After Bella recovered from watching Diane plunge into the bloodied water, she hesitated, turning to look at me. "Do you think she's realized that you still have the respawn anchor in your inventory?" She asked, and I let out a low groan, pulling the stone out and placing it on the dash of the car.

"If not, she'll remember soon…" I said with a shake of my head. "She gets this way whenever she finds a skill or something that she thinks suits her roleplay. I'm guessing she's got ideas in her head about ninjas manipulating enemies through wires or something."

Normally, I'd want to go down to support Diane, but that wasn't really an option here. There wasn't a level surface to park and place the respawn anchor on while Bella waited. And, as Diane pointed out, she can't allow both herself and Bella to breathe underwater at the same time.

In order to keep an eye on Diane, I activated my Hawkeye-X. Now that I had trained it a lot more, I could project my vision anywhere within five hundred meters of myself, as opposed to the original fifty meters. With this enhancement, I projected my sight underwater, watching as Diane deftly swam through the shipwrecks, looking for the entrance to the dungeon.

She was going out of her way to avoid fighting the fish, flickering in and out of stealth to lose their attention. To help speed things up, I scanned the area myself, pointing towards one of the broken ships with a projected arrow. Diane was slightly surprised at first, but soon nodded and shot towards the ship.

As soon as she had entered the ship, where I spotted the largest source of blood parasites coming from, I lost sight of her. Despite my skills, I wasn't able to project my senses into a dungeon.

"How is she?" Bella asked when she realized that I was no longer focusing into the distance.

"She's fine. It looks like she's being pretty cautious right now. So, she'll probably try to avoid fighting as much as she can, and grab each of the chests. Maybe fight the boss. Knowing her… if she can't get the skill book she wants, she'll come out and swap with me. You should be prepared for that."

When I said that, Bella's eyes went wide, and she let out a low gulp. Naturally, that meant that they'd have to try to hide on top of one of the broken ships, away from the parasitic creatures. As I was thinking about that, Diane must have gotten lucky. She sent me a series of exclamation marks in a private message, as well as a skill description.

Blood Link (Martial - 1☆): Allows the user to create a Blood familiar.

Mana Burden: 5% Reservation. Level: 1(0%)

My eyes widened in surprise, realizing that both of us had misunderstood the nature of the Blood Puppet skill. This wasn't a skill to manipulate your target, but to create a familiar out of your own blood. Moreover, it was a Martial familiar. This was different from the clones that I created, which were classified as summoned entities. Familiars essentially had their own lives, and could even level up and acquire skills.

If someone with this skill possessed the Master of the Horde trait from that necromancer, they could create an army of blood puppets. Of course, I had no idea what special abilities blood familiars had yet. Furthermore, they would need to be trained from scratch, so they wouldn't immediately be useful in battle.

Should I look for a second book for you, or head out now? Diane asked, and I hesitated. If she knew the effect of the skill from the start, she would have definitely just grabbed the book for me and had me teach her the skill. But, since I showed no real interest previously, she was just planning to grab the skill for herself.

Try to get another one, if you can. If not, I'll go in to try my luck next. I told her. Also, try to verify the abilities of the familiar.

After I sent that message, there was silence from Diane, which only made me more and more anxious. I couldn't tell whether she was having trouble, or was just busy verifying things, or if she was looking for the next chest.

It wasn't until half an hour later that she sent me another image, this one of a blood-red skill book. On my way out. Talk when there.

After she sent that message, it only took her about five minutes to swim out of the dungeon, jumping up onto one of the boats and signaling for me to retrieve her. Due to her needing to drop stealth for this, the parasites were swarming towards that boat, crawling up its hull.

I created a projected path for her, and she immediately began to run along it, stopping just outside the car to dry herself off. "Thanks. And sorry for rushing out like that, got a bit carried away."

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"A bit." Bella said with some amusement, earning a small pout from the halfling.

"Anyways, I confirmed a few things before I had to book it out of there. First, the blood familiar takes the form of the user, and can only be created if the user has some form of bleeding to use as a medium. Secondly, the puppet starts at level one, without any traits or skills. All it can do is regular movement. Third, and this one's not quite confirmed, but the puppet seems to retain its individuality between summons. That's just a speculation on my part, but the puppet seemed to remember that the parasites were dangerous and tried to avoid them the second time I summoned it."

I pursed my lips, somewhat disappointed with these discoveries. "We'll need to test them a bit more extensively. The odds of us finding a dungeon that low level around here are pretty low. And there should be some more unique properties about it. Maybe Karlson's heard of the skill?"

