Blood Shaper

Book 4: Chapter 23

“Ready?” Kay looked at Eleniah with a level gaze.

“Yeah, but start slow. This isn’t something to rush into.”

Slowly and carefully, Kay drew a dagger down his arm, letting a thin trickle of blood ease out of him. He moved the blood off to the side as it flowed out so they could see the cut better. “Alright, I’m going to try it.”

While suppressing his natural healing from his Bloody Regeneration Skill, he slowly released the stash of hydra blood he kept inside the dimensional storage in his veins. With some experimentation, he’d discovered that while his veins had also been spatially expanded so that he could hold an inordinately large amount of blood physically inside him, there was also a separate spatial storage that allowed him to keep blood “in” him without it actually being part of his vascular system. He believed it was for moments like this.

As the hydra blood seeped into his veins, he concentrated and took control of it, keeping it from mixing into his own blood. He’d learned how to use Meld Blood to take the magical abilities of someone and make them into or add them to an item. Why not add magical abilities to his own blood? The description of his potential tier five Class Sanguine Augmentor talked about doing something like that with both himself and others, but could he push beyond that? Could that only be done with the Skill from that Class, or could he use the Skills that were the base of it to force his way into that power? He wasn’t sure, but it was worth testing.

Focusing on the regenerative aspect of the hydras magic, its ability to grow back its heads no matter how many were cut off, he slowly began to fuse the blood into his system. He felt the swell of magic pulse through his body, and he carefully allowed the magic to disseminate and flow.

“I can feel something.”

“No changes on your arm.”

Kay looked down at the cut and saw it was healing, but only the tiniest bit that they’d already determined was from his inability to completely suppress Blood Regeneration. “Let me try concentrating it near the cut.” He took control of the flow and gathered the parts of his blood that had taken on most of the hydras magic and moved it toward the minor injury.

As the magic was packed together and concentrated in one spot, it began to bubble. Not literally; his blood didn’t begin to boil or move oddly, but the energy felt like it was roiling. With a frown at the sudden pain, Kay grabbed at his arm with the other and took a few steps back.

“What’s happening?” Eleniah demanded sharply.

“I don’t know, it’s started to react to itself.” Focusing through the pain on the magic in his blood, he started to pull bits of it away from the greater whole, but even as he did, the magic slipped from his grasp, draining out of the blood he was using to portion it away and joined back into the mass of tumbling, growing magic.

Whatever reaction was occurring suddenly reached critical mass and began to balloon upward in size. Kay noticed the cut fusing together less than a second before his arm began to swell and twist. For a brief moment, he thought he saw scales growing on his skin before his limb tripled in size and burst, exploding from the inside as the magic completely slipped the leash and erupted outward.

A new spray of blood splashed over the already trashed ground of the sparring room, which was covered in craters from the intense sparring match they’d finished before beginning to experiment. Fragments of bone shrapnel slammed into the walls, some getting jammed into the stonework.

Eleniah deflected a jagged piece of his radius and surged forward. “Kay!”

The pain of the hydra’s magic reacting inside him was nothing compared to having his arm explode, but he had enough control of himself to take control of the blood gushing out of his ruined limb and stopping the Class Line Progenitor of Blood Manipulation from bleeding to death. “Fuck!”

“What the fuck was that!?” Eleniah demanded, reaching toward his arm, jerking to a stop before actually grabbing it.

“The magic went wild in my arm and exploded.” He hissed through gritted teeth. He turned toward her, “Probably-“ His entire body jerked as an indescribably intense burning sensation leapt from his stomach through his throat and lingered. He felt his fangs drop down without any conscious thought as the relatively new sensation of his vampiric thirst for blood rocketed to a level he’d never experienced and then a million times beyond that. He couldn’t take his eyes off her throat. He just needed to bite down, right there on her jugular, and the sweet nectar would flow. Everything would be alright if he could just- “Gah!” He wrenched himself back, slamming into the wall as he failed to control his strength while he kept himself from attacking and biting down on Eleniah.

“Kay?”

“Ah! Fuck!” He spat out. The burning sensation was becoming almost all-consuming. He could feel his body begin to cannibalize the blood in his veins as it was consumed for something, but the wrenching pain in his stomach only increased. Wrenching open his Inventory with a thought, he began to float streams of his emergency blood into his mouth, drinking it down like he’d drank water from a hose as a child.

He drank and drank, cups and cups of blood becoming a gallon, and then two, more blood than a single person would have in their entire body flowing down his throat, and still his body craved more. His instincts died down somewhat as he consumed more and more until, eventually, the thirst was only a demand, not a need. Breathing deeply, he allowed the flow to stop and closed his spatial storage Skill.

“Kay, are you alright?” Eleniah asked gently from a few feet away.

