Adam always mourned the deaths of those who fought for humanity. The Wall of Heroes hadn't been just an impulsive thing. Adam felt it was important. People needed to know who had died. They needed to remember that it could be their turn next, even if they prepared as much as possible. Finally, they needed to know that even if victories were being stacked, there was always a consequence.

This time, Adam knew he had made a mistake. Even though he was the one at fault, others were the ones who paid as a consequence.

Adam had expected this fight to be more like what had happened with the Drathan tank. He never assumed that Sgolkr had a similar temperament. There were unwritten rules in the universe. Those rules had been apparent in the teachings and experiences of those whose memories he had watched.

When someone at Tier 2 fought Tier 1, or Tier 3 against Tier 2, it was rarely a fight. Usually, it was just an execution due to the power difference. That led to most warriors fighting against others of similar strength, tier, and level. There was no honor or respect gained in crushing someone weaker.

Most importantly, killing someone so far below your own level resulted in a universal loss of XP, or soul energy. The [System] was very against that, though Adam hadn't figured out why.

Of course, once the strong were defeated, a refusal to surrender by those weaker meant an execution was acceptable. Since Adam had previously had no class, and no one had seen a strong native before, there was no judgement of him for whoever he killed. Besides, every race was already gunning for Adam.

This was the same reason that wars rarely happened within a race's planet. Lashtam had explained early on that races rarely sent stronger people to attack worlds because the amount of XP they gained would be far lower than the amount contained by those killed. The transfer was inefficient as the disparity in level increased. Again, the [System] was strongly against that.

Wars were usually fought by proxies on neutral worlds. If one force was able to overwhelm an equal force, that meant that the higher-level fighters would have an even greater disparity in strength due to developed classes, knowledge, and training methods by the superior race. This is how so many worlds and races became subservient to the dominant ones. It resulted in fewer deaths and more survivors to serve the victors.

All of that was why Adam had expected Sgolkr to only go after him. If Sgolkr had ignored those [System] accepted methods and gone after the weaker fighters even with Adam in front of him, then it meant the former berserker was more unhinged than Adam expected. The very act would bring dishonor to the Scyrric if it was known. One more example that Sgolkr had fallen from his position within his own race and had been backed into a corner.

Like with the Drathan fight, Adam had wanted to start off slowly and build upon his abilities. With his recent increase in strength, he didn't really know how to compare himself to the stronger invaders. Was he on par with the strongest? Or a little stronger than those at the current top? Would someone's skills make a difference against Adam's pseudo-skills?

He had handily defeated the Arcane Obstructor, and that was a promising sign. However, that Drathan didn't have much mobility or offensive punch. His skillset had been based on absorbing damage and hurting those who came close.

Adam had wanted to see how he would match against someone focused on offense yet still had a solid defense. How much damage would Adam have to expect, and how well did they counter his own abilities? An armored warrior like Sgolkr would have provided a reasonable test.

It turned out those evaluations weren't possible if his opponent didn't follow the expected script. And now there were dead humans because of Adam's faulty expectations.

Adam's body shook as he tried to drag himself to the body of the Sentinel soldier that he had brought with him when protecting Brittney. Sgolkr was stronger that he expected, and Adam wasn't willing to allow his shield maiden to suffer for it. Instead, Adam took the hit, and without using [Soul and Body Shaping] to increase his stats, he was much less durable than the shield maiden.

The left arm and leg of Adam were half eroded, along with the armor covering those areas, as they became a bloody mess from being dragged across the floor. His right arm and leg were also shattered. None of his limbs were able to move him.

Adam needed to get to the body, to the blood that would help regenerate him. As loath as he was to drink an ally's blood to heal, Adam knew the soldier would have gladly given it to protect his fellow humans. That was why Adam had grabbed it when he used [Gladiator's Approach] to knock Brittney away.

Unfortunately, now it was out of reach, about 15 feet away. Adam's body was shuddering in shock more than he was moving towards it. Even as he increased his stats, pulling on 60% of the [Grand Blood Berserker] while increasing his tolerance to the pain, his body wouldn't move.

