Chereads / Bloodmancer: Hero of Ruin / Chapter 45 - Blood-burning technique

Chapter 45 - Blood-burning technique

The law of conservation of momentum wouldn't change just because something as silly as magic existed in this world in a greater quantity than it did in the world Leon hailed from.

When the massive bear charged, it relied less on its speed and mostly on its overwhelming mass to bring forth the destructive power of such an attack.

But when the charge missed, its power turned into the handicap that carried the beast quite a lot ahead, leaving behind a nice, clean path for Leon to follow the monster.

'Here I go!' the bloodmancer thought, allowing a wicked smile to run on his lips when he sucked a part of the activated mana he used to raise his spatial awareness.

Leon bent down on his knees. He then leaned forward and rested his left hand on the ground. His right hand, on the other side, gripped tightly at his short spear while directing its blade behind.

Then, at the same time, Leon jumped forth and run the mana he recovered through a set of three different formations on his weapon.

POOF!

The energy of his mana transferred directly into kinetic energy that then shoot out of the tip of his spear, accelerating his jump like some sort of rocket engine.

This kind of leap was something only an idiot would try in a forest with all the branches, trees, and bushes acting like traps all over the place.

But conveniently, the massive bear that dared to bare its fangs at Leon... carved a perfectly clean path for him to blast through.

'Boom!' Leon thought, a crazed look erupting in his pupils when he blocked one of the three formations that he activated.

Leon twisted his spear. In a single frame of time, the direction of his makeshift engine reversed, slowing down his approach by a tiny margin.

The momentum of the mana died out. The formation that Leon blocked from acting up no longer turned the gathered mana into kinetic energy. And in the short moment that Leon took to bring his hand from behind his back and then over his head, he stirred up the mana in the blocked formation to the other direction.

And so, when he unleashed the formation again, it now blasted pure energy out of the butt of the spear, driving it down along the angle he made with his arm.

"IEEE!" the bear-beast uttered a pained cry when Leon drove his spear right into its back, puncturing through the bones and canals of its spinal cord.

'Was that enough, I wonder?' Leon thought.

In theory, severing the spinal cord of any living organism that possesses one should instantly knock it out. Or at the very least, render a huge part of its body paralyzed.

And yet...

The bear rose up on its hind legs again.

'It's going to shake me off,' Leon thought, recognizing the way in which the beast tensed its muscles up.

And so, he pushed his activated mana around to the fourth formation in the row, changing the manner in which the energy would be released.

THUD!

The bear's body suddenly flailed, as if an explosive went off right in its abdomen. Its skin bulged up before waves made the shockwave spread through all its insides.

'Yeet,' Leon thought, pulling the weapon out and allowing a stream of blood to shower his body.

He didn't enjoy the idea of getting dirty. But right now, with his mind shrouded with killing intent, this was the greatest praise a hunter like him could receive.

The bear remained on its hind legs for a moment. And then, its body inched just a little bit forward...

Only for the beast to fall flat on its stomach a second later, no longer capable of uttering even a single cry.

"To think that it would still try something even with its spinal cord severed..." Leon muttered, lowering his weapon.

He then used just a tiny spark of activated mana to designate the blood over his clothes and body before setting fire to it.

Poof.

Just as expected from a monster of this evolution-unexplainable size, its blood contained a trace amount of mana. And once Leon's blood fire latched on to it, it burned it all out without harming any other type of matter at all.

"Now then," the bloodmancer muttered as he raised his hand and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt. He then tucked his spear behind his belt and pulled out his short sword instead.

In theory, this was the most versatile and useful weapon in his possession. Yet, he never picked it up with the intention of using it to fight.

'I wonder what that lower officer would think if he knew I reduced his priced sword to nothing more than a butchering knife,' Leon thought with a small smirk as he drove the sword's blade right into the wound he created with his spear just a little bit earlier.

And then, without minding his surroundings all that much, he started to cut the bear open.

'Eh...?' It wasn't long before Leon was faced with quite the dilemma. 'Is it dull or something?' he thought, pulling the sword out of the carcass.

Even after moving it up and down within the wound, the blade barely managed to cut the wound open an inch of the bear's thick skin.

'It would make for a good armor material,' Leon thought. He then lowered his eyes to the wound... only to end up throwing the sword out into the forest.

"It's not like I have any intention of making clothes from a beast like that," he muttered to himself. The bloodmancer wiggled the fingers of his right hand around, warming them up.

And then, in a single, graceful motion, he drove his hand right into the opening of the massive carcass.

The corners of Leon's lips then curved up when he felt a gentle sensation of mana-rich insides coiling around his flesh.

'Now, this is what you call a proper way of regaining strength!' he thought, a crazed look returning to his eyes.

"Burn all the excess," he then muttered, reverting to use the type of magic he was most proficient at.

The blood magic.

Following his desire, the entire corpse of the massive beast suddenly started to bloat up. Its skin tensed up as if the monster suddenly took on the greatest breath in its entire life...

Only for it to then deflate all in a single moment.

All the blood and insides of the bear vanished in the fire that consumed the corpse from the insides, leaving just its bones and skin intact.

"Haaa...." Leon exhaled when he absorbed all the mana left behind by the burned-out flesh and blood of the monster. "And that's what you call a fitting reward for a nice bout!"

The bloodmancer then stood up, pulling his hand out of the wound.

What used to be a terror of the forest, now turned into a sad sack of precious fur and bones.

"I guess I now understand why someone capable of hunting in the forest with beasts like those roaming around is considered an A rank," he then muttered to himself as Alice's face flashed before his eyes.

Leon then took a deep breath and lowered his hand. With the beast's energy now safely stored at the bottom of his stomach, he couldn't help but crave more.

"Well, duty before pleasure," he muttered to himself, turning his eyes in a certain direction.

Even before the encounter with the beast, Leon already found out the direction the chaosbringers camp was most likely at. In the end, in spite of what she said, that Alice-like girl nearly managed to find their location all on her own, giving Leon an easy time completing the task.

"Should I go and hunt some more?" Leon muttered as a cheerful smile decorated his lips.