No pain No Gain

Before his hand could reach the ghoul's head, it moved unnaturally and evaded his attack.

*crack*

He slashed through the tree branch and missed the ghoul's body by a small margin. The ghoul extended its wings and flew upwards.

'Damn! Why did it have to wake up right now? Couldn't it sleep for one more second?' Keith cursed his luck or lack thereof.

Now that the ghoul baron was up and awake, he had to fight with it using his full force. He had confidence in himself as he practiced martial arts with Brad. But the thing that worried him was the aerial maneuver of the ghoul. He couldn't fight with the ghoul if it stayed in the air.

'I need to bring it down.' Keith looked at the ghoul who was also looking at him.

The red eyes glowing with viciousness, the menacing look on the face that was twisted and full of symmetrically wrinkled skin. The inner body was a lighter shade of red while the wings and outside were dark red, almost black.

While Keith was getting ready to launch a second attack, the ghoul moved from its spot and circled the tree. Its gaze was locked on him.

'Yes, come to me'

Keith stayed alert while maintaining his fighting stance. The ghoul stopped for a moment and darted towards him with great speed.

*swish*

The ghoul extended its arm and swung it as he approached him. The large claws almost scratched his face, but he moved back at the right time.

He threw a punch to the side as he turned sideways. The punch connected to the wings, jolting the ghoul midair. Using the imbalance as a chance, he leaped forward with all his strength and delivered a powerful kick.

*wham*

The skin of the ghoul was really tough. Even after hitting him with all his blood-qi, there was barely a crack. But he was able to throw it off balance. Without wasting any more time, he launched a series of attacks that hit the ghoul's body at point-blank range.

*Grrrr* *Grrrr*

The ghoul opened its mouth with annoyance, with a split jaw. A large tongue came out. The attacks were working as the ghoul couldn't go away after getting tangled up by the kicks and punches.

' This ghoul is strong but it's really stupid.' Kieth came to this conclusion after fighting it.

All he had to do now was to keep attacking it, as the damage piled up, it would eventually bring it down. His martial arts really helped him negate every attempt of the ghoul to catch his limbs.

' I can see why ghouls are no threat to the vampires. They are all brawns but no brains.'

Attacking furiously without leaving any gap to let it stabilize its position, Keith struck its head from all directions. Concentrating his blood-qi on his hand he grabbed the tongue and pulled it hard.

*GRRRRRR*

A loud screech was heard as the tongue separated from the ghoul's mouth. Blood started flowing from its mouth.

'Now comes the best part.' Keith extended his hand in the mid-air, stuffing it inside the ghoul baron's mouth. He circulated blood-qi to the entire arm to keep the hand stable and not let the ghoul maw it down.

He instantly activated his purple mark and the purple tendrils extended and covered the entire severed tongue. They attacked themselves to the glands and slithered inwards.

[ Blood essence absorbed : 1]

[ Blood essence absorbed : 1 ]

...

...

The ghoul was visibly weakening and it tried everything to shake his arm off. Keith didn't let it use his arms. Using his legs and the other hand, he locked its limbs and pinned it down. The ghoul spiraled down the sky and crashed into the branch and dropped to the ground.

Keith kept it pinned down without letting go. The blood essence was being absorbed each passing second and the ghoul's body looked weaker and weaker. After struggling for a while it stopped and Keith loosened his grip.

Looking at the status window, he found that he collected almost 400 blood essence. His body was starting to heat up. The overflowing level of blood-qi made him feel like he was inside a lava pool.

'Fuck' He threw the ghoul away and rolled on the floor, trying to contain the blood-qi from erupting.

'Fuck fuck fuck fuck' Banging his hands on the ground, he tried to calm this storm that was moving inside his body. It was similar to a brain breeze but much worse. If he wasn't a vampire baron, this pain would have easily killed him.

This was something he experienced earlier but on a much lower scale. When he absorbed the twenty glasses of vampire blood. That felt like a pinch to the hand compared to this. This was also partly because the ghoul blood was incredibly corrupt, full of violent disarray of energy.

The blood-qi inside them is more potent than a regular vampire. It was a good thing he had the system to purify the blood-qi, but some of the potency was still left that was innate to their life energy.

Keith tried to sit still, but the pain was really unbearable. He cracked the ground using his punches and two small craters formed where he was kneeling.

'Not good, if only I knew absorbing this much blood-qi will have this effect, damn.' He cursed nonstop in his mind, while the blood-qi was circulating inside his body with breakneck speed.

He clenched his teeth and focused his mind on his blood core, which was getting overloaded by the sudden influx of blood-qi. Still, most of the blood essence was yet to be converted into blood-qi. Focusing his mind on his blood core, he channeled the blood essence into it.

Little by little the violent outburst stopped. He managed to condense the blood-qi and it slowly accumulated inside his blood core. The shade of the blood core changed slowly and became lighter as it absorbed more blood-qi.

Now somewhat stabilized, he got up and looked at his status window. Panting heavily he was drenched in sweat. The violent outburst of blood-qi was really terrible. Looking at the window, a satisfied smile escaped his lips.

[ Keith Ennes ]

[ Blood Core: Baron ]

[ Body detected: Vampire ??? Hybrid ]

[ Level 1.702 ]

[ Path: Blood condense ]

He gained almost 460 blood essence from the hunt alone. The ghoul baron gave him 450 blood essence and the normal ghoul gave him 10. There were thirty more ghouls lying dead. If he collected blood essence from each of them, he will definitely break through to the next stage.