Before I left the second floor, I decided to drain the guard's blood
"Now, time for my feast"
I killed at least nine guards in this very hallway, five of them were sliced with the use of my blood sword, while the other remaining four were casted by the blood bow entirely, I killed them with my own hands, there, I sucked their insides until there are none left,
[Drain Activated Extraction Completed fifteen liters of blood has been consumed]
"15!!" And so on, I drank exactly fifteen liters of blood in a span of nine people from the room, their blood was tasty through, much like I had taken an quick snack of herb-filled skewers from my mouth, There, I opened my Blood Curse with the use of inspect
[61L/50L= evolution for Phase 3]
[Successfully drank 50 liters, ready for third evolution]
Then, the most wonderful and glorious sensation, that of stomach truly filling for the first time, my stats begin to grow when I undergo my third evolution, I'd never felt so satisfied in my life, there I analyzed my progress from my Blood Curse
[Evolution Completed: Phase 3]
Blood Capacity increased to 100 liters,
Specialized flavor will be enhanced, boosting sweet and savory flavors from blood
Control the urges of craving blood willingly,
All five senses are enhanced and reaction time will be improved
Built-in super smart AI assistant
Attributes obtained: +200 defense, +2000 vitality, +100 agility
My third evolution was a success, my power is refined and increases significantly, it's motor functions that my reaction time is greatly enhanced, being able to adapt my swordsmanship from my attacks, even better, my five senses have been adapted,
I sensed that my stats grew even more than ever, I been multiple evolutions , Three times already in my life ever since I awakened my Blood Curse, but I never seen a built-in ai assistant like that, Is it a new feature?, well I decided to discover it out
"System Rebooting…"
A loud voice began ringing my ears, I doubted myself that this is some kind of process from evolution, But no, this is different, this is far from what I felt from my evolution, everything seems so…
"Greeting Eirene, or perhaps I should call you Roxy"
I swear I just heard something, it was a calming male voice talking inside my head, I think that some people was calling me, but no one in the facility is alive, and perhaps he greeted me, and he even knew my name?
"Wait who said that!?"
The voice echoed through the room when I said that word, it was a shamble of voices that was left unanswered, I heard that it was a male voice than no one heard in the facility except for me, and yet I kept telling myself, is this the side effects of the evolution?,
Then, the voice returned inside my head once again, but with a simpler masculine tone of a man, someone was clearly talking to me, instead, from my own mind
"Do you have any manners when I'm speaking to you, Roxy?"
There is certain that someone was talking through my head, no one in the passageway is alive, it just cold air, and I doubt myself that I was not crazy and indeed hearing the voices, it's not hallucinations, it's a feature from the Blood Curse, so I questioned the voice inside my head
"Wait, Who are you, why are you in my head?"
There I asked a raising question inside my head, a through and kind question, but the voices response said it clearly, And I was left speechless, I should've known better, about my abilities
"No manners Eirene, anyway, I am your super smart AI assistant for today, you can call me plasma"
I thought that I was crazy, but when I learned the truth, it was just my newly featured, ai assistant from my blood curse, I used inspect to analyze his functions, but it doesn't work
"Sorry Eirene, your puny skills doesn't work for me"
"Huh, how did you know my inspect, Plasma?"
"I lived inside your head, dum-dum, the information from your brain is connected from my consciousness, so I rewired that information from your ai assistant"
And as such, Plasma tells the whole thing, he knew my memories despite being an ai assistant from my Blood Curse, worse than that he can depict emotions,
"You know, I can hear your emotions, Eirene, your secret is not safe with me"
"Shut up, Plasma"
He is a little bit annoying despite living inside my head as an assistant, it seems that my third evolution has the ability to drastically change my body whenever I consumes a lot of blood, As I remember the Blood Curse motto, the more blood you consume, the stronger you get,
"Okay Eirene, or Roxy… ugh, why do you have multiple names, are you a nameaphobic?"
"Shut up, I'm trying to concentrate"
"Give me a break, Roxy, I can sense your thoughts clearly, I knew your very annoyed with me"
While Plasma and I are conversating, the shrilling alarm went off, the noises stopped echoing through the room, I breathed a sigh of relief, there I asked my annoying newly Ai assistant silently
"So, Plasma, what are you doing inside my body, are you gonna control it?"
"No, Eirene, ever since you awakened your third evolution, the Blood Curse gave you an AI assistant like me, No way I would control your body like that, think of me as your personal companion from now on,"
I was dumbstruck about Plasma response, with no time was wasted, I left the second floor of the facility and headed towards to the stairway leading to the first floor of the castle, I was getting closer, Then suddenly…
"H-huh?..."
I reached the first floor completely, and saw numerous humanoid creatures was waiting at the doorstep, it was the same creatures from the pit, as well as from the cages inside the research facility, there, I saw no evidence of guards running to investigate, all of them are dead, devoured my the same creatures that they raised, it was a bloodbath from the first floor,
"Whatever you do, don't move, these creatures senses human fear" Plasma said through my head
"Huh?, your information doesn't seem to be useful, I gonna die right away"
Twenty of these hideous creatures crowded the passageway, They were the reason why guards didn't came despite the shrilling alarm, No one intended to capture me alive, Instead, by giving up to these beasts, they could ensure no identifiable part of their intruder ever left the facility, The alarm bell didnt summon guards to investigate, it warned stuff to evacuate, this is the reason why so little guards came to kill me
I hadn't considered them any kind of threat when they are trapped in a pit, or caged in the research facility, so I hadn't used inspect, but now, it was the time to better understand my enemy
The creatures saw me at first glance, they didn't hesitate to charge at me, they widen their teeth, misshapen and deformed and they bared dog-like fangs straight at me, it released a foul smell as they leaped through me,
"Roxy, now"
As Plasma signaled me to fight, I raised my blood sword and sliced these creatures in half, they were terrifying, there was nothing but bones and flesh through them, they were horrible experimentations from this guild, and I wouldn't allow it,
As I sliced these creatures through the way, I sensed that their blood is no ordinary blood, but rinsed meat and skin that was left to rot, I knew that these hideous creatures were affected by an ancient virus known as the plague, but something was different, it was weird
"Plasma, tell me what are these creatures, they are not ordinary beasts"
"As based from your memories, these creatures are once humans, but are affected by the plague, they were just experimentations from the guild, to create an man-made weapon"
"Wait, how did you know this, Plasma?"
