Blood and Qi: A Vampire Xianxia LitRPG

All the good creatures that could be made into minions were too far away, and all of John’s minions died too quickly in the Boneyard anyway, so he was without any, and had been without any for a while.

John was having the time of his life. Killing giant monsters was more fun than it had any right to be.

After John destroyed the Peerless Empire, he hoped to live in the Nether with Amber. She wouldn’t be able to go full Lilly on him if he was the only man around. She could watch him battle all day and praise his mighty deeds. Then they’d go home and since she took some strange enjoyment being watched as she cooked and cleaned, he would do so. Life would be good.

Talker no longer wore his biosuit since it drained too much essence and he’d always be out of it. The Peerless brute was also having the time of his life, running around with his axe, wearing only his helmet and boots. Both his biosuit and rifle were in the storage bracer John wore. There was an old biosuit in the bracer too, from before Talker became a scout and needed different peripherals.

Mele could control a ton of peripherals, things like the discs and white arrows used against John in his fight with Ele Four-three on Earth. Peripherals were connected to the biosuit and controlled by the mind of the suit wearer. Oli could only make use of one or two peripherals total and could only control one at a time.

Talker’s new biosuit had a spy-drone with limited offensive capabilities. His old biosuit had two small and deadly white arrow things called bolters, but one was broken.

John had found a much more productive way of using all of Talker’s talking. He asked the brute to help prepare him for Li academy.

The large ruck John wore into the Nether contained a lot of study materials. During downtime, he was supposed to study and memorize the contents of the materials. Not only did Talker help him study, but he also helped him learn many other things that were necessary or helpful to know for the academy. Talker even let John don his old biosuit for practice.

Biosuits were bound on attunement. Talker claimed unattuning the suit wouldn’t be an issue if John was accepted into an academy as The Peerless Empire had plenty of tokens that unattuned bound items.

The biosuits were made specifically for a wearer, so John had to add a resize rune to the suit himself. It wasn’t easy to add a rune to a rune grouping after the fact, and it conflicted with another rune as it didn’t work all that well. The biosuit was very loose and baggy, and he had to roll the sleeves up many times since Peerless Oli had ridiculously long arms. And since the biosuit was made specifically for Talker, he knew it wouldn’t confer all the same benefits for him as it did for the brute.

Controlling the bolter peripheral wasn’t easy. John couldn’t do it nearly as well as the Ele he had fought, and that Ele was controlling a ton of other peripherals at the same time. He was getting better with it though.

“Are you ready,” asked John.

Talker laughed before saying, “This is crazy, but yeah!”

John gripped his sword with both hands, raised the blade, held it as steady as he could, aimed the tip far off into the distance, took his time aiming, and fed essence into Gird. The sword hummed and began to glow. After a moment, a focused dark-blue beam of a maser energy called charric shot forth from the blade.

John continued to imbue the sword with essence. Many seconds later, a monstrous scream could be heard far, far away.

“Was that noise you hitting it? I can’t see anything,” said Talker.

John laughed. “Yeah, I’m getting it. Keeping the beam right on it. It’s charging us. Oh, it just lost an arm. Ha!”

The screams got closer and closer until Talker could finally see the huge creature charging. The monster spotted them too and bellowed out a mighty roar as it jumped in the air, trying to close the distance without getting hit by the charric maser.

The sword’s beam tracked the monster through the air. The giant beast crashed to the ground, dead, four or five hundred paces in front of the two companions.

Talker grabbed both of John’s shoulders as he laughed and jumped in excitement. “Great Akua, we are going to have so many points! That was a Two-five-something. Wish we had a better idea of what mats to collect. The things we think are valuable are always too big to store. Let’s go get the crystals. Hopefully crystals. I hope that wasn’t a first ranker.”

John slapped Talker’s back. “No matter about the mats. We’ll eat its heart and bathe in its blood.”

“Great Akua, don’t start this again. Eating the heart of an enemy doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t give power. Just think it through. It’s the same meat as the rest of it. The Nani would make an exception and allow us to eat our enemy’s hearts if it gave power. Demons would eat hearts. They don’t eat anything. And take that biosuit off before you get near it, weirdo.”

“It’s not just any heart,” replied John. “It has to be the heart of a very mighty enemy, preferably a beast. Some power is transferred to the eater, and bathing in their blood fortifies the constitution.”

“That’s…that’s just nonsensical.”

“Touche,” replied John. He was still going to do it. It made him feel better, at the least. He stopped to rub his chest as pain flared up.

Talker asked, “Still hurts?” He patted John’s shoulder. “So, if it still hurts now, it isn’t killing with the brain-energy twisting, right? It must be killing high-tier foes. We should find the camp and ask for help. Maybe they don’t want us dead anymore. Maybe it was a test. We’ve proven we’re powerful. We deserve to pass our superior genes on.”

