The Asshai's Bloodmage

 In front of the blood magic class, the teacher demonstrated a ritual using a drop of blood from one of the students. As soon as the teacher placed the drop of blood in the middle of the magic circle drawn with fresh blood on the ground, he also took out a small rodent as a sacrifice and spoke the magic words in Asshai'i. At that moment, the magic circle glowed red and all the items disappeared. All that was left behind was a black symbol burned into the ground.

The student who offered the drop of blood began to stagger and sat on the ground, his skin reddened as if he had a fever. He was weak and breathing with difficulty. The teacher then began to explain.

"This low-level curse will greatly weaken the target, leaving them in a sick state. Although it cannot kill them, you have seen the consequences of letting your enemies have a drop of their blood. The same goes for saliva, skin, nails, and hair, and of course, even personal items count. All that changes are the magic circles used and the sacrifices offered. The curse should disappear after 1 week naturally. If the target has any natural resistance, it will last less time, with weakened or even non-existent effects. If they have an item that provides protection or some kind of purification, it will also disappear immediately."

He then took a necklace from around his neck and placed it in the young man's hands. It only took 1 minute and his appearance changed completely. He recovered to his healthy state.

"Be very careful, if you don't have an item or other defense methods, you better be careful when offending someone, especially in this city. Next, I'll teach you a ritual that removes the curse I just cast, all you need to do is…"

This was the last free blood magic class, and in 3 days it would be the final test to permanently eliminate the 10 worst students, no, there will only be 8 since 2 died… The blood magic teacher gave us two rituals that were in the tower's free knowledge. I think it was a way to show us that the cost spent on the class can be recovered with certain rituals and other equally valuable methods. In the necromancy class, the teacher taught us how to trap a soul inside a corpse to protect certain places.

The more intelligent the soul, the smarter the corpse would be. Unlike the spell intended for people with soul affinity "Summon Lesser Undead", this method only allowed the corpse to remain in a certain area. And it constantly needed materials or energy from the tower to feed it and maintain its functions. All blood rituals and sacrifices were ways of casting weakened versions of real spells. But none of them were practical since they required long preparation times, greater energy expenditures and had their own limitations.

Now that all the classes are over, I should choose my two free classes. Among the 3 professions, I was a Bloodmage, and I highly doubt I'll learn anything very deep in the initial stages of this class. And between necromancy and shadowmancy, I'm more inclined towards the second one. It's necessary for me to keep my feet on the ground and focus on just one at the moment, I'm already putting too much burden on myself by learning 2 professions.

So my second class will be anatomy and biology of beasts. This will help me a lot in blood magic and also in the classes to become a Shadowmancer since the focus of this first year of this class is beasts from the Shadowlands. And the third class I chose to pay for the costs would be the rituals and sacrifices class, after attending all the classes so far, the one I learned the most new things from was this one. I had two small towers at the moment, and I planned to go after a medium-level or even a large one. This class was helping me understand and use the power of these towers to their maximum limit, avoiding unnecessary costs and sacrifices.

Furthermore, the focus of this class would be to teach how to create your own rituals and I was quite anxious about it since my knowledge and creativity did not have as many limits as the people of this world. As I walked, I soon arrived at the cafeteria, it was crowded today and I sat at the table that was reserved for our Order, I had never seen anyone sit there even when it was empty. There were two tables mostly together and 20 chairs organized by Ted and another younger apprentice of the Order. As soon as I sat at the table and started eating and talking to the others, everyone in the cafeteria went silent. At the entrance to the cafeteria, the senior disciple Genesis entered and everyone knew that it was time to announce the elimination mission.

"Good evening everyone, now I will announce the details for the final test of the Garden of Beasts."

Everyone looked closely, some had already gotten clues about the test, but in general everything was still a secret. He then continued this time.

