With my interruption of their fight, the two jump back defensively. With my interruption, the battle becomes a three-way melee so the two beasts remained on guard. The three of us maintain eye contact with each other while perceiving the outside world in case of an external attack.
Soon, both beasts grow impatient. The leopard-like beast unches an attack and swipes toward my neck. The rhino-like beast charges upfront with its horn aimed straight forward.
I quickly swing my blood bde to meet the leopards paw while I flexibly turn my body to dodge the rhino. It seems like both of these beasts want to deal with me as an outsider first.
That is exactly what I wanted so I quickly repelled the leopard while sshing at the rhino with my red jade bde.
The cuts on the rhino are light and only lightly scratch the tough outer armor of the rhino. The leopard takes the opportunity to back off using the momentum that I repelled it with to quickly dash back.
I then go back to a defensive stance as the rhino quickly turns back to charge me again. This time, the leopard thinks smarter and sneaks around behind me. When I went to block the rhino's charge head on, the leopard quickly leaps into action and swipes at my head with both paws.
Seeing the situation become a little dire, I quickly crouch down and force the rhino's blow a little higher so it would collide with the leopard. The rhino's momentum pushes it forward uncontrolbly and the leopard's paws only strike at the rhino's tough armor while the remaining force of the charge sms the leopard into a tree in the surroundings.
Seeing this, I quickly jump back away from my current position below the rhino and quickly stabilize my position in the air before quickly getting into a defensive stance.
Now, the leopard is likely quite injured. Although it did not tank the full blow of the rhino, feline type beasts are generally not known for being defensive. This means my current goal is to defeat the rhino in front of me. I quickly begin to brace myself for combat as the rhino eyes from a side view.
After a little confrontation, we just watched each other waiting for the one who will make the first blow. Seconds pass by as I build up more energy. When I sense that I reached my limit and that the rhino had not moved yet, I made the first move and dashed toward the rhino.
Seemingly provoked, the rhino quickly charged me as brown glow appeared on the rhino's body. This time I quickly swung my bdes in various ways. When my bdes struck, I knew my current blow could not take this beast down. The rhino's tough skin has been toughened even further to the extent that it matched full pte steel armor. After sensing this, I also felt the force of the rhino's blow through my bdes.
Realizing the situation was not so great, I quickly mirror the techniques of the leopard and use the force of the rhino's blow to escape the full blow. Although I mirrored the technique, the move was made for a leopard's body to use and not for humanoids so I still took some of the force.
I then activate my fighting spirit so I could even the pying field once again. The rhino was noticeably more careful after I activated my fighting spirit. I quickly dash at the rhino as it was still in the middle of turning to face me again. Likely sensing it, the rhino quickly stomps it's back feet and a shockwave like effect appeared along with the earth cracking around the stomp with debris flying towards me.
I quickly turn my bdes to cut up the bigger chunks of debris. Some of the stray bits go through my bde defense and strike me head on. My body was now full of small scratches and cuts from the sharp debris, but now the rhino was within striking distance of my bde. The rhino still was not done turning so I quickly followed along the side of the rhino and began sshing at it with a flurry of sshes.
As I struck the rhino, my sshes were now able to cause sizable wounds to the rhino. The bright spshes of blood stimuted my instincts and my fighting spirit glowed a crimson light as I felt my body get lighter and stronger.
The rhino quickly charges away as I cut all across its side. The rhino then quickly charged away, leaving me relishing in releasing my bloody fighting intent. I could smell the blood from the battle just now and relished in the atmosphere. I then quickly swing my bde towards the right. My ssh swung out a flying ssh, the likes you would expect from a fighting anime.
In the path of the ssh was a small and flexible bird that was dashing towards me. If I remained immersed in the blood, that bird would have dashed at my head and pierced through.
Even though I struck an unexpected strike at the bird, the bird quickly weaved past the ssh and continued its quick descent towards me. From my back, my bat like wings stretched out while folded up like a nce. I covered my nce like folded wings with my fighting spirit and struck towards the bird.
The wings sprouted out and surprised the bird as I was able to quickly skewer the bird on my wing. I then flicked my wing and sent the body out to the forest. I took in a deep breath and relished in the freeing of my wings.
