I woke up in an unfamiliar tent.

  Unlike the large yurt of the creche, this was a personal tent. It was only really sized for one or two full-grown Uli, but the real giveaway was how lived-in it seemed. The tent was full of belongings and personal effects, including more carved ivory.

  “Good, you’re awake,” my father said, as he entered the tent, which was clearly his. He set down a stone-carved plate with some brined meat and some seafood on it next to the bed I was in, which caught my attention since the children didn’t get such plates with our food.

  The stone was probably fragile and breakable, so it was a safety issue, rather than treating the children as livestock for the slaughter, though as my memories of the past day returned to me, it did seem that was also the case.

  I took a mindful breath, dismissing that negative thought for now, as well as my curiosity about how these Uli carved stone and ivory, and looked up at my father. Daru seemed different from the man I had met once per year since I was born. Instead of the stoic and intimidating sire, he now seemed softer, almost a warm and caring father.

  “What happened?” I asked, my throat feeling scratchy. I ached all over still, and my chest itched. I stopped myself from scratching at it, as well as from looking at it.

  “The Blood Fever,” Daru explained. “It was… particularly hard on you. All boys get it when they become Bloodied, but it usually doesn’t render them asleep for as long as you.”

  Frowning, I checked in with myself, and felt an unfamiliar power within. Had I come here straight from my first life, this feeling would have been entirely foreign to me, but after a life as Tovar, I was quite familiar with a similar force. Pulling up my System, I confirmed what I was feeling.

  My Blood had increased from 1 to 2. Whatever had happened, it didn’t seem to touch my true Will stat, which remained 72, as it had been since the end of my life as Tovar, but it did seem like my Blood capacity had doubled.

  The fact that killing a sapient—someone with a soul—increased my stats at all seemed wrong to me. It ran counter to what I had learned in my last life, and what I knew about souls in general. The fact that it didn’t affect my true Will stat could have been because it was just too small of a change for me, personally, or it spoke of something else at play here.

  In any case, absorbing Uqar’s Blood, which was clearly what I had done, had not sat well with me. That surely was a product of my true Will being so high. Perhaps my physical body rejected the foreign energy more strongly because of my strength of Will, or the latent energy within me caused a feedback loop as my increase in Blood quantity was affected by my hidden Will quality.

  “No matter,” Daru said, interrupting my thoughts. “You’re awake now, and more importantly—you were victorious. Decisively so.”

  The genuine expression of happiness on my father’s face floored me for a moment.

  “Have… none of my brothers won before?”

  Daru’s happy expression became clouded with something darker. “Some have made it through the ritual, but only just. They became targets for challenges.”

  My mothers had said something about being challenged by other boys once Bloodied. That means this isn’t over, I thought morosely. I’ll likely have to keep killing teenagers until I stand above it all as an adult.

  That seemed horrific, at first glance. So many dead young boys, so much potential lost. But, was it a necessity for the Uli to survive? Biologically, were these excess males necessary for a race to continue to grow and thrive in their niche, when fewer males could achieve the same ends in terms of population growth? If this method led to a high Blood stat, true or artificial, and that led to further success of the entire tribe, was this actually a good survival strategy?

  Daru’s progeny weren’t being successful at all, in that regard. Yet he was still here, contributing to the tribe, both in social terms and in genetic ones. I wanted to ask how he had survived to adulthood, then, but that seemed like an incredibly rude question that I couldn’t find a delicate way to ask, at least for the moment.

  My father shook off his negative emotions, focusing again on me. “But you had a strong showing. You won’t be challenged right away. That gives us time.”

  “Time for what?”

  Daru grinned. “Time to teach you how to wield your Blood.”

  *

  “The first two skills most new Bloodied learn are [Blood Augmentation] and [Blood-Empowered Blow],” Daru began, after leading me away from the tribe’s camp out into the barren land beyond. “The first uses Blood to empower Brawn, increasing your total resilience and strength. The second focuses your Blood into an attack that can help you take down large prey—or break through another Uli’s [Blood Augmentation].”

  I gaped at the straightforwardness with which my father was describing skills to me. After a lifetime under the Five Guardian Faith and then a cloistered childhood in the creche, this, more than having four arms or anything else about being an Uli, felt truly foreign to me.

