Bloodstone
An unfamiliar ceiling… was not what greeted me.
I had lost count of how many times I had woken to this same view.
What the hell happened?
All I had done was pick up a strangely shaped stone. Instantly a crushing pain had slammed through me, and I had blacked out on the spot.
Whether Yekaterina had sent me some kind of assassination tool or simply coated the rock in poison, one thing was clear: it was not something to be handled carelessly.
Thinking that, I forced my aching body upright—and immediately sensed something was off.
I’m… not dizzy?
Normally the moment I sat up, vertigo would hit and my vision would darken, along with a dozen other unpleasant symptoms. Right now I felt as refreshed as if I had slept deeply, without so much as a speck of those usual problems.
“What is going on…?”
Unable to shake the uneasy feeling that something had changed inside me, I ran a hand over my face. The instant my palm touched my skin, my head cleared completely; the half-frozen fog of consciousness began to flow again.
What… what is this?
It might have been my imagination, but my body felt lighter than usual and my thoughts spun faster. Trapped in a five-year-old’s frame these past few weeks, I had felt my very mind dulling—yet now it was sharper than when I had still been an active agent at the National Intelligence Service.
I was still tilting my head in confusion when a hand settled on my shoulder from behind.
“H-hyaaah!”
“A-are you all right?”
“H-hweh? Y-yes?”
A doctor in a white coat stared down at me, looking even more startled than I was.
“Where… is this…?”
“Ah, the hospital. Don’t worry. We used a hemostatic agent and performed emergency surgery. You lost so much blood we almost lost you.”
A sudden wave of anxiety made me glance downward—then I stopped myself.
Right. I don’t have anything there anyway.
I had been so out of it I had momentarily forgotten.
“I was bleeding?”
“That’s what your guardians told us, though I can’t be certain. By the time you arrived, most of the blood they claimed had been spilled had cleanly evaporated.”
While I was still listening, the door to the ward flew open and the head maid rushed in.
“You’re awake? How do you feel?”
“H-Head Maid?”
“Ah, Lady Isabella, correct? I was just about to explain. There are quite a few strange points.”
“I would appreciate as detailed an explanation as possible.”
At the head maid’s words the doctor called over a nearby nurse and had her bring a sheaf of papers covered in test results.
“First, according to the statement you provided earlier, while Miss Seo-hyun was upstairs in her room a loud thud was heard. When you went up, you found her collapsed—is that right?”
“That’s correct.”
“And there was nothing nearby that could have caused injury?”
“Nothing at all. Just an empty cardboard box.”
“Our working theory is epilepsy… but there are many oddities. Looking at her previous medical records, the patient has a history of anemia symptoms—is that accurate?”
“Ah, yes.”
“Yet according to the examinations we just ran, there is not a single sign of anemia. I don’t know if it was cured somewhere along the way, but… frankly, Mediterranean anemia is a genetic condition that cannot resolve naturally. Yet at some point it simply vanished.”
“Is that… possible?”
“No. It’s impossible… which is why I suspect the earlier test results may simply have been wrong. In any case, it’s hard to deny that her overall condition has improved in multiple ways.”
Improvement was good news, yet it left me uneasy on several fronts.
More importantly, where did the gem go?
I clearly remembered the moment I touched it; after that, everything was blank. Just what had Yekaterina sent me?
“Um, do you still have the clothes I was wearing?”
“They’re hanging right there.”
My clothes hung on a rack beside the hospital bed exactly as they had been.
“All right… and if there’s nothing else wrong, I’d like to be discharged. Is that okay?”
“Well… it should be possible, but you’ll need regular check-ups. We have to make sure there’s no underlying issue, and given the risk of another epileptic episode, you’ll need to continue related treatment as well.”
After that the head maid gripped my hand tightly, urged me to take proper care of myself, and left with the doctor to collect the prescription.
The moment they were gone I dug through the pockets of the pants hanging on the rack and pulled out the instruction sheet I had stashed before collapsing.
This letter is a user manual I’m sending so you’ll know how to properly use the Bloodstone—the gift I’m giving you.
Don’t touch it carelessly. Use it for whatever purpose you want.
The Bloodstone is a condensed mass of mana forged from my unique ability.
When supplied with enough mana it activates that ability; think of it as a miniature version of my power.
Now I’ll explain how to use it.
First, the method I recommend: turn it into equipment.
Ring, bracelet, sword, gun—anything works.
You’ll need a skilled workshop, but once it’s finished you should be able to produce an artifact of at least Grade 2 to Grade 1 quality.
Second method: embed it in your body.
I don’t particularly recommend this one, but it’s far more versatile than equipment and convenient to carry.
