AUTHOR'S REINCARNATION IN A FANTASY SETTING

Chapter 357 Bloodbenders

Neon Bloodbender. The girl with snow-white hair and deep red eyes.

She was the one I had been interacting with and had seen her way back but what slipped my mind was that she was one of the supporting cast in loli_pop's novel—in other words, she was another member of Leon's harem.

She was always bullied by everyone in the academy and the reason for that was the family she belonged to and the reasons surrounding that.

Her family name "Bloodbender" was a result of a trait that everyone in the family had—deep red eyes and pale white skin. Due to that with time, people started calling them the Bloodbenders.

They used to have a good reputation as almost all of the family members excelled at magic and turned out to be great adventurers or scholars from the academy. However, it was also due to that power that the general public started fearing them.

The blood-red eyes and pale white skin already gave them quite an intimidating appearance and this new fear was doing them no favors either. And coincidentally, with these physical features, they also happened to resemble a mythical monster.

Vampires.

All the cards were already up there on the table. Red eyes, pale skin, powerful enough to inspire fear, the connection of blood in their name, and the unusually accurate resemblance to vampires.

It wasn't long before people slowly stopped thinking of them as humans. The family from the start had people who they were at odds with, people who hated them due to personal or political reasons.

The political part was important since after the Griffin family, the Rosenberg family, and the Lovett family, the Bloodbenders—being as powerful as they were—were going to become the fourth family who could provide the kingdom with a new ruler in case something were to happen to the royal family.

Their current circumstances and the intense drop in public reputation presented the other families with a great chance to clear out the competition.

Thus the strings were pulled behind the curtains and as a result, the Bloodbenders were officially marked as monsters disguising themselves as humans.

The reasons for these actions were the family's strength and capability in magic which no normal human could have, their resemblance to monsters and how their skin made them look like walking corpses, and the evidence of several human dead bodies found within their property.

As a result, they were exiled from the kingdom—well, at least on paper. There was more to what really happened to them.

The night after this news was published a manhunt was announced by an unknown client. The reward for it was so ridiculously high that people even thought it was fake, yet they participated.

While the family was gathering their stuff and preparing to leave the kingdom, they were attacked by mods of adventurers, assassins, and even normal citizens.

They tried to fight back but were simply outnumbered. Within the span of a week the entire family was wiped out, not a single Bloodbender was alive—or so the world thought.

Neon Bloodbender, the daughter of the family's head had managed to survive the manhunt. Although she had to be on the run for the rest of her life until she came to the Zaforths magic academy.

The academy was cut off from the rest of the world and worked as a separate body, thus had no political influence over it. It was a good place where she could take shelter and she did just that.

But after the calamity when the entire world was turned upside down, many things changed and people were trying to kill her again—since the Silver Garden academy was not that separate from Havenreach.

Though as you'd expect, Leon came to save her, then she fell in love with him blah blah blah…and then became a part of his harem.

That was the story in the novel and considering how she was being treated in the academy it seemed like her backstory hadn't changed at all.

However, what mattered the most to me was that just like everyone in her family she was a magic expert as well. She did not have a ridiculously large mana pool or was able to cast ten advanced spells at once, but mentally she was a genius when it came to magic.

And by genius, I literally mean that. She could analyze magic spells quickly, remember the most complex spells, and understand how they work to replicate them or to make a counter spell for them, or to amplify their strength. There was a lot.

That was the reason it occurred to me that she could be beneficial to me if I played my cards right.

Seeing how things stand now she hadn't been attacked and saved by Leon which meant I still had time.

"Well, before that I have someone else I need to deal with," I said to myself as I stood up. I was sitting somewhere on the campus with beautiful trees around to pass the time before the class started.

'I can't let Akumi run wild for long or he'll spell trouble,' I thought.

He was a wild card in this world and if he continued to do everything according to his own will, I won't be able to predict shit.

I didn't care about keeping the plot the same as the novel but I still preferred it being similar.

Therefore I needed to do something about him. Also, from his actions I determined that he was obsessed with Anya in a way that made my blood boil.

As I thought of his intentions regarding her I clenched my fists, just thinking about it had thrown me into anger. I wasn't about to bear anything when it came to my family, and during my absence, if he had done anything to her he was going to pay for that—in ways more than one.

'Ah well, calm down Zero,' I said inwardly as I took a deep breath.

I stood up and began to walk toward the classroom. There were a lot of things going on right now and it was easy to lose sight of my actual goal if I let myself have tunnel vision.

I needed to do this rationally, just like I always have.