Vampire Cultivation System in a Hidden World of Monsters

I locked the dungeon instance and we left through the portal. The portal closed up behind us and turned into a red keyhole. I looked around the underground room and there were only three remaining portals.

Nice! We could take one portal each. And now that Chad was actually armed, I felt more confident leaving him alone. Besides how much trouble could he possibly get into? He can't die!

"Ok, we're each going to take a portal, but I'm going to modify them first so you can complete them without having a system like mine," I said. "Chad, take your sword out and see if any of the portals have ghosts. That will be your dungeon."

"Ok," Chad said. He pulled out his sword and went around to all the portals. The last one made his sword glow green. "Ghosts over on this one!"

"Ok, I'll work on your portal first," I said. I held the compass and walked over to the portal hoping the needle would direct me to the control panel. It directed me just off to the side of the portal.

I swung my hands through the air until I felt something solid. A metal panel materialized in front of me. I pulled the panel open and stared at a bunch of controls. There was a lot going on here.

I let the system translate what each thing did, until I found what I was looking for. Accessibility options. In many games there are accessibility options for disabled people to be able to play the games. There are subtitles for the hearing impaired and there are options where all the text on screen gets read aloud by a voice for the blind.

I turned both of those options on and I chose English as the preferred language. I figured Chad should be able to figure out the mission objectives with either one of those options.

I also looked at the difficulty settings. They were automatically set to Hard for some reason. I changed them to a special setting called Tailored. It measured the skill of the player and gave them a challenge without murdering them.

I set the rewards to auto unlock by sticking the key into the control panel and turning it. And I set the dungeon to auto lock after Chad finished his run. Then I did all of the same things for Victoria's portal.

"Alright, you guys are all set to go. I'll see you when you're done," I said.

"Alright! Have fun sweetheart!" Victoria said.

"Alright, uh, here I go!" Chad said.

"Thanks, babe," I said to Victoria. "Good luck," I said to Chad.

They stepped through the portals and disappeared. Now it was time to work on my portal. The rewards were set based on how hard the difficulty was that you completed. Tailored gave you rewards based on how high it was able to crank the difficulty on you before you started having trouble.

So technically Tailored was not only the safest but also the best calibrated option but I wanted to go for a challenge, so I set the difficulty to the next highest setting, Nightmare.

Then I stepped through the portal. I looked out a window and all I saw was the blackness of space. I was in some sort of spacecraft. The main objective flashed across my vision.

<Main Objective: Stop the space pirates from crashing the spaceship into a space colony on Mars>

A woman ran up to me and said, "Captain! The space pirates are taking over the ship! You have to stop them!"

"Don't worry, uh, lady. I'll stop them," I said.

"I'm your wife! You don't remember your own wife's name?" She said, looking pissed with her hands on her hips.

"Uh, I claim amnesia. It's been going around lately," I said, not really sure what this weird social interaction had to do with training me to fight bad guys.

"Amnesia? Well, maybe a kiss will jog your memory!" She said, puckering up her lips and leaning into me.

"Uh, I'm good honey. I think we should focus on the space pirates. You know, the thing that could end killing us?" I said. What the heck was this training game doing? Was it trying to get me to cheat?

Find more chapters on empire

"No! Give your wonderful wife a kiss!" She said as she tried to jump up to kiss me on the mouth.

"I'm going to have to refuse until I can remember you honey! This is making me uncomfortable. Can you stop?" I said, pushing her off of me.

She fell to the ground from my push, and a knife fell out of her hand and clattered across the floor. What the hell? Why did she have a knife in her hand? Maybe this wasn't actually my character's wife.

She looked up from the ground and smiled as she wiped blood off her freshly busted lip. Then she licked her hand. She grabbed the knife and stood up.

"That wasn't a very nice thing to do to your wife! She's going to have to teach you a lesson in obedience!" She said. She ran at me with her knife held in a stabbing position.

I drew my sword and swiped at the knife to knock it away but I was too slow and instead I cut off her hand at the wrist. The knife stabbed into me about an inch deep and then fell away with her severed hand.

"How dare you attack your wife!" She said. She pulled out a gun with her other hand and aimed it at me, but I was faster this time.

I slashed before she could pull the trigger and her hand flew away along with the gun. She looked at both of her wrists that were now missing their hands and she said, "Look what you've done! You're going to clean up this mess mister!"Nôv(el)B\\jnn

She tackled me to the floor, which worked because I wasn't expecting it. I was kind of expecting her to go into shock or just die. Not attack me. Then she stuffed one of her bleeding wrists into my mouth and her other bleeding wrist over my nose, cutting off my air supply.

For a no handed deranged person, she was a pretty resourceful fighter. I had to give her that. I cut off her head with my sword, but I swallowed some of her blood in the process.

[You have consumed a new source of blood. Would you like to access blood memories?]

[You have been infected by the Furorem Mortis virus]

[Secondary Objective: Find the anti viral cure in the med bay and cure yourself of the deadly virus before you go fully mad]

[Madness progress = 1%]

'Yes, I would like to access blood memories,' I thought to the system.

[Accessing blood memories]

A flood of memories entered my mind. She was a space pirate who had been infected by a common but deadly disease known as the Furorem Mortis virus. There was a batch of cures in the med bay, but I would have to reach it before the progress reached 100%.

When that happened, even if someone else administered the cure, it wouldn't work. The effects of the virus would become irreversible at that point. The effects of the virus were increasing levels of mania and rage, and a loss of general cognitive function, as well as eventual death.

[Skills gained from blood memories, space piloting and gunplay]

[Space Piloting skill is now Excellent]

[Gunplay skill is now Bad]

The woman who attacked me had been the space pirates' pilot. Her space piloting skill might come in handy if I end up needing to pilot this thing out of danger.

On top of all that, I also received a memory of the layout of the ship. I knew which direction I needed to go now. I turned left and walked through a door into another area of the ship.

This was the Hydroponics Bay. This was where the ship generated most of its oxygen and food. There were back up supplies but this bay was meant to supply the vast majority of food and oxygen for the crew.

As I looked around, I noticed someone was very poorly hiding in one of the plants. I could see nearly 70% of his body. There was just one big leaf in front of him that he seemed to think was keeping him hidden.

I readied my sword and walked up to the plant. I said, "What are you doing in that plant? I'm sure there's a bathroom somewhere else on the ship."

"I don't know!" The man said as he leapt out of the plant at me baring his fingers and teeth.