab her core stats one at a time and drop them into matching slots in the pattern, ensuring that it remained balanced all the while. When Zoe read that part, her question was simple. How am I supposed to do that?

  The stat categories themselves weren’t nearly so tangible as her skills. Yes, it was easy enough to assign points to them—but that was something the interface of the system did on her behalf. While Zoe doubted she could do something like that here, she did try—and, as expected, there was no result.

  I know I can sort of focus on emphasizing a specific stat under normal circumstances. I’ve already been using it now and then to actively stretch my Perception. That’s probably going to factor into this, but I can’t imagine it’s the whole thing.

  Pulling up her list of core stats, Zoe read through them in hopes that inspiration of some form would strike her. And lo! It did. The primary prerequisite for being able to attempt this first advancement was binding an element to each of her stats. Zoe was in the process now of maintaining a concentrated storm of attuned mana.

  And it was attuned. In its raw, default state, her own mana wasn’t some pure and undifferentiated substance. Even before binding elements, it was colored and textured, a reflection in some way of her own spirit. Right now, it was predominantly a mixture of a heated, metallic red and a charcoal black. A wire-like mesh of dull silver coiled within—a new addition, and one Zoe guessed was from the metal she bound to her Durability. Aside from those elemental colors, there was a faintest halo of purple and rare flecks of gold. She wasn’t sure what those were, but now wasn’t the time to investigate.

  The black had to be shadow, and that was bound to two different stats. Differentiating them might be complicated—or it might not—but Zoe decided to start with something simpler. The fiery bands of red metal had to be a combination of hellfire and blood. Simpler to extract, maybe, but still unideal. The silver wires would be the clearest place to start.

  A cool, smooth weight settled at the center of Zoe’s core. It felt solid—unyielding, but not brittle. Zoe’s grinned. This has to be some manifestation of Durability. Now what do I do with it?

  She was supposed to drop it into a slot in the star-shaped whirlpool, so that’s what she did.

  For a fleeting, terrifying moment, Zoe feared she’d invited disaster. Just as the accumulated Durability vanished from her core, a sudden weight pressed down on an edge of the magic-infused formation. It didn’t stay in one place, though, the centrifugal force drawing it to the very tip and sending the whole system into a dangerous wobble.

  Shit!

  This must have been what the text meant about balancing. Rather than force it back into position, Zoe kept an eye on it and worked quickly to add a counterbalancing force.

  Repeating the process she’d used to accumulate her Durability, Zoe drew out the hellfire for her Power. The red mana all blended together in a homogeneous mass—and yet, there was still a distinct effect from each component. By isolating the hottest, most volatile elements, Zoe formed a new weight in her core.

  Unlike Durability, this weight was the opposite of solid. Violent and shifting, it was less of a heavy mass and more of an intense pressure. Zoe wasted no time in adding it to the wobbling currents of ritual magic.

  Timing it was the the only challenge. Upon release, the charged Power settled itself at the tip of one of the two points opposite to Durability. Being fivefold symmetric, balancing the two masses could never be perfect. It was a lot better than having one, though, and the wobbling leveled out to a far more comfortable level.

  Next came Vitality. After removing a large portion of the hellfire and having already done the process twice, consolidating the bloody essence in her core was simple. This time, it was as if Zoe gained an additional heart—only one that was more than mere flesh. She wasn’t sure how to describe its weight—if anything, it was a confident pulse, pushing and pulling in equal measures.

  She slotted it beside Power.

  That left two more, both of which were attuned to the same element—shadow. Zoe didn’t have any ideas for how to separate them, so she didn’t bother. Pooling half of the mana in her core created a fluid, oily mass without issue.

  Zoe took a moment to study it. At first, she thought it could fit either of her remaining stats. Yet as she continued to observe the slick, orb the color of crude oil but far thinner, she realized it could only be her Acuity. Unlike the previous three, it lacked mass and solid substance. But it didn’t lack weight, pressing back against her as if by sheer will.

  Zoe added it to the star.

  Doing so was becoming more difficult. While the circulating pattern gained increasing stability, timing it to an empty spot left less room for error. Fortunately, Zoe only had one left.

  The black hole that formed in her core couldn’t be anything other than Perception. That was obvious by elimination alone—yet Zoe took time to evaluate it regardless. Her shadow-bound Perception truly was a black hole, warping her arcane vision around its flawlessly smooth, featureless event horizon.

  Zoe took her time lining up the shot. She didn’t want to miss. It took several full spins before she released the miniature singularity—and it slammed straight into one remaining socket.

  A tension Zoe hadn’t been aware of released itself. Awesome. Now, all I need to do is commit to it.

  The text hadn’t been any more specific here than it had been for the past few steps. Zoe didn’t need any further explanation, though. She understood at this point what she needed to do infinitely better than she had before she started. The technique she selected from Stella’s book said to grasp the pattern and close it upon herself. Zoe did just that.

  The whirlwind of her mana accelerated as the ring shrunk inwards. A part of Zoe’s mind recalled concepts about angular momentum and ice skaters raising or extending their arms. Most of her mind was focused on keeping it from getting out of hand or slipping apart.

  Ever closer and ever faster, the ring condensed until it overlapped with Zoe’s physical body and intersected her natural mana channels. But it didn’t stop there. Smaller, faster, denser, the formation constricted back around her very core. Like her Perception, Zoe’s physical monster core became a black hole devouring the accretion disk of her stats and mana.

  The ring squeezed inwards. The glow of the mana flared bright enough that Zoe had to toggle off her manasight for an instant—and then it went dark. Mana seeped back out of her core, flowing lazily through her natural channels like it always did—or close to the same, but not quite.

  Zoe opened her real eyes. For all the intensity of the ritual, the room and the symbol carved into the floor were remarkably unchanged. The same wasn’t true for Zoe—and she didn’t even need to read through the flood of system notifications to be certain of it.

  Zoe had reached Rank E.