Van was in his soul realm going through a few experiments.
“Okay Anna, are you sure you want to go through with this?” He asked, worried for her safety.
“Of course, I know what I'm getting into, besides, there is plenty of me. Losing one wouldn’t be such a big deal at this point.” The Anna he was talking to responded.
It felt a little weird that she was so laissez-faire with her own life. But she was technically right, so Van couldn’t very well refute her desire to help him in this strange scenario of theirs. One where she was once more inside a unique magic circle, using the latest he learned and mastered in blood arts.
“Okay then…” He looked over to the priestess Anna who was waiting nearby. Unlike the other Annas, she was slightly more beautiful and more powerful than her copies, even with slightly bigger breasts on top of it.
“It’s amazing to think that despite being the same person, they can grow and change completely differently from one another. If one goes through an upgrade, that doesn’t mean the others go through the same, the only thing that seems to carry over are certain skills. So once I go through this test, this particular Anna will be a little different from the rest.” He thought inwardly.
“Okay then, I’m going to start.” Van then created a small cut on his palm and manipulated the blood outward. He then created a small tattoo on Anna’s head with his symbol and crest, with a few runes in a circle around it. He felt the intimacy between them deepen, and when he consumed her blood in turn to add to his own body, it felt like the barrier between the two of them almost disappeared.
Once the blood pact was done, Van raised his wounded hand towards Anna. In a method similar to when he dissolved into shadow, Anna dissolved into blood. He was thankful it wasn’t in a gross or terrifying way…
Anna’s essence flowed into him. He felt her power increasing his own. Felt her running through his veins, it almost felt like there was an image of her overlapping his own. He took out a dagger and stabbed himself in the stomach. The wound was not as deep as he would have thought it would be. A portion of the damage being transferred to the Anna now a part of his body. Their combined regeneration now quickly healing their shared physical form.
He opened up a book and read a few quick passages. Then put a finger to his temple to help him concentrate. “Anna? Can you hear me?” He thought inwardly towards the essence flowing in his veins.
“Yes, I can.” She replied in a strange distant fashion.
“How are you feeling?” He asked.
“Weird… I’m not sure how to describe this sensation… I’m fine… But I have no form…” Anna replied. “And I can feel your everything… Your heartbeat, the movements of your body… Yet… I feel like I’m not here… Like I’m part of your being, rather than just your physical form…”
Van looked over to the Anna in front of him. “And you? How do you feel? Do you feel the connection still between you and your other?”
Anna seemed to be in deep concentration. “Yes… It feels odd… But I feel her like I would any other Anna… Only with a bit more distance between us… Nothing more… I don’t feel the things she’s feeling very well from my end.”
“Interesting…” Van muttered, flexing his hand and feeling the flow of the Anna inside him rush through his body. He then raised his hand and let Anna out. “And now?” He asked.
“I feel the connection as strong as ever.” Anna replied.
Van turned his head to the Anna that just popped out. She had gone through a minor change, her form more sexual and willowy then before, though only slightly. With a feeling of newfound power hidden inside her body.
“I feel a little disoriented, but it also feels like our connection is stronger than before. Like I feel your body is my home, or a guiding star… If that makes sense.” The Anna replied.
“Hmm…” Van gave it some thought. “Do you feel stronger?”
Anna gave a few experimental jabs. Her fists glided through the air with unmatched speed. “Yes… I feel a twenty-three percent increase in power and speed. I feel like there will be more coming soon, as the connection between us stabilizes. But I think your worries are founded.” She looked at him now. “This is very dangerous. If I don’t die, someone could use our connection to hurt you. This I can feel instinctively.”
Van sighed. “I was worried about that. I had thought considering your unique position of being one of many that there might be a loophole of sorts. But I guess that was too good to be true. Thank you anyway Anna, your help is much appreciated.” Giving her a thankful smile for putting herself through all of this for his sake.
Anna returned the smile. “Of course. You know I’m always happy to help. Is there anything else you need?”
“Nothing at the moment other than to set up the next experiment. Can you prepare the circle for me and everything else?” He asked kindly.
“Sure.” Anna nodded and all the other Annas began to move.
They cleaned up the magic circle and began working in perfect synchronicity with each other creating a new one. They then brought forward a massive nine foot skeleton in black armor with a tail and two horns on its head wielding a large broadsword. They carefully placed the demonic-looking skeleton with its suit of armor inside the circle.
“So I guess it’s my turn now, right?” Van’s double asked, stepping forward.
