++Vampires do not give up. Patience is the one virtue they surpass any human, and even some elves, in possessing. Their kind have been known to persist for centuries over what they want, and rarely fail.++

  Book 2: Chapter 17

  Reggie was doing a lot of running through grimwoods, now that he thought about it. Well that just meant he was getting plenty of use out of his undead physiology and it’s unlimited stamina. Ludvich had started their sprint a good fifty paces ahead of him, but that lead had only lasted for about a score of Reggie’s own strides. He’d taken that many in the first second, then slowed once they were neck-and-neck.

  It would’ve been nice to have more peelers or ants at their back to fend the enemy’s pursuit off, or to serve as a shield. Reggie kept waiting for the blast of flames to come.

  But it never did. He didn’t question the oddity in the moment, just kept running alongside Ludvich. They were making a lot of noise, he realised now. To his Enhanced Senses their sprints were like a pair of lumbering bulls smashing through the foliage, any predator within a mile would probably hear them. Was that why the elves weren’t pursuing?

  Reggie was getting ahead of himself there, maybe there was no logic behind it. Maybe the elves were just stupid, he’d certainly met stupid ones of their kind and seen them act in ways that went against their own best interests. Could he have finally been saved by a stroke of fortune, rather than endangered?

  He shivered. If that sort of thing started happening, Reggie would have to seriously reconsider his long-standing pessimism. The last time he’d done that the universe had opened the gates of hell and summoned a horde of giant ants to march through them and try to eat him.

  A minute into their run, and pursuit was long-gone. Even with bolstered Toughness few creatures could sprint at full speed for a minute straight. Reggie’s big fear, that Ludvich would be run down, had passed, and he let himself relax slightly at last.

  That relaxation didn’t grow when they reached the cave.

  “I found this about twenty years ago,” Ludvich grunted as he led Reggie down into it. “Only remembered it recently after…well, you know. After my memory got better. Not exactly cozy, but the wildlife don’t like it.”

  Reggie frowned at that, the place looked like it’d promise shelter to lots of nasties. “How come?”

  “It’s full of poisoned gas.”

  Reggie stumbled out of the cave instantly, coughing and yelling. “What the fuck?!”

  Ludvich was laughing, as loudly as was safe, and eyed Reggie with the most amused expression he could remember seeing on the old man in years.

  “We’re undead, poisoned gas doesn’t matter for us. Even if we breathed it in I doubt it’d do anything with all our organs not working. But we don’t breathe, so even that question doesn’t matter. We’ll be fine.”

  Reggie had let his panic take over for a moment there, and now felt keenly aware that Ludvich seemed to be adjusting to certain things about his new anatomy better than Reggie himself was. Practicality was a Witchfinder’s bare necessity, he supposed.

  Inside, the cave was pretty much exactly what they were looking for. It was small, it had only one entrance, and that entrance was just narrow enough that a wolf spider couldn’t cram its way through. That everything was solid stone also made it a pretty good assurance that any wolf spiders trying to get in would at least be delayed for a while. It was perfect as far as places to sit down in the dark and slowly heal went.

  Maybe not so slowly, even with the magic tainting Reggie’s sword wounds he still felt his tissue closing and reconnecting quickly enough. Without surging his blood and burning already-low ichor reserves, he expected that he’d be fully restored within a few hours. Regeneration remained as eternally useful as ever.

  Ludvich looked both better and worse. He had far more injuries, and far more varied. Up to and including an entire axehead jutting out of his neck, that he noticed only when Reggie pointed it out to him. Were it not for their undead bodies’ lack of circulation, Reggie would’ve been more than a little worried about having left a trail of blood to lead the enemy to their current hiding place.

  Fortunately, Ludvich hadn’t been cut by any magic weapons like Reggie.

  They didn’t have much to do except sit and heal, save for make a plan. So they did.

  “We have the swords now,” Reggie nodded down at them. “That’s pretty good right?”

  “Hm.” Ludvich picked one up. They had no sheathes for the weapons, which meant that just handling them was a matter for concern. Reggie plucked one off the ground himself and tested it in his grip.

  Elven blade, Tier 1

  Strength +16

  Speed +5

  Self-repair I

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  Reggie did know about magic weapons, a bit at least. Their secrets weren’t outright guarded in the way higher Classes or their acquisition were. Tier 1 meant that something was ostensibly a ‘Worker-killer’, effective at taking out pretty much anything up to the level of Worker, the Common Tier, with a single slice.

  That certainly lined up with what he was being told the Strength modifier was. +16 was about as big as it was possible for a Worker to get from their Class alone, compared to baseline human anatomy. Which meant that this blade’s edge would treat even a Worker as Tough as Ludvich in his prime like a regular weapon would Reggie himself, back in his own days as a Vagrant.

  “Always wondered why the Circumscribers aren’t given Tier 2 weapons,” Ludvich grunted.

  Reggie had to suppress his grin. Finally, something he knew that Ludvich didn’t.

  “They exist, but they’re really rare. Way rarer than a Tier 2 elf. I’m not sure how magic weapons are made, there seems to be a few different techniques, but all of them are expensive, difficult, time-consuming and need really uncommon and powerful Classes specialised in crafting just to attempt. There’s maybe two cities in all of Engyr where you can expect to find blades like this being made, and the people who make them are Tier 5 at a bare minimum.”

