++It is considered a dangerous sign among Witchfinders to find a nest of mana-borne insects cleared out entirely. Sometimes such things are natural, mere starvation or disease. Sometimes. More often, it is the work of a vampire. A beast that eats its way through so large an amount of others will invariably have gained much for the trouble. And they are never willing to stop there.++

  Book 2: Chapter 2

  More experimentation followed as Reggie played with the limits of his new power. The only limiting factor was the blood he had available to actually use.

  No, he couldn’t control the gore staining his clothes from fights with other ants. Not all of it, at least. There were a few ounces on him that, once extracted from the fabric they’d soaked into, could be moved around like the handful of droplets he was already using. The rest had dried or congealed, which apparently left it beyond use.

  That was unfortunate, as Reggie had enjoyed the idea of walking around with some tank of blood on his back and smashing people off their feet with miniature tidal waves. It was also kind of expected though.

  It turned out, with no opposing magic to weaken his influence, Reggie could send the blood flying around faster than his own limbs. Faster by far. Droplets hit the wall hard enough to punch an inch or two deep into the weird, pseudo-mortar these ants made their homes from, while larger globules went easily twice as deep. On impact, they all soaked into the debris just as they did fabric. Not a problem. With a bare exertion of will Reggie could extract the liquid and clear out all the granules that would otherwise have slowed it down.

  So long as the blood itself didn’t congeal and dry, he could command it. And, as it happened, so long as the blood was under his command, he could stop it from congealing.

  “Magic is kind of powerful,” he noted. “Shit. Why didn’t I try practising it sooner?”

  You were using your Blood Magic I to its fullest potential, more or less. This level of mastery was attainable to you only by draining a human to death.

  That put a dampener on things. That little principle Reggie had stuck by, abandoned. He didn’t like the reminder.

  Yeah, okay, Norman was an asshole. But it hadn’t been about the people, not really. It’d been about him, about Reginald Smith’s choice not to be a cannibal.

  Not to be a monster.

  But as his sire had said, right before she’d fucked off and abandoned him a second time, a monster could do things a million heroes couldn’t. And there was a lot that needed doing.

  It all started with power. Everything started with power.

  Reggie headed deeper into the tunnel, leaving the orbs of blood to drift after him in the air. It tired him, tired him a lot. Blood Magic was apparently one of his more exhaustive abilities, and ironically enough burned through a lot of stored ichor to sustain. Reggie’s tank had been full when he started experimenting, but after a brief few minutes, between the magic and his Form Of The Beast, he felt like less than three quarters of it remained.

  That would get bad fast if something managed to rip one of his limbs off again. He really hoped they didn’t, Reggie thought it was patently ridiculous how much of his undeath had already been spent with half the usual number of feet.

  His idle thinking distracted him from boredom, but not from danger. Twice, a smaller ant lunged for him and twice Reggie dispatched them with a single slash of his claws. It was the third incident that truly concerned him, though.

  The third incident, bringing the third soldier ant of this tunnel. The second soldier ant was accompanying it.

  Two at once. Reggie thought fast; he could take one comfortably, even with a disadvantageous start to the combat. Two though?

  Well, it didn’t really look like it mattered what he thought he could take. They were sprinting so fast that Reggie, even after turning and running himself, found them gaining and gaining quick. They probably didn’t have higher Speed than his transformed self, it was just six legs against two. Stupid bipedalism, what did it even do for him?

  It’s an extremely efficient body type for long-distance movement.

  “I HAVE UNLIMITED STAMINA NOW!”

  Yes. Sorry about that, it’s purely disadvantageous for undead.

  One good thing about his vampirism was that Reggie could swear as loudly and hotly as he wanted, and not worry about slowing down for the wasted breath. The unlimited stamina was doing a bit more to keep him alive for the time being, though. However freakish they were, insects were still, fundamentally, living beings. No living thing could move forever, not fast at least. These ones started slowing down after ten seconds and maybe two hundred yards of tunnel.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  They were running with advantages though. When Reggie turned a corner, he stumbled and slowed. They just raised two forelimbs and kept scurrying along the walls without losing the slightest bit of speed. They also didn’t have the occasional drone ant squirting acid at them from various crevices or crags.

  It was a near thing, but slowly, by pressing his body to keep moving full tilt the whole way, Reggie managed to keep the distance between them from shrinking just long enough that his pursuers began to slow down. He’d escaped.

  Right up until turning the last corner and finding a dead end awaiting him. Reggie spun, knew he had only seconds before the ants were closed in, and readied his defence. Blood, he needed blood. Needed to control it, needed to use it.

