While I was returning through the surface. I analyzed the blood curse with the use of my appraisal skill.
[172L/200L = evolution for phase 5]
Phase 4
[172L/ 105L= +50 agility (completed)]
[172L/ 109L= +50 defense(completed)]
[172L/ 117L= +250 mana(completed)]
[172L/ 129L= +1000 mana(completed)]
[172L/ 137L= +50 strength(completed)]
[172L/ 148L= +100 agility(completed)]
[172L/ 157L= +1000 vitality(completed)]
[172L/ 169L= +100 strength (completed)]
[172L/ 173L= +skill(shapeshift)]
[172L/ 180L=+1000 mana]
[172L/ 192L=+50 defense]
Half of my threshold was completed in an instant. My progress was slowly becoming better after our bloodbath between thee goblins. I nearly drank 72 liters of blood during my fight. It was horrendous, but still I deserved it.
This explains my rising stats during my battle at the goblin king. All my strength, defense, agility and mana was rising exponentially while I was consuming blood. The taste was good overall. The rich and savory taste of blood was still remained in my mouth, still stuck.
Upon viewing, I noticed that there was one specific skill from the threshold, it was a shapeshifting ability. It required 173 liters of blood to unlock, a few more liters to acquire this skill easily.
Out of curiosity, I immediately used inspect.
Shapeshift- skill to physically transform any living being willingly, required DNA or simply blood to access its form. Only the body is shapeshifted, not the clothes. Skills and stats will not change.
So it is a shapeshifting ability, hence the name that was placed in. For me, it was a overpowered ability, changing my body into any kind of person at will, though it required me to match their DNA completely, it is still useful in any scenarios possible.
A few of more abilities will make my body a vampire.
"You can became anonymous by this ability, Roxy." Plasma said
"Indeed, I could became a vigilante by acquiring this skill. I will become an incognito adventurer just by this skill. The people will have a hard time finding me." I replied
"Hahaha, an incognito I see, you want to impersonate your brother, huh?"
"No, I think my brother identity was a trademark overall. It is his idea."
After some time, we finally arrived at the rope, the moonlight shines atop of the ravine, waiting me to ascend to the surface. It was a grueling nightmare just by looking at the full-moon. I was in hell looking at heaven.
Calix and his men were seen in a distance, a silhouette of a bodybuilder is at the top of the ravine. Waiting at me, ignoring my injuries, I climbed the rope without a second thought.
"Hey Roxy, you're almost at your limit. Don't push yourself too hard, besides, you're climbing a sixty-feet rope that goes upwards."
"I'm concentrating Plasma, will I tell you to shut up."
The climb was a slow, wet nightmare.
The climb back up the sixty-foot rope was a grueling test of kinetic memory and raw, stubborn will. With only one arm and a body slick with the drying, iron-scented blood of the goblin king, every inch gained felt like a mile.
The rope bit into my palm, and the phantom sensation of my missing limb made my balance wobble over the abyss. When my hand finally breached the lip of the ravine and I hauled my battered frame onto the grass, the silence of the evening was shattered by a collective gasp of horror.
Calix was the first to reach me. He didn't just run just to warn others, he practically threw himself across the clearing, his face draining of all color until he looked as pale as the moon beginning to rise behind the treeline.
"Roxy! By the gods…your arm!"
Calix's voice cracked, a frantic, high-pitched sound I'd never heard from the composed leader before. He reached out as if to grab me, then recoiled, his hands shaking violently in mid-air. He didn't know where to touch me. Between the jagged, empty space where my left arm should have been and the tattered, gore-soaked remains of my white dress, I looked more like a specter of the ravine than the woman who had descended an hour ago.
Calix was frozen. He stood five paces away, his face twisted into a mask of pure, primal horror. The "Lady Roxy" he had been flirting with…the woman in the elegant white dress…was gone. In her place was a slaughterhouse breathing.
My dress, once white, was now a stiff, dark maroon, plastered to my skin by cooling gore. My brown hair with silver ends was matted into wet clumps. But it was the left side of my torso that held his gaze…the empty, mangled socket where my arm had been, looking like chewed meat.
"Stay back, Calix!"
I wheezed, dropping the heavy burlap bag. It hit the ground with a wet, meaty thud. The same bag that I once stored all the heart of the goblins I slew.
