My Vampire System: Erin's Awakening

Erin was at the gaming pods again, and logged in. She wanted to do something for Quinn, but didn't know what. Not only that, but she was thinking about what it was that Quinn told her about the way the world worked. She knew she had a bad habit of only remembering the faces of those who were strong, but somehow she'd remember Quinn's name despite him not having an ability. Erin just assumed it was due to the fact that the system had his name linked to their shared messages, meaning he was an exception to her bad habit.

Checking up on her status, she noticed that she had gained a singular point in strength.

[User: Erin Heley]

[Race: Halfling]

[Level 2]

[45/200 EXP]

[HP 20/20]

[Strength: 16]

[Agility: 15]

[Stamina: 15]

Erin wasn't sure what the point in strength came from, but then she recalled that she actually gained a notification around the time period where she drank Layla's blood. Not only that, but it was likely that drinking blood would increase her strength if what Layla's stories about vampires said were true. Erin would need to test this theory out later, but it wasn't like she could ask Quinn to test out his blood.

Again, guilt crept in on her, but she ignored that. Instead, she started up a random ranked match, she wanted to test out her blood swipe skill she just acquired.

As the match began, she saw the environment form around her, a circular arena indented into the ground with chairs outside of the indented arena. Getting into a battle ready position, she saw her opponent, a man wearing light blue with a white electricity symbol plastered on his chest, charge straight at her. He no doubt had a speed ability.

Erin then held her hand out, and yelled out "Blood swipe!"

Her hand glowed bright red, then she flicked it downwards, the red leaving her hand and leaving a glowing trail that slashed against her opponent. She didn't feel her health go down at all, and threw out another bloodswipe, spamming It against her opponent.

[You have gained 25+ EXP]

[70/200 EXP]

After winning the match, she checked her health stat, noticing that the HP count did not go down at all. She wasn't sure why this was the case as the blood swipe skill clearly stated it would remove HP, but she had to assume it was due to the fact that she was in a game and not actually making these moves in real life. 

Erin thought about how to spend her time at the gaming pods. She could improve her fighting skills by actually taking the fights seriously, or she could spam attack blood swipe and level up quickly that way. 

In the end, Erin decided to do a mix of both. She would fight normally before using blood swipes if the fight took too long.

—

Quinn left for his dorm room. He didn't want to deal with Erin at the moment, and decided to just relax his body. It was still sore from the beating earlier that day even with Hayley's healing. 

Entering his dorm, he saw Peter hunched over a table reading a book. Next to the book was a plastic tub of mud. He looked absolutely exhausted.

"Hey Quinn…" Peter muttered.

[Erin has gained 25+ EXP]

[70/200 EXP]

Quinn was really going to need to figure out a way to mute the notifications.

He took a seat next to Peter, and squinted his eyes at the earth ability book. Skimming over the text, he could understand why Peter was struggling so hard as the instructions really weren't the clearest. Either that, or he was misreading the words since everything was blurry.

"Who wrote this book?" Quinn asked, lifting the cover to see the front. It unfortunately didn't have an author listed.

"I don't know…" Peter slowly blinked, "I've been staring at this book all day and the most I can do is this."

Peter then took out a chunk of mud from the tub and shaped it into a round cylinder. 

"That's impressive!" Quinn complimented, but Peter didn't seem to really accept it.

Peter set down the mud cylinder, and took off his glasses, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands, "Is it? How am I meant to protect myself like this?"

Quinn then took out a mud chunk and tried to shape it into something impressive, only to make a lumpy ball, "...Well it's certainly better than what I can do."

This entire time, Peter hadn't taken a good look at his roommate. However, when seeing Quinn's messy lump of a ball, he noticed that his face was bare.

"Quinn—! Your glasses!" Peter pointed at him.

Quinn instinctively touched his face, getting a little bit of mud on his cheek, "Ah crap—" he wiped the mud away with his knuckles, "Yeah, some guys jumped me, but I'm healed now. Can't really say the same for my glasses though." 

