The Weakest F-Rank Who Breaks the System

Chapter 49: Blood is Peculiar

Thanks to the hospitality of the two old men, Clara didn’t feel quite so out of place in the workshop.

She managed to settle into a spot, where Lucius immediately began teaching her.

"What’s the blood for?" she asked, curious. "The professor asked you that earlier, but you didn’t give him a clear answer."

Lucius grabbed a few vials, each containing 20 milliliters of blood, and placed them on a table with various types of tools and fossils.

"Do you know how to determine the age of a tool?" he asked, without answering her question.

Clara nodded slightly, and after processing the information in her head, she replied, "The fastest and most effective way is with specialized magical tools like the ones they sell in stores. But, by eye, you could do it by studying the mana, its layers, and the way it moves."

Lucius nodded. "Yes. Although there are many more ways to do it with mana, if you’re not an expert in using mana or you’re an F-Rank, it’s best to use something physical. You can use liquid mana, but since it’s so expensive, it’s better to use blood."

"Blood?" She looked up. "Can blood be used for that, too?"

He looked at her with an expression that said: Of course.

"Blood is very useful in researching magical tools. Even more so than mana itself."

"Really?"

Lucius chose to answer with a demonstration. He picked up a vial of blood. "It’s the blood of an F-Rank tiger," he said.

He shook the vial a little to mix the contents thoroughly in case the blood had settled, then picked up a fossil. "It’s a fossil of a tool with a tiger’s mana mark. It’s 150 years old."

Without further ado, he dripped a few drops of blood onto the fossil.

Since it was solid rock and not soil, it was difficult for the blood to seep into the rock. And in the first few seconds, exactly what Clara had expected happened: nothing.

The blood pooled in one spot, unmoving.

She even looked up to ask him what was happening, but just then, the blood began to move on its own.

It began to swirl gently, and the cursed energy began to take effect on it. The blood did not let itself be carried away by the cursed energy; instead, it began to seep into the rock.

"Now it will peel away in layers, allowing us to see how many layers have been peeled away. The compounds in the fossilized rock and the cursed energy that fossilized it will have formed a number of layers determined by its age—one forms every 10 years—which is almost imperceptible to the naked eye. That’s how we’ll know its age," said Lucius, explaining the new phenomenon Clara had just discovered.

However, at that moment, something changed. The blood seemed to go on high alert, and everything slowed down. It entered a strange state of caution before beginning to spin in place, as if searching for something.

It spun around several times and began to create streak after streak of blood, like a spiral on the rock, until there was no more blood left to keep spinning.

"He just acknowledged that the mark of manna inscribed and fossilized there belongs to a tiger. Now the process begins." Lucius turned the rock over and had Clara look closely as the blood began to flow down the center of the rock.

Those same lines of blood formed around the edges and flowed down in layers—something Clara was seeing for the first time.

One layer, two layers, three layers...

And so on, until it reached 15 layers.

"150 years..." She swallowed hard as she watched the blood come to a complete stop right there, flush with the center of the fossilized rock.

The blood remained there for a couple of seconds.

"This was the blood of a common tiger. It’s what we use to determine the age, but if you want to be a little more precise and soften the fossilization, there’s a way to do it with blood." Lucius grabbed another vial of blood.

"It’s the blood of a Lineal Dark Tiger. The same kind as the Mana Mark inside this fossil..." he said, and after waiting for the blood inside to disappear and disperse into the cursed energy, he poured a little of the new blood onto the rock, following the same process.

The process was similar, except this time the blood was much more active and frantic. Being of the same type as what was already there, the blood frantically sought its place in the world.

At one point, it stopped at layer fifteen... It lingered there for a second before moving again, and at "layer 16," the blood vanished—there was no longer a layer there. Only the magical tool remained.

The moment it vanished, the fossilized rock began to shake from side to side repeatedly.

"W-what?" Clara swallowed hard. "I-is it trying to escape?" she asked.

"Yes. It’s trying to reactivate itself."

"But, h-how..."

"I told you before. Blood is much more useful than mana. Blood serves as the perfect fuel for magical tools, even modern ones. As long as they use mana marks and the blood comes from a beast identical to the one depicted on the mana mark, then it will be a better fuel than mana itself."

"In fact, if you ever want to take a magical tool to the Kalgarth Plain and prevent corruption from damaging it, drain all the mana from it and inject blood instead. Blood is the only thing that can fight the corruption of cursed energy. And the best example of that is this..." Lucius grabbed a hammer and a small chisel.

He struck the fossilized rock they had just been examining several times. The blows shattered it, and on the fourth strike, the entire rock crumbled into small pieces.

Clara covered her eyes with her hand to prevent the cursed energy from hitting her, but no matter how long she waited for the cursed energy, it never came.

She opened her eyes, puzzled, and found only the magical tool there, covered in dirt, as it tried to activate itself. The rock lay shattered all around it.

And the cursed energy... was inside the tool, into the blood.

"!?"

"As you can see, blood is capable of using some level of cursed energy as fuel."