Over the next half a year, Lucien pushed his control over Particles outside his body to 100% which enabled him to feel as if the Particles were an extension of his own body. A simple though would allow him to shape them or move them however he wanted.
While his main body was pushing his control, the clone was slowly exploring the diagrams and progressing on his promotion. He was already in front the 9th gate, and the speed was mainly credited to the already high control and his strong Soul, but he was still lacking once final push to open that final obstacle.
Normally here would be where people whose talent was not enough would be stopped. They could have a shortage in some areas they couldn't notice or just couldn't complete, for example in control or a flawed Soul.
Lucien was a complete exclusion as he could see his stat in a numerical way and determining where he stood was a piece of cake. But normal Practitioners didn't have such a tool, they had to feel and explore on their own, and they might feel that their control is already at the peak, since they can't improve it anymore, which brings the giant bottlenecks one could experience.
And even if they peaked on everything, depending on the method they use to breakthrough, whether it is grinding the gates slowly or opening them up with force, it could take a long period of time. Many average Practitioners chose to give up once they saw no progress over large amounts of time, deciding to enjoy the mortal dust and give up on their Path.
All of these factors summed up, made up the talent of a Practitioner. And the way Lucien enhanced this potential was just making sure that their visible improvement wouldn't stop before they got to the desired Rank.
The Vampire Path mostly worked by purifying their blood, which led to faster training in Vitality, once they saw they were much better than their peers, new confidence was born and allowed them to push forward. And if Lucien decided that it would work till Rank 3, then once they reach Rank 3, their bloodline would stop supporting the fast growth and they would turn back to average.
Noticing that he still lacked a little bit even when using large amounts of Darkness Sources, Lucien didn't activate his Devil Armor to push it forward, but stood up and exited his room. He knew that sometimes haste would make waste, and even through he was in a hurry, patience was still with him.
During the previous half a year, the organization now named Blood Legion, grew at an absurd pace. They already had dozens of Rank 1 strongholds and a couple of Rank 2 strongholds. They could be much further, but Maria decided that investigating who was the backer before attacking a stronghold was a must, even if Lucien didn't care. She didn't want to bring him troubles during his cultivation.
The business headed by Elena also grew much faster than before, and it even started attracting the attention of Rank 3 Practitioners. When he got the news about this interest, Lucien frowned a bit. He knew that SilverMoon family had one Rank 3 Practitioner who was their patriarch. If the interest grew and a couple of Rank 3s teamed up to attack the SilverMoon family, he would have to do something about it.
Another phenomenon that started occurring in the Scarlet Empire was the disappearance of families, it started about three months after Lucien entered seclusion, of course nobody noticed a couple of common families disappear.
Maria made sure to take only a family or two from a city and one family at most from villages. She made sure they didn't have that many relatives, so nobody would ask questions. Since there were plenty of villages, she planned it in a way that a cycle would take a year, and once she started over nobody would notice much. A lot of the children were also recruited and were currently being trained, some of them also refused and decided to embark on a path filled with revenge by themselves.
Lucien had decided to change the pace a little bit before secluding to finish his breakthrough, in a way he wanted to clear his head and get to his peak state before doing it. So he left the capital and headed to one stronghold that was not known to anybody. It was not taken over, but build by the Blood Legion over the past half a year. Once Practitioners got involved in the process, building a stronghold was a much faster process.
But the only Practitioners involved with this stronghold at all were slaves. Nobody else knew anything about this location. And even then the stronghold was just a front, what was on top paled in comparison to the underground world that was right underneath. This was the place all those poor families were imprisoned.
Lucien made sure that nobody was following him on his trip to this place and since he was the master of all the slaves, not a single soul showed up to bar his way. Lucien walked in the stronghold without any reservations and headed to the central building, the one that was the biggest and obviously belonged to whoever owned the place. It was the only entrance to the underground, if you exclude a couple of hidden ones that were meant for escaping if the situation required it.
And since he didn't trust Maria fully, he made sure to create a hidden path or two nobody knew about.
Lucien entered the underground and headed to a special room that was made on his request. The room that would be bringing him lots of negative energy to enhance his Devil Armor. The room had two entrances, the one that lead to the outside which was also the one Lucien came through. And another one that seemed a bit eerie. Occasional cries could be barely heard from behind it.
To clear his head and distract himself from any stray thoughts might disrupt his breakthrough Lucien decided to enjoy himself a little bit.
"Bring one family." Lucien spoke to the air as there was visibly nobody else in the room, but the moment his order was delivered, a shadow appeared and bowed deeply. Once the whole solemn action was finished the shadow vanished once more.
The shadow didn't reappear, but moment later the eerie door opened and two people were pushed through it, landing in the middle of the room. The door then closed slowly, cutting everything that would happen from the outside world.
The man and the woman were both just commoners, their looks were also nothing special. The slave were under orders to take families that wouldn't make much impact if they were gone overnight.
The man was the first to lift his head with a fierce expression.
"You will go to hell for this."
While the woman had a pleading expression while looking at the man in front.
"Why would you do this?"
Lucien smiled radiantly, completely ready for some fun. He even decided to answer them before starting.
"What do you mean go to hell? You are already in hell. And why? I just want to get distracted for a bit."
Lucien walked towards them, this time he didn't plan to play games with them, he was going to use some old-school methods and dirty his hands. He wanted to see if there would be a difference in the negative energy amount if he did it differently.