Blood and Qi: A Vampire Xianxia LitRPG

The old crone didn’t lift the 10 essence-battery per year restriction for John. She did grant and set up a way for him to receive assistance studying. The same assistance all Li received.

When possible, John studied with the child group of whatever Alii had CQ officer duty for Kulolo, and Abe Cohen was allowed to accompany him. The professor loved doing so as he was gaining a lot of knowledge unknown on Earth he could share with his peers.

John had thought all Peerless had a clan tattoo on the back of their necks, but it was bioware called a cyberspace link, or CSL, which served a function somewhat like the cellphones and internet of Earth, and the Trainers enhanced its functionality. He already had a very restricted CSL, but he received a better one in the shape of a Kahaka tattoo with access to a lot of information. He wasn’t the first to receive the tattoo. Nine had that honor.

Nine had replaced John as the golden boy of the Peerless and was often featured in the weekly recaps. The biosynth didn’t even have to live in the Kahaka district of Kulolo.

John and Abe usually arrived at the child group as the kids were finishing breakfast, which was after morning exercises. At that time, the Li studied for an hour, did an hour in the Trainer, drilled for an hour, then had two hours to play with their peers.

Some of that playing was also done in the Trainer. Then the schedule was repeated over again, ending with dinner followed by a mock real-world event performed by the whole child group, after which there was another exercise session.

When John arrived in the morning, he’d be handed a packet to study. Sometimes Abe would have to speak to an Ele about the content or translate it into terms he was familiar with.

At first, John thought he was being toyed with, as the packet he was given was just nonsensical gibberish. The one he received the previous day read –

K42 IEP 4 – linear algebra and vector spaces: inverses, determinants, unitary matrices, inner products, diagonalization, eigenvectors, eigenvalues. Fourier series and transforms. Ordinary differential equations: homogeneous and inhomogeneous first order and second order equations, power series methods. Partial differential equations: separation of variables, Green’s functions. Complex analysis: analytic functions, singularities, calculus of residues.

This was what the twelve to fourteen-year-old Li groups learned. Except they could understand it and turned the packet in for grading the same day it was received. John took his home to study with Abe. The new packet he received read –

K42 IEP 5 - structure and function of cells, proteins, nucleotides, and membranes. Fundamental physical concepts governing the behavior of those structures, including thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, electrostatics in solution, fluid mechanics, chemical equilibria, reaction rates, mechanisms behind cellular functions, molecular motors, nerve signals, regulatory pathways and biophysical techniques, including electrophoresis, microscopy, and electrophysiology.

John had vowed he would study and learn better than anyone had ever done either in all of history. No one could fault his effort, but effort, diligence, and discipline could only go so far without capability. It wasn’t just an issue of memorizing information. [Elaborative Encoding] would’ve helped, but it was more an issue of understanding than memorizing.

Abe did what he could. He focused on getting John to understand the basics, and even those were well above John’s capacity to understand.

During the evenings, Abe worked on building John’s foundation, trying to shore that up and make it solid enough he’d struggle less during academy classes and testing.

Seeing how the child groups operated was interesting. Alia started puberty around the age of ten. As soon as their udders started milking until they turned about eighteen years of age, they ruled their child group with an iron fist and took their duties extremely seriously. The other children jumped at their commands.

Depending on the size of the kauwa and child group, there could be one to four Alia with the eldest in charge of the others, all ensuring training and studying were done with ruthless efficiency, and that was on top of their motherly duties caring for the babes and toddlers.

John was thankful the Alia were not sexualized at all. They never came close to flirting and were covered from neck to toe. When an Alia ascended to Gold to do their internship, he wondered exactly what happened to them. He assumed whatever switch turned their milk off also hypersexualized them.

Li, Ele, and Alia were all very different and trained and studied differently. They were all odd, but the Li were the most like normal children.

After leaving their child group, Li had a year of academy. Alii had a year of some sort of internship. Mele went to a university at the age of 12 for a six-year program that had two years of study, two years of something called Experiential and Practical Learning, and then two more years of study.

The Ele kids were strange, solitary, and behaved as old men while still toddlers. It made John sad that they had nothing like a normal childhood and had no interest in having one either.

John had been in some child groups with two Ele around the same age, and the two would ignore each other as much as they ignored everyone else, lost in their own world. He hoped part of their minds were talking with other Ele kids through the CSL.

