Chapter 204 - Rose in Bloom

[Here we are.] (Syrus)

Successfully breaking into the building, it was time for the stealing part of the plan.

[And we even got company ahead of schedule.] Syrus could hear other footsteps in the building, which was not to plan. Mary’s leaking of information shouldn’t have happened until later, which seemed to be the case as the footsteps Syrus were wearing appeared to be from two different groups. One group were able to control their steps to be quiet, while the other two individuals were trying and failing to be quiet.

Syrus assumed it was less of purposely being quiet, and more trying to be safe in moving into a house that supposedly had traps.

[So, what a fantastic situation.] (Luna)

[Do we go loud?] Eva worriedly wondered. Was their arrival ruined at the start?

[I think we can certainly make an entrance.] (Syrus)

[Sure…] Luna sighed, [Let’s make this memorable.] 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

Downstairs, a young girl and a professor were strolling through the abandoned building. It had taken a long time to prepare for this event, and permission was denied at every possible turn, but sometimes the quest for knowledge required breaking a few regulations.

“Professor, this room doesn't show any signs of decay.”

“Nuana, the furniture used in places like this tended to be made out of high-quality material to last ages, and usually supported with coatings to help them last.” The professor pointed at the wooden structures on the walls and then at the armrests of the chairs. “The popular coating used at the time wore away with use, so anything not actively interacted with will be in a better condition.”

Suddenly, the duo was cornered as two masked figures blocked the entrances to the room. They didn’t immediately attack, but when they were noticed, the professor immediately pulled the girl behind him.

The fact that they didn’t attack first meant they weren’t here to kill them… well, at least wanted something from them before that happened.

The two masked men were joined by a third who walked towards the duo.

“I’m here to claim something lost.” Rose’s cold tone quietly echoed through the building's floor. “Are you going to step in my way?”

From one of the hallways, a woman with nearly entirely dark blood red hair, excluding a few small strains of luminescent white, was hovering over her face.

To be Rose, they had to play up the act. They had already begun when they first met Alba. Whenever Syrus spoke, she tried to use some different dialogue from normal, and now it was time for the second attempt. This was a performance they were all going to work together on.

The man she was slowly walking up to turned around and attacked, and Anlesa slapped the attack out of the way with enough force that the person’s arm hit the wall.

“So this is the county’s defence?” A small knife of blood appeared from a crack that opened in Rose’s hand. Entering into combat with the other intruder who jumped to support, their enemy quickly realised they were completely outmatched. Each blow shattered bones, and the woman's red eyes gazed into his soul. “Vermin, the lot of you.”

The third member who hadn’t attacked ran from the room and left the building, but the sound of his footsteps. The other two masked individuals were quick to follow. Syrus might’ve tried to chase, but Rose did not care for such action and honestly, if more came later, the better.

Anlesa turned to the remaining two people in the room. “Hello, children, are you going to interrupt me?”

[Professor Aalmost?] Eva was stunned seeing the two figures in the room. Running into him was certainly not what she expected to happen today.

On the ground was a gentleman with blue hair and grey in his beard, and a younger woman also wearing a lab coat next to him. The older man tried to raise his arm in front of the girl as he tried to wobble up to stand between Anlesa and them.

[Wow, we keep running into your friends.] (Syrus)

[Wait, I remember seeing him from the window at the school.] Luna remembered Eva showing some odd emotions stirred when she saw the person in the window that time.

[Yes… he is that person.] (Eva)

[Investigating the royal family as well…] Syrus decided not to mention that perhaps talking to him would’ve been a potentially good idea.

Getting over the shock and fear that the situation had given him. The man asked, “What are you doing here…?”

“Revenge,” Anlesa replied. Anlesa had decided what Rose’s motivation was going to be and what truths this character was going to believe.

Nuana said, “You want to burn down the royal family’s home for revenge?”

“Child, where did you get that idea?” Rose’s cold red eyes stared into Nuana’s soul.

“...I… or what reason would you be in the royal family’s former house?”

Anlesa asked, “Is your motivation to burn it down?”

“No!”

“Then why would mine be?”

“You said you are here for revenge…”

Rose turned away and continued to follow the path to the secret room. “Why would that revenge necessarily be against the royal family?”

There were many secrets to the house. Syrus had explored a few places that had internal traps, and she learned from a friend about how to pick up on the different sounds of mechanical traps. Luna assisted by using her Moonlight to help search between the gaps. Together with their knowledge of such places, Luna had also read a lot about the design of such places from the books in the church. A weird combination of differing learned sources, magic, and insider information meant they had a good shot at finding whatever was hidden away. If, of course, there was something hidden.

The duo tried to slowly follow her, and Anlesa chose to allow them to, but eventually they chose to take a step back after Rose chose to completely ignore them. Aalmost whispered to Nuana that they couldn’t be here for long and went to continue their investigation in a different location.

The method to access the secret underground room was long. Technically, there were two ways: one with a password and key, which was quick, and another that required activating a bunch of different mechanisms in the correct order. Sadly, they didn’t have a key.

When they were nearly done. “Did you bring that woman here?” Syrus heard a quiet, fearsome voice threaten someone from a few rooms over.

