When I arrived at where Lu usually stays in the base, I saw that she was fiddling with something. After waiting patiently, she finally wiped her forehead and noticed my presence. Surprised, she hurriedly stands and bows. When she stood up, I saw that she was actually crocheting.

  In her hand was a work in progress scarf that was silver and red in color. After taking a gnce, Lu quickly put the scarf behind her back before greeting me.

  Lu: H-Hey Celine! What are you here for?

  I just ignore the scarf and tell her that we should begin filling our base. She gives a nod and pulls out a notebook.

  Lu: I have already investigated the slums here and found the ones most likely to join us. I recorded the groups and names of the people that I would recommend to add to the base in here.

  I looked through the notebook she handed over to me. When I skimmed through the book, I noticed that there were quite a few orphanages here. Although they are called orphanages, Lu left a note that most of them are actually human trafficking suppliers. Seeing this, I have decided my goal for now would be to take back these children. Not only will they be easier to take care of, they are quite susceptible to learning from their environment.

  Deciding this, I quickly take out a bag with various supplies. Before I am so strong that I can overwhelm everything, hiding my storage ring will be the best py.

  Once finished, I headed on over to the pce on the map after rushing out of the sewers. The map for the slums has already been beled so I quickly climbed up on the roofs before dashing over. Although I can travel through the alleyways, it isn't as optimal due to gangsters and the like blocking the way.

  When I arrived at the base, I went and looked at the notebook again. When I confirmed the description of the pce matched the notebook, I went and summoned my blood eye. It is better to watch all over the base to make sure we have not missed any secret spaces.

  In the notebook, Lu had already checked through all the areas under this location so all underground passages have been known. Through my Blood eye's ability to shrink to the size of a drop of water, I was able to find the location and mechanisms of the various underground pathways.

  After confirming everything in the notebook, Now I have to completely block the areas and escape routes of the people here. There is only one way that I can do so confidently.

  Celine: Sanctuary of Blood!

  My domain quietly spread. In my domain, I can summon my skeletons anywhere in the domain. All domains don't only affect the surface, but also underground. My skeletons were quickly summoned.

  Unlike before, my summoning ability has changed drastically here in this pne. In these months, I have learned a lot about magic. In general, blood magic and blood techniques actually come from the same route. Blood magic was developed by watching the techniques of the Ancestors of blood. Because of this, most of the tricks and skills used in blood magic can also be used when using blood techniques. This is why blood magic is commonly used even amongst vampires.

  This boost from these techniques have been able to boost my overall abilities in my technique.

  Now my individual summons have been boosted in strength. Even the mindless skeletons are able to use an imitation of my own technique. This boosts them from being weaker than an average human to on par with a trained soldier. This in addition to the increased numbers have allowed me to quickly subdue all the folk here.

  The most important factor is that I can now completely control the summons I summon. I can now choose to summon a skeleton of a specific strength at anytime. I can even summon multiple of my favorite skeleton swordsman now.

  As the fight began, I could hear a bunch of the traffickers screaming and alerting one another. I have already summoned skeletons on every single exit out so unless all of the skeletons in a passage are eliminated, I can be sure that they are still here.

  I then closed my eyes and my perspective quickly switched to that of one of the skeletons. Blood Techniques are not stagnant ability like skills in a game. They are more like talents that require the user to constantly dig into. As a field type technique, Sanctuary of Blood has many different avenues and directions to grow in. So, I was able to develop the ability to see through my summon's eyes because of my contract with my blood eye.

  Because I learned and got used to this ability, I was able to deduce a simir ability using my technique.

  Now I was able to watch as the skeletons quickly finished off all of the people here while guarding the location of the children to prevent a hostage situation.

  Since I had the time to scan the premises I was able to find all the kids and even one in hiding so I summoned skeletons to prevent these low lives from doing anything crazily.

  After a few minutes, the people here were all sin and I finally brought all the kids before me.

  They seemed afraid at first, especially after I took them through the corpses of the guys here, but they eventually rexed as I coaxed them. After a while, I took all of the kids to one of the secret passages. This one is in the direction of our base so I took them through this passage way. Along the way, they slowly began to warm up to me and even started asking me questions.

