Blood and Qi: A Vampire Xianxia LitRPG

John had a lot of robes in his ring. He only had two fancier robes of a higher tier – the same ones he stole from Garioch’s armor stands. He wore one of those two all the time and wore the other set the last time he dined with Amber. He put on a lower set and wore some of the heavier armor he had in his ring, minus the helmet and gauntlets.

It wasn’t fully articulated armor and was easy for John to don himself, as the pieces were held together with a thick and sturdy material and required no padded cloth such as an arming doublet or gambeson to be worn under it. He just slid on the top and the bottom, connected both pieces, and then slid into sabaton-like comfortable boots that didn’t need to be attached to anything. He also bathed and trimmed his beard.

When John said he had a gift for Amber, he lied. So, he spent some time trying to figure out what he had to gift her with, and what gift she’d find acceptable. He ruled out arms and armor and such. Amber didn’t wear jewelry and wasn’t excited at all when she looked through the jewelry in Garioch’s ring. He knew women often got excited over nonsense such as flowers. He thought of collecting grass and somehow forming it in a nice arrangement but dismissed the idea immediately. I doubt even women would find grass as a suitable gift, no matter that flowers and grass are useless weeds.

A great idea popped into John’s head – he could whittle her a small statue of her likeness. He just needed wood, but that requirement was harder to fulfill than it seemed. He thought the building and all items in it must have been made for beings on much higher Trees, as he couldn’t destroy anything for a piece of wood. One of the legs of a sofa in the lounge was made of wood soft enough for him to cut through. The sofa had middle legs, and he removed the back one so it couldn’t be seen.

John struggled to whittle Amber’s likeness since the wood was extraordinarily hard compared to any wood he had ever whittled, and he didn’t possess the correct tools. He made do and finished. And still had a very long wait until Amber started her descent down the stairs.

“John! I’m coming down,” yelled Amber.

“I know,” John yelled back.

The sight of Amber took John’s breath away. She managed to look even more beautiful than last time. “You look…more than beautiful. I can’t even find a word.”

Amber smiled widely. She wore a tight black and very small dress with no straps and some sort of ruffled bow thing puffing around the chest area. She wore a different pair of black shoes with very high and pointed heels, exposed toes, but a thick and shiny cover for the top of the feet. Instead of wearing her hair down, it was done up in some sort of fancy type of buns around her horns. Her lips were peach colored, and it went well with her eyes, which had much darker and thicker lashes than usual. Her claws again matched her lips.

When on the last few stairs, Amber stopped, and her smile went away. “I’m sorry, John. I know I’ve been awful. You have no idea how much being a demon alters my mind. And it gets way worse over time. I know you didn’t give me a command on purpose.” She smiled again and said, “Thank you for this. This is just what I needed. Wow, you look good. Real nice. I like the armor. Not really my idea of formal, but I get it. And sorry I took so long. I had to alter this dress a ton to get it to fit right. Do you like it?”

John thought her dress was far too revealing and even common nightwalkers would think it was too illicit to wear. Amber did look beautiful in it, so his reply was, “You look beautiful in it. I like the lip color and nail color too. And how your hair is shaped. Again, there are no words.”

Amber smiled brightly and when she finished her slow descent down the stairs, John removed his hand from behind his back and offered the small wooden statue to her. “Oh! Is…this is me! Wow, this is…amazing!” For some reason Amber’s face crinkled up and she started to cry.

“Did I do something wrong? I can find you a new gift if you dislike this one.”

“No. I love it. I really love it. It’s just…I can’t explain. Just…thank you. It’s beautiful. It looks so much like me.”

Amber and John had a wonderful time together and discussed many topics. Amber said she wouldn’t stay as a demon for such long periods, and she promised to use her time in the pocket plane more wisely. They both agreed their initial plan to split the time in half for each tier had no real benefit, and she would ascend to Bronze, and he would rank up to peak Copper once they finished what Amber called their ‘buddy-date.’

There was one more request by Amber. Some events she wanted John to play along with before she ascended, and he ranked up. After she switched the spatial ring he acquired from Muzaran to her left hand, she had him carry her through the front entrance of the building and set her down across the threshold.

Then Amber had John silently watch as she cooked and cleaned for some time, and she would look up and smile at him often, a crazed sparkle in her eye. There was no real way for her to cook, so she pantomimed making a meal. The house they stayed in cleaned itself somehow, but Amber still smiled brightly as she danced around wiping down counters and cabinets. She then dragged a staff around she said at different points was a broom, a mop, and something called a vacuum.

Once Amber was done pretending to cook and clean, they both sat on the same sofa. She had John put his arm around her shoulder and they pretended they were watching a movie at a theater.

