Chapter 115 - 83 : The Swarm That Fed the Beast (1)

Chapter 115: Chapter 83 : The Swarm That Fed the Beast (1)

Ethan looked down for a brief moment.

Blood dripped from several wounds across his body, some his own, some belonging to the people he had already killed. The ground beneath his feet had become slick in places, darkened by blood and scattered with broken weapons and bodies.

He felt the Blood Seed.

The reserve within his body had fallen noticeably.

He had been replenishing some of what he spent through cultivation between encounters, and the blood he had collected from those who came after him had helped restore what had been lost. But this was different. He was burning through Living Blood faster than ordinary cultivation could replace it.

Another arrow came out of the darkness, so sudden that Ethan’s Blood Perception gave him no warning. He caught the faint whistle of the shaft cutting through the air and moved on instinct, twisting his head aside as the arrow grazed his cheek and left a thin line of blood. Ethan turned sharply toward where it had come from, but there was nothing there. Whoever had fired it had already shifted position.

Before he could locate the shooter, another attack came from somewhere else, forcing Ethan to move again. He cursed silently. Blood Perception could sense the living bodies around him, but an arrow had no vitality for it to detect. Against attacks like this, he had nothing to rely on except his eyes, his ears, and his instincts.

He moved again, barely staying ahead of the next attack as the battle closed around him. The shouting, clashing weapons, bursts of Qi, and movement from every direction blurred together until the entire valley seemed to have swallowed him.

One group gave way to another. Ethan killed a cultivator and immediately felt steel bite into his back. He turned and killed the attacker. A Qi technique struck his leg, and his knee buckled before he forced it straight again. A spear came toward his chest.

Ethan caught the wooden shaft with one hand, stopping the spearhead just short of his chest. The cultivator holding the other end stared at him, disbelief flashing across his face as he tried to pull the weapon free. Ethan tightened his grip instead. The wood groaned under the pressure before snapping in his hand.

The cultivator barely had time to react.

Ethan stepped forward, his dao flashing across the man’s throat.

The man collapsed.

Ethan breathed heavily as Living Blood circulated through his body. The wound in his leg began closing before his eyes, the torn flesh drawing together with each passing moment as the damage repaired itself. There was something almost remarkable about watching his body recover while he was still standing in the middle of the fight, as though injuries that would have ended another cultivator’s battle were little more than temporary setbacks to him.

Yet as Ethan took another step, a faint ache remained in his leg. He glanced down briefly, almost expecting the injury to have already disappeared completely. The wound had closed, but the lingering pain told him that something was different and that shouldn’t have happened.

His eyes narrowed as he looked inward. The reserve he had built throughout his body was falling faster now, and the Blood Seed’s steady cycle could no longer keep pace with what he was demanding from it. He had spent too much in too short a time.

Another attack came, and Ethan blocked it before cutting down the attacker. Then another came, followed by another, leaving him with barely a moment between each exchange. His body was beginning to feel heavier with every movement. It wasn’t a loss of strength yet, but he could feel the strain building in his body, something that hadn’t been there earlier.

He had always thought of regeneration as one of the safest advantages his vampire body gave him, something that allowed him to keep fighting through injuries that would have ended another cultivator’s battle. But surrounded by bodies and blood, he was beginning to understand the other side of that advantage. Every wound had a price, whether it was a broken bone, a torn muscle, or a deep cut, and Living Blood paid for all of it. He was simply spending it faster than he could replenish it.

A cultivator rushed him from the darkness. Ethan reacted a fraction too slowly, and the blade tore open his side before he could get out of its path. He killed the man with a quick slash, then pressed a hand against the wound as Living Blood moved toward the injury. The torn flesh drew together, but the healing had lost the speed he had come to expect. Ethan watched the wound close, his fingers still pressed against his side, and a quiet unease settled in his chest.

"I’m running out."

He lowered his hand and looked toward the darkness just as another group emerged from between the rocks. They came quickly, weapons already raised, their movements carrying a dangerous eagerness despite the bodies scattered across the valley. One of them even called out with a sharp grin, "He’s slowing!"

Then they charged.

Ethan raised his head and slowly looked across the valley. Bodies lay scattered across the ground, some sprawled among the rocks while others had fallen along the paths where the fight had carried them. Blood stained the stones beneath his feet, running into the cracks and darkening the ground around the fallen. The battle had already changed the way the remaining cultivators moved. Some had begun keeping their distance, circling cautiously instead of rushing in, while others stayed farther back and watched, waiting for an opening rather than becoming the next body on the ground.

They had seen him heal. They had seen him kill. And now they had noticed something else, the speed of his movements had begun to slow.

They didn’t know why, and they didn’t need to. Whatever they thought was happening, they only had to keep pressing him and wait for the moment when he could no longer keep up.

Ethan’s Blood Perception spread outward again, passing through the darkness and over the surrounding slopes. More presences entered his senses. Some were close enough that he could feel them clearly, while others remained farther away, moving through the darkness or standing completely still as they waited. He searched the surrounding valley, trying to keep track of every presence he could reach, but there were too many.

He couldn’t count them anymore.

His senses were beginning to strain beneath the constant awareness of so many living bodies. Everywhere he looked, there were people, and everywhere his Blood Perception reached, he could feel their vitality. The sensation of warmth, life, and blood had always been useful to him. It warned him when someone was nearby and helped him distinguish the living from the dead. But standing in the middle of a valley soaked in blood, surrounded by fallen cultivators while countless living presences remained around him, the sensation felt different.

There was blood everywhere, and so much of it that Ethan could almost feel its presence through his senses. He swallowed, suddenly aware of how dry his throat had become, but before he could dwell on the thought, another cultivator charged.

Ethan raised his dao as the man’s weapon came down hard. He blocked the strike, the impact shaking his arm all the way to his shoulder, while the cultivator pressed forward and tried to force him backward. Ethan’s feet slid across the stone as his muscles strained against the pressure. He shifted with the next exchange and killed the man, but before the body had even finished falling, another attack came from the side.

The blade tore beneath his ribs, opening a deep cut across his side and sending him staggering. Living Blood surged toward the injury, drawing the torn flesh together, but the wound stopped before it could fully close. Ethan felt the difference immediately. His breathing grew heavier as he steadied himself, while the Blood Seed continued its quiet cycle inside him. The reserve spread throughout his body was simply no longer enough to answer every demand being placed on it.

He couldn’t keep doing this.

Ethan looked across the valley. There were too many of them. He could kill them, perhaps dozens more, but there was no guarantee another group wouldn’t arrive after those, followed by another and another. He had been fighting for too long, and no matter how strong his body was, he couldn’t keep spending at this rate forever.

He needed time to recover, but more than that, he needed a way to replenish what he was losing. His gaze moved across the blood-soaked valley and the countless living presences surrounding him.

He needed blood.

The thought came so naturally that Ethan almost rejected it.

Then his gaze moved across the battlefield. Blood was everywhere, soaking the ground and staining the rocks beneath the bodies. But it wasn’t the kind of blood he had allowed himself to use before. He had taken blood from corpses, bought it from merchants, and experimented with animal blood, spirit-beast blood, human blood, and cultivator blood. He had always treated it as material, something already separated from the person it had once belonged to.

This was different.

The people surrounding him were alive, and they were still trying to kill him.

Ethan’s gaze moved slowly from one cultivator to another. His fangs remained hidden behind his lips. He could continue fighting, maybe, but another serious injury could change everything, and he could already feel how much his reserves had fallen.