"Stay back? Roxy, you're…you're mutilated!"
One of his men turned away, retching into the bushes, while the others stood frozen in a state of catatonic shock. Calix dropped to his knees in the dirt, his eyes wide and brimming with a mixture of terror and agonizing guilt.
"I shouldn't have let you go alone. I'm the leader, I should have... why didn't you signal? Why didn't you come back up?"
"Because a gold-rank like me doesn't leave a job half-done."
I muttered, though my voice lacked its usual bite.
Then Calix approached me, Calix stripped off his own heavy cloak and wrapped it gently around my shoulders, his hands still trembling as they brushed against my neck. He looked at the empty sleeve of my dress, then at my face, finding the traces of black blood around my mouth that I hadn't quite wiped away.
"Roxy, let's go to the cabin. It's too dangerous out here."
As they helped me toward the log cabin, I looked back at the ravine one last time. The pitch-black hole seemed smaller now, less like a mouth and more like a grave. My arm was gone, my favorite dress was a rag, and I tasted like a slaughterhouse…but as Plasma hummed a dark, satisfied little tune in the back of my mind, I knew the contract was fulfilled.
Luke Granhart emerged from the cabin, his lantern swaying. When the light hit me, he nearly dropped it.
"Goodness gracious Lady Roxy... what happened to you?" Luke responded in fear
"It's a long story Luke, mind you start a fire and let me take some rest."
"O-Okay, Lady Roxy."
Luke finally moved. He approached me not as a comrade, but as one might approach a wounded, starving wolf. He took off his red suit, but when he went to drape it over me, he saw the way the skin around my neck was bruised and punctured where I'd been slammed into the rocks.
"Roxy, we have to cauterize that. The arm... there's nothing left to stitch. It's just... it's just a hole."
He said, his voice trembling so hard he could barely form the words.
"Don't touch me." I snapped, my fangs baring instinctively.
He recoiled, his eyes filling with tears…not of grief, but of pure, unadulterated shock. The realization was setting in for all of them, the gold-rank I possess wasn't just a title of prestige. It was a warning. It meant someone who could lose a limb, feast on the blood of a monster, and climb out of a hell-pit just to report the job was done.
"Get the fire ready."
Calix whispered to his men, his eyes never leaving my mangled shoulder.
"And get the iron hot. She's... she's still bleeding."
Then Luke questions me about the incident.
"Oh my Lady Roxy… you're mutilated. And your covered in blood. What happened?"
I didn't respond. Instead, I handed Luke the burlap bag I've been holding earlier. The bloodstained bag is full of goblin hearts, it dripped through the floor.
Luke's gaze drifted from my stump to the burlap bag. With trembling fingers, he pulled the drawstring back just enough to see the massive, blackened heart and the glint of the core within.
"Open it, Calix," I commanded.
With shaking hands, he knelt and pulled the cord. He didn't find a clean trophy. He found the goblin king's heart…a bloated, pulsating organ the size of a melon, still twitching with residual mana, covered in the grey, sloughed-off skin of its owner.
He let out a choked, shocked face.
"A goblin king? You fought a king... in the dark... while we sat up here drinking lukewarm tea?"
"Yes Luke, you should tell the bureau about this."
"Indeed Lady Roxy."
He looked up at me, his expression shifting from shock to a deep, haunting reverence.
"Why are you so calm now Lady Roxy, your arm is bleeding and yet, you should no emotion. Better yet, how did you survive down there?"
Luke noticed that my expression was calm as ever, like I didn't felt any pain whatsoever. The fascinating is that, the goblin king killed numerous luminous knights during his career, and I was the one who managed to stop it.
"Easy, I'm a gold-ranked adventurer."
"Doesn't mean you're rank is high enough to beat that thing. Better yet, since when did you grow fangs?"
"Fangs? There my personal traits."
After that I abandoned the question and replaces it with a new one.
"The water will clear up now," I said, leaning my head back and sipped a cup of tea.
The adrenaline was fading, replaced by a cold, hollow exhaustion.
"The carcasses were being piled up by that thing. Luke, flush the shallow levels. The source of the rot is dead."
The Town of Allure would drink clean water tomorrow, and they would never know the name of the woman who bled for every drop.