Chapter 288: New Threshold
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Every few breaths, the crimson surface shifted slightly, as if some internal force pressed outward and then withdrew again. Not enough to crack the shell. Enough to remind him something living was still happening inside.
The Void Land itself watched with all the patient wrongness of a place that had seen too much and spoken none of it aloud.
Then the system moved again.
[Ding! SYSTEM Notification: Congratulations host for reaching chaos rank three.
Recent feeding has made it possible.
The hosts overall Battle Power increased.]
Sekhmet’s eyes sharpened. He did not move, but his full attention turned inward at once.
[Chaos Energy increased by 5000.
Chaos Body increased by 5000.
Chaos Energy Purity increased by 1%.]
The force of that made him go still in a different way. He had expected gains.
Not those gains. Not that much. Not in ranking up.
His blood stirred in response to the notification, and for one brief second he could feel the difference physically. Not abstractly. Not only as numbers waiting in a window. Real change.
Density.
Weight.
The sense that his body had become more expensive to kill than it was a few minutes earlier. His internal reserves deepened. His flesh felt tighter, stronger, more complete in some difficult-to-name way.
The system opened the old status window in his vision first, as though reminding him of the shape he had been carrying before this moment.
[Previous Status Window-
Host: Sekhmet Dawn
Race: Human
Location: Slik City (Null Territory)
Overall Battle Power: 22000
System Note: Host has removed training suppression. The host’s combat power is active.
Chaos Energy: 11000
Chaos Body: 11000
Chaos Energy Purity: 13%
Blood Awakening: 5%
Blood Proficiency: 100/100
Skills-
Blood Control Lv2
Blood Sword Lv1 (Can transform blood into a sword for now)
Blood Eye Lv2 (Appraise items and beings. Can now see more detailed information and low-rank god status)
Blood Summon Lv2 (Summon blood minions using blood. Stronger blood = stronger summon. Minimum summon battle power: 1000. Rare summons can evolve into Harpies)
Blood Puppet Lv2 (Slots 1/3. Cannot betray master. Forced conversion if target battle power is not more than 2x host. Stronger targets require willing acceptance)
Vampire Creation Lv2 (Slots 2/3. Eligible Targets: Female only. Loyalty: Absolute. Growth: Blood feeding. Can now turn any female into a true vampire if they are not more than 2x stronger than the host. Same and lower rank targets can gain up to 3-rank push. Rank 4 targets gain up to 1-rank push)
Blood Eye Upgrade Effect: Active
Vampire Creation Shared Slot Restriction: Removed.]
.
.
.
.
The old numbers faded. And then the new ones took their place.
[Updated Status Window-
Host: Sekhmet Dawn
Race: Human
Location: Slik City (Null Territory)
Overall Battle Power: 32000 (Chaos rank three.)
System Note: Host has removed training suppression. The host’s combat power is active.
Chaos Energy: 16000
Chaos Body: 16000
Chaos Energy Purity: 14%
Blood Awakening: 5%
Blood Proficiency: 100/100
Skills-
Blood Control Lv2
Blood Sword Lv1 (Can transform blood into a sword for now)
Blood Eye Lv2 (Appraise items and beings. Can now see more detailed information and low-rank god status)
Blood Summon Lv2 (Summon blood minions using blood. Stronger blood = stronger summon. Minimum summon battle power: 1000. Rare summons can evolve into Harpies)
Blood Puppet Lv2 (Slots 1/3. Cannot betray master. Forced conversion if target battle power is not more than 2x host. Stronger targets require willing acceptance)
Vampire Creation Lv2 (Slots 2/3. Eligible Targets: Female only. Loyalty: Absolute. Growth: Blood feeding. Can now turn any female into a true vampire if they are not more than 2x stronger than the host. Same and lower rank targets can gain up to 3-rank push. Rank 4 targets gain up to 1-rank push)
Blood Eye Upgrade Effect: Active
Vampire Creation Shared Slot Restriction: Removed.]
Sekhmet read through the window slowly, letting each change settle.
Thirty-two thousand. He had crossed another invisible line again. He is now chaos rank three.
Not enough to make him careless. Never that. But enough that even the shape of tomorrow’s meeting with Mihos shifted in subtle ways. Enough that he was not the same man who had been standing here before feeding from Sofia and Natasha. Enough that the blood of half-god true vampires had proven itself worth the danger and the ugly practicality.
His chaos purity rising by one percent mattered too.
Fourteen percent. Small on paper. Not small in consequence.
Every gain in purity sharpened the quality of what he carried. His chaos was not just more. It was cleaner. Closer to its proper state. Easier to impose, harder to resist, more expensive in the right ways.
He looked down at his own hand. The one he had cut for Lily. The one that had bled into the glass. The wound is healing faster than before. The fingers flexed once.
Power moved under the skin like something with memory.
He should have felt triumph.
He did, a little.
But it came tangled with too much else tonight. Lily. Mihos. The Blood Sovereign. The city lord. The hidden marriage is already settling into his bones like a secret second skeleton. No single gain could rise above all of that cleanly.
Still.
Thirty-two thousand battle power.
He breathed once and let himself recognize the truth of it.
He was becoming harder to kill. (Good for him.)
The system had not finished.
[Ding! SYSTEM Notification: Host blood awakening reached 5% several days ago.]
Sekhmet frowned inwardly.
"I know that."
[SYSTEM Notification: The host has not yet made full use of the available blood awakening threshold.]
That shifted his attention immediately.
"Explain it."
The answer came with the organized coldness he had come to know well.
[SYSTEM Notification: At 5% blood awakening, hosts can now create Level Two vampire conversions.
Recommendation: use this threshold.]
Sekhmet’s eyes narrowed very slightly.
Level Two.
He already knew there were five tiers. Knew creation was not a flat act. But he had not yet tested the full structure beyond what the system had forced open for him through circumstance. Because of the truth about his family and then the wedding and rest he totally forgot about it.
The twins and Lily are level three vampires. They had followed different vampire paths, specialized, personal, and costly in different ways.
This was something else. More basic. More practical. He can make as many as he wants. Potentially very useful. He wanted to refresh his memory with the information.
So, he answered inwardly at once.
"Show me the information of level one and two."
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