Vampire: World of Blood

Substance, now shifted into a form mirroring her master, kneeled reverently before Merciless. Her posture was low yet steady, awaiting the final steps of her transformation.

To the untrained eye, the process of creating an apostle might appear simple. But to those who understood the significance, it was an act steeped in sacred meaning; a ritual that bound the fates of master and apostle for eternity.

In the culture of the Spawn, the act of feeding one's essence to another was no mere transfer of power; it was a profound and sacred bond. Comparable to the blood bonds of vampire clans, it went far beyond mere ritual; it was a fusion of beings, an irreversible covenant, basically.

When an arbiter shared their essence, the recipient became an inseparable part of their master's aspect, so much so that if the ritual is done undone, it will cause serious repercussions on the apostle's end.

But after it was finished, the apostle in question's very existence will be intertwined with the Arbiter in ways both physical and metaphysical. The apostle's life became an extension of the Arbiter's, tethered to the pulse of their creator's being basically.

For the apostle, this meant more than power; it was an immortal pact. As long as the arbiter lived, so too would the apostle. Their shared essence granted them not just life but a connection to the arbiter's reserve of strength and perks.

However, this gift was not without its price. If the arbiter were ever to fall, the apostles tied to their essence would perish in unison, their lives extinguished as if a single thread had been severed. It was the ultimate loyalty, an existence bound entirely to the one who gave it purpose.

Merciless regarded Substance with a mixture of amusement and purpose. Her transformation into a potential apostle had already begun with the fusion of his tails into her being. Now, the final step awaited, which was to give away a piece of his essence.

His essence was no ordinary substance; it was the core of his existence, carrying the weight of his identity and power.

To give it away was an act of trust and dominion, one that would solidify Substance's place as both servant and extension of his will.

As such, he said to himself, or rather, the being inside him responsible for that core, and currently speaking, she was inside of him at the moment.

'Oi Carmilla... please create a fruit for me out of Correspondence.'

"Hmm...

Carmilla said as she began to speak.

"You want to take a piece of your essence and turn it into a fruit."

'Yes, just a small piece if you would be so kind.'

Naturally, Carmilla replied.

"Okey, dokey... you're the boss."

Following the orders, Merciless opened his right hand.

Carmilla, on the other hand, as precise as ever, reached into him, her true form looking at it as a sea of difference from his Prime Source, which was a sea of nothingness that stretched infinitely.

Correspondence sat above the vast nothingness within his being, reigning as the supreme authority in his body's hierarchy. It was the strongest and most absolute source of power, capable of governing, harmonizing, and uniting all other sources of power into a single, cohesive force.

If nothingness was a boundless sea of darkness, before correspondence, it was a mere drop of black water within an even larger sea that was way darker and incomprehensible.

A sea within a sea, basically.

As such, Carmilla, who was just another source of power, representing his vampirism concept, and just like Prime Source, another source of power, along with Michellian bloodlines, the throne of wrath, both the sin of Pide and Vanity; all of these were just an external source of power for Merciless.

That being the case, Carmilla took a single scoop of the Sea of Correspondence and gave it form, this thing being Merciless true essence. The very thing that describes his being.

On the outside.

A black apple was taking form inside his hands.

Merciless stared at the fruit, turning it over in his hand. It wasn't just a symbol or some conjured object. It was a piece of him, his true essence in physical form.

He sighed, a half-smile playing on his lips.

As he wondered and said to himself, he was putting off the question for a while now but still said his thoughts out nonetheless.

"I swear, I'm just one big walking enigma."

He muttered.

"I don't even know what this thing really is. I mean, I think it's my soul or at least something like that. But then again, it's not. Not in the usual sense."

He paused, his expression clouding over as he tried to put the strange, abstract concept into words.

"The soul Michelle took from my original body? That wasn't real in the sense that it was not me. I know it sounds weird, but it's true. It was just... a placeholder. Something to make me fit into this universe. But this? This is the real deal. This is who I actually am."

He glanced back down at the apple in his hand, its faint glow reflecting in his eyes.

"I call it Correspondence... It's not a soul, not exactly. It's more like... my core, my origin. Just like the originators, this thing is a chaos from somewhere outside this universe."

His voice softened, a note of frustration slipping through.

Substance listening but not replying.

"Why I'm here, who I was before, what this even means... I don't have a damn clue. And who could I even ask? I've been figuring it all out on my own since I recently learned about its existence. Who or what am I? I know my life as Mercy is fake, but it's unnerving to know that I was something else before I was even Mercy Morgan."

Merciless let out a dry laugh, his grip on the apple tightening slightly.

"The one thing I do know is this Correspondence makes me different. It's why I can bend the rules of this universe and break them even. It's what sets me apart. But if I'm ever going to figure out the rest...

He hesitated, shaking his head.

