Second Genesis

The next download was [Blood Surge]. It seemed to be similar to blood doping, increasing the amount of blood in the body beyond what it could reasonably withstand and then increasing the efficiency with which the body used it. It seemed that this was also the method that Amunet had used to heal him, because it could also be directed toward other people.

The download after that was [Branching Blood]. This was probably the one that Amunet had used to form that tree of blood, the very one she had ended up using in order to take down so many of those enemies at the same time.

Grey tried to flip the page again, but there was nothing.

He took a deep breath to steady himself again and then exhaled. It seemed the tome wouldn’t allow you to continue until you grasped these abilities.

If he learned these things from the tome, his Vampire Lord Frame would definitely double, maybe even triple in strength.

But what good would it be? If he was a little stronger?

For a moment, Grey even thought of simply abandoning the tome entirely. There was no point in continuing like this, he would just end up gaining strength that wouldn’t make a dent against Captain Terran and Baron Giyoto.

At best, it would help him be able to deal with Silva in a more straight forward matter, maybe massacre Stella and her little group a little easier, but it didn’t feel like it would be making a dent.

And with every death costing him more and more, he wasn’t sure if it would be worthwhile.

Grey wracked his brains, trying to come up with a better path forward, something better that he could do to change all of this.

’There’s just one more thread that I haven’t pulled on yet.’

Baron Giyoto seemed to find the idea that Captain Terran would go so far to kill him ridiculous. He believed that Terran should have been heavily tied down and restricted.

The question was why?

Logically, if Terran was sent here from a far more powerful city, and he had a father who could pull off something like shielding him from punishment for blaspheming the Goddess, then it logically followed that he should have a lot of leeway by the time he got here.

He had already gotten away with blaspheming the Goddess, so what else could he not get away with?

So this was a two-pronged problem for Grey.

On the one hand, it seemed like Baron Giyoto knew about ways that Terran was restrained that Grey had no idea about. If he could find what those restraints were, and pull on those levers, he might actually survive.

On the other hand, despite these restraints that Giyoto was sure were holding Terran back, Terran had found it logical enough to ignore.

Why was that? What made him so confident in ignoring something that presumably tied up even his powerful background?

’The Producers?’

From the moment Grey learned about what was happening with his hidden treasures, he realized that the Producers were limiting him in some way, for some reason.

At first, he thought it was maybe for entertainment. Then he thought it was maybe because they wanted to hide the mistake they had made with his Nexis Suit. There was even an inkling that it might be because he had multiple Neural Frame Types, but he wasn’t 100% sure about that either.

At this point, if someone was paying close enough attention, he had definitely been exposed about that last point already. There was no hiding it. He was using too many abilities, from too many treasures, and he didn’t have the luxury of hiding it, either.

He was barely surviving as of now—if this could even be called surviving in the first place. Restraining himself wasn’t something he could do even if he wanted to do it.

’And so what if it is? What the hell am I going to do about them right now?’

Grey frowned and then he thought of something.

The Great Udon.

That floating mask thing was a huge loose cannon, and they had given him almost too much freedom. If Grey was a betting man—and he might have very well been if not for those pesky minimum age requirements—then he would definitely bet that the Great Udon had made Joaquin one of his three promising selections because of him.

All that guy wanted was chaos, and there was no greater chaos than taking away something that should very obviously be someone else’s and watching them crash out about it.

Maybe Grey would have done exactly that had he had the luxury to do so, but he hadn’t had that.

Instead, he was in a situation where he was barely scraping by the skin of his teeth.

’If I make a spectacle of going after the political hack, maybe I could force the green mask dude to make it a live event? And in that case, I might be able to...’

Grey’s thoughts trailed off. He raised his hands through his scalp, practically peeling layers of skin off as he looked at himself through the mirror.

Putting his life in the hands of a psychopath, that would make him worse than an idiot. Relying on other people was just going to get him killed faster. Even the one person he had almost trusted had ended up stabbing him in the back. Baron Giyoto seemed so kind, but everything Grey had learned made him think it was only a matter of time before he did the same thing.

He had enemies everywhere he looked, no solution to his problems, and no path forward.

If not for this damned Center of Balance Ability he apparently hated so much, he would already be spiralling if this didn’t count as much already.

Grey’s heart suddenly skipped a beat as he recalled something.

When he was in the catacombs, he had entered a trance and his feet had moved on their own. In the end, he ended up appearing in front of the altar before he knew what happened, almost like he had been puppeted over there.

’Resonance...’ Grey’s eyes narrowed. ’... Extending my Neural Frame away from my body...’

An idea slowly began to form in Grey’s mind.

Then he grinned.

’Don’t let me get my hands on you. First thing I’m doing is stuffing a Popeye’s biscuit down your fucking throat. No drink.’

Grey flipped the pages of the blood witch tome and slapped a palm down on the first page.