Quinn looked at his hands, then back at Peter, "Give me a moment, I need to wash my hands."

"Don't worry— I got this," Peter began, before he placed his hands on Quinn's, picking up the mud into a more spherical ball than Quinn's attempt.

His hands were now basically clean, and Quinn took out his broken frames to try to fix them again. 

"Thanks, Peter," Quinn softly spoke with a smile.

Peter heard the compliment, and smiled as well.

Quinn examined his glasses. The middle was split apart, a lense was cracked, and the sides were all bent. He sighed as he got to work bending the sides back into place.

[Erin has gained 40+ EXP]

[110/200 EXP]

Ignoring what Erin was doing, He managed to bend the sides back into place, but despite his best attempts to fix the nose bridge part using what tape was left, it was simply too weak.

"Damn…" Quinn muttered to himself.

Peter glanced at what Quinn was getting frustrated with. 

"If only Fex was here, he could've used his strings to tie your glasses together," Peter began to joke.

"Ha, yeah," Quinn thought about a series of string wrapped around his glasses to hold it together. Then he was reminded of the fact that Fex was a vampire, "Speaking of which, where is he?"

"I think he went to the library." Peter shrugged. 

"Hmm," he hummed. He really wasn't sure what Fex's deal was, or his ulterior motives. So far, Fex hadn't done anything bad to him or Peter, so he was hesitant to say he was a bad person. Not only that, but he hadn't recalled a single time where Fex was bothered by the sunlight, maybe he could be asked for help on how to be a vampire.

Before he could think on it further, Peter's body leaned on Quinn's arm, surprising him. The boy yawned, then blinked a couple of times.

"Don't get sleepy just yet, we still have plenty of time left in the day," Quinn gently shook Peter, waking him up, "Look, I can help you study this ability stuff."

Peter's eyes widened, then looked up to see Quinn, "Seriously? Are you actually considering the earth ability?"

"Well, unless I get a ton of money, or someone buys me a book, it's kinda the only ability I could get. Besides, if I do learn this, then I could fight back against those assholes."

Suddenly, Peter started to shift around uncomfortably, sitting upright in his chair, "I thought that way too, but…"

Quinn gave Peter a concerned look, "Is there something wrong? You know you can ask me for help."

Peter shook his head, "It's nothing, let's just focus on studying."

Quinn looked over Peter, but didn't see a single injury on him. Not only that, but Quinn was at the hospital earlier today, and didn't see his roommate there either. Still, he was worried for him. He knew personally what it was like to be targeted and treated as easy pickings.

[Erin has gained 25+ EXP]

[135/200 EXP]

Quinn didn't want to bother Peter about it more, especially since he didn't want to open up. Instead, he decided to be an extra head that Peter could talk to as they looked at the earth ability book together for the rest of the night. Quinn didn't actually learn the ability, just in case there was an opportunity for him to learn something else, but just in case, this would serve as a head start.

—

Outside of the gaming pods room, Fex was walking around, following the scent of that strange girl he saw yesterday. He eventually found where the scent led, the gaming room. Not only that, but the smell had changed from what Fex presumed was a category C subclass into a halfling.

Fex was theorizing that this strange girl was marked by a vampire, explaining her strange scent, and was then subsequently turned into a halfling by said vampire. If he could figure out who turned her, then maybe his punishment would lighten.

—

A green haired boy was looking over the servers of his game in his very cluttered room. The place had knick knacks littered all over, which were considered inventions to the green haired boy. The floor was covered in wires, inventions, and trash. As he held his hand to his very advanced computer, he was looking through the forums since there was a recent surge in posts about a user in his game using hacks.

Apparently, the user was using a strange ability that wasn't registered as something one could select in the ability library. It apparently was about a red aura that would slice through the air from what he could gather from the forums.

The green haired boy thought the whole situation was interesting, but due to the encryption devices that he coded that would scramble the data, not even he would be able to identify who the person was. Instead he opted to come up with an alternative solution. If he could find out what times this person was active, and when that person would go online at the same time, he could pinpoint who the user was.