  The simple questions I answered, but as I answered questions, the kids became more and more comfortable and started constantly chattering.

  Although I was a little annoyed at first, I still did my best to tolerate them as I headed over. When we were about to leave the passage, I quickly shushed them and casted two spells.

  Celine: Stealth Magic - Cloaking Sight and Sound.

  This magic is a composite spell that I learned. It contains the stealth spell and the silencing spell so we were not only invisible, but silent as well.

  The only problem with most composite spells is that they are more costly and if you break just one part of the spell, the whole thing breaks.

  Because of this, I made sure all the kids knew of this weakness and carefully brought the kids over to the sewer entrance.

  As I thought, the kids were quite obedient as I took them into the sewers. I then pulled out a map and started to head in the direction of the base. After a while, we were all in front of the fake manhole cover that I used as the entrance of the base. I finally took the spell off after one st check and opened up the fake cover.

  The entrance opened up as I hopped in. After a little trepidation, they followed me and saw nd of wonder. I quickly headed on over to Lu and handed the job of introducing the kids to the base over to her.

  I quickly rushed out of the base and headed on over to my next goal. This whole scenario is a race against time. I need to hurry up and take as many people from these pces to my base as possible, before the other groups catch wind of what I am doing.

  Even if I do not fear their encirclement, if they ask for help and the helpers find out our base then the situation will become quite troublesome.

  Defending a base and defending ourselves is two different concepts. So, if they start cracking down on our base, then we might have to prepare to rebuild the base in another town. That would dey the pn of building a force in this world by an indefinite amount.

  I quickly rushed to the other goals and quickly subdue the traffickers while taking away the kids to our base.

  Once the sun rose again, I knew that the time for this action was up. Thankfully, I was able to securely take over all of the targets for this action. Since we are in the slums, the people they send in here to find us out will likely choose to give up. Major incidents have happened here that ended with no conclusion so my action would likely follow that conclusion.

  I finally went back to the base and found it quite bustling. Unlike before, the base now had a breath of life to it. Kids were wandering around and some were pying with the golems that were working. I showed a smile as I headed over to where a big crowd of kids were.

  When I got there, I saw a bunch of kids standing and listening to a figure in the center. Lu was teaching this st batch of kids about the precautions in the base.

  Lu had already done her research, and coupled with their former living conditions, most of the kids were obedient and willing to work if it could help them live.

  When the final batch of kids were sent out, she gave a sigh of relief before turning and noticing me present.

  Lu: Oh Celine, are you done bringing back everyone?

  I nodded and began expining the whole process to her. Once finished, she nodded and then told me to go back and help coordinate all the children while she rested. I agreed and went out to help take care of the many children here.

  When I went out, I saw that the kids were all situated in various areas of the base. Some were eating by the cafeteria, some were by the bedrooms rexing and some were watching the golems create various materials for living. When I walked out, a few walked up to me and asked what they would be doing now in the base.

  Since it needed to be told to everyone, I called everyone who was idle over to talk to them.

  Celine: You kids were brought to this base to eventually work for me. My name is Celine Vodol, you may call me Celine. Your current abilities are not fit to work for now, so we will teach you all basic knowledge before giving you your future jobs. You are being provided by me so I expect you to work for me when you are able, so don't slouch about.

  I then told them to tell the others of what I said as I went back to my room in the base. I took out a book about teaching others and began writing a doctrine for the kids to go by. Since I want them to work for me, I need them to know what I need of them and what the ultimate goal for this group will be.

  As I began writing, the kids spread my words over to everyone. After exploring the massive base the whole day, they all decided to go and eat before going to find their bedrooms. The rooms for these kids are in groups of four and are divided by genders. After a day of excitement, most went straight to bed and fell asleep. Others were not able to sleep so well.

  Eventually, the base fell to silence as only the sound of flipping pages could be heard from a room beled Celine's room.

