Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

It took three months of dormancy until One, every single second of that time had been spent by the vampire whilst being bathed in the concentrated sunlight of every single light-emitting sun within the Empire, for a sun walking vampire like herself, there was no better environment to be in.

Before getting to the realm with all that nourishing blood, One had already tried plenty of means in an attempt to enhance her strength, making use of her learned talents as an alchemist to concoct all sorts of potions, dews, elixirs and the likes.

Sifting through every single one of the countless materials available within the Empire, keeping up with the new ones that were being created every single day, trying out an unthinkable amount of combinations, testing every single brewing technique, mixing things up constantly in an attempt to discover some better method.

She had thought that her efforts had not yet yielded fruit as even after consuming all of these, nothing much had changed about her, showing no signs of either of the outcomes she desired.

The vampiress wanted strength for the same of becoming what she believed would be the pinnacle of she desired, it didn't really matter how or why, she really just wanted to be able to take festering death force, it might seem like a rather ridiculous aspiration to some, but it wasn't like the Empire was in need of more warriors or geniuses anyways, those sprouted out of nowhere all the time!

Truly, if she could just carry an undeadling from Loimos, it would be a great step for her, that was basically the only reason why she sought to be more powerful, and perhaps also because she felt a little unfit next to Maliah, she had already felt a bit threatened even when The Death Dealer was still alive, now that she was undead, things were even worse.

Albeit rather delusional, One was very much aware that Loimos would never actually love her, he was the pure undead after all, the only 'Love' he could extend was the one described in aspects of Death, and that was rather different definition than what she would have liked from the skeleton, but still, she couldn't help but feel like she needed to compete with the assassin.

After all, the closest thing to affection Loimos could extend to a female undead would be to meld his death force with hers and thus, participate in the creation of an undeadling with her…

And Loimos had not done that once yet, not because he did not want to, after all, he had created the concept with Elenantiel, bringing a whole new realm of multiplication to undeadkind, so naturally, there was no reason for him not to take part, especially with his blinding and overwhelming strength, any undeadling he took part in creating would definitely turn out to be a menace to the livings!

However, festering death force was simply too powerful, if melded with another undead's death force, it would just completely consume them.

One needed to grow powerful enough to handle that, and what she was vying for, either becoming the new Sunwalker and thus, ascending to a gravelord-level, or awaken her own vampiric blood and hopefully, awaken something that would allow her to become powerful enough later down the line.

The first option was hard to imagine, mostly because replacing Sunwalker did not actually mean that she would become a proper gravelord, one does not become as powerful as them so simply, One suspected that it was a level of power she wouldn't reach in thousands of years.

The second option, however, held some promise, vampiric blood was unique between individuals, who knew if it could yield something that would allow for her to become the first woman to meld death force with Loimos?

And if she could do it once, she could do it again, and again, again! Loimos would not mind it, after all, producing undeadlings was a good thing for the Empire and undeath as a whole! That was perhaps the best advantage One had in her endeavour, she didn't actually need to seduce him, as long as she had the capacity to bear an undeadling from him, it was all but assured that the pure undead would have her do it.

Just like if anyone else showed the capability…

Before Maliah turned into an undead, One had always been wary of Elenantiel, as an instrumental part in the addition of this way of multiplication, the vampiress had been worried that the part-giant woman could possess some sort of special trait that would allow her to bypass the festering death problem, but nothing had occured in all of these years, so it was safe to say that there was no such thing.

Such questions and fantasies were all that filled One's mind during the three months she remained in dormancy, endlessly imagining herself surrounded by countless undeadlings from Loimos.

'Just you wait, Maliah! You won't have any advance on me soon enough!' and with this thought, One suddenly rose up from the open coffin she was lying in, standing amidst a flood of light with multiple colours.

"Mmh… I feel… A little different?" she tried to look at herself, in terms of height and other physical aspects, she seemed wholly unchanged, her clothes fitted her just as well as they did before.

So instead, she brought a small mirror to inspect her face, unlike some vampires, she did have a reflection, mirrors interacted like normal with her.

She looked fine, One felt that she had become a bit prettier perhaps, but most importantly, her eyes had changed from blood red to a bright, glowing pink.

"Oh… Does that mean…?" hastily, she manipulated some of her blood to come out, making it float in front of her, and sure enough, the blood had turned pink as well.

Since she doubted that being the lord of the sunwalking vampires involved pink blood, it meant that she had managed to awaken her very own vampiric blood! Something that was only possible for her due to the fact that her vampire group was lordless, otherwise, a vampire would not be able to awaken their own blood if they already possessed that of a vampire lord.

It was great news, but it did not mean that her dream would come true immediately, it all depended on what her new abilities could do, with luck, her ability was precisely to be able to handle festering death force, if not, it had absolutely nothing to do with it and she would need to find ways to further increase in power.

Still, One was feeling quite excited!