So luckily neither the divine class nor the selected element changes anything major about what I can do, which means I can fill in the missing classes more or less as planned.

  I double-check my skills one final time before I start to fill in the gaps.

  Oh, hey, Extra Affinity Mk Barf has now a proper list to choose from.

  I think the old selection was something like Bad Spelling, Surprise, uh... Cursor, Hand and Walnuts? Well, nothing I'd want anyway. Not that this selection is any better... They don't sound like legitimate elements, so nothing would be weak to them, and I can't really think of a rank 0 use for them. Considering the suspicious origin it is more than obvious that a "city" created by this City element wouldn't solve the housing issue but just create another Glitch Zone, and Water wasn't fit for consumption so why should the food substitute be any better? Somewhere between pointless and self-defeating.

  Can't you give me something useful? Ah, shit, here comes the deja vu...

  Open mouth, insert foot. Another headache, another questionable change.

  I'm not sure what else I could want from this random selection. Maybe one of the regular magic elements but I can take those via classes later, and of the missing ones only wind would be important. Light is explicitly something I can't obtain, neither this way nor via a class, and poison... is, well, poison, when was that ever a useful element.

  So, should I...? At a minimum for style points, I guess. Can't call myself a proper vampire if I haven't absolute mastery over all things blood.

  What's done cannot be undone anymore.

  I cannot contain my curiosity and begin playing around with the newly gained [Blood Magic]. A projectile created by it looks more or less as expected, a thick lump of blood that leaves behind a blood puddle on impact. No suspicious glitchy visuals either. I have no enemies around, so I can't check what status effect this magic could carry.

  As a final test, I create a bit of blood with level 0 magic in my hand. It feels... well, bloody, exactly like regular blood should do.

  I'm a bit hesitant to taste it, I've seen how... wrong the status interaction with the Titanium creation was. What does [Appraise] say about it?

  Not very helpful.

  Ah, screw it, I've survived a full-on glitch bath. If I can survive that a small sip shouldn't hurt.

  I bring my hand closer to my mouth and let a few drops of blood slowly drip into my mouth.

  Gulp

  Gulp

  Blech

  Disgusting, it tastes like a cross between sandpaper and nail scratches on a chalkboard. Guess I should've seen that one coming. Elly explained ages ago that it isn't the blood directly that vampires eat but the life force carried within it, and if the blood doesn't come directly from a living creature it'll be useless.

  Well, at least now I know how Anna must've felt when she drank the water from my Water Magic.

  Earlier while preparing some candidates, I noticed that the EMPTY spots were locked into similar class types as they were before. Where before was Blood Mage, I could only select classes that sounded like they were unique to vampires or elves, plus some glitched entries as usual. Likewise, Dread Lord's spot only showed elite classes that seemed "dread" themed in some fashion. Very weird stuff.

  Of course, remembering any of the glitched classes is useless, they change every so often, just as the glitched [Affinity Magic] variant did before. Not that I could remember them if I wanted to, I can't read glitch language.

  I might as well start with the dread spot since that is the easier one.

  Before the disaster I had:

  Well, the second skill should've been different.

  Honestly, I'd rather not regain the borked affinity granted by the glitched version...

  Given the options I have, there was only one other class that looked somewhat viable.

  Honestly, I only noted that one in case the divine class makes somehow summons unusable. You never know with these glitches...

  This would've been my plan C. I have [Intimidation] to spread the fear status ailment, once that's done, take control of monsters with [Fear Control] and thin the horde, lather, rinse, repeat, and at no resource cost at all. I would just need to juggle concentration between the two skills and I could turn an endless amount of trash monsters on each other, they rarely have high WIL values.

  Although I'm not even sure that their fear would count. Back then when I tried to achieve something with [Charm Eye] it had no effect at all even when the status was inflicted.

  And if not for that issue, the problem as usual would be time. I've not only to contend with the flood monsters but also with my fortress lord duties. And for the dungeon where I have all the time I need, I still have to deal with bosses and eventually monsters of too high a level to control.

  Yeah, I'll simply stick with Dread Lord. The improvement options for our spirits will probably serve us better in the long run than this gamble. If I want to go the route of enforcing my will upon other creatures there are probably better-suited skills or classes for that than Dread Sorcerer.

  Click

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  Now, did any of its skills glitch out again?

  ...yes, it did, and again the armor skill...

  Argh, why couldn't the auto-crit be against monsters in general?! Dumb glitches, please be more useful for once!!

  Wait, if this skill doesn't grant me fire affinity anymore, what's happened to my [Fire Magic]? Uh, it's still there. So once [Affinity Magic] has created a skill it can't be that easily removed anymore? Works for me.

  But why is then the completely glitched-out magic gone? Well, I didn't want it, so the fewer chances I have of accidentally using it the better.

  Okay, that leaves the final EMPTY class spot, the Blood Mage replacement.

  I'm not too happy with this class. The only good part is [Blood Burst] but now that thanks to [Undead Resilience] HP and SP are the same, it is less appealing. Even if I choose the recovery option each time I'm losing easily over 100 HP with each cast. Compared to that, I could just as well cast cost-free rank 0 spells. If I hit a weakness with them they should deal comparable damage. In the same vein, [Sanguine Wave] doesn't really offer anything I couldn't already do with elemental magic, it is just a bit bigger area with about a third of the damage. Not very cost-effective.