Diane blinked, but nodded her head, sending me the second book that she received. "It's worth a shot. Should I try to send a message to him when I go offline later?"

"Huh? Oh, right, I never got the chance to mention it. I have Karlson on my friends list now." I said with a smile, surprising Diane. "I met him again back at Elvenwall, and we added each other."

"Are you talking about the halfling that's always hanging around the library?" Bella asked, and I nodded my head, sending a message to Karlson.

Have you ever read anything about a skill called Blood Link? It is a Martial skill to create a familiar.

Oh! Give me just a minute! I remember seeing a book about blood skills last night. He responded, going silent for a short while. Here it is, Chronicles of the Blood Oath. It looks like an interesting story depicting fanatics that worshipped the moon, wielding a variety of skills. Most books like these include detailed descriptions of the skills involved, as they are often taken and studied afterwards to prevent future mishaps.

Let's see… Blood Link looks to be quite the interesting skill. As does its evolved version, Blood Puppet. Blood Link creates the most primitive form of a blood familiar, which takes on the appearance of the creator. In order for this blood familiar to grow stronger, it has to be fed the blood of higher level creatures.

When fed blood in this way, there is a certain chance of obtaining skills from the blood used. With the basic Blood Link skill, it can only store the skills of a single type of creature at most, so it's best to be picky.

However, this weakness is lessened when it evolves into Blood Puppet. This skill is able to send your blood familiar into a corpse. One that has blood of its own, obviously. The familiar devours the corpse from within, taking on its appearance and abilities. It can also swap between any form it has mastered at will, making it a formidable tool in battle.

As Karlson was explaining this to me, I was sharing the information with Diane and Bella as well. Diane nodded her head in understanding when she realizing the reason her familiar was so weak.

The highest recorded stage of this skill is its third tier, Blood Thrall. At this tier, you can send your blood familiar into the body of a wounded enemy, forcibly taking over their body in the middle of combat. The possessed body will be able to use its original skills, as well as the skills of the familiar.

That sounded more like the skill Diane was initially expecting. Evident by how her eyes seemed to light up with the news. Clearly, this would be a new staple for her in the future, once she found something suitable to feed to it.

Are there any notes about leveling up the skill? I asked curiously, but received a disappointing reply.

Not specifically! My guess is just standard usage, but if that doesn't work, it will be up to your experimentation.

With a sigh, I nodded my head, thanking Karlson for the information. Diane climbed into the car after she had dried off, and we drove into the sky again to start looking for other dungeons. Preferably ones where it looked like we would be able to set up a safe respawn point, so all three of us could participate.

That said, I didn't put the respawn anchor back in my inventory after we set off, just in case anyone decided to jump out of the car again. I wanted us to be able to disembark at a moment's notice.

After about twenty minutes of driving over the surface of the water, Diane's eyes narrowed into the distance. "Is that… a castle?" She asked, pointing towards a large structure floating on the water in the distance.

Looking closely, it appeared to be a floating fortress, complete with large stone walls. Ballista were firing regular projectiles into the nearby water, striking at shadows moving beneath the surface.

When one of the projectiles struck, the shadow rose up, a huge amount of water displacing to reveal a pitch-black whale thirty meters long. As soon as it surfaced, it shot a wave of black energy at the tower, crippling the ballista.

However, to my surprise, when I zoomed my vision in on the walls, I found that they weren't manned. The ballista were firing autonomously. "Well… that's definitely a dungeon." I muttered, and Diane nodded her head, though she was looking at the pitch black whales.

"Those looked like shadow skills…" She muttered under her breath, and I rolled my eyes with a slight smirk, turning to drive towards the castle. To my delight, the artillery on the walls paid no attention to us as we arrived, even if we weren't under stealth. Additionally, there were no security features stopping us from landing, and no troops inside to question us. It truly seemed as if the castle was operating completely on its own, in an eternal struggle against the black whale outside.

"Let's split up and see if we can gather any information." I said, removing the respawn stone from the car and placing it near the stairs leading into the castle proper. To be safe, I left my three clones behind to guard the anchor. "If anyone dies and respawns, be sure to alert the others."

The two girls nodded their heads, and we each split up. Diane rushed towards the walls, while Bella investigated the courtyard surrounding the castle. As for myself, I went straight into the castle, assuming that any information about this place should be located there. Or, if there was an entity controlling everything, I'd be able to find them.

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