Back at home, I was used to training all of my abilities. Since it was at home, I was able to show and train all of my abilities to their fullest extent. In comparison, here in this pne the situation is different since I was hiding that I was a vampire from the organization. Things like my fangs and extraordinary parts like cws and wings would be better left for when I had to eliminate all witnesses.
Since that was the case, this was the first time I was able to fully release myself in this pne. This feeling lead to me ughing wildly in the valley. My voice quickly echoed and resonated through the whole forest. I could feel that there were several bronze tier enemies heading towards me and so I licked my lips before opening my wings and releasing my cws.
From the core of my body I felt my fighting spirit awaken full of bloody fighting intent. The blood all around then stimuted my blood magic and the very core of my existence. In my heart I felt a thumping and craving for a bloodbath as I voiced my words.
Celine: Sanctuary of Blood - Blood Unison!
All of a sudden, my human figure quickly expanded. In pce of my previous body was a rge western style dragon with wide bat like wings and long serpent like fangs. In this form I stretched out my neck and sent out a ferocious roar. The roar was simir to the roar of a lion with a subtle hissing noise simir to a snake, but magnified to match the lion-like roar. From my body, an aura simir to a domain spread out from my body. My head suddenly got filled with more knowledge of my technique.
This new domain was my Dragon Aura. Dragon Aura is the natural domain like ability that most pureblooded dragons contain. It is a mix of the powerful blood in dragons as well as their strong mental presence. The both powers fuse and become a unique pressure that weakens the courage and will of their opponents. It is through this domain that dragons obtained their fame.
My aura was not an actual dragon aura as I was not a pureblooded dragon. Instead it was a simuted aura that was developed as part of the Sanitary of Blood technique. By using a dragon like form and using a dragon aura like ability, the creator of this ability was able to have the combat ability of a dragon of the same level. Although it would not have the special dragon nguage magic that dragons were known for, the uniqueness of blood magic was able to let the user become more difficult to face than an ordinary dragon.
Dragons were, after all, more known for their raw destructive power. Using the body and aura of a dragon and adding the weird flexibility of blood magic makes this form quite troublesome to face. Blood magic is one of the most flexible types of magic around and was also known for being able to recover the user's body by merely intaking blood. This leads to this form being absolutely optimized for absolute melee combat.
Not only that, I was able to sense my fighting spirit and quickly wrapped my new cws with it as I looked towards the forest.
Because of all of my ruckus, several bronze level enemies were drawn to my presence and they quickly rushed over to attack me. When I revealed my dragon aura, they all stopped for a second apprehensively before deciding to rush towards me.
I quickly folded my wings and coated them in fighting spirit as I rushed to meet their charge. At the head of the charge was a swift cheetah like beast that quickly entangled me as the other beast arrived. Since I was more familiar with fighting using my swords in human form, the beasts were able to quickly entangle and strike at me.
In addition to the head on confrontation, some of them casted spell like abilities towards me. Seeing this, I wondered why they were fighting so hard to repel me? Was there something in this valley that was worth all of their fighting?
I quickly shook my head and got back to focusing on fighting. While I was distracted, more beasts arrived so the fighting was getting more and more serious. I quickly got the hang of fighting in groups as I faced all of these beasts. The individual cws on each of my hand were now stabbing forth in different angles to quickly cut into these beasts. I quickly got the hang of using my tail and began swing my tail covered in fighting spirit like a whip. My wings were folded into bde-like shapes and were then used in a matter simir to my swordsmanship.
Although I say this, the beast were able to break my scales when working together so my dragon body was full of wounds as we fought.
Soon the battlefield was left with me and three other beasts.
In front of me was a goril like beast with massive strong arms that were able to restrain my dragon like limbs. To my left there was a massive golden eagle with tough and sharp talons that were able to confront both of my wings. To the right was finally a massive praying mantis like beast. It's cws were massive and so sharp that they were able to cause sharp cuts all over my body even through my scales.
Finally there was me, I was covered in wounds and cuts while standing upon a pile of monster corpses. Most of the bodies were in the bck iron level, but there were still plenty of bronze level opponents that I vanquished. I was atop the pile gasping for breath. Although I won over this pile of beasts, the three in front of me would be where the real challenge began. The three of these beasts were actually around my strength. While we were in a standstill, I quickly absorbed the blood of the beast pile through my body to quickly recover from my internal injuries.