“It was just a flare up. Not related to killing this beast. It happens occasionally.”

The pain in John’s chest had grown and grown with each soul taken. It got bad enough he had to stop. The giant monsters on the second Tree had much more powerful souls and wills.

As John had grown to fear the pain taking a soul caused him, winning the contest of wills had become a closer and closer thing.

The beast they had just killed was their first major win without draining the soul. And their easiest and safest kill by a very large margin. They had almost died from the mighty manifestations of the giant creatures far too many times.

And for the remaining giant beasts, they only had a chance of getting close enough to one of them to drain its soul before being attacked. Killing at a great distance was the only safe way, and John had just proved it was a viable method.

John had always been able to see much farther into the distance than anyone else. The Nether restricted the distance he could view, but he was able to see farther and farther into it the more time he spent in it. His horns had yet to grow, which angered him. Talker was getting the beginnings of taint by the Nether, but a Diamond’s body was very resilient.

“What’s next? The ogre, the spider, the lizard-insect with the big arms, or the huge head,” asked Talker before adding, “Can’t be the huge head. Too much armor. Same tactic won’t work.”

John stood up and started walking towards the giant dead monster. “We’ll play it by ear.”

After killing the giant lizard-praying mantis thing, the giant demon-ogre thing, and the giant boney-spider thing, all that was left in the boneyard was the giant head thing.

The demon-ogre worked out better than expected. They both had thought the giant monster was dead when they approached it. And it was basically dead, but not fully. That gave them an opportunity.

Talker had borrowed John’s sword and killed the ogre with the charric maser discharge. Getting the killing blow should ensure Talker received the ‘Climber’ [Achievement] for it when they exited the Nether and returned to Gani.

The giant head would be an issue. They weren’t even sure if it was only a head. Only half the face poked out of the ground, and just the face was as large as the other giant beasts they had fought. They hoped it was only a head. Since the thing was a fifth-rank peak Transcendent, a two-six-five, they assumed it couldn’t be much larger than what they were able to see of it.

The head of the monster was buried right beside a cliff. Most of the face was covered in what looked to be extremely thick rocklike armor. They were certain the charric maser couldn’t penetrate that armor in a reasonable amount of time.

Upon returning to the Boneyard, they had spotted the sleeping monster by peering down a cliff it was partially buried next to. It had one giant eye, no nose, and a giant closed mouth. Since it was partially buried, or due to all the rocklike armor, John couldn’t see its soul. He could only see vital essence through the closed eyelid.

Beasts on Kiamoni were very weak, but the weakest peak Transcendent alive could easily kill the two companions with ease if given the slightest opportunity.

John could try sneaking up and taking its soul, but the pain in his chest wasn’t getting better. Since he stopped taking souls, it just hadn’t gotten worse. He couldn’t risk taking another, especially not the soul of a peak Transcendent.

There was an idea John was batting around in his head. It was risky though. He thought it was a little too risky. He and Talker had gotten lucky so far. He didn’t think they should push their luck. He was hoping Talker would talk him out of it, but the Peerless man was insane and willing to fight anything. John would not be the reluctant and lesser man when it came to battle.

John was glad Talker had turned out to be a pretty cool guy. He wished he could talk to him and get advice on how to destroy the Peerless Empire, but Talker was all-in on his people’s empire. He had nothing but love for his people. If John told him of his plan, he knew it would destroy their friendship.

John stood atop the cliff, looking down at the peacefully sleeping giant head. This is a stupid plan, he thought.

Talker was on the low ground, hidden in the distance. Since they could meditate without interruption in the nearly empty Boneyard, John had filled both of Talker’s empty EBs. The brute was fully kitted out with his rifle and biosuit and ready to help out if things went badly for John.

And John thought things would go badly for him. The plan relied on the thing’s giant eye being a weak spot and making it easy to kill. The eye made a big target, and if it led to the brain, John should be able to blaze Gird’s manifestation into and through the eye and into the brain fast enough the thing died before waking and killing John and Talker.

This really is a stupid plan, but what else could cause such excitement? The crystals, the mats, the points, the [Achievements] we’ll earn in victory are worthy rewards. I’m glad to have such a friend as Talker. Who else would do this with me? Everyone else would attempt to talk me out of this. Talker goads me on as a good friend should.

And if I die, I’ll die doing what I love. And I’ll be free of Amber, the Peerless, and all else seeking to twist me up and destroy my mind.

The head was buried a little canted, so John stood a little way off along the cliff. He raised his sword, held it two-handed, and tried to aim so the beam would go right through the center of the eye and into the brain. The eye was closed, but the eyelid had been fluttering as the giant eye behind it moved around in sleep.

