Blood Shaper

Book 3: Chapter 66

The corruption pushed deeper into his chest toward his heart. Kay’s voice was hoarse from screaming and no water, but shrieks of pain still erupted from him as the vile vampyr sludge spread throughout him. He could feel it changing him wherever it spent time; his veins were becoming something different, his bones were getting strange, and his muscles were contorting in odd ways. For whatever reason, it was leaving his brain alone, spreading down through his neck instead of up. He could feel a simple intelligence in its malevolence, or if not an intelligence, a goal. It wanted to corrupt his heart so that his own body produced more sludge for it, and then he’d be lost entirely, only the time it took to fully turn him keeping him himself.

Kay knew time had passed, but he had no idea how long he’d been screaming and trying to fight back against the changes. It felt like an eternity with the pain dulling his sense, but it couldn’t have been very long at all since the viral agent or whatever it was that was changing him into a vampyr was only part of the way into his chest. It wasn’t like there were leagues to travel to get there; it was only a foot at most, so it could have only been a few hours.

His focus was increasing as he tried everything he could to combat what was happening to him. He could now “see” inside his bloodstream, small enough to identify his own cells trying to attack the invader as if it were a bacteria or virus that had gotten in him. This wasn’t a normal viral or bacterial invader, though, and it was actively fighting back, consuming and twisting cells as they charged into battle. He didn’t know if it was because of his Skills or just something a body could do, but there was an actual battle in his body; his cells were fighting back and delaying the change, even if, overall, the contaminant was pushing deeper and deeper inside him.

The pain was becoming something he was used to as time passed, and the fight went on. It wasn’t lessening, it hurt just as much, but he was becoming able to withstand it to greater and greater degrees. The eldritch taint of the disgusting goop flowing through him was another matter. He felt like he constantly needed to vomit, but his gag reflex just rebounded on itself over and over, never getting anywhere. He pushed past both sensations as the pain became something to bear instead of something unbearable and started trying to aid his body in this fight.

He started by forming infinitesimal barbs inside his veins and shredding at the corruptive fluid, but it just divided individual pieces like mitosis and kept moving. Using Healthy Blood and Blood Regeneration gave his body more resources to fight back and let his cells last a few moments longer in each individual battle against the tide of vampyric change, but it only delayed what was happening. The corruption started to creep around his heart; pieces of it somehow jumped from the main host and appeared in other veins, coming at the heart from all directions and surrounding each of the chambers.

Part of small Kay was confused since blood was produced in the marrow of the bones, not from the heart itself, but he could feel the eldritch purpose behind the sludge and its desire to fully corrupt his heart, so he was more worried about that. He tried Skill after Skill in different ways, but nothing worked for long as the change crept closer and closer to its goal. It was when he tried using Blood Boost to send more oxygen running through his veins that things started to change.

The burst of highly oxygenated blood spread throughout his entire body, and some of it went into his brain, sharpening his thoughts for a moment. His senses became sharper, too, including his sense of pain, and he writhed as the agony came into even sharper focus. At the same time, though, a thought hit him, the idea that he wasn’t using the best Skill for this. Something was off.

He tried to focus on what Skill he should use, but it was fuzzy and distant like a sign off in the distance that he knew said something important, but he’d broken his glasses. At least, it was similar to how Noah used to describe such a thing. His focus jumped down. The first bit of contagion was breaching his defenses and rushing toward his heart. Knowing it was his last chance, he reached out for whatever Skill it was he somehow knew he needed and pumped mana into it.

His heart throbbed, the sense of unease and disgust from the eldritch nature of this corruption suddenly enhanced by magnitudes. He’d already known that this was something wrong, something that didn’t belong in him or on this world, but now that feeling was increased one hundredfold as he activated the Skill he couldn’t remember. His heart beat again, the last bit of uncorrupted blood inside it pushing out to fight as his last defense.

