Scarlet

I guess I need new armor.

My armor is currently still technically in one piece, but with one major issue. There are now glowing red cracks running throughout it, and occasionally glowing red runes appear over those cracks with the cracks running through them. Which shows that the Red Plague managed to damage the runes themselves somehow.

Runes, unlike crafted items that allow people to put a skill into them, are drilled directly into the reality of whatever is being enchanted. Meaning they normally can’t take any damage even if the enchanted object is completely destroyed. If they don’t have a self-repair rune then they’ll just float there forever in a sort of quantum space separate or parallel from our own.

Or something like that.

If they do have a self-repair rune like mine, then they simply regenerate starting from scratch.

But this… the runes themselves are damaged now.

“The question is which runes are damaged,” Tar murmurs as he floats over to and begins looking at the armor I’m now wearing. “Considering that it’s not hurting you just to wear it, it shouldn’t be too badly damaged.” I blink at that, raising my head from my armor to look at him with a frown at the implication that my own armor could hurt me. “And since you were able to summon it that means the summoning runes weren’t damaged either.”

Wait a second, back up to the whole ‘hurting myself by wearing it’ part please.

Tar raises his own head from looking at the armor and answers, “Oh, well, inscribing runes is a very touchy process from what I’ve heard. If a single rune is slightly off then it could mess with the entire function of the enchantment. So the armor could’ve very well exploded the moment you summoned it if the runes were damaged badly enough.”

“And you didn’t think to mention this?” I ask with a blank look on my face, simply staring at the tanuki in front of me.

He blinks in surprise and shrugs while saying, “Well, it wouldn’t have hurt you at your level. So there wasn’t much need. And it’s not like the furniture in here or the building itself would be damaged by a simple rune discharge. Who made the runes doesn’t matter in this case.”

Uh huh. Still would’ve preferred a warning that I could be blown up by putting it on.

I sigh and look back down at my armor again with a frown.

Explosions aside, what do you think doesn’t work anymore?

I see Tar lowering his gaze back to the armor in the corner of my vision as well as he answers, “Well, considering how the amor is in one piece now, the self-repair rune has to be intact. Otherwise it’d be in pieces right about now. And the self-cleaning rune as well.” He floats around the armor before moving towards the pockets and frowning as he glances at me and asks, “Can you use the spatial pockets?”

In response I try to put my hands inside of the pockets of my armor, but nothing comes about from it. I just end up putting my hands in some regular everyday pockets with no spatial pocket to speak of.

Fuck.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Tar says with a wave of his paw. “You have your bloodwell, so you don’t really need those spatial pockets.”

I blink at that and raise my hand, making a portal into my bloodwell open up in my palm. Then I let out a sigh of relief, close the portal, and refocus on the tanuki again.

“Other than the spatial pockets… I can’t personally think of anything that might be wrong with it,” Tar says while raising his gaze back up to meet mine again. “I’m not an expert on runes though. You might want to bring your armor to someone to get it looked at.”

Yeah, good idea.

I lie back down on the bed again and raise my hand before releasing some of the Red Plague again and simply watching it writhe around above my head.

The Red Plague seems to dislike being controlled by me, but it also doesn’t have any sort of power to disobey me either. Other than stalling ever so slightly and trying to fight back to no avail.

“That’ll be different when you take in more Red Plague, and when you level up,” Tar says while lying down closer to my feet, seemingly avoiding the Red Plague like the, well, plague. “You’ll be able to control more of it and with a tighter grip the higher your level. But the more you’re trying to control, the harder it will be to do so. And if you have too much of it in you at once, then it could leak out.”

Okay. That might be a pain.

I continue messing around with the Red Plague for several minutes before grabbing something from my bloodwell – a simple white cloth – and lightly tapping the Red Plague with the edge of it. And almost right away, the Red Plague flares with a bright red flash of light and red cracks begin to appear all over the white cloth. Then the cloth itself simply disintegrates into red ash, leaving me narrowing my eyes slightly while trying to dust off the ash from my armor, regretting that I chose to test it above myself.

Looks like your description of the Red Plague was pretty on point. It doesn’t waste time and simply attacks whatever it’s infected right away, eliminating it as quickly as possible.

I stare at the orb for a little bit, watching as it attempts to get away from me with no success whatsoever before I eventually get up from the bed. Then I look around for a bit and raise my voice for Amelia’s benefit, “I’ll be heading out to test this plague a bit!”

Then I shift into blood and begin moving through the air, only to halt almost immediately as I realize that even the blood I transform myself into is made simply of the Red Plague. As if I became the Red Plague myself. Or rather, it became part of me instead? Considering how I don’t have full control over it still.

This is getting confusing.

Anyways, I begin flying through the air in search of some demons to test this new power on.