Curing my external wounds would only prompt them to rush in my non optimal state so I needed to recover while not taking their attention. After some time in this stalemate, the three suddenly came to a consensus and rushed towards me. I quickly went into combat and swung my cws at the goril. The beast took the blow head on and entangled my front cws.
As that happened, the golden eagle rushed toward my head so I quickly blocked with my left wing as I swung my right to deter it. My tail was then left to sweep towards the praying mantis. Since I knew its cws were so sharp, I coated my tail in my fighting spirit as I swung. The praying mantis quickly dashes back to safety as my blow narrowly misses it.
I then turn my attention to the other two and quickly stretch my neck over to bite the goril with my snake like fangs. the goril proceeds to back off as the mantis strikes towards my neck that I stretched out. Before the mantis could swing, I finished my quiet chant and a familiar barrier made of blood appeared on my neck.
As the mantis was surprised by the barrier, my now free cws swung straight at it as my tail began helping to strike the eagle. My two attacks both hit right on and I was able to get a good ssh on the mantis while striking the eagle out. Right as I was starting to get a little smug, the goril quickly rushes in and nds a solid blow on my head.
I reel from the pain and it rushes in to my torso in the gap I was reeling and swung a solid combo on my body.
I quickly bite at the goril and successfully sink my fangs into the goril. My surprise attack caused the goril to cream out and quickly back off, I allow it as I quickly rushed back to the corpse pile and quickly recover my wounds while they were all reeling. Before they could react, my wounds were quickly recovered by absorbing the blood from the pile.
As I recovered, the beasts seemed to notice something was off. As my wounds recovered, the beasts then quickly decide to run away while I was healing.
I allow them to escape as I quickly recovered my wounds. When they all slipped into the woods, I let out a satisfying roar as my aura expanded. I could sense many beasts were quickly running from this pce full of danger. I took another deep breath before finally reverting back to my humanoid vampire state.
I quickly fell in exhaustion, but before I fell onto the floor, I could feel a furry figure catch me. I opened my tired eyes and see that Lu had arrived and caught me from my falling state. Seeing that it was Lu, I knew I was safe and fell asleep under her wry smile. I could feel my head being patted as she took me away.
...
When I woke up, I felt super sore all over and groggily opened my eyes. I found that I was in a tree like base on a soft mat and that there was a tasty smelling scent beyond the doorway in the base. I moved my muscles a bit and found that I was feeling a little weak. Before I could struggle off the mat, the door opened and in came Lu who was wearing an apron while carrying a tray with a bowl of what looked like porridge and a gss of blood.
She looked surprised I was up and pced the tray on a side table before helping me sit up. She then slowly poured the blood like liquid in the gss into my lips. A trickle of the blood flowed down my chin as I tasted the liquid. I was able to tell that it was the same artificial blood that I had back at home. After finishing the gss, Lu wiped my chin as I slowly began feeling energized. Before I could open my mouth, she quickly pced a spoonful of the porridge on my lips.
I then took the spoonful as Lu began narrating the happenings that happened since I fought that day.
Lu: After you fought with the beasts in the Devil's Pit, the beast grew quiet as many of the bronze level beast were killed. The three main beast who besieged you at the end all have returned to their territories to recover while the vacant territories were divided by the other bronze beasts. The biggest change is that the beasts did not come to the surroundings of that battle and regard that area as your territory. As for the organization, things are going as they should be and nothing out of the ordinary has been reported.
I took a deep breath and finally finished the porridge. Lu then left to do her own training and I sat up on the bed in thought.
I looked inside my body and found that I have not yet reached the silver rank yet. Although I haven't broken through, my bottleneck has already loosened and it is just a matter of time before I can break through. I could choose to fight again to break through, but it is not so necessary at this point.
Looking at my hand again, I could feel that it wasn't just the energy in my body that has changed. Although I am still weak right now, I can tell that when I have recovered, I would be able to absolutely crush my previous self with just my regur body and blood magic.
I guess I can call my current state pseudo-silver tier.
Since I was still injured, I decided to just rest both my mind and body here. That battle truly and completely exhausted me so taking a break should be fine right?
