The forest steams and bristles in dying embers scattered about its entirety. Soot rains on high, blackening the smouldered earth and burying multitudes of charred remains. Tilted trees and timber felled by glancing strikes of flame are left behind as Lavinia dashes by them all, unrestrained in her chase and retreat.

The hairs on her neck rise, instincts screaming for her to avoid the incoming strike. Her knees scrape against the ground as she slides narrowly saving her neck from the whip of angry red flame scouring the air. Not sparing a glance at her pursuer she pulls on Essence and continues her mad dash.

Lavinia's meal flees into the unburnt forest, the skimpy thing caught wind of the encroaching fire wielding demon before she took note of it. Their pursuer rages, thrusting its flames outwards in a blast that sends a wave of heat to scald and propel her to run even faster on all fours lest she burn. Lavinia subdues a sneers and a great urge to stop, turn and face the damned thing Crimson tier to Crimson tier.

She knows better; though her Crystal Essence may still read Crimson but it holds the paltry Essence of a Pink, like the lanky prey galloping ahead of her. The demon pranced forward on four long limbs connected by a short torso of leathery black wings too large and frail to spread open in this hot mess.

Finding it and its herd cooling underneath the canopy of a giant tree was a miracle find after three days without a single meal. In those dry days Lavinia’s Crystal Essence increased even without rest, but her hunger grew more than she ever felt. Her stomach growled and her fangs ache for a feast of blood. Her blood yearns renewal.

Things have been different since the Dungeon. More intense, sensitive and colourful. Lavinia’s explored many of the benefits of surviving that ordeal but the negatives are just as soon to rear their ugly head.

Leaping over crackling timber, Lavinia lunges at her prey, all too wary of the flame demon close behind. She straddles its surprisingly meaty, long skinned neck and it squawks, brimming with Essence before taking off in a burst of speed. Almost thrown off by the momentum, Lavinia glimpses their pursuer as she digs her claws into her prey for quick leverage.

It is very tall. That’s how Lavinia eventually spotted it and avoided its flames when she moved to kill the herd of the galloping demon bird she clings onto. Its radiant body emitted heat so blistering it set the leaves underneath their peaceful canopy aflame before it even came within ten feet of them and rained fireballs at the herd, Lavinia and the poor recovering forest.

Lavinia blames her unending hunger for dulling her senses so much that she failed to notice such an obvious demon before it was raining fire on her. Since the forest fire, prey is scarce to hunt, demons even more so— whatever that fire at the centre was has scattered both wild demons and monsters far from their usual broods. But the Ruishia forest is large, massive and so Lavinia refuses to lose hope in her hunt, after all, it’s merely a matter of covering greater swaths of the forest. Unfortunately, other demons are of the same mind.

Her prey rebukes her straddled grip with poor, desperate manoeuvres, snapping its beak of sharp, serrated teeth down at her head. Lavinia bears the pain without reinforcing herself with Essence, the resource far too precious to waste against paltry attacks like this. She swaths the creature’s offensive beak and presses her weight against its furled wings as it bursts into a wide, scorched clearing of smoking timber. It squawks in protest as darts of fire follow after them and Lavinia heaves herself up onto its short back, quick to switch from stabbing with her one hand to strangling.

Its wings stretch and pull under Lavinia’s weight, its last chance to escape, its last chance to survive an encounter with two Crimson tiers seeking to devour it. But Lavinia isn’t having any of it, she knows if it manages to get airborne she will never have a bite of it. What’s worse, with her riding on its back it may inflict even more damage than she’s recovered; Lavinia dreads to have to spend Essence using a Perk to get out of a bad situation and if anything she might have to spend it against the flame demon that refuses to give up the chase.

Just then a spear of flame stabs the soot caked earth, startling the suffocating bird demon to wild flails and leaps. Lavinia bares her fangs out, intent on draining the frantic demon and setting it to eternal slumber but it sees its death and fights her with every last drop of Essence within its Crystal. She senses it rushing through the things long, bare skinned throat as it squawks, Essence surging to bolster it against strangulation.

Her increased affinity with Essence and blood are among some of positives of escaping the Dungeon and her own Soul Crystal the way she did. With all her time invested in searching the forest for prey to feast on, Lavinia only recognizes the change in the background of her growing lust for blood and Essence. But it’s there, present and active even in her reactive uses.

Blood and Essence are what make up her soul and give energy to her body. She’s always wielded Essence in battles and hunts, always spent it as the main currency of power but like Ulx, Lucy and even Henry have seen, she’s different from most demons because she’s a Vampiric.

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Lavinia takes a breath, gripping the demons throat with her one hand and wrapping around it with her elbow. Shutting her eyes, she reaches within herself, to the dormant power she’s ignored since stepping out of her crevasse, to the power of blood. Her heart pounds faster and louder than she’s ever heard that it scares her, but she’s tested this before now, albeit momentarily and not while a demon she’s riding tries to kick her off its back and wings. She knows what comes next.

