"Jeez, wipe your mouth after you’re done sucking all that meat—."

BANG.

Calixan appeared before Grey in a flash, blood still dribbling down his chin.

It was fast, Grey knew that it was fast, faster than anyone he had ever faced in one on one battle before. Well, other than Valdris. That man had simply been on another level.

And yet, Grey was sure of one thing...

He could react. And he could react easily.

Almost as though to prove it to himself, one of his fang daggers disappeared and he caught Calixan’s arm before the latter could use his new claws of darkness to pierce through his neck.

"Holy shit." Grey said.

Calixan ripped his arm free, slid back against the ground, rounded to the side, and then lunged again. He moved like the wind, his movements erratic and nigh impossible to track.

And yet Grey caught his wrist again. This time, reacting faster than Calixan could, his other fang dagger surged and cut his arm clean off.

The fang dagger sucked the arm dry before Calixan could even finish his retreat.

Grey blinked.

Calixan blinked.

Grey cleared his throat. "I would apologize, but after all the shit I’ve been through, I really deserve something exactly like this. In fact, I deserve even better than this if you really think about it."

Calixan’s only response was a growl. Grey’s response, however, was a step. One that instantly put him in front of Calixan.

He pierced his dagger through the man’s neck and smiled.

"Shh, shh, don’t fight it, don’t fight it."

Calixan did fight it.

It didn’t matter in the slightest.

The man was sucked dry until nothing but a pile of ash was left behind. Then, as though it had finally been completed, a roaring amount of energy surged around Grey’s body.

He could feel his Vampire Lord Frame working overtime to convert all of the blood—into what? He had not a single clue.

The feeling was similar to [Blood Surge], one of the three skills that Grey had picked up from the witch’s tome. But that skill was like blood doping, it was temporary, and it would fade.

This feeling felt like it would fade as well, but for very different reasons.

[Blood Surge] would leave him a bit weakened. It was almost like a berserk skill and even had a measure of blood lust it added to the mind.

But by comparison, whatever the fang was doing was very different. It almost felt like his body was being upgraded.

Grey didn’t know how he felt about this. After all, wasn’t a lot of Blood’s blood from the people the Holy Knights had killed?

Grey couldn’t feel a deluge of various kinds of blood, though. He only felt one stream of blood from a single source. That probably meant that those people had been used for fuel, but hadn’t actually made any changes to Blood himself.

Still, if he hadn’t had to do this in order to survive, Grey wasn’t sure if he would be willing to do this at all.

He looked down at his hands. His skin was still giving off wild tendrils of crimson, and it only seemed to be getting faster and faster despite the fact the inside of his body was actually feeling a lot calmer as the energy was quickly digested.

Grey looked at his status screen to see if that was what was changing, but there was no shift to his stats either. He didn’t really understand.

Was it just an amplification by the fang spirit, then? But that didn’t feel quite right. His Legendary Set gave him +50 DEX and PER, but there wasn’t a boost to that either.

The only new boost was to his Abilities, but that was still at +3 Levels and nothing else.

The energy suddenly stopped. It felt like it had reached a bottleneck.

Grey understood what that bottleneck was innately, it was the same one that had been bothering him all this time.

Iron Veil.

Of all six of his Vampire Lord Abilities, Iron Veil was the only one that hadn’t reached Core Sync because he didn’t quite understand it as well as all the others.

But in battle just now, when Helion Resonance failed to heat up his blood blade, he had instinctively reacted with Iron Veil as though that could help.

Still, even if he could use Iron Veil like that, it would only be enough to make his Active Link a little bit better, it wouldn’t do much in relation to Core Sync.

Everything else just seemed to flow so seamlessly together.

Heart Lance formed his blades and formed a connection with his heart, allowing him to take energy into it that could be used by Hemorrhagic Regeneration more freely. This energy allowed him to comprehend his opponents with greater ease, which allowed Void Gaze and Crimson Cognition to work together to both measure an opponent’s flow of blood and briefly stop it.

’Abyssal Anchor doesn’t quite fit into that loop, now does it...’ Grey’s head tilted as he lost himself in thought.

Abyssal Anchor made his mind vast, causing any status ailments to sink into it almost like a drop of water to an ocean. But...

Grey’s pupils constricted.

Was it really that blood didn’t come with any side effects? What if Abyssal Anchor was precisely the reason he didn’t feel overwhelmed by the amount of different blood that was in Blood’s body?

In that case, Abyssal Anchor might fit into the cycle perfectly. It would allow him to form a connection with the blood of several people at once without being overwhelmed by their influence.

But that still left Iron Veil.

Grey felt a bit of the bottleneck he was facing loosen, almost like he was just a single step away from exactly what he was looking for, exactly what his Vampire Lord Frame was looking for.

’I get it.’ Grey said, his eyes glowing.

Heart Lance was slotted under Body Combat, so he had always thought that it was offensive. By comparison, Iron Veil was slotted under Body Resistance, so he always thought it was defensive.

They could both be used as such, but he had their fundamental uses all wrong.

Heart Lance could turn blood into blades not because that was its duty, but because its main function was to link the blood with the heart, and further with one’s thoughts and intentions.

It could just as easily turn his blood into a plump, juicy ass if he wanted.

He kept forming blades, but it could be a whip, an arrow, it could be a fucking guillotine if he was bold enough—and he was certainly bold enough.

Iron Veil, by comparison, was what truly could harden his blood. It was only listed under Body Resistance because his blood was literally part of his body. If it hardened, what else would it be if not a resistance?

The flow between these abilities was much more lax than Grey realized, but that was by design. That was what made a Perfect Frame so powerful.

It wasn’t just having six Abilities to each one of the slots, it was having a strong overlap and synergy between them.

Iron Veil wasn’t just any defensive Ability, it wasn’t just any offensive Ability either.

Chi.

Spikes of black red appeared all across Grey’s body, even right beneath his feet, shattering the earth beneath him.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

The bottleneck crumbled to pieces.