Chapter 58

  Dragon!

  After tasting blood for the first time, Elijah was a mess of guilt and disgust. He hated himself for giving into the impulse. Apparently, if he hadn't snatched that bottle of human blood, he would have died, and the Trial would have resurrected him as a human – or as close to one as he was before.

  Now, however, he was stuck as an undead abomination. Elijah hated himself. Even his Race had changed to Vampire Prince. He wanted nothing to do with his monstrous nature, and yet, every time the progenitor withdrew a fresh bottle of blood from his Inventory, the teen would stop at nothing to get his hands on it, transforming from a normal young man to a rabid beast.

  It took two weeks for Elijah to learn to resist the pull of blood, and even then he could only control himself for ten minutes at a time, after which the monster within would take the reins. In those two weeks, the horrid creature that cursed Elijah treated him like a pet, rewarding him with bloody treats whenever he was able to hold himself back for a second longer than before.

  Elijah could no longer stand the sight of the vile monster and demanded he be allowed to move on to the next Trial. The progenitor was quick to remind the teen that his soul hadn’t yet healed, and his self-control was lacking; when he met a living being, he would kill them and feast on their blood.

  Elijah didn’t listen. He insisted he be let go, and, eventually, the first vampire relented. The teen soon regretted his actions. Upon entering the next Trial, he received another massive chunk of soul damage and was forced into a fugue-like state for several weeks, oblivious to his actions.

  When he came to, he found himself on a desert island. Everything was red. Palm trees, sand, rocks – all of it covered in blood. Even the sky was red. A crimson moon completed the bloody tapestry, adding to the sinister scene. Elijah wept uncontrollably. The island had once been home to a village of dolphin people. No longer. He had torn every last one of them to pieces. Not even the women and children were spared.

  For the next few years, he secluded himself in the mountains of that volcanic island, hiding in a cave during the day, away from the sun that now burned his skin like a blowtorch. At night he would wander about listlessly, always staying on the opposite side of the island from the site of the massacre. He had become so scared of himself that if he so much as heard a mouse, he would run in the other direction. The mere thought of what living blood might do to him terrified the Cornish lad.

  Not once did he check his notifications and discover what the goal of the Trial was supposed to be. He didn’t care. He couldn’t care. A part of his soul had been damaged. It never healed the same again.

  Time passed, and, although his sharp, claw-like nails and glossy black hair grew, the age listed on his Character Sheet never once increased. It seemed he would be seventeen forever. But at what cost?

  Eventually, Elijah’s mind was able to piece itself together somewhat, and he recalled the advice he had been given about repairing one’s soul. With nothing to lose, the raven-haired young man tried to meditate.

  It didn’t work. Every time he emptied his mind, some new nightmare would wriggle its way in. He couldn’t do anything to stop them, as, deep down, he didn’t feel he was worthy of peace. A different tack was required.

  It started with music. One day, Elijah remembered that he had a piano taking up most of the space in his Inventory. Withdrawing the instrument, he began to play. Nothing fancy, just scales and arpeggios, over and over again, until his mind went elsewhere.

  Elijah couldn’t say how long he continued to play, making his way through all twelve keys, all the while in a trance. But when he came back to himself, the teen felt more centred, more himself.

  A new routine emerged. Elijah would spend his time hidden away in his dark cave all night, playing the piano, figuring out whatever pieces he could remember, aided by his inhuman Intelligence. During the day he would sleep, not because he needed to, but because it helped him internalise what he had learnt that night and gave his mind a break from reality.

  More years passed, and Elijah continued to play. How this Trial worked, he didn’t know. Days and nights could pass, but the seasons never changed. The island remained much the same. Hair started to grow on the young man’s chin, but he was forever stuck with the fluffy scruff of a teenager, never able to mature into a beard.

  Elijah didn’t care; he continued to play. Over time, the keys began to wear down to bare wood, the skeletonised steel frame started to rust, and eventually a string broke. The first note to snap was high up and hardly used, the victim of some crashy octaves, but it wasn’t the last to break.

  Within a week, six more sang their last. Elijah tried to continue playing, but with so many notes left to his imagination, he was unable to reach the flow state required to strengthen his soul. Naturally, he tried fixing the instrument by tying the strings back together, and while that worked temporarily for the bass notes, nothing could be done for the treble tones.

