Not the Kind of Vampire You Think

As a lich who had stripped away all worldly desires, conducting experiments was one of the few forms of entertainment left to Anbaixiu. After all, money couldn't be made every single day. When there was no money to be earned, he could only pass the time with experiments—and if an experiment had to do with making money, Anbaixiu would be all the happier. In theory, the power of the Golden Throne could grant Anbaixiu limitless wealth and might. Coupled with his two legendary boons—Simulated Soul and property transmutation—he could establish a self-sustaining cycle. Given enough time, becoming the richest person on the continent was only a matter of time. Yet beautiful as the ideal was, reality was somewhat cruel. It wasn't that the theory was flawed, but rather that the blank souls created through Simulated Soul had an intelligence quotient far too low. Lined up before Anbaixiu were five new types of "undead" he had just created. Regarding material transmutation: given equal mass, the denser the substance, the more gold it consumed to alter its properties. The bodies of the five new "undead" before him were made of books, leather, steel, sand, and gold. Each weighed exactly one kilogram, and each was infused with a blank soul calibrated precisely to an intensity of 100 po. This was a unit of soul strength Anbaixiu had devised himself; an ordinary human soul fluctuated between 80 and 130 po, whereas the blank souls Anbaixiu molded himself were relatively standardized, which minimized experimental error. When altering their properties, however, the disparity in gold consumed by the different materials was staggering—a hundredfold difference between the cheapest and the most expensive. The tiny skeleton cast from one kilogram of gold consumed seventeen times its own weight in gold just to modify its material property to "corpse." That might have had something to do with Anbaixiu's lack of familiarity with the process, but the cost was undeniably unacceptable. Furthermore, the experiment ultimately proved that regardless of the material used, the efficiency of faith replenishment generated by the undead puppets differed very little—they were all utterly pathetic. By Anbaixiu's rough estimate, once the Golden Throne forged from one million gold coins was completely drained, it would take several million standard-strength blank souls praying to restore it within a day. Still, blank souls possessed evolutionary potential. The freshly created little creatures were dim-witted, but so long as Anbaixiu lifted the restrictions on them, they had a chance of growing smarter. At that point, the efficiency of faith replenishment would rise accordingly. Moreover, the undead were easy to sustain. During ordinary times, they could simply slumber and passively absorb dark magic to maintain their activity, costing practically nothing. In other words, the more undead he had and the more time passed, the more Anbaixiu's returns would snowball. After all, the undead were immortal. Barring battlefield losses, their numbers would only steadily increase. Given enough time, Anbaixiu truly stood a chance of achieving financial freedom in gold through this method. The only limiting factor was the capacity of the Golden Throne. Anbaixiu suspected the throne had an upper limit of capacity as well; he just hadn't tested it out yet, though it was definitely far more than a few million. Legendary abilities likewise required continuous exploration and practice to truly master. With the baseline data tested, the problem ultimately returned to the quality of the undead puppets. Although blank souls were highly malleable, no amount of tweaking could immediately bring them up to baseline human intelligence; they required time to grow. Therefore, making puppets out of gold was a pure loss. Because gold was dense, the blank soul had to expend more power to control the body, rendering it tiny and clumsy, with advantages only in resistances. It had no combat capability, offered no advantage in faith output, and incurred an astronomical cost. The material could be ruled out immediately. Perhaps once Anbaixiu attained gold freedom in the future, he could craft a couple of golden Death Knights just for fun. On the other hand, the "undead puppet" made from sand gave Anbaixiu a pleasant surprise. After the blank soul merged into the loose sand, it could actually control every single grain. Without any guidance from Anbaixiu, it learned to move like quicksand and demonstrated an impressive talent for mimicry. The little fellow looked at its brothers and sisters around it. One moment it reshaped itself into a book, rustling as if turning pages; the next, it copied the clumsy iron lump, rolling back and forth. Curiosity was the wellspring of wisdom. This sand-made fellow was clearly smarter than the other four. Although its faith replenishment during commanded prayer still fell short of expectations, the little creature showed great promise. As for the other four... apologies, but it was time to cut costs and tighten the purse strings. To test the influence of physical form on blank souls, Anbaixiu tried flowing water, iron filings, and gold dust painstakingly scraped off. In the end, he reached an intriguing conclusion: a loose, granular "corpse" state truly seemed to enhance the blank soul's intelligence. For the exact same gold, casting it into a tiny skeleton made it clumsy and dull, whereas the gold dust form was noticeably more lively. Though still far too heavy, its sensory perception of the outside world had indeed improved, and it exhibited a natural knack for mimicry. This discovery was fascinating, but Anbaixiu couldn't come up with a reasonable explanation for now. He could only surmise that a looser bodily structure gave the blank soul a greater surface area of contact with the outside world, allowing it to perceive more information. The hypothesis wasn't necessarily sound and required further testing, but the experimental results spoke for themselves. The only problem was that flowing water had originally been the best choice, but water evaporated. Once it was gone, the poor little creature would perish completely. Thus, after repeated experiments, Anbaixiu ultimately settled on two materials for his new undead puppets. One was crushed glass, and the other was sifted sand. The densities of these two materials were comparable, their transmutation costs fell within an acceptable range, and both glass and sand were relatively stable, not prone to environmental wear and tear. Anbaixiu crafted five of each and let them roam freely within the castle like the mercury soul puppets, intending to observe their development over