Chapter 6: Blood Essence

As Keith watched the blood sucked up by the purple tendrils, he retracted his hands. The tendrils went back to the palm as if nothing happened.

'What was that all about ?'

He looked around again to see if anyone noticed his behavior. Grandpa Lex was talking to other elders of the family and the spectators were all gone. He breathed a sigh of relief as he found that no one was looking at him suspiciously. He walked out of the arena and left for his room.

As he was going to his room, many vampires were looking at him. As the upcoming leader of the family, everyone started to pay attention to him unlike before.

He was amused by the behavior of the family members, as it took a little time to change their minds. He ignored all the stares and reached his room. After he entered his room and closed the door, he sat on his bed cross-legged.

He focused his mind on the purple mark on the forehead. A hologram-like window popped in front of him.

[ Keith Ennes ]

[ Blood Core: Baron ]

[ Gene: Vampire ??? Hybrid ]

[ Level 1.011 ]

[ Path: Blood condense ]

Keith looked at the status window and noticed that his level increased by one-thousandth of the level. After he consumed the blood of Marvin, the system notification told him that he absorbed one blood essence.

' What was that for ?'

He remembered how the system absorbed all blood essence in the blood pool and evolved him further. And now, the blood of Marvin increased it ever so slightly.

' Does my level go up by absorbing blood essence?'

He guessed correctly, but he didn't know what blood essence was except it was a type of energy that flowed within the blood of living beings. The energy was found in all living beings but varied in amount and concentration.

Unlike blood qi, blood essence didn't circulate within the body, it was just a source of power like life essence. From what he could think of, blood essence might be a type of energy source within living beings.

He concentrated his mind on the blood core, that was just condensed a day before. It was a mahogany color core, as he was just a baron. The core will turn into lighter shades of red as he evolved to the next stages. He circulated his blood qi inside his body. A warm feeling covered his whole body, the blood qi flowed in a rhythm and nourished every part of the body.

'So this is why vampires can live without eating? And the blood qi reinforces their organs and muscles. So they have superior physique than humans.'

The fact that every vampire was born with blood qi flowing within them, made the vampires strong from the start. They consumed blood from other creatures, but at this day and age every vampire consumed human blood, as they provided with the best-concentrated blood essence which was of the best quality. So it was like a tradition to drink human blood, so nobody drank the blood of other creatures.

Keith circulated the blood qi for hours, as his body relaxed and his heartbeat which was already very low, lowered to the extreme. He could sense every part of his body and everything around it. The whole room was visible to him, even when his eyes were closed.

Vampires have a very low heartbeat the barely registers, and when a vampire with a blood core circulates blood qi, the heartbeat drops to almost zero. This allows them to extend their life force by multiple times. On top of the natural long life spans of vampires, the blood qi allows them to increase their life spans even more.

'What an amazing technique.' Keith rejoiced.

Now that he had an idea about how the blood qi worked within a vampire body, he wanted to test out his abilities. He also wanted to know more about blood essence and how it affected him.

As he was thinking this, he heard a knock on the door.

"May I come in young master?" Keith heard the voice of the young maid.

" Yes," Keith replied in a stoic voice.

The maid opened the door and walked in. There was a tray in her hands, which was holding one glass of fresh blood.

" This is your meal for the night, young master" The maid placed the glass on the table beside the bed and bowed.

As she was turning around to leave, Keith grabbed her hand from behind.

"Young Master?" The maid panicked by the sudden behavior of Keith, who was staring at her wrist.

Rena was a maid for the Ennes family for six years. During this time, she was the personal maid of Keith. As they were of the same age, Keith was quite open towards Rena. But after he took control of Keith's body, They didn't talk much. Rena didn't show it on her face, but she was really sad inside. She knew Keith might've gone through a huge trauma, so she gave him time to recuperate.

" Rena, I need your help with something." Keith looked into Rena's eyes. The blood-red eyes reflected the figure of Rena in front of him.

" What do you need young master? If I can help you with something, I am willing to do anything." Rena said with determinism.

" I need your blood" Keith said to her.

Rena looked at the glass of blood and then turned her head to look at Keith. There was a slight flush on her face. She didn't know why Keith wanted her blood, but if this was his wish, she couldn't refuse. As a human maid, raised in the Ennes family, she was among the upper level of humans that the Ennes family owned. There were the humans that were used for blood. They were the lowest level of humans whose life was that of a slave.

Even after the new laws in favor of humans, they were still treated unfairly. The violence has dropped and there was no unnecessary bloodshed, but there were always exceptions to the rules. Humans stayed in bounded colonies and provided blood on a daily basis for the family's survival. They were given food and other bare necessities to live their life but were not allowed to go outside their territory.

" Don't worry, It won't be much," Keith said, as he cut her wrist slightly.

Blood dripped down slowly and he touched it with his right hand. The purple tendrils crawled up and absorbed the drops falling from Rena's palm.

Rena didn't know what was happening, but her blood disappeared inside Keith's palm after it fell there. The pain was minimal as Keith cut her wrist with precision and it was not a big cut.

After some drops of blood fell on his palm, there was no effect. He didn't want to absorb too much blood as it would make Rena's body weaker. He stopped after ten drops, as nothing was happening.

'Why is it not working?' Keith thought to himself.

He sighed and grabbed Rena's wrist. He applied his blood qi on her small cut, and after a moment that cut disappeared from her wrist. This was a basic application of blood qi, which was taught to every vampire. This allowed the vampires to speed up the healing process by applying it to a wound. It also depended on how grave the wound was. In this case, Rena's cut was pretty small with no visible stretch, so it healed almost in an instant without needing to apply much blood qi.

"Thank you, Reina, it was really helpful." Keith let go of her hand.

" I... It's nothing, I am your maid and the servant of this family. I am supposed to do anything you ask of me."

Keith felt guilty that he tried to test his hypothesis on her, as she was a good person. But he was so curious and desperate that he did it anyways, which in return didn't bring any results. But at least he found out that not every blood provided him with blood essence.

Keith opened his drawer and took out a gold-blood coin. In the vampire continent, Blood coins made by the royal treasury, also imprinted by them, were the primary currency circulated. It was strictly controlled and due to the royal imprints, these blood coins couldn't be duplicated. There were three types of blood coins. Copper-blood coins which was the lowest unit of currency. Then there were silver-blood coins which were equivalent to 100 copper-blood coins. The highest unit, the gold-blood coins were equivalent to 100 silver-blood coins. Normal humans needed great effort to receive gold-blood coins. One gold-blood coin could cover their needs for months.

Keith handed her the gold-blood coins, to which she became nervous.

"Take it, you always served me with great care and always listened to me. So this is nothing much." Keith said to her as he placed the gold coin in her hands.

" Forgive me young master, but.. but I don't need it. I don't have a family to take care of, and there is barely anything I need. The family provides all the things needed for me, so I don't really need this much." She said with a flushed face as she returned the coin to Keith.

Keith was taken aback by her response.