Chapter 292: The Third Threshold of Blood
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The lesser vampire moved sideways with unnatural ease.
Too quick for him. It was too clean.
He caught the attacking arm, then twisted it, and drove a knee into the other man’s abdomen before the prisoner had even finished understanding he had missed.
The impact doubled the man over.
The lesser vampire followed instantly, one hand around the back of the neck, the other driving the man down into the dirt with humiliating force.
Not a lucky exchange. Not desperation. It was a control power.
The prisoner tried to rise, swinging backward in blind panic, but the lesser vampire was already behind that movement, stepping through it, striking once across the ribs, once behind the knee, then forcing him down again before any real recovery could form.
Sekhmet watched closely.
The transformed man’s speed had risen sharply. His coordination too. His aggression remained under command rather than spilling outward.
The second prisoner was already weakening, but even accounting for that, the gap was obvious.
The lesser vampire dominated him very easily.
Vera and Vela had drifted close enough by now to observe without abandoning their watch. Good. Let them see this too. Auri, though farther back near Lily’s sphere, also watched with tightened focus. Even Bat Bat had gone entirely silent, which in her case was the highest possible sign of serious attention.
The lesser vampire ended the test by pinning the other Chaos Rank Three captive flat on his back, one hand at the throat, one knee on the chest, with enough control to crush but no need to prove it.
The man beneath him had no fight left.
Sekhmet let that image hold for a second.
Then said, "Enough."
The lesser vampire released at once and stepped back.
Immediate obedience. Very good.
The defeated prisoner rolled to one side, coughing, shaken not only by pain but by the speed of the loss. He had been weak already. True. But not so weak that the outcome should have looked that one-sided unless the transformation had delivered exactly what the system promised.
It had.
Sekhmet let his gaze move over the new lesser vampire again.
He got Fangs. Refined eyes. Predatory grace. Blood-bond obedience. Basic combat enhancement is already visible.
He was impressed. More than impressed. He was thinking ahead now. Always dangerous when he started doing that.
If he wanted, he could build a small army of lesser vampires.
Not tonight. Not carelessly. But the possibility was real now, not theoretical.
And if he ever chose to do it properly...
Raka and his men came to mind.
He did not speak the thought aloud. He did not need to. It passed through him in clean silence, settling in the dark part of his mind where plans waited for the right moment to become crimes.
Raka and his men were already his in other ways. Loyal. Violent. Effective. If they became lesser vampires under his blood...
That would be an army. Not of random captives. Not of broken merchants or stolen thugs.
An actual force. A trained one. A hidden one.
Sekhmet looked at the new lesser vampire and thought, "Yes. This has potential."
Sekhmet did not move for a few moments after the test finished.
The newly created lesser vampire still stood with lowered head, red eyes bright under the dark sky, his chest rising and falling more steadily than any mortal’s should after a transformation so fresh. The defeated Chaos Rank Three prisoner remained on one knee in the dirt a short distance away, one hand braced against the ground, face pale with pain and disbelief. Around them, the line of captives had gone almost completely silent.
Fear had changed shape in them again.
Not the fear of punishment.
Not the fear of beatings, starvation, or disappearing into the wrong corner of the Void Land and not returning.
This was more primitive.
They had just watched one of their own become something else in a matter of breaths. They had watched a man they knew, a man of flesh and exhaustion and dirt and rank and history, collapse screaming and rise again with colder skin, red eyes, and obedience written into his bones. They had watched another Chaos Rank Three man get beaten down almost effortlessly by someone who should, by all ordinary logic, have been weaker moments before transformation.
That kind of fear took root more deeply than pain ever could.
Fear is educated faster than speeches.
Sekhmet stood at the center of it all with his gaze still on the lesser vampire, and in the stillness after the test, the implications unfolded through his mind one by one.
Not slowly.
Cleanly.
Useful transformation.
Stable obedience.
Significant enhancement even from a fresh conversion.
And that was only one lesser vampire made from one reasonably healthy captive.
The possibility of scale had already crossed his mind. The possibility of Raka and his men. The possibility of building a hidden strike force not out of random criminals and broken scavengers, but from chosen people with discipline, loyalty, and a proper foundation.
That possibility remained.
And the more he thought about it, the more one particular conclusion became impossible to ignore.
He should upgrade now.
He had time.
Lily remained in the crimson womb. The blood sphere still pulsed steadily in the distance under Auri’s watch. Vera and Vela remained on duty. Bat Bat had resumed whispering tactical nonsense to the spirit leaf. Sofia and Natasha were contained. The captives were terrified into order.
And he still held one upgrade.
No.
More than that.
He held momentum.
That was too dangerous a thing to waste.
His thoughts shifted inward.
"System."
The answer came instantly now, like it had been waiting.
[Ding! SYSTEM Notification: Blood Proficiency available for upgrade usage.]
He let his gaze linger one last second on the newly made lesser vampire, then turned slightly so his line of sight included the crimson sphere where Lily remained hidden inside transformation.
Three true vampires already under him.
Vera.
Vela.
Lily.
If Level Two already opened that much potential, then Level Three of Vampire Creation might give him exactly what he suspected it would.