He was nowhere near as clumsy doing this as he had been when he first held a cold weapon. His movements were swift and precise, not only due to his higher Agility, but the fact that he had training with a weapon.

While it might be specific to the spear, these things had overarching fundamentals. It was similar to how a person familiar with using pistols being able to use rifles, albeit quite poorly, but still above the level of someone utterly clueless.

Darius tossed the sword over to Joneson, who also received it with a blank expression. Before the duo could question him further, he took the initiative to explain.

"You are now Pureblood Vampires, no longer constrained to pure magic as Liches. As such, it would be a waste for you to not use your great stats in tandem with physical weapons and the necessary magic in combat."

The duo shared a look and nodded. "As you command, boss!"

Darius nodded and checked their newly added ability and improved trait descriptions.

[Create Initiate - Intermediate Ability

Cost: 10% of HP.

Description: As a Pureblood Vampire, imbue a living vessel that is willing to receive your power and part of your vampiric essence, changing their existence to neither living nor dead, but a fledgling vampire that becomes part of your family, eternally loyal to his ancestor.]

[Summon Thralls - Intermediate Ability

Cost: 1 mana per Thrall

Description: Call out to all your created Thralls and have them teleported to your location to serve as your shields in battle.]

[Create Blood Warriors - Intermediate Ability

Cost: 1% of HP.

Description: Convert a drop of your blood into a Blood Warrior, a servile subspecies adept in battle. All Blood Warriors possess 30% of the creator's combat prowess and skill.]

[Life Drain - Intermediate Ability

Cost: None

Description: Drain the blood of any living being. The rate at which life is drained is 1% per second and requires contact. Any life drained is used to replenish the vampire's health by the same value.]

[Magic Immunity - Trait

Description: As a being born from the blood of a Progenitor Vampire, you are strongly resistant to all forms of magic damage or effects.]

[Damage Ward - Trait

Description: With the blessing of a Progenitor Vampire on your side, you automatically spawn a barrier that has your total HP and various resistances. The barrier lasts until it is broken, and will automatically respawned after an hour.]

[Absorb - Trait

Description: As a rare growth type undead, you passively absorb the Death Energy from any slain foes in order to strengthen yourself.]

[Ultra Dominate - Trait

Description: As a Supreme Undead, you are able to dominate any undead of a lower rank and level than yourself within 10 kilometers, turning them into your subordinates in the absence of another master.]

After assessing their skills, Darius closed the menus. As he had been reading, he had been factoring their new and strengthened abilities into his plan in order to maximize his chances of success.

One thing he could say was that if he could get Mikey and Joneson to the Adept stage and at a reasonable level there, he might just be able to pull of a hare-brained scheme involving a direct battle, misdirection, and espionage.

With Gunner's increased utility, his new Heal spell, and the two Pureblood Vampires… it just might be possible. Darius was beginning to feel hope burgeon within him as it seemed like his chances were rising!

He also noticed that the cleansed land had begun to slowly lose its healthiness and was slowly blackening under the encroachment of the blight, making him sigh.

'So much for creating a safe house.'

Darius nodded to his group and led the way forward as they all trekked through the last few kilometers of the Journeyman band and entered the Adept band later in the day.

He noted that the blight's power had almost doubled once again, making his Purification Potions struggle to maintain an equilibrium between drain and restoration. It eventually stabilized, but the effective duration of the potion more than halved.

Gunner too felt the increased strain, His greenish aura fluctuated, going from intense to weak many times as his expression changed before he finally stabilized as well.

When Darius checked, he sighed as Gunner's mana drain was now at 20 points. As long as he kept the Earth's Guardian skill up, he would not be able to regenerate spent mana used on other skills!

His only option would be to drink potions, so Darius gave Gunner three-fourths of their mana potions to be safe. As for Mikey and Joneson, they simply sighed with pleasure and flexed their muscles.

"Boss, it feels great here. I feel like I can fight 30% stronger than on normal grounds unno." Mikey commented.

"Wow! Unreal! This is amazing! I feel incredible! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! I can win! I feel great! I can do this!" Joneson cheered as he raised his hands to the sky, like he wanted to hug it.

Darius tilted his head with amusement, feeling like he had heard that line somewhere before. Still, he took in the increased power of his undead minions as both a good thing and a bad thing.

The good thing was that the help they could render him had greatly increased. Naturally, the bad thing was that this also went true for every other undead here, who were technically his enemies.

Darius sighed, and couldn't help feeling chilled inside the more he progressed towards his goal. He knew in the depths of his heart, that without Vena's kindness of forcing Caesar to spit out those hints, he would likely have chosen the wrong path.

Even now, Darius felt like the only reason he had landed on the path of 56 was thanks to adhering to those three hints and his decision to increase his Luck to 50 points.

He was convinced that the latter choice had to be the key to his success until now. Nothing could make him think otherwise.