However, it will clash with any unique ability you already possess, so only try it if you’re confident you won’t die from a mana rampage.
It settles into the flesh, so you’ll have to live with it looking unsightly.
Last method: just sell it…
You could fence it for at least several billion, but well?
I trust you won’t reject my goodwill that way.
*Caution: Always wear gloves when you touch it. It is drawn to blood; bare skin will let it burrow straight into your flesh. I suppose you no longer need to wonder how to use it.
Seriously… the person who wrote “wear gloves when you touch it” in the caution section put the manual underneath the Bloodstone?
At this point it felt like a carefully engineered act of pure malice designed to mess with me.
But it says it clashes with a unique ability…
I didn’t have a unique ability. So what happened in that case?
I checked every inch of my body for any sign the Bloodstone had embedded itself, but nothing stood out.
It said it settles into the flesh, right?
What the hell? Was the manual garbage too? Did people without awakened unique abilities simply not get to use the Bloodstone?
I was turning that over when a new hypothesis struck me: maybe the Bloodstone had simply melted into my body.
If someone had no unique ability to begin with, there would be nothing for it to clash with—and that would also explain where the stone had gone.
“No way…”
Focusing every scrap of attention on my fingertip, I waited. Moments later I felt blood gather there; a tiny amount of blood welled out of the tip of my finger.
“Nngh…”
A sharp, needle-prick sting made me wince, but that settled it.
The droplet that had emerged from my fingertip floated into the air, shaping itself into a small awl—then my concentration slipped and the crimson bead simply ran down my hand.
“Haa… ha…”
It was a strange feeling. The sensation of wielding a unique ability—something I had believed impossible in reality.
Because my body still could not sense mana, anything beyond this was nearly impossible. Even so, today I had taken one step forward.
“Haa… heh. Perfect. For now I’ll just experiment with this.”
It was nowhere near combat-ready, yet the fact that I—who had started as an unawakened—now possessed a unique ability meant something huge.
In this world, I too could reach the place I was aiming for.
The instant we returned to the mansion I hurried up to my room.
“Seo-hyun! You’re discharged already?!”
“Ah, Miss! It was nothing serious, so please don’t worry!”
Leaving Yulia—who always fretted over me—behind, I climbed the stairs. The moment I entered, Laplace’s startup screen bloomed across the computer monitor, greeting me.
—Laplace, make a list of every commission that came in for me and sort them by reward. Filter out the low-trust ones yourself.
[Understood.]
Gazing at the flood of people who had thrown money at me either to test the skills of the rising hacker Lucifer or to hire him outright, I steeled my resolve.
From now on my task was to grow—fame, power, wealth, combat strength, connections—by every means available.
The first step would be clearing hacking commissions, and every resource and asset I gained would be reinvested into further growth.
I’ll have to keep studying steadily… and handle mansion work at the same time, so it’s going to be pretty brutal…
Shhk—!
Watching the blood-formed awl pierce out from my fingertip, I allowed myself a small smile.
I’ve already seen the possibility. There’s no way I can stop now.
Several years later, on a certain day in January, I turned thirteen.
“Lady Yekaterina, you sent the Bloodstone to Lucifer, did you not?”
“Mm, yeah… I did. Something you want to ask?”
“Even the pieces we give to the executives never exceed the size of a pinky nail. Wasn’t that one far too large? At that size you must have carved off a full tenth of the power you possessed…”
Yekaterina fell into thought at her subordinate’s words.
True, she might have cut off a little more than necessary.
“So what if I did? I won’t have any use for it anymore.”
“…There is a possibility of full-scale war, not just small skirmishes like this one. As our side’s greatest combat asset, Lady Yekaterina—”
“Full-scale war? If it ever reaches that point, we’re all already dead. Instead of calling for me you should be praying to a god to spare your lives.”
“…Some among the subordinates regard you as a kind of god, my lady.”
“Who? Ah~ those fanatics? Tell them to do whatever they want. Leave them alone and they’ll get disappointed and peel off on their own.”
“…”
“Look at it another way—maybe forging a connection with Lucifer this time was lucky. You’ve seen his hacking skills roughly, right? If Leviathan ever has to fight a full-scale war, he might block it out of goodwill.”
Yekaterina waved her hand, dismissing the subordinate.
“…Understood.”
“Ah, next time you come, bring a lot of blood packs. I used up most of the stockpile making that Bloodstone.”
“No… even if making a Bloodstone consumes some blood, there’s no way it put a dent in that enormous reserve—”
“Shut up and go already. Want me to send you out into the field with the rest of the underlings so you can clear your head?”
“I’ll be back at once.”
After the subordinate left the room, Yekaterina sank her body into the bathtub filled to the brim with blood.