Scarlet

Over the next couple of hours, I spend most of my time just staring at the ceiling as I take note of all of the sounds within the few dozen floors of the building on either side of the one I’m in. But I also make sure to spend 33 SP on leveling both Blood Boil and Blood Bank to level 5. Immediately after checking the changes to their descriptions though, I realize that the descriptions are pretty garbage for skills. Since there really isn’t much difference.

The only difference in the skills’ descriptions is that Blood Boil now no longer says that it ‘slowly makes the blood of the target begin to boil’ and instead just takes out the slowly part of it, leaving the rest. And Blood Bank’s description didn’t even change at all.

Such a nuisance.

“I did tell you that the skill descriptions aren’t the end all be all,” Tar comments in my head as I get up from the bed and walk over to the door of the room.

Yeah, yeah. But up till now, most of the skill descriptions have been mostly spot on with what the skills do and what the level-ups of a skill changes. So it’s a little disappointing regardless to see these not straight up tell me.

“Just take solace in that you figured out the change in your Blood Claws skill,” the tanuki tries to console me. I think.

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“Yeah…” I mutter before thinking back to when I tried out blood claws again and immediately felt a difference. One that somehow just made me instinctively feel that I could draw on my own blood automatically instead of my mana if I wanted to. “That will be a very nice benefit. Makes it so I don’t have to wait as long for my mana to regenerate, since I can just charge up my claws on my own blood and keep it charged through the demons’ blood.”

The tanuki floats in front of me with an amused expression on his face as he says, “You’re gonna end up cleaning out the cafeteria at the base if you do that.”

I pause mid-step at the thought, only to shrug and continue moving.

Even if I don’t like eating much, it’s a price I’m willing to pay if it means a more efficient hunt. Which really isn’t something I ever expected myself to think just a week ago, but meh.

“You know, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you about,” Tar asks, floating in front of me as I reach the door of the room. I stop walking and raise an eyebrow at his words before he continues, “You seem to adapt to new situations way too easily. Is there a reason for that?”

What do you mean?

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“Well, from my previous experience dealing with humans, I would’ve expected one to cry or something if they were told they weren’t a human, or at least not fully human anymore,” he begins, a frown forming on his tanuki face. “But while you did initially freak out, you didn’t cry. You didn’t lose your awareness of your surroundings much. And you kept calm for the most part. Why is that?”

I stare at the tanuki for a few seconds, only to shrug.

No idea. Pretty sure I’ve always just been rather accepting towards things. Because if I don’t like them – which is often the case – all I have to do is work towards fixing it.

After all, it’s not like throwing a pity party or bawling my eyes out will change anything, right?

The tanuki just stares at me for a few seconds before slowly nodding his head in agreement.

Although I do feel like my awakening as a demon might’ve strengthened my feelings on the matter.

A few seconds pass in silence, but when he doesn’t say anything else, I leave the room before walking down the hall and entering the staircase, briefly pausing as I hear the boy from earlier whining about some sort of demon in the form of a human being. And right when I’m wondering if Alex has him fighting a huntsman or something, I hear Alex saying, “Suck it up and continue fighting. Don’t be a wimp. They’re just simple spawn.”

Oh. He’s calling Alex a demon.

I stare at the stairs for a few seconds before eventually shrugging and walking up them to the next floor, deciding to leave the poor fella to Alex’s venting. Since she’s probably mad that I ditched her.

Not my problem. May you rest in peace Julian.

By the time I reach the next floor, I completely shut out the kid’s whining to focus on the monsters in the floor. Which number at around a dozen or so, one of which sounding like another knight, and the others just a bunch of hounds in one massive pack.

This could be annoying.

The stairwell this time opens up straight into a long and rather narrow hallway going down both left and right for quite a ways, with doors likely leading to suites of rooms sparsely spread out through it on both sides of the hall. Just like most of the rest of the hotel, the hallway has a nice red, orange, and black color theme to it, making it appeal rather well to my sense of taste.

I focus on the left side of the hall, since the right is where the knight is, with the left being where the hounds are. After all, the knight won’t be moving from its spot unless another Julian happens by it.

There are eleven hounds spread out through the rooms, in three groups. Two groups have four hounds, and the third has three.

Shouldn’t be too much of an issue assuming I can get them separated from each other, without the three groups forming one. And considering that it’s a narrow hallway with suites of rooms, that shouldn’t be a problem.

“There’s a lot of shouldn’t in those statements,” a certain tanuki injects into my thoughts.

Yeah, well, what could possibly go wrong in such a narrow floor?

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