  There wasn’t any around, except…

  When the ants came for him, they must have been quite surprised when their sprays of acid were caught in the air and splashed right back over them by the sheet of ichor Reggie flung from his own slashed-open wrist. If that was a shock, Reggie could only imagine how it felt for that same blood-and-acid mixture to keep flying, drench both of them and begin eating into their armour.

  It wasn’t as strong as the pure stuff, but by the way the ants squealed it was strong enough. Reggie resisted the urge to rush right after them, hanging back and pummelling them with little globs of blood. The gory projectiles were probably hitting about as hard as pistol balls, though with nowhere near the mass or solidity. Knocking the ants one way and the other, keeping them unbalanced while the acid did its work.

  Once the sizzling had stopped and there was less mist in the air, Reggie figured they were about as eroded as they were likely to get. He flattened a sheet of blood out in front of him to catch any subsequent acid sprays and charged in, claws out and slashing. The carapace was still tough, but it felt half as thick as it had been and his natural weapons made short work of it. In two seconds Reggie had removed five limbs, and both his enemies were writhing around on the ground screeching.

  He considered that a win. If victory isn’t the point where you legitimately felt a little bad for your enemies, then what was it?

  The resulting feast that came after, maybe.

  +1 Celerity

  +1 Toughness

  Name: Reginald Smith

  Age: 21

  Race: Blood Courtier [Inheritor Race, Tier 2]

  Class: None

  Attributes:

  (S)Strength 38(+12)/49

  (P)Speed 37(+12)/52

  (P)Celerity 38(+12)/52

  (S)Toughness 38(+12)/49

  (P)Charisma 13(-12)/52

  Abilities:

  Blood Magic II

  Form of the Beast II

  Royal Presence I

  Traits:

  Enhanced Senses I

  Regeneration II

  Addictive Ichor

  Reggie was still a nautical league away from hitting the limits of a Tier 2 vampire. Knowing that was leaving him less eager to keep pushing himself, more tempted to cave in and just let himself evolve already. The new power would come in handy, right?

  And the new weaknesses would come in deadly. No, he had to keep at it. Discipline. He’d made himself wait in a leaking, drafty shack for years while he worked on a way to escape poverty without relying on an old man’s charity. Compared to that, this was nothing. Far quicker, and incomparably more certain.

  If nothing else, Reggie was feeling more confident now. Tougher and faster reflexes. Mild things, both of them, a single Attribute point was always hard to notice on its own, but they both made him that much better prepared. The next soldier ant he encountered was on its own, and, if Reggie wasn’t just fooling himself by seeing what he expected to, it appeared to move a hair slower in his quickened sight than its predecessors had.

  This time the ambush was his, and Reggie closed to skewer it through the mouth right as its mandibles widened for another acid spray. He’d started to get good at putting down soldier ants, started to figure out a basic logic to it. Insect anatomy was weird but one thing they shared with humans was a need for their brain to remain at least roughly the same shape as it was born in.

  So Reggie drove his talons deeper and twisted, just as he had the first. It wasn’t as lucky, this hit, but his careful aim compensated somewhat and saw similar damage dealt as his bladed nails came ripping free. The ant wasn’t quite so immobilised, managing a last lung for Reggie which promptly failed as he sidestepped and kicked the forelegs out from under it.

  Before the ant could correct its stumble, he was slashing again. Holding a leg with one hand while dragging the edge of his talons along that critical junction where armour plates met over a sliver of exposed flesh. The limb was rendered useless in a moment, more blood oozing out. That gave Reggie an idea. He leapt back from the ant while it kept thrashing, then focused.

  Without physical contact, and working against the resistance of its own magical body, Reggie’s Blood Magic was hard pressed to siphon out the ant’s blood. Hard pressed, but not entirely foiled. By the looks of it he was drawing out a good ounce or two extra with every moment that passed, plus whatever trickled free from its gaping wounds naturally.

  All of this drifted over to pour down Reggie’s throat.

  The ant tried to make its way over and keep fighting him, but with one leg wounded and the other five supported by a blood supply that was shrinking with every moment, it didn’t manage to move nearly fast enough. Reggie kept the space between them from shrinking as he simply backed away and watched it fall. Once it did, he only found it easier to drain. In moments more he’d emptied the ant as much as was needed for the System to consider it fully eaten.

  +1 to Speed.

  That pushed it up to 38, now. A small difference once more, but Reggie was pleased that his body had now made up the fractional difference between it and his reactions. He turned from the cooling corpse and headed down a new tunnel.

  Yes, eating these soldier ants was growing easier the more he did it. Should he seek out another pair to fight them both at once?

  It seemed like the only way they’d be offering him a challenge anymore.