Due to the dream, the moonlight felt strange and primal to Damien as he basked in its light. To other Vampires, it brought safety, but for him, it was a reminder. He was supposed to be a creature of the night, not some human in the skin of a monster.

"But Damien Nightshades' worries were not misplaced." Damien mumbled to himself while stroking Fay's sleeping head, "Vampires do not learn magic but instead focus on a bizarre form of cultivation that drives one mad."

A small rift in space opened, and a familiar golden pocket watch dropped into his open palm. He snapped it open with a distinct click and looked at his handsome reflection in the mirror.

[Damien Nightshade]

[Noble Vampire]

Schools Of Magic:

[Psychic Magic (B+)]

Psychokinesis [A]

Pyrokinesis [E]

Aerokinesis [F] (New)

Hydrokinesis [F] (New)

Geokinesis [F] (New)

Levitation [B]

Clairvoyance [C]

Automatic Writing [F]

Telepathy [C]

[Spatial Magic (C)]

Phantom Form [C]

Spatial Movement [D]

Spatial Inventory [D]

[Blood Magic (C)]

Blood Script [F] (New)

Blood Tracking [F] (New)

Blood Sacrifice [F] (New)

Blood Transmutation [F] (New)

Blood Contract [D]

[Darkness Magic (D)]

Shadow Walk [D]

=Null Spells=

Mana Control [B]

=Trait Spells=

Deflection [B]

Soul Bind [C]

Sleep Casting [C]

Perception Field [C]

Suppressive Voice [E]

"So bloody long yet so depressingly weak!" Damien's eyes scrolled past the many sections, only briefly checking if anything had changed. The new Psychic spells were there as expected, and a few spells had levelled up a grade since he last checked.

But the most important section and the area he dreaded the most was Blood Magic. "Blood magic drives its practitioners crazy with blood lust, like a heroin addict constantly looking for their next fix, and just like heroin, the more blood I cultivate, the worse the craving becomes and the higher my tolerance."

Damien looked down at Fay's sleeping face, "I will need multiple Blood Queens and maybe even a pet Dragon or two to sate my thirst. My Father had four Blood Queens, and one was even a fallen angel, yet he still went mad."

Damien was depressed, but there was still hope, "Luckily, I can upgrade Psychic magic and hopefully reduce the madness." Without wasting any more time, Damien checked each of his new skills.

[Blood Magic (C)]

Blood Script [F] (New) - Allows caster to create runic formations with blood. These runic formations can be activated immediately or delayed.

Blood Tracking [F] (New) - Vampires are apex predators, and therefore prey can never escape. So long as the target's blood is available, a Vampire can hunt the prey to the world's end. Nothing can escape a vampire's hunt. At higher levels, even bloodlines can be tracked.

Blood Sacrifice [F] (New) - Draw vitality and mana from a foreign source to power spells and rituals.

Blood Transmutation [F] (New) - The closest thing Vampires have to true magic. Vampires can change the properties of their blood; for example, they can make swords of solid blood or a poisonous mist of blood.

Damien scratched his head in confusion, "Vanity in the dream talked about condensing blood, but how does one accomplish this?" He thought for a while and then decided trial and error was the only solution.

He bit into Fay's artery, yet she didn't even awaken; only a soft murmur escaped her lips.

He threw his head back, mouth dripping scarlet blood.

Fay's neck healed in a mere second.

Damien awkwardly pushed Fay off and sat in a lotus position; he tried to feel inside himself. Then, after a few minutes, he gave up. How does one even feel inside themselves? He was clearly approaching it wrong.

"I need to control my blood. Maybe I can cheat a little? Hemokinesis could work?"

Damien had no clue how a real Vampire meditates as Damien Nightshade refused to partake in his sister's teachings in fear of the madness.

Shaking his head in regret, Damien cut his finger with his nail and then, with a tendril of Psychic mana, he tried to manipulate it. Compared to all the other kinesis spells he tried to learn, this one felt almost natural, as if his very soul wished him to learn.

Hemokinesis[F -> C] (New) - Manipulate blood with the mind.

The information he had locked away that felt like an instinct roared to life. He could feel Fay's blood dissolving into his muscles, "What a waste!" Quickly he concentrated, and with Hemokinesis, he brought the escaping blood back into his bloodstream.

His veins bulged as they reached their capacity; it was painful, and Damien gritted his teeth. Attempting to ignore the pain, he directed his now red-tinted tendrils of Hemokinesis to squeeze the blood within his veins. The pressure built and built until his body could take no more.

His veins exploded. Like a faulty network of pipes, eruptions of pressure happened one after another in quick succession. Damien fell backwards in immense agony as blood leaked from his eyes, nose and ears.

Damiens gurgled screams awoke Fay, and she was horrified, "No! Damien, what happened?!" Still half asleep, she stagged to his side. She placed her shaking hands on his face and gently tried to get a response.

