Vampire Cultivation System in a Hidden World of Monsters

"Who are you and what are you doing here?" Said a space pirate who was foaming at the mouth and currently pointing a gun at my face.

I chose this moment to manifest Midas again and he bit the pirate's arm. I ducked as the pirate shot his gun. Lara got out of the pod, and I did the same after her, while Midas wrestled with the pirate.

I poured more Vi and life essence into Midas and he grew three times larger. He swallowed the pirate whole. Now I had two live pirates in my inventory.

"Hey, Terry! What's happening in there?" A voice said from outside the room we were in.

"Terry's in time out!" I said, as I walked out of the room.

"What? Who are you? Where's Terry?" He said, aiming his gun at me.

"I said Terry is in time out. Now its your turn to go into time out." I looked at Midas and pointed at the guy ten feet in front of me.

Midas jumped through space at the man. The man shot at Midas but the bullets bounced off. Midas swallowed him whole as well.

This was getting a little easy. Of course, as soon as I say that, things will get hard again, but I had to say it. It was true. I might have needed to ratchet up the difficulty even higher.

Or maybe the nightmare difficulty wasn't showing in the enemies, because it was showing somewhere else. It was showing in the madness progress. I was minutes away from incurable lethal madness with no immediate solution.

As a last minute consideration, I changed my blessing to the Blessing of Protection, hoping its limited invincibility would be able to give me more time.

Lara, Midas, and I made our way in zero gravity down the corridor to the actual helm of the ship. We crawled through the doorway into a large spread out room filled with consoles and work stations. There was a large display in the front of the room showing the view out of the front of the ship.

Pirates were sitting in the stations, but they didn't seem to be doing any work. Some of them were just giggling to themselves and some were just staring in a direction without moving.

Down by the display seemed to be the space pirate captain. He wasn't dressed any differently. They weren't dressed like traditional pirates mind you. They all were wearing tech pants and harnesses on their upper bodies that had a bunch of strappy bits.

The captain was wearing the same, but he seemed to hold an authority and confidence that the others didn't possess. He turned around in midair to see me, Midas, and Lara floating into the room.

"Men, get them!" He yelled, pointing at us.

His men fumbled and struggled to get out of their chairs. Some of them didn't. Some of them just shot their guns at us. I put my body over Lara's to shield her from the gunfire. A few bullets peppered my back, but nothing my advanced healing couldn't handle.

Midas pushed off of me to attack the pirates shooting at us. He bit the heads off a few, the legs off a few more, and the arms off some more. When all the pirates had been taken out, I stopped shielding Lara with my body.

"Wow, I did not expect that to happen so quickly," the pirate captain said.

"Relinquish, control of the ship! You're done!" I said.

"I'm done when I say I'm done," the pirate captain said. He started glowing red and wisps of red smoke started to come off his body.

A long red health bar spread across the lower part of my vision. Above it said, "The Dread Pirate Shmigel."

"Seriously, '@$$'? You couldn't come up with a new name, so you named him Shmigel? Come on!" I said to the air. It might have been my imagination, but I thought I felt a massive cosmic being shrug its shoulders.

The pirate captain didn't have a weapon, so I felt guilty drawing mine. So I didn't. I decided to fight him bare handed. It wasn't particularly exciting. I wish it was.

We clasped hands together as we flew at each other. When we clasped hands, a shockwave shot out pushing everything back away from us. I punched him and a shockwave came out. He slapped me and a shockwave came out.

We ended up wrestling each other in mid air, trying to get the other in a submission hold. It took several minutes but I ended up getting a rear naked choke on him. He passed out and I cut his head off, just to be done with it.

I was so tired and fed up with fighting at this point, I would kill to end it. I did kill to end it. It was this thought process that alerted me, something was wrong. I shouldn't be thinking this way. I shouldn't be this callous about killing people even if they were in a game.

[Madness Progression = 100%]

I started to get a splitting headache. It felt like my mind was splitting in two. Everything went black.

When I could see again, I was standing in blood up to my ankles as far as I could see in every direction.

"'@$$'? System? Anyone?" I yelled but got no answer.

"No one can help you now," A voice behind me said.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

I turned around to see someone who appeared to be made of blood standing there. After a few seconds the blood dripped off his head and face and I realized underneath the blood was a person who looked a lot like me.

In fact, he looked exactly like me. "Who are you and what you want?" I said.

"I'm you! Well, I'm the better stronger you. The you that you could be if you gave into the hunger that drives you," he said.

The blood continued to drip off him revealing more of his body. He appeared to be completely naked, and as the blood continued to drip I realized how true that was.

He was completely naked even down to his exposed genitals. That wasn't what disturbed me though. What disturbed me was the fact that he was rock hard.

"Why are you hard?" I said, giving him a weird look.

"What? What's more intimidating than a rock hard dong?" He said.

"Put that away. I can't take this conversation seriously with you just hanging out like that," I said.

Experience new tales on empire

"Ok, ok," He said. He pulled pants out of the ankle deep blood and put them on and a shirt and a jacket and put those on as well until he was fully clothed. "How's that?"

"Much better. Now we can talk. So you were saying you're the evil version of me?" I said.