“Time to let loose! Death to trash!”
Hello again—it’s your favorite protagonist, Inori. At this moment, I was venting my stress from my training session in the afternoon. It had already been a few days since my training with Sister Sensei had begun, and the amount of mental and physical exhaustion I was experiencing from that was juuust super. I was completely and utterly pooped.
Put simply, here was how the past few days had gone: Sister Sensei would drag me off, I’d get beaten to a pulp, I’d pass out from exhaustion, and then by the time I woke up, it’d be night. At which point I’d find it impossible to fall asleep again, so I’d be sleep-deprived when morning came. Yes—I was sleep-deprived. Vampires didn’t get sleepy at night, so I got the same feeling as being hopped up on coffee. Holy hell, am I tired. This is all her goddamn fault!
As usual, I’d slipped away by jumping from shadow to shadow before using Teleport to get out of the town entirely. I was earlier than usual, though, so I didn’t see Ariya on my way out. I was desperate to blow off some steam by hunting monsters. Leveling up Sexual Prowess would just have to wait. Good for you, Ariya. You don’t have to go to bed on the verge of passing out tonight. My Sexual Prowess was currently level 5.
My own personal perception of the strength of Skills based on their levels went like this: levels 1 and 2 were “beginner,” 3 and 4 were “intermediate,” 5 and 6 were “advanced,” 7 and 8 were “master,” and 9 and 10 were “godlike.”
In essence, this meant I was “advanced” when it came to Sexual Prowess, but “godlike” when it came to Dropkick, Bite, and Leap. What did it mean to have a godlike dropkick, though?
Well, enough about my Skills; it was time to get to monster hunting. The only problem was...my level still had yet to go up, and I had no idea why. Was my Growth Boost on vacation? Did it take a shitload more EXP to get to level 15? Couldn’t they at least show me my experience bar in my stat sheet or something? Honestly, though, even if I couldn’t level up, it wasn’t a huge problem. There wasn’t really anything I could do about it right now, anyway. I needed to focus on what I could do, and that was taking down monsters, sucking their blood, and raising my stats. I had no problems getting that done.
My Eye of True Sight caught a glimpse of a monster far in the distance. It was pretty awesome that I had this eye because without it, I wouldn’t have been able to spot the monster without getting a whole lot closer. From what I could tell, it was a skeleton monster. Given that this was such a remote area that barely anyone came to, there was bound to be a corpse or two lying around, and that pointed to the presence of the undead.
Even with my Baron-Class Authority, I couldn’t control it, and that was despite having been able to control the ghouls during the coup. This must have been because my ability to control the undead had come from a different world. I could control any undead that I had created in this world, but not those that had been created by others.
Because of that, my Authority felt kinda pointless, especially since it wasn’t increasing at all. How long was I supposed to stay Baron-Class? Was it even possible for me to raise my Authority? Maybe it could only be done through a process specific to the world that had bestowed my vampirism on me. This blows. But whatever. My frustration with that could wait—the skeleton came first. I already had a decent idea what kind of monster it was from its equipment, but I still decided to use Appraisal.
No Name / Undead Monster (Skeleton Mage)
HP: 50/50 / MP: 1580/1580 / STR: 50
VIT: 93 / DEX: 452 / AGI: 65 / INT: 1023
Divine Blessing(s): None
Titles: None
Yep, just as I thought. I mean, what else could it have been? It was a skeleton with a frickin’ staff. Then again, there had been a skeleton that had tried to whack me with a mage’s staff once. Apparently, even the world of the undead had its muscleheads.
All the same, I was grateful for monsters with high MP and INT. Of course, I still wanted to train my AGI, but the more MP I had, the more times I could teleport in a row. And the more INT I had, the more things I could control at a time with Puppet Master. Both of these were incredibly important to me.
Detect confirmed that, apart from me and the skeleton mage, there weren’t any other monsters or humans in the area. Additionally, I was still a safe distance away from it. Usually, I’d be much more methodical and strategic about taking out a monster...but I was here to blow off some steam. I was gonna blow right through it. Screw plans!
According to Absolute Measurement, a thousand five hundred and twenty-three meters separated us. It would take six seconds for me to close the distance between us. I went into a crouching start and kicked off of the ground. With each second, I moved faster, until I was moving at subsonic speed, the environment around me whipping past.
By the time the skeleton mage noticed me, it was too late. Its face quickly became acquainted with my fist. Its skull practically exploded, shattering to pieces with multiple satisfying cracks. Man, I feel so much better!
“Did that do it?” I wondered aloud, purposely trying to jinx the situation. I slowed down and turned around. “Oh. That did do it...”
The skeleton mage’s skull was lying in pieces. The rest of its bones had also been scattered about by the force of my blow. That made sense—after all, it was just a squishy magic user. I felt so let down, but regardless, I began to collect all the bones so that I could suck the skeleton’s blood. Hm? How am I supposed to suck blood from a skeleton? Fear not—there was a way!
First, I took the bone that looked like the thing’s femur and split it vertically with my knife. It wasn’t easy, but I managed. Cracking open the bone revealed the marrow. It wasn’t red or fluid anymore due to its skeletonization, but it still counted as blood. I scooped it out with my knife and chowed down. It had a rich flavor, perhaps because of the high amount of mana in it. Either way, it was delicious—maybe enough for it to be called a delicacy.