Blood and Qi: A Vampire Xianxia LitRPG

WARNING!!! User is crash landing an unauthorized device on a Tech 0 world. Device will be consumed.

WARNING!!! *NON-INTERFERENCE, HIDE PROTOCOLS* in effect. Focus here to review protocols. Failure to adhere to protocols will result in USER’S TERMINATION!!!

John was quickly covered in a thick and sticky substance completely filling the escape pod. Words continue to show in his vision.

Deactivating NCU upgrades: Emergency Heal

Deactivating NCU expansion upgrades: Auto-Reflect – T1C+, Auto-Shield – T1C, Emergency Heal, Prefill – T1C

Deactivated components: Smart-link

All glyphs deactivated

User is to…

Whatever the NCS wanted to show John was missed as he banged off something and tumbled around. Once he finally stopped moving, no words were showing in his eyes. Whatever substance surrounded him suddenly disappeared and he was dunked in water. Thick and buoyant water as far as the eye could see.

Without even needing to tread, John floated easily in the too-thick water and was at no risk of sinking. The water was covered by a very thick foam and seemed filthy. It looked strange and dark green. Even with his wonderful eyesight he couldn’t see anything but some dim and far-off souls deep within the ocean. Still, he infused essence into Adumbration and hid.

John couldn’t spot land in any direction. He reviewed all the information he remembered about the world. It was a very large planet with slightly higher gravity than that of Thecla. The atmosphere was similar to Earth’s but had far more carbon dioxide, vegetation, and no real deserts despite all the mountains. It had two moons and four major continents.

After getting nothing from the info function of his NCS, John applied his navigation [Skills] to clue him in on where he was and which direction he should swim. Before he could figure much, he felt a mighty presence rising up from far below him. The presence was so large it was hard to pin down, but it was some tier of the Transcendent Tree. He had been told the planet only had Salts.

John had never liked the ocean. Long ago on Earth, while on a ship, he saw a giant creature called a blue whale. It was such a large creature that he had a hard time comprehending the reality of it. He had seen much larger since, but the size of the thing rising up below him was far, far larger than any dark walker or giant creature of the NetherRealm. And the massive thing was still at such a depth he was surprised that he could sense it at all.

Tentacles of essence softly and carefully explored John. There was nothing he could do but let it happen and hope events didn’t turn violent.

“You are trespassing in my realm. Leave it now or die, old creature. You will not be warned again.” After those words forced their way into John’s mind, he obliged the massive monster and started swimming in the direction he believed to be westerly and a little northerly. He was unsure why, but his instinct told him that was his best option, and he trusted his instincts with such decisions when he didn’t have time to work the problem out in the usual ways.

The water being so thick made it strange to swim through, and the constant but minor waves forced much of the water and foam into his mouth. His vital essence considered whatever little he swallowed as a poison, but a very weak one, causing it to drain very slowly.

Thankfully, while hidden, none of the other creatures in the ocean sensed John. Most of the life he sensed was lower tier, the highest being a Gold far off in the distance in the direction he believed to be the north.

John could swim for days and days without tiring, but hours later, upon seeing a floating, bloated carcass of some large sea creature, he climbed onto it. Not to rest. He had no idea how large the realm of the massive creature that ordered him out of it was, but the quicker he got away from it, the better. And he wanted to be on land and the right continent as soon as possible anyway.

After getting close to the far edge of the creature he stood upon, John dashed across the length of it. He continued to dash across the surface of the water until a wave ruined his feat. He swam back to the creature and did the same again until he figured out the wave issue.

Since he had to be careful, John couldn’t run at his fastest, but he was moving many times faster than his swimming speed. He eventually messed up on a wave and sunk. Jumping out of the water to run across its surface was impossible, but he found a way to do so by first slipping through the shadows. It wasn’t all that easy and took many attempts, but he eventually figured it out.

Mere hours later, John spotted land. As he approached, he saw it was a small island with many others past it. He kept running until he finally saw the coastline of a large body and ran onto its shore.

After taking the time to study his environment and the sky above, including the setting sun and the one moon he could spot, John put more effort into trying to get a better idea of where in the world he was. The world spun in the same direction, so the sun rose and fell mainly as it did on Earth, but the axis tilted differently. If water swirled as it did on Earth, he was in the northern hemisphere. He wasn’t sure of the tilt of the axis, or if having two moons changed that.

There were some conflicting clues regarding which hemisphere John was in too, and besides reaffirming the cardinal directions, he couldn’t figure anything else out with certainty. It wasn’t yet dark, but if he were to judge by the sky, he’d say he was in the southern hemisphere. Once the other moon appeared, he’d know more.

