Theo wasted no time and went back to the first page of his panel and selected Value of Slaughter. Another page opened; this one was almost completely blank with only a square-like empty slot, with another similar slot on the right that had a lock symbol in the middle. The slots looked similar to the inventory slots you would find in your average RPG game.

When he tried to inspect the slot with a lock, a notification appeared that told him that he needed 10 SP to unlock it. He didn’t bother to ask Eileen about it now and rather turned his attention to the empty slot. This one triggered a notification too, but different than the last.

[Artifacts available to equip:

-Artifact of Fenrir (Fragmented)

-Artifact of Jormungandr (fragmented)]

He didn’t know the effects of either one, but he figured that if he had to hunt, a wolf would be a better choice.

The moment he selected the Artifact of Fenrir, his whole world changed. His vision that was already leagues above a normal human, because of his vampire bloodline and the previous reconstruction of his body became so sharp he could even see each individual detail of a fly’s compound eyes, located about a hundred meters away. Not only did his sight sharpen, but his kinetic vision also increased by such a margin he could literally count the number of flaps the fly made with its wings. Although a part of that was also thanks to one of his newly acquired skills.

His nose was overloaded with numerous senses lingering in the air and his brain couldn’t decipher all the information the senses carried with them. He was even able to tell the direction of the wind with just a light breeze hitting his skin.

His ears caught a plethora of noises and sounds, overloading his brain and disorienting him. He waited around half a minute to adjust to the newly gained senses, then slowly stood up from his sitting position. Even though the hunger remained, and his stomach still contracted in pain, he felt amazing. The hunger wasn’t driving him crazy anymore but was more like a drive to help him achieve his purpose, to hunt.

Instead of desperation and urgency to fix his condition, he now had a genuine wish to hunt, to kill, whether to devour or even just for sport. Gazing at the deeper part of the now dark forest, he started running with a bloodthirsty glint in his eyes.

‘Theo, are you feeling alright?’ Eileen asked in confusion as his attitude completely changed.

‘I never felt better.’ His running barely produced a sound, movements that would take years to master achieved by pure instinct. His body even subconsciously used some of the skills from this world’s system, further increasing his speed.

‘You are about to reach the 1-kilometer distance, if what that girl said is true, then you should be careful and use the Spectator function first.’

Although he wanted to just let loose and have his body take over, he knew that it wasn’t the best idea. No matter how much better his senses became, his body strength stayed the same, just like Eileen said. That also meant that a beast could dominate him with pure physical prowess, so what if he could see every one of its movements, if he couldn’t dodge them, it wouldn’t matter.

He once again opened the panel and selected the Spectator feature under Map. His vision suddenly doubled, and his senses were sent into pure disorder. He quickly closed his eyes and that seemed to do the trick.

He looked around with his Spectator skill, his gaze immediately landing on a black-haired, topless vampire with closed eyes. It appeared that this skill let him send his senses beyond his body, which was indeed quite useful for scouting.

As he tried to move his perspective, though, he soon noticed a problem. His senses were only limited to sight, he couldn’t smell or hear anything, and the sight was also a lot weaker than his own, especially now that he had equipped that artifact.

He ran into another problem when he tried to move the perspective around. In some areas, he could move it as quickly as he wanted to or even teleport it around, while in others, it felt like he was sending his senses through a dense liquid and advancement became quite slow.

He explained the problem to Eileen and immediately received an answer.

‘You know that Spectator is a function of the Map sub-system for a reason, right? You can only freely spectate your surroundings in the areas of the map you have already explored.’ She would have added an insult at the end, but she wasn’t certain about Theo’s mental condition, so she refrained.

Theo suppressed his bloodlust and patiently scouted ahead, although restlessness showed through his expression.

The speed his senses could move in Spectator mode through unexplored terrain was about as fast as an average human taking a stroll, which was extremely slow when you consider that this was a fantasy world, with some forests taking up land larger than the size of continents on Earth.

10 minutes passed, then 20, and finally 30. At that point, Theo’s blood boiled and his eyes radiated bloodlust that almost shone red through his closed eyelids, but he hadn’t spotted a single beast, or even an animal other than an insect.

‘Maybe that girl lied about the range for the sake of your own safety.’ Eileen's words entered Theo’s head for the first time since he started scouting.

He really couldn’t take it anymore and decided to take some risks. Although he had some information about the strength system from the vessel's memories, he had no way to compare himself. The fact that beasts here go all the way up to the peak of second order also did nothing to ease his worries. Especially since he was supposed to be merely level 5.

Continuing his journey, he traveled along the path he already explored with Spectator.

For context, this world functioned on levels, and every 20 levels symbolized a new order that vastly deferred in strength compared to the previous one. Although Theo had strength a lot higher than a normal level 5 with his body reformed by constitutions, not to mention the new artifact, he wouldn’t even survive a single attack from the weakest of second order existences.

He soon reached the place where his previous exploration ended, which was only about a kilometer away. It would’ve been farther, but he didn’t use Spectate in a straight line and rather explored in a broader range.

He was on full alert and his ears subtly twitched every now and then, reacting to even the smallest of sounds, his nose did its best it could to feed Theo’s brain the information about the surroundings senses, which he still had trouble processing.

Even after another three kilometers nothing changed and Theo’s annoyance slowly grew, but just a moment later, his nose caught the scent of something that stood out from the rest of the smells, a smell that no vampire wouldn’t recognize, the smell of blood.

Theo’s nose twitches, sniffing the air, as he started to follow the scent, his speed subconsciously quickening from excitement.