John steeled his nerves and sent essence into Gird. The sword hummed and he held it tight as it kicked when the beam released. As soon as the charric energy began extending out from the sword, the giant eye opened and shot its own much, much bigger beam right at John.

The giant beam cut through the cliff like paper as John dove backwards and slipped away through the shadows. When he had to exit, he was standing in the air as most of the cliff had collapsed away. He prayed the collapsing cliff was burying the head as he slipped again.

John’s perception wasn’t great while slipping through the shadows. Everything was dark and dim and hard to make out. But he saw something giant float by him. When he had to exit, he saw a massive egg-shaped monster flying in the air with a huge, forked tongue lolling out of its mouth. The face took up the upper two-thirds of the egg and all of the body was completely covered with the thick and hard rocklike armor.

John slipped through the shadows and then did so again to get behind the creature. He then slipped up it, ran along the top of its head, jumped off, and twisted around in the air to cast [Glyph of Plasma Barrage] and send his bolter peripheral at the massive eye.

Gird’s manifestation was great if John had time to channel it and hold it steady on a target. [Plasma Barrage] did all of its damage much faster. Before the little meteorites or bolter could hit the eye, the head started to spin around extremely quickly, like a spinning top.

John felt the egg start a manifestation. He tried unbinding it, but like with the other Transcendents, he had no luck at all.

As John fell through the air, the spinning head barreled towards him. He barely slipped away in time to avoid being smashed by it. When he came out of the shadows, the thing’s tongue, quick as a snake strike, snatched him up. His orb-eye saw Talker charging forward, bellowing a war cry, his rifle spitting essence at the tongue in rapid succession.

Talker screamed and blasted rifle fire as the tongue drew John into the giant mouth. Then the monster swallowed.

John stuck Gird into something and held on for dear life as the massive tongue dragged by him, doing its best to rip him away.

The sword became dislodged and John cut into the tongue before stabbing Gird into something else, scarcely managing to stop his slide down a truly massive gullet. The tongue finally stopped dragging by, but John still banged around as the egg-monster flew about.

The mouth opened and the tongue began to drag by John the other way as it lolled out of the huge maw again. He could see the giant red beam of the egg’s eye digging deep trenches out of the ground as it tried killing Talker.

Since entering the mouth, John had thought of a bunch of ways to kill the monster from within.

All those ideas flew out of the window. If John had time, he would drain the egg-monster of vital essence as he did the dark walker. In order to strengthen himself with vital essence now, he needed to drain something above mid Transcendent, and the egg-thing was a peak Transcendent.

The thought of how annoyed Avatar would be if John reached the soft cap for [Stats] again so soon after fixing the issue would’ve made him smile if his friend wasn’t in grave danger.

John could think of a ton of ways to kill the creature while inside of it. But only one way would be fast enough to save Talker.

After grabbing Gird’s hilt tightly with one hand and putting his other palm on what flesh of the monster was within his reach, John began to drain the beast’s soul. The pain he knew he’d be inflicted with by winning the contest of wills would be terrible. He winced before the contest even began.

A new beam started to tear a new trench in the ground. John put all his focus and titanic will against overcoming the beast’s own. It lasted longer than all the prior attempts.

The beam attack ended. The head crashed down to the ground as its mighty soul entered John. The new soul caused him so much pain that he didn’t even notice the falling or crashing. He held his chest and rolled around, oblivious to all else.

It felt far worse than the pain John felt on ascending tiers. The chest pain used to be localized in a small part of his chest near his heart when he had first started draining souls, but it had grown and grown and now radiated from his whole torso.

It took a long time for the pain to subside enough for John to place his sword in storage and crawl over the tongue and out of the mouth. He ran to the trenches to find Talker. His heart sank when he could neither sense nor see any sign of his friend. He leaned over and rubbed his pain filled chest. He hoped his friend lived.

John began to search the trenches in earnest after the pain flare-up allowed him to. He found nothing. His worry increased. He finally had a good friend that was as willing as he was to do stupid things. A tough man with decent values and honor.

John sat down in defeat. His friend was dead. Sadness from the loss competed with the pain in his chest. Then a drone entered his senses. His spirits lifted. He waved. A minute later Talker entered his senses too.

Talker stumbled around, John assumed lost in the Nether, so John ran to his friend.

Both men grabbed each other and laughed and jumped excitedly.

“That was a close one! I told you it’d work out though. Let’s go get those crystals,” said Talker. “And don’t forget the bolter.” That was a helpful reminder as John had forgotten about his peripheral.

They had only found four of the five crystals before all of the ground trembled mightily. Not too far off in the distance, a truly massive dragon burrowed out of the earth and took flight, hovering high above the ground.

“Great Akua,” exclaimed Talker.