  “Some new Bloodied learn augmentation first, others learn to focus an attack first, but it’s good to learn both,” Daru continued. “Each will help you with different basics that will lead to acquiring more Blood-based skills. Allow me to show you.”

  A red aura, for lack of a better word, seemed to suffuse Daru, as the energy of his Blood began to enhance his physicality. His skin turned bright red, not quite glowing to my eyes but bright in the sense I had for energies which transcended physicality thanks to living in a System world. This must be the augmentation skill, boosting his physical body with supernatural durability.

  Then, the energy shifted away from his full body and focused into a fist he made with his upper right hand. This time, the “glow” of his Blood concentrated even more there. He strode over to a large rock, reared back, and laid out a devastating punch that split the boulder in two. Afterwards, the energy faded.

  “Huh,” I said, reviewing what I had seen. “Is the energy… used up? How do you recover it?”

  Daru looked at me in mild surprise. “Interesting question. It tires, like using a muscle tires, but with food and rest it returns in full.”

  So it wasn’t expenditure, like how mana was used up in Argadia and needed to be recovered from the atmosphere with breathing. Or it was, but it internally recovered through some sort of mechanism.

  “What’s the ‘large prey’ like, by the way?” I asked my father while I started prodding at my Blood control. I had only seen the meat butchered, but was curious about the megafauna I was, ostensibly, learning these skills to help hunt.

  “There are a couple that we hunt,” my father said. “The mirulu is a massive, lumbering beast that walks on all six of its legs; slow, but can charge when angered. They have massive tusks that risk goring you even with strong [Blood Augmentation], and require a full hunting team to take down.”

  Those were likely the source of the massive haunches we ate, as well as the ivory dagger and other carved items I had seen in Daru’s tent. I mentally translated mirulu to mammoth.

  “Then there is the uqandu, which is much smaller and fleeter. We do eat these, but we hunt them because otherwise, they hunt us. They run on their hind four legs, and their front two limbs are more like our arms, but less useful for anything but eviscerating their prey.”

  Some kind of… nightmare centaur, then? I guessed. I was eager to see them, though it would probably be a while before I could hunt either mammoth or centaur.

  “It will be a while before you can join us on a hunt,” my father said, echoing my thoughts. “You must prove yourself in a number of ways, still, not the least of which is acquiring a skill.”

  “Right,” I said. “Well…”

  I flexed the Blood in me and began to brighten red.

  While Daru had been telling me about the animals, I had been exploring the new sensations in me that I had noticed since awakening in his tent. Despite this world not having mana, I did still have [Mana Manipulation] at skill level 7. I was quite familiar with how to interact with an energy source inside me, though obviously my Blood was quite different from shaping mana with Will.

  As opposed to my mana circuit, the Blood in me was less ephemeral. It very literally seemed to be in my blood, hence the name. Spilling Uqar’s blood, mortally, had somehow let me acquire his energy, too, and while I didn’t want to dwell on that too much, it was one of only several data points I had to analyze.

  In focusing on my heartbeat and the blood within my veins, which I was also quite good at with a strong mind-body connection from meditation and exercise, I very quickly tapped into the limited pool of Blood energy within. Despite it being limited in quantity, I could still feel the power that came from my 72 Will. It was this familiarity with my power that made acquiring the base skill somewhat trivial.

  I wasn’t sure if it was the right way to do it, but using the same principles of bridging and extension of the mana circuit for my Blood flow seemed like a good way to pick up the second skill. I couldn’t actually bridge the Blood flow, because it wasn’t an infinitely fractal path that was separate from my body, but I used the same mental tricks to concentrate my Blood’s energy into my fist.

  My augmentation faded—not enough of the resource to maintain both, plus it required splitting my focus, which would take practice—and my fist began to shine to my Blood sense. It began itching to be released, so I walked over to a rock, frowning slightly. I didn’t want to break my hand showing off, but just a tap while releasing the energy should be safe.

  Gauging the distance so that I didn’t over-commit to the punch and break my own hand, I jabbed at the rock just hard enough to bruise my knuckles, pushing the Blood energy into the strike.

  A crack rang out as the boulder split into two, like my father’s example had.

  I glanced up with a grin to find Daru in full-blown surprise. Slowly, his gaping expression morphed into a delighted grin, and he began to laugh.

  “That’s my boy,” he said through his guffaws.

  Try as I might, I couldn’t help but feel pride from his words.