"Don't leave me, please! Honey? What's wrong? Blood fixes everything, right? Then take it all!" She grabbed Damien's hand, sliced her wrists, and placed the open wound over his mouth. "P-please..." she mumbled while dabbing his face with her sleeve.

Unknown to Fay, when a Vampire enters a critical state, its body will enter a stasis state as it automatically repairs itself. An injury as serious as this is only enough to take Damien's consciousness away for a minute.

As his vision returned, he coughed out a mouthful of blood.

Fay's distraught and tear-filled eyes met his. She was deathly pale, "Husband is alive!" She triumphed, "I knew you would be okay..." she mumbled before fainting on his chest.

"Silly girl, a Vampire can't die in such a ridiculous way!" Damien sat up and instantly felt awful, "How much blood did this crazy person feed me?"

Making sure Fay was at least alive, he quickly concentrated on condensing this absurd amount of blood within him. "There's far too much. Perhaps I should condense the blood in a different place than the veins?"

The obvious choice was the heart, and upon searching for it, Damien discovered something. "I have no heartbeat?"

In all its fleshy glory, a heart was there, yet it remained still. Damien smiled; he finally figured it out. Using Hemokinesis, the absurd amount of blood began gravitating to his heart. The empty chambers filled, and something ridiculous happened.

The heart began beating, but no blood left its embrace. Instead, the blood was pounded and crushed under the powerful heartbeat. Then, like the centre of a star, immense pressure forced the blood to condense until it felt almost solid.

The pounding heart shook in his chest like a forge of the gods. He could bearly sit up straight without the force knocking him over, "So this is Vampire cultivation." He said through gritted teeth.

After a few minutes, his heartbeat ceased, a valve opened, and it deposited the nugget of pure vitality into his bloodstream. It was quickly absorbed, and Damien felt a rush of euphoria and power wash over him.

"AHHHH I NEeD MoRe BlOoD."

Without regard, his Hemokinesis flared to life and all the blood he had absorbed rushed to his heart like fish to food. This time, his heartbeat was so strong he genuinely thought it would pound a hole through his chest.

He lost all sanity when his heart completed the cycle and deposited the nugget of vitality. He felt as if ecstasy had been injected right into his brain. He was so full of PoWer and BlOoDLuSt that he needed a hunt, and he needed it now.

With all the sanity he could muster, he contacted Richard via telepathy, "Richard Cunningdal! Meet me atop Tarlington hill; let's have a duel! NO! A HUNT!"

A slightly sleepy, confused, but downright boisterous voice responded, "Damien, you Vampire bastard, are you drunk? HAHAHA, I LIKE IT. LET'S GO!"

***

Richard Cunningdal was a man of enormous stature; a fur coat struggled to contain his heroic muscles, and his wild reddish-brown hair gave him the look of a Viking warrior. Currently, he stood surrounded by trees, and sweat covered his brow.

"This is hardly a duel, you know?" He chuckled nervously as only the whistling wind answered his question.

He straightened his back with a sigh but suddenly tensed; he barely turned his head in time to see a shadow with glowing red eyes slash out at him. The creature of darkness made no noise as if it was a mere illusion.

The black nails screeched against his rock hard skin, and sparks flew in the air, briefly illuminating Damien's grinning expression.

Richard's rock hard fist swung with immense strength at that grinning face, yet Damien's body became spectral, and his hand passed right through with a hum.

"Darn space mage bullshit." Richard roared as Damien vanished into the darkness, "And Shadow Walk? What a sly bastard!" Despite his insults, he was grinning ear to ear. "This should be exciting."

Damien waited in Richards's blind spot, Levitation kept him off the ground, and Shadow walk obscured his movements. Finally, after clashing for over an hour, some of the blood lust had faded, and now that Damien could actually think, he decided to test some truly outlandish spell combinations.

Some dried blood from an earlier exchange remained on his claw; he licked it and activated Blood tracking. The world became a red hue, and only Richards's massive silhouette could be seen as a black shadow except for a small red dot, his heartbeat.

Damien licked his lips; Oh, how badly he wanted to RIP OUT AND CONSUME IT. No. He is WeAk AnD dIsTracTEd.

He slashed his finger, Hemokinesis controlled the stream of blood, Automatic writing spurred to life and combined with Blood Script, he constructed runes in mid-air and on the move.

Once completed, he left the pentagrams of blood on the floor and moved to cover.

Richard was scrutinizing the treeline with mana sight. The darkness gave Damien the home advantage as Richard was still a simple human. Suddenly behind him, a small burst of power was on the ground. "A trap?" He smiled, "No matter."

His bronze skin shone with a brown light, the earth opened up, and he dived in. Geokinesis, combined with his earth affinity, churned through the solid mountainside. Then, like a mole, he emerged in a surge of stone at the location.

The area was empty except for a blood pentagram; within seconds, he realized, "A disruption array? How cute."

Showing his true might, he shattered the array, and it collapsed.

Yet a claw emerged from his blindspot in this brief moment and smashed him in the mouth with enough force to break his neck.