  Ludvich whistled appreciatively.

  “So what we have here, then, is a bit of a treasure trove.”

  They looked at each other for a moment, then their situation hit them and they both started laughing.

  “Three Circumscribers!” Ludvich grinned. “You killed three bloody Circumscribers!”

  Reggie hadn’t really registered that fact until Ludvich said it outloud. He laughed all the harder at hearing it.

  “It wasn’t even hard,” he realised. “Not really. I mean, you know, I ambushed them, and they seemed tired from fighting the praetorians, but…holy shit, I killed three Circumscribers. Which means the Warden has three less, too.”

  Reggie found his excitement growing the more he said it. This whole time, without really realising, he’d been assuming the Circumscribers couldn’t die. That Eryqai’s death was some fluke. They’d still been the demons who so effortlessly overpowered and killed him, in his head.

  But then, what had happened as soon as Ludvich reported that bear? A whole squad had shown up, rushed over even. Because, Reggie realised now, they’d suspected vampiric activity from the blood-mad creature. Because they were fearful of vampires.

  Fearful of what Reggie was, and they feared him because they knew he was a threat.

  “Sycily, can I make more vampires except Ludvich?

  The ex-Witchfinder froze at that, while Sycily gave her answer fast.

  At your current Tier, you will be able to create another Deity Tier vampire in one thousand years.

  “What?” A thousand. A thousand? That was insane, it was ridiculous. “How the hell do vampires even reproduce if it takes them that long? Does the average one even survive a thousand years?”

  The amount of time required between sirings is determined by the Tier of vampire one wishes to sire. You can create a second Deity-Tier vampire in one thousand years, but if you wish to make a mere Demigod Tier then it will take you only three hundred.

  “Only,” Ludvich scoffed. Sycily politely pretended not to hear the man as she continued.

  You can sire a Legend-Tier vampire in one century, a Hero in five decades, a Master in two, an Expert in one, an Adept in five years and a Journeyman in only one. Common-Tier vampires can be sired in unlimited numbers. Vampires are also unable to sire other vampires of an equal or greater Tier than themselves, so you will be limited to Deity Tier progeny or below.

  Reggie was trying to soak up everything. He understood the Tier names of course, that much was common knowledge at least. Deity meant Tier 9, Demigod Tier 8, each subsequent name represented the Tier immediately below.

  “This is Permanent Tier then?”

  Yes.

  So Reggie could sire an unlimited number of vampires, but they’d be stuck at Tier 1 for the rest of their existence.

  That didn’t make them useless of course, far from it. It just meant that he was a lot less enthusiastic about making vampiric allies besides Ludvich now. There were far fewer creatures in the grimwoods now that they’d more or less exterminated that ant nest and depopulated god knew how many other areas, and they were already feeling the effects of Ludvich gaining Attribute improvements at half the speed Reggie did. A Tier 1 vampire would need…what, 10 creatures drained per improvement? If they started with average human levels in everything they’d need to singularly eat their way through hundreds of creatures just to become a match for Ludvich in his human prime.

  A lot of time, work and blood upkeep just for soldiers who’d need a five-on-one numerical advantage to have decent odds against a Circumscriber.

  Ludvich came to very much the same conclusion, though a bit more slowly. He wasn’t as used to the balancing factors of blood supply as Reggie was. Come to think of it, he probably knew nothing about that at all. The lucky old fuck had been sired, and immediately handed all the dead things he could eat by his maker.

  Reggie’s hadn’t been that nice, which was a shame because, if her ability to snatch bullets out of the air was anything to go by, he’d already control Norvhan, Lorwick and probably most of East Engyr by now if she had.

  But there was nothing to gain by agonizing over what might have been.

  “Vampire armies are a thing for the future then, it seems.” He sighed.

  “Probably sooner than you’d expect, I’ve known vampires to accumulate subordinates among their own kind without siring them,” Ludvich noted. “Though that level of influence is still a ways off for you, anyway. I could…I could also sire, right?”

  Yes.

  “Right,” Ludvich continued. “And whatever I sire can sire, too. Though we’d best wait until we have a good candidate for that.”

  They sat there in silence for a good few seconds while Reggie worked up the courage to make his next suggestion.

  “And what if we start feeding people my blood?”

  Ludvich’s lip curled, his face tightened, his jaw clenched, his hands became fists. Everything about the man’s body twisted and twitched and looked on the verge of some violent explosion of temper. Reggie found his eyes flicking towards the magic swords laying beside them. Then Ludvich spoke.

  “Do it, if you think you must,” he said at last. “I took your parents from you, I’m not going to get you killed by holding you back from saving your own skin. Not at the expense of these fucking people.”

  Reggie hadn’t realised until then how much he’d been silently hoping the ex-Witchfinder would put his foot down and veto the idea. Now that he had the all-clear, it was his decision at last. No more putting it off, no more pushing it into the future. They were choosing their next move and it needed doing.

  Was he willing to do this?

  He’d been a little boy, too young to even remember now, and they’d wanted to kill him. They’d murdered his parents and stained Ludvich’s hands with their blood, just because they saw Reggie was different and decided he needed to die for it. They’d ruined his fucking life out of ignorance and stupidity and hatred.

  “We’ll do it,” Reggie said at last. “We’ll do it to as many of the fuckers as we can snatch. As soon as we’re healed, we start raiding.”