By far, the most useful parts of the day were the two hours John spent within the Trainer, and, oddly enough, the playtime. In the Trainer, he could practice obstacle courses, conduct mock battles, missions, and learn Peerless strategy.

During playtime, the Li kids would review small group tactics, strategies, various equipment, drill and ceremony, and grill John on history and the Aikapu. As a reward, he’d practice combat and roughhouse with the kids and throw them around a little, which they enjoyed tremendously as they never received attention from adults.

The Li had something called a three-fold mind. What that meant wasn’t apparent until John saw the kids inside a Trainer blazing through dozens of screens while doing whatever else they were doing all while talking to him or demonstrating various perimeter types or how Peerless reacted to near and far ambushes and the like.

The Ele supposedly had seven-fold minds. Alia only had two-fold minds since they needed to be more empathetic. Their duty was to live and think in the present as much as possible and miss nothing happening around them or to those they led.

And John still had other obligations on top of studying. He helped Gle Ah when he could and still trained with Marbrouk, Hux, Gabin, and Naoki when possible. He went to the Kahaka arena at every opportunity, though he never received permission again to attend the Kotown arena. He made very little betting as the payouts became even worse for him, often only netting one crystal for every 200 or 500 bet. There was no chance of him attaining enough to purchase the mats for the [Elaborative Encoding] [Perk] before the exam.

Surprisingly, John’s foundation settled after about three months again. He saw no benefit in holding off on ranking up, so did so. And continued to study and study.

The last week to take placement exams came far too quickly. John felt more nervous than he had in a long, long while. He would be relieved if the studying was ending, but he would have to continue studying diligently until he graduated academy.

The entrance exams were graded on a curve. The highest and lowest score within each event skewed how many points everyone else got. The highest score received 400 points and the lowest score received zero. There were ten events or categories.

Nine had already completed his placement exams. After refunctioning himself prior to every event, Nine scored so well he had to retake the exams while sticking to the same functioned-form for all events. Nine still scored better than any Li ever had in every category and currently had a perfect score of 4,000.

There were many categories John and Abe were certain John would get a zero in. In all the events John could excel at, he needed to skew the curve so badly that he’d still manage to pass the exam, as only total score mattered.

After being seen off by his friends, John went to Gaan and made his way to the facility where the entrance exams were held. He was surprised how small the building was, and further surprised to find out he was the only person taking the exams that day. The only other person in the building was an ancient looking Mele in a clearly outdated biosuit sitting at a desk.

The Mele completely ignored John and just looked at nothing while occasionally glimpsing at a monitor. John cleared his throat many times, each time louder than the last, and still went ignored. Finally, an Alii entered through the front door and said, “Hi, Kahaka Four-three! Sorry, we usually have a trainee running these exams. They just sent me over from CQ to administer yours.”

It had been a while since John saw an Alii. How gorgeous the one in front of him was, and her scent, immediately muddled his mind. She was wearing extremely skimpy and sheer robes covering not much at all. All eight of her sacs were full, meaning she recently returned from or had built up a queue during deployment. He found all her sacs being so plump appealing for some reason.

The credits John possessed immediately started to burn a hole in his pocket. He needed to clamp down on his resolve. I made a vow to Amber, and I will not break it. Be a man. Stop thinking like a boy, John thought, admonishing himself, as he took a knee and bowed his head. “Greetings, Alii Pono.”

John could tell the Alii knew what effect she had on him, as she smiled wider and struck an even more salacious pose. Damn these devil witches, he thought.

“There’s a queue to quicken me, but if you need release before the exam, a deuce will only cost you four credits. I’ve never done this so I’m going to be relying heavily on, oh…,” the Alii stopped as she looked at the Mele at the desk. “You’re Meleua Two-three-five from Kauwa Makani Ka, right?”

“Yes,” replied the Meleua without looking up. A strange thing, since all Peerless usually ogled any Alii that came into view, at least for a few moments.

“Oh. What’re you doing here? I have CQ.”

“My Alii ordered me here,” replied the Meleua, still without looking up.

The Alii tried to keep a genuine smile on her face as she said, “Oh, good. I’m glad to have such a famous Meleua assisting me. Please tell the Nani I send my respects, regards, admiration, and thanks.”

John could tell the Alii began communicating through her CSL as her eyes went unfocused. He stood and waited.

After about a minute the Alii looked at John and smiled. “Okay. All set. Did you want to purchase a deuce before beginning?”

