It makes sense why she would use such a low-cost spell due to robots not being able to produce Magineum, so I at least have the advantage of having more of an arsenal than she does, but for now I must think of a plan real fast.

I began to quietly walk down the path because most likely that spell-casting robot will be after me soon. I managed to sneak some distance away from my original area. I made the choice to sit here and take a breath for a while as I began to think of my next move.

As I was resting, I began to hear some wheels quickly approaching my location. At first, I was going to hide behind one of the trash hills, but then I remembered that there was only one robot down here that was on wheels. Roby then zipped around the trash hill in front of me but was moving so fast that he accidentally ran into me and knocked himself off balance and crashed into a trash hill.

"You move fast for a little guy," I said while helping Roby out of the trash pile and back onto his wheels. Once I got him back on his wheels, he then reached on his back and pulled out the Arts of Blood book and handed it to me. I must have dropped it after that robot sent me flying. I examined the book's cover and noticed something peculiar about it. The book's author didn't have a full name on it; what it had instead were 2 initials, which were S. T. N.

The book was also black with bloodstains all over, which had me discouraged, not because of the bloodstains but because of the fact that this book could be what I think it is.

I opened it and immediately wanted to chuck the book into a trash hole. This is the blood mage's spell book. I didn't even know there were spell books for blood magic, but lo and behold, I managed to get my hands on this book out of millions of other spell books in the world.

The reason why I was so mad about getting my hands on a blood magic spell book was because blood magic was the newest and hardest form of magic to learn and use effectively. The reason for that is because instead of you using magnesium, you instead use blood for the fuel of spells. That may sound like a good thing due to your body having more blood than magnesium, but the thing is it's so hard to do; let me explain.

Two things are needed to use blood magic: the amount of blood you're using and the type of blood you're using. What this shows on its pages is the amount of blood required in order to cast one spell, and when it shows blood type, it doesn't mean like A+ or A-; it means either animal, human, corrupt, or legendary.

Let's just say I would like to cast my favorite spell, illusion (don't ask). And I wanted to use blood as fuel to cast it. I would need 1 oz. of animal's blood to cast that spell, but there is one major problem with that: where would I get animal blood in the middle of a battle? And even if I brought blood along with me, there would also be the problem with separating the amount of blood you need to cast the spell in such a small-time window of a life-or-death fight. Sure, you could practice, and it would be easier to do with time. Why take the time to learn something so limiting when you could just imagine, which is always with you inside your head?

That's when it finally hit me. I quickly sat down and began reading the book after realizing this might be the best form of magic I could possibly learn with my current condition. I slowly examined the pages of the book and began to realize that this book is somewhat off, like what it's showing me are the basics of how to use the blood to cast D-tier spells, but that's where it ends, like literally, there are no filled pages for any other ranked spell past the D-ranked formulas and spells; all it said past the D-ranked section was this.

The rest of the book is yours to fill out.

"Why not just give me the rest of the formulas?" I sighed while looking at the ceiling of the trash hole in disappointment. I then looked back at the book to examine the previous pages only to notice that the sentence had changed.

Stop being lazy and just do it.

"What the heck, am I tripping?" I said while looking at Roby, who was digging through a trash hill. I shook my head for a second, then looked back at the book to see if I saw what I just saw, only for me to see that the sentence had changed again.

No, you are not tripping, and also look for the rat on your way out.

"Wait, what, rat? Hold on," I yelled while standing up in confusion, but as soon as I blinked, the sentence was gone, but this time there was no other sentence replacing it. After opening and closing the book a couple of times, I finally decided to reach into my bag and pull out the key item I'm going to need in order to cast this blood magic: Lycanthrope blood. Well, the correct term would be anamorph, but Lycanthrope is a more recognizable term for the condition. Lycanthropes are people who are able to physically turn themselves into somewhat of a human-beast like state; the most popular example would be a werewolf, but the most common one would be a wererat (due to, you know, rats being so much of an invasive species).

The reason I have this vial of Lycanthropes blood is because Lycanthropes have an enhanced healing factor that the world uses to create healing tonics and potions. Most Lycanthropes usually donate their blood for some free cash due to them being able to donate more than a usual person should be able to.