Too bad there wasn't a regeneration stat to draw on, but vitality only increased toughness. Even while his body was becoming stronger and more solid, the damage was too significant to allow him to make use of that strength. The shock and debilitation that his body felt caused him to convulse while he tried to squirm it towards the nearby body.

"You know, aberration," smirked Sgolkr, "in the back of my mind I wondered if it would be enough. If changing paths would afford me enough strength to defeat you. As much as I look down on you, that self-doubt could not be excised from the back of my mind."

Adam pulled his bloody left leg to his chest, leather pants shredded, trying to get some purchase with the part of the boot that was still there. He couldn't quite get the angle and when he planted it, instead of pushing forward, it squeaked as it slipped on the rock floor, lubricated by his own blood.

"All my fears were for nothing! All my doubt! I truly am that much stronger!" laughed the Scyrric.

Looking towards his goal, only inches closed than before, Adam turned to the gloating Sgolkr.

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"Now I have the hardest choice. Do I make you watch your own people die, one by one? Do I string you up and carry you with me as I slaughter your city and take all your conquered bases for the Scyrric? Or do I end your suffering now, before I exterminate the vermin?"

Adam's limbs throbbed with blood and pain. His head and thoughts pounded with guilt and frustration. The pulsing of his soul was filled with rage and wordless shouts from the corruption.

Closing his eyes, Adam tried to get through all of that to find a skill that might help him, that might move him closer to recovery. Memories flashed through his head.

He remembered the police tase and then shoot him. He re-lived his body exploding as he tried to manipulate a rift barrier. He once more experienced the devastating battle with those damn lizard men, the ones that had practically conquered the entire globe, when their battle had devastated an entire jungle as he fought against tens of thousands of soldiers, flying creatures, and numerous magic devices that had managed to wear down his body.

Adam gasped. That wasn't his memory, but he knew what it meant. Clearing his head, ignoring the seizure that was wracking his body, Adam allowed the pulsing blood and rage to carry him through it.

Breathing heavily, he stood in a clearing. The jungle around him had been devastated. In a path that spanned hundreds of square miles, the charred trees, massive craters in the ground, and leveled vegetation would never have been thought to be one man's fight against an army.

He had so much blood spilling from the wounds he had suffered. Even though there were hundreds of corpses around him, they all belonged to grunts lower leveled than him. For him to truly heal, it would take days of directly drinking their blood. And he knew he didn't have the time. More invaders were coming. Higher level ones that would take advantage of his increasing weakness.

They had tried to wear him down, and while the fight wasn't gone from him, he needed to be at his peak to keep his rampage up. If only his mentor was there. The young man always seemed so knowledgeable and strong, unthreatenable, even as his class wasn't geared towards direct confrontations.

It was time. There was one skill that he could use. It wouldn't solve all his current problems, and using it now meant he wouldn't be able to use it for several more weeks. But it was the only option.

He would just need to continue surviving as he waited the two weeks that the cooldown lasted.

Opening his mouth, he spoke the name of his skill.

"[Draw of…"

"…Blood]," muttered Adam, inarticulately as the memory ended.

"What was that, aberration?" laughed Sgolkr upon hearing sound come from Adam. "Has your mind been so damaged that you might beg for mercy now?"

Adam's head came up. His eyes burned with fury. And confidence. They met Sgolkr's without an ounce of hesitation or surrender.

"[Draw of Blood]!"

Sgolkr's eyes grew large in surprise. He grabbed for his sword, almost fumbling his grip on it.

Adam felt the pseudo-skill trigger, and immediately knew it wasn't the same as the memory. It was hard to describe, but now that he had a legitimate class and skills with it, even though they were beginner skills, Adam could feel the shape of his pseudo-skill. He could feel the way it activated.

When using a normal skill, the block within the soul that represented it, contained in the class area, would release stored energy. That energy would flow into the appropriate part of the user's body, with the proper strength, duration, and shape. That's what caused the red flashes. It was the transfer of energy.

