One Who Savors a Cup of Black Tea: But without the Spirit Blood Tea Rite, you can't permanently station a soldier, you know? ^^
One Who Savors a Cup of Black Tea: The Spirit Blood Tea Rite only needs to be done once! As long as you pour your mana in carefully during that very first brew, unlike other necromancy arts, it doesn't consume mana every hour—the form is maintained until the little one is completely destroyed. ^^
No upkeep cost, huh.
That's basically a perpetual motion machine.
Obviously broken as hell.
I didn't need to know much to see it was clearly a busted skill.
Hard or not, I had to learn it.
If I could station a guard active 24 hours a day on the floors below, I'd have nothing left to wish for.
Hard or not, I absolutely had to learn it.
"Just having a guard would be enough for me…"
If I could get advance warning whenever intruders showed up, I could at least sleep—even if it was light sleep.
One Who Savors a Cup of Black Tea: Would you mind checking my post? ^^
If I could post a sentry watching the lower floors around the clock, my quality of life would change completely.
Just the thought of being able to get an alert made my chest flutter.
Because that would mean I could actually sleep.
└ Anon (60F): But can you keep it active even when you're far away from the undead? I'm going to keep climbing the tower.
└ One Who Savors a Cup of Black Tea (OP): Of course ^^
Distance isn't a problem, then.
I asked more questions after that.
How experience gain worked when the undead killed monsters.
Whether it could carry out commands from long range. Things like that.
Every answer came back positive. All of it was under the assumption that I could actually learn the Spirit Blood Tea Rite, of course.
Either way, it seemed like every experiment I could think to ask about had already been done.
Made sense, given the Gallery had centuries of history behind it.
The senior members before us, including the current regulars, had worked through all kinds of trial and error…
"Hmm…"
That train of thought led me to a question.
└ Anon (60F): So on the floors where seniors left their undead behind… did monsters respawn there?
If I could know the undead's status, I'd also know whether there were monsters near it.
I was curious whether situations arose where respawned monsters ended up fighting the undead.
An answer came quickly.
└ One Who Savors a Cup of Black Tea (OP): Yes, that's right! That's actually how we confirmed monster respawns! ^^
└ One Who Savors a Cup of Black Tea (OP): But you don't need to worry—on floors where a Spirit Blood Tea Rite undead is stationed, it's recognized as a complete monster, so nothing respawns there!
└ Anon (60F): So it's confirmed that monsters do respawn…
"Then I really am the weird one…"
Why were the monsters I killed in my tower the only ones not respawning?
Just like Floor-574 Anon had said—it was a mystery.
└ One Who Savors a Cup of Black Tea (OP): That's why what you're experiencing right now, newcomer… even digging through records from the past, it's a strange and bizarre thing. ^^;
*
The conclusion that followed was, once again, the same.
I needed to learn the Spirit Blood Tea Rite.
I navigated back to the Gallery homepage and pulled up the post she'd written.
______
Title: The Basics of the Spirit Blood Tea Rite ^^
Author: One Who Savors a Cup of Black Tea
The first step is the process of emptying the cup.
………
……
…
..
.
______
Finished reading it thoroughly.
I had a rough understanding.
Including why this necromancy art was compared to the process of brewing tea.
Now that I knew, it made my skin crawl.
Every step was grotesque, but starting from step three in particular felt deeply wrong.
But I'd already steeled my resolve twice.
I moved straight to action.
Whirr—
First, I opened my inventory and pulled out the most intact corpse onto the floor.
"Most intact" was a relative term, though… it was a headless body.
The female mage I'd attacked first and killed last—the one whose barrier I'd shattered before taking her head off.
I'd ambushed her mid-coffee and sliced through her arms and torso, but the healing magic she'd cast inside her barrier had knitted everything back together.
"Step one is… emptying the cup, right."
I needed to drain the blood from the corpse and collect it.
"Heave."
I grabbed both ankles and lifted, flipping the body upside down.
The skirt fell the wrong way.
I positioned a pot beneath where it was pointing.
Slosh—
Blood began pouring from the severed cross-section of the neck.
"…Can I ever use this pot for anything else again."
The human body holds roughly five liters of blood, apparently.
A fair amount had spilled on the floor when I'd taken the head, so maybe half that would come out now.
Drip… drip. Drip.
Before long it slowed to drops.
Apparently the Spirit Blood Tea Rite was possible even with this crude physical method.
Using a Black Magic spell called Blood Drain would make extracting the blood far easier, and the resulting "cup" would be cleaner—meaning the finished undead would be of higher quality—but learning that spell required separate time, which was why I was resorting to this clumsy approach.
Still, I decided to try it.
Keeping my right arm raised to hold the ankles, I extended my other arm toward the severed neck where the blood was dripping and held out my left hand.
"Blood Drain."
The principle, as I understood it, was resonating my own blood to forcibly draw out another's.
Honestly, I had no intuitive sense of how that was supposed to work.
But.
"…!"
Whirrrr—
The 1st circle in my dantian seemed to have figured it out on its own.
Hssss—
Red blood began rising from the severed cross-section of the corpse's neck.