When I thought that, a sudden thought appeared in my mind, if I am not practicing what should I do? When that thought appeared my mind got confused. Ever since I was able as a kid, I was always learning or training. I thought about it all deeply and finally decided to just sleep. Why should I fixate on a hobby in an extraordinary world like this? I should just seek out further and further heights till I reach the limits of this new world.
Finally deciding so, I fell into a fast slumber and my body was able to fully rex and recover.
A week passed and my body was finally in its top shape. When I confirmed so, I headed on over to Lu to tell her that I would be back to training. She gave a wry smile as I rushed over to an open area to practice.
We were still near the valley so I found an open clearing and summoned my blood bde. This time, I wanted to see what changes have happened overall, so I coated my blood bde with my fighting spirit and used the surroundings to test my new strength.
My bde quickly sshed outwards and tore open a ravine into the surrounding forest. I could tell that the overall output of energy and fighting spirit had increased a sizable amount. If I had to quantify it, it was near 20% boost in overall output. That means, my various abilities could be around 20% stronger if I went all out compared to before.
As I saw this, I then summoned my domain around me.
Celine: Sanctuary of Blood!
A familiar circle of red appeared around me and I saw my skeleton swordsman again. I then commanded him to duel me as usual and when we cshed I knew that even my summons have improved. The strength and fighting spirit from them was all improved and was still a match for me.
After a quick bout, I was finally able to completely control my new strength minutely. The increase was a big 20%, but that was only in energy output. Strength, speed, and endurance all got a small boost as well so familiarizing myself with my changes should be my number one goal right now.
Since I got used to my current physical strength, now it is time to get familiar with my various other abilities. I then started casting various magics and checking my proficiency in them. Once I confirmed that my magic control was still there, I prepared to test the most important thing.
Celine: Sanctuary of Blood - Blood Unison!
My form was once again transformed into my dragon like form. The overall shape has not gone through any changes, but the overall size has increased. I could tell that my length had increased when the trees nearby appeared visibly shorter than before. If I had to compare, my previous form was maybe 12 feet long. Now I can say that I have reached the 15 feet mark in this form.
Afterwards, I began moving around in this body. Since that group fight, I have gotten completely used to fighting in this form. Before, when I was training, I could only walk around and perform simple attacks. Now, I can easily pretend to be a beast who fights with their body. That fight let me easily see how various beasts fight and matching certain movements with my new form has become easier than before.
This means that if I were to participate in the next Little Blood Cup, I would likely be able to bloodbath the tournament with this new form.
When I thought of this, I gave a small smile at the thought. I wonder how strong Sos will be by the next competition? I hope she can still rival me when the time comes, otherwise I'll just be bored out of my mind.
I then stretched all of the muscles of this form as travelled about. After a while, I reverted back to my base form and stretched again. Once I was done, I went ahead and began my sword training as usual with just swordsmanship. I constantly swung my bde in various ways in an almost dance like movement. Swordsmanship was originally all about killing and a major part of it is through bance. Not only will dancing with my sword help develop my bance, but it will also help me learn about the usage of my bde in various different angles.
As I spun about, I finally even enveloped my whole body with fighting spirit to amplify this sword dance from a performance like art to a true killing move.
Even though I originally chose to wield a weapon to supplement my summons, all of this time training has truly allowed me to appreciate the art of the sword. So, even though I may not be a strict and pure swordsman, I still regard myself as a swordsman at heart.
I then finally swung the st ssh that accumuted all of the force from the whole dance as one. this one blow, blessed by my fighting spirit, easily annihited all that was in the path of my bde. That swing, I have confirmed is indeed a strong blow even among the silver level. Although I say it is a silver level blow, I concentrated the bde so only the air in front of me truly felt the concentrated essence of that strike.
Were it to strike on a person, the effect would likely be akin to that of a ser that precisely splits the target from top to bottom.
I nodded in appreciation for that blow. Although I haven't fully reached silver, I can already be considered able to fight at that level with that one blow. When I checked my energy level, I was once again low on energy. That blow may have been overwhelmingly strong, but I haven't reached silver yet so such a blow can only remain my trump card for now.
Since I had no energy left and I already tried everything I wanted, I returned to the tree base and went to take a nap.