[Looks like they came back.] (Syrus)

[Did you not hear them re-enter?] (Luna)

[No, I did not.] Syrus turned around and raised her arm.

In the other room, Nuana was on the ground with a massive bruise on her face and pinned to the ground with wooden nails, but she couldn’t scream.

Aalmost was left kneeling on the ground as the same wooden nails pierced his skin as the man demanded answers. The whole space felt silence and the lack of noise felt suffocating.

“Vermin, you have returned.” Anlesa entered the room and ripped the man off the ground into a wall. He quickly tried to fight back, but he missed, and Anlesa punched a few times with clear sounds of bones cracking and then pinned him to the wall.

Nuana gasped for air as she felt the air seem to shake. The mana around Rose seemed alive in a bloody red colour, as the woman's cold rage held the man to the wall.

Nuana knew she shouldn’t feel sympathy for the man. He attacked them and demanded answers from her teacher, but a part of her couldn’t help but do so, if only so she could push back the fears of being in that situation herself.

Syrus was not adept at utilising her Blood Attribute outside her body. At best, she could stretch it out and seal a wound, but crafting weapons and proper armour was not possible. She had wondered why that was the case, and part of her training in her last life she had tried to learn external blood manipulation. However, she came up short every time.

When they fought as Anlesa in the Demon Home, they displayed a level of Blood control that far surpassed Syrus’s own abilities. Now that wasn’t too strange. Every ability of theirs from the two times they had become Anlesa had been amplified to drastic proportions. Still, from the vague memories, Syrus knew she couldn’t replicate them even if she wanted to. There seemed to be a limitation to what her Attribute could do.

It wasn’t an unknown sentiment. It had been documented that some Attribute users of the same Attribute had vastly different strengths. Manipulation was an easy one, where some people had far easier times putting their mana into objects than others. Syrus had met people who could fling fireballs across a town but couldn’t keep a flame near their bodies without it exploding.

There were more extreme examples like Blood. People like Syrus, who had mastered Blood’s physical strengthening side, and others who had mastered external manipulation.

However, when they became Anlesa. Syrus didn’t believe they were stepping into the sphere; instead, it was a similar but still different space. They weren’t controlling blood objects or floating weapons. Blood formed around them as a weapon and armour.

It was said that external blood manipulation was the combination of talent and practice. It was an art that required proper learning of spells and magic to use effectively. Syrus had met someone who fit the talent side, but didn’t have the learning to make proper use of his skills. He could strengthen himself weakly, but he had the talent for transferring blood between people. Syrus watched the blood float in the air as it passed between them. While he could at least do some amount of strengthening, she could not make her blood just float.

So what happened upon gaining Anlesa’s knowledge on passing the inbuilt limitation and the power of the Redux crystals? When the conditions were met, Syrus had learned of a new way to empower her combat potential. And Rose was the perfect avenue to test that in live practice.

Syrus didn’t know if it was actually any different from the path of people who mastered external Blood magic on a fundamental level. She wasn’t the type to care or research that information. All she did know was that she could certainly use this power to her advantage.

Wooden spikes emerged from the walls and launched towards Rose, and Anlesa took them. The wooden spikes only lightly pierced the skin, and those cold eyes stayed on her target.

Blood dripped down the side of Rose’s head, but it hadn’t been hit at all.

“Child, that was a mistake.” The woman didn’t sound energetic, but the anger in the words was felt.

Nuana gasped again, not out of fear but pure shock. When she saw their saviour again, a red horn with a black tip had grown from the left side of her forehead. The horn in question was taller and sharper than Eva’s normal horn and was a recent advancement in her abilities, able to shift the appearance of it. That didn’t sound like anything special, but it was a step closer to making more drastic changes.

The opposite side of her face, blood hardened and formed a mask that covered that half of her face and only revealed her eye. A second horn grew from the mask, this one a pure blood red.

Never in Nuana’s life did she think she would see an Exotic Attribute owner in the city, and especially not in this situation of all places. The research on those attributes had been greatly halted since the plague, and most of the existing material had been lost, but the curiosity about this mostly unknown branch of the core system of their world was deeply fascinating for her and in her opinion, most researchers. Even normal attributes hadn’t been explored that in depth. There were certainly places that had done better jobs in researching Attributes. Places that work to develop magic were likely the closest in understanding the nature of Attributes.

Nuana knew of only one major study that had been saved from the purge. In the past, Eletscoep had a long-term study into Exotic Attributes. It tracked the spread and how often they were passed down to offspring. The study was a great record at helping identify people lost during the plague.

“So, who do you belong to?”

The man tried to create another spike, and, realising the uselessness of the situation, Syrus made her choice for Rose.

Nuana had returned from being lost in her own thoughts as she heard a crack as the masked man fell to the ground.

Anlesa didn’t even look at the body and simply walked away. Nuana felt the mana in the air slowly fade and watched as the mask disappeared, but the horn stayed, before the woman touched it, and with a small spark of light, it faded away.

Returning to the previous room, they completed the process to open the door, which the noise caused the other two to jump and run into where Anlesa had moved to. Only to see the door closing behind her.