After obtaining a power reted to blood the next step was obvious, how do you strengthen or break it? Mixing it with another blood-based ability of course. “Vampires are out and is any form of vampirism. I still ck Mana so any magical form of hemomancy was also out. So that leaves, moderately unexpined Sci-Fi route?” And I had an idea for where to turn - an item from a not-so-wonderful wondernd and the tale of a naughty little woodpecker.

  The object in question was a red hexagonal prism that housed a parasite (Or did it count as a virus? I think they called them nanomachines.) Either way, it housed a microscopic entity dubbed the Nameless Worm. Like the Bloodstone the Nameless Worm bonds with the host, so it doesn’t spread like a virus. From there the recipient receives a change in their blood, the Nameless Worm acting as a medium allows blood to be controlled at will. The ability dubbed a Branch of Sin was unique to each individual.

  In an infected individual, the extracted blood appears as a sort of string that's directly connected to the nervous system through their veins and arteries. This blood can then be returned to the body afterward if it's still connected (And in some cases can still be controlled even when not connected to the body). Bdes, bombs, hardened armor, a variety of constructs, all made with one’s own blood. It converted an ultimate weakness into an ultimate offense. After all, who wouldn’t want magic blood?

  I did have some questions, such as how the Bloodborn would react. And what my own Branch of Sin would be. In the end, the only way to answer was to reach in and find out.

  Reaching my hand into the image,

  Spoiler

  [colpse]I quickly pulled out the red crystal. Upon pulling my hand back through, “Mufhhh” I grunted as the red shard was instantly lodged within my right palm. “Right, that was a thing.” Momentum was consistent when I took things out of images. Since time doesn’t pass inside static images the moment an object in motion can exert that motion, it does. In this case, it was less grabbing and more aptly catching the flying shard while I pulled it from the panel.

  Looking at my right palm, the shard was lodged deep inside. The red color slowly leaked out over the rest of my hand. While I took in this sight, I felt my veins prickle from the inside and the palm-sized infant within my dantain stirred once again. Its eyes opened wide, and I felt it doing something.

  Blood from my right hand was brought over and it seemed to be inspected (Was it treating the foreign bodies as an infection? Or is it?) Whatever it was doing it seemed to finish up quick before it started to move. Heading out from my dantain the red mass of Ki went straight to my right hand. Using Ki I could feel the fight between the two sides though there was an inevitable outcome. The red shard was quickly torn apart and consumed by my Bloodborn. Once it had finished, I didn’t feel any different, the Bloodborn soon returned to my dantain to sleep, and I was left to stare at the hole in my right hand.

  The blood around it had dried and turned bck, and the same had happened with the cut on my wrist. Pcing my forearm into the bowl now that it was empty, spshed it with some of the red healing potion and watched the two wounds recover in the blink of an eye. With that done, I was left to wonder if it worked and the only way to find out was to cut myself again.

  I took one of the blood recovery pills (they taste like liver) then used the bck knife to once again cut my wrist. Fresh blood started to ooze from the wound, but not in a normal way. Instead of dripping or pouring everywhere the blood that came from the cut was a congealed blob with a consistency of jelly.

  Moving my arm around, the blob remained unaffected by anything other than gravity. It was being pulled towards the ground but still connected to my arm.“It feels weird.” I really don’t know what else to say. It was like when I first tried to use Ki, that feeling of unfamiliarity, but this time the strangeness was its tangibility. It was like I suddenly had a new arm or leg. And unlike Ki, I felt like I could move it the same way I did my regur appendages.

  Upon trying to flex the glob of blood I could feel my body from the inside before it cringed and tensed. The appalling sensation contorted my body into a fetal position.

  The Bloodborn attempting to sleep within my dantain was awoken by the reaction. Seeing that it had made a mistake by absorbing the Nameless Worm it hastily began making corrections moving around my insides before heading to my head. I felt a pinch before the tension in my body was released then I felt it encouraging me to continue.

  Once again, I tried to flex the blood on my arm, this time I didn’t have an exaggerated physical reaction it just felt gross. I could suddenly feel all my blood as it moved within my body. Well, not completely, there were two spots I couldn’t feel, being the blood in my heart and the fluid in my head. The sensation of feeling your blood moving directly was just pin weird. I couldn’t help but question (If there was a hiccup in the process somewhere).

  Following my thoughts my Bloodborn got to work, traveling from my head around my body through my vascur system. As it moved, I felt the sensation of my blood moving less and less. It seemed to have trimmed the miscelneous and redundant connections.

  “That’s better… Tentacle?” After my Bloodborn combed through and fixed the mess it had created the glob of blood was responding, properly this time. And no, it wasn’t tentacles, more accurately it was string-like strands of blood. “It wiggled!” The blood began to wiggle around (ok, it's a tentacle).

