Stuck as a Dungeon Mob

The battle that proceeded could be said to be a battle of transcendent species. Yes to onlookers, Samuel no longer appeared to be a human like the rest of them. His might was legendary to say the least. What man could face a dragon by themselves?

This served as a great insult to Pyre. How could this human resist a sliver of its power?

"What did you do human!?!" He roared furiously demanding an answer. How was Samuel withstanding his searing flames with his puny body?! Even the sword he held showed signs of melting. If it weren't for Samuel reinforcing it, the sword would have definitely turned into hot slush and disappeared like his clothing.

The insignificant human did not respond though. His eyes were bloodshot.

"Hap!" Samuel let out a yell. His sword cleaved down on the empty air but a sharp slash of wind formed and raced forward. Pyre was no longer in the mood for jokes, however.

With a simple movement of his claw, a thick wall of fire appeared out of thin air. Steam came out as the ongoing storm poured water on the hot flames. Still, the flames didn't dissipate. In fact, the wall of fire suffocated the oncoming wind slash. The powerful attack did nothing more than fan the flame wall.

"You are not my match" Pyre was not boasting, Samuel was still not his match.

His body had shot from the edge of the kingdom to the Bosque capital yet even with all that momentum all he managed was to pierce a single scale. His following attack left a superficial streak atop his head. This attack was nullified.

Samuel knew this, but he also knew he couldn't give up.

"Then entertain me for a little while longer!" Even if Pyre thought of him as nothing more than a fly, he would continue to pester the mighty creature until the moment he was inevitably squashed.

On the ground, W was dodging debris and entering the hectic palace. Unsurprisingly, all the knights that were originally guarding the gate seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

'They were either incinerated or ran away' There was also the possibility of some loyal knights running in to save their royalty but honestly the chances were slim. 

The constant conflict of succession in the throne left the country without a main figure. There was no king ingrained in the minds of the knight. Certainly no image of anyone they were willing to throw their lives away for.

While W was not saying there was no one to protect the king, the guard knights outside definitely weren't the ones doing it.

Bringing his focus back to reality, W inspected the palace. A large section was burning thanks to the fire breathing lizard in the sky. As if that wasn't bad enough, the wind Samuel often attacked with would occasionally fall down onto the building and break off pieces.

'How reckless' It seemed heroes could never defeat the villain without destroying their immediate environment in the process. That was bound to have resulted in some deaths.

But W was not concerned about the lives being lost around him. He simply reinforced Brennan's body with the help of Bloody. The blood element coursed rapidly and efficiently strengthening his body. The ease with which it flowed was unlike that of plain old mana reinforcement.

Feeling light, W took off the ground. He jumped straight into the air, just about high enough to reach 2 floors in almost an instant. The modest mansion had many trees around it, W just had to scale them.

He landed on a branch and looked up at the remaining palace floors. The dragon blood was mostly on balconies and the roof of the building. The trees were not high enough to get him all the way up there but…

Most of the journey was still possible! Brennan's body did another giant leap, this time his body grabbed onto the ledge of a balcony. He climbed his body up the balcony and was delighted to find beautiful fiery red blood.

Without hesitation, Blood integration came into effect. Bloody came out of his body swiftly and rapidly gobbled up the blood. Not even a second later, Bloody started to writhe. The fiery blood was visibly dissipating inside Bloody's body but the apparent pain was not.

'What are you-?!?' W asked after Bloody suddenly retreated towards him. But it wasn't like he could jump off the balcony, Bloody came into Brennan and shared the pain with W.

'Argh!' It felt as though they were suddenly thrust into boiling water. The weirdest part however was that this boiling filled him with power!

The blood inside Brennan, Bloody, and of course W started to change. The one with the most drastic change was Bloody who had earned a new skill.

Blood Mix.

It was soon after getting this skill that Bloody suddenly forced itself upon W. Bloody looked like he would gobble W up!

'Stop-' W wanted to instruct Bloody to stand down before he got serious, in the end, it was unnecessary.

'I see' While W did not know Bloody had earned a new skill, he could see it was the case now!

In the vicinity, there were patches of red highlighted even through walls and debris. Not even the fires that were neither too far not too close could hide the heightened sense W just gained.

But it wasn't just a sense of sight towards blood, W swore he could almost smell the difference in quality of all the spilled blood in his immediate vicinity.

'Some dragon blood fell into the palace' That made sense considering that the place was wrecked by the crazy battle.

'I can't tell what kind of skill this is but thank you Bloody' This blood sense he somehow received from Bloody was undoubtedly helpful. The range was not too large but it was large enough to be useful.

It was here where a curious thought appeared in W's mind.

'I can sense it… can I control it?' The blood inside himself was technically himself so that was a different matter. But the blood spilled on the ground should be moveable with magic, no?

Brennan had been a B class knight so he was obviously capable of handling mana. W also had personal experience manipulating mana. So he gave it a shot.

In the dark of the night, no one was able to see a robed man aim his hand at a pool of human blood. Not even the knights that this figure could now detect through walls were capable of noticing that the pool of blood was shaking softly.

W was given hope. The pool of Blood shook more vigorously, it was now rumbling rhythmically.

Soon after however the blood started to slowly seep towards Brennan whose smile could not be hidden by the robe he stole.

'This is great' Getting all the dragon blood would be much easier now! Not just that, but W could see the blood of animals and people. Since he could manipulate blood with mana, he could definitely manipulate the blood of people!

'To ward against it, they probably just need a basic mana reinforcement' If they covered their body with mana the mana he was sending over would not pass which was a pity.

Still, for anyone unaware of his ability or for an ambush the ability was near invincible. It was only now that W realized how broken the blood clot he created was.

'Realistically, If it appeared naturally it would die' The first stage of being a blood clot involved being blind. Actually, there was no stage he knew of where this stopped being true.

'Blind, dumb, squishy, the blood clot would not survive the wild' Without sheltering, without Ed giving it skills through the system, the blood clot would not be overpowered at all since it would just cease to exist.

There was a lesson to be learned from this. Namely, that flawed creatures could be born and thrive when sheltered. Also that sometimes, there was a reason why they didn't exist previously.

Just as W was distracted, something changed in the battlefield. Tiny dot Samuel was sent crashing down towards the palace. His body descended rapidly breaking through the roof of the palace and landing on a pile of rubble.

"Urgh…" He laid limply on the floor for a moment before struggling to his feet and looking back up at the sky. His mana consumption was miniscule but he was still not confident in outlasting a dragon.

Samuel felt that something had to change.

"Huh?" Samuel felt someone approaching his area thanks to the whispers of the wind. He was surprised to see a hooded figure come out of the darkness.

His bloody wounds suddenly closed up on themselves and his spilled blood flowed towards the hooded figure as streams of red blood.

"What the-!?" Samuel was utterly shocked by the performance he just witnessed. He could not believe that the person that performed this was anything but evil! They wore an ominous robe, came out of the darkness, and controlled blood.

But… the person also closed his wounds... 

"Thank you!" Samuel didn't think about the matter for another second. He shot back into the sky just as Pyre was about to rear his head into the hole Samuel bore.

The robed figure W was laughing internally, however.

'There is only one reason I'd heal your wounds' The more Samuel injured the dragon, the more dragon blood he could get! Samuel himself might get injured and spill blood. Realistically that was blood he could get off Samuel's corpse instead but that wasn't a good idea. The dragon came first!

W disappeared back into the night as he chased after the dragon blood he sensed scattered around wantonly. What a feast!