I found Daisy on the deck of the ship. Not working, but staring out at the ocean. It was odd. I expected her to have her hands full to keep the ship sailing. Still, if she wasn’t busy, then this was the perfect opportunity to ask her about her own experience fighting with a Shrikon.

She smiled when she saw me, but her expression changed from cheerful to serious the moment I told her what I’d fought below deck. Daisy demanded to see what was the left of the body right away. Her insistence was a little strange, but she had battled these things before and so any advice she’d have to give would be useful.

Before leaving, I decided to check on Pete, who was all alone in steering the ship. I called up to him, “hey, do you need Daisy for anything?”

Pete shook his head. “Not really. It’s weird, but this ship isn’t behaving naturally. It’s like parts of it are running on autopilot. Like the sails, keep naturally moving into the correct position all on their own. I guess the System figured we needed some assistance sailing this thing, given the size of our crew.”

I nodded. That was good. It was one less thing to worry about.

“Come on. Time’s a wastin,” Daisy said, practically shoving me towards the stairs.

When we got to the site, I figured that she’d glance at it and go ‘yep, that’s a pile of green guts’ and then walk away. Instead, she bent down for a closer examination.

“Be careful,” I said. “The blood is corrosive or acidic.”

“You know those are two different things, right?”

“Well, it’s whichever one burns skin on contact.”

“It could both of those things,” she murmured. “Hey you got credit for the kill, yeah?”

“I mean, I would say it was a team effort, but sure.”

“Did you feel any connection to this blood? Because you should be able to control it.”

I hadn’t felt any connection, and I nearly told her that this was different, but why would it be? My Class has given me the ability to manipulate the blood of many different creatures. Why should this be any different?

I crouched down next to Daisy and put my hand out over the green blood. I was careful not to touch it directly lest I get burned.

My hand hovered there for what felt like a minute. There was not even an inkling of a feeling. For some unknown reason, I couldn’t harness it.

I was about to tell Daisy this when she suddenly grabbed my hand and shoved it into the blood. Shock and confusion became pain as the Shrikon’s blood started to burn. I tried to pull my hand free, but Daisy held it in place.

On instinct, I used the last of the blood reserves in my bracer to heal my burning hand, but that was only a temporary fix. Already, the blood was eating away at the hand again. The thought of permanently losing a hand made me panic.

“Let me go!” I gasped.

But she wouldn’t budge. The burning was becoming agony. Instinct took over and pulled out my knife with my free hand. I didn’t want to hurt, but I had no other choice.

I swung the knife towards her, hoping it would scare her into letting me go. Half way through the movement, a thread of shadow shot out of the ground and wrapped itself around my arm. The shadow coiled and tightened, holding me firm. My eyes bulged as I strained against it.

“Stop fighting this,” she said. “This blood is not any different. Focus and find the connection.”

I didn’t want to. It hurt so bad. Daisy had a look in her eye that said that this would only end one way.

Ignoring the pain, I closed my eyes. Extending my senses was something that I was used to at this point, but there didn’t seem to be anything there. I pushed harder. Staring at it with an intensity I’d never felt before. If there was no connection to receive, then I was going to force one into existence.

You are the blood of my enemy, I told it. You are mine to command. Answer my call!

A small twinge hit my brain. The thread was thin and fragile but I caught hold of it. Felt it solidify into something unbreakable. Suddenly, the blood couldn’t hurt me anymore.

*DING!* You have gained [The Junior Phlebotomist Skill] – Congratulations, you’ve discovered a new blood type and found a way to harness its magical properties.

*Item Identified!* [Shrikon Blood] – The blood of the deep sea fishmen is a potent item. While this blood has a more limited healing factor, it can greatly enhance your toughness for a brief period. This can allow you to survive devastating blows that would otherwise have killed you and take on more challenging fights. But be warned. This blood is still corrosive. Use too much of it and it will end up eating you from the inside out.

