The Misadventures of the Man Formerly Known as Victor Heart

I spent the next day or so analyzing and fine tuning my new vampiric form. The most immediately noticeable change was my appearance.

The first major change was my facial features. They had all changed ever so slightly, but when all put together it changed the entire feeling of my face. The previous featured were shaped by the golden apple to be beautiful in the way a piece of art was beautiful. My new features were forged in all the savage beauty contained in one of the multiverse’s worst monsters. It was hard to put into words, but it was like I went from the white knight to the demon king.

The next change was my eyes. The left seemed to contain a rich brown tree set alight. While my right looked to be chipped from a block of ice. I saw them as two perpetual warnings of the two extremes of human emotions, all-consuming obsession and dispassionate indifference. These were important due to my new diet, emotions. If my stomach got too low all my emotions would fall away, and I would go down roads better off left untraveled. If I gorged myself, I would be flooded with emotions and likely end up largely the same.

The last of my outward changes was that my hair had turned into another unsubtle metaphor about warring emotions. My new mantle had turned my head into a battle ground between honey blond and platinum blond hair.

The inward changes were more startling mostly because I finally had innards again. My body had finally turned into something resembling a human. While losing the inviolability of my previous form was a strong choice, especially after it just saved my life from the circus, I had to get rid of it. While it was fine for this world, not every world had the required magic for an entirely magic creature to exist. My connection to unreality would allow me to negate that fact, but I had just been shown that connection was not inseverable.

Also, the ability to die is a privilege that I knew I would regret not having in the future if I rejected this new form. There are fates worse than death and traveling the multiverse, hell even just this world, I was likely to run into them.

It was also due to the fact that a lot of power systems required an actual body to function, and I wanted to experience them when I eventually reach a reality with one. In addition, I just wanted to have a semiregular body again.

Make no mistake though, no one who saw my insides would think I was human. For one I had two hearts, one was black as coal and the other white as snow. For another I had vastly more veins, arteries, and nerves.

In terms of new tricks, I had gained various emotion-based abilities with the highlights being emotion manipulation and empowerment. I also gained a base human level of physical ability, well the very peak of human, as a bonus. I could have gained more physical ability, but at the cost of weakening my emotion-based abilities. Seeing as those were more impactful, I decided to make my flavor of energy vampire a mage build.

Now enough about all the fun and good things to come from my mantle. Let’s get to the “fun” things.

The most critical was my new weakness to gold. My body operated on a paradoxical nature of being simultaneously impure and pure as represented by my two hearts. Gold, symbolizing both impurity and purity, taints my purity and cleanses my impurity.

The next joy was my new relationship with the sun and moon. The sun’s rays burned my body like an oven while the moon’s beams gave me ever worsening frostbite. I had to dress like an artic explorer at night and desert wanderer during the day.

The only good news was that faith had no effect on me. so, there is that.

I also now lacked a reflection. Take that for whatever you want.

All in all, my new state of existence was a lateral move that will hopefully become increasingly positive. I just had to keep a lookout for my new body ascending to godhood. which due to its connection to the god of vampires, was a distinct possibility.

This was due to not wanting to ascend due to it. The first time you ascend creates your primary divinity or aspect, depending on how you ascend. Divinity is granted when you ascend due to believers imparting some of their innate spark of ascension. Aspects are granted when someone elevates their spark by doing something beyond mortal means.

The vampire mantle will primarily result in a divinity. Which means that my powers will rise and fall with my believers i.e. if I were to go to a place that did not believe I would be weakened. For instance, a world that does not even have the concept of vampires, which I will inevitably run into.

The other important reason is that I am a crafter before anything else and my first ascension must reflect that. It is the difference between Poseidon being the god of the sea and also horses and Poseidon being the god of horses and also the sea. The second will forever be lesser.

Any who let’s get to the next part of my day, artifact crafting.