Van nodded. “That's right, I know you can’t walk out into the real world. But what if you had a medium? You see, I’ve been thinking, now that Ren has had some success with the bone mold. Maybe I should create a death knight to help control a new growing portion of my army. But creating a pseudo soul strong enough for such a thing would take a lot of time and money, even for me who has a lot of spiritual energy and money to spare. So then it struck me, what if you, who has a portion of my power and my skills, became the pseudo soul for my newest model of death knight? Pretty ingenious, am I right?” He said with some pride in his voice.
“I have to admit… That is some thinking.” The double answered. “And it certainly beats working at the brothel all day. Would be a nice change of pace to get out and exercise as well.” He replied, with a constant semi bored-looking expression on his face.
Van nodded, and had his double move himself into the circle with the skeleton. Once the double was in, he began the spell to fuse the double into the death knight with the help of the Annas also surrounding the circle.
A few minutes later, the spell was done and the double had vanished into the skeleton. Slowly, two bluish pinpricks began to form in the eye sockets of the death knight, until they grew big enough to be two burning balls of necromantic blue fire.
“Ho… This feels different.” The death knight said, moving its body languidly. “I feel some disconnect from my emotions, and am certainly lacking some feeling in the body department. But other than that, I don’t feel any negative effects from the transfer.”
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It then brought out its sword and began cutting the air in front of it in slow but powerful arcs. Even a few feet away, one can feel the weight of the blade slicing through air in powerful slices and thrusts.
“Not bad… Not bad at all…” The death knight acknowledged.
“Thanks.” Van said with a smile. “I put a lot of work into it. It wasn’t easy creating a powerful enough mana core for it. But you should find that there wasn’t a single place that I didn’t enchant or add runes too to maximize the power you can wield. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could lead an army of a few hundred skeletons.”
The death knight nodded to this. “It doesn’t hurt either that I don’t hold the same reservations about using the corpses of others like you do. That should make it easy to replenish troops out in the field as necessary.”
Van’s face fell a little at this, but he couldn’t refute the death knight's point. In a way, he was thankful for someone who seemed fine around a bunch of dead bodies, so long as that person wasn’t him.
“Right then.” Changing the subject. “Anna, what else is on today's list.” Turning to her with some expectation. He was in a good mood, and all the tasks he set out to do today have been completed with ample time to spare.
Anna nodded and began to recite everything off the top of her head. You have to meet Ren at the newly constructed bone mold factory to discuss production and whatever extra materials you may need to establish an efficient process for developing more bone mold in the future. I think he also wants to talk about some things about the state of your soul realm and it’s growth, and where to go from there on.”
“You also have a few appointments with Lyn and the other girls here. Who you promised to discuss methods of economic growth. Now that everything and everyone is fully settled in, and all the basic necessities of food, water and housing are met. It is time to start planning for the future, do you want to focus on self sustainability? Or branch out and try to gear the economy towards something else? There is also the issue that your soul realm can’t supply everything. With talks about mining Agnes’s portion of the soul realm for her growing mineral patches, though there is some push back from her about that.”
“We also have the troop inspection, with Isa also wanting to talk about providing new military materials for the soldiers. Such as new training programs, new gear, and most importantly, upgrading the training grounds to provide a better challenge, as well as the promotion of a few of the girls to help maintain order in the slowly growing army.”
“Finally, if you complete all your tasks in a timely fashion, you should be able to make it for tonight's date with Avalyn that Lucia helped arrange.” Anna finished.
“Ah, yes… Of course.” Van thought back to that day with Lucia in the bath. It had been a month since then, and true to her word, Avalyn had slowly been seeing him in a new light. He felt a little conflicted about this, but in all honesty, he wasn’t going to turn down this date with Avalyn just because of Lucia. He already resolved himself to gain as much power as possible, he only hoped that everything worked out and they genuinely developed feelings for each other.
“Well… No time like the present. Let’s get to it then shall we.” Then proceeded to fly towards Lyn’s place.
He made good time and landed in the meeting ground where everyone else was. “Hey girls, how's it going?”
“Van! You're here! Haven’t seen you since that orgy we had!” Lyn said with a devilish smile on her lips. “Come for round two?”
“Calm down Lyn.” Amelia said. “We have a few more important things to discuss.”
Lyn pouted. “Oh fine…”
Van sat down on the seat provided for him and the group began to discuss about the future growth of their respective queendoms.
