"Dang it, Olwell, I guess that job is more of an investment than a straight income," I said to myself while tapping the robot on its head with my gauntlet.

"Alright, robot, state your name," I commanded the robot.

"My designated name is 16356743," the robot announced.

"First of all, that's not a name; that's a serial number. Second of all, I'm not calling you that," I said while looking around to see if anything in the area could describe this robot. I continued looking around the place to find a name for the robot and managed to lock my eyes on the ladder the robot was still holding, and finally an idea came to mind.

"I'm changing your name; your name now will be Escalate," I said with enthusiasm, hoping the robot's programming could do at least that much.

"Name changed to Escalate, awaiting orders," the robot said while still not breaking eye contact with me.

"Power off permanently," a voice said behind me. Once I heard that voice, I immediately dove to the ground. As soon as I hit the ground, a green orb flew over my head and hit both Roby and Escalate. The orb that sent them flying was the same spell she used on me, which sent them both flying. I quickly got up and threw an impact mixture at the ground beneath her feet, which launched a bunch of trash in her direction. She managed to quickly dodge out of the way of all the trash and began charging up a spell.

"You love spamming that spell, don't you?" I said while loading up a spell in my gauntlet.

"Could say the same thing about that mixture," Washer said as we both cast our spells at the exact same time. I cast the Magic Paralyzation Orb, which shoots an orb that instantly paralyzes the person it hits for 5 seconds, it's not that great at causing damage, but it's amazing at creating openings. Both of our spells collided with each other, which caused them to explode into some form of magic gas, which blocked our view and gave me time to prepare to concentrate.

I took a deep breath and began to focus on thinking about slow things in life, like snails and waiting in the room until a doctor arrives for a checkup. After thinking about slow things, I opened my eyes, and everything around seemed to have stopped moving, even the smoke cloud where the spells collided. Alright, this gives me all the time in the world to plan out my next move and prepare the blood for spell usage. The reason why everything is moving slowly isn't because I cast a spell around the area or anything like that; it's more of the fact that I can make my brain process so fast that the world is at a standstill.

I don't know how I'm able to do this or what this ability even is, but all I know is that an ability like this has many uses, like separating the amount of blood needed for a spell or thinking up a clever lie about who broke the printer in the lobby.

When I was reading the Arts of Blood, it said that even though blood magic takes time to get right, its casting speed is near nonexistent; once you get the amount of blood you need to fuel the spellcasting, it is the easiest part if you already know magic. You're also able to load multiple spells to use later instead of needing to refocus on the amount of blood needed for another spell; here's an example.

Let's just say when you use normal magic, you load up a musket. A musket can only be fired one time vs. If you use blood magic, it's more like you are loading a revolver, which is able to fire off repeatedly until you have to reload again. The thing is, blood magic takes more time to load up than normal magic and is also a lot easier to mentally cast the spell than blood magic, which is why blood magic is so much harder to master.

That's why I think blood magic would be the best magic for me to learn due to me not being able to naturally produce Magineum, but I can naturally produce blood, and I have a lot of that, so it would be a good idea to use this form of magic.

I began to mentally load up on the specific spells I needed to win this fight, which took me about 1 minute from my perspective. And once I was done loading up the spells in my head, I once again began to focus on thinking. This time I thought of things that moved fast, like cheetahs and 15-minute naps. Once I got done thinking of that, time began to go back to its regular pace.

As soon as time went back to normal, I immediately put my plan into action by summoning an illusion near me on my right, then quickly sneaked around the fog and readied my gauntlet at the smoke. The smoke lasted for about 15 more seconds, and before the smoke even cleared completely, another green magic orb was fired through the smoke and hit my illusion that I put down.

The green orb hit the ground near my illusion and exploded, which caused my illusion to evaporate in a red mist that quickly went away. At first, I was worried that the washer would have suspected that it was an actual illusion, but the smoke must have blocked up her sight too much because she immediately began to gloat to herself.

"I know people freeze up in their first fight, but the least the stupid girl could have done was get out of the open," Washer laughed to herself while spinning her staff around. I then cast a paralyzing orb at her while she was distracted, but right before the orb hit, I popped out of my hiding spot and gave away my position just to gloat.

"Says the one who also didn't move from their current location," I yelled while casting a light magic star at her. Washer quickly turned around to where I was and tried to dodge out of the way of the paralyzing orb, but it was too late. The paralyzing orb hit her square in the chest, which paralyzed her, which made her unable to dodge the magic star that I cast at her.

