Robert Vlaho
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[1% LIFESTEAL] Chapter 199 - Hope and Despair
🕑 Added 2025-08-19 12:33:25 +0000 UTCUp and all along the wall were countless defenders, anxiously waiting for whatever they were invited here for. It was a tense scene, especially knowing many of them had been taken away from defending other sides of the city, which were by no means free of assault.
With only a few people left to defend the other sides, there was no doubt that whyever they were here had to be of extreme importance. Coupled with the recent news of many of the mercenaries deserting the defense force, the situation painted a rather bleak picture.
By the time the people had gathered, the two hour mark already passed. And off in the distance, they spotted the infamous Freddy Cliff.
For many, this was the first time they were seeing him in person. While he’d been too preoccupied with everything to notice, his reputation had grown even more unwieldy, with tales of his accomplishments out in the wild spreading like a plague, with many believing it was nothing but propaganda.
From how long he spent fighting, to the number of things he killed, to the shambling giant he’d taken out with a single javelin thrown from miles away—it was simply too fantastical to be true, and yet, the rumors were too loud and flashy to be ignored.
Regardless of what they might think, even the greatest of skeptics kept their mouths shut at the sight of him.
Walking slowly across the plains in his half-white, half-black armor, carrying his massive executioner sword slung over his shoulder, he was followed by the black-clad Emily Umbra, another figure that might as well be a legend to the average defender.
She skipped along beside him, her well-honed vision revealing the looks on many of the crowd members' faces. It wasn’t new for others to direct awe-stricken looks at her.
But this was different.
Her irritation was starting to reach a boiling point.
She had followed him to see what exactly he would do, which he welcomed, and rather than explaining anything, Freddy simply ignored her as he proceeded to chase down anything that can bleed and killing it with the kind of speed and brutality that even she had to surrender was quite impressive—even if a bit crude.
And now, he seemed to be using her as little more than a tool to aid his inflated image before the crowd. If it wasn’t for the gnawing curiosity at what he’d do, she would have strung him up and hung him upside down before the crowd.
But there had to be a reason for why he was doing all this.
And really, why did he provoke that giant drake? That thing was nasty enough that it would take some serious effort to take it down, even if they fought together.
The drake, which was now tailing them, released a furious roar that was distant and yet approaching rapidly, the pain of its wounded tail adding quite a bit of intensity to its bellow.
The numerous defenders shuffled anxiously at the sound, their reaction bordering on panic.
It was at that moment that Freddy turned to face her with his golden mask, and then coughed. “Hey, uh… Do you have any tips for how to do a rousing speech?”
She stared at him for a long moment before bursting into a sudden bout of laughter. “What!? Are you joking?” At his utter stillness, her jovial expression turned into one of utter bafflement. “You’re serious.”
“I’m dead serious. I suck at this kind of stuff.”
“You know, you really should have thought about this sooner…”
He sighed. “I thought I’d be able to do it given the situation, but I’m feeling kind of nervous now. I mean… look at the size of that crowd. Sheesh.”
She lightly slapped him on the back of the shoulder. “Hey, if you aren’t feeling up to the task, I can take over.”
He shook his head. “No. It has to be me. I’m the face of the defense force and the leader of the city. Which is exactly why this is so nerve-racking…”
“Just give it a shot. What’s the worst that can happen, anyway?”
“Let me think—I fumble the speech and come across as incompetent, which plunges the morale of the city, allowing the ether virus to take hold and snowball out of control until everyone is dead?”
Emily’s expression suddenly turned serious. “You’re overthinking things. Besides, there’s a massive drake running our way, so if you don’t hurry up, I’m guessing whatever plan you have will be thrown into question anyway.”
“Shit. You’re right.” He paused for a long moment, then released a tired breath. “I’m just gonna say what’s on my mind. If it works, it works, if it doesn’t, well… at least I tried.”
Freddy reached for his golden mask, took it off, pulled his head cover off and then took a few steps forward, before stopping as he looked up at the wall. From above, he felt the tides of insanity churning like a tsunami rising into the sky. It was an oppressive feeling—he felt like he’d never truly be used to this sixth sense.
But as he listened and observed, he started to notice. The ways the insanity was spreading. The things fueling it. The way he could extinguish it. As he followed the trail of madness to its source, words, all on their own, started coming to him.
He waited for a moment for the crowds to quiet down. He took a deep breath to calm his nerves. Then, he shouted in a voice so loud it nearly deafened Emily. “You have been having nightmares,” he declared, “of square-eyed people telling you horrible things.”
Many of the crowd members’ eyes widened in surprise. “How did he know?” echoed through the crowd as he took another step forward.
Spreading his arms wide, he shouted, “The virus that’s infecting the monsters is the cause of this!”
