Dawn Walker - Chapter 290: The First Lesser Vampire
Chapter 290: 290: The First Lesser Vampire
—
He kept walking across the dark ground of the Void Land while the notification unfolded inside his mind.
[Ding! SYSTEM Notification: The host has gained a new skill for reaching the Chaos rank three.
New skill acquired: Blood Regeneration Lv1]
Sekhmet’s steps did not stop, but his focus sharpened at once.
The name alone made something cold and useful settle into place inside him.
“Show me.”
The answer came immediately.
[Ding! SYSTEM Notification-
Blood Regeneration Level 1: As long as the host’s brain and heart remain intact, the host can regenerate all body parts.
Regeneration consumes: Chaos Energy.
Recovery speed: Depends on the severity of injury, volume of missing flesh, and complexity of lost body structure.
Minor wounds can heal quickly.
Major wounds require greater chaos energy and longer time.
Severed limbs and destroyed body sections can be restored if sufficient Chaos Energy is available.
Skill speed, efficiency, and total restorative capability will increase with future skill level up.]
Sekhmet’s eyes darkened slightly.
That.. That was not merely useful. That was the kind of skill that changed the shape of every future fight.
His mind moved through implications immediately. Swords through flesh. Crushed arms. Torn organs. Lost limbs. Deep battle wounds that should cripple, maim, or end momentum. Not all gone from consequence, no. The energy cost alone would prevent carelessness. But survivable in ways most enemies would never predict. And if he kept raising the skill…
His mouth shifted faintly. “Good. Very good.”
The kind of good that belonged not to comfort, but to war.
He looked down once at his own hand as he walked, flexing the fingers lightly. He thought of the auction hall. Alex’s claws across his back. The pain. The blood. The way battle could still cut him if the enemy reached the right angle with enough force. Blood Regeneration changed that. Not into invulnerability. Not yet. But into endurance so unnatural that even stronger enemies could make the mistake of thinking they had won before they truly had.
“This will save my life in many ways,” he thought.
Not poetically. But practically. Many times, if he used it correctly.
And, as always, the system had no interest in modesty.
[Ding! SYSTEM Notification: 100 percent Skill integration complete.]
He let the new understanding settle while he approached the holding grounds.
Fifty plus men waited there, broken into clusters by fear and old injuries. The captives had learned by now that silence was sometimes safer than noise. That did not mean hope had died in all of them. It had simply turned mean, weak, and half-starved.
It made them more frightened because a few minutes ago the twins had fed on some of them.
Some still looked up whenever he approached, as if hoping to read whether today would be the day he killed them, fed on them again, or forgot them.
Dickon saw him first. Of course he did.
The son of Dickoff Iron sat with his back near a rough stone rise, dirt on his clothes, bitterness in his face, and the unmistakable look of someone who had spent too long trapped in humiliation and had not become wiser for it. His eyes fixed on Sekhmet at once, then moved past him for one heartbeat toward the crimson sphere in the far distance before snapping back.
He had seen enough already tonight. Let him keep seeing. He can’t do anything.
Sekhmet stopped a few steps beyond the front line of captives and let his gaze move over them one by one.
He was not looking for fear. Fear was everywhere. He was looking for structure.
The seven Chaos Rank Three men stood out even in their current worn state. Better bodies. Better base endurance. More preserved spirit under the same captivity. A lesser vampire made from one of them would clearly whether the transformation was worth using regularly.
He identified the healthiest one almost at once.
Broad chest. Strong neck. Minimal limp. Eyes still too proud to stay lowered properly. Enough weight on him that the feeding line had not yet turned him gaunt. Not the strongest overall of the seven before capture perhaps, but now the most stable and physically useful one.
Sekhmet pointed at him.
“You.”
The man stiffened. The others beside him instinctively shifted away.
Good for them. Let fear choose the distance for him.
The captive swallowed once. “What do you want?”
Sekhmet looked at him without warmth. “Come here.”
The man hesitated at first. The hesitation didn’t last for long. Because he was scared that if he wouldn’t obey him. Something bad might happen.
He had seen too much already in this place to mistake hesitation for defense. Two nearby prisoners stepped back from him entirely as if afraid merely being close would make them somehow share in his unknown selection.
He rose slowly and came forward.
Dickon watched all of it with growing tension, and behind that tension something uglier had started to grow. Not only fear of pain. Recognition. The slow understanding that Sekhmet did not merely keep monsters in the dark.
He was one too.
And Dickon had walked into his reach by foolish choice.
The chosen captive stopped at the correct distance and tried, with only partial success, to hold onto some remnant of pride.
Sekhmet studied him once more.
“Chaos Rank Three. Healthy enough. Afraid enough. Useful. Good.”
The man’s eyes flicked to Sekhmet’s mouth, then to the blood-dark focus in his face, then back again.
“You are not going to kill me, are you?” he said, and the line came out wrong because it was clearly meant to be a statement, but sounded too much like a request.
“That depends,” Sekhmet said.
The man’s throat worked.
Dickon’s breathing changed in the background. Sekhmet heard it without looking.
He did not explain what he was about to do.
That was unnecessary.
He caught the man by the back of the neck with one hand and pulled him closer. The captive made a short, involuntary sound, more surprise than resistance, and then Sekhmet bit.
The man jerked hard.
This blood was nowhere near the quality of Sofia or Natasha. Mortal. Coarser. Thinner in richness. But still stronger than the average line here and stable enough for what he needed. He drank only enough to establish the opening, enough to carry his blood into the man’s body and overwrite the necessary lines without draining him toward collapse.
The captive trembled under his grip.
Around them, the other men held still with the absolute, frozen silence of prey trying not to breathe where predators fed.
Dickon stared so hard his eyes had gone wide.
Sekhmet pulled back.