time. Perhaps it was time to cultivate higher-tier undead through conventional methods. It just so happened that Dahei and Erha had been preserved by Anbaixiu; in a couple of days, he would resume crafting bodies for them. At most, it would cost a bit more to replace bones with other materials. Higher-tier undead with independent consciousness ought to provide substantially more faith replenishment. Experiments kept him perpetually busy, and gold coins were never enough. Anbaixiu organized the day's experimental logs, then flipped open the Necrotic Codex and sent a message to the Rose of Decay: [Lady Rose, does our deal need some adjustment? With the City of Alchemy gone, I'm afraid things will be chaotic around here for a while.] After waiting a bit with no reply from the Rose of Decay, Anbaixiu checked the group chat and found it unexpectedly lively today. [Crown of the Headless Horseman: Are those elves really preparing to make a move?] [Pale Little Skeleton: From what I hear, yes. They've already started assembling troops. Good thing we came back early, or we might have run right into the elven army.] [Crown of the Headless Horseman: It was all thanks to your decisiveness in bolting right away. What a relief.] Anbaixiu grimaced, his facial features practically scrunching into a ball. Why on earth were the two of them chatting in a public group? Flirting for everyone to see? Then again, what were they talking about? Just as Anbaixiu was about to scroll up through the chat history, he noticed a new user. [Dislikes Humans: Heh, it's not just the elves. The desert dwarves are getting ready to make a move too. As you know, Ryan has been beating the desert dwarves black and blue lately, costing them several oases. With territory as vast as the City of Alchemy, the desert dwarves have had their eyes on it for a long time.] Who was this user named "Dislikes Humans"? Undead often slept for decades at a stretch. Since joining the Elegy Poetry Society, Anbaixiu had never seen this person speak. Now that they had suddenly appeared, it was a good chance to get acquainted. [Tiga Ultraman: Greetings, Senior. I'm a newcomer. Are you a lich as well, Senior? I have a design blueprint here for aberrant skeleton modifications. I wonder if you might be interested.] [Dislikes Humans: Oh, a newcomer. Haven't seen a new member join in years. But I'm not a lich; I'm a vampire. I don't usually use skeletons.] Anbaixiu: ... The word "vampire" made Anbaixiu feel a bit uneasy. After all, the Necrotic Codex recorded far too many "case studies" concerning vampires, every single one of which suffered a miserable fate after falling in love with the food on their dining tables. So much so that whenever Anbaixiu saw a vampire, his instinctive reaction was that their tastes were somewhat questionable. Perhaps because the silence had dragged on too long, this vampire senior sent another message. [Dislikes Humans: I'm not the kind of vampire you think!] [Tiga Ultraman: No, no, no, you misunderstand. I don't discriminate, truly.] [Dislikes Humans: Look at my name! Isn't it obvious enough?] [Crown of the Headless Horseman: Haha, aren't there elves besides humans? Several cases in the Codex even involved vampires with orcs, or even mind flayers. You lot are wilder than druids.] [Dislikes Humans: Piss off. You ride a bone dragon and you have the nerve to talk about vampires?] [Pale Little Skeleton: What? Got a problem with dragons? How about I bring my kin over to pay your house a visit for a few days?] Seeing that an argument was brewing, Anbaixiu felt rather awkward. His silence had sparked the war. Just then, the Rose of Decay, who had not responded to his message earlier, chimed in to the group chat: [Did you just say the elves and the desert dwarves are both mobilizing their armies? Are they both heading for the City of Alchemy?] As expected of the Undead Queen; the moment she spoke, the others immediately fell silent. [Dislikes Humans: It's only natural. The City of Alchemy occupied vast tracts of fertile land. Although the main city is gone, the rest of the territory still retains intact alchemical manufacturing systems. Who wouldn't want to seize that? Especially the desert dwarves—they've been beaten so badly by Ryan that they can't even fight back, so it makes total sense that they want to relocate.] Anbaixiu mentally reviewed the map of the kingdoms. The City of Alchemy bordered the Silvermoon High Court and the desert's Kingdom of Gold, Salokma, whereas the strongest realm, the Ryan Empire, was separated from the City of Alchemy by an entire desert. Ryan was likely drooling over the legacy of the City of Alchemy as well, but its reach fell short; it could only watch as the desert dwarves moved in to seize territory and catch their breath. Anbaixiu asked curiously: [What's the story with the Silvermoon High Court? Elves rarely wage foreign wars, don't they? And haven't they been jacking up material prices like crazy lately, offending plenty of people? Aren't they afraid of being ganged up on by the remaining kingdoms?] [Rose of Decay: I've heard word of that too. The elves have indeed assembled their armies, and their price-hiking of materials seems to have hidden motives; it wasn't purely to sabotage the economies of other kingdoms. For some time, the Silvermoon High Court has allowed entry but no exit, locking down all news. It's unclear what exactly has happened.] Entry only, no exit? Anbaixiu vaguely recalled Isabel mentioning that her former teacher had traveled to the Silvermoon High Court and never returned, which was why the lord had targeted her. Otherwise, with a certified alchemist as a mentor, an ordinary lord wouldn't have dared to act rashly. What on earth were those elves of the Silvermoon High Court up to? Could they have botched an attempt at godhood, just like the City of Alchemy? Probably not, though. When alchemists courted disaster, no gods watched over them, but elves were different. The elven pantheon had plenty of deities who took special care of their own; they wouldn't let any major mishap befall them. [Rose of Decay: Little brother Tiga, are you still planning to stay in the City of Alchemy? It's about to become a battlefield. The desert dwarves are fighting for survival, so they won't back down, and the elves have always been aggressive. They are bound to clash to decide how to carve up the kingdom.] The Rose of Decay's words gave Anbaixiu pause. Although the power of the Golden Throne ensured he was no longer at the very bottom of the legendary rank, a war between two nations was not something one or two legends could easily sway. Lingering here would indeed invite trouble. The question was, where could he move?