Adam had watched all this many times, both when he experimented in himself as well as running tests with his friends. The passage of the energy was immutable by the person.

Yet, Adam had also restructured portions of souls, including his own. He had taken the soul energy, the XP, and had shaped it, destroyed it, and constructed it. Size, depth, density -- he had manipulated it all. Often to a bad effect, but he understood how the energy coalesced and moved. He understood how it could be changed.

For the first time, Adam saw the energy within himself as it was released from a pseudo-skill, and he understood. The pseudo-skills were his body trying to do what the skill container within the class knew how to do. Pseudo-skills were the memories, an instinctual attempt to release the energy like a [System] created skill. However, it was also a failure of that.

The energy shape was sloppy, an attempt by an amateur to sculpt clay into the same shape that a computer-controlled manufacturing line had been precisely and accurately programmed to do in a repeatable way. While the pseudo-skill tried to mimic, it lacked all the precision and details. However, it also wasn't immutable.

Adam grabbed the energy as his soul tried to release it. He could feel how the details were lacking, the density of energy, the length of time it would take, and the ways it was trying to affect the world. Using his experience with soul shaping, and drawing on [Soul and Body Shaping], a unique skill he had created despite his ignorance, he changed the pseudo-skill.

Sgolkr aimed his sword at Adam and went to step forward.

"You can't know that skill!" the Scyrric hissed.

Then Sgolkr stumbled.

Blood from a sphere around Adam rose into the air. Thin streams of blood from the Sentinel soldier's body were pulled from the armor and moved towards Adam. The blood trail that Adam had left on the ground also rose and returned to him.

Surprising everyone who watched, and Sgolkr the most, green droplets seeped from the creases in Sgolkr's armor and moved towards Adam.

The air swirled around Adam for dozens of seconds as the blood reached him. Instead of drinking it with his mouth, it would touch his exposed skin and wounds, then dissipate. Very slowly, new muscles were growing.

But he knew it wouldn't be enough to heal his wounds. The blood absorption wasn't as efficient as when he drank it himself, partly due to his need to rush his shaping of the skill, and partly because it couldn't all be preserved in the transfer.

"Another trick! That skill," shouted Sgolkr, "it cannot draw from living targets. Only corpses. How are you pulling from me?!"

Adam's head began to hurt from manipulating the energy, but he needed more. He needed help. Reaching into his soul, Adam grabbed loose soul energy that he had earned in previous fights, XP that was waiting to be used to gain levels. Just like when he was patching his soul, he drew on the stationary energy and fed it into the force of the pseudo-skill, to keep it running longer.

Suddenly a body lofted through the air and splatted next to Adam. A glance showed that it was another Sentinel soldier who had died to Sgolkr. Then a second body flew towards Adam, followed by a third and random body parts.

Looking to the entrance to the chamber, Adam saw Lucas trapped behind the barrier that Brittney had created. He was shouting at the soldiers inside the chamber to send more bodies towards Adam.

As gruesome as it was, it helped immensely. More blood was drawn in. It was grabbed by the energy expelled by Adam and pulled into him. At a quicker rate, his muscles and skin on the left side regrew. The broken bones, crushed skin, and blood vessels on his right side reshaped.

Visually Adam looked horrific, like he had been painted to resemble a zombie. Yet, the pseudo-skill was doing its job as Adam continued to feed energy into it. His body reknit and his strength soared as he became able to benefit from the stats he was pulling from future Gregor.

Even after Adam felt completely healed, bodies continued to be thrown his way. He waved his hand to tell them to stop and cut off his pseudo-skill.

Blood that was in the process of transferring to him stopped midair and then fell. That included the green drops coming from Sgolkr. Adam had been so focused on the process, that he missed the Scyrric stumbling towards him even as Adam drew the life from him.

A sharp inhale of breath caught Adam's attention. Looking up, Adam saw Sgolkr's sword already gripped in two hands and raised above the lizard man's head. With an exhale and all the strength the Scyrric had, the sword was swung downwards at Adam like an executioner's axe.

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