“Sorry, Alii, but I need to stay focused to score well.”

“Okay. I’ll be available after the exam if you’d prefer. Since you’re the only examinee here, we’ll let you pick which order you take the exams in. It’s all done in a Trainer. Don’t worry, I’ll be right there with you. And you know your Tech 4 NCS won’t be able to block your info? Not if you want the Trainer to have accurate models to test. This Trainer is far more advanced than any you’ve had access to prior. If you’re still set on keeping information from us, this is your last chance to back out.”

John said, “Understood, Alii. Thank you.” He discussed this with Avatar. She was going to keep some information secret still, but the Peerless would get nearly all of it. It had to be done. And John was certain they already had most of it all anyways.

First, John took the exams he and Abe were certain he’d get a zero on to get them out of the way – the science and math exams. The biology exam was mixed with self-cultivation knowledge, and he thought he did decently, but decently meant little if he was the lowest scorer, as he’d still receive a zero.

The exam questions could be read by John or read aloud by the Trainer, and John could write down his answers or speak them aloud. Since most Li were about the same level of intelligence, a big factor on scoring was time. He found when a Li explained something, they were all very verbose. He thought they’d all answer the exam questions in great detail.

John’s own strategy was to be short and concise and move on. Skipping a question was the same as getting it wrong, so when he didn’t know the answer, he’d guess. He did beat the fastest time on each test so far.

Standing in a circle in an empty metal room within the Trainer, the exam called ‘History and the Aikapu’ began.

The great and venerable Akua started down the path of peers after demons tortured his family to death in front of him. What was his motivation? And was that motivation correct?

John said, “Vengeance, yes, next.”

Expand.

“Vengeance is a sacred duty and always correct unless an Alii orders otherwise. There was no Alii then. If anyone kills your own, killing them must be your whole life until vengeance is satiated. Since Akua was a true man, that is what he did. Next.”

After Akua and the other high ranking ganians engaged Inner-Point Master Ukobyzouth in battle, the Peerless were revealed soon after. What was the first priority of the Peerless?

Facts raced through John’s mind. “Gain and hold the portal to Kiamoni at any cost and deny Ukobyzouth and other high tier demons the Nether. Next.”

John had a decent memory for stories. For most of his life stories were how information was relayed. He knew he flubbed some dates and some opinion questions, but he nailed the rest and thought he did pretty good on that exam overall. He ended up with the best time, so he felt his chances of not getting a zero were decent.

Next, John completed the exam about stations and functions of spaceships, nav points, and other technology. Most of it was hands-on functionality, and though he didn’t get the best time, he felt he performed decently.

After that, John took the exam on soldiering. It wasn’t soldiering as he knew it, and contained many tasks new to him, such as clearing mines, range estimation, formations for different types of terrains and enemies, modern defenses and arms, fields of fire, intersecting fire, fire zones, plunging fire, mortars, artillery, and the like.

Land navigation was a task John knew he aced. There was also a forced march carrying heavy gear he beat the current best time of by a significant margin. It was supposed to be an all-day event. It took most Li between 18 and 19 hours to finish the march. Nine did it in just under 10 hours. John finished in three and a quarter hours.

The remaining events were strategy, missions, the grand battle, and an obstacle course. John believed he could get the top score in the battle and obstacle course. He had a plan for the strategy exam and the missions, both of which contained four random scenarios within each exam. If his plan worked, he didn’t trust the Peerless not to cheat and change the following scenarios.

Once he was back in the lobby of the Trainer, John asked the gorgeous Alii, “For the strategy event, are all four scenarios locked in once it starts, Alii? And how about for the missions?”

The Alii replied, “Sorry, Kahaka Four-three, we can’t tell you what the events will entail. Each scenario gives a briefing before the timer starts.”

John said, “Sorry, Alii. What I’m trying to find out is if the following scenarios can be adjusted depending on my performance in the first? Or are they locked in? Sorry if that doesn’t make sense.”

The Alii smiled and said, “It made sense to Melua Two-three-five. He said the events are randomly generated upon initiating the exam. All four events are seeded at the same time and can’t change. And remember, the events take place in significant time dilation, so don’t rush. It’s still early morning.”

John smiled internally. If what he had planned worked, he’d be taking first place in the strategy event. If what he had planned for the missions worked too, he’d also be taking first place in that.