The hours allocated to the blood mutants for them to rest passed, alerting the Granians in charge of watching them to wake them up. As soon as the orders were given, their holding cells were lowered to ground level, followed by the aliens using blood mutant blockers to keep them from transforming. Check latest chapters at 𝕟𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕝⁂𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖⁂𝕟𝕖𝕥 Feeling energized and refreshed, Cherry felt ready to take on yet another challenge for the day. Jim felt like doing more extensive research on the blood mutants, instead of wasting time fighting. Having been in the army, he was taught that knowing your opponent, their strengths, and weaknesses, and your own strengths, and weaknesses ensured a victory, so he needed to know more about the Ethisians. Skyler, as always, was still exhausted and yet was dragged out from her cell with a collar on her neck that stopped her from transforming. Ace, who had little sleep, waited anxiously to see Anya. As bad as he felt, he still could not see any other way to get the thing the Granians fed to her that would eventually kill her. While being dragged out, the young blood mutant kept wondering about Anya, her progress, and where she was but neither of the Granians he spoke to gave him an answer. "Ace, don’t get so excited about Anya being turned." Jim said to the young blood mutant, having noticed how anxious he was to see her. "She did not want to get turned into a blood mutant and yet you suggested and pushed for it." "It’s not like we had a choice, Jim." Ace argued back. "Grim said that they put something inside of her that was going to kill her slowly and the only way she would live is if I turned her into a blood mutant, which obviously I can’t do." "He’s right, Jim." Cherry chipped in. "Besides, they were going to turn her anyway. It was only a matter of time until they did. Either way though, she’s still going to be mad at you, Ace. It was your idea after all. I wonder what her form looks like though." While discussing amongst themselves, Huntress and One Horn came in and took the four humans into the same simulation chamber. Once there, the blood mutant blockers were turned off, allowing the four humans to access and use their blood abilities. "Why are you the ones here? I thought Grim was the one supposed to train us?" "Patience, you three." One Horn spoke back. "Lord Grim got a couple minor injuries due to the other human’s transformation, which was a success by the way." Hearing this caused Ace to calm down a little, but also worry because he expected his former school nurse to be mad at him. "In the meantime, we will take over for Lord Grim until he returns." "For today’s exercise," Huntress continued while swinging her circular blade around her torso, "You’ll be working on being creative with blood." As she spoke, four Granians came in with barrels of green and red blood for the blood mutants and an extra one in case the others were depleted. "We’ve noticed that you two have deteriorated in your blood skills." Huntress continued. "When I faced you two when you were younger, your blood manipulating skills were more powerful than what you have now." "If we were to bring a real blood mutant, which we unfortunately do not have at the moment, you three would see how pathetic you are at this." One Horn continued. "We’ll judge your performance another day. Right now, we want you three to focus on perfecting your blood manipulation skills. Learn how to make weapons that are not blood spikes or blood blades, come on." "As for you, Skyler," Huntress said while running the tip of her tail across the young woman’s chin, "You and I will focus on making your attacks creative. Now that you have three DNA variants, I expect you to be able to transform into and out of them perfectly to suit you in battle. Don’t want to have you slowing your friends down once they are on the battle field." From the top of the simulation chamber’s ceiling fell four black pods, and out came four Ethisians. However, unlike the first time, these Ethisians stood in one place, neither of them moving a single inch or even breathing. One Horn moved over to them and informed what they were going to be used for. "You already fought these and you know how difficult it is to penetrate through their skin. Ethisians have some of the thickest scales in the galaxy so it is important for you three to understand where to hit and extract blood from. First one to drain blood from these dummy clones moves onto the next round." [Blood Manipulation skill: Activated.] Once the instructions were give, Ace drained a certain amount of blood from his barrel and swirled it around his body. As One Horn watched, Ace shot the blood at his dummy Ethisian whilst aiming for its head. As the attack got closer, the clone skillfully dodged the attack and then returned to the position it was standing in. "Don’t think we were planning on making this easy for you." One Horn said to Ace. They may not attack, but they certainly will defend themselves." "Alright then." Cherry emptied her barrel and placed on the blood on her body, creating a blood armor suit. "Let’s see if they’ll defend themselves from this." With every muscle fiber in her body flexed, Cherry focused as hard as she could and created a thick blood ball. Once it was made, she hardened it to the point where it weighed as much as a cannon ball. After making a couple more blood balls, Cherry hovered them over her head and fired them progressively at her opponent. The first two balls were fired at its head and mid section, only for the Ethisian to duck and move to the side before standing back in place. "Always keep your eyes on your opponent." Even though the blood balls did not hit the target, they were still in tact and could be used again. Cherry quickly brought the two balls back while sending two more at the Ethisian. Not knowing about the ones behind, the Ethisian focused entirely on the front balls, only for it to get hit from the back. "And that is a failed attempt." One Horn chuckled as Cherry planned to make the same attack again, only for her to get stopped by the Granian. "You’ll get another chance. Let the golden one go next." Looking down into his barrel full of blood, Jim felt disgusted for a moment as he wondered where the blood he and the two siblings were training with came from. However, not wanting to ask questions that were completely not needed for, Jim gathered a thing line of blood and made a blood ring, similar to the one Huntress had in shape and size. After creating four more, Jim held each blood ring in his hands as he focused his attention on the Ethisian. "HYAAAHH." Before throwing the blood rings, Jim transformed his upper body into his blood mutant form, giving his throw much more power. The transformation worked for his rings moved so fast and once they landed on the Ethisians’ body, it got pushed back a little. "Is that all you..." While One Horn asked questions, Jim caused the rings to spin incredibly with a couple of blood droplets spilling all over. The Ethisian used its thick arms and pushed back the rings. Unfortunately for it, the rings only spun faster and eventually started to chip away at its armor. Before it knew it, the Ethisian’s forearm scales were broken off of its arms and left injured. "That’s enough." One Horn ordered, prompting Jim to stop. "That was effective but it took too long to get the job done. Let’s leave these two to try again." While the other three blood mutants were undergoing training, the fourth was in the symbiotic fusion room, the same place where Ace and Cherry had symbiotic fusion operations done on their bodies. Anya, who currently had all her limbs held in place, was sweating heavily while a low grade symbiote was surgically inserted inside of her with the help of robotic arms. It was thanks to intensely powerful anasthetics that the woman wasn’t screaming terribly The woman dripped from head to toe with sweat, her body quacked, shivered, and ached intensely, and her breathing was so loud and heavy that those conducting the operation got worried for her. "It is almost complete." Grim, who stood in front of Anya, muttered softly at her. "You’re actually doing much better than those two siblings." "They went thrugh this?" She inquired, concerned, worried, yet surprised that Ace, of all people, endured such pain. "You put thise disgusting thing in them?" "Theirs climbed and attached themselves onto their bodies." The Granian answered. "Do not get angry with the boy. It was the only way we could get an answer away from him. We tried asking him nicely how he turned the other one but he claimed not to know. And yet here you are. Only a few steps closer to being on the same level as they are."