Chapter Twenty-Two: Blood Essence

“How…does that work?” Lacy gulped. “Do you have to bite my neck? I think people will see the injury and ask me what happened. I won’t be able to play dumb to cover that up.”

The vampire scoffed.

“Biting your neck is unnecessary. Humans have witnessed koroths doing so for theatric effect; to intimidate our foes, and make them forget that we do not need contact with you to extract your blood essence.”

Lacy got the distinct feeling that he was revealing a lot more about his people than last time.

“Okay, gotcha. So I should…?”

“Present your shoulder,” the vampire commanded.

Lacy did, lifting the sleeve of her shirt like she was about to get a flu shot. The huge creature’s hand moved faster than she could follow with her eyes, and her shoulder began to bleed. It was actually exactly like he’d taken a needle to her skin. But instead of flowing downwards, the blood floated away, toward the vampire, who produced a gourd from his robe pocket. The blood flowed slowly into the gourd, not a drop missing.

The spirit cultivator remembered Instructor Poko saying something about blood poisoning powers. It seemed poisoning wasn’t all they could do to blood.

The blood letting only lasted a few minutes, thankfully, and Lacy didn’t feel any different afterward. The vampire put a stopper in the gourd and it was over.

“You have surpassed all expectations, Lacy.”

She gulped at how ominous the vampire sounded.

“You have kept your end of the deal, and though you have no way to confirm it yet, so have we. One party of Seeds and Sprouts came for us, and we let them all live. You will hear of it after your future return to Yellowvine.”

Lacy nodded, saying, “Okay.”

“Do you intend to continue maintaining our deal?”

“Yep. I’ll be honest, after how easy that blood essence donation was, I care even less that we’re colluding.”

The vampire seemed to take a moment to savor her words, determining their veracity.

“You speak truths. Good. After your flawless performance, you deserve…a little more trust.”

“Yeeaaah?” she asked, eyes wide with confusion.

“You may call me Hydrugno.”

“Oh, just that? I was scared for nothing…”

“Scared? But I commended you.”

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“Ah…nevermind. Hydrugno is it? Nice to meet you.”

“It is reassuring that you, in fact, find meeting me to be nice.”

“Well, you are letting me live without doing anything terrible. I think I’ve been treated pretty well.”

“I see.”

Lacy shifted awkwardly on her cot as she considered how absurd her life was. She was a wizard colluding with vampires while in training to learn muscle magic.

‘Shit’s wild,’ she thought.

“That is all. I will seek you out again in due time. Keep to our deal and we may one day even…be friends.”

The darkness qi previously clinging to every surface of the room suddenly shrink-wrapped around Hydrugno, not exactly making him disappear, but…almost. He became no more than a blur that left the barrack, which she could only see thanks to being a spirit cultivator and her new attunement with darkness qi.

Suddenly, Shu stirred.

“M-morning?” Shu asked, looking around blearily.

“Sorry, I woke you up,” Lacy lied. “Just my qi control practice.”

“Okay…”

Then Shu laid back down.

Lacy endeavored to begin practicing darkness qi control when she realized something interesting. She couldn’t even remember what the dude’s aura had felt like, which was strange because auras were a bit like fingerprints. Lacy could identify every single cultivator she’d met since becoming one herself by their auras. Yet Hydrugno’s hadn’t stood out to her at all.

Was his aura different because he was a koroth, or was it another effect of darkness qi? Lacy was excited to find out in the coming weeks if she could use darkness qi to hide her aura while still using it.

Achieving that might be her key to survival in this new world while still hiding her extreme talents.

……

The second day of spear training involved actual sparring, where it became pretty clear who had come prepared. As Instructor Kong explained it the day before, there were enough trained guards maintaining the camp available to spar with half the recruits every day, making it so every recruit would receive sparring once every two days.

Now it was Yellowvine’s turn.

“I’m next!” Shu called out as the guy sparring with Instructor Kong lost five times in a row. Then she whispered to Lacy, “Watch!”

Needless to say Shu didn’t win, but it took a while for her to lose.

“You did great, Shu,” Lacy consoled.

“Yet I lost,” Shu sulked.

“Besides being superhuman, Instructor Kong likely has decades of practice on you.”

“Ughhh, I know…”

Hoomar was also a sight to behold, since he also lasted a long time against the cultivator he was matched with. He, however, didn’t sulk about it.

Then it was Lacy’s turn.

“Go get him!” Shu encouraged, but Lacy just shook her head with a wry smile.

“Do not fear. Keep your eyes on his weapon,” Hoomar advised.

Lacy was no martial artist. Not in her past life, not in this one. She seemed to have fine reaction time and a very healthy body, but none of that meant combat skills. She lost the spar pretty quickly without even getting close to landing a hit with her padded spear.

“You could have whooped him if you’d used your spirit arts,” Shu whispered as Lacy walked back to her friends.

“I need to learn to fight before I try incorporating elementalism into my fights,” Lacy said while sticking out her tongue. “I’m trying to become a dual cultivator, not just a spirit one.”

“That…makes sense,” Shu replied. “However, I want to see you whoop ass with elementalism.”

“It would be entertaining, but I agree with Lacy’s justification,” Hoomar added.

Lacy shook her head and smiled as she added, “I’m not even that strong yet. I have a ways to go.”

……

By the time night rolled around Lacy was pretty stressed. Obviously she hadn’t told anyone about Hydrugno visiting her, but the whole day she’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for someone to step out from behind a corner and call her a traitor to her race for working with the koroths.

Not being visited by Autberry the whole day just played into the anxiety. Was he just busy today? Or was he observing her to see if she met with Hydrugno again? If he showed his face, would he pretend not to know? Would he pull her aside and question her?

Even Hydrugno said the dual cultivator Sprout was capable of finding him, despite being confident that hadn’t happened.

But she would be fine, right? And even if she was caught, she could explain herself…right?