7 Chapter 7: New.

"You pervert!" She shouted, her face now fully red from the embarrassment.

The weight keeping me on the ground disappeared, prompting me to get back up immediately, and as I massaged my neck, I looked at the girl that was now more similar to a tomato. Was this really the same person that was able to squish me like a bug a few seconds ago?

I felt myself freeze, as if I were in the jaws of the very personification of death. I had the illusion of millions of blades surrounding me, all pointing to my throat, and jewels, for some reason.

I raised my hands in defeat and said, "Woah, calm down, girl; aren't you my master and all that? Then act as such and forgive a little indiscretion."

I had to admit that comment was pretty childish of me, but in my defense, she deserved it for pissing me off.

"Eternally forget what you've just seen!" She said, the metaphorical blades multiplying but still aiming for my throat, heart, and second head, "If not for me sharing the same life as you, I would've definitely gouged out your eyes and made sure there wouldn't even be a grave for you to rest in!"

Oh my, how ominous.

"Chill girl, I don't have a hobby of thinking of children's privates; I'm not a monster." While still keeping my hands raised.

I would have to drink until I collapsed later, all in the hopes of forgetting that.

She seems to have calmed down a little, but she seemed even more pissed than I was earlier—no longer angry at least.

"I'm not a child; I'm your master!" She shouted back.

"How old are you?" I had to be sure before anything else; I had no idea how incredibly powerful vampire girls worked after all.

This cultivation thingy made me rethink my knowledge: how did this kind of power change or otherwise affect the human body?

"I'm thirteen." She replied, still visibly pissed.

I sighed in relief, discovering that she was a hundred years old, or something would have been very embarrassing. "Then, Jasmine, oh dear master of mine," I said sarcastically to appease her, "I hope we will have a wonderful collaboration for the next thirty something years."

Her mouth turned into a smile, evidently appeased by my words, "Then, oh disciple of mine," she raised her fist, her hand facing upwards as she slowly pried her fingers open, revealing a single floating drop of blood, "This is what you'll need to build your new profound veins."

I looked at it; the droplet seemed a deeper shade of red than normal blood, but the biggest thing was definitely the aura around it.

"This is the last vestige of the power of the Evil God; it's said that whoever ingests this drop of blood would have in their profound veins the power of the last true god of the Primordial Era.

For centuries, people relentlessly searched for this single drop of blood, and an enormous fight was ensured when it was found; eventually, it came into my hands, and for this, I was poisoned."

That's a great story, but just the words "evil god" seemed incredibly ominous.

But I had already accepted, and it wasn't like she was going to just kill me after this entire story, so I just accepted her words at face value.

It's not like if she really wanted me dead, I could do much about it; my life was out of my hands, and I didn't like it one bit.

It's like being under nuclear threat constantly, just that the nuclear warhead is suspended right above my head and it might set off at any minute.

"After fusing with this droplet of blood, your broken profound veins will turn into the Evil God's profound veins; there is a chance you'll even get some of the Evil God's abilities; you will finally no longer be a good for nothing!"

"Hey, I resent that; I'm a medic." I objected; if most from my old world heard her call a medic a good for nothing, they'd just look at her as if she were a nut case.

"Wait a little; I have some preparations to do." I said, throwing myself into my laboratory.

The girl furrowed her brows in displeasure, but she still put away the drop of blood and started following me.

I sat on my laboratory's chair after taking all that I needed. If I was going to take this drop of blood thingy to alter my body with magic, then I needed to at least study whatever this thing's effects were.

So, first of all, I put an elastic band around my arm just over my elbow and stuck the variety of needles I had commissioned for blood tests in the future.

Obviously, I had to sterilize it on my own, but there was nothing that I couldn't do.

I took just around two hundred milliliters in a small, sterile glass container for analysis.

"What are you doing?" Asked the girl who was looking at my actions with immense confusion.

"I'm taking some of my blood; if you had more than one drop, I would try one out on a sample to see the effects, but since there is only one, I'll limit myself to observing the before and after of taking that Evil God blood." I explained, feeling stupid for even contemplating taking something called Evil God's blood.

But what could I say? Good and evil were relative; one's good was another's evil, and all that.

So maybe this was evil for everyone who didn't take it, or something.

I was just searching for reasons beyond my greed for the strength necessary to no longer be squashed on the ground, but then I realized

I really didn't need more, for in this world, I had nothing.

If becoming a god, or whatever this was, helped me get back to my old life, then I would happily throw everything else away in this insane quest for power.

I safely put away my blood sample in a rudimentary refrigerator that I had prepared. I had to change the ice constantly, but it would be enough for short periods of time.

I then turned back to the girl and asked, "This is going to be painful, right?"

"Incredibly so." She replied, almost bored.

"Great." And with great sarcasm, I strapped myself to a chair and bit hard on a leather strap I had to muffle any screams that I might make.

"Go ahead." I said, hoping to be understood with my mouth blocked, but it seemed to have worked, as I saw a shadow disappear from her hand and enter into my chest.

Then there was no then.

Only pain.

