She yelped but didn’t pull away.
Even as she shrank back in pain, I changed to my Vampire Form and cast Dark Magic Heal. I kept ahold of her wrist in case she tried something again.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly, before raising my voice. “But what are you doing?”
Becoming as still as a stone, she found a spot low on my chest and bore a hole into it with her gaze. “Do I not please you, my lord?” I saw her wince as she realized she’d addressed me how I’d asked her not to.
The heat in my chest rose as if I were in my Crimson Incubus form, but my growing anger had nothing to do with what she’d called me. Before she could speak, I nearly barked her head off, but calmed myself just prior to speaking. “That has nothing to do with it. You did this for all of your masters?”
She must have been able to feel my anger, for she didn’t speak, but shuddered while nodding her head.
“How many times do I have to say it? I’m not your master, and I’m not a lord,” I said, before realizing I was squeezing her wrist too tight. I loosened my grip but didn’t lose my blunt tone. “If you had a choice, would you have continued sleeping with those lords after marrying your husband?”
It was like she’d been plunged into cold water. “Never,” she whispered. She was soon shaking her head as if she couldn’t stop. The determination she’d had a moment ago had suddenly been leached from her.
Letting go of her wrist, I watched as she fell to her knees. She looked more confused than anything else.
“Don’t do that again,” I commanded before adding weakly, “Get some sleep.”
“I—I don’t know how…” she replied.
Shaking my head to myself, I bent down and pulled her dangling strap to her shoulder before offering her a hand. She took it and I helped her to her feet.
“What do you mean?” I said.
She was quiet for a moment before glancing back at the bed. “I’ve never slept alone.”
Her words were like a lightning mallet striking my chest. “Not even as a child?”
She nodded. “When I was young, I slept with the other kids. Then when I was of age, my new master changed me and…”
I just stared at her without a clue what to say. My eyes swelled. Before I knew what I was doing, I pulled her into my embrace and held her there. If I’d given in to temptation…
It wasn’t long before tears started flowing, but they weren’t mine. Even as she bawled, she lifted her hand and extended her index finger to command her tears to float off her face and dissipate into the air.
At first, I didn’t stop her, but after a minute I couldn’t take it any longer. I grabbed her hand and forced it away from her face. When I did, she turned and dug her forehead into the Skeletal Armor over my chest.
It had to be ten minutes before I loosened my embrace. When I did, I didn’t let her go, but scooped her off her feet and held her like a child. Reaching the bed, I laid her down and tucked her in. Instead of leaving, I sat down at the edge of the bed and leaned against it so she could feel my presence.
“My father used to do this when I was little and I couldn’t sleep,” I said.
She didn’t say or do anything for a few minutes, but before too long, I felt her scoot over and put her back against mine.
It was then that I noticed Shamash had disappeared from the scene. It was a few minutes before he returned but stayed outside the barrier.
Jasmine’s quivering whimpers came in waves, but still I didn’t move. It was an hour later when her sobbing stopped. I used my perceptions to check on her and I saw that she’d finally fallen asleep.
I didn’t leave her side even then. She was obviously broken. But what could I do? I was broken as well. I immediately thought of Aeris and wished she were here. She’d know exactly what to do. I just needed to return, give Lilith what she’d asked for, then Aeris and the girls would return. Then Jasmine could get some real help.
I couldn’t help but remember the change in Aeris’s voice before I’d left for the vampire realm. I began to shake, but not in sorrow. I was the one who was supposed to go into the Head Mistress’s dungeon alone, face Mistress Nava, and come to the vampire realm—to do the things that the others couldn’t to gain power to protect everyone. In agreeing to execute the succubi’s prisoners, Aeris had taken it upon herself to grow in power for the same reasons regardless of the personal consequences. It was possible that when she returned, she wouldn’t be the same.
I gripped my hands together to try to stop the tremors, but it only helped a little.
I felt Jasmine move and I stiffened. She’d finally fallen asleep and I’d already woken her up.
A small, graceful hand moved across my shoulder and clung to my collarbone as another hand squeezed my arm. Then I felt a cheek press into my back as Jasmine embraced me from behind.
After a moment, I let my body slide down until she was able to hold on to me without having to sit up. As she fell back to her pillow, I leaned my head back to rest on her shoulder as she clung to me.
While looking up through Shamash’s barrier at the dense shadows that clung to the ceiling untold miles overhead, I realized how tired I’d become since leaving Persepolis. Even my natural regeneration seemed to be powerless against this kind of exhaustion. I closed my eyes after an unspecified amount of time and fell asleep.
Chapter 41 – Thank You
When I awoke over six hours later, Jasmine was still curled up behind me. If I’d fallen asleep leaning back in the same way before coming to the Underworld then I probably wouldn’t have been able to move my neck for a week. But with a simple Dark Magic Heal, the stiffness evaporated.
When I sat up, her hand fell from my shoulder.
It was too much to ask that she’d be able to sleep any longer. She sat up in bed almost as soon as I moved.
Shifting around, I greeted her with a grin.
Her eyes darted to the floor.
I responded by bending down to cut off her line of sight to try to coax her to look at me. “So what you’re saying is that the floor looks more interesting than I do, huh?”
