Draconic Vampire: Curse of the Blood

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"Do you think he uses an artifact?" Erica asked with a serious expression.

"Surprisingly, he doesn't have any artifacts on him. Not even a warrior artifact." Valencia replied.

"Then how could he keep his emotions from leaking out? I can sense your emotions but not his, even though he is weaker than you." Erica asked in an alarmed tone.

"He hides many secrets but we are not going to talk about them. I have enough on my plate so I don't want that old man on my tail." Valencia said, rubbing her forehead.

"Mr. Visit? But there was no sign of rune formation." 

"Just don't think too much into it. Whatever you learned here, keep it a secret." Valencia warned.

Erica nodded her head and didn't ask further questions.

"He is a special vampire and I need him to keep a favorable impression of us. That's why I didn't want to force him to do anything and negotiated a deal instead. Otherwise, you know how I handle things."

"Yes.. Miss. Winters." 

"Now go and assist him as much as you can. Make sure he is satisfied with everything."  Valencia ordered her.

"I'll go right away," Erica stood up and left the office quickly.

"Learning every discipline at the same time! What are you planning to achieve?" A smirk appeared on Valencia's face.

Keith took the elevator and came downstairs only to find the summon missing. 

"I was up there for about an hour and Kenny couldn't sit still." Keith looked around the hallway in frustration.

'Where are you?" He tried to communicate telepathically.

There was no response. But he could feel that Kenny wasn't in trouble. His presence was nearby and he was purposefully not answering to him.

'If you don't reply to me now,  I will take you to a place where you will be fighting ghouls tirelessly until you are on the verge of death.' 

'Grrr!'

'Fighting? Where are you?"

'Grrr!'

Keith ran to the entrance and appeared in front of a crowd in an instant. Dozens of vampires were surrounding two beasts and one of them was undoubtedly his summon. Kenny was growling at the wolf-like summon with two tails and they were facing each other, ready to pounce at any moment.

"What's happening here?" Keith heard a familiar voice.

Erica walked up to him and looked at the scene with an angry expression.  The vampires surrounding the two beasts also dispersed and only five of them remained. Looking at the familiar faces, Erica was red with anger.

"I told you to leave the beast where it is, why didn't you listen to me?" She roared.

"Ugh! We didn't do anything. It came out on its own." The leader scratched his head, trying to explain.

Grrr!

Keith stared at his summon angrily trying to get a response, and under direct pressure from Keith's mind, Kenny couldn't refuse. Keith got a gist of what happened from the short rant.

"Let's go. I think you enjoyed yourself enough. Time for your real training." Kieth walked away without saying anything.

"Wait! Aren't you going to take your rune card and uniform? It will take only a couple of minutes." Erica shouted from behind.

"Deliver them to my residence." Keith walked off without turning back.

"Who's that guy?" The leader of the five asked.

"He's your new boss. So next time you see him, don't misbehave." Erica glared at the leader.

***

Waking on an empty corridor, Keith was having a serious conversation with the system.

'What do you mean we can give her the warrior frame technique?' 

[ She doesn't know how you are increasing your blood-qi density and it's not a single technique either. I make sure all the blood-qi gets allocated equally throughout the body, which she can't replicate. On the other hand, the warrior frame acts as a Quasi blood core and acts independently. I will change it slightly so that it doesn't stay active all the time and decrease its capacity.]

'But what if she figures it out on her own? We can't risk giving her one of my main techniques?' Keith opposed the idea.

[ It will be a downgraded version and she can't make the warrior frame independent. And I'm thinking about giving her the most downgraded version, so we can come back and revise her technique for it to work properly. Like I revised the warrior frames of the other blood warriors, I can adjust the blood-qi inside her body.]

'That could work. She will need us in the future if she wants to remove more of her irregularities. We can exchange more favors from her.'

[ Then I will prepare a downgraded warrior frame technique.]

Now that Keith decided how to proceed with Valencia, he just needed to wait for her to settle everything. 

"An Esper who was abandoned by the department."

This vampire used to be a student in the academy and after the department expelled him, other departments didn't take him in. In the end, he left the academy in shame and never came back.

Valencia knew about him because the vampire opened up a bloodstone shop in the capital of Efrain. He practiced whatever he learned from the academy and broke through to the count stage on his own. Then he started selling bloodstones and after decades of hard work, he became rich enough to buy blood-qi techniques from other vampires.

According to Valencia, the vampire had a price for everything, even his very own blood-qi technique. He was expelled for selling the Esper technique to another student. That didn't stop him from exchanging blood-qi techniques later in his life. He was a businessman at heart.

Valencia promised to bring that person to the nearest city and take Keith to him. She would pay him for his services, but it was up to Keith to grasp the concepts. 

He agreed to it immediately. It was a rare opportunity to learn the most secretive technique. Even if there was a chance that the Esper could scam him, he wanted to go. Besides, he was giving Valencia a faulty technique anyway so he was not losing out on anything.

Keith was a student of the academy and could learn and acquire a technique with money and use it to grow his strength. If he tried to learn any of the four disciplines before attending the Crimson academy, he would've had to get it from an illegal source. Maybe the manager of the blood shop knew someone who could provide blood-qi techniques.

But they couldn't compare the connections Valencia had with dealers. with her background, she could get anything done as long as it wasn't forbidden. Keith already broke the law before by consuming blood-qi from other Vampires. 

Keith went to the training facility next and brought Kenny with him to the viscount chamber. No one tried to get close to him after yesterday's event. He found an empty corner and sat down with Kenny.

Circulating blood-qi and channeling it to the summon, Keith was increasing the blood-qi reserve of the beast. Right now, there was no way for a summon to increase their blood-qi except for consuming blood and life energy. They couldn't absorb the blood-qi of vampires so except for vampire blood, they could absorb any kind of life energy as long as it was not corrupted.

After a couple of hours, Keith brought Kenny's blood-qi reserves to the final stage baron. He was already at the middle stage baron level so it took him some time to break a minor stage. The summon was far from reaching the pinnacle of the baron stage, but it was enough for now. His vitality increased significantly and so did his strength. 

"I have to take you outside for hunting. You can't learn anything sitting in one place. The more you fight, your reflexes will improve accordingly. Getting stronger without getting enough experience will make you useless like the summon I fought at the hunter office.

"It was strong but extremely slow. It could've given me a much harder time if it had better reflexes." Keith remembered his fight with the bat-like beast with two horns.

Even with some much power, it couldn't dodge a single attack from Keith. The use of the wings was good but in a closed space, it didn't amount to much. Keith didn't want his only summon to end up like that. 

'I should take him to that cave and make him fight the horde of ghouls. If he could hold off against them, then other beasts will be a piece of cake for him.'

[ I agree. You are currently fighting all your enemies on your own. If he could get stronger, you can coordinate with him to fight multiple enemies.]

'Then I will look for a mission outside the campus tomorrow. I've given Sen one month to prepare, so I will take this time to train Kenny.' Kiteh thought.

He didn't need a significant amount of blood-qi right now because he had just broken through and he needed to convert all of the blood essence into blood-qi.