And that last bit of blood started kicking ass! It tore through the corruption, dissolving it as they came into contact, and Kay’s head suddenly cleared as he remembered. Purify Blood! The Skill that had been upgraded in his battle against the Lesser Eldritch Hunger to clear away eldritch taint! He used the Skill again, sending blood from his brain where the corruption hadn’t attacked yet and hitting it in the rear.

The sludge fled from the sudden counterattack, completely helpless as Kay’s Skill destroyed it utterly. It retreated down into other parts of his body, starting the change in his limbs and organs as his blood chased it and destroyed it. The pieces of him it fled into started to change the same as his neck and chest had, but only partially, as his Skill-laden blood harried it through his body. Kay took a massive breath, only now realizing that the battle had cut off his oxygen supply, and new troops started to flow from his heart to his lungs and through his body, bearing fresh supplies of oxygen.

As he destroyed more and more of the sludge, he began to notice something left behind that the Purify Blood Skill left alone. He had the faint sensation that the Skill and his party would target whatever this residue was as an invader that didn’t belong, but the eldritch was a bigger concern for now. The last of the corruption pooled in his kidneys for a final stand, but that was one of the worst places to go, the part of his body designed to remove toxins. The eldritch fluid fought a losing battle and soon died to the last man as the purifying power of his Skill radiated through his body.

At that point, Kay was lost on what to do. The unending waves of incredible pain ended with the death of the contamination, but he still hurt, and bits of him had still been twisted by the viral agent, or whatever it was that had sought to turn him into a vampyr. Even in his victory against the attack on his being, he could feel himself dying, the changes too much for his body to withstand without completing the process. The parts of him that had been twisted were out of joint with the rest of his body, and he could feel his internal processes starting to slowly fail.

At that moment, as he contemplated what to do, he felt a sensation, a familiar one. The sense that something more powerful than him was looking at him and evaluating him. His eyes opened a fraction; a tiny peek was the best he could do. Silvery text appeared in front of him, without a screen behind it, just floating in the air.

Kay had only a moment to read over the message from the System, one that looked different enough from the previous one that it distracted him briefly before a rush of mana started pumping into his body. He started to spasm as inside of him, the residue from the corruptive influence began to come to life, suddenly shooting through his body and burrowing into his cells as it began multiplying, acting more like an actual virus than the eldritch corruption had. That was when the pain came back, and he started screaming again.

The parts of him that had been twisted earlier snapped back into place with the rest of his body, and all of him began to change at one. His bone marrow became denser, his muscles became denser, his nerves grew faster and more responsive, he could feel his eyes change in ways he couldn’t describe, but he knew it was making them better in the dark and even better overall and his teeth started to grow. Two of them specifically. His canines began to sharpen and expand deeper into his skull, muscles forming around them that would allow him to drop their entire length out for biting. His organs began to shift as well, his stomach changing to account for a new kind of diet and his intestines following along. His heart started pumping more slowly, and his kidneys became more robust, better able to remove toxins and poisons. Even the nails on his fingers changed, becoming stronger and sharper.

A massive shift flowed through his body, every part of him changing in one sweeping wave that turned him from a human into something else. Something new. The pain was so much worse than it had been when he fought against becoming a vampyr, but it was over so much more quickly.

He opened his eyes with a grunt as the pain began to fade, leaving only a persistent ache.

“Oh really?” Kay groaned sarcastically, “I wouldn’t have fucking guessed that a vampyr with the eldritch taken out would be a vampire. How could I have missed that?”

Movement had Kay looking up from the text to see the vampyr staring at him, his expression pulled back in an animalistic snarl and bright red rage in his eyes.

“What have you done!?” He shrieked, his eyes frantically roaming over Kay’s body, “What foul mockery of my lord’s holy power have you wrought!?”

Kay jerked as an ocean’s worth of mana flowed into him, significantly more than any other tier-up he’d experienced. He could feel the changes from his sudden race change become even more pronounced as the influx of mana strengthened his body to even higher levels. He yanked his arms down and threw his legs apart, shattering the red energy that kept him bound. He landed on his feet with graceful ease and stared at the vampyr, who snarled at him wordlessly and charged.

Kay saw one last message as he charged forward.