Amber spent most of the time smiling dazzlingly at John. He disliked the crazed look in her eye and hoped it was some leftover mental ailment from spending so long as a demon.

John found the whole thing strange but thought it was a little enough thing to do for a friend. He enjoyed the feeling of Amber being so close. He probably enjoyed it too much and it made him feel both very excited and very guilty. He had a loving wife he would never betray, no matter how much he desired another woman.

When that was done, Amber moved the ring back to her right hand, and they both went behind the building to the cultivation mats so she could ascend while John ranked up.

The rank up went as usual for John and left him unconscious and his face bloody. He saw Thomas and Betrayal and was extremely thankful that the grotesque monster left him alone and didn’t toy with him.

When John awoke, he heard Amber crying on the third floor. He rushed up and announced himself from the landing. “Oh, John. I’m ugly again! It’s awful. It's even worse than it was before! It was all for nothing. I’m a beast again. I ruined my life for no reason!”

“Can I enter,” John asked outside her bedroom door.

“No!”

“What happened? Was there a problem ascending? It feels like you’re a Bronze now.”

After more loud sobbing, Amber said, “I ascended just fine. I got five bodies. Party-pooper says they’re real good ones too. Three were formations and two refinements. But I’m…hold on, I’ll just show you. Let me switch to demon. I don’t want you to see me, the real me, so ugly like this.”

A moment later Amber opened the door to the third-floor bedroom she usually slept in. Her demon form was taller than John now that she was a Bronze, as tall as the larger Bronze of the War Academy. Her demon eyes had a yellowish hue and the slit pupil of a snake. Her skin was the color of a sickly and blighted pine tree, and she was covered in something like large and grotesque scales.

To John, the scales looked somewhat like the seed scales of a cedar cone. They were thick and plentiful and jammed closely together.

Amber also had spikey ridges coming out of various parts of her body, not unlike those of Ridge-head, including on her own already horned-head. He moved behind her and saw even larger spiked ridges running up and down her spine and along her stubby tail. She looked far more intimidating and frightening than normal demons.

The worst part, to John, if the changes to her demon form also applied to her human form, were the strange, thick, cone-like scales. She said her human form was ruined so he assumed the same changes applied to that form. He thought of telling her she was now a far more capable fighter in all her forms, but decided it was a bad idea. He was at a loss for what to tell her.

Tapping his forehead, John entered his Mind’s Eye. Avatar smiled and said, “Congratulations on ranking up, John!”

John asked, “Avatar, Amber was saving her harmony to get her human and demon body [Perks], but I was wondering, now that she’s Bronze, what does the next [Perk] in the…the chain thing to improve race do?”

“It’s called [Fibrilized]. It improves your muscular system in various ways. There’s a review and enhancement of skeletal, smooth, and cardiac muscle for effectiveness and durability. All fibrils and myofibrils are fortified along with improvements to lactate and NAD processing and slow and fast twitch fibers.”

John internally cursed. “Is there a [Perk] that allows someone to control their appearance?”

“The most common ways to change appearance are manifestations and items. Tell me what your goal is and how you’d like to change your appearance, and I can be more specific.”

After explaining the situation, the two talked about various options for a long while.

John exited his Mind’s Eye and said to Amber, “Within your Transmuter [Archetype] there are many spells that could change your human appearance. Not illusions. Real changes but would cost a lot of essence to keep up. And there’s a [Perk] called [Suppress Body] too. It deactivates the changes to a body refinement or formation. It can be turned on and off with essence. Avatar isn’t certain if it will work in all your forms or just one, or if it will deactivate all your bodies or just one of them. But there is hope.

“And I’m sure you look fine as a human. You’re very beautiful. Some scales and ridges won’t change that,” lied John.

“Oh, John! I just…I found it. Party-pooper thinks it’ll work. Do you have blood from a high tier magal? Or demon. Or anything. Any blood will work.”

“No, sorry.”

“Darn it all! I’ll have to use my own. Mind if I mix some of yours in? I’ll need the best crystal you have too. I’ll also needta use the best item we have with the [Repress] rune. Meet me outside and we’ll dump our rings. Yay!”

John wished he had talked to Avatar about the requirements. He enjoyed looking at Amber in her human form, and he wanted her to stop being so distraught, but he didn’t know fixing the issue would cost him such wealth.

John ranked up to peak Copper and Amber ascended to Bronze in the middle of their fourth month in the pocket plane as time was measured on Earth, leaving them with more than a year at their new levels. The [Suppress Body] [Perk] worked perfectly for Amber, and she was very happy about that.

As an added benefit to gaining all her body [Perks], Amber believed the rules that governed her forms changed. It felt to her that the part of her curse that made men mindless animals when they saw her was gone.

