Keith looked at Rena with a surprised expression. He never thought that Rena was this selfless, even living under the harsh conditions, restricted and bound by the vampires. The resolve to keep herself from turning cold and selfish, in this cruel world was not something any ordinary individual could do.
“What else do you need then? Tell me, if it is within my power, I will try to give it to you.”
Keith didn’t want to let her go empty-handed, so he asked her if she needed anything else.
To his surprise, Rena didn’t say anything.
“.. It’s just a few drops of blood, nothing much. You don’t need to compensate me. This is part of my servitude.” Rena replied in a low voice.
” That may be true for everyone else, but you’ve always taken care of me, so I want you to at least get good compensation for it. If you don’t eat well, how are you going to give me blood when I need some?” Keith smiled at her.
He didn’t want her to go empty-handed. As his most loyal person in the castle, he needed to at least make her life better. He felt that he could trust her, and he didn’t want her to feel that he was using her as a source of food. Even though he said that he needed her blood, he actually wanted her to believe this and at least eat better. The price of meat was very high for humans, as vampires didn’t hunt them.
Vampires only needed blood and they collected that from the humans. The humans only farmed their own land that was given to them. The scarcity of food also limited how much cattle they can domesticate. So the price of meat was really high. Normally, people ate bread and cooked vegetables for their meals. And that too, wasn’t enough most of the time, as they had to give their blood regularly to the vampires for consumption.
Rena rarely had the chance to eat meat. The daily meal was the same every single day for all the maids, and only in a couple of months, they were given some cooked meat. As she never went out of the castle premises, she never knew what other delicacies were out there.
When she heard that Keith need his blood in the future, it made sense that, she needed to get healthier. If she kept the same diet as now, she couldn’t provide him with more blood. And she knew, he didn’t want to take too much of her blood as it would make her weaker. He restrained himself when he saw that he took too much blood. She wanted to be able to provide as much assistance to him.
” I will eat better from now, young master. Thank you for giving me a chance to assist you.”
She replied with a kind smile.
” Yeah..” Keith gave her the coin, and this time she didn’t deny it.
” You can go now..” Keith wanted to start channeling his blood qi so he wanted some isolation.
Rena nodded her head and stood up and walked out of the room.
After she left, Keith closed his eyes and sat cross-legged. He channeled his blood qi and circulated it throughout his body. He felt that his blood core was responding. He continued the circulation for hours and he could feel the blood core was absorbing the blood qi ever so slightly and accumulating in the core. He did this for the whole night; as the morning came his body felt light and refreshing. He opened his eyes and got up from his bed. Today, Lex was going to explain to him all the details about the inheritance process, but that was going to happen in the afternoon.
He thought about going out of the castle to see the surrounding area. As the previous Keith was feeble and sick all the time due to his disability, he rarely went out of the castle. Keith opened his widow and looked outside. From the view up there, he could see that the castle was on top of a small hill.
The rest of the colony was spread across the plain that surrounded the castle. Keith looked at the horizon, which was dimly lit. It felt like pre-dawn, as you could see the bright stars in the sky. The settlement was active all day because the vampires do not sleep most of the time. The only time they sleep is if they want to go on hibernation due to lack of blood. But here it never happened.
The light of the settlement was shining in the dimly lit sky that felt like fireflies swarming the surrounding landscape. Keith got out of his window and jumped down twenty meters. He landed on the back garden of the castle. He walked through the exotic trees that were planted there for decoration. Carnivore trees were trying to grab his hands and legs, but he shook them off with no effort at all.
He moved across the garden and reached a twenty-meter-high wall. It was coated with pitch-black paint and many inscriptions were carved on it. With his strength, he didn’t need to climb the wall. He thrusted his legs on the ground and propelled himself to the sky. He landed on top of the wall which was half a meter wide. He looked down and on the other side of the wall, there was a cliff. He estimated that it was two hundred meters high.
Even though he was a baron, he couldn’t take the fall lightly. Falling from such height could break his bones. And if he didn’t get blood to regenerate, then it will be even troublesome.
He looked down the cliff, used his hand to grab onto the wall. He circulated his blood qi in his hand and carved a small hole in the wall.
‘Hmm, if I can hold onto something before reaching the bottom, it will be fine.’
He let go of his hand and started falling down the cliff. Before he reached the bottom, he used his hand to grab onto something. The tree branches were not enough to stop the momentum, so he plunged his hand into the rock. He created a carving and as his hand gripped the stone, he stopped few meters above the ground.
He jumped down and landed not the ground. There were many trees with blood-red leaves and black tree bark. The red leaves reflected the lights in a way that created hallucinations, but he didn’t feel the effects due to the blood qi that circulated in his eyes.
If a normal human was here, he might lose the sense of direction and end up in a different place. He walked through the thees and after a while he saw a stone road at the end. He walked on the road to go down the slope. After he reached the end of the stone road, which was curved, there were many shops on both sides of the road.
He looked around and saw that every shop had vampires. The shop owners and the customers were all vampires and it was quite lively. He looked at all the shops, as he walked down the stone pavement.
There were many types of stores, such as clothing stores, jewellery stores, restaurants, and many others. He looked at the restaurants, that served many types of blood and on their menu, there were many types of dishes made from blood. Looking at them, he felt weird.
As he was a human before, he has been to many places and tasted many cuisines, but here everything was made up of human blood, which was really uncanny.
After looking around for a while, he came across a shop that really interested him. It was a shop that sold fresh human blood. He wanted to figure out how he absorbed the ‘blood essence’ so this was a good place to test it out.
Even though there was a part of him, that didn’t want to do this, his vampire instincts took over. After he became a baron, his mind has been quite calm and the vampire instinct suppressed his human side. He still felt that it was him within, but his body was different. He was not a human anymore.
With that in mind, he walked into the store.