Seeing no reason to dally longer, John sped into the strange and thick forest beyond the shoreline. Since the world was Tech 0, the NCS gave little information on it. What the people of the world looked like was a mystery. Their type wasn’t listed, but the classification of world and environment indicated they’d be beta-types.

After running for some minutes, John reached the ocean again. He was on a large island filled with much life, including a few troops of creatures that looked somewhat like gorilla-wolves. One of them was a Silver. All the beasts ran away from him when he stopped hiding.

The island was about four times as wide as it was long. John thought the island was very large, but he had no true scale to measure by. He remembered two similarly shaped islands from studying the globe. Both were east of a major continent. One was near a heavily populated continent.

Running west would get John to a continent in either case. The island off the populated continent had no land to the south of it but the other did. He ran southwesterly and spotted a coast wrapping around. Now he knew where he was. Or he believed so.

If John was correct, he was deep in the southern hemisphere and the north end of this continent connected with one of the two populated continents. He started running north-northwesterly, flashing his info function on occasionally, hoping he’d get something from it, though he never did.

There was a lot of life all around him, and John was still surprised at how weak everything was. He eventually sensed something at the Gold tier and stopped to check it out. It was some bearlike creature. Wanting to test the life of this world, John unhid. The beast growled and immediately gave battle. It was surprisingly strong and vicious.

John let the beast get all the manifestations it wanted off. It had a charge, an echo-attack, and a body-enhancement. He fought it for a while, getting its full measure before draining it. He put the three crystals it dropped, two large parts of its hide, claws, fangs, heart, and some other organs into his ruck.

After half a day of sprinting northward, John finally found some natives. During his time on Earth hiding as Jim, he watched a lot of vampire movies. In some of the movies were creatures called werewolves. The natives looked like larger and much stranger versions of those beasts. They had hairless and odd skin like the bark of a cedar, and that skin was covered in something like evenly spaced-out warts all over. Like humans, the natives had hair on their head, armpits, and groins.

The info function gave nothing on the natives. They wore no clothes at all. He figured they had to be sapient as they used tools, carried weapons, and lived in mud huts. The ones carrying weapons painted patterns on their face and body.

The weapons were primitive. Just spears, stone daggers and axes, crude bows, and shields made of hide. One native wore a wooden mask and a headdress and was one of only two that had achieved the fifth rank of the Bronze tier. None were higher.

There were only about a hundred natives he could spot, and the NCS info function didn’t give the village a name or count the population. John wondered why. He unhid and walked towards them.

Every villager fearfully placed themselves flat on the ground, their faces shoved fully into the dirt.

John yelled out, “Please, friends, stand. No need for any of that. I come in peace and mean no harm.”

The villagers knew almost nothing. Their speech, even translated, was very primitive. They knew the location of three other tribes and a few beasts they worshiped, but nothing else useful.

John ate all the food and drink offered to him. Most if it was considered poison by his body, but weak poison, draining his vital essence very slowly and only for a short time. They also gifted him a spear, an axe, and a shield, all far too frail and brittle to last long for him in battle.

John gifted them the hides, claws, and some other organs he collected from the bearlike creature and continued his journey northwest, staying hidden, occasionally infusing more essence into Adumbration, avoiding other tribes. He reached a beach and headed westward along the northern coast of the continent, knowing it would slope upwards and lead to the lands north.

The forest was and had been more jungle than not, thick with vegetation and life. As he ran along beachless and high cliffs, he felt something mighty far off in the distance of the jungle to his northwest, definitely an Exalted. If he was feeling everything correctly, there was little other life in that area, and the Exalted had its soul unveiled.

If John felt the Exalted, the reverse was true too. He wondered why the Nani had told him this world only had Salts. This was the second Exalted he had come across. Then he realized it was probably a beast. If the Nani were right, the highest natives, the sapient species, were only Salts.

John could attempt to flee by running across the water or some such, but the Exalted had only felt into him in an exploratory manner. Mindless beasts didn’t do that. Curious, he started heading towards the Exalted as the Exalted did the same, and he was able to tell it was a low Transcendent.

Most people would claim John had no chance of winning a fight against a Transcendent, low or otherwise, but he had beaten higher before. Granted, one was a truly mindless dark walker, and the others were very weak and mostly mindless creatures from a demonless world of the NetherRealm. He still didn’t think the result was a foregone conclusion. If the creature wanted battle, he’d give it all it wanted.

Since the creature’s soul was unveiled, John returned the favor. Doing such was considered extremely rude in civilized places, but the jungle always had its own rules.

Soon a giant snake slithered into John’s view.

The snake looked strange, but besides how big it was, he had seen much stranger looking snakes. If he saw a smaller version of this thing on Earth, he wouldn’t be surprised or think it was alien.

