Darius spent the next month working on his new spell. Miranda's help had been a great boon for him, preventing him from making too many mistakes, smoothening his path forward by quite a bit.

By supplementing crucial information on various matters and performing simulations repeatedly, the AI had helped shorten the overall process, but ultimately it was on Darius as for how long it would take.

Meanwhile, Xela had spent this month mostly watching old TV series from Earth collected from Darius' memory.

The Branded Servants had both received full access to everything on their HoloBraces, something that nobody else but Deia would be granted in the future.

The young elf had quickly discovered her love for the series CSI and comedy-dramas in general. It left her totally enraptured, while the elf hugged a couch pillow, completely fixated on the screen.

Darius and Gunner were forced to come in periodically to check up on her, only to find her crying and fighting back whenever they tried to feed her.

The two fellows only had wry smiles at this kind of behavior.

If they didn't do this, wouldn't she starve to death behind the TV? Why did the sweet Elven Princess have to bite and scratch them like a crazy feline?

As for Gunner, he had spent most of his time with training. Still, since even Xela had to sleep, he had occasionally watched some TV.

Darius had recommended for the half-giant lad to watch some action anime. After browsing through a few anime, Dragon Ball had quickly become Gunner's favorite, especially after a character named Broly had been introduced.

Even Darius was left speechless. They looked 95% similar to each other, and if he didn't know any better, he would have sworn they must have been related in some way.

A big part of Gunner's training now included him trying to copy some of Broly's skills and techniques to incorporate into his fighting style. Clearly, the large lad had found a role model.

So far, he had created three new skills that the Supreme System accepted, which were;

[Earthen Lariat - Level 1 Skill

Grade: Intermediate

Cost: 20 MP

Description: Channel great amounts of pure Earth Energy into your arms, rushing forward to strike your foes with a powerful lariat. This deals 60% earth damage.]

[Omega Blow - Level 1 Skill

Grade: Intermediate

Cost: 20 MP

Description: Concentrate Earth Energy into a ball, throwing it out in a compressed form to explode on impact. This deals 90% earth damage to a single target.]

[Eraser Cannon - Level 1 Skill

Grade: Intermediate

Cost: 20 MP

Description: Concentrate Earth Energy into a beam, blasting it out at any angle within 10 meters. This deals 120% earth damage.]

Since the skills were self-taught, they had different power, unlike transmuted skills which were all at 5x the base value. However, Darius was impressed by Gunner's learning ability and his adaptability with the Earth element.

Darius sincerely doubted that even pureblood giants were so talented as Gunner, and upon checking with the Database, he found that this was true, Gunner was indeed special.

Fortunately, the half-giant wasn't the only one who was progressing. Darius was currently at the Experiment stage. This stage was not even a problem for him as Miranda had already run countless simulations while they were preparing.

In other words, having Miranda was like being able to jump to the Experiment stage to see the effectiveness of the spell while in the Design stage, so the actual Experiment stage was kinda… routine.

Still, it was necessary. Just like with Scientific Experiments, one could run all the simulations they wanted and get a good answer 99/100 times, but upon trying on live subjects, unaccounted problems would quickly reveal themselves.

That was just how things were, and the same went for magic in Faust. Darius gently activated the spell and it worked while he used the slow method the first time.

He then spent the next week sequentially increasing the speed at which he activated the spell. The Supreme System targeting could not help him here as it wasn't something keyed into the system yet, so he needed to do it like any other mage.

Darius made sure there were no problems with the internal activation and that everything ran smoothly before moving to the Verify stage after yet another week.

Here, he cast the spell outwards and felt everything go mostly right. In fact, according to Miranda, there was a high chance that it was perfect. However, there lay an issue with this stage, and it was the fact that… Darius lacked an actual target to test it on.

Unfortunately, vampires didn't grow on trees nor were there a vampire test subject delivery service he could call. So far, he had merely cast the spell and felt it work… without being able to tell if it would actually work.

This was a very unique problem to have and Darius was unsure whether to just move to the Conclusion stage or not. Eventually, Miranda convinced him to get it done.

Whatever the case, if it worked, the Supreme System would incorporate it, and with its targeting, it would not fail. If he penned a spell manual for it, even if it was flawed, he could transmute it to perfection.

As such, there would be no loss.

As long as he could pass the Design and Experiment stages successfully, he could skip the Verify stage and still get his spell to work by abusing the tools granted him.

After Darius was done, he named the spell 'Convert Vampire'. This was different from the Journeyman 'Turn Undead' which was a Light-based element spell that cleansed undead and sent them to the afterlife in peace.

It was unique for two reasons, the first being that Convert Vampire was specific to the vampire race and would not work on any other type of undead. The second was the fact that Turn Undead struck the target with Light Energy that coursed through their system and expunged all Death Energy.

As for Convert Vampire, it used mana to turn into Life Energy that would enter the body of the target and convert all their Death Energy. Instead of removing anything, their internals would be changed fundamentally.

It was practically the same as injecting poison into someone's veins that would corrupt their blood. Nevertheless, there were a few ways to fight against that, chief of all being to inject to the corresponding antidote.

But what if someone injected you with medicine that changed your entire bloodstream into medicine? How was one supposed to fight that?

How long would one even be able to live with medicine in their veins instead of blood?