Back to the Cave

Going back to his room, Keith was tired and exhausted. He sparred a little more and he was absolutely decimated by his cruel uncle. At least that's what he believed. On the positive side, he was able to improve his speed while activating the warrior frame, but that went unnoticed by him, because of the excessive beating.

Still, he was looking forward to learning the blood esper techniques. First, he had to adapt the warrior frame even more. He needed to control the output of his warrior frame so that he could divide his blood-qi between his frame and body.

While activating the warrior frame gave him a greater boost in power, it also restricted his blood-qi usage. His speed also suffered. This was because of his lack of control in the frame.

He couldn't control the amount of blood-qi that went inside the warrior frame, partly because he was short of blood-qi. Building the current warrior frame cost him almost all of his blood-qi.

For him to overcome this, he needed more blood-qi. He wanted to cut the blood-qi consumption to half, and for that, he needed to reach the viscount rank.

'I have to go to the cave again.' Keith thought while lying on his bed.

'After reaching the viscount rank, I will have enough blood-qi to adjust the warrior frame. Then I won't be burdened by the blood-qi limitation.'

Now that he had managed to stabilize the blood core and convert all of the blood essence into his very own blood-qi, he could go back to the cave and absorb more blood-qi and evolve.

The tournament was a couple of days away, and he needed to be in his best shape before going there. He first wanted to go there for the blood, but now that he had a reserve of ghouls, he was less interested in that.

Still, getting vampire blood was better than getting ghoul blood. Also, he wanted to test out his power against younger vampires. He was measuring his power against his uncle who was way older than him.

In the tournament, he could gauge the power of other vampires of the same rank. Even now, he was pretty confident against fighting early stage viscount. He was sure he could beat them if they didn't know any advanced blood techniques.

After resting for a while, he finally decided to go to the cave. He told Rena to stay put and not leave the premises. When night arrived, he snuck through the wall and left the castle.

BOOM!

The ground cracked as he landed, after jumping from halfway off the cliff.

'I could probably jump from the top, but some bones might crack.'

Thinking that he shrugged off the dust from his shoulders. The landing didn't do any damage to his legs, but he still felt a slight shock.

He walked in the direction of the blood forest away from the city square. He passed several check-posts, but there was not even a single baron guarding there, so he easily sneaked out, without alerting anyone.

After reaching the city wall, he looked around for any city guard on top. Two guards were looking in the direction of the blood forest. Keith quietly climbed up the wall and peeked at them.

He was thinking about how to divert their attention. Picking a stone from the side of the wall, he threw it on the other side. The guards looked sideways and walked in that direction.

This gave Keith the chance to pass the wall without being detected.

'This cliche move works on this world too.' He landed on the other side of the wall and walked near the wall until he got far away from probing eyes. The blood forest was in front of him as he walked into the shadows.

He followed the same route that he took the first time. He first reached the blood tree where he buried the ghouls and the ghoul baron. The place was quiet as a cemetery, as it was for the ghouls.

Still curious to see if he could still absorb their blood-qi now. The amount of blood-qi would definitely be lower, but he wanted to know how much.

He dug out the corpses and activated his purple tendrils. After going through all the lower-level ghouls, he only absorbed only a couple of blood essence units.

'This is worse than I thought. All the blood-qi has been dissipated."

Digging out the ghoul baron from the ground, he absorbed everything from the corpse. In the end, it was only twelve units of blood essence.

Sigh!

He put all the corpses inside a giant pit and covered it with soil. After dusting his hands off, he walked in the direction of the cave.

Two red eyes glowed as he walked away. A small bat opened its eyes and looked at the fading figure of Keith.

When Keith reached the entrance, he looked around again. He couldn't detect a single soul but somehow he felt someone was spying on him.

'Maybe I'm being paranoid.' After finding nothing with his senses, he jumped inside the cave.

He entered the tunnel he created when getting out of the cavern. The giant rock was still there covering the entrance to the cavern.

" Nobody came here after we left."

He crossed the tunnel and got out of the other side. As he got out he saw a blood-red mist covering his vision.

[Corrupted blood-qi detected.]

Without waiting, he activated his purple tendrils that started absorbing the surrounding mist.

[Blood essence absorbed : 1 ]

…

Slowly, the mist started to thin out as the tendrils absorbed the blood-qi.