He continued to breathe, closing his eyes for a moment as he calmed himself down. “No.” He replied, eyes still closed, “My arm just exploded because of me experimenting with my Skill, and then I almost lost control of my vampire thirst for the first time.”

“Is that why you jumped back?”

“There were even odds that I was about to attack you,” Kay told her, slowly opening his eyes. He let his gaze drift for a moment before grimacing. “I’m not feeling like striking you, but your neck does look quite tempting still.”

“Do you need to?” She stepped closer and tilted her head to one side, offering herself up.

“I…” He tried to analyze how he felt. “Kick me off of you if I start taking too much.”

“Can and will do. Now, here.”

Sliding up against her, he bent down the modest distance between them and lightly slid his fangs into her vein. The same as the first few times he’d had her blood, the heady rush of taste and power in her veins rushed into his mouth. Unlike the times before, he needed more than a pull or two to feel alright. He took three, four, or five gulps from her before his hand gently pushed at his head, and he pulled back.

She peered up at him, her eyes still filled with worry. “Do you need more? I’ve got more to give, but I wasn’t sure since that was more than usual.”

He bent forward and licked at the bit wound, causing her to shiver, then backed up a pace. “I think I’m better. From what I’ve learned of Zeia so far, she’ll probably yell at me for saying this without more testing, but I’m sure now that blood pulled directly from a living being is better for me and the other two than stored blood and the mana from higher tier people or monsters is more satiating. You’re like a full-course meal compared to a light snack.”

“And you still needed that much from me than usual?”

Kay held up the stump of his arm so they could both see it. “Well, now that I’m not overwhelmed by my urge to consume the life force of others and my mind’s a bit clearer, it probably has something to do with one of the vampiric abilities we haven’t tested yet. I still don’t think I’m able to transform into a bat or turn into a cloud of fog, but…” Peeling the shell of blood away from his shattered limb, he showed the jagged piece of bone and the ragged flesh around it. It was slowly patching itself together, and as they watched, the bone slowly smoothed out and began to inch upward.

“That’s a lot faster than your Bloody Regeneration is.” She commented.

“I don’t know if Blood Regeneration could regrow my entire arm at the level it is. Maybe, maybe not. But vampires in legends are known to heal themselves from pretty grievous injuries with no lasting scars or problems.”

“Vampyr can’t do that.”

“The bodies of vampyr are infected with some kind of eldritch corruption along with the vampire pathogen or whatever it is. I bet their regeneration is constantly fighting against the destruction of that taint and trying to keep them from disintegrating or something. Their bodies probably can’t keep them alive and deal with their injuries, so it picks the more important one.” He started pumping extra mana into Bloody Regeneration, and his healing began to speed up by the tiniest visible amount.

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New Racial Characteristics Discovered!

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As a new and technically unnatural sapient species to Torotia, any newly discovered information regarding your new race will be added to your Status and to the Status of any other members of your new race as new information is discovered. This information will remain in the Status of all members of your race for ten biological generations or until that information reaches a level of acknowledgeable by the sapient beings of Torotia that the System determines counts as “general knowledge”.

New Characteristics:

Vampiric Regeneration: The transformative agent that turns a being into a vampire is dedicated to its own survival and, thus, that of its host. Not quite a disease, not quite a parasite, and not quite a symbiote, it constantly works to keep its host healthy, consuming blood and energy to keep the body in its best shape even in the face of potentially mortal wounds. Your body will heal itself, regenerating from anything that doesn’t immediately kill you. This consumes blood and mana at increasing rates as the severity of the injury increases, so it is still possible to die if you run out of blood or mana, resulting in the healing stopping and your death. The healing abilities of any vampire will grow in strength as the vampire ages, decreasing the amount of blood and mana needed for each injury the older the vampire gets, as well as speeding up the healing process itself.

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“The System just confirmed that it is part of my new species.” Kay mentally dismissed the screen and went back to staring at his arm. “This is kind of off-putting.”

“I’ve seen worse, but there’s a reason healers tend to cover up bits of people that are being regenerated. Speaking of, we should go see a healer.”

“I’ll be fine; the System confirmed that I’ll regenerate it back as long as I don’t die.”

“Are you stupid!?” She grabbed his ear and started dragging him to the door. “I don’t give a shit what the System says about your fancy new species; your arm exploded! We’re going to see the fucking healers!” She stomped off, literally dragging him behind her. Every time he tried to get his footing back to try and pull free, she jerked his head to the side without even looking, keeping him stumbling.

“Let go of my ear.”

“I swear! When people talk about how stupid men are, especially when they get hurt, I usually ignore it as useless mild sexism, but then you do shit like this! The arm exploding, that was an accident which I participated in, and I thought it would be fine to test, so that’s not totally on you, but then you don’t want to go see the healer!? What is wrong with you? And stop struggling!”