Alarm lit up through the crowd.
“The torment it puts you through in your sleep is designed to make you succumb. It pokes at your greatest weaknesses, pushing you to despair! And then, when you’re at your weakest, it will make you the offer to willingly allow it into the inviolable depths of your soul.” He paused for a long moment, leaving the crowd in a stunned silence. “That is exactly what happened to a few unfortunate workers.
“And then, under the virus’s influence, they destroyed a section of the wall, losing their lives shortly afterwards. Do you want to end up like them!?”
Another roar came from behind him, and this time, the drake became visible as it crushed a small grove of trees and sprinted out into the empty plains. In less than a minute, it would be upon Freddy and Emily.
Yelps and shouts of surprise sounded through the crowd, only for Freddy to take another step forward. “In the midst of all this, you’ve heard some rather bad news. The mercenaries deserted the defense force! The elites who have come to help are choosing to take their people away! So who will maintain the walls if they crumble!? Who will fight back against the swarm!?”
The anxiety of the crowd became palpable.
Freddy took another step forward. “Tell me, then! Do you think we’re helpless!? Do you think we’re doomed!?” He paused. “Are you going to surrender!?”
“Dude…” Emily muttered, getting into a fighting stance. “The drake is almost heeeere!” she reminded him in a sarcastic sing-song voice. “You better hurry.”
Freddy raised his hand. “If you think you’ll have a better chance, then I advise you to leave and try your luck in the wilderness. But for those of you who want to stay—”
He raised an arm into the sky and whispered, “Blood Sacrifice.”
Immediately, uncountable streams of blood started flowing in from far out in the plains. Every monster he’d killed, every beast he’d felled in the last two hours. It hadn’t taken him long, but even in just that time, he had spilled enough blood to fill a small lake. Throughout his time fighting the monster hordes, the amount of bloodshed he’d created was difficult to describe. And his Blood Ring had bathed in enough crimson to grow to a truly awe-inspiring degree.
Blood Ring: -20% essence cost, +22% power for blood-affinity abilities. Can be used to release Bloodshed. Attacks inflict severe bleeding.
If this were just another regular cursed item, with effects like these, it would verge on being priceless. Any of its three effects was enough on its own to cause a serious bidding war between major blood factions. But Freddy would never sell the item. To him, it was likely the most important treasure he had, and this was in no small part due to the way it worked with Blood Sacrifice.
With -20% essence cost, every drop of blood he used went much further. With +22% power, that blood displayed an explosive might.
As the massive streams of blood flowed above its head, even the giant drake was forced to slow down and approach more carefully. But regardless, it was already too late.
The blood gathered into a spherical pool. And then, it morphed into a mass of pure blood essence, coiling together and growing into a giant mass of red, towering way above the walls. Then, it started to solidify.
Freddy grinned. For the first time ever, he’d outdone that time he killed the leviathan.
Clad in dripping brown robes appeared a skeletal giant, a deformed, uneven skull hiding beneath its hood. It had two arms on its left side, and one on the right, with its left leg splitting into two from the knee down. As it appeared, it turned to face the sky. And then, it screamed.
Everyone and everything that heard the shout froze on the spot, including the massive drake. In a mere instant, the monster had gone from predator to prey, being only about as large as a small dog compared to the towering bloodshed. After a mere second of hesitation, its instincts finally took over, and it turned to run in the other direction.
But Bloodshed had other plans. It bent down, reaching towards the drake and picking it up around its torso. The drake tried fighting back, but in the colossal grasp of the skeletal titan, it was completely helpless as it was raised towards the skull, and bloody teeth bit its head off its body.
The crowd looked on in stunned terror, with many looking like they were on the verge of running away.
It was at this moment that Bloodshed dropped the drake’s body, bent down, and picked Freddy up onto its other palm, raising him high above the crowd along the wall. “For those of you who want to stay”—he spread his arms out—”know that the monsters won’t step foot into this city! And to the wicked things haunting your dreams, let them know who is fighting on your side!”
He was sweaty and breathing heavily by the time he was finished. “That was good, right…?” he whispered to himself.
The crowd gave him no standing ovation. His speech didn’t exactly have the rousing quality he expected. But it had worked, nonetheless. Even if most of the people down there looked scared shitless at the sight before them, he could smell their despair withering away.
Whether they knew it or not, the idea of having Bloodshed fighting on their side was doing wonders for making them feel safer.
And for Freddy, that was good enough. “That will be all!” he said. “Everyone, go back to your stations! And remember, if any serious threat shows its face, you just have to let me know! That being said, Bloodshed can’t go all the way around to the Southern side of the wall. If something appears there, I'll deal with it myself!”
Many of the people present quickly nodded and then virtually sprinted away, clearly eager to get as far from the massive skeleton as humanly possible.
