Chapter 103: Questions

It was around midnight, and Keith returned back to his room after practicing his warrior frame. When he entered the hall, he saw the beast sleeping lazily with two empty bowls by its side.

"The beast is doing good. His bodily functions are working properly, and there is no sign of any side effects." Keith examined the beast's physique and said.

"Young Master! You're back." Rena walked out of the kitchen with more food and put it in front of the beast.

"Just got back. Today was a little tiring…" Keith stretched his hands and walked towards the beast.

"Young Master, Kenny is very obedient and listens to my every command," Rena said with a smile.

"Oh! You already gave it a name, Kenny… huh." Keith patted on the beast and It shivered slightly. 

"It's a good name. So, let's see your progress regarding the blood-qi stabilization." 

Keith examined the blood-qi inside the beast's body and it was functioning normally as usual. He withdrew his hand and headed to his room.

"Master, I will bring you the blood in a moment." Rena walked inside the kitchen again.

'Come here.' He sent a message telepathically to Kenny.

The beast stood up and followed Keith to his room. Inside Kieth sat on his head and condensed blood-qi and the beast was sitting on the floor next to the bed. After some time, he touched the beast's head and started channeling his blood-qi inside its body.

'Slow and easy.' Keith carefully controlled the blood-qi amount and slowly injected blood-qi into the beast's body.

'How's the estimate?' 

[About a week or so. Maybe a little sooner. The beast's life energy is significantly weaker than yours, so replacing all the life energy with your blood-qi won't take too long. The tricky part is to control the input and not kill the beast accidentally.]

"Young master, your blood is here!" Rena entered the room holding two glassed of blood and a large bowl.

Keith frowned after seeing the bowl.

"What's that for?" Keith asked.

"I wanted to give Kenny some blood, so I bought a bowl with me," Rena replied.

"That's a good idea. He needs blood-qi from natural sources and it will stimulate his growth. There is a lot of blood sitting on the shelf, better to use it on something useful." Keith nodded his head.

"Also, Kenny eats normal meat as well. I gave him some of my cooked meat and he ate it cheerfully." Rena added.

"That's understandable. His body is running on life energy, so he could consume meat even after half of his body has been replaced with blood-qi."

[More like a quarter.]

Kieth got up from his bed and drained the blood. After a busy day of analyzing so many student's warrior frames, he was mentally exhausted.

"Rena, go back to your room." Keith handed him the flower and asked her to leave.

She blushed a little after getting the flower. She nodded her head and left the room silently.

"Now that everything is taken care of… I need to level up my warrior frame as quickly as possible."

'What level is my warrior frame at?' Keith asked.

[Middle stage viscount. The blood-qi alone is enough to fight against a count-level vampire. I estimate two weeks will be enough to get it to the count stage.]

'I need to get there as soon as possible, then there is my blood core, which is at the final stage baron for months.'

[Then we need a source richer than the training facility. We can't consume vampire blood here, even if we could get blood from a count level or higher is next to impossible. Bloodstones are rare, and we don't have any idea where they are.

Lastly, human blood won't increase the blood-qi unless we kill thousands of humans, which is really inefficient.]

'Then what can I do?' Keith racked his brain to find a solution to his blood-qi shortage.

"The blood forest!" An idea suddenly popped into Keith's head.

'If there is a blood forest, there will be ghouls or other blood beasts too. We can go and hunt them and absorb their blood-qi.' Keith thought excitedly.

[That is indeed a good idea. The question is, is there a way for us to get out of the campus premises. From what I've gathered the academy doesn't allow students to get out of the campus without a hunter license.]

'What's that?' Keith asked with a confused expression.

[It's literally written on a wall of the training facility. Blood warriors above the viscount and students for two years minimum are allowed to apply for a bronze class hunter license.]

'Geez! There are so many things going on right now, I lost count.'

[That's why I'm here. Your  personal slave.] The system replied with a sneer.

Keith got up from his bed, ignoring the remarks of the system. He went to Rena's room to check on her. From his senses he could pick up on that, Rena was calm and there was no sign of side effects. Her body was a little hotter than usual, but she was sitting on her bed with a calm expression.

'Is she meditating?' 

[ I don't think so. It's more like she's controlling the life energy inside her body and suppressing it. Amazing!]

'What's her level now?' Kieth asked.

[ She is three times stronger than before, which is significant for a human.]

'She only consumed the flowers that boosted her life energy.'

[The highest level a human can reach is  0.5, the same as the fifth stage of blood condensing phase. If she can exceed that level, we can be sure that her physique is indeed very special. The way she handles and controls life energy so efficiently without wasting it, I suspect she is capable of way more things.]

'What is she then? If normal humans can't break this threshold and her handling of life energy is unique, she must have some techniques or innate skill, but we can't see anything. She's not a vampire for sure.' Keith thought.

[Maybe, her technique is fundamentally different from vampires and has nothing to do with blood-qi.]

'Maybe, I can ask Mr.Visit about it.' Keith thought.

[What if he finds out and takes her to his lab.] 

The system laughed.

'Like, I'm going to tell him about her. I will say that I heard this from an old vampire, who had a human underling. Or that, I read it somewhere or something. Might as well add the plant into my story.' 

Keith glanced one more time toward Rena's room and left. She was doing very well in terms of absorbing life energy. Keith stayed up the whole night and injected blood-qi into the beast. 

The next morning, he got a message from the blood summoning department, It was Miss. Cryel. Now that he completed the first phase of the blood summoning technique, he was not required to come to the class. 

The beast needed as much time as it could get to absorb blood-qi and integrate completely with Keith. He only needed to go in case something went wrong. Unbeknownst to him, it was not something normal students could get. Only members of the council who are occupied with other responsibilities are given some days off. 

But in the case of Keith, his exceptional growth was abnormal, to say the least. Dean Jesper personally instructed Miss. Cryel to give Kieth enough leeway so he doesn't feel pressured. In a way, he was getting special treatment from the department.

With that, his plans for the day changed. He stayed in his room for the morning, injecting blood-qi into Kenny's body. He left for the training facility later.

'I'm not a viscount and I just joined the academy. This will be harder than I imagined.' 

While walking to the training facility, he was thinking about the bronze hunter license. The requirements for the license were a problem for Kieth. 

Instead of going to the training chamber where Sen and Garion were practicing, he headed to Mr. Visit's lab.

The door opened with the touch of the rune card and he entered the quiet chamber.

"Look who it is? The esteemed businessman." Mr. Visit glanced at him and chuckled.

"What?" Keith was taken aback.

"Aren't you making quite a sizable amount from fixing warrior frames? All of the blood warrior department knows this. Even Vice-dean Chandra approved of this. If you can improve the output of the blood warriors, it's a good thing for the department.

Students are lining up for this, haha.." He laughed out loud.

Keith was happy that the department didn't interfere and let him do it. He had to meet the vice dean and thank him properly. 

"Well, If I can help other fellow blood warriors and make money at the same time, isn't it a good thing?" Keith moved closer to Mr.Visit.

He was carving some odd-looking shapes into a golden plate.

"It's not bad at all. I find it very ingenious of you. Just don't get carried away by the smell of blood coins." Mr. Visit glanced at Keith.

"I never did it for the money in the first place. The insight I gain from performing my technique is way more valuable than mere blood coins can give." Keith replied.