  When the next day began, a wake up arm sounded through the base waking all of the kids up. While still dazed, groups of smaller, adult sized golems came and started taking care of the kids. Before they knew it, most of them were cared for and taken to a rge hall like cssroom.

  Then, the golems began sorting the kids into groups of around 15. In total there were a little over 150 kids so they were situated into 10 groups. They were then led to smaller rooms and taught by the golems there.

  Although golems can't interact as easily when teaching, they can be instilled with the knowledge they need to teach and routinely teach and check up on their respective students. So, I had the golems teach all of the kids about basic reading and writing. All of these kids will eventually help out when we complete our big organization. They should at the very least know words.

  After the morning css was over, the kids were brought to a massive cafeteria to line up for food. The yout was reminiscent of the old school cafeterias in the past. When an hour had passed, everyone was confirmed to have finished eating and were then back in their groups. They were then led into the cssrooms again.

  When they entered, the rooms were completely transformed. Now they all looked like training dojos with various weapons and tools for training.

  Since we live in this more primitive and dangerous world, our staff members should, at the very least, know basic self-defense.

  The golems would first ask them their preferred method of combat before training each one personally on how to fight. Each of these dojos would have three types of golems, one who teaches long ranged combat, one for close ranged weapons and one for melee combat. For those undecided on their weapon of choice, they are analyzed and given recommendations for weapons based on body type.

  After a while of training, they were then given a period for rest before going back to studies. All of this would then end here and the kids would be left with the rest of their time free. No need for homework as of yet since the kids are still familiarizing themselves with the base.

  This schedule left the children with plenty of energy to spend wandering the base. Although I could build a pyground for them to py in, this base should be here to train all around staff members rather than pyful kids.

  A few days passed as the kids got used to their new lives here at the base. Everything was going smoothly since I built plenty of golems to take care of the kids education and livelihood.

  While they were learning, Lu and I were both secretly pnning to travel around a bit. Since we have been staying here for quite some time, we should go ahead and revisit the adventurer's guild again.

  So we hurried along and finally arrived at the guild's entrance. Suddenly, the front doors swing open revealing the inside. A snobby looking rich kid walked arrogantly past us as we saw the inside of the guild looked a little roughed up.

  When we walked in, we saw that it was mainly the front desk damaged and that the other adventurer's in the hall were nowhere to be seen. They most likely left when the arrogant rich kid was here.

  Nonetheless, I waited for the staff to finish fixing up everything before they greeted me.

  Receptionist: Oh, it's you. Sorry for letting you see such an ugly side of the guild.

  I accepted her apology and started asking her about what was going on.

  Receptionist: Well, the one who went by is the son of one of the nobles here. His family is responsible for the public security of the town. Adventurer's as a job make it difficult for public security so the kids of his family are usually taught about the bad parts of adventuring. That noble's son was here to disparage the guild. Don't worry, they are taught to not go after individual adventurers to prevent the guild and nobles from fighting.

  The receptionist then let out a deep sigh of exhaustion.

  Receptionist: Anyways, sorry for listening to my rambling. What did you arrive here for?

  I then asked of there were any quick quests avaible that won't take too much time to finish. After a moment of thinking, they then look through a pile of requests before pulling out one.

  On the paper was a request to fetch an item from a certain pce. It is a retively urgent quest as the item would be arriving at the location by tomorrow and no one else is avaible to pick it up.

  This whole request seems fishy from beginning to end. If it is so important, why can't you ask a friend to pick it up? If it is not that important, why can't they just leave the item there for a day to pick it up. This whole request seems like a big problem in itself. No wonder no one picked it up yet.

  Since I just wanted to find a request to do, and not look for trouble, I decided to deny this quest and ask if there were other requests we could take that matched my requirements.

  After a sigh of disappointment, the staff shelved the request before bringing out a few more.

  This time, none of the requests had any abnormalities so I took a few and began completing them one by one. In the end, after a week of work, I went back to stay at the base once again.

  Now that some time had passed, I saw that the kids were a lot more educated then before, and now their proficiency in their respective weapons have now reached the level of adequate.