A voice – deep and distant and rattled, somewhat hollow – sounded in John’s mind as the NCS gave words to the snake’s hissing. “I’ve never met one of your kind. Why are you in my realm? Do you wish for battle? You will only find death here, Silver.”

John bowed deep at the waist. He reminded himself to be extra careful with his words. “Greetings, mighty one. You believe my tier is Silver?”

“Yes, I do. Because it is. You name them differently? Tell me how you name them, starting with Foundation and ending with the Sovereign realm.”

“I come from faraway lands, Sovereign,” answered John. It wasn’t much of a guess that Sovereign either meant the same as the honorific Exalted or was this world’s name for the Transcendent Tree. “My people are few and isolated. I’d rather know your ways, mighty Sovereign. Would you be kind enough to inform me of how tiers are named in your lands, so I can conform to your ways?”

“I’m glad you have manners,” said the snake, “but you have a strange taint within you. Tell me truly, are you a demon worshiper like the ananong foreigners to the north?”

“I worship no demon, mighty Sovereign. I slay those bastards when I see them. Are ananong those…the sapient people I saw some tribes of south of here?”

The snake hissed and was silent for a moment. “You claim to slay demons? How? The foreigners from across the western ocean worship the one named Kazthun. Or are you a spirit?”

That took John by surprise. Kathzun was a g’athu. Since this world is extremely Tech 0 and in the dark on how things truly work and are categorized, they must assume she’s a demon in the sense humans had always thought of demons until recently – just powerful and malicious entities such as the gallu, similar to gods, he thought.

“Sorry, mighty Sovereign, I misspoke. We call these little nasty beasts of my land demons, though they can grow to be powerful. I don’t worship Kazthun, or any like her. We consider her to be as powerful as the gods we worship. I’m not a spirit either.”

“Ah, I see. Strange that your people don’t worship the great spirits. What gifts have you brought me as testament to your peaceful intentions as a guest in my realm?”

John removed his ruck. “My sincerest apologies, great Sovereign, as I have little worthy of you. I’m new to these lands and didn’t expect to meet someone as mighty as you are. Would this heart of a beast suffice? It was the same tier as my own, what you named Silver.”

“I’ll take that, and the crystals. Keep the fangs, I have no use for those. To answer your prior question, we name the tiers Foundation, Copper, Iron, Jade, Silver, Underlord, Overlord, and Archlord. I am above those, a Sovereign, and old. No ananong has reached my greatness, though there are some pretenders. These gifts will not suffice. I require more.”

John stored the tier information away. “Name your price, great Sovereign, and I’ll leave at once to acquire it.”

“The lands across the shallow sea north of here are infested with demon-worshipers. Invaders. They pushed the ananong that worshiped me north and eastward. Bring me the heads of two Silvers or 20 Jade. If you can.”

That meant two Golds or 20 Silvers. “As you wish, mighty Sovereign. Are the ananong the sapient species I saw some tribes of south of here? How can I distinguish the demon-worshipers from the others?”

The snake hissed. Images flooded John’s mind of creatures that looked very similar to the sapient race he met to the south, but clothed, armed, and armored in a much more advanced way.

The snake said, “The demon-worshipers come from many peoples going by many names. They are easy to tell apart from the Saxxanese and Gansettish led by the Archlords Mena and Ino. The demon-worshipers are led by the Archlord invaders Masset, Sakmaw, Naskapi, and Ogema. Across the ocean stayed the Archlords Ninigret and Sequin.

“They’ve conquered every land across the ocean, sacrificing many at the altar of Kazthun, trying to weaken the veil enough to summon their mistress. Only Sakim still fights over there. Your people haven’t been conquered? What are they named? You hail from the south? What lands do you live upon? Or near?”

John had a cover story ready that Avatar said was fine to use. “My people are the Atlantans. Long, long ago, our city, Atlantis, was taken by the sea, but our magic was able to protect it. We live deep in the ocean, protected by a bubble of air that surrounds the city. I’m the first of my kind to venture forth in long ages.”

The snake hissed for some time. “Interesting. The Saxxanese and Gansettish both have an old tale about such a city, lost to the ocean long ago. They name it Wangunk, not Atlantis. I wonder if it’s the same. The vast ocean has many strange and mighty things within its depths, including the ancient and all-powerful Danaka, she who will not be tread upon.

“Go north and bring me those heads. If the Underlords, Overlords, and Archlords of the demon-worshipers find you, flee back within my realm. It extends to the northern continent. They will not follow you within. But do not approach me without all my heads as proper tribute. Two Silver or 20 Jade. Or one Silver and 10 Jade. No less.”