  From here I tried to treat it like any other limb. Attempting to stretch caused the blood to extend in a rope-like form shooting out and stretching over the table before being brought down over the edge by gravity. Then I tried flexing it - in response the rope of blood crystalized, becoming a dark, crimson-colored crystal with many faces.

  “Humm…” Looking over the new crystalline form I noticed the hardened sections varied in size. The smaller sections were just malleable enough to move but rger faces were completely solidified. The reason was likely the smaller sections having just enough unsolidified blood to allow manipution. And all of it was still connected to my wrist. Releasing the flex caused the rope to lose rigidity but some parts of the crystalline formation remained (I wonder if they’re sharp)?

  I tried stretching again to see if that would dissolve the remaining crystals. In response the blood bobbed this way and that while I tried to adapt my control. It wasn’t too long before I ended up stretching it in two different directions and the rope-like strand split down the middle becoming two separate strands and just like that, I gained another limb.

  With a little more practice, treating them like fingers, I got the two tendrils to articute simirly. (They still looked like tentacles). Treating them like a hand caused them to sprout stubby little fingers, with barely any articution. If I trained with it for some time, I could probably use them like hands. However, control over the crystalline formations would be more difficult to utilize

  Seeing that everything was working properly (this time), my Bloodborn attempted to return to my dantain “No, no, you’re not done yet.” I forced it out of my body, its gaseous form ejected all at once. Hovered above the table with what looked to be a sad expression from its eyes. “Hey, I’m not trying to be mean. I just need to see how this works on you.” Since its body is made of my blood, and we are mentally connected, this should work.

  Combining their effects on the mist-like body of my Bloodborn caused its form to solidify. The bloody gas clumped together turning into a hemisphere as it sat on the table (its eyes still looked back at me). I couldn’t help but imagine a cube before the shape changed again, turning into a cube (With eyes that looked at me mournfully). “Sorry.” I couldn’t help but apologize, “Let’s try this.” Imaging a doll-like body in my mind, my Bloodborn slowly took shape. It had arms and legs of less-than-expected quality, and its torso and head could use some work.

  With a few more iterations my Bloodborn had a small humanoid body. And I gained some insight into the crystalizing effect, it was easier to adjust its body before activating the hardening effect. Overall, I could use it to change his body into different shapes before hardening. In essence, I could turn him into a literal blood diamond and a variety of other shapes and forms.

  As for his new body, it was still small, a little smaller than two feet in height but now having a defined humanoid form with both arms and legs. Due to trial and error and many attempts with the crystallizing effect, I found that I could create small sections within his body that he could move around. These small formations were then added to his fingers and toes, giving him a solid body part that could be adjusted naturally (Without my direct input. And they were also quite sharp.) His hair was still a work in progress, considering it was still more boneless limb than strands thin enough to be called hair. In total, he had six small tentacles on his head just barely out of his eyes. Aside from the seven-pointed star on his forehead and his bright red eyes, his face reminded me of mine when I was younger. And while he cks a mouth, he seems quite happy with the new form putting his little arms in the air as he circles the room.

  I was quite satisfied as well because the Ki cost for keeping him out had decreased since he had a stable form now. The only thing I still needed to check was if/how I could augment my blood with Ki directly, but that can come ter, I'm too tired for that right now.

  "Now for your job, go look around the mountainside, see if any seeds are left over from that tree."

  END

  Spoilerkidmonkey94

  Kindly donated from the series Deadman Wondernd and yes, I reread the whole manga which took about 2 days.

  Chapter 22 gives this image of the Nameless Worm

  Spoiler

  Which I find hard to see as a nanomachine, though any type of nanomachine is more likely to be organic in nature than a metal construct.

  [colpse]While Chapter 46 expins pretty much everything:

  SpoilerThe Nameless Worm- the nanomachine inside the hematopoietic stem cells- gave birth to mutated blood cell components and bonded with the brain’s glial cells. The nameless worm serves as a medium allowing blood to be controlled at will.

  Testing scene:

  A gravitational anomaly at a molecur level! Its... A super compression of matter caused by high-speed blood flow!

  Glial cells:

  SpoilerGlial cells are a type of cell that provides physical and chemical support to neurons and maintain their environment. Located in the central nervous system and peripheral nervous system, glial cells are sometimes called the "glue" of the nervous system, as well as neuroglia or just glia.

  Interesting note: I remember them calling them 'temporary nerves' when referring to how characters controlled their blood.

  [colpse][colpse]I think it’s kinda poetic that James’ first real additional ability is a Branch of Sin.

  [colpse]