The magic star is the highest D-ranked in the book. Even though the spell is a D-rank, it doesn't mean that its power output is weak; the spell does do a reasonable amount of damage. But I also realized something when reading the Arts of Blood: even though the spells I'm using are D-ranked spells, it doesn't mean they have D-rank scaling. What I mean is the way Magic Star works is the fact that it forms into a destructive, fast-moving ball of light whose destructive power is measured by the amount of magic you put into the spell. That's why I put almost all of the blood I had into that one spell because, out of all the spells I know how to cast, that spell would be my most powerful one.

The Magic Star hit Washer Square in the chest and launched her in the air. The hit managed to do a lot of damage to her while she was flying. The reason I know this is because during her flying, her arm fell off and almost hit my head.

"Alright, it's time to see if those 2 robots are alright," I said while beginning to walk towards the direction that they flew in, but as I was walking, I felt a sharp pain enter my shoulder. I looked over my shoulder in confusion to see what the problem was only to see some type of thin, sharp piece of metal lodged in my shoulder.

I grasped my shoulder while beginning to breathe hard due to pain and began thinking to myself, how did this pole even get lodged into my shoulder? The robot didn't even hit me before I cast those two spells. I quickly turned around to see what hit me and saw that I wasn't the only one with a trump card up my sleeve.

Not only did Washer come back from that spell I hit her with, but she was also somehow floating in the air even though she had sustained such critical damage. I then suddenly felt the piece of metal begin to move out of my shoulder slowly at first, but as the washer flew down closer, Quicker than the piece of metal exited my shoulder, no matter how tightly I gripped it.

That's when I noticed that it wasn't just the metal in my shoulder that was going back to her; I was all the metal I just blew off her all going back to her body. She was repairing herself. Before the piece of metal that was stuck in my shoulder flew back to her, I tried to keep it from getting to her by grabbing it, but all I was able to do was bend the metal before it got back to her.

"I'll give you props, Owl; you have a lot of potential with magic due to your intelligence, but it seems like you're running low on the blood in your vial," Washer said as she was slowly descending, and the metal that was coming back to her was quickly reforming on her body. But all the metal was reforming on her body. I spotted something: the piece of metal that was in my shoulder that I accidentally bent finally made it to her and attempted to form up with the rest of the other pieces, but it didn't fit properly. Not only that, but due to the other pieces of metal also trying to put themselves together on the bent piece of metal, it caused a small part on Washer's arm to appear swollen like a knot.

I then began to think of a way I could possibly win. I only have 2 ounces of blood left, which is only good for one spell; a wounded shoulder, which needs to be treated before it becomes a problem; and 7-8 mixtures left, but none of them are able to deal with this robot for good. The smart thing to do would be to get some help and come up with a strategy, but I don't have anyone else with me. The only other person who might be able to help me is...

"Please tell me that's not all, owl, because if it is, maybe you can just accept defeat, and I'll just let Master Abel deal with you," she said while continuing to slowly descend her way to me. I reached inside my bag and saw the remaining amount of blood I saw and had an idea. A really sucky idea, one I would never even consider doing conceptually, but this situation calls for extreme measures, or more accurately, monstrous measures.

I then popped off the top of the vial bottle and proceeded to drink the rest of the blood that was in it. Once I got done drinking it all, I then felt my sanity quickly slip away and my body slowly forming into something I never wanted to become. I dropped down to one knee due to the weird feeling in my body, then suddenly my body felt lighter and the pain in my shoulder felt a little better, as if my body were trying to numb the wound.

"Ew, you do know you can get a sickness from that, right?" Washer, she said in disgust as she finally made it to the ground. Before I could think of a mixture to bring out, a loud crashing sound came from the far direction of where I came from. I looked over in the direction, trying to see what that was, only to be staring into the eyes of a rat that was pointing in the direction of the crash.

I was confused at first because, you know, why is a rat looking dead in my eyes and pointing at the sound of the crash? But that's when I realized who was most likely responsible for it. That's the reason I began to run in the direction of the crash.

"Hey, don't run away. We... Jesus Christ, you're fast," Washer said as she was trying to catch me. I looked back to see how far she was behind me only to realize that I somehow ran so fast in such a short amount of time that she was nowhere to be seen anymore.

"Let's see if Pazzo is having better luck than I am fighting his robot," I said before taking off a whole lot faster than what I was prepared for and managing to run headfirst into a small trash hill on the way there.