John couldn’t feel a change, as he still desired her every bit as much as he did before, but it made some sort of sense, as no magic was strong enough to ever make a man desire her human form if it was covered in such grotesque scales and spiked ridges. Amber was certain the rule about carnal knowledge still applied.

Amber still spent most of her time in demon form, only changing to human to sleep or when John wasn’t around, or on the rare occasions they had a ‘buddy-date.’

John quickly maxed out the allowed [Skill] increases for his new rank with the important [Skills] he could increase, and Amber claimed she did the same. The two sparred often, and Amber practiced with many of her forms, including her human form.

John knew Amber had many ways she could kill him he couldn’t defend against, such as using her powerful eye-laser glyph from invisibility. The first time he wore heavy armor when he sparred with her bear form, she applied more pressure than usual when biting his head and injured him greatly. She bit through the helmet like it was made of paper. If she applied even a little more pressure, he thought she may have crushed his skull.

Prior to Amber becoming Bronze, every other time the two sparred John held back in the hope of building up her confidence and willingness to fight. After she became Bronze, he struggled even going all out. He didn’t use his manifestations as he could’ve, but in a straight up brawl against any form besides human, including the frog, he struggled.

It annoyed John that Amber was so unwilling to tell him what bodies she got, or her new manifestations. She wouldn’t even tell him what aspects she had. She claimed Party-pooper said she had to hold all her cards close to her chest, John knew too much about her already, and it was for everyone’s safety and benefit. The only thing she did tell him was that she didn’t get the body the frogs of Esau received called [Fluoropolymer Skin].

John worked out some of what Amber received at Bronze on his own. For manifestations, she had a fear-roar that didn’t work on him, an essence-shield, the ability to clone herself with an illusion she controlled, and she could spit acid. The frogs of Esau couldn’t spit acid, but he guessed that came from either her frog or lizard form.

Amber was far more resistant to most damage. John could feel into her, and if he wanted to, he would be able to kill her with a clot. He could also beat her with his [Drain Essence] spell. At least he thought he could. Of all the ways he could damage her during normal sparring, she was most susceptible to shadow damage.

Though Amber was much slower at gathering energy than John, they both thought it was worth it for her to purchase NCUs that made her more resistance to mental influence. She could really tell the difference in energy gathering speed after the purchases, and that made John realize how lucky he was.

Most days, after his two hours of exercise, John practiced with blade energy, spells, and mixing concepts together. He started thinking of blade energy as slashing energy, as it worked the same for an axe as a sword or even his own claws. He also figured out how to use what he considered piercing energy with a sword and spear and thrusting-type weapons, and blunt energy with maces and flails and even his own fists.

No matter what John did, he couldn’t get piercing energy to work with arrows and distant targets. The energy disbursed far short of the missile reaching the target, and the same was true for all projectiles after a certain distance.

John could release blade energy quickly. He even practiced with a sword in each hand and could fling blade energy with each somewhat rapidly. He could even fling blade energy with his shield, Defiance.

The only issue was the faster John flung blade energy, the less powerful it became, and the shorter the distance it traveled. When he did it as fast as he could, it didn’t hurt the sturdy and scaled hide of Amber’s bear form at all, or even his own leg he tested it on. He could only hurt Amber when he took the time to make the blade energy’s release powerful, and that took too long to use effectively during battle.

The new spells John made he thought were impressive, though he failed to create a reflect-type spell. When he had enough [Runes] and rune points he still planned on making a fire-based spray spell. His [Shadow Spray] included the ‘battle’ concept in a way that made it do more damage, but he wanted fire to billow forth from his hands, and ‘shadow’ infused with ‘battle’ was a poor substitute for fire.

The year both flew quickly and crawled slowly by. The high points, to John, were the ‘buddy-dates.’ He even enjoyed the parts after, where Amber would pretend to cook and clean. They only physically touched while pretending to watch a movie at the theater the one time, and not since, as it felt like too much of a betrayal of his wife.

John had removed all the legs from both the sofas north and south of their building to whittle gifts for Amber out of. He made twelve additional gifts from those legs, and a thirteenth he would gift her with before he ascended, made from the other middle-leg of their own sofa.

Amber and John had their last ‘buddy-date,’ and he gifted her the fourteenth figurine. He was sad their time together was ending, but she still annoyed him in her demon form. And her human form too, but in her human form, he couldn’t help but to desire her greatly. He never once looked at her with his orb-eye when they weren’t on ‘buddy-dates’ where Amber explicitly told him she wanted to be seen. He would not breach the trust she put in him when she shared her true name.

After their last ‘buddy-date’ ended, it was time for John to ascend to Bronze and face the g’athu.