"The first years as an apprentice... I still remember it as if it were yesterday... The joy and enthusiasm with each new spell, ritual or knowledge we acquired. For many, discovering our talents is considered the greatest change in our lives. But not everything in magic is something happy and peaceful. Even more so in Asshai, where no type of magic is considered forbidden. Entering a tower can help us accelerate our studies and give us access to a safer place within such a dangerous city, but this comes with a cost. Everything in the tower requires constant work, and every resource is valuable and cannot be wasted on useless people. The tasks performed inside the tower are no less dangerous than learning magic on your own outside of it... The test that will be held in 3 days is proof of how difficult and dangerous everything can quickly become..."

Everyone started to get a little worried as Genesis' words continued:

"Many years ago, after the previous recruitment, one of the plants we were taking care of in a secondary Garden located in a Medium Tower in our territory mutated. Before the disciples could seal off the entire floor, the mutated plant consumed all the living creatures and other plants in the tower to reproduce, creating numerous plant-type monsters. Since the tower was an important resource location for the members of the Beast Garden, we tried to clean up the area by gathering 30 apprentices. However, it was a complete disaster, 14 students were killed before we could escape from there."

The students were shocked by the number of deaths and Genesis continued:

"But thanks to their sacrifices we discovered all the details and weaknesses of the new mutant creature, and we finally knew how to get rid of it, but our first attack weakened us greatly and we had to wait many years before we had new students to carry out a complete cleanup and recover this important resource site. The first thing you should know is that the plants are considered to be on the same level as a common zombie, they have a humanoid appearance and are found on all floors of the tower. They are vulnerable to fire and leave a dark green seed the size of a fist when they die. Two students must form a pair and enter the tower to kill 10 creatures together."

The students thought for a moment, if it were in pairs it wouldn't be so dangerous, it would be 5 monsters for each, besides they only needed to go with someone strong, right?

"You can leave the tower whenever you want, but if you don't kill the 10 creatures, you'll lose a lot of points. The tower's elevators are already working and have power to make it easier to get in and out without too many risks. The floor each pair will go to will be drawn, which means it can be easy or difficult depending on the floor you go to and the number of creatures on that floor. You'll earn extra points for extra creatures that are killed in the final result, but remember that the time you take to complete the task affects your score as well. You have the weekend to form your pairs. Bring torches and other flammable items instead of weapons. If the leader appears, avoid combat with him. He has paralyzing poison, high regeneration, and huge tentacles that give him a combat range of easily 3 meters away. If he catches you, everyone will be transformed into more plant soldiers. If the cleanup goes well, the senior disciples will kill the mutant creature and everyone who participated in the test will earn the equivalent of 1 month of beast points. And the worst 8 students will be kicked out of the tower after the test."

Little Liu after hearing everything asked: "What is the point rate for each creature and the points earned for being the fastest?"

"The time is based on 5 minutes as fast, 10 minutes as medium and 15 minutes as slow. In other words, the average is 1 monster per minute, and spending a lot of time trying to find more only to find none on the floor you are on will only result in a loss of points."

Liu then asked again: "If the floor I am on does not have the 10 monsters I need, can I go to a different floor?"

"You can, but you will find another pair there and perhaps no monsters. We will evaluate it well and fairly, so you do not need to worry. But I guarantee that there are plenty of monsters on every floor, otherwise if there were only a few dozen we would have already cleared everything."

As soon as everyone asked more questions, all the students in the top 10 went out to collect their artifacts that they had won for being in the top 10 of the initial test. Most of them didn't take it when they knew there would be a test, and now was the best time, fire artifacts would be the most sought after by them. I also went to the treasure room on the second floor and took a bracelet that could create a wall of fire in a small radius in front of me. But I didn't bind the item, I would give it to my partner. The pairs formed naturally in my head. I left all the Sages with the weakest members who were ranked at position 110+. My partner would be the blacksmith, and I was smiling at the thought of testing my new "weapon" created by him on these creatures vulnerable to fire...

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