Veins and arteries bulge all over her arm as blood rushes through, supplying as much nourishment as Essence would to her muscles if not more. She loosens her grip for half a second only to clench the damn demon’s throat the moment after, bone snaps, blood spurts and the demon trips as the strength of her grip trumps all its bolstering Essence. Even as they tumble, Lavinia’s grip on the demon’s neck remains, it rasps and snaps its beak at her and the walking pillar of fire but Lavinia quickly spares it a horrible death in flame with a single pull, decapitating it completely as she rips its neck out with a slim spine trailing after it.

The power Blood Strengthening allows her is similar to that she gets with Essence, only fiercer and closer to what happens when she enters [Blood Rush]. She wondered if this blood manipulation was merely an extension of her Vampiric Perk, [Blood Art; Kinesis] but it couldn’t be as that follows a different set of rules and requires Essence and the blood of prey to use. She also wondered if it is her gaining mastery of [Blood Rush] a Perk of hers she’s never had conscious control over, one that has always come to save her life when things got dire. Whatever the answer is, it can wait as she wonders if Blood Strengthening will be enough to let her escape the pillar of fire strutting towards her now.

She’s seen its kind before, on the second day within the forest to be precise. She ventured in, chasing the still smoking centre of the forest for any sign of Corym or the Trirax but instead found demons of walking flame and brimstone. Demons she cannot hope to combat in her weakened state. Then she had the advantage of noting them before they saw her and so she left to continue her hunt for Corym as well as to assuage her growing hunger but didn’t think any would be found elsewhere within the forest, a stupid thought.

They are tall and lanky with a head shaped like a busted fruit, a geyser of fire and lava spurting out the open top as their entirety continues to blaze in a furnace. Lavinia can't know their true name without using [Inspect] and for a demon she doesn’t intend on fighting, knowing its name is pointless.

As Lavinia drinks from the gaping neck of her decapitated prey, the fire demon raises its arms that fell farther than its knees and a dozen frail looking fingers wiggle within the aura of flames. Lavinia tenses, expecting it to assault before she can find her prey’s darn Pink Crystal but it doesn’t. Instead it stops walking and thin twines of fire wisp out of its twelve fingertips, its draw on Essence doubles and the furnace engulfing it turns into an inferno that ensures this part of the forest will not see another breathing plant for decades.

The twines begin to rope themselves together into thick tentacles of flame while the demon itself seems rooted to the ground, looking like its usurped the plant life of the forest to seed its own impossible breathing, living, growing inferno.

Shoulder deep in the winged demon’s insides, Lavinia scatters its guts in search of the Soul Crystal. She must have it or she will have made almost no progress at all. Not in finding Corym, not in recovering her strength.

The tendrils bugle and seep lava, slamming onto the ground as the fire comprising them suddenly gains weight and terrible mass. Lavinia scrambles to her feet at the sight of six slithering lava whips snaking off the demon inferno that’s phased from angry orange to cold blue. Lavinia begins to suspect the demon is more powerful than she estimated. It resembles a tall blue tree stalk with flailing red whips of lava as its branches and a searing heat wave washes over the scorched clearing at its presence.

Even though she found its kind nearest to the centre of the forest burning, Lavinia never thought them anything of them but now she suspects they might have something to do with the blaze after all. What other explanation is there?

One of the lava whips snaps at her with ungainly speed. Still searching, Lavinia tosses the decapitated head and spinal cord of her prey at the descending whip. The beaked head bursts into flames before the whip lands and forces Lavinia to toss out under a convenient stack of scorched timber.

A second whip smashes her shelter to nothing before she has a chance to think, lighting it and the fringes of Lavinia’s mane on fire as she stumbles down an incline, her unharvested demon corpse rolling loose.

Watching the headless corpse of her prey roll down unchallenged by the sheer lack of trees, Lavinia curses her luck and throws her glare to the wave of heat descending on her. With a burst of Essence, she dashes out in a zigzag in time to avoid three consecutive strikes from the demon’s lava whips but it doesn’t seem to matter as its goals go beyond smiting her in a single hit.

Lava seeps out the whips, deflating as their contents pour down the slope. The terrain melts under the fervent heat, its rocks and wood fuel the expanding lava stream. Growling, Lavinia notes the other three lava whips empty out onto the ground as well, filling it with bubbling plasma.

A trap. It's changing the terrain to...

Lavinia glares at the demon, cursing its form lost within the blue of its inferno. Flames like this are far too powerful for her to subdue. Even if she were at full strength it would take effort to damage it underneath such a veil. But she’s known that all along, what pisses her off now is the loss of her prey, its Soul Crystal unharvested and precious blood nutrients lost. All because of this nameless walking flame. And now it forces her to spend Essence to escape its infernal trap.

Crystal Essence: [Crimson]- Lvl.5— 51.39ESQ

“Grrr, your time will come. Crimson Blink.”