Chapter 440: The Witch

The Elder stepped into the house behind Belladonna, and immediately flinched in surprise before bowing his head.

"I apologise, I did not realise you were in the middle of an initiation."

The strange woman, who the Elder had referred to as the Witch, simply waved him off with one hand and did not bother lifting her head from the body.

She dipped a needle into a clay jar that she had sitting beside her, which was filled to the brim with an old, pungent blood, before pressing the needle against the body and whacking the other end with a hammer.

As for the body, it was a young Orc who was doing his absolute best to stay as still as possible, as not to ruin everything the Witch was doing.

If he even so much as flinched, not only would he be showing weakness, but she would slap him for ruining her marking. It was safe to say he was scared of the Witches wrath more.

Belladonna glanced idly between them before gliding silently around the room, as she inspected the shelves that lined the circular walls.

Every shelf was filled with clay or stone pots, which had been sealed tight with cork-like lids that fit them perfectly. Even still, Belladonna did not need to open the jars to know what was in them, her nose twitching was more than enough.

Blood. That was what filled the majority of the smaller jars, especially on the higher shelves. Those ones had an odd scent, they must have been mixed with a preservative or some other herbs for alchemical reasons.

In the larger, urn-sized jars there was something a little more fresh and meaty than just blood. Floating within the preservative concoction, were organs. Not just any organs, judging by the smell. But the organs of their own people.

"Baroness?" A strained muttering from behind her caught Belladonna’s attention, as she turned to the young Orc that was laying on the table.

He was gritting his teeth from the pain of the needle constantly stabbing into his arm, but the moment he saw Belladonna’s face, his eyes widened with recognition and a strange smile replaced his pain.

Was he... Star struck? By her? How adorable.

"Oh my god, it really is you! I-I’ve watched all of your streams, multiple times! What are you doing here? Did you get a bad respawn and-" The Orc rambled excitedly, trying to sit up before the Witch planted her hand on his forehead and shoved him back down.

"Silence boy! Remain still, or the next one might slip to your heart." The grumbled, before putting the finishing touches on the tattoo.

Belladonna let a chuckle slip from her lips, as she glided around the room to examine the ’Ancestral Marking’.

Sure enough, right there on the Orc Players arm, was a blood red Glyph. It was the basic Glyph of strength, tattooed through the bloody concoction. It was drawn rather crudely and dare she say amateurish, only a small portion of which was down to the young Orcs wriggling.

The Witch silenced the boy before he could speak again, giving him a few scornful slaps, before digging one of the organs from the Urns and shoving it into his hands.

He gave the organ, a dried kidney the size of Belladonna’s fist, an odd look before stuffing it into his mouth. He chewed sheepishly, before swallowing it and a moment later his new tattoo glowed with a faint, crimson light as strength flowed through his body.

"Check it out Baroness! I’m just like you!" The Orc laughed jovially, as he leapt off of the table and started to pose in various flexing poses like he was a superhero.

Belladonna couldn’t help but laugh at his child-like excitement, it was infectious. She couldn’t bring herself to tell the Orc the issue with his new marking, or that what he had eaten was the Kidney of another Orc.

Chastising someone for something akin to cannabalism would be rather hypocritic of her, wouldn’t it?

Tattoos like this were something that Belladonna had considered very briefly. They still gave the same magical effects as a carved Glyph, and were arguably less self-harming, disturbing or painful than carving them into your own flesh.

However when it came time to decide which one to use, Belladonna had neither the tools, resources or skills to tattoo herself. So she used carvings and never considered them again.

There were some benefits to them, and some downsides. Both required a robust body trained to withstand the brunt of the enchantment, as you were treating yourself like a tool rather than a magician, but the advantage of the tattoo was that it shared the strain between the user and the glyph.

In terms of enchantment, Belladonna’s carving method was like forging a weapon.

You tempered the steel, carved the enchantment in and the weapon took the entire brunt of it. If the enchantment was too strong, the weapon would simply crumble or explode, and if the weapon could not transfer mana properly then the enchantment would come out weak and useless.

The level of enchantment you could imbue into the weapon, as well as the number, all depended on the quality and temperance of the weapon itself. Of course In this case the ’weapon’ was her body.

The Tattoo method was more akin to creating a scroll. The burden was shared between the parchment, in this case the body, and the ink that was written on it.

In exchange, the level of the enchantment you could use was dependant entirely on the quality of the parchments endurance as well as the quality of ingredients used in the ink. Which would get rather costly as you grew stronger.

Both had to be risen in sync. As even if you tempered your body to survive the burden of level 6 spells, for example, if the ink you used was only crafted from level 1 ingredients then the painstaking tattoo would burn up after a single use, or perhaps burn up without being able to cast the spell at all.

The burden was reduced, but in exchange you had to be ready to shell out for powerful and rare ingredients or be relegated to the lower tiers, no matter how strong your body grew. It made for an easy bottleneck.

However, as she watched the Orc flex, Belladonna realised that there was one benefit to the tattoos.

Since they took some of the burden off of the body, the ink also acted as a controlled channel for mana flow. So, if a mage player were to get their own tattoos, it could possibly avoid a fatal blowback like when Vestra had tried Belladonna’s carvings.

Now that did have some potential.