So, there I was eating my traditional break… dinner of champions, pancakes and French fries, when my meal was interrupted by Gary’s usual inane chatter.

“Mr. Garnet How’s your day?” “Pretty g…” “My day’s going fantastic. After my shift I’m spending time with my girlie friend. We’re work shopping our Dracula theories. Remember Dracula, he’s our local serial killer. Well one of them. We have a lot of them, serial killer capital of the world. Well country. I can’t imagine our tourism department likes that or maybe they love it. Back to Dracula, my girlfriend thinks Agent Cole is the man, that’s the very guy tasked with finding him. Crazy right?” “Crazy.” “Annyywwhhooo… how’s your food?”

I considered being rude or brushing him off, but that’d be like kicking a puppy. A particularly verbose and annoying one, but a puppy all the same.

“It’s good. Thank you for asking.”

“Well, I’ve already talked your ear off, I’ll leave you to your food.” Gary told me before walking off.

“Have a nice time with your girlfriend.” I called after him.

Right when I was about to dig back into my food, I got a call.

“Yeah.”

“…”

“Yep.”

“…”

With a sigh, “I’ll be right there.”

With one last longing look at my food, I dropped a twenty on the table and left.

***

I walked up to the police circled around a body with a stomach empty of pancakes and/or fries.

Detective Hopper oversaw today’s scene. I like working with him. He’s all business and does not really care who does the job, just that it gets done.

“So, David, why am I here and not eating dinner?”

“The victim. Exsanguinated body. Long list of domestic disputes. Looks like your guy.” Hopper reported. See what I’m talking about, short, sweet, and most importantly to the point.

Now we all know that he’s wrong, but that’s not his fault. How could he know that I was Dracula and that since I did not know about this body it was not Dracula.

“Sounds like it. Can you finish up here? I want to look around the area.” I said while walking away from the scene.

“That’s fine, but don’t see how that’s going to do any good. Guy’s a ghost.”

“Worst case scenario I get a nice evening hike.” I said while waving over my shoulder.

I followed the trail that was like a flare in the night sky to my senses. Whoever, and judging by the savagery contained in the psychic traces it was closer to a whatever, actually killed this man was at the end of the bloody brick road.

I must say that when I find this entity, I might have to sue for copyright infringement. The entity’s aura trail was infested with blood, hunger, and consumption. Add killing the deserving and we got ourselves a copycat. The problem is that judging by the aforementioned savagery, my copycat got lucky and will not be so discerning in victim selection.

When I reached a lake contained in the park, don’t know if it had a name or if that’s even a thing for lakes in parks, I knew I had found my feline.

The lake was dyed crimson in my senses due to the entity’s aura. So dyed in fact that I could not locate it inside the water.

My first thought was to draw it out by firing my gun in the air, but that was idiotic. If I can’t see it, it more than likely could not see me. Now I was not going to bet my life on that as no one will ever tell you that you were not the smartest in the room. They will just fleece you for all your worth.

Also, there was no reason to enter the water as it clearly contained some flavor of aquatic creature. I was looking for fun and adventure, not a death sentence.

That left me with my least favorite activity, waiting. So, I spent the next day of my life sitting on a tree branch with my back against the trunk. It did not help that to minimize the chance of the creature finding me, I had to don my Ghillie suit for that. It was a basic magic artifact made of a regular Ghillie suit infused with nature and stealth essences.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The way I killed my time was my second least favorite activity, performing maintenance on my artifacts. I love making them, refining them, hell I even love fixing them. The one thing I hate is maintaining them, lots of boring work for little return. So, I only do it once a week or when I’m waiting on something.

Twenty-two long hours later, I saw a giant leech with arms and legs walking out of the lake.

_

Nameless Mutated Leech

“A drain on society”

Grade C

_

Which was perfect as I had just the right bullet for such a creature. I had thought of salt bullets for various dark creatures that my standard bone bullets wouldn’t work on. It was my good fortune that salt was contained in the body and thus could be easily created by Murder Weapon. It was just my luck that those bullets would utterly wreck this creature due to its dual nature of both leech and dark.

*bang*

And suddenly the giant leech had a second huge hole, the first was the toothy maw. Said first hole was vomiting blood while the being it was attached to shriveled up.

The first boon I got was from the corpse’s soul. It was a new way to feed. I had been mimicking the way succubus’ feed all this time which, while effective, did not even hold a candle to the leech’s method. The biggest benefits of this new method are the speed of the drain and strength of the connection. These two features allowed me to drain people in combat which vastly improved my combat repertoire.

The two treasures I unearthed from the corpse itself were the leech’s teeth and muscle.

One of the teeth was used to add an anti-coagulant effect to Murder Weapon. This was worth using one of the smaller teeth.

The teeth were infused with the concept of consumption and the muscles took to enhancement like I had never seen before. If this creature was smart enough to learn how to use either, I would have been the one taking a dirt nap.

Neither were good enough to infuse on my body as the materials from the bigfoot and wendigo were everything they were and more.

My next thought was to recreate Muscle Shirt, but quite frankly I had outgrown it. Mana sleeve brought me to human standards and Jekyll’s Hide only boosted it even more. I was additive in my strength acquisition, Muscle Shirt’s multiplicative method would only throw off a good thing. The muscles also would not meld into something for the mana sleeve technique.

I considered a chain dagger to further boost my combat draining but it seemed a waste. While the materials paled compared to their betters, they were better than an artifact of limited use.

With all my ideas dried up, I decided to save them for when inspiration struck me.

With my job done, it was time for a second try on those pancakes and fries.

Being:

Body:

[Bone Apple Tree]

Soul Tattoos:

[Celestial Weaving]

[Sand: Tier Three]

[Water: Tier Five]

[Faith: Tier One]

[Holy Water: Tier Three]

[Shadow: Tier Five]

[Necromancy: Tier Five]

[Rot: Tier ErRoR]

Special Abilities:

[Consumption: Tier Nine]

[Wound]

[Empowerment: Tier Nine]

[Empathy: Tier One]

Current Equipment:

Head:

[The Black Wasp Jackal’s Face]

Earrings:

[]

Necklace:

[]

Clothes:

[Jekyll’s Hide]

Rings:

[The Mentalism Ring]

[Mena’s Book]

[Petrifying Ring]

Bracelets:

[]

Shoes:

[]

Armaments:

[Beastly Heart]

[Murder Weapon]

Storage:

[Chi Organ]

[Spirit Shards]

[Various Utility Artifacts]

[Various Articles Of Clothing]

[Death Dogtags]

[Leech Muscles]

[Leech Teeth]