  Though it is weird that I can now see what the third skill would be, not that it seems too appealing to me. I'd lose effectively 900 HP to regain a measly 300 MP and get what 4-5 more MAG on one spell? We certainly can do much better, can't we?

  Where was the class I wanted, the list isn't short by any means...

  I start typing: B, L, O, O, ...

  Huh, a result I didn't see before, what is it like?

  Almost tempting. [Sacrificial Ritual] would help a lot. Put death row prisoners to a final use to gain a ton of exp but honestly... I'm not in the business of human sacrifices. Even if it wasn't for morals, people are already quite uneasy with a vampire as their ruler, this would just put them over the edge.

  Selfish as it sounds, happy people simply taste better.

  The second skill, [Ray of Exhaustion], is seemingly only useful to knock the ritual victim out. It would easily require five hits to take any effect, if not more. For the same cost, I can cast ten regular spells.

  [Sanguine Night] can get deleted for all I care. The minimum upkeep would be what? 7200 seconds times 20 damage... a death sentence. Who would want or could even use that crap!? Maybe I could trick that cursed lich into casting it, the total cost would exceed even its max HP by a wide margin.

  Either way, I have to make sure Lucia never learns of that class. I still don't have a good enough idea of how she would react to it and the risk is too great that she gives in to her vampire nature. Again...

  Not that I'm any better... I just got the disgusting idea to reserve a few summoned spirits just to sacrifice them every week... Couldn't even use it to recycle undead... Urgh, I need to distance myself from this class fast!

  ...

  I still can't make sense of when I can see the level 5 and 15 skills and when I can't. Thanks to the spirit creation menu, we could sneak peek at most level 5 skills of basic classes, but not elites, and certainly none of the level 15 skills. Elly might have gathered some intel in Karen's lab but I doubt they had notes on vampire-locked classes. I can only guess that the glitch soup messed up the flags on which I've seen and which not...

  Hmm... or not? I just looked up Dread Sorcerer again, this time the second and third skills are hidden again. If I had to guess, the system reveals the full skill list during these "repair" jobs. Thinking about it, the stat requirements don't seem to apply either, at least there's no way I could've met the outlandish VIT requirements for Dread Lord.

  Well, back to the two classes I actually considered.

  Overall, I'd prefer to stay on the mage track or rather the mage-slash-summoner path. Going by that, this class has little to offer.

  But if I consider that my claw damage is at least in part powered by MAG, [Clawed Weapon] may be worth it. Imitate a bow or gun, and I could deal some decent damage at a distance for 80 SP per attack. Or simply get a different melee weapon so someone could actually teach me properly in weapon combat. For vampire claws, there are simply no teachers available. Gee, I wonder why.

  [Life Tether] just has the problem that I'd have to endure the disgusting taste of monster blood. Would require some actual willpower, and not just the stat. Well, at least it is more likely to succeed than the earlier [Fear Control]...

  Well, the main selling point of the class would be that I could call myself a "vampire hunter" then... god, that was bad...

  Ah, forget it. This class was just the backup in case the divine class messes with my spell-casting ability, which it luckily didn't. So that leaves...

  Really. This system is so "creative"; most vampire-specific classes just have a blood prefix. Elves have variants of "elven"... Get a better writer you lazy hacks! Scarlet, crimson, gore... there, was that so hard to come up with alternate variations?

  Well, out of the available Blood X classes, this is the only one that had anything that improves my spirits, while Blood Mage is the only one I saw that is really a spellcaster. Everything else seemed geared more towards physical combat, maybe stealth-slash-infiltration or some weird food sacrifice fetish, looking at you Blood Occultist.

  [Infernal Link] looks like some kind of weird contract magic, a resource trade of questionable legitimacy. Like Elly has no use for MP but could use all the SP she can get to throw her illegal [Fire Bombs], while I'm kinda the opposite. No clue how that interacts with [Undead Resilience] though.

  I feel like this skill is severely misplaced, doesn't feel very vampiric to me, I'm not a devil after all. At least, Ren's sword confirmed that I lacked the necessary evil part - or it was, as so many things, bugged. Honestly, that could go either way. But in the end, what do I know? The collective fiction of a backwater world or two means neither jack nor shit compared to the reality of the wider universe. Real vampires might just as well take the role often associated with devils and similar tempters.

  Anyway, I wanted this class over the alternatives alone for [Ravenous Chains]. Fire isn't exactly friendly around here and our ever-increasing party size makes slinging spells harder and harder. But some crowd control should help with that. And depending on how generous the whole skill is, I may choose the ceiling as the surface and just drag 6 monsters out of the battle to their death. Dunno, have to test this thing.

  [Bound Armament] is nice, I guess. That would be about twenty to thirty stat points per item for now. Not the world but at least no upkeep cost, just the material cost of the actual items. Although... it does mention item properties, so I assume those would still apply. So if we ever find legendary items with special effects... yeah, dream on, Jared, dream on.

  I think it over one final time and then choose the Blood Binder class as the Blood Mage replacement. But before I can check how my status looks now, I'm quickly passing out. Seems like I can finally wake up again.