When her eyes shot up and she was clearly jumbled, I lightly chuckled.
Then the craziest thing happened. She smiled. It was a skittish little thing that mostly matched her manner over the last couple of days, but it was authentic enough.
“So what would you like for breakfast?” I said, putting on my best snotty waiter impression.
Her eyes didn’t drop to the floor, but sheepishly looked away.
I was sure to follow up with another grin. “I know my impressions are terrible. I’m really sorry you had to see that.”
She looked at me again, shaking her head seriously when I laughed. She let out a giggle as weak as a whimper.
“That’s better,” I said, sifting through my inventory. “So what do you like to drink? I had you drain all of the non-beast-feeder blood except for what you were carrying. I’m sorry if that’s what you would’ve preferred, but I’m a human and I don’t want you to eat me so… Also, all my vampire friends are beast-feeders, so there’s that too.”
“You have vampire friends, Elorion?” she replied.
“Besides you?” I narrowed my gaze. “Yes. Some of the best people I know are vampires. Here. This is my favorite.”
Pulling out a bottle of Smith’s Dregs, I handed it to her. “It was actually a dark elf that introduced me to this. She’s not a vampire but is the one who educated me on vampire drinks.”
She popped the cork on the bottle with an expert hand. “Is she your fiancée?”
“No. We did go on a date, though. It was really just a way to pay her back for almost killing her in the arena. My fiancée is human, or at least I think she is. She’s a Wind Sprite who can also turn into a Wind Wisp. You’ll meet her when we get to where we’re going.”
“Oh,” she replied, taking a drink.
“Don’t worry. You guys will be great friends. How’s it taste?”
“It’s good.”
“What do you really think?”
“A little too sweet.”
“Hrmm. If that’s the case.” I started looking through my inventory but then I had the idea to check the Master Ring. Switching to it, I scanned for blood. I was suddenly glad I was sitting down. 133 bodies of Trueblood were staring back at me. Not 1, not 3, but 133…
“Uh.”
Hearing her hesitation, I removed my senses from the ring. “If you have a question, unless there’s a chance talking might put us in danger, you don’t have to ever fear asking me. Even if it’s the dumbest question any dark elf has ever asked. At the worst, I’ll savagely tease you until you give me a death glare. Then I’ll feel bad and let you hit me—preferably on the arm.”
“Okay… You made a face like something was wrong. Is anything—wrong?”
“Not for long.” I began removing metal cylinders from my Master Ring and undid their lids. “Drain these in this order without looking.”
She was a little taken aback, but I’d already had her Drain a full shop of blood, so she wasn’t too hesitant.
I’d set out a dozen cylinders. They were broken up into four sets of three. I pointed to each group in order. The first had Quarter-blood, the second Half-blood, the third Full-blood, and the final group had Trueblood. Normally, one would have to depend on vast quantities of lower quality blood to build their bloodline, but with enough of the higher quality, it wasn’t difficult for someone to become Trueblooded.
She Drained each group as I asked without looking. I could tell as the last bit of blood began to fill her that she could feel that something had changed, and it wasn’t insignificant.
“Go ahead, and take a look,” I said.
She jolted in her seat. With both hands covering her mouth, she stared blankly for a long moment before she started waving them frantically back and forth. She looked up at me with tear-filled eyes, but they were no longer tears of grief. “I—I—I. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Then just say it. Thank you. It doesn’t take more than that.”
“Thank you. Thank you, Elorion,” She threw her legs off the bed and leaned forward until her face was only inches from mine. “It must take more than words because…” She motioned toward her popup like it explained everything.
“Is that really how a Trueblood acts?”
She laughed fully for the first time. “I will do anything you ask of me.”
“Then return with me and become a part of Sanctuary. We’re all one big family.” I realized she might not understand the concept of having friends as close as family, so I added, “Or at least like one. None of us are really related, so you’ll fit right in. Just be prepared for a lot of vampire jokes because we’re a bunch of human teenagers. Get to know them. Help where you can. Protect them if necessary, and we’ll protect you.”
She pounced like a giant cat and wrapped her arms around my neck. Her knee was digging into my calf muscle, but I didn’t make her move. She finally sat back onto the edge of the bed and began patting her lap without stopping. She began saying, “thank you,” over and over again as if singing a song.
After her little caper was over, she let out an exaggerated sigh. “And what about you?” she said, suddenly serious. “You said I should protect them, and you all will protect me, but who protects you?”
“By staying safe you protect my peace of mind so that I can do what I must to keep everyone safe,” I replied.
She lowered her eyes as she nodded, but I noticed she seemed to be seriously contemplating something.
“Besides, that’s not the only thing,” I said fondly. “When I get home Aeris probably won’t let me go anywhere without her ever again.”
***
I hadn’t actually refined any mana but had my first night’s rest in who knows how long. It had helped to relieve some of my emotional exhaustion, and I was thinking clearer. My mind was still constantly on my 600,000 victims, but I started to allow myself to look forward. No little part of that was because of Jasmine. Without Aeris here to take care of her, I had no choice but to step up. I couldn’t just be content with protecting her. She needed more than that, so I’d try to do whatever I could.
