Ryan slowly moved away from the danger zone and used his senses to locate another safe spot at a good distance away from the boars and his previous hunting area. This way, he wouldn't be disturbed by beasts and men alike. He found a tall tree and slumped under it with a sigh, tiredness slowly getting the better of him. He felt his entire body ache somewhere on the inside, and it was as if he wouldn't be able to take another step forward in this condition.

"Should I just log out and sleep it off?" He wondered as he absent-mindedly opened his status screen. The past several minutes had been extremely intense, but he had also gained a lot from it. Ryan felt excitement bubbling in his tired bones as he began looking through the status screen. Slowly a grin started forming on his face.

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Name: Ryan Holland

Race: Undead

Gender: Male

Level: 9

Title: Cursed God's Descendent

Legacy: Cursed God's Legacy (Incomplete)

Class: Mindless Bloodsucker (Can be upgraded)

Health: 50/50

Mana: N/A

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Stamina: N/A

Vitality: N/A

Strength: 23

Defense: 14

Agility: 23

Wisdom: 10

Intellect: 5

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Unique Skills:

Blood Lust: (Class Specific Passive Skill) Your bloodlust is randomly triggered; when the skill is active, you lose your consciousness and act on pure instinct; Memories might be lost forever; Every time the skill is triggered, your body degrades, and your brain corrodes; Skill cannot be triggered if hunger is completely satiated; Cool Down: None.

Curse of the Abyss: (Legacy Specific Passive Skill) The first of the ten curses of the Cursed God; When the curse activates, you permanently lose your mind and become a rabid animal; The curse will be nullified when you drink the blood of three common rank beasts, three elite rank beasts, three rare rank beasts and one chieftain rank beast; Cool Down: 10 days (1/10).

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Active Skills:

[Blood Swipe - Lv1], [Claw - Lv5], [Sprint - Lv1], [Kick - Lv2], [Punch - Lv2]

Passive Skills:

[Heightened Hearing], [Heightened Smell] and [Heightened Sight]

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"Not bad. Not bad at all." Ryan clicked his tongue in satisfaction. Not only had he gained a whole bunch of skills, but he had also leveled these up a little. Moreover, he now had an actual skill related to his 'special' class, with which he could do actual damage.

"Good stuff." He chuckled as he thought about the two who had helped him a lot by putting everything on the fast track. On his own, perhaps it would have taken him a lot more time to stumble onto something like this. Maybe he wouldn't even have unlocked it at all.

Thanks to those two pushing his limits, he was able to get here quickly, but why were they after him in the first place? Now that Ryan thought about it, he felt very weird about the whole thing. People looking down on him or people being dickheads, and calling him names, making fun of his disability, all of these were not new to him.

However, this was something new. That priest girl acted as if they had some sort of unforgivable enmity between them. They had barely met once, so why was she so obsessed with putting him down? Ryan scratched his head, but no matter how much he thought about it, he couldn't understand the weirdo. Maybe some people were just built like that, with too much pride and hatred.

As for him, he would never allow anything like that to cloud his heart or mind. It was simply not worth it. He had far bigger problems in his life right now. Talking about problems, his gaze shifted back to take a look at his two special unique skills. It was time to take care of these two problematic skills.

Ryan ended up not logging out and taking an hour or so of rest while still inside the game. Perhaps it would have been better for him to take a nap outside of the game, but then there would be the added headache of finding blood for his thirst every twenty minutes. He couldn't possibly attack that drunkard for the second time in a single day.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

So, in the end, he decided to simply enjoy the nice clean, fresh air inside the game and spent the hour thinking about various things while enjoying the scenery. In between, he found himself a couple of lone dire wolves to drink blood from and quenched his thirst.

In the meantime, he also managed to make a plan for the near future to deal with the biggest problem he had, his 'Curse of the Abyss'. Out of the required three common rank beasts, three elite rank beasts, three rare rank beasts, and one chieftain rank beast, thanks to the two idiots, he had already managed to take care of the three common rank beasts and the three elite rank beasts.

After this, only the three rare rank beasts and the chieftain rank beast were left. Earlier, he had no confidence in dealing with powerful beasts like this, which required an entire party consisting of several players to take care of, but now he had an actual skill under his belt, so he was a lot more confident, at least for the rare rank beasts.

If he was not able to achieve this, then there was always the other path. He could power-level his way up the ladder and then safely target a lower-level rare rank beast. The curse only specified the rank and didn't mention the level. This was a big loophole that he could make use of.

In reality, apart from these two plans of action, he also had another trick up his sleeve, but he did not want to use this unless the situation was extremely dire. Ryan grinned as he stood up, dusted his back, and dove right back into his hunt again.

