“Incredible,” I whispered.
It was hard to tell for sure, but the strength Nupeol had just shown had likely been in the triple digits. He could have easily crushed a Roba, probably even two at once, and presumably had held back since he wouldn’t have wanted to blow all his Blood on a simple demonstration when I was still potentially a threat.
Sure, split four ways, it was somewhat less impressive. I wasn’t sure any single one of them could take down a mammoth or fend off a group of mantises, but it depended on how much they were hiding. These were also the elders, which means they had the most experience and stood at the top of the village, so they were likely the strongest ones here; Ushem and his group were likely much weaker.
But, like the Uli, they would never actually fight alone. As long as they were together, well trained Sheowon were plenty powerful enough for this world, and most importantly, they could all be this strong, with no sacrifice necessary.
The Blood Bond was what I had been looking for since I first learned about the First Blood ritual: a way to grow the stat without killing.
Uli progressed by co-opting what the Sheowon called “Blood retaliation”. By killing in a safe space, they could be guided through the retaliation—the Blood Fever—and would come out the other side of it with their baseline raised, leveraging the remains of the victim’s Blood inside of them. Since Uli simply kept on killing to raise their Blood, that baseline was practically always growing faster than their ability to wield it. My advantage in this life had been my Will, which gave me a lot more power with which to wield whatever Blood I had. As far as I could tell, though, my Will couldn’t grow until I could push myself hard enough to make it grow, which required as much Blood as Will, which I had yet to achieve.
The main issue I had—and what the Uli also had—was that Blood recovery time was horrendous. It was much more physical than my past life’s magic, and strictly required food and sleep; there was nothing atmospheric or environmental I could absorb. With only a little Blood, that could recover in a couple of days, but when the stat was high enough it could take weeks to fully recover. This naturally limited the use of Blood, since while it was renewable, the rate of recovery meant that most Uli held on to the bulk of it until it was needed, like for a hunt or a challenge.
Blood Bonding solved this in two major ways. The first was that it had a natural, built-in form of progression. If two Sheowon Bonded, they would immediately be working in tandem with 2 Blood for their techniques, while each only actually having 1 Blood. This was the opposite situation to my own, and clearly, the result was that their individual Blood stats would grow to meet the demands of the use.
As soon as one of their Blood stats grew to 2, to match what was being used in the Bond, they would be able to work with a total of 3. That would push the other Sheowon’s stat even harder, and so in no time, they would likely both be using a shared Blood of 4. From that, they would again be pushing their limits, until their individual stats started to catch up to the amounts used, and grow further.
And that was just with two Bonded, but the Sheowon often Bonded in groups of four. Whether that was two pairs that came together or the adding of an individual third and then fourth, it would push the growth even more. Most importantly, more bodies meant faster recovery. A Bonded quartet would recover the total Blood four times faster than an Uli would.
Thinking through the numbers, I realized this wasn’t even just linear progression. It was exponential. When all four had 25 Blood, they could work with a total of 100. Well before their bodies could individually catch up to 100 Blood, they’d already have surpassed that in total; by the time they all reached 50 Blood, they would be working with a total of 200, which would push them even more.
The limitation was likely still recovery, since at those levels, even split four ways, the recovery time would be huge. The Blood Bond also seemed to be a lifelong commitment, and while the elders bickered a bit, they were clearly very comfortable together. That kind of commitment would likely be something that took a lot of consideration, and probably not something that children were pushed into, like Uli boys were.
Despite the potential growth rate, if they started late and then had few reasons to use their Blood in full once reaching a comfortable strength due to how long it would take to recover, growth would slow down, no matter the potential. It would take a truly dedicated Bonded group to never stop pushing their training in order to reach the heights I was imagining, and without [Metasurvival], few, if any, would reach those.
“This must be what the All-Bonded wants me to bring back to my people,” I said. “Though I will have to learn how it is done.”
“That may be… easier said than done,” Nupeal said.
“Why’s that?”
“Who would Bond with someone who has disrespected life so much?” Brumesh said, sneering slightly as she glanced at my marked torso and arms.
“The Blood Bond isn’t just a means of gaining power,” Owawu said, with much less hostility than his fellow elder. “It is a way of living. One which requires valuing life, and an empathy for your fellow Sheowon. Having killed…” He frowned, eyes darting down at my markings. “Well, I’ve never seen anyone enter into a Blood Bond in your… state.”
“If the All-Bonded called him here, it must be possible,” Nupeal pointed out.
Were I any other Uli, it might not be. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the Uli lacked empathy, as they did manage some level of social cohesion, but their culture certainly promoted individual power over shared growth. And, whatever empathy they had certainly didn’t extend beyond the tribe to all life.
Reaching my age and power would normally suggest enough indoctrination in that way of life that it may not have been possible to pivot, although had that been the case, I probably wouldn’t have been here in the first place. My perspective was much broader than my life as an Uli, which had been the only reason I had been able to speak to the admin.
In my last life, I had been able to learn demon magic despite being human, and there was a much larger difference between those two species. Uli and Sheowon were much more similar, though Blood was a lot less dynamic than mana. I was pretty confident I could Blood Bond, assuming someone was willing to with me.
Yishola, who had been silent since I began my story, finally spoke up. “We will find out, in time. And, Mali, it will likely take a lot of time.” She paused, thinking. “You will stay with Ushem and his family while staying here, for now. You are to obey them while within the village, but they will also keep you safe and teach you our way of life. And you will meet me every few days for healing.”
“Healing? I have [Blood Restoration]. I’m just a bit malnourished,” I said.
“Not for your body,” Yishola said, smiling softly at me. “For your heart.”