"I created a summary based from your experiences, self to say that I was intelligent overall"
As Plasma continued to boast himself, I successfully killed all the creatures inside the hallway, I left no trace from these mindless beasts who only knew violence, These people were led to experimentations from these disgusting criminals, these poor people had led them to their suffering, as I finished muttering, i continued to go to the passageway
I didn't take a single drop of these creatures blood, it contained a deadly virus that will certainly kill me, based from Plasma's observation, these creatures will feed down hatred on humans, thus making the virus more active as it seems, one drop of virus from my body will turn me to one of those creatures
As I approached at the end of the passageway, I saw a metal door sticking out at my path, it suppose that it is the end of the passageway, but it wasn't, it was a dead end, Fortunately, based on the lack of scratches or blood in the floor and walls, I gathered that it hadn't been used recently, As the alarm continued to ring, I tried to figure out how to escape this castle,
"This might be the best way to go" I said, looking up
"The ventilation shaft?"
"Yeah, it's probably our best bet to escape this hellhole easily"
As such, White and I abandoned the mission from retrieving the guild carriage, she was worried about my safety, and the good news is that, they came to Castle Libra along with the guild members to come to rescue me, I sent backup from White to assess my safety as a vice-leader of the guild
"Okay here we go"
Just as I was about to head up the shaft, I noticed light leaking from the gap in the wall. What was that?, I hadn't yet seen any seams in this building's structure, but now light peeked from between what appeared to be two sections of wall, Was that possible?, I approached curiously just as Plasma made a sound like he was clicking his tongue.
"Ah, I see… a hidden room, Something caused a shift in the room that bent the wall slightly out of shape. That's why you can see the light on the other side, What do you wanna do, Roxy?" Plasma said
White was likely waiting for me outside, and it didn't seem like she'd regain my trust anytime soon, I need to get me to safety, but I'd come to uncover what the Bronze Coin Guild were up to, If I'd stumbled a hidden room, it likely contained more secrets that the guild didn't want found.
"Let's check it out" I said to Plasma
"I knew you'd say that"
I cut open the wall with my blood sword and stepped into the room
The scene before my eyes was, yet again, one I could never have imagined, The room stretched out a hundred feet to the back wall from where I stood, I heard a propeller whirring distantly through the dimly lit space, The room housed huge glass cylinders filled with the clear red liquid I'd seen earlier, Creatures were submerged into these tubes, suspended in the liquid, ordinary animals like cats and dogs, but also monsters, The room was filled with row after row of them
I was still in the first floor of the facility, and I was almost close from leaving this castle for good, all the horrors and nightmares was left me traumatized, it left me speechless when I saw bloody corpses for the first time, this inhumane act is too far,
"Are they doing experiments on these too?" I said to Plasma
"By the looks of it, yes. I bet it has something to do with those creatures, The liquid on these glass cylinders is diluted blood. It's probably the source of the virus"
"What do you mean by source?"
"These creatures are derived from an ancient virus that stormed through the past. If a creature infected with it bites you, or drinks their blood, you will also become these creatures, The guild must have acquired this somehow. Of all the things they could've gotten hold of for their experiments, it had to be this"
"It's like a contagious disease, then?, It spreads quickly, and if these creatures are naturally inclined to grow in numbers. If they escaped this place and roamed around Andromeda, we'd never be able to stop them"
"Exactly"
I moved deeper into the room, I hoped we might discover this "source". Instead, the contents of the last glass cylinder jolted me through my core, it was a deformed man, covered in stitches and a disfigured face, it was almost unrecognizable
"Ugh, what the hell is this, this monster is different from what I encountered"
"No way, this monster possesses high output of mana from his body, this creature possesses the same measure as a high-level beast, it is a high-threat, Roxy. It is best to leave it here"
I moved up to take a closer look at the man's disfigured face, at the top of the glass cylinder, it says "Experiment 001", what a fancy name for a monster, and Plasma pointed out that the man has a high output of mana stored inside it's body,
Suddenly, the man's eyes shot open, with its eyelids bleeding like crazy, His blood-red irises locked onto mine, and the glass cylinder began to fracture, I'd been careless, I'd assumed everything in the cylinders was in the same level as one of the monsters, and now I would pay for my arrogance
I leaped backward to put space between us. Just as the cylinder shattered, spilling torrents of clear red liquid over the floor, The disfigured man have the same crazed like as the other nightwalkers
"I recognized that uniform, it was a luminous knight, a disfigured man wearing a knight full of honor"
"Yes, I can already tell his strength just by looking at his uniform"
The man lend out a screeching roar, it almost bursted my eardrums, Worse that this creature was a former luminous knight, one of the protectors from the beasts, I can already tell his strength
"Roxy look, his eyes… full of fear"
He glared at me through a haze of hatred, as his mouth moved clumsy as he roared
"I-i-i, I don't want to die, Please, s-spare me!"