"I'd probably have to escape this thing we call the fruit of life itself if I ever want to find out where I truly came from before Correspondence enters this fruit and what I really am... And until that happens, there's no point in dwelling on questions I'll never get answers to."

He smirked faintly, a mix of resignation and determination on his face, before finally shifting his focus back to the moment. Whatever mysteries Correspondence held would just have to wait.

On that note, he took the apple and gave it to Substance and said to his kneeling, look-alike with four tails behind it being.

"Sorry for rambling, Substance. Anyway, here it is my cute creation. This fruit you see before you is a piece of my essence, the closest thing I have to what you'd call a soul. It's a fragment of me, my truest self, the essence of my existence. Before there was Merciless Morningstar, before there was Mercy Morgan, before anyone or anything else that was of me, then and now, I was Correspondence... Eat, and you will become my 1st true apostle."

Substance gazed at the apple before her, its size far larger than any ordinary fruit; nearly the equivalent of six apples combined. She carefully picked it up, her hands trembling slightly as she held the weight of its significance. Turning to her master, her eyes gleamed with unwavering devotion. With a voice filled with solemnity, as though making an unbreakable vow, she declared.

"Master, through thick and thin, I will never leave your side. You have no idea how honored I am to receive your blessing as another one of your very first."

With her vow spoken, Substance brought the apple to her lips and consumed it whole. The moment she did, an intense and vivid connection surged through her, far surpassing the depth of their blood bond. It was as if she had become a literal extension of Merciless's very existence, an inseparable part of his being.

Her neon blue eyes flickered with a purple glow before turning completely black, only to return to their original blue. In that moment, a dark, menacing "M" tattoo materialized on the left side of her chest, its ominous presence unmistakable filled with a piece of Merciless corruption as well.

Power surged through her being, one of Merciless's unique blessings as an Arbiter flowed through her, and how to use it.

From her knowledge, Merciless had 5 unique blessings he got from a mysterious being known as Æthelthryth upon ascending as her Arbiter.

Out of those 5, she herself has gotten access to use two of them.

The first ability was called "Living Lie>"... This power created a real-life simulation, mimicking the real world but trapping anyone in its grasp inside a dream world full of lies; its a power so perfect that once in it, you don't realize you were caught up in it to begin with. The simulated world appeared perfect, reflecting the real world, but once inside, escape was impossible unless the person realized they were in a dream. The dream world would adapt to prevent them from waking up, with the living lie constantly altering scenarios to keep them trapped in false beliefs.

The second power, though weaker, was something Merciless had dubbed as "Profane Honesty"... This ability was dangerous for one key reason: it was nearly absolute. It allowed the user to speak lies so convincingly that others would believe them as truths. Essentially, it made any lie the user told appear indisputable, forcing others to accept it as reality, leaving no way to tell whether they were being lied to or not.

But that was Merciless Blessing to Substance; with that said, he turned around and said.

"Well, that's all I wanted to do, the time to do your mission is now. I'm counting on you to receive the 50% from the team for obtaining the Prometheus series from Father. Either way, I'll be leaving now, okay?"

Substance nodded and replied.

"You can count on me, Master."

"Good. Now, then I will be sending you off."

With that said, Merciless began to use the power of Grand Order, to send Substance away.

"Substance isn't here. She's exactly one kilometer away from Jordan and the rest of the group."

In that instant, Substance, taking on his form, disappeared from sight. Meanwhile, Merciless looked ahead, then stretched out his hand. At first, nothing seemed within reach, or so it appeared. But at that moment, as a result of tampering with the Xphelia family contract using his eyes, as a result, he grasped the air itself.

The space around him rippled, pulling forward like a dry sheet being yanked from a clothesline under the sun. He pulled downward, literally tearing a massive fissure in the Azamit space, like ripping a piece of paper, revealing the next side of reality through the tear.

He walked through the tear in space, stepping onto the examination grounds—a vast, star-sized structure durable enough to withstand the warfare of multiple Level 5 and 6 vampires as if it were child's play. The terrain was diverse, and at this moment, he found himself in a desert-like area. He could sense and see a few living beings, some of them Level 5 vampires, but most were servants or other races under them.

In various parts of this area, there were other challenges; monsters, or rather, Spawnlings of various calibers, scattered as obstacles to make the examination harder. He sensed thousands of them lingering, with a significant number buried deep beneath the sand.

Behind him, the tear in space closed as he ventured further into the desolate expanse. The sky above was heavy with a menacing aura, as a fragment of the entity in the sky giving the sky itself a blanket of auroras that covered or rather made the sky itself.

The being known as Formless Light spread across the entire examination grounds, its sheer size reaching countless constructs of the Primix, and other parts of creation as well.

Darkness swept across the cold desert sands, but there was one being he sought. From here, he could see it, despite it not being in the human definition of what his definition of line of sight is.

Hundreds of miles going in a straight line, he saw it.

"There you are... Djinn."

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