A pain unimaginable to the human mind, as if the drop were devouring a part of my body, making me apart and spraying the gore of my destroyed body all around the room, before taking them all back and remolding me to its liking.

So I used the energy around me—energy that I could now sense and use instinctually—to block any nerve receptor from sending a signal.

The pain disappeared all of a sudden, but an incredible amount of discomfort was still there, so I blocked my tactile receptors all over my body too.

The pain was gone, but the procedure was still going on.

I spat out the leather strap from my mouth and looked at the girl, who was looking at me with a dumbfounded expression. "I really underestimated that pain; you really weren't kidding."

"Did it already end?" She asked, wondering whether her senses had betrayed her, because she could almost see with her own eyes the air around my body morphing and assuming the aura of someone with intact profound veins.

And incredibly powerful veins at that.

"Oh no, I just turned off the pain, but I don't think I should really talk right now. See you later." I replied, confusing the girl and closing my eyes at the same time.

In my mind, I explored the changes, reactivating the tactile nerves on different patches of my body until I found where the drop of blood was working.

Any and all insights gained in this process were precious insights into this whole Profound Vein magical system.

I found it near my heart, then it progressively moved, first to my lungs as the pain around the heart lessened, then around the digestive tract and the rest of the abdomen.

Then, it returned back up, and then it kept going, to my brain, then it returned down once again, dividing into three parts, two going to my arms, and working there until it was completely absorbed.

The last part once again divided in two and went down the legs, then disappeared too.

I slowly and very cautiously turned back on the normal tactile receptors, then the pain receptors too.

The source of the pain was gone, and the ease with which I controlled the energy I had unknowingly been using increased by several orders of magnitude with each passing second.

Finally, I opened my eyes, seeing the little girl staring at me while completely dumbfounded, her mouth open enough for a fly to get in.

I sighed in relief; the few seconds of that unimaginable pain were more than enough for multiple lifetimes. "Would you mind unshackling me?" I asked.

She just silently took off the straps that stopped me from moving like a headless chicken, something that I would have done, no doubt, had I continued to feel that pain the entire time.

"How long has it been?" I asked.

"A quarter of an hour," came the reply. "How did you do that?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Do what?"

"How did you turn off the pain? That shouldn't be possible." She explained.

I thought about it, but ultimately, I had no clue either, but I still tried to explain to the best of my abilities, "I used the energy around the place to block the neural signaling of pain from reaching my brain; this came to the effect that I didn't feel the pain; you really should have told me it was possible before going through this; I can't imagine going through all that and still being sane."

She looked at me, then slowly nodded.

I know that kind of nod; she didn't understand anything.

It's the same kind of nod that I gave in statistics class; that kind of math was my bane.

But oh well, if she didn't understand too badly, I wasn't in the mood to explain anything; I was going to bed.

"See you tomorrow." I said, turning around to leave.

"Wait!" She replied, trying to stop me, "Where are you going?"

"To bed, I have to wake up early tomorrow; I have work to do and people to help; evil god or not, I really need some rest."

I closed the door behind me, leaving the now-even more confused astral projection speechless.

"What kind of weird person is this princess bound to be?" She sighed before following the medic to his room.

She lived in his hand, after all.

The next day came rapidly.

Too rapidly for my tastes.

The first thing I did was to draw some more blood, just as I had done the day before, followed by a quick analysis under my newest microscope.

The new blood was darker by a shade, indicating that there really was a radical change, a change big enough to affect the blood that was in circulation just a day after the change.

Unfortunately, my microscope sucked, and my refrigerator even more.

"Hey Jasmine, do you have any weird cultivation magic to keep stuff cold?" I asked the girl who had been roaming my laboratory silently, just looking at the things that I was doing.

"How cold?" She replied with another question.

"From just a little above water's freezing temperature to just a little below it, I just need to preserve some things in a cold environment." I replied.

She hummed, thinking, "You could make a talisman; it's not that difficult, but you would need to learn how to use your energy for that; it might take a while to learn it."

That wasn't good; my normal human blood couldn't last too long outside in a warm environment, and procuring myself the ice continually was starting to piss me off. "Can you just tell me the rough process? I can figure out a way later, but I need to start somewhere."

"Talisman making is a very complicated matter; you can't just learn to make it from knowing the concept," she rebuked, entering her teacher mode. "You need to perfectly create a pattern with ink on a special paper; this takes talent and incredible practice to get to the required level of penmanship; the patterns are specific for each different talisman."

"Is that so?" I mumbled, already searching for ways to ignore these limitations.

Because there was no way that I could learn penmanship, I was a doctor.

Couldn't I just condense this energy thingy into a code?

"That's indeed so; that is why you should abandon your silly ideas of helping useless mortals and concentrate on you." Her words slowly fizzled out of existence as I condensed the energy in the air into shapes with meaning.

The meaning was cold, because I wanted to cool stuff, and soon enough, around the symbol that resembled a snowflake, a slight fog formed, showing that it was indeed cooling everything as ice crystals formed in the air.

I slapped the symbol on the refrigerator and hoped that it lasted.

"Good, that's done; now, back to this..." I mumbled as I returned to my chair to analyze my sample.