The Asshai's Bloodmage

 On the first day that everyone joined the Garden of Beasts, Jhon followed Old Daran to Madame Zirya's personal laboratory. When she visited the Sage Store 5 days ago, she had asked Jhon to speak with her on the first day he joined the tower, as she had an offer he couldn't refuse. Jhon didn't know what it was about, so he decided to listen first. Luckily, the place where Daran was taking him was the laboratory on the penultimate upper floor, and not the one on the last floor of the basement. Otherwise, Jhon would have been so scared that he wouldn't have returned to speak with Madame Zirya so soon. Arriving at the Plague Master's second laboratory, there was a reinforced metal door, Old Daran knocked and soon after it was opened, a sweet voice came from inside:

"You may enter."

Jhon followed the hunchbacked old man and soon they saw Madame Zirya sitting down, Jhon was fascinated by the beauty of the woman who was now not wearing any mask. Old Daran bowed to her and left to wait outside.

"Welcome to the Garden of Beasts Jhon, today I invited you here to tell you that I would like you to become my student. If you become my student, I will immediately give you new free knowledge, you will earn double the points you already earn without needing to do missions for the tower, I will also guide you on the path of the plant element since that is my element too. All you need to do as my student is to assist me in a certain experiment of mine that I have dedicated my entire life to, but I am still limited due to not having a special physique like you. I will not lie to you, most of the time I will study your special physique. Your blood, your saliva, your marrow, your hair, your skin and all your bodily fluids... This may seem scary, but there is not much information about your special physique and this is a way for you to also learn the limits and also all the skills and abilities that your physique can do and what their advantages and disadvantages are."

Jhon felt a chill when she said fluids and looked in a certain direction of his body, but apart from that he also wanted to understand more about his body, he only found 2 books in the free library and both were just hypotheses, there was private knowledge, but he wanted to wait for tomorrow afternoon's class to better understand what it was about so Jhon replied:

"Madam, I am very grateful for your request to become your student, but I need to ask Rafael's opinion first. Since there may be risks to my life, I must speak to him first… He saved my life twice, and I do not want to put it in danger without his permission."

"Alright, come see me after you speak to him."

Jhon bowed, making a reference to the Plague Master, and left. The next day it was 6:00 in the morning, and all the main members of the Order were in the spell training room. At the door, Ted and his brother were on guard, preventing anyone from entering during the meeting.

As soon as the meeting began, Rafael explained the amount of points for the missions and how much each piece of knowledge would cost. Omar then explained how much the monthly cost was for materials used in spells, herbs for alchemy experiments, and other magical items needed for various rituals. The prices would be half the points you would earn in a month for doing 1 mission. This would double the time it would take to obtain free and private knowledge, but we didn't have these problems because we were all rich and could buy it outside the tower. Liza then said that she had taken on an exclusive mission to take care of Madame Zirya's rooms and bath every morning for 7 days. The points were the same as a normal mission, but there was no risk. She had also reserved this mission for the next 3 months, and that was the limit for a student to repeat a mission. After that, they would have to do other things for 3 months before repeating it again.

Vitarys then reported that he had not yet been able to obtain details about the test that would take place in a month. There is a secrecy among the older students. He asked if he should try to bribe them, but we were against it. Jhon told his story to Madame Zirya and asked for my opinion. I told him to accept it, but not to use the extra free knowledge yet to bring something useful to everyone. I also told him that if it became dangerous or difficult to bear, he should let me know. After that, Jack said that he had been invited to teach dagger mastery classes, since there were no experts in this area currently in the tower and he would only need to teach 1 class per week to earn his monthly points.

Last were Zaya and Zhang. Zaya had bought her private knowledge and said she had signed the blood contract that places a restriction on the information obtained. Zhang only said that when he visited the private library, he had also signed the same contract as her.

"So that's it, guys. We'll meet again tomorrow at the same time... Liza, make a basic report about what we talked about here today and give it to the other members of the Order who are in the tower. Zaya, get information about those who are in the top 10. We can consider them as future members of the Order since they have good talent. Jack, you'll be responsible for taking care of the security of the store and the Tower of the Sages today. We'll take turns so that there's always 1 of us watching everything. You can take 1 of our new apprentices as a helper." When Rafael finished, everyone nodded and left.

After the meeting, I had breakfast in the cafeteria with some of the members who were there. We had coffee or tea as drink options, black bread, and scrambled eggs. It wasn't bad for a free meal. Unlike Valyria, where a single copper guaranteed a meal, here in Asshai each meal cost 1 silver. After breakfast, I went straight to the place where I was supposed to appear to start the mission. A gray-haired man was waiting for me, and next to him was a young man wearing a mask who introduced himself as Yun Zhe. I introduced myself, showing the mission card, and the gray-haired man then began:

"There are 12 underground floors in this tower. The floor where the manticores are is the 10th. You need to carry all these dead sheep there first."