To warm up I created a simple artifact, Idle Hands. The thin skintight red leather gloves were made from Natalia’s hair, Spiderini’s spinnerets, Sergei’s accuracy, the chi organ I got a while back, and some loose spirit shards. The gloves could create and control thread based on Natalia’s demonically empowered hair.

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Idle hands

“Are the devil’s playthings with the world being the playground”

Tier Six

A pair of gloves that can create and control evil attributed thread

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The next thing I did was refine the artifact that my mantle naturally created, a set of four fangs made of twisted black wire that resembled veins and acted as caps. This I feed my black hole tattoo representing consumption ability. This would normally not be possible, but the caps were practically part of my body as they were how my fangs manifested. This did weaken the consumption ability, but in return gave the ability potential to grow and evolve.

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Vampire’s Hunger

“The teeth hunger for all things”

Tier Six

A set of tooth caps that empower all consumption related actions and allows the user to consume wounds from others

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My next artifact was created from the conjoined twins’ superspeed. The Comet Kicks were an asymmetrical pair of shoes that granted superspeed. The left shoe was a gold that transitioned to black at the soles with the right being its inverse.

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Comet Kicks

“Rocks you fast as fire”

Tier Three

A pair of shoes that grant low level superspeed

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The last artifact of the night was a brass bull head ring named the Brash Ring. It was made from Done Brawn’s superstrength.

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Brash Ring

“Strong like bull”

Tier Three

A ring that grants low level superstrength

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***

I was driving to get dinner at the diner like I usually do when I noticed my car being surrounded.

Large blue spectral wolves were running alongside my car. Now call me a pessimist but I think this might be an attempt of my life. One of the wolves got in front of my car and tried to stop it. my car’s front opened up into a fleshy gapping maw and shallowed the spirit in one bite.

Now might be a good time to mention that I picked up this car/mimic on a previous case. It was quite voracious as the owner, well various owners because you know, did not feed it. Now I have a car that runs great, has great security, and drives itself all at the low cost of buying a whole cow from the butcher every week.

The wolves on the side were torn by the huge claws that its doors turned into. The doors shifted back, and I got some distance from the rest of the pack by sticking my hand out of the window before spewing a cloud of Black Smoke imbued with the emotion of confusion behind me.

The cloud disoriented the wolves long enough for me to create a clear enough gap for my next maneuver.

I switched from smoke to corpse oil created from necromantic energy. After leaving a trail I ignited it by swinging a cross made of faith essence infused with righteous anger against the pavement created holy sparks that ignited the oil.

Holy flames, even those weakened by having to purify the oil, were enough to reduce the remaining pack to cinders.

I banked a hard U-turn and followed the trail the wolves left behind. That was an invitation and I was sure that if ignored it would not be me the next pack was sent after.

Being:

Body:

[Nascent Energy Vampire Progenitor]

Soul Tattoos:

[Celestial Weaving]

[Sand: Tier Three]

[Water: Tier Five]

[Faith: Tier One]

[Holy Water: Tier Three]

[Shadow: Tier Five]

[Necromancy: Tier Five]

[Rot: Tier ErRoR]

Special Abilities:

[Empowerment: Tier Nine]

[Emotional Empowerment: Tier One]

[Emotional Manipulation: Tier One]

Current Equipment:

Head:

[The Black Wasp Jackal’s Face]

[Vampire’s Hunger]

Earrings:

[]

Necklace:

[]

Clothes:

[Idle Hands]

Rings:

[The Mentalism Ring]

[Mena’s Book]

[Petrifying Ring]

[Olivia’s Friendship]

[Brash Ring]

Bracelets:

[]

Shoes:

[Comet Kicks]

Bracelets:

[]

Shoes:

[Comet Kicks]

Armaments:

[Beastly Heart]

[Murder Weapon]

Storage:

[Various Utility Artifacts]

[Various Articles Of Clothing]

[Death Dogtags]

[Leech Muscles]

[Leech Teeth]