Chapter 73 - The Roleplayers

Merlin watched as the blonde girl's face suddenly shifted into a worried expression after receiving the notification that she had been poisoned. Her tongue turned purple, and that purple blight quickly spread along her face and down her neck.

The rest of her teammates stared at her in shock as the girl's face was overtaken by the purple hue, they then turned to face Merlin with their weapons drawn.

"What the hell did you do to her?" The samurai wannabe screamed at Merlin while pointing his sword at him.

"What do you mean what did I do?" Merlin looked at him with a dumbfounded expression, "I didn't make her lick my blood, who the hell runs around randomly licking blood. How do you not expect blood transmitted diseases to be a thing?"

The redhead seemed to agree with Merlin, as she was nodding her head along with his retort. It seemed she wasn't very fond of blood, or at least the consumption of it, which may have influenced her choice in picking a ranged play-style.

Merlin guessed that this was a group of friends who decided that they wanted to roleplay as characters, which wasn't an uncommon practice. The game allowed you to live a second life completely different to your own, so most people who enjoyed the escapism usually put their all into acting out their characters, sometimes adopting a personality that was the complete opposite of their real life counterparts.

The aggressive katana guy clearly went for a samurai theme, the archer went for the typical redhead archer woman trope that was popular in fantasy stories. The heftier man seemed to be going for some kind of half-giant, or bulky barbarian-like character that swung around heavy weapons. And the blonde girl went for the typical cute-but-psycho character trope, most likely modelled after some character from pop culture.

"Calm down, the poison will dissipate in five minutes." Merlin explained while keeping his guard up. "Now, before you go back to attacking me, can you just confirm that you're not a part of LordKyle's group? There is a chance this may be a misunderstanding."

"We're not a part of their group, we are against their group." The redhead archer spoke up this time, she had an arrow nocked, but wasn't aiming it at Merlin just yet.

"Good to hear, well I'm in the same boat." Merlin explained, trying not to anger the group. "In fact, I have this red name here because I killed a few of them not too long ago."

Hearing this, the group seemed to calm down a tiny amount, but they still had their weapons drawn. It was at this moment that two more figures appeared in the distance from behind the roleplay group, Snowbunny and Typhoeus were running towards the group as fast as they could, and once they were only a few meters away, they slowed down into a small walk.

"See, I told you they wouldn't kill each-other, you were worried for nothing." Typhoeus remarked out loud as he approached.

"They all have their weapons drawn, I'd say they were close to--" Snowbunny caught a glimpse of the blonde and just stopped talking as she stared at her. "Alvira, why are you purple?"

The blonde girl who Snowbunny called Alvira didn't answer, and instead tried covering her purple face with her long blonde hair in embarrassment. The rest of the roleplayer's group turned to face Merlin, who had just started sheathing his gladius.

"Well, now that we've figured out our affiliations. Friends?" Merlin spoke up as he ripped an arrow out of his battered shield, offering to hand it back to the archer. "We can call it a tie."

The archer was the first to put her weapon away, she retrieved the arrow Merlin handed to her and stowed it away in her quiver. The big guy followed, placing his war hammer on the ground with a thud. It didn't seem like the samurai wannabe Zankoku trusted Merlin that much, but he too sheathed his blade.

The two groups began having a friendly conversation for a few minutes, and eventually Merlin's poison lost its effect, causing Alvira's face to return to its usual colour.

"What caused the purple face?" Snowbunny asked Alvira once more, but she didn't seem to want to answer out of embarassment.

"Purple-People Eater over here decided to consume my blood, not knowing it was poisonous." Merlin explained while Typhoeus chuckled at the reference.

"Why is your blood poisonous?" Snowbunny asked, her facial expression showed more shock at hearing that than the part about her friend licking blood.

"Long story, I'll explain after." Merlin pushed the conversation aside, before turning to face Alvira to ask her a question, "It's not real, but it should still taste like blood right? Why'd you lick it?"

Everyone stared at Alvira with a concerned look. It seemed that at least Snowbunny and Typhoeus weren't aware of this strange quirk of hers, but her party didn't seem to know the reason either, which suggested that she recently picked it up.

"I-I wanted a skill." Alvira spoke with a soft voice, completely different to the character she tried to portray. "A guy in the village got a skill for killing things bare handed, I thought I'd get a vampire skill if I licked blood."

A skill for killing things bare handed? Merlin thought to himself, but all he could remember was a title that gave you additional damage to unarmed combat, it was even more useless than the shield title unless you acquired a class soul like monk or pugilist that buffed aspects of your unarmed combat or made unarmed combat a requirement.

"Are you talking about the hardened fist title?" Merlin asked, there may be a chance his actions would have changed things around, but he doubted it. It was more likely that she didn't yet know the difference between titles and skills, or had even heard of the term knowledge yet.

Merlin received a nod from Alvira, confirming that the name of the title was the same at least. Typhoeus broke out in laughter upon hearing her reasoning, claiming that it was the dumbest thing he had heard all day.

"Actually, it kind of makes sense." As Merlin spoke those words, the entire group looked at him with a collective dumbfounded look, "Although you're probably going about it the wrong way."

"What do you mean?" Alvira asked, her voice filled with curiosity and traces of hope.

"Just a few droplets of blood is nowhere near close enough to be recognised by the system, you're going to have to be excessive with it to see results." These words sparked several morbid ideas in everyone's mind, but what Merlin thought of probably differed by a large margin. "Someone find a wolf, lets test a theory."

The group all gathered within the forest, following Merlin towards the area he had been farming prior. They eventually encountered a dire wolf who was alone, and that was when, to everyone's surprise, vines erupted out of Merlin and entrapped the wolf, and they watched as he beat this helpless wolf to the brink of death.

"What the hell is that ability?" Snowbunny was practically screaming now, she had so many questions that weren't being answered, she wasn't sure how many things changed over the span of a day.

"I'm like half plant or something now, I'll explain later." Merlin shrugged as he grabbed the almost-dead wolf and started shaving a section of its fur, revealing almost bare skin underneath. "Alvira, come over here and bite into it until it dies."

The group looked at Merlin with disgust, especially Alvira who didn't expect him to come out with this. She thought he was going to make her drink animal blood at most, not eat the thing.

"Most titles I have were received by killing stuff in a certain way, so if you kill enough creatures by biting them, if there is a title to be had you should get one. This is what I mean by being excessive." Merlin's reasoning was flawed, but oddly convincing, and a few moments later, Alvira had fallen to her knees and began sinking her teeth into the wolf's flesh.

The redhead archer turned away while recoiling, and the rest of the group looked on with varying levels of disgust as this little girl tore chunks of flesh from the wolf with her mouth until it died.

"Alright, now feast." These words were all it took for the rest of the group to turn away. Tears began forming in Alvira's eyes, she turned to Merlin while hoping he was joking, but his gaze seemed like he was being serious. "What do you think a vampire does? Start eating."

A large chunk of the wolf's upper torso had been eaten by the girl, whose face was covered in dried blood, her signal to stop arrived when another wolf spawned, and the process repeated.  Alvira's salvation came when she received two notifications after devouring the tenth wolf.

"I'm done, I got it." Alvira spoke while barely holding in her stomach contents, "I unlocked two titles, Predator and Corpse Eater."