  If I had to summarize their current level of strength, I would say that they were all on average at the level of an athlete. Due to the supply of extraordinary food, harsh training and diligence lead to them all quickly growing in strength. though they were still in the unranked stage, they could all definitely grow to bck iron by the time they have grown up.

  Although that doesn't sound that strong, since I reached that level as a kid, the average strength in this pne is unranked. For every one silver there are only a two digit number of bronze tier fighters. There are still about three digits of bck iron tier fighters, but the rest of the pne is just full of unranked individuals.

  Unlike a main pne, this small pne doesn't nearly have the resources to grow too many extraordinary people.

  This leads to my next point, although higher tier people are not allowed into the pne here, higher level materials are not restricted. Thus my parents left a bunch of materials and how to use them in the ring. Things like blood crystals wouldn't be produced in a pne like this, so these materials are my greatest advantage here. With them, as long as I can stay incognito, I can slowly develop myself and my own power. Once I reach the level of silver, the inheritance and magic to be learned will have a massive jump in strength.

  Unlike the natives of this pne, my pne already has a mature development path that has been id down by the senior vampires. Due to this, various techniques and ways to use power in the silver stage are already written down for me to enjoy. So, once I reach that stage, I will only be more powerful than they are.

  After a break, I decided to get back to training myself. Since the kids will be getting stronger as time passes, I will have less things to do here in the base. Now that my hands are basically freed, I should really get back to training.

  Unlike at home, I don't have the guards who can teach me how to fight. Luckily, I still can summon my skeletons to fight so I won't get rusty.But only fighting skeletons will skew my fighting methods so I go out adventuring for about a week every month or so. Because of this, my adventurer rank has reached the level of bck iron.

  Although we have been promoted I still lived my days as I did before and continued to work hard in training.

  It was until one day that I finally reached a bottleneck in strength.

  Ever since I reached the level of bronze, my training had been smooth sailing this whole while. The only problem I ever had was that I needed to experience a real fight to obtain my fighting spirit. Now I finally reached my first real bottleneck in training. Unlike the other levels, the bronze tier is a tier that stops most extraordinary people from advancing. It is said that only one out of a hundred bronzes can break the barrier and reach the level of silver.

  As a vampire, the bottleneck is naturally much easier to break past than it is for a human. The potential that a vampire's body has depends on how rich the vampire's bloodline is. As a daughter of a duke level bloodline, I would certainty have an easy time breaking through. The only problem is that I currently need an opportunity to break through.

  If it was in the main pne, my parents could create a trial for me to surpass that would naturally result in a breakthrough. As, the vampires are currently likely locked in a war and so I need to look for an opportunity myself.

  Although I say that, I can't leave the base in their hands just yet. For now, I decided to just consolidate my current foundation by training and learning until I reach the absolute limit of the tier. Although I could break through with an opportunity, it is better to build my foundation up now than to haphazardly do it at a ter point.

  While I had more time, I went and helped Lu take care of the base. Since the both of us took turns to take care of it, Lu finally had the time to train herself. In order for me to have a stable training period, Lu took over the base and maintained it so I wouldn't have to worry about it.

  Now the base was running on the right track as the kids are now knowledgable enough to handle some of the easier chores out and about.

  Since that day, I could feel Lu progressing steadily as I absorbed more and more knowledge on this level. In this base, time seemed to pass by on speed up as a year had passed since then.

  Of the kids at the base, some of them have finally reached the level of bck iron. Since that was the case, I had them start to go out and live as adventurers on their own. Since they were taught basic nguage and writing, as well as combat, they were quickly able to show themselves off while traveling about. When they left, I had given them a special magic tool for communication. It is one of the commodities made in the golem production line.

  Because of this, I was able to learn more about everything surrounding the town without actually leaving it.

  Now that the kids at the base have started to develop, I think it is about time for Lu and I to depart.

  So we can preparing to set off while handing the mission of maintaining the base to some of the kids and the formation I had developed earlier to help maintain the base.

  After the preparations were complete, we said our good byes and left the base and this town we developed for so long.