  The instrument continued to deteriorate rapidly in the desert-island Trial’s equatorial climate, and Elijah was eventually forced to admit defeat; nothing could last forever; he had to move on. So he did.

  When he finally took a look at his notifications, the sallow man learnt he was required to perform a series of stunts underwater in order to complete the Trial. Simple enough for someone of Elijah’s Strength. What sickened him was the additional objective he had completed by wiping out the village of dolphin-people. This was a Trial for level 25 Dolphin-kin! He had known that the aquatic mammals were vicious, but to award their own for such a thing…

  Elijah received a new Trait and pressed on into the next Trial. There was some discomfort, but the damage to his soul was minor, and he soon recovered. The piano playing had worked to heal him, but his instrument was ruined.

  The next Trial was a classic ‘kill or be killed’ affair. A squid-like monster charged him, tentacles flailing. Having spent so long out of combat, Elijah wasn’t ready, and the monster scored a gash across his arm. His bloodlust rose, and he was forced to hold himself back from tearing the beast apart and draining its fluids.

  Miraculously, he was able to control himself. His mind had grown stronger than he expected. The fight ended with the orange squid dead, all of its blood still in its body.

  After it died, Elijah’s bloodlust doubled, his eyes began to glow red and strain against his sockets, and his veins throbbed an ominous black. Even so, he was able to restrain himself long enough to be sent into the next Trial.

  Elijah was proud of himself. From that day forward, he vowed never to drink blood again. That was a mistake.

  The Trials continued, and, with nothing else to focus on, Elijah ploughed through one after another. The monsters grew stronger. Not all at once, but occasionally, after facing a particularly difficult beast, he would receive bonus Xp for defeating a monster of a higher Tier than himself.

  It didn’t take long for him to put things together. Monsters of the same level weren’t all equal; life wasn’t as fair as that. A level 26 Giant could crush a level 26 Snow Rabbit any day. To reflect this, the System separated them into Tiers.

  When Elijah had reached 10 points in all of his Attributes, his Race changed from Elijah to Elijah I. Likewise, when all his stats reached 25, his Race changed again: this time from Vampire Prince I to Vampire Prince II.

  The teen-by-technicality wondered if his Attributes remained the same, but his level increased, would his Tier decrease from II back to I? It was an interesting question, but Elijah wasn’t willing to sacrifice the extra Xp he gained from fighting creatures of a higher level than himself in order to test the theory.

  In the end, it didn’t matter. When he reached 100 in every stat, his Race changed once more, from Vampire Prince II to III. As a result, he began suffering a massive reduction in Xp, purportedly for killing something of a lower Tier than himself.

  For a while, Elijah was able to continue speeding through the Trials; however, the soul damage soon accumulated, and he was forced to stop once more. With nothing better to do, he spent his time wandering through the wheat fields that comprised the Trial in which he would be recovering.

  Elijah, now more confident in the control he had over himself, found a field mouse suffering with a broken paw. He did all he could to heal it. He spooned it water, fed it grain, and ensured it wouldn’t get cold by fashioning a blanket from his ruined clothes.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  In time, the skittish creature came to see the vampire as a friend. Once it had recovered, the pair spent their time playing in the endless wheat, like children. However, one day, the mouse cut itself on a rock. A small injury, something most wouldn’t even notice, but the scrape had sealed its fate.

  Unlike with the fights, Elijah wasn’t prepared to resist the pull of blood. Before he knew what was happening, his mousy friend had been drained like a Capri-Sun. Overtaken by grief, Elijah was no longer able to keep a hold on his bloodlust.

  Everything in that eternal plane of golden grass was exsanguinated, and so began a destructive cycle Elijah was unable to control. Every time he came back to himself, he made a promise that he would never drink blood again, only to break that promise and, in his despair, consume anything that lived until nothing remained and his mind was his own once more.

  He knew it wasn’t sustainable, but he continued going around and around in circles, unable to stop himself. Trails spread past in a blur. Sometimes the only reason Elijah was able to become himself again was the pain caused by gaining too many Skills without leaving sufficient time for his soul to recover. Sometimes he didn’t wish to return to consciousness, but he was unable to end it.

  In his darkest hour, a light shone upon him. The creature living in his blood, the one the progenitor said was his true familiar, came to life. It had been fed by all the blood Elijah consumed, expanding from a small spot near his blood heart until it controlled all of the black substance in his body.

