Vampire Cultivation System in a Hidden World of Monsters

Shikasa appeared in front of me, inside my orbiting blood bullets and chakram. She hit me in the chest with the heel of her palm and send me flying. My blood constructs collapsed as my concentration broke.

I spat out blood from the internal injuries she caused with her blow. I sent Vi to the injury locations and felt them heal. I began to get up off the ground.

"How did I beat you?" She said, looking at her fingernails.

"You… you're too fast," I said, getting up to a half kneeling position.

"Do you think my being faster or stronger has anything to do with my muscles in this realm?" She said, looking me in the eyes.

"No, I, I guess not. But aren't you like a goddess? Don't you have special powers that just make you naturally stronger and faster?" I said.

"I do, but I'm not using them. If I used even a fraction of my goddess powers, you would be obliterated by the force of the Vi coming out of my body. I am using abilities that you yourself already have access to. You are simply focusing your energy on the wrong things," she said.

"Creating all those useless floating constructs diverted your attention and left you with openings in your defense. All I had to do was run forward at you and dive through one of those openings. You would have done a lot better if you didn't use all those fancy weapons and techniques and simply focused on one at a time," she said.

"Why did you show them to me then, if you didn't want me to use them?" I said as I fully stood up.

"To stretch your mind's capacity to handle complex formations, to increase your responsiveness, and to teach you how to defend against all types of weapons. Not to make you think they were ultimate moves. All techniques and all weapons can be equally effective in the right hands," she said.

"Sometimes you have to figure out the right technique or weapon for a job, and sometimes you just have to pick something simple and do it to the best of your ability, while keeping your mind open for the occasional clever adaptation."

"From what I've gathered by talking to your teammates Victoria and Chad, is that you're normally very good at doing exactly that. What changed here?"

"I was afraid you would be too strong for my normal approach," I said. "I thought preparing, would make me more… well, prepared."

"You allowed fear to cloud your judgement. That's what happened. Caution is good. Fear is not. Fear often makes us make poor choices in dangerous situations," she said.

"I want you to use a simple sword and try not to be afraid. I'm your mother for crying out loud. Do you really think I would kill my own son?"

"No, I guess not. That was dumb of me," I said.

"Don't put yourself down. Just get better," she said.

"Yes, mom," I said.

I created a blood sword in my hand, and stood in a defensive position. This time she came at me first. At was a diagonal overhead strike. I parried the blow and came back with a blow of my own. She parried mine. We kept parrying and blocking each other's blows.

We continued to go on like that until I finally cut the inside of her leg, causing it to buckle. Then I thrust my sword through the air, in the direction of her neck, and stopped just before I actually stabbed her.

"Well, done," she said. I gave her a hand up to stand. "You're learning, quickly. Very quickly. Far beyond my expectations. I feel like you're ready for the last two steps of the Blood Artillery Stage. And then you can go do whatever you want with the rest of your day."

"Sounds good," I said. "So blood swipe and blood shield?"

"Yes," she said. "Let's begin."

We began by covering what a blood swipe was. It was a razor sharp arcing blade that travelled through the air until it hit something or it got too far away to control, and the blood fell to the ground.

It was produced by releasing blood from the ends of your finger tips as you swiped your hand in an arc. It could also be produced by the end of a blade by releasing blood from the end of the blade during a swing.

We started by having me create one blood swipe from the end of my middle finger. That was my idea, because I had the sense of humor of a child.

I extended my middle finger in a flipping someone off way, and then swiped it through the air while releasing blood in a stream from the tip. The blood naturally moved in the direction of my swing, but to make it into a true blood swipe, I had to take control of the stream, sharpen it, and maintain it for the distance I wanted it to travel. Continue your saga on My Virtual Library Empire

This time, I did get to practice on my mother, but she didn't sit still and take the hit like I wanted her to. She jumped, dodged, and flipped out of the way of my swipes.

"Too slow," she said. "Faster."

"Ok," I said.

I concentrated on speeding up the swipes. They started at 40 feet per second. Then they rose to 100, then 150, then 200, and finally they leveled out around 250 feet per second. For reference, the average baseball pitch is 140 feet per second.

After 200 feet per second, my blood swipes started to hit her. I opened a gash on her leg, then her chest, then her arms when she had to block her face.

"Ok, that's good. Next is multiple swipes. One for each of your four fingers, excluding your thumb. This time you're going to practice on a wall, not me," she said.

When we found a nice wall to practice on, I threw out a four fingered swipe. It smacked into the wall and left deep gouges in the concrete. I tried with the other hand and got the same result.

Then I started alternating hands as I swiped. It took about 100 swipes but eventually the wall crumbled to pieces.

"Ok, last part, blood shield. This is what you could have used to shield the girls from those bullets. Or if you'd had the presence of mind, you could have expanded your domain and had the golden mouths eat the bullets, but you didn't do that," she said.

"Now throw a swipe at me, and I'll block it with a shield."

"Why didn't you do that before?" I said.

"I didn't want to introduce it too soon and run the risk of you getting distracted by a new shiny technique to play with," she said.

"Fair. I do like shiny things," I said.

I waited for my mom to be ready, and then I performed the blood swipe. My mom raised up a semi-spherical shield to block. The blood swipe hit the shield and then broke up into a swirling mess of wasted energy.

"How did you do that? You didn't just block it, you made my attack disappear," I said.

"I redirected and broke up its momentum by creating a swirling effect in the shield of blood. If you can redirect the force of a blow, the shield takes less of the impact, requiring less power and less blood to block the attack," she said.

"Now it's your turn," she said. Then she quickly threw out a blood swipe of her own. It was far superior to my own. The arcs were wider, the blades were thicker, and the lines spread out as they traveled forward, instead of bunching together. And it was heading straight for me.