The Primal Hunter

Ah, vampires. If any race had been truly marginalized and suppressed throughout the history of the multiverse, it was them. The Risen and Holy Church both hated them, and most humans, elves, and other humanoids also weren’t fans due to the racial skills they possessed.

For a good reason too. Vampires had the ability to drain the lifeforce of others. In fact, they had to do this due to a massive drawback associated with their race: the lack of natural regeneration.

Pretty much all other races could live without any kind of sustenance until they died of age after reaching a certain grade. You could put Jake in a box, and he would keep living until he ran out of lifespan. If you took the same box and put a vampire in it, the vampire would eventually die due to starvation simply due to passive energy expenditure. They did have some racial skills to alleviate this drawback, such as the Eternal Slumber skill, but it wasn’t perfect, and there were many times Eternal Slumber truly did turn out to be an eternal rest.

Now, the usual way to drain lifeforce for a vampire was through drinking blood. It was easy and straightforward, but it had the issue of harming the victim that was used as food quite a lot and could easily result in a casualty. Even if the target didn’t die, they would lose resources, and continued exposure to vampires would result in a temporary reduction in stats and prolonged periods of weakness. It was like Jake overdrawing his own body with Arcane Awakening except far worse, and often items or extremely skilled and specialized healers were required to fix the ailment.

Jake had already learned all of this during his time in Yalsten, and he had now learned even more by reading a few basic tomes on vampires that were already present in his library. He had even called Meira, who had given him quite the negative input if he said so himself.

“Vampires are always part of powerful families and really ward their legacies and power. They also buy a lot of slaves to use as food and simply for pleasure. The most positive outcome for a slave sent to a vampire house is the vampires liking the taste of their blood and deciding to use them for crafting blood potions. Well, they would also get really lucky and one day become a vampire themselves… if that is even considered a better fate.”

So, yeah, Meira wasn’t a fan. Yet she didn’t seem alarmed or surprised when Jake said he would go and visit the Nalkar House. Jake learned the reason for this was quite simple: there was no way they would ever dare drink a single drop of his blood. No, not because he was blessed by the Viper or had a backer or something like that, but because drinking his blood would be what in the vampire world was known as a very bad time.

You see, it turned out that drinking from someone with highly toxic blood courtesy of Blood of the Malefic Viper wasn’t the most pleasant experience. It involved a lot of corroded flesh and overall just made the entire action futile as the vampire would lose more blood energy than they would gain.

The exact polar opposite of someone like Jake were slaves or servants bred to be used as food. Viewed as livestock or pets, these people were trained and nurtured all their lives to be valuable blood banks. It was somehow a recognized Path of the system, and they even had skills and professions focused on providing better and more tasty blood while not being susceptible to the weakness after a vampire used them.

For classes, they tended to still have one focused on combat, but nearly always of the physical variety for better stats-distributions. These were also specialized and worked in synergy with vampires, making them potential soldiers.

The classification for these people was Blood Thrall for the weaker and less recognized ones. Blood Servant was then used for the more qualified and influential non-vampires, and finally, the Blood Disciples. Blood Disciples were those who had the potential of joining the main family and becoming vampires themselves.

Jake had decided to read a bit more up on modern vampirism as he didn’t wanna go in with knowledge many Eras old from Yalsten. In fact, it was a bit funny to read the books from Yalsten and compare them with more modern ones. One difference was that in Yalsten, merely consuming health potions and potions made with herbs was considered adequate to regenerate blood energy, but in modern times, consuming such potions was only done in combat.

inherently tied to the consumption of blood and life, so to try and substitute it was to stray from that Path. Short-term, it didn’t matter, but long term, the effects on Records became significant. Maybe some vampires in Yalsten knew this, as they still kept live humanoids to drink from, but Jake knew only the elite were able to indulge in this. Keeping the fact that using health potions was harmful in the long run

consumption of other humanoid races. The worst part was that it had to be humanoid. Beast blood and such only worked for vampiric

it was far different. You had to be part of a family or be hunted down and slain,

races, but it also meant they were more restrained and few in number. They were careful and wanted to

everything. That entire thing where only the talented could become vampires also led to every natural-born vampire being the child of talented individuals. The weakest vampires were born at D-grade, the majority in C-grade, and the Nalkar House, as an example, had four S-grades and dozens of A-grades currently alive. This did not sound like a lot for a “faction,” but one had to remember this was merely a faction connected to the Order and did not contain all Nalkar vampires that existed.

there and receiving benefits would help obscure who his backer was, maybe even making some factions assume

simple as merely taking a teleportation gate. Jake had to put in a request to be able to enter their area as it

affirmation that he could come, which also unlocked his token and allowed him

stayed in his good old combat outfit. Jake didn’t think he would get into a fight, but he wanted to be in what he

stepped through, finding himself in an entirely new area. Jake stepped

of individuals staring at the newcomer. All of them were either elves, humans, a few beastkin, and some mixed races. Compared to

entire area seemed like the outer area of a large medieval city. The only thing really distinguishing this place from anywhere else was the oddly familiar sky. It was red, and

was a young man that looked about Jake’s own

[Vampire – lvl ???]

a weak one either. The vampire looked at Jake briefly before smiling, revealing his fangs. “Welcome to our humble abode, Hunter. I am

vampire Alcor didn’t even recognize their existence but just looked at Jake. The vampire also

hope for a pleasant stay,” Jake smiled

hand to reveal a rune of blood that then conjured a frame of red

the spooky-looking mirror portal for a moment before stepping through. He felt no sense of danger from it, and quite frankly, the C-grade wouldn’t need

furnished hall, and Jake instantly felt dozens of auras far more powerful than himself. At least twenty C-grades, and one

who gave off an aura that seemed

eyes. The vampire was currently sitting on a large lounge chair with two barely-dressed women standing at his side –

as he got up and began walking towards Jake. “All wish to be the hunter in any situation, but never the prey. And as you stand here, I come to believe that you do indeed adopt this trait, at least in concept. Immune to presences of those stronger… unwilling to recognize himself potentially a prey before a predator. You are a hunter indeed, with all the bravado that comes with it, young Bloodline