“Oh.” I was being assigned court-ordered Sheowon therapy. That made sense, all things considered, but as a guy with lifetimes of secrets, that could be difficult.
“Yishola is an excellent healer,” Owawu said with a warm smile. “If anyone can help you through this, she can.”
“I—” I began, but stopped myself. I didn’t need help through this, I almost said. I had gone through more than these so-called elders could even imagine, across multiple universes, transcending death itself. But I had to play my role, and despite being blessed by their goddess, I was still a young savage to these people. “I understand.”
*
“What?” Keo shrieked after Ushem told them was the elders had decided. Pliwa opened her mouth to say something, but stopped herself before she did, and the fourth—the male whose name I still didn’t know—simply frowned.
“They said we should consider Mali a victim of his people, not the perpetrator. That he shouldn’t be punished for surviving, when the alternative was death,” Ushem said, though his tone of voice betrayed that he wasn’t entirely on board.
“And if he kills us in our sleep?” Keo hissed.
“I think he could probably kill us right now, if he wanted,” the unnamed male said to Keo. “No need to wait for us to sleep.”
“The All-Bonded wouldn’t have spoken to him and given him the ability to speak with us if he was just going to slaughter us,” Ushem said, though it was with a lot of uncertainty.
I didn’t say anything, letting Ushem explain it and calm down Keo, since anything I said would probably only further anger her. Instead, I looked over the four more closely.
Yishola had said I would be staying with Ushem’s family, and the reactions of the other three made it clear that they were a part of it, not just coworkers of some sort. Given the intimacy of the Blood Bond, it wasn’t surprising that your Bonded partner would also be a romantic one, to whatever degree the Sheowon had romantic intimacy. There certainly wasn’t very much that was romantic about how Uli kept mates.
Both the four elders and Ushem’s Bonded quartet seemed to be two males and two females, though I was relatively sure I had seen different compositions back on the beach.
I wasn’t sure if they were some sort of polycule or if they were just a pair of partners that lived together as family, but since I would be in their care for the foreseeable future, I would find out. Whatever the case was, the very existence of the Bond enforced a certain level of gender egalitarianism, which was a refreshing change after living among the Uli. There, the females were powerless, which had been one of my major concerns growing up outside of immediate survival, particularly when it came to Nadi and her well-being.
Admittedly, my concern about their powerlessness had fallen to the wayside for me over the years, since they were largely well-cared for. While Uli males hunted, fought, and died, most of the females lived to old age, and the grandmothers had a lot of soft power, in their own way. But they were denied the freedom to choose how to live their life, and could never pursue true power of their own.
The Sheowon gained power together, male and female alike, which meant that all parties had to make decisions together, and I could see how that affected the larger culture. Males could choose to only Bond with other males, but without an authoritarian level of control over the female population to deny them the teachings, females could simply choose to Bond with other females, again leveling the playing field. That went both ways, too, so males couldn’t easily be suppressed in a fully matriarchal Sheowon society either.
Bringing the Blood Bond back to the Uli could therefore both spare the children from ritual pedicide and eventually even out the gender roles. The only question was, would that actually help them survive and thrive?
The Sheowon had a lot of resources here that the Uli didn’t have, and if egalitarianism and reduced child mortality led to a population boom, the Uli might not be able to survive as a species in their homeland. Resource depletion would lead to migration, which could put them into conflict with other species like the Sheowon. Though, perhaps that’s what the admin actually wanted; the last admin certainly had cultivated a lot of conflict.
I still wasn’t sure species was the right word, which was one of the things I really wanted clarification on from the admin. If Uli and Sheowon were the same species, the difference in culture no doubt had led to wildly different sexual selection criteria. Uli males wanted strong sons to survive First Blood and go on to strengthen the tribe, and the females had little say in the matter. The result was that the Uli were taller and broader, and while the males were bigger still thanks to their Blood and training, even the females were larger and physically stronger than Sheowon males.
The difference between Sheowon male and female was also significantly smaller, but that was hard to compare due to the fact that Uli males, as a result of the culture, were all Bloodied. If I dismissed that, and only compared the Uli females to the Sheowon, I was reasonably certain that despite the differences, they were the same species. Perhaps different subspecies, but very likely able to interbreed, like the early humans who bred with Neanderthals and Denisovans.
Or maybe it was more like the difference between something like dogs and wolves. By the admin’s own admission, she was experimenting with cultures like the Sheowon. She had introduced the Blood Bond, and had thus shaped Sheowon culture. Domestication, then? Perhaps the right terminology for our differences would be that we were different breeds, the project of a mysterious higher power.
I hoped to get the chance to pray to her again soon and get answers, but given what she had said, I didn’t think she would answer me until I figured out how to get a Blood Bond of my own. That meant learning a lot more about Sheowon culture through integration.
And my first hurdle was these four people.
“I know it’s hard to believe me when I look like this,” I said, just loud enough to be heard. “But I promise I won’t harm you. I just want to learn about your way of life.”
“It is hard to believe,” Keo snapped. “Why should I?”
I locked eyes with Keo. “Because if I can succeed in the task the All-Bonded has deigned to give me, it would save countless children.”
That shut Keo up, at least for a moment.
“Bar-al Uqami. My elder brother. He died in his First Blood ritual the year before me. Uqar-il Roru,” I said, pointing to a name on my chest. “He was the child I faced in my own First Blood ritual, which only one of us was allowed to survive by my tribe. Nu-iqal Orqa, who died by my hand after he challenged me, in hopes of gaining strength to survive. I have killed, yes. Had I not, I would be a name on one of these people’s body instead. If there’s a better way… please allow me to learn it.”