As I was resting, I smelled a good fragrance from outside the base. I walked over and noticed Lu was there making a delicious looking stew. After wiping away the drool on my face and giving a light cough, I walked over to Lu.
Celine: Your stew smells so good, is it going to be ready soon?
Lu: Oh, you are awake. The stew will be ready soon Celine. It just needs to simmer for a little longer.
I give a light nod as I sit right on the ground. While waiting, I asked Lu about how strong she has gotten currently. According to her, she is still a while away from the Silver level. Unlike my high level vampire blood, fox folk don't rely on bloodline as much. Because of this, it is often a little harder to grow in strength for them compared to a bloodline based race. The benefit is that the upper limit is not clear. This means that the upper limit of those fox people is their talent.
Lu then talks a little of her hometown. She says that she originally lived in a small pne known as the Sakura Sanctuary. The main characteristics of her pne are creatures known as evil spirits and the miko profession. Evil spirits are something like an elemental spirit made of negative emotions. As an intangible existence, the best way her world had to deal with them was concentrating positive emotions to face them. This resulted in the Miko profession as they were people who had a high tolerance for positive emotions and could contain, absorb, and use them to deal with evil spirits.
That is the general history of her world as she knew it at least. Lu was the Miko of her vilge and worked hard in fighting evil spirits. Suddenly, one day the world shook and the sky cracked as many of what looked like drops of blood fell from the sky.
After a closer inspection, each drop was actually a distant spaceship that the vampires use to invade different pnes. In a few days, the whole world was turned upside down as battles rang out all over her world.
Half a year went by before the biggest news spread, the Great Miko who oversaw the pne and fought head on with the vampires was defeated and captured. Then, in only a few months time, the whole pne was captured and she was then given to uncle Leon to sell off. The rest of the story I already know so she did not eborate further.
As she finished her story, she went to check on the stew. Seeing that it was finished, she hurried back in the base to get bowls and spoons for us and we both enjoyed sitting around and telling stories to one another.
After I spoke of my childhood, Lu responded with stories when she was a kid. We both ughed and enjoyed each other's company as we chatted till night fell and the stars appeared in the sky.
When we saw the stars in the sky, we appreciated them for a while before I finally decided to call it quits for the day. From the corner of my eye, I could see a small and truly genuine smile on Lu's face. Maybe today's chat let her finally rex around me?
I went back into the base and fell asleep.
As I woke up, I went to change into training clothes and trained for a while as the sun was starting to rise. Unlike in my homend, there is an actual day night cycle here. Although vampires are weak to the sun, it depends on what sun you are specifically talking about. On different pnes, there will be different suns that have different effects on the nd around them. If the sun was light/holy element then I would be troubled as a vampire.
Thankfully, the sun in this world is mostly based on the fire element. Thus, the effect on vampires like me is that we just feel a little uncomfortable in the sun. Even if it did have an affect on me, my parents would have already prepared countermeasures in the space ring they left me.
So, I was finally able to feel a sun on my body once I arrived in this world. My previous life has almost no traces left so although I don't remember how it felt like, I think that it might feel something like this. A slight warm and uplifting feeling that spreads throughout my whole body.
As I kept pondering this, I went to practice my swordsmanship as usual. After a while, I switched to training my technique and them magic. Once that was done, I went back in the base and checked on Lu. Surprisingly, she was still sleeping in bed. After seeing that she was sleeping happily, I went to wash up before making breakfast fir myself.
Since I had never cooked before, I looked through my space ring before finally finding a basic cookbook. After scrolling through the pages, I found a recipe that was beled easy to create. It was a simple omelette.
I looked into my space ring and found that I didn't have any eggs anywhere. After searching though the base, I finally found a fridge like magic device. When I opened it and searched a bit, I found a bunch of eggs. I took a few and searched around for a pan and oil to cook the eggs.
When I found all the ingredients, it was quite a while afterwards. Since it was my first time cooking, I made sure to prepare all the ingredients in advance so I could focus only on the cooking when I started.
After starting a fire using another magic device, I went ahead and began. Pouring the oil, adding the cracked and seasoned eggs, adding extra toppings like cheese and some meat, and finally giving the eggs a flip.
Once I finished, and omelette was now on the pte in front of me. I went in and took a bite.
Bnd...