Though Ryan had spent a lot of the day fighting with beasts inside the game world one after the other monotonously, he found himself only excited and not bored in the least as he searched for some more. It wasn't too difficult to run into some dire wolves. For his current level, these were perfect. They posed a challenge to him as they always traveled in at least packs of five and at the same time weren't too overwhelming for him.

This was the perfect opportunity for taking his time and working on his newly acquired [Blood Swipe] skill. He wanted to level this skill as soon as possible because without a doubt this was his way to acquire more specialized vampire class skills if that was even a thing.

At this moment, he also had no idea how to go about finding a rare beast or what to do even if he found one by chance. He periodically looked up the internet to see if anyone had sighted any rare beast in the vicinity. They were termed rare-grade for a reason and their spawn rate was extremely unpredictable and rare.

If he spent his time looking for one of these, then he would only end up wasting all of his allocated ten days, after which the curse would be completely unleashed.

Ryan really did not want to think about what would happen next. So for the time being, he focussed on understanding his [Blood Swipe] further and potentially unlocking new skills by hunting more beasts and farming for more experience points. If he ever ran into one, he wanted to be ready for it.

Ryan continued grinding in the same area and soon a couple of hours passed by. He had also gained 2 more levels. He decided to take a break and search the online forums again for any rare beast nearby when he noticed several messages blinking in his notification, all of them from Mark.

"Did something happen? Did mom figure out everything?" Ryan immediately panicked and started opening all the messages. Luckily for him, nothing he feared had happened. Mark's messages were all about cursing his guild leader and asking for his current location.

It looked like his friend was really pissed off and wanted to vent a little. "I am near the dire wolf territory." Ryan marked his coordinates and sent the location to his friend. Almost immediately, the other party replied.

[Damn it. That is too far. I will just talk to you when you log out. By the way, you were absolutely correct. My entire guild is a shitty guild and that bastard is even worse. He was basically using all of us for some quest.]

[We died three times you know! Three times, all because of him! And then, the nerve of the guy, he is also interrogating us and asking us if someone came to the dungeon without him and finished off the hidden boss.]

[That fucking asshole is actually accusing us of stealing some treasure! How dare he! He was the one who lied and basically used us all like meat shields and now he is talking as if we cheated him out of something!]

[Complete and utter bullshit!]

Mark's message came flying into the inbox one after the other. "So the cat's out of the bag huh?" Ryan sighed. He had already warned his friend about this but the guy did not listen.

Ryan also did not blame him. After all, Mark had been playing with this guild for a while now so it would be difficult to just up and quit the guild out of nowhere. However, now at least, he needed to get out of that damned place.

As Ryan was typing up a reply to his friend, suddenly an idea popped into his mind. He stopped messaging his friend and opened the call interface to make a call urgently.

Di! Di! Di!

Mark immediately picked up the call in a couple of rings. He was still in the mood to vent out and curse his damned guild members, but before he could say anything, Ryan interrupted him. "Hey, did you quit the guild yet?"

"Huh?" Mark was confused, but once Ryan explained, he quickly understood the plan. "Yes, leave it to me. I can do this. These idiots definitely get the news about rare beasts every now and then. We can take advantage of it for sure." The duo ended the call, and Mark started searching the guild chat room eagerly.

Ryan as well once again began his grind. He found a target and activated his [Blood Swipe] skill repeatedly to increase its proficiency. As for the rare sighting, since he delegated the task to Mark, he had full faith that his friend would bring some good news.

Mark was always like that. He helped with his whole heart and never asked any questions. Even this time, he did not ask anything about why Ryan needed this rare or what quest he was working on. Anyone else would have been nosey or at least asked once about the why part, but not Mark.

Back when Ryan was horribly injured, and it felt like his life was over, and his family was doomed, he was also the only person who stood beside him through it all. "I should just tell him?" Ryan quietly contemplated as he slaughtered the two dire wolves circling him. Not that he did not trust his friend, but this was just too much of a burden to share, especially when he couldn't even tell if this was a curse or blessing yet.

However, he had to make this decision soon. Maybe in a day or two, Mark might come back with the information about a rare sighting. At that time, Ryan knew he would insist on fighting the thing together so he could have a better chance of completing the quest. Then everything would anyway be revealed. In fact, the next time the two of them met in-game, it was inevitable that things unravel.

While Ryan was mulling over this, suddenly, another message popped up on his interface and snapped him out of his thoughts. "What!" His eyes almost widened in shock as he saw the ID and the message the person had sent along. It was from Mark!