Chapter 291: The First Lesser Vampire II
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Blood ran down the captive’s neck. His legs almost gave out, but Sekhmet held him upright for one more heartbeat and thought inwardly with precision.
"System, start the Level Two; Lesser vampire transformation."
The system answered at once.
[Ding! SYSTEM Notification: The Host’s command accepted.
Target qualifies for the transformation.
Lesser Vampire creation initiated...]
Then the man screamed. Not from the bite. But from what came after it.
His whole body convulsed like something had just reached down through his blood and gripped his skeleton directly. He fell to his knees, his hands clawing at the ground. Veins darkened visibly beneath the skin of his throat and face. His back arched. His teeth ground together so hard that even the other prisoners flinched from the sound of it.
The transformation did not explode upward like Lily’s had.
It did not create a great shockwave or crimson womb. This was cleaner. Lower. Cruder in some ways, but more controlled.
Blood-red light spread just under his skin rather than around his body, tracing his veins in hot, branching lines. His breathing turned ragged. His nails thickened. His fingers curled into the dirt as if trying to anchor him against the changes tearing through him from the inside.
Sekhmet watched everything. This was exactly why he was doing it.
The others needed to fear him, yes.
But he also needed to learn about his blood powers.
The man’s skin began to pale. Not corpse-pale. But a colder type of pale. Less alive in ordinary human terms. His eyes, when they opened between screams, had already begun to change. The whites remained, but the irises were flooding toward red, brightening from muddy human brown into something far more predatory.
His canine tooth extended next. Not the ugly thick points of a ghoul. It had proper fangs.
Smaller than Sekhmet’s own. Cleaner than he expected from a lesser line.
"Interesting." He said out loud.
The system rang again.
[Ding! SYSTEM Notification: First Lesser Vampire successfully created.
Blood Creation Path confirmed.
The host may continue stable Level Two conversions within the blood awakening threshold.]
"Useful. Very useful."
The man collapsed forward onto both hands, shaking hard as the last of the visible light sank under the skin and vanished.
Silence followed. Not total silence. The sound of his breathing remained.
It was harsh, fast, and alive.
Sekhmet let him stay there for a few heartbeats more before speaking.
"Stand up."
The new lesser vampire obeyed at once. That in itself told Sekhmet much.
No hesitation. No confusing delay. Not mindless either.
The man’s eyes still held awareness. It was full of shock. Full of fear and pain. But the order had sunk beneath all of that and anchored somewhere deeper.
He rose. The difference was obvious. He looked like himself and not like himself.
His face had refined at the edges. Not prettier, exactly. But sharper. His skin had taken on a colder tone. The red in his eyes was bright now, not animal-dull like the ghoul tier the system described. His movements carried a faint unnatural grace even under the leftover tremor of fresh transformation. And when he looked at Sekhmet, something had changed there too.
Not simple fear.
Loyalty.
Raw. Unwelcome. Half-understood by the man himself, but real.
Dickon stared in horror. His mouth had actually fallen open by a fraction.
There was no calculation left in his face now. No rich merchant son’s arrogance. No belief that this was all temporary leverage between men and houses.
Only one thought, written so clearly across him that Sekhmet did not need blood sight to read it.
"He is a Monster."
Dickon’s mind spiraled all on its own after that. Sekhmet could almost see it happening. If he had not come to rob. If he had not followed his father’s greed. If they had not touched the Dawn House. If he had not chosen the weaker target, the easier target, the boy that merchants and rumors said could be pressured.
He would not be here.
He would not be stuck in the dark land under a sky that was not a sky watching men become vampires by command.
He would not be wondering why his father had not saved him.
Why didn’t Dickoff Iron not torn apart the city to retrieve his son?
Why all that had come instead was pressure, failure, then silence.
Why had his father not done more.
Why had he not come himself to save his son?
Why had Sekhmet become this instead of folding.
The thoughts made Dickon’s face twist with helplessness.
Let him rot in them.
Sekhmet’s attention returned to the lesser vampire.
The man stood straighter now. The trembling had lessened. Hunger had entered his eyes, yes, but not enough to overwhelm the bond. He looked like a dangerous servant rather than a broken victim.
"Excellent."
Sekhmet decided to test it immediately.
He looked toward the remaining Chaos Rank Three prisoners and selected another one. Not the weakest. Not the strongest. One still stable enough to fight and angry enough to do it.
"You," he said. "Step forward."
The chosen captive hesitated, then obeyed because everyone here obeyed eventually.
Sekhmet pointed toward the newly made lesser vampire.
"Fight him."
The man looked as if he wanted to beg, but shame and fear tangled badly enough in him that he chose anger instead. Better. Anger made for a clearer test.
The lesser vampire did not move until Sekhmet gave him the next order.
"Do not kill him."
The new vampire nodded immediately. "Yes... Master."
His voice had changed too. Not much. But it became smoother and colder. Like the throat itself had been tuned to a different frequency of life.
Interesting.
Then the fight began. If it could be called a fight.
The Chaos Rank Three prisoner lunged first, probably because pride was the only thing still keeping him from collapsing into pure fear. He came in hard, fast enough that before transformation he might actually have overwhelmed a weakened equal by momentum alone.
But now it did not matter.