“I know we don’t have to worry about it right away but…” Xenith gave a complicated look after discussing a few things about the distribution of resources. “But we should start talking about how we're going to expand the farms and housing area for our people. Even if our growth has stagnated a little bit due to the bottleneck of a lack of males. We will eventually have to expand our territories. When Van evolved into a greater vampire it helped a little bit, but I worry about what this might mean for our ten year plan going forward when we don’t know if we won’t have enough land for our people, or enough people for the land we already projected for us to have…”
Anya nodded. “I am also doing my best to balance the economy and keep some semblance of trade going on. But unless we figure out a method to get new resources, as well as establish a proper currency, I fear that constant inflation and deflation will be the norm in the future.”
“There is also a lack of school supplies and learning material.” Amelia added. “We abandoned a lot of things when we fled the forest. It wasn’t such a big deal before. But now that we have established some form of security for our people here, as well as the promise of future growth. The lack of higher education will stunt any form of greater prosperity for our people. We can’t have laborers and workers making up the majority of our population. We have the doctors and mages, just not the books and materials for their students.”
The discussion continued for well over a few hours. Van tried his best to give his own take on things, but largely being unable to truly add to the discussion since this wasn’t really his forte. The best he could do was promise that he can help get some of the books and learning materials from the school library, as well as talk to Agnes next time he saw her about mining rights of her soul realm.
After that, the meeting was over, with half the stuff everyone was discussing flying over his head. He quickly went to look for Agnes to hear her take on things.
“I would like to help you Van, but I’m not sure the minerals that grow in my soul realm are even worth anything. Not to mention if I let people just take from my soul realm, my soul realm will be depleted of energy, and all my hard work of cultivating it will go to waste.” Agnes said.
Van nodded. “I can see why you would be worried then. You worked so hard to increase your soul realm, but people want parts of it for themselves and you're not even sure the things you grow are even worth the effort. But I have a lot of spiritual energy to spare. Why don’t we compromise and say only a portion of your soul realm is for mining and the rest is to be untouched. I will also provide a large portion of my spiritual energy for your soul realm's growth. Will that help allay your fears?”
After talking it over for a while and hashing out the details, the two agreed on a compromise and Van left to go to the bone mold factory.
“Hey Ren, anything new?” He asked as he walked into the newly built factory.
“Nothing really. This factory won’t really be able to satisfy our need for bone mold without building a few more. The number one issue we have here though is that the majority of the bone mold we grow goes to waste. As in, most of it is unusable. Almost ninety percent. We either have to increase production to a ludicrous rate, and at cost to make enough worth using. Or we go back to square one and figure out the right ratio of materials necessary. Otherwise it might actually be cheaper to buy the mold then make it ourselves.” Ren said, scratching his head.
Van sighed, wishing things would go a little easier on him today. Though Van was acting like nothing happened between him and Ren, he still didn’t forget that time a little over a month ago where Ren refused to listen to him and made it obvious he was keeping things from him. But for now Ren was useful, so he let things be.
The two then began to discuss what they should do next. They both agreed that for now they should go back to square one and try to work on a new formula on the bone mold.
The next stop was the training grounds where he met Isa. He had to say, she was as cute as ever, and he really enjoyed viewing her new Amazon Variant body.
The two went right to work talking shop. Isa explaining that now that Kella wasn’t here, she was having trouble keeping all the girls in check. There was only one of her after all, and so started giving him a list of soldiers she believed were ripe for promotion.
Van nodded and asked her to introduce them to him so that he could give them names and promote them. He also decided to promote Isa from sergeant to lieutenant, giving her the energy necessary for the rank up and making her stronger. It was something he should have done a long time ago, but forgot to do. With that done they started talking about materials for the soldiers, to which Van promised to do the best he could.
“Okay now that’s done with.” Van said, finishing signing off on a bunch of papers. “Have you done what I asked you to do?”
Isa nodded. “There all are in the room, awaiting your pleasure.”
“Thanks Isa, you're the best.” Van said and got up. He was then led to a room where all the goblin girls he bought at the auction were waiting for him. “Alright girls, it’s time to work.” He unzipped his pants and went into it.
About two hours later he was walking out. “I really should have gotten to them a long time ago. They are very rare, so I should have bred them when I first got them.”
“No time like the present master. Is there anything else you need to do?” Isa asked.
“No, I have to go now. See you later.” With that, Van left his soul realm and woke up on his bed.
Avalyn was there, waiting nervously for him. Wondering if she should try and gently shake his shoulder or not.
“Hello Avalyn, sorry about the wait. Shall we get going?” He asked gently.
Avalyn blushed a little, but also looked excited to go on her first date ever. “Yes, ready when you are.” Giving a nervous smile.
He got up and took her hand into his own. “Let's get to it then.” Returning her smile with one of his own.