The blood that had been dripping downward defied gravity and floated into the air, condensing into a round sphere in my left hand.
It worked.
"Oh…"
But it felt like it was about to slip out of my control.
The way it churned was unstable, unnerving.
I quickly lowered my hand toward the pot.
Splash—!
I poured the drained blood into the pot.
"No need to keep holding it up."
I laid the corpse on the floor.
"Blood Drain."
I scraped out every last drop of remaining blood from inside the body and emptied it into the pot.
"This is the right way to do it. It's not like I'm running a butcher shop…"
I looked away from the now-pallid corpse and focused on the pot of blood.
"Now, step two."
Step two began with infusing this blood with my mana.
Touch—
I dipped my index finger into the pot.
And stirred it around, pushing mana in.
I already knew the sensation of infusing something with mana.
In the Death God Realm, I'd had to pour my mana into the Great Stone Tablet when searching for names.
Whirrrr—
I spun the circle in my dantian again and kept feeding mana in.
Stir, stir.
Soon I reached the threshold.
It felt as though the finger I'd submerged had merged with the blood inside the pot.
The sensation of mana dissolving in to its limit.
Now.
This mana-saturated blood.
Had to go back into the corpse.
After circulating through the body once.
I'd need to drain all the blood back out again, pulling the soul along with it together with my mana.
If that happened, the blood would become Spirit Blood—and its color would turn pale and diluted.
If the color didn't change, I'd go back to step one.
So in other words…
Repeatedly pushing blood into the corpse and pulling it back out was the core process of the Spirit Blood Tea Rite.
My teacher had compared it to "brewing tea," but the first thing that came to my mind was dialysis.
In more ways than one, it felt like I'd become a doctor.
"Alright, let's try this…"
I prepared to push the blood back into the corpse.
I used the tip of my scythe to poke a small hole near the heart.
That lowered the internal pressure, then I cut the long blood vessels near the neck so they protruded outward.
"This is practically surgery at this point…"
I inserted the other ends of those vessels into the pot and used the siphon effect to let the blood flow back inside the body.
Whatever couldn't be pushed through the vessels, I just poured in directly.
That was how I got the corpse to absorb the blood again.
Whoooosh—!
The blood carrying my mana began circulating through the corpse.
Then I applied Blood Drain to the severed neck again.
…
..
.
First check.
The liquid in the pot was still a dark crimson.
"Failed…"
"Well, they did say it's normal not to get it on the first try, so…"
…
..
.
Second check.
"Failed again…"
The color hadn't changed.
…
..
.
Three times, four times… and then the fifth attempt.
The blood's color remained exactly the same.
The longer I kept at it, the more covered in blood I became—and the more numb to it I grew.
"……Hmm. I'm stuck at step two."
I slumped down onto the floor and pulled up the Gallery.
└ Anon (60F) (OP): Not going well. I've repeated the brewing process five times and the blood color hasn't changed.
└ Anon (350F): Oof.
└ Anon (702F): lol can't do it right? Told you Spirit Blood Tea Rite is hard. Getting stuck at step two means gg
└ Anon (651F): Why does this person seem kind of relieved about it;;
└ Anon (702F): Just let me teach you regular necromancy, do that instead lol
└ Anon (431F): Why are you trying to drag someone down to your level;;;
└ Anon (240F): Not buying, shoo shoo.
└ Anon (702F): I'm on floor 700-something you lunatics. Regular necromancy is still plenty good…!
└ Anon (279F): Doesn't that have upkeep costs though…
I had no intention of giving up on the Spirit Blood Tea Rite yet.
I'd come to the Gallery to get feedback.
.
└ Anon (60F) (OP): I tried adjusting how much mana I was infusing… where am I going wrong?
└ One Who Savors a Cup of Black Tea: My, you're doing well, actually!
└ Anon (350F): Doing well but it's not working, what gives, sensei!
└ One Who Savors a Cup of Black Tea: It seems the corpse's soul has a strong attachment to the body…!
└ One Who Savors a Cup of Black Tea: Be patient, newcomer! If you're really struggling, why not start by learning that Blood Drain spell that extracts blood completely? ^^
Hmm…
I'd already learned that.
└ Anon (60F) (OP): Ah… well… I actually tried the Drain earlier when I was pulling the blood out the first time, and it worked on the first try.
Silence.
└ Anon (702F): ???
└ Anon (351F): Huh.
└ Anon (702F): You succeeded with Drain on the first try?
Question marks started piling up.
└ Anon (546F): Wait, can you really learn a spell that easily???;;;
└ Anon (421F): That's insane lmao
└ Anon (345F): "Easily" doesn't even cover it lmaooooooo if you got it on the first try you might as well have been born knowing it lol
└ Anon (702F): No but wait… so you ran Blood Drain five times and the soul still didn't come out? That's seriously weird…
The necromancer anon was getting confused.
└ Anon (702F): Why would someone this talented get stuck at step two??? The hard parts come after this.
Then the high-nick teacher's reply followed.
└ One Who Savors a Cup of Black Tea: Oh my… you succeeded with Drain on the first try? How impressive! In that case, you might be able to try a broken cup!
"Broken cup."
I knew exactly which kind of corpse she meant.