First Cultivators(part 2)

"....Blood Madness."

It sounded pretty bad but the actual explanation of it was far worse. Blood madness would basically make an individual a psychotic killing machine. Forgetting who or where they are intent only on shedding as much blood as possible. 

Those affected by the blood madness would kill anything and anyone in their vicinity regardless of who they might be. It was safe to say that it was an undesirable condition to say the least, even worse was that once taken by the madness there was no recovery...ever.

Fortunately for Isobel and her children the primordial vampires, it was simple enough to avoid the blood madness. One simply had to be strong enough before practicing the technique. 

The technique itself was rather straight forward, an individual would slay its enemy then gather the fallen blood. They would then use the energy their cores naturally absorbed to form the blood into solid crystals. You can think of this energy as a by product of the cores function, it would never absorb enough on its own to break through. Then, once the crystals were formed, place these crystals near their chest as they activated the absorption part of the technique. Doing so would replace their current elemental energy with blood energy, after replacing all the energy inside the core it would then begin to expand it like normal cultivation techniques.

One of the other benefits of this technique was that it was rather fast to cultivate. The more blood you gathered the higher quality blood gem you could make, but here in lies the danger. If you attempt to cultivate with a gem of a higher rank than you can handle, there is a significant chance that you could be consumed by the blood madness.

Isobel and Vel spent a few hours memorizing the technique and all of its requirements and dangers before Vel went through the tower once more. Having already cleared this rank of tower he was no longer rewarded with anything after he completed it the second time. 

This worked out just fine for Vel as the only thing he wanted was to gather the blood from each of his enemies for the practice of his new technique.

Each fallen creature yielded enough blood to forge a 0 rank blood gem filled with a crimson gaseous energy. Vel could feel the calm violence it radiated, and it filled him with a sort of grim excitement to begin cultivating with it.

Returning to Isobel once more he presented her with the blood gems he was able to forge.

"Here mother, I have managed to make 27 blood gems. All rank 0 in the gaseous stage. These should be perfect for my and Sarah's cultivation."

Isobel smiled lightly as she examined the gems in her hands. The energy contained within them was peculiar but worse than useless to someone like her. She could tell however that this energy would be far more suited to her children than the fire affinity that she had. She of course wouldn't change her affinity for anything, this is the way her father made her and she loved it. She was just perfectly aware that for a vampire, this blood energy would be far better.

"Well done my son, we will worry about your wife later. For right now lets get you started! You will be the first mortal cultivator in the entire world! I cant wait to rub this in Icarus's face!"

The 7 all loved one another dearly, and would do anything to protect each other. But like all siblings they enjoyed competing with one another. This could be seen in the extraordinary lengths they went to in creating their children. And the exceptional care they were taking in grooming them.

Sure it was all so that they could defend their fathers creation from imminent invasions by parties unknown. But also so that they could defeat one another in healthy competition. Veron did nothing to stop this of course, the more they competed with each other the faster and stronger his world would grow.

Without wasting any more time Vel took one of the gems in his hands before sitting in a lotus position on the ground. Bringing his hands together in a prayer pose he held the blood gem in the center of his chest, bringing it directly in line with his core.

After doing so he channeled his energy from his core, circulating it through his vascular system in a clockwise direction, making it so that the energy in his core passed into the blood gem through his left hand, and back into his body through his right until it came full circle to his core.

As the cycles of this continued he noticed that his core's energy was changing color, becoming more and more sanguine by the second. Not only that, he could feel the subtle changes that this energy was making in his body as it passed through him, strengthening his muscles, skin, senses. He was growing in every way, but most especially in his abilities as a vampire.

Soon enough the energy within the blood gem was spent and it turned to dust immediately after. Taking stock of his current energy Vel was surprised to see that only about 6% of it had taken on this sanguine color. His total energy capacity hadn't risen hardly at all, which made sense as the blood energy would replace what he currently had first.

"How do you feel?"

Isobel's melodic voice interrupted Vel's introspection. He took a brief moment to gather his thoughts before responding.

"I feel slightly stronger, like this energy is a better fuel for my body and its abilities. I feel like I can hear and see slightly better and that I would heal faster too."

This news was very comforting for Isobel to hear, it meant that the towers were working exactly as they had intended. It was providing exactly what their children needed to grow. The only thing she didn't know was exactly how effective this new energy really was, Vel said he felt improved in many ways but how could she know for sure?

"Stand up son, I want to try a couple of things before we continue."

Vel immediately complied and stood ready before his mother. He knew in his heart she meant him no harm so whatever she had in mind he was game.

"I want to test to see exactly how effective this new energy is before we get to far. I remember exactly how strong your abilities were before you cultivated so we will rerun those initial tests."

Vel nodded in understanding before using his abilities to grow his nails slightly longer. He then swiftly used them to stab himself in the stomach leaving five deep holes in his abdomen. 

Isobel kept watch on how long it took for the holes to close up and was pleasantly surprised when they did indeed close up faster than before. Not by a huge margin but the increase was definitely noticeable.

"Exactly how much of your energy was replaced in this cultivation session?"

"About 6% total."

Isobel's eyebrows shot up when she heard this. 'Surely not.' She thought to herself. 'If this efficiency holds true for all of his energy, then my children will be nearly unstoppable!'

The 6% energy that Vel said was replaced matched perfectly with a 6% increase in his regeneration rate. Isobel was skeptical at first but concluded that they needed to run more tests to be absolutely sure.

"Vel please move away from me until you can no longer hear my voice."

Vel complied and walked south towards the forest, he was able to make it 106 feet before he could no longer hear Isobel saying his name.

'6% again' Isobel mused internally. Vel was also aware of the strange occurrence but didn't read to much into it yet.

Speaking a little louder Isobel called out more instructions. "Travel to the edge of the forest and once you get there wait for 30 seconds before running back to me as fast as you can."

The forest was exactly five miles south of their current location. Before cultivation Vel was able to run that distance in just 223 seconds, or 3.43 minutes. But now he was able to run that distance in 210 seconds, exactly 6% faster. At this point the truth could no longer be ignored, and Isobel promptly burst into laughter.

"HAHA! This is wonderful! For each percentage of energy you replace with this new blood energy, your faculties increase by an identical amount! That means once you replace 100% of your energy you will literally be TWICE as strong as you were before!"

Both Isobel and Vel were ecstatic, they simply couldn't believe that such a thing was possible. These primogenitor vampires were already incredibly strong, but doubling their baseline was just absolute absurdity.

This one cultivation technique would make them a terror of the multiverse for generations to come. Entire civilizations would drown in blood, and the words "Primogenitor Vampire" Would cause entire invading armies to flee in fear. Of course none of them knew this yet, but one day in the future this would be the day that would be called, 'The rise of the Blood gods.'