  It first made itself known by forcing a small drop of blood through Elijah’s finger, shaping it into a hand, and using it to wave at him. Naturally, the newly minted vampire was shocked by the display. He hadn’t been monitoring the situation inside himself and had no idea the creature had matured to such a state.

  A part of him wanted to expunge the being, but he had to admit, as soon as he saw that little hand, he felt a connection. Some corner of his mind was able to interpret the infantile creature’s thoughts and feelings.

  The way it saw the world, like a newly born baby, was refreshing and somewhat endearing. To the blood creature using Elijah’s eyes to see the world, everything was new and exciting. It spent a long time forming bloody hands out of different parts of the vampire’s body, just so it could try touching different things; grass, stone, trees, water – everything was fascinating to it.

  In some ways Elijah was saved by the creature he could no longer deny was his familiar. Some paternal instinct he never knew he had compelled him to teach and protect the strange entity. And so he did.

  Over the next few decades, Elijah did his best to raise the creature inside him with the values he held dear. Loyalty, compassion, hard work, and dedication. It wasn’t easy. Belioz, as Elijah had decided to name him – and a ‘him’ he had chosen to be, taking after Elijah – was not at all human. It took him a long time to be able to converse with his vampiric host with anything more than thoughts and emotions.

  In time, Belioz learned to take on a form greater than a bloody hand. After years of hard work, he was able to secrete his consciousness through Elijah’s skin, creating an entire body out of the vampire’s black blood.

  There were only two downsides. If all of Elijah’s blood left him at once, even with his vampiric nature, he would be knocked out, though not for long. Despite the young man’s body essentially being dead, it could still perform biological functions. After a few minutes of unconsciousness, Elijah’s bone marrow would create enough blood for him to wake up.

  The problem was his hunger. Elijah would wake up starving and feral. It was in such a state that the young man first ate his familiar, drinking down the being of ichor as if he were the only water on a desert planet.

  Fortunately, that left no lasting impact on Belioz; he could come and go from Elijah’s body at will, but the raven-haired man saw things differently. He could never forgive himself for his loss of control. He hated that the blood held so much power over him. He couldn’t even stop himself from hurting a person he had come to consider family; even if Belioz wasn’t actually hurt.

  The greater issue of guilt couldn’t be solved, but the lesser issue, the one where Elijah would turn feral if all his blood left him at once, that was easy to solve. Whenever Belioz created an external body, he would limit himself to only taking half of Elijah’s blood. This would leave him with a three-foot-high form, but that was a small price to pay.

  The pair would later learn that Belioz only required a single drop of Elijah’s blood to form an external body. After which he could gather blood of any kind to increase the size and power of his physical form. But if he died in that form, any of its special abilities would be lost. On the plus side, death wasn’t permanent for Belioz. So long as Elijah’s blood existed, the creature of blood could move his consciousness from one part to another freely, regardless of whether or not they were touching.

  The second of the two downsides wasn’t so simple to mitigate. When Belioz first created a body for himself, it was an exact replica of Elijah, except made entirely of black blood. Neither of them liked that he instinctively took this form. Elijah found it creepy, and, although Belioz loved Elijah, he wanted to be his own person.

  The pair spent time trying to get Belioz to change the shape of his form, but they were unable to change more than superficial features. It wasn’t until, during a fight, Belioz dove into the mouth of a bearkin, in order to destroy them from the inside out that the growing creature of blood started to get an understanding for other forms.

  After spending two weeks controlling the bearkin from inside his veins, and with Elijah’s guidance, Belioz finally learnt how to shape his pure blood form into the image of a new being; he could take the form of a bearkin.

  In time, he was also able to learn how to change the properties of his form so that, even though he was still entirely made of blood, he could imitate skin, fur, eyes, or hair. Despite the control time would grant him over this ability, he still chose to add a red tint to all of his features, as a nod to his true nature.

  As a bearkin was the first creature, aside from Elijah, that he learnt to imitate, it soon became his favourite form, the one he would spend most of his time using. As such, he came to style himself as Belioz The Blood Bear.

  Despite the joy having a companion initially brought to Elijah’s life, the constant Trials continued to wear him down. It didn’t take long for the vampire to relapse and commit another massacre, causing him to once more fall into a deep depression. Belioz did his best to cheer up his friend, but Elijah couldn’t help but wallow in self-pity.