The reason I have this blood right now is because Lycanthropes blood classifies as 3 types of blood, which are animal, human, and corrupt. But the problem with this is that I only have one vial of it, which holds about 1 1⁄2 cups, which would give me about 12 low D-ranked spells to cast. As I was going over the book on how to separate the amount of blood needed to cast a spell, I heard something walk toward our location.

I quickly got up and was going to test out the functions of blood magic, but I managed to stop at the last minute. The reason I had stopped was because the robot that was walking towards us was not Washer; the robot instead was the robot with the ladder that I and Pazzo launched a while ago.

"Command in progress, error, initiating previous commands, error, no data found from previous chain of command found, self-destruct protocol initiating in 45 minutes." The robot announced while stiffening up its posture and standing straight up. Well, that's one last robot to worry about. Most robots are built in with a code to self-destruct once they can no longer move or their mainframe gets hacked so they can't be used by the enemy and gain any Intel.

I then sat back down and began to study the book. After a minute of focusing on the details in the book, I heard a loud drilling noise come from the robot. I quickly turned around to see what was going on and saw that Roby was now tinkering with the robot and had managed to somehow get its control unit hatch open on its back.

"What the heck are you doing?" I said while getting up and running over to him. I ran around the robot and saw that Roby managed to not only open its back hatch but also somehow managed to open its data and hard drive ports in just the very little time it took for me to get to him after he got done drilling. I stood there and watched him work on the robot. He didn't really do much; all he did was insert some cords into the robot's insert ports.

Roby picked up the insert ports that were attached to the ladder robot and handed them to me. At first, I was confused about why he handed them to me, but then I realized why and proceeded to lift my gauntlet and flip it on its forearm. I then took the insert port and inserted it into the gauntlet.

After I put it in, the screen on the gauntlet immediately lit up and started showing images and numbers of the robot. After the images and codes were done uploading on the screen is when Roby grabbed my arm and started examining the whole screen.

Once Roby got done examining the screen, he began to start pressing on the screen a couple of times, which somehow caused the robot to come back online. The robot didn't do anything, though; all it did was just stay in place and make very little movement. After a couple of seconds of the robot being still frozen in place, I looked at the screen myself to examine what Roby was even trying to do.

I began looking for a few seconds at the screen and noticed what Roby was trying to do. Roby was trying to override the robot and change its chain of command to the gauntlet. At first it seemed like a good idea to take control of the robots by making the gauntlet one of the chains of command, but there is one problem with that: it's a gauntlet. The gauntlet can't give out commands, and robots usually do exactly what you tell them to. Which means if I told them the gauntlet is their only chain of command, they would literally wait for the gauntlet to verbally give them a command despite the gauntlet being a nonverbal object.

After examining the screen for a couple of minutes, I began to fiddle with it and just changed the chain of command from the gauntlet to me after putting in my information and profile. After putting my information and profile onto the screen of the Gauntlet, I proceeded to upload the info into the robot's hard drive. Nothing happened for a second. At first, I thought I just didn't send it right. I finally looked back at the screen and saw that I needed to put down some more information, like the bot type I wanted it to be.

I began scrolling down the list of robot types there was to choose from; what it means by robot types is more of what the robot's job is. There is actually a bunch of options to choose from, like engineer, medical, mechanic, scribe, archer, front assault, etc. I continued scrolling down the list of jobs that the robot was able to learn and do; after scrolling for a minute, I finally stopped at one that got my attention. The job that had gotten my attention was the job called Commander; Commander robots are robots that are able to relay strategies to other robots and troops by themselves without any other person telling them to.

Commander robots are exceedingly rare and require a lot of hardware—so much hardware, in fact, that the cost to make 1 commander robot is over 1,000 gold coins at least. After I saw the job option, I immediately picked it. After I picked it, the robot then began to make sounds of a computer turning on for the first time. After a minute of it making that noise, the robot finally responded.

"Chain of command established; new job assigned; error, current job cannot be downloaded, sending job into adaptive hard drive; job will now be learned with time." The ladder bot reported as it unstiffened its posture and began to stare at me.

"Dang it, O-well, 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.