Vampire Cultivation System in a Hidden World of Monsters

I waited until the space pirates stopped firing and had to reload and then I extended my blade with blood manipulation and sharpening it with Blood Saw and cut the pirates that were on the right flank in half. And then I did the same to the pirates on the left flank.

I looked over the cryo storage tubes and saw that there were no pirates left. I had killed them all. I was about to celebrate until I realized I didn't hear anything from Thistle and Penny.

I looked back at them, and realized they were already dead. They had been peppered with bullets from the left and right sides. Sure I did my best to shield their bodies, but their were two of them and only one of me. They still a large part of their bodies exposed.

I checked them and sure enough Thistle had dozens of bullet holes on her left side and Penny had dozens on her right. Even though they were dead, all was not lost. I might still be able to get the dungeon rewards for them and bring them back.

I would sit down and cry, and hate myself for my failure, if it increased my chances of success, but it wouldn't. So I didn't. I had seen enough dead at this point, that with the potential of bringing them back on the horizon, I wasn't as fazed as a normal person would be. I was fazed, sure. Just not enough to slow me down.

'System, are my suspicions correct? Can I still get the dungeon rewards for Thistle and Penny?'

[That is correct. Due to how the dungeons are programmed, there is a loophole where players who make it to the end of the dungeon, regardless of their living status, are still rewarded at the end]

[This is because the dungeons are supposed to be able to be completed by undead people such as vampires and zombies which are virtually identical to dead people in the eyes of the dungeon's system]

[You can technically exploit this by carrying dead bodies from the beginning to the end of the dungeons, but it doesn't count if they're in your inventory. You have to physically carry them from beginning to end. So it's not much of an exploit in the end]

'I mean, I could just tie a bunch of dead bodies to my waist and drag them to the finish line, but that's so grotesque that I don't think I could force myself to do it.'

[Exactly. If you could force yourself to do that, or for most people even be physically capable of doing that, then you would have earned the extra rewards anyway]

'Fair.'

I picked up Thistle and Penny's lifeless bodies and carried them to the airlock door to the next section. The door hadn't been welded shut by the pirate's this time, because they were too busy trying to fill us all full of lead instead.

I checked Penny and Thistle's bodies again and using Vi, removed the bullets from their wounds. I didn't know if the medicine would remove the bullets from the holes, and I didn't want the holes to heal up with the bullets still inside them.

I walked through the airlock with the girls under my arms. A pirate standing on the other side of the door, aimed his gun at me and yelled, "Stop!"

"Ok," I said, and set the girls down on the floor. I didn't want them to get hit by anymore bullets. Then I stood up and started walking towards the pirate.

"I said 'stop' and you said 'ok'. Why are you still walking towards me?" He said. He backed and shot at me. The bullets hurt but they didn't pierce my skin. I grabbed him by the throat and slammed him down to the ground, breaking his neck.

I checked every room except the command deck and killed all the pirates inside with my bare hands. I picked the girls back up and placed them outside the command deck.

I walked inside the command deck and systematically caved in the heads of every one of the space pirate commander's subordinates with my fists, before turning my attention to him.

The commander saw this and started powering up. He clenched his muscles and veins stood out of his neck and forehead. He started to glow red and a boss health bar appeared at the bottom of the screen. I didn't even look at the name.

I knew what it would say. "Hey, man. Do you need to take a shit? Cuz I can go into another room. You don't have to do it right in your pants."

"I'm not shitting!" He yelled.

"Oh, well, you could've fooled me," I said, as I walked up to him.

He was still powering up, so I grabbed his head and pushed my thumbs into his eyes, blinding him. He screamed as I did it, but the power up must have prevented him from moving, because he didn't defend himself in any way.

The power up finished, but he was blind. He tried swinging at me, but he missed every time. I didn't even have to dodge. He couldn't fucking see. Of course he was going to miss.

I grabbed his arm after one of his punches and threw him over my shoulder, slamming him into the ground. It dented the metal flooring. Then, before he could get up, I laid into him with my fists.

I straight up beat him to death. Just fist after fist into his stupid blind face, until he didn't have a face anymore.

[You have defeated Dread Pirate Schmigel! Congratulations!]

Huh. That didn't happen before. Maybe it happened after I passed out from the madness disease last time. I went back outside, grabbed the girls and brought them onto the command deck.

I needed one of them to turn a key on one side of the room while I turned a key on the other side to override the controls to steer the ship away from crashing into the Mars colony.

After some thinking, I came up with a pretty grotesque way to do it. I was fast, but I wasn't fast enough to turn both keys close enough to the same time to activate the override by running across the room.
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So instead, knowing that I could manipulate blood by filling it with Vi, I figured I could probably do the same to a body, as long as I maintained physical contact with the body.

So I grabbed all the bodies in the room, and lined them up from one end to the other. I gave the one at the far end, one of the keys Thistle and Penny had in their pockets. Then I took the key I had in my pocket out.

I grabbed the hand of the closest dead body, which happened to be Penny's, then after filling her body with Vi, I manipulated it so that she grabbed Thistle's hand. Then I filled Thistle's body with Vi through Penny and made her grab the next body's hand.

I slowly completed this chain while the image of Mars got larger and larger on the command screen. Once I was finally done completing the chain, I made the body at the end insert the key into the hole.

It was pretty awkward and hard to do but I eventually did it. Then I inserted my key into the other panel and made us both turn the keys at the same time.

It worked. The override went through and I sighed a big sigh of relief. I went to the computer and had the system lead me through changing our heading so we would crash into Mars instead of the colony.

<Main objective complete! Calculating rewards>

Two chests appeared, the same size. They looked identical to the one I got when I first completed the dungeon. Then I took out the dungeon key, inserted it into one of the chests and tried to turn it, but it wouldn't budge.

[You have 30 seconds before the ship crashes into Mars]