Freddy looked down, only to spot Emily staring at him in total shock. Same could be said for Georgie, but she was also grinning at him maniacally and shaking her head.
And then there was the person he wasn’t looking forward to having to confront—the adjudicator.
The man was staring at Freddy with a deeply disappointed, borderline hostile glare. And it didn’t take a genius to figure out why. Sighing, Freddy commanded Bloodshed to put him down on the wall, where the adjudicator approached him as soon as he set foot. “My office. Now.”
***
“You have three spirit abilities," the adjudicator said as soon as they walked in. “And you haven’t told me.”
Now, if Freddy was dumb, he could have said something like “I didn’t know it was relevant.” But it was definitely relevant. For starters, it was “common knowledge”—or rather, a misconception—that spirit abilities stunted an archhuman’s growth, with 3 of them slowing it down by 99%. What most people didn’t know was that spirit abilities also compressed aura, amplifying its potency.
And there was a good reason why nobody knew this. After all, as far as public knowledge went…
Nobody had ever ascended with 3 spirit abilities in their soul. Ever.
The adjudicator sighed at Freddy’s silence. “Do you have any idea what kind of a nightmare you’ve just created for me?” He glared at Freddy. “Almost everything I was authorized to do for you was under the premise that you were a candidate for the position of a future Overlord. Almost. Everything.” He took an aggressive step in Freddy’s direction. “Do you have the slightest clue what this now means? I’m in deep shit, Freddy. Deep, deep shit.”
“Not if I go up a star,” Freddy said.
“Hah! You’re an outstanding young man, but it seems you don’t know your mathematics. Do you have any idea what it means to have your growth handicapped to that degree? You have to be a HUNDRED”—he shouted, his veins bulging on his face—”times more impressive than a regular archhuman to make it to the third star. A hundred. And you’re not. I know you’re not. You’d have told me if you were ready to ascend, but you’re not, because you won’t be, not for a long, long time.”
Freddy suddenly tensed. He wanted to tell the man the truth behind spirit abilities, but without proof, he’d just sound like a madman. He had been, and still was, fully confident that he’d reach the third star one day. But he’d severely underestimated just what his third spirit ability meant to the adjudicator. “Am I in trouble?” he asked.
“No. Yes.” The adjudicator groaned. “Maybe. I don’t know. I will have to stand trial before the high adjudicators for this. And the only way I could possibly justify my aid to you is if I can prove that you’re already a monstrously powerful individual.” The man’s eyes unwittingly went towards the window, in the direction of the giant skeleton. “Speaking of which, what the hell is that thing?”
“Bloodshed,” Freddy said. “The spirit ability that summons it grows in power depending on the amount of blood I sacrifice. And I’d spent about two hours killing monsters as quickly as I could.”
The adjudicator’s eyes widened. “That is a remarkable spirit ability. That will go a long way to presenting my case.”
“Will it be enough?”
“Not even close.”
Freddy hesitated. “What will I have to do, then?”
The adjudicator’s expression darkened. “Most likely?
“You will have to defeat a Lord in a direct duel.”
Comments
Meir Banon
Tftc
Devin D
All he has is his word. Even if he shared what he knows, nobody would believe him. He's going to have to Prove it. He has to gain his 3rd star. Going up a star with 3 spirit abilities has never been documented. His journal logging his progress and the change after the 3rd star are going to be the start of his proof.
Fast Lance
Yh exactly, humanity are not ready for the multiverse and this sort of info is vital for them, they are being crushed and the other forces have yet truly touch foot on earth.
Fast Lance
There’s a huge possibility with the hoard of monsters and blood shed no longer being kept secret he can really start cleaning out a lot of monsters and gather an obscene amount of latent aura.
Fast Lance
Firstly that holiday did you wonders, your back to solid pacing again, thank you. Also is it just me or is Freddy a bit retarded, the knowledge he got from insanity about needing 3 spirit abilities to upgrade to the 6th star is crucial for humanity as a whole. But the dumbass is worried about looking crazy. The other races have yet to find humanity as a whole and some of them can already spread these square eyed infections to the dreams of others.
Fleetpanda
“Oh is that all?”
Satyaki Mukherjee
I really think that for narrative pacing it would be good if we see freddy go up a star by the end of this book or beginning of next. I mean we know there are atleast 6 possibly more stars. The 2-3 books per star is already quite a big series. The pacing would get way too slow if he is stuck in 2 star otherwise.
Devin D
It wont be that easy. It wouldnt be entertaining or exciting if he blew the Lord's head off with a double start flowing strike boop to the nose. Funny as all hell i grant you, but if there's no contest, there's no story.
