Taboo (4): Brewing the Spirit Blood Tea
One Who Knows the Leisure of a Cup of Black Tea (OP): But unless it's the Spirit Blood Tea Ritual necromancy, you can't permanently station soldiers, right? ^^
No maintenance cost?
Perpetual motion machine level?
It was obviously a cheat skill, no doubt.
Difficult or not, I had to learn it.
"Just having guards would fulfill all my wishes..."
If I could station sentries for 24-hour surveillance on the floors below, my quality of life would skyrocket.
I'd actually be able to sleep, for one.
No issues even with distance?
I asked more follow-up questions about what I was curious about.
How experience points worked when the summoned body killed monsters. Whether it followed long-range orders well. And so on.
All the answers came back positive. All under the assumption that I could learn this Spirit Blood Tea Ritual necromancy, of course.
Anyway, it seemed like all the experiments on the things I was wondering about had already been done.
The gallery had hundreds of years of history, after all.
Seniors like the current gallery users must have gone through trial and error...
"Hm..."
That train of thought sparked a new question.
If I could check the summoned body's status, I'd know if there were monsters around it too.
If I issued a "fight from afar" order, I could gather info from experience gains or news of the summoned body's death.
I was curious about the respawn time they'd measured.
The reply came soon.
"What?"
"Immediately??"
"Then I'm really the weird one..."
Why didn't the tower monsters I'd killed respawn?
Just like 574F said, it was a total mystery.
*
In the end, we reached the same conclusion again.
I had to learn the Spirit Blood Tea Ritual necromancy.
I headed to the gallery home and checked the post she'd uploaded.
Title: Basics of the Spirit Blood Tea Ritual ^^
Author: One Who Knows the Leisure of a Cup of Black Tea
The first step is emptying the cup...
……
……
…
..
.
I read it carefully. I got the gist. Even why this necromancy was likened to brewing tea.
Now that I knew, it felt creepy. Every step was grotesque, but especially from step 3 onward—it was unsettling.
But I'd made up my mind twice already.
Time for action.
Whirr— First, I opened my inventory window and pulled out the most intact corpse onto the floor.
"Most intact" was relative... it was headless. The first one I'd attacked, the female mage whose head I'd blown off after breaking her barrier—the last one I'd killed. I'd sliced off her arms and torso, but her recovery magic inside the barrier had fused them back.
"Step 1... emptying the cup."
I had to drain the blood from the corpse and collect it.
"Heave-ho."
I grabbed her ankles and flipped her upside down.
Her skirt flipped up.
I placed a pot where it pointed. Drip—
Blood started pouring from the severed neck.
"...Can I use this pot again later?"
The human body has about 5 liters of blood. Quite a bit had spilled when I decapitated her, so maybe half would come out.
Drip drip... plip. Plip. Soon it was just dribbling.
She said even this physical method would work for the Spirit Blood Tea Ritual.
Using the black magic Blood Drain makes extracting blood way easier, keeps the cup cleaner, and raises the summoned body's completion quality...
But learning that spell takes extra time, so I was using this crude method.
Still, I'd give it a shot. Keeping my right arm holding the ankle up, I extended my left hand toward the dripping neck stump.
"Blood Drain."
It resonates with my own blood to forcibly draw out someone else's. Honestly, I had zero feel for it in my head.
But.
"...!"
Vrrr— My 1-circle in my dantian seemed to get it right away. Shhh—
Red blood began rising from the severed neck like mist. The drops falling against gravity floated up into the air, condensing into a spherical orb in my left hand.
Success.
"Whoa..."
But it felt like it was about to slip control.
It churned unsteadily. I quickly lowered my hand toward the pot.
Splash—!
I poured the drained blood into the pot.
"No need to hold it anymore."
I laid the corpse flat on the floor.
"Blood Drain."
I scraped out every last drop of residual blood from inside the corpse into the pot.
"That should do it. Not like I'm a butcher..."
I averted my eyes from the now-pale corpse and focused on the blood-filled pot.
"Now step 2."
Step 2 starts by infusing my mana into this blood.
Plop—
I dipped my index finger into the pot.
Then swirled it around, pouring in mana.
I already knew the sensation of infusing mana into something.
Back in the Shinigami Realm, I'd had to pour mana into the great slate to find names.
Vrrr—
I spun the circle in my dantian again, continuously infusing mana.
Swirl swirl.
Soon I hit the critical point.
The feeling that my finger had merged with the blood in the pot.
Mana fully dissolved to the limit.
Now.
I had to pour this mana-infused blood back into the corpse.
Circulate it once inside the body.
Then drain it all out again, dragging the soul along with my mana.
If successful, the blood becomes spirit blood, and its color thins out.
If no color change, back to step 1.
So... repeatedly filling and draining the blood is the core of the Spirit Blood Tea Ritual. Teacher compared it to "brewing tea," but to me, it screamed blood dialysis.
I was basically playing doctor.
"Time to try..."
I prepared to pour the blood back into the corpse. I used the scythe tip to poke a small hole near the heart. Lowered internal pressure, then sliced the long vessels near the neck to make it spout.
"Not exactly surgery..."
I made a siphon with the pot and used the effect to flow the blood back inside.
Any amount too much for the vessels, I just shoved in.
Thus refilling the corpse with blood.
Whoooosh—!
The mana-infused blood began circulating through the corpse.
Then I used Blood Drain on the neck stump again.
…
..
.
First check.
The liquid in the pot was still dark red.
"Failure..."
"First try failing is normal, so whatever..."
…
..
.
Second check.
"Failed again..."
No color change.
…
..
.
Third, fourth... fifth try. The blood color stayed the same.
The longer I worked, the more blood-soaked I got, but I grew numb to it.
"...Stuck at step 2."
I slumped to the floor and pulled up the gallery window.
I had no intention of giving up on the Spirit Blood Tea Ritual yet.
I'd come to the gallery for feedback.
Hm...
I'd already learned that.
Silence.
Question marks started flooding in.
The wandering necromancer lurkers were confused.
Then teacher chimed in.
'Broken cup'.
I knew exactly which corpse she meant.