Draconic Vampire : Curse of the Blood

Chapter 82: An Opportunity

Garion gave his treasury card and made up for all the coins Sen was lacking.

“Here you go. I lost big time, but knowing someone like you and getting a chance to fight is really a great experience. If we can start a good relationship with you, I would consider that a win.” Garion said with a voice full of admiration.

“About that, I don’t care about it as long as you don’t show any malice. He was saying all this just to get us to fight, so his intentions are not too excessive. You, on the other hand, never showed any malice towards me. Quite the contrary actually.

I felt a warrior spirit within you and your focus was always to have a good spar. So I never thought of you as a bad person.” Keith said with a calm voice.

“Glad to know that you don’t see me that way. I was really losing hope on this one.” Garion heaved a sigh of relief.

“You are not so bad. I have some special traits that make me stronger than you and give me an unfair advantage. But a normal final stage baron won’t be able to take your blows. I bet they will get crushed in a second if received the attack at point-blank range.

The only thing you need to work on is your speed.” Keith pointed out his skills.

“I agree. I know my weaknesses very well. I’ve been practicing very hard to increase my agility, but my warrior frame technique is unique and so heavy that the increments in speed are abysmal.” Garion replied with a dejected voice.

“Mind if I take a look at your physique while you activate your warrior frame. I can point out the flaws and you can improve on them.: Keith proposed with a smile.

“Can you really analyze my warrior frame and point out what I’m doing wrong?” Garion looked at Keith with surprise.

“Oh yes! I have a special technique that allows me to analyze faults in blood-qi techniques. You can call it a weakness detecting blood-qi technique.” Keith explained with a dignified voice.

[Yeah, right!]

‘Shut up! Don’t ruin my acting.’ Keith snapped at the system. His expressions were the exact opposite to the one he was feeling on the inside. He was carefully maintaining the profound expression on his face.

“Ah! Is that why you can detect faults in other people’s blood-qi techniques? That explains it.” Sen, who was listening to all this said while smacking his fist.

‘Did he just buy that so easily?’ Keith almost laughed out loud.

“Yes! So you know why I could beat him so easily. It allows me to detect the weak points of the opponent and I attack them on the spot. Easy win, unless they are way more powerful than me. Plus my strength is also very high so it helps a lot.” 

“I see… So that’s how it happened.”  Garion looked at Keith with awe.

“Can you analyze my warrior frame and give me pointers to improve it,” Sen asked eagerly.

“Sure! But I need time to properly find the flaws. The ones I detect in a fight and the ones that provide a detailed report are vastly different. The former is a piece of low-resolution information that only shows vague points, while the former gives much more detailed report.” Keith explained with a straight face.

“So how long do you need?” Sen asked impatiently.

“That is uncertain. It could take an hour to several days depending on the complexity of the warrior frame. But rest assured, the reports I give will most certainly improve your strength and blood-qi technique at the same time.” 

“That is not a bad idea. What kind of compensation do you want for this? If you analyze warrior frames for so long, you’ll be wasting your time. ” Garion said with a thoughtful expression.

“As a gesture of goodwill, I will do it for free. If others see the results of my service, more people might be willing to do this. Then I can charge them.” Keith said while stroking his chin.

“Are you sure?” Garion asked with hesitation.

“Absolutely!  After your improvement in strength, good words about my service will spread the entire training facility. So you are helping me out in a way.” 

“If that’s what you think, then we agree.” Garion nodded his head.

“Great! I will start analyzing your warrior frame in the afternoon. Till then I will stay here and condense blood-qi, so I can achieve the perfect state before performing the technique.” 

“Alright, we will also do the same. I lost quite a bit of stamina after the fight.”  Garion said embarrassingly.

The tree vampires scattered and occupied their spots. Keith once again immersed himself into the blood condensing and madly absorbed the ambient blood-qi. His warrior frame started filling up slowly.

After several hours, Kieth opened his eyes and it was almost noon. The identity card which acted as the universal rune card for students was fitted with many runes that provided a lot of services. 

It showed the time of the day with an ever-changing streak. It reminded him of the sundials from the earth, but it was very precise and used blood runes to show time. The mechanism was entirely different. Maybe there was a central device that measured the time and synced it with all rune cards.

The other features included in the rune card were, communication runes, controllers that helped automate various mechanisms integrated into the academy structures. Communication runes worked more like messaging and no voice was sent through.

It was not because the voice feature was not invented. The blood ritualists were geniuses that created all the necessary communication runes, but it was never implemented on the identity cards. Simply because the same runes could be used for monitoring the voices and collecting information.

That’s why it was not implemented on the student’s id cards. The communication rune was a small space at the center of the card that changed shape and sent the desired message to the receiver. 

This was very limited and only worked if the other side also integrated the rune with the sender and approved of its transmission. Also, the messages didn’t contain any personal attributes like voice. So it was impossible for any blood ritualist student to reverse engineer a backdoor.

Keith tapped the card and checked all the information on his card. The identity rune card also showed news regarding the academy as well as the student’s information. On his profile, it showed his blood core level, department and estimated strength.

As he didn’t give his final decision regarding joining departments, that section was empty. The blood-qi technique section showed a viscount level blood warrior frame. This data was only visible to him and it was the same for all students as well. 

Only deans and a handful of high-level professors had the clearance to see the student data. But he was not concerned about that. The data recorded here was only the ones he showed. It didn’t have the capability to detect the physique on its own. It was approved by the academy and then put here after careful consideration and scrutiny.

Besides, his system could mask his data by tampering with the runes. But that would alert the blood ritualists maintaining the runes, so he avoided that. The judgement pillar was independent of the academy runes and represented an ancient power.

He could get away because it was not controlled by blood ritualists. They could only see the runes and deduce accordingly. 

“Have you accumulated enough?” Sen asked from a distance.

Keith forced a smile and turned around.

“Yes, all the preparations are complete. I will start now.” Keith pointed to the empty spot in front of him and gestured for Garion to sit.

“What about me?” Sen asked impatiently.

“Your turn will come. But first, I have to analyze his warrior frame.”  Keith replied.

“Ugh! I am always unlucky.” The vampire youth mumbled dejectedly.

Garion sat in front of Keith and activated his warrior frame.

“I will begin the process now.” 

Keith used his system to analyze the warrior frame.

‘Try to copy the warrior frame structure and decode the technique if possible. If this works, we can copy every warrior frame technique and improve it further. We can also integrate the unique one into my own warrior frame, given it compliments my warrior frame.’

[ Leave it to me…]

[ Analyzing…]

The system’s analysis was way more capable than Keith’s use as it required a tremendous amount of computing power. Keith’s mind couldn’t provide that so he handed the task to the system. He also helped by giving some of his concentration.

Everything went smoothly and he started mapping the warrior frame inside Garion’s body. Nobody suspected him of stealing the technique because this was not how the blood-qi technique was transferred.

It had to be properly taught and given the complexity of the structures, without the guidance of a master or guidebook, learning someone else’s blood-qi technique was almost impossible.

So no one suspected him of stealing the techniques. His system was the reason he could copy the techniques and learn the blood-qi flow within every vampire. However, there was one exception to this rule. If a vampire practiced the pinnacle of blood condensing and mastered a myriad of techniques, learning the blood-qi technique of a baron-level warrior frame wasn’t a difficult task. 

The pinnacle here means the highest level blood-qi manipulators of all four disciplines. So clearly they were already at the pinnacle of vampire society. They don’t need to learn or even glance at this technique. It’s not even worth their time.