It wasn’t just my attentiveness toward her that changed, but I also returned to power leveling like a madman. I began systematically going through my Forms that I’d stopped leveling at 95 and got them all to level 100 in two days. My mana regeneration was at such a level that excessive channeling was no longer as tedious.
One form that I’d yet to spend much time with but had a lot of promise soon rose to compete with Vampire as my third best form. In time, it could even outdo Primordial Cat.
Minotaur Form
Level: 100
Cost: 5,000 Mana Per Minute (500 with buffs)
Strength: +1 for every Character Level, +100% Strength
Dexterity: +1 for every Character Level, +100% Dexterity
Constitution: +1 for every Character Level, +100% Constitution
Special Abilities: Magic Resistance, Wild Bull
Magic Resistance:
Level 1
5% Damage Resistance to every School of Magic
Wild Bull: Pushes past any mind-affecting status effects and allows you to continue your attack.
Note: This puts you in a state of auto attack if you lose consciousness. Target picked at random. If you regain consciousness the attack stops immediately.
Its cost was almost nothing and even though enhancing it through channeling didn’t work as well as my other forms, the +1 for every Character Level was mind-blowing. For not even a fraction of the cost, its base buffs were now greater than Primordial Cat and Crimson Incubus because I’d reached 29,641. They could still outdo it, but it required much more mana. There was simply no other way of getting my Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution to 50,000 for such a tiny mana cost.
I still needed to find a way to improve its Magic Resistance ability, but I wasn’t worried about figuring something out in the future. Once I’d mastered it, it was possible that it would surpass all but my Primordial Cat Form.
With my unreal level of mana regeneration, force leveling my forms wasn’t the only thing I was able to work on. I’d been neglecting working on leveling my Dark Magic to the Advanced Rank. Since I’d been trying so hard to blend my Dark and Blue Magic, I hadn’t been able to push it as hard as I could. But now, I did both.
As expected, even at the Intermediate rank, my Dark Magic was more susceptible to channeling than my Blue Magic would ever be. I flew up more than a thousand feet so that there was no chance of harming Jasmine. She continued to ride forward on Brat’s back and power leveled her own magic—although I’d seen her watching me more than once.
I was in 4x Vampire Form with my Crimson Incubus Wings behind my back. I had 48 seconds before I’d run out of the mana bonus from enhancing the form. 4x gave me an additional 40,000 Intelligence and 24,000,000 MP at a cost of 500,000 Mana Per Second. I had no desire to tap into my refined mana, so I’d make complete use of the 24,000,000 MP before dropping the form back to 1x which only cost 500 MPS.
This Vampire Form was completely unlike anything else I had in the way its channeling worked. In some ways it was superior even to Primordial Cat Form. But, instead of having to double the amount of MP to it to gain the benefits of channeling, I had to push it to ten times the amount to just double the stat bonuses. The Intelligence bonus also doubled, at first, but then the bonus halved each time I poured ten times more mana into it to reach each of the form’s tiers.
With my left hand outstretched, the pressure from my Dark Magic aura intensified. The space around me began to darken even without the mana escaping from my body as if the surrounding dark mana particles were attracted to me. All the held back energy burst from my hand. An ocean of Dark Magic lightning covered the sky in an instant. I tried focusing it and pushing it further so as to see how far it could possibly reach.
I wasn’t just using t
he base spell from my Dark Magic Alignment, but also Blue Magic blended with it in a chaotic entanglement. It wasn’t perfection that I was going for, but absolute destruction.
My aim was nothing but the space above the Cavern Level in the direction we’d already come. The ceiling was more than a couple miles above, so nothing would be harmed by my magic. My sole goal was to stretch myself and my Dark Magic to see what it was truly capable of.
As the lightning was concentrated into a loose beam, the static power took on a new state. It was like hate had liquified and wanted nothing more than to express itself.
At one time, reaching a distance of twenty feet was impressive for my Dark Magic lighting. But now, its range had extended to more than a mile and it was impossible for me to accurately measure how much further than that it reached.
In a matter of seconds I’d run out of the excess mana and let my Vampire Form return to its normal state. It took about five minutes to recharge my Vampire Form’s ability to provide its MP bonus. I flew down to rejoin Jasmine and Shamash as I waited.
She looked over after casting one of her mounds that was already twice the size it had been before. I’d provided her with more than a thousand Minor Dark Orbs she’d could drain to speed up her mana recovery, so her power leveling had also sped up. The scorpion-like plant she summoned was also three times the size it had been and taller than I was. She now only failed one out of five times.
She gave me a timid grin, and I couldn’t help but praise her improvement.
“Thank you,” she replied, holding my gaze a few seconds longer than she’d dared to yesterday.
It took six days for us to go from Persepolis to the Vampire Gate. Each night, I’d lean against Jasmine’s bed as she nestled up against my back. In many ways she remained distant, but she’d slowly started to show me little pieces of herself. As much as I liked to think that I was helping her, I was fully aware that she was helping me recover just as much, if not more so.
Underworld - Scorching Sun: A LitRPG Series Page 41