Huh, enhanced toughness. I wonder if this could be used to improve my weapons as well as my body? It was an idea to test at a later time. My hand was still severely injured, and I needed to get fresh blood on it quickly.

“It’s done. I’ve done it,” I told Daisy.

She didn’t look convinced, and I realized that she couldn’t see the messages that I got. So taking matters into my own hands. I mentally pushed all of the green blood away from my hand. It flew up and collected into a ball that floated in front of us.

Satisfied, she let me go.

A fresh human corpse plopped onto the ground in front of us. Not caring how disturbing it would look, I shoved my ruined hand into its chest cavity. The body was still warm and its blood washed away my pain and began repairing my injuries.

Once I was fully healed, I drained the body of its remaining blood. Telekinetically drawing it out like a steady stream to store in my bracer. However, when I tried to do the same with Shrikon blood, I found that it couldn’t enter the same gem on my bracer. I had to use a different gemstone on the bracer in order to store the blood, which still left two other empty stones.

Four gemstones on the bracer for four different blood types, perhaps? Samara must have predicted this. She knew that I’d be encountering other blood types and had equipped me accordingly. It was helpful, but I still couldn’t get that insane Blood Reaver’s face out of my mind. The fact that she encouraged me to go down that path without warning me of the danger didn’t sit right with me.

And then there was Daisy. A woman allied with a god that I didn’t trust, who was suspiciously strong, and seemed to know a lot about my Class.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “I figured that with your Class there was an opportunity here for you to get stronger.”

Daisy was trying to play it off like it wasn’t a big deal. She got up and started to leave when I said, “I don’t believe you.”

She turned back to look at me. “What?”

“You’re hiding something.”

She snorted. “And you’re not? Mister ‘let me just disappear to talk to a god for a while.’”

“I have to do that because I haven’t declared my allegiance. I assume you don’t have that problem with Roan.”

She flinched at the sound of his name. “Don’t use their names out loud. It draws their attention.”

“Why? You don’t like your god looking in on you?”

Her expression darkened. “He’s not big on helping.”

“Then why pledge yourself to him?”

She shrugged again. “Didn’t have a choice.”

Another deflection. Another attempt at being nonchalant, but I could tell that there was more to it than that and so I waited. Daisy could have left at any time. Nothing was keeping her in this room. She could have simply walked away. But as the silence stretched on, something that was weighing on her caused to her speak.

“Did you ever think it was strange that I didn’t have a last name in party chat like the rest of you?”

I had thought that. But after several life and death struggles, a question like that naturally fell on the back burner. There were simply too many other pressing needs.

Still, I nodded and waited for her to continue.

“The first thing I learned about the dark was its true nature. It’s not simply the absence of light. It is a void. A true emptiness. That is the first lesson I learned in Drakahn.”

I must have looked confused, so she elaborated.

“It is the name of his realm, and it was there that I disobeyed him. And it was there that I received my punishment.”

I didn’t understand what she was getting at.

Daisy smiled bitterly. “He took my last name and my past from me. I don’t remember any of it. Every time I try to recall a memory from before the System showed up, there’s nothing but fog.”

I winced at the violation. That a part of somebody could just be stripped away from them. There was nothing I could say to do it justice, so I kept my mouth shut and let her continue.

 “The worst part is that I don’t even remember how I disobeyed him. He took that from me, too. Only by serving him faithfully can I get my memories back, and he was the one that told me to put your hand into the blood.”

I nodded. That made sense since Roan and Samara were allied together.

Her eyes welled up with guilt. “I didn’t want to burn you, but I had no choice.”

I put my arms around her and said that it wasn’t her fault. That she was doing what she had to do to survive. Daisy seemed hesitant at first, but she returned the hug and dried her eyes.

“Thank you for being so understanding.”

“Not a problem. Now come on. We should spend some time with the others. I bet you’ve never seen a bird eat double its body weight in chocolate before. It has to be seen to be believed.”