He then pointed to 2 already slaughtered sheep. They were larger than normal and had black wool. I didn't find it strange since these creatures must be altered or native to Asshai. I approached them and stored both in my inventory, then headed towards the elevator where the two were waiting for me. After the elevator went down to the tenth underground floor, the man continued speaking:

"If you've accepted this mission, then you've probably already read a little about the beasts that live in the tower, so let me warn you... The deeper you go underground, the more dangerous it is. The manticores were responsible for killing 7 apprentices from the last recruitment 40 years ago. So follow my instructions at all times and do nothing other than what I tell you. And remember to follow the same instructions from tomorrow onwards when you're alone."

I nodded, as I made several notes in the system and the young man with the surname Yun also took out a small notebook and began to write. When the elevator doors opened, we were already on the tenth floor, all I could see was a 2 meter wide stone path and the fog prevented me from seeing anything beyond the stone path. I tried to see the ceiling, but that wasn't possible either. Soon more instructions came from the eldest apprentice…

"When you reach this floor, always stay on the stone path and never put even one arm out of it. Then start counting your steps until you reach two hundred."

The man continued counting his steps and we did the same as we walked side by side, afraid of getting off the path or calculating our steps incorrectly. The other apprentice couldn't help but ask:

"Why can't we leave the stone path?"

"There are at least 30 caged beasts on this floor, and some of them can attack you even when you're inside their cages. This stone path can hide your presence from their sight, your smell, your sounds, and even the presence of your soul. That way they never know you're here. Put one arm out and you'll be dead without even knowing how you died."

The boy Yun swallowed hard and then went back to counting his steps with even more precision. It didn't take long for us to complete the 200 steps, then we left the stone path and headed right, starting to sweat at that moment after hearing that it wasn't safe to go outside. We followed the man until a ladder appeared in the middle of the fog. We climbed it and arrived at the top of a cell that I assumed was the manticore's cell. We walked on a metal platform until we reached a sort of ventilation duct the size of a palm with a glass window in the floor. Not far away there was another glass window along with a lever.

"One of you will throw these baits into the duct and observe the cell below, the other will stay at the other larger window and will observe the manticores inside the cage. There are currently 4 manticores inside, 1 female which is the largest, 1 smaller male and two young. Only close the lever when all 4 are inside the cell where the baits were thrown. And pay close attention, if you don't look carefully and close only 3 and leave some of them outside you will die if you go in there."

We started the process, the boy threw the bait and I soon saw the enormous creature rise from the tall grass, it was twice as big as a common lion and its body really resembled one. It had a human face in the shape of a woman, and its tail was like a scorpion's tail, only enormously large in proportion to its body. The human face made an expression as if it were sniffing something and then went into the cell, soon after a smaller version of the first manticore, but this one with the face of a man, came out of a pile of sand and followed the female. The last two manticores came out of a bush, they were the size of a medium-sized dog and both had the faces of human boys and also went into the cell. Seeing this, I immediately pulled the lever, locking the four animals in the cage.

The whole process was similar to taking care of dangerous animals in a zoo. The middle-aged man led me to a trapdoor still on the roof of the cage and when we opened it there was a ladder, he went down first and I followed soon after. He then told us to spread out the sheep and the boy who came with me took several cloth bags from his inventory and a shovel and started collecting the feces. I finally understood that this was probably his mission. After that the man told us to look for flowers in the creatures' cage, this was a rare ingredient and any found here could have a good value in points. I patted myself on the shoulder and made my crow that had been there silently the whole time fly high. The animal was smart enough to look for something so simple, but it returned with nothing. It was not our lucky day.

It took 20 minutes for the boy named Yun Zhe to collect 3 huge bags full of feces, he managed to store everything in his bag and we climbed the stairs before closing the trapdoor and opening the cell door. Soon we saw the animals feasting on the sheep. I asked the man about the feces and he said that they would be used in the private garden to grow the manticore flowers, the same ones we were looking for inside the cage. It was an extremely valuable alchemical ingredient and only the Garden of Beasts produced it in all of Asshai. He even added that the only herd of these creatures in existence was on the central island of the cluster of islands that made up the Manticore Isles in the Jade Sea. So it was hard to count on anyone going there to collect these flowers, since the place was also very large. In addition, the island was inhabited by the infamous poisonous insects with the same name as the creatures in this cage and covered the entire place.

With that, our first day of mission, despite being dangerous, was completed without any accidents. I went up to my room to practice my spells and meditate, only coming back down when it was time for lunch. Also, classes were about to start this afternoon...

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