  Now the sewers are taken care of by the kids at the base so that base will likely stay as our base of operations here for years to come. With the new knowledge given by the various kids who left to become adventurers, I now had a better understanding of this pne then before.

  The pne is split up into three main factions. One is the church who holds most of the power in this world and has the widest and most fertile territory. Second is the dark races who are mainly based around the outside of the church, but have many bases hidden in the various towns of the church. Third is a neutral ground that is able to persist on its own due to an ability they have to unite their strength to fight those of a higher level. By working together, the third faction was able to make a name for themselves when they resisted a silver level fighter from the dark race alliance.

  The town I have been staying in is on the outskirts of the nd controlled by the church. It is because of how distant it is from the capital that we were able to do so much.

  In other cities, the church has the greatest say, so hiding a base would be more difficult under their direct scrutiny.

  So the kids sent out were all tasked to find and stay in less important areas to hide from their eyes. While they are there, they will start building up branches and bring in orphans they find to add to our ranks.

  This will slowly grow our organization over time as we begin to infiltrate these pces.

  Because of this, now we don't have pay so much attention to building up the organization as the more people join in the further the group will develop. Since the organization can grow on its own, we can leave it to them with confidence.

  Now that we knew more about this pne, it was time to start searching around for an opportunity to reach the silver level.

  As we headed off, I checked the map again. Since the kids left, the map has been slowly developing so we were able to know more about the world. The magic communicator we gave them will quietly record the terrain of the area around them so the map is always constantly updated as they explore more. From what we have learned from their adventure, there is an unpoputed valley that is full of various beasts that repel any invaders.

  I was pnning on fighting in that valley and trying to break my bottleneck in all of that fighting.

  So we headed on over to that valley. Unexpectedly, the valley was quite far from our town so it took quite a while to head on over. I wasn't in a hurry though. I am a vampire so I already have an extended lifespan. Lu as a fox person, can increase their lifespan as they grow tails. The stronger she is before growing another tail, the more powerful and long lived she will be. According to the records in the library at home, there was a fox person who only grew a tail at the level of ptinum and was able to live a long life in the thousands of years. Although it is just hearsay.

  Because of all of this, time isn't really a problem for the both of us so we took our time to head on over. While on the way, we decided to stop by the various vilges along the way and helped them with some menial problems. After a month of traveling we finally came in the vicinity of the valley.

  Now that we were here, I began with calling my blood eye to check out the situation roughly. After confirming the situation, Lu began preparing a base for us as I began my first trip into the valley.

  The reason that I chose to venture into this valley is that the kid who found the valley had found out that there were monsters who were confirmed to be bronze in strength. Since that was the case, I knew this was the right pce to get the life and death combat needed to make a breakthrough.

  I headed on into the valley. Although I called this pce lightly, this valley is actually a massive region that the outside world knows as the devil's pit. It is called that because it was once a pce where a silver level monster appeared. This monster was eventually vanquished by a silver warrior from the church. The fight sted years and the result of their constant cshes was the valley known as the devil's pit.

  Originally, the pce was watched over by a silver level extraordinary person, but with the rise of the dark race alliance the church could not put the time to send a silver over to clean it. Because of this, the adventurer's guild was entrusted to regurly cleaned it.

  Now the mission was left to the kid who told us of the pce. There is just one problem, the monsters there had been in hiding and finally reached an overwhelming level for the guild. Now, rather than clean up, the mission here was to watch over the pce and warn the town in case of an invasion.

  The only thankful part is that the beasts in the valley have been stuck warring against each other for a long time now. Now that I am here, it is time to use this pce as my training ground.

  As I headed on over, I noticed that the pce was bustling over with activity as there were constant fights all over the pce. I slipped into the valley in all of that fighting and searched around for any targets who I could face that were bronze level.

  After some time I found my target. In the distance there was a rhino like creature facing a leopard like creature.

  Both animals were at the level of bronze and were locked in a back and forth. When I saw how they were fighting, I knew I found my first target.

  And so I snuck in real close to them before I made my blood sword and pulled out my red jade sword.

  Right as they were about to csh again, I rushed in between the two of them and blocked both moves.