Rabx
I dont think even freddy knows though. Before he got his third spirit ability, the first time realized he could accend to the third star. It snuck up on him and was an emotional moment for him. I personally dont think its a bad thing for it to come as a surprise.
kingsford
Time for us and bloodshed to feast
Isiah Debarros
Ya if he needs to get his final element working
Devin D
That is correct, but adding the 3rd Spirit ability added 33% more compression. He could have before Taking the spirit, and He may be very close after all the city defense actions(especially the giant). I'd guess it will take something else big to push him across the line. Like Surviving a visit to blood dimension with a razor thin narrow escape in hopes of augmenting himself enough to survive the duel, or discovering he can use his own blood for blood sacrifice.
TheGoodyShop
I’m a bit confused. I thought Freddy could reach the third star after his 100 years in solitude, but had chosen not to, in order to level some of his abilities and get more aura for his talent on advancing to the third star
Ted Burgess
I realize his essence condensation causes a significant delay in his level ups. Have you thought about including a %condensed tracker in his leveling sheet? Given all his city defense combat, would anticipate it creeping up - albeit slowly. As a reader, it would be nice to have a sense of it - right now it seems like some point in the far distant future, maybe, if he’s lucky.
Laurence
It was, at this point, Freddie burst out laughing.
Laurence
It's innately tied to the concept of bloodshed. He has to fight for it to count.
Devin D
The pending Trial/Duel got me thinking. Blood Sacrifice requires blood to well sacrifice. As mentioned in the Dungeon, volume isnt the only quality that makes for a good Sacrifice. All his other spirit abilities have a Downside. Leviathan's Furry causes damage, And Twisted Pendulum slows him down initially. What if instead of slaughtering Foes for the blood, he used his own? He should have 15-20 times his own Volume, but for Sacrifice what could have a higher Quality/Value than his own?
Abel
Awesome story, can’t wait for the next chapter bossman authorman
Devin D
Yea, I doubt anyone would believe him.
Axim
I know it doesn’t fit Freddy’s paranoia but I would really like him to have told the Judge about spirit abilities compressing aura here. Even if he doesn’t believe it yet it opens the door for him to prove it down the line without it coming out of left field. He can sort of prove he spoke to Madness with his madness sensing abilities as support for his story. This world knows there is a multiverse out there so is it so crazy to think someone learns something from alien contact that Earth hasn’t figured out yet?
Tryptic
I know it's less believable that way, since Freddy can't just summon a strong enemy attack to show off. But maybe he can combine his blood aura with an ability from someone else to draw monsters closer. Maybe even ask the Adjudicator to lure some in since the defense of the city depends on his spectacle. That allows the adjudicator to be even angrier since he just helped out. I just feel like this was the time to really let loose. It'll be alright as long as Bloodshed does get to let loose within 3 chapters, but you've bit to strike while the iron is hottest
Tryptic
I absolutely love the idea, but I think this chapter doesn't even reach half of its potential. This needs to start out with a news reporter POV on the wall, I wondering if she made a terrible mistake agreeing to the assignment when her boss sent her out here. Then her glee mixed with fear at getting to report about the dreams, a huge scoop for her career. And the drake gets the job done, but there's so much potential for a badass slaughter. How about a monster that can teleport others closer to it, which brings 3 drakes in to fight and flees as they get devoured? And the monster even teleports some fighters off the wall, which bloodshed scoops up without harming?
Kai
Freddy: No problem. Does me killing the Craven clan head as a one star count?
신현준
Gracias
Stormz Rift
Was anyone else low key hoping that Freddys bloodshed from the entire siege would’ve been sacrifice not just 2 hours?
CJ King
I wonder how much latent aura he’s built up so far and what his third star is gonna look like. Thank you for the chapter !!
Luis
Cant they verify his claims with a lie detector talent? Or look into his past or memories?
Luis
He likely wont be allowed to prepare blood sacrifice for the duel. Whatever he gets from the blood dimension needs to amplify his combat power to an extreme degree or at least allow him to use 100k wet hells again.
Kroppertites
Thanks for the chapter, it feels like things are picking up again, looking forward to the solution to the duel.
Luis
He killed 270 times more monsters
frankie doerr
Nah he’s 3 star max
Gio
Didn't that portal guy say that freddy was 270 times more impressive than expected? That is 270 times more than what is expected from an elite.
Lucas Gulick
Exciting stuff
Bryn
Thanks for the chapter!
J
Missed opportunity to name this chapter show off 😭
Uroš
Can the lord he defeats be Basilisk? :)
Uroš
4 star I think?
frankie doerr
Ez difficulty he’s done it before at 1 star max 2 star I feel bad for the other lord
J
What’s a lord again
pratticus maximus
Fuck yeah, enough time to read it before going into work!