  But Belioz was loyal and relentless. He would continue to crack jokes, prod, and make fun until Elijah felt ready to continue through the Trials once more. After several such cycles, Belioz suggested that Elijah drink small amounts of blood regularly in order to build up a tolerance.

  The vampire teen, who was originally vehemently opposed to and disgusted by the idea, was eventually talked round by his companion.

  At first, the plan worked great. It was hard for Elijah to consume a single drop of blood and stop, but with practice and persistence, he was able to subsist for many years with very little blood, never once losing control.

  Until he was forced to face three back-to-back Trials with no living creatures in them. By the time he left, Elijah had once more devolved into a lesser creature. There was more death, the once-teen swore off blood once more, and an even greater cycle of guilt commenced. Elijah was an addict without the possibility for stability.

  The Trials seemed never to end. Hundreds of years passed with both ups and downs. Elijah’s meditations grew, by necessity, beyond the bounds of music. He was able to find that zen-like state while doing anything monotonous and repetitive, something that could be found in any number of tasks.

  The first outlet Elijah discovered, other than music, was blacksmithing. He used the hammer he made with Rubeous, constantly. Forever trying to find something new to make, and failing that, just making the same thing over and over until his mind went somewhere else.

  Not all Trials were conducive to blacksmithing, however, so the vampire was forced to expand his skills. There were other Trials similar to Rubeus’ where he was expected to learn a craft: pottery, weaving, and enchanting, to name but a few. Through these trades he was almost always able to find some way to meditate whenever the soul damage from new Traits became too great.

  Time continued its inevitable march. The Trials continued. And Elijah continued to grow more and more distant – detached. Belioz, who had never been human and who had a completely foreign way of thinking, wasn’t worn down by the passage of time like his familiar.

  Despite the blood bear’s best efforts, even through his cycles of grief and recovery, Elijah became less and less present, less emotional. They tried coming up with rules to dictate his actions, how to behave, how to react, and how to think, but only one stuck.

  The river of time eroded away the person Elijah once was, leaving behind a blank machine, designed only to beat a Trial, meditate, recover, and repeat.

  The vampire’s perception of time warped. The days blended together, and it didn’t take long before the only thing driving him forward was the notifications telling him he had passed a Trial.

  He became a passive observer to the thousands of monsters he killed. They passed him by uneventfully. However, one day, in one Trial, something changed. For the first time in millennia, the vampire faced a true challenge.

  With all the stats he had gained, most enemies weren’t even a threat. They could be defeated by Strength alone. However, on Trial number 999,990, he faced something completely different, a giant eyeball that was able to freeze Elijah completely.

  None of his stats or Skills could be used to defeat the creature that, with its gaze, slowly melted the perpetually regenerating vampire. This was the first of ten monsters in a completely different league to any other Elijah had faced before, and for the first time in gods-only-knew-how-long, he felt truly alive.

  To separate these ten unique monsters into their own category, the System placed them into their own Tier. All other monsters were in Tiers I - V, but this eyeball, and the monsters inhabiting the nine subsequent Trials, were listed as being in Tier X.

  Each new enemy required a new approach to defeat, and Elijah was forced to use everything he had at his disposal, from Skills to Traits to items he had made through years of meditation.

  After nine impossible Trials, he and Belioz finally came to the last Trial, the only thing separating them from being free, once and for all.

  A new world formed around the emotionally stunted old man inside a teen’s body. There were mountains, volcanoes, rivers, hurricanes, and a patch of desert, all together, representing the basic elements. Directly in front of Elijah, snoring powerfully enough to shake the earth and bend the trees, was a creature so large that it was able to curl around a mountain, using it as a nest.

  Its scales were black as night, mana of every type danced around the massive beast, ready and eager to do its bidding, and despite Elijah’s experience and detached state, the sight of it sent an involuntary shiver of fear down his spine.

  The Trial of Evolution 1: Dragon

  You have reached Lv 25 as an immature Dragon! Welcome to The Trial of Evolution: fight Dracsimus, God Slayer, in order to prove you deserve the name of Dragon and evolve past level 25. A better performance in this Trial will lead to a more powerful Evolution with stronger monster Skills and Traits.