After giving a long lecture to Jiang Shuang for something he himself wasn't sure about, Rex nodded in satisfaction.
Jiang Shuang was standing in his place in a daze, he was trying to figure out just what was his fault.
"Okay, then see you later," Rex said then he tapped the bird on her back who obediently turned around prepared to fly away so as not to anger Rex and make him change his mind about not forcing the contract.
"Brother Rex there is one problem I wanted to talk about," Jiang Shuang suddenly said when he saw Rex leaving.
"Not today, I have something important to do. We will talk about it later," Rex left a sentence before leaving.
Rex then took the bird to the entrance door of his not-so-uncommon workshop on the ground floor.
{Little Blue obediently wait here, and don't do anything foolish,} Rex said while patting the head of the bird who was staring at him with resentful eyes but still nodded obediently.
Rex pulled his sleeves up then walked in and got to work.
After around half an hour, he walked out of the workshop with a satisfied expression on his face.
Rex was holding an equipment similar to a white bracelet in his hand. The bracelet looked like it was made from opaque white glass, the bracelet was not long or broad but very simple looking like a friendship band, it's surface was smooth without any flashy carving, there was only a sky-blue flower-vine like pattern on it, the two ends of the pattern were connected not letting the viewers know where it started and where it ended.
At one place on the flowery-vine pattern, there was a symbol akin to a flame mask which was scarlet on one side and blue on the other, it only had two sharp polygon eye sockets on it. The mask didn't look like it was attached to the flowery-vine pattern but was covering it. The mask was the symbol of the Frozen Flame.
The bracelet was rather simple but its true charm as shown in its simplicity.
{Little Blue I prepared this gift for you, take it as our meeting gift,} Rex said as he walked to her.
The bird stared at the bracelet with interest because of its beauty but wasn't too interested, she wasn't idiot enough to believe Rex's words and knew that this bracelet was likely a tool to keep her location in check.
It's just that she was still underestimating Rex.
The bracelet actually carried both benefits and limitations for her. Before Rex modified it the bracelet was one of the many prototype models of the equipment he was making for Little Aru and others beside him, then he thought about it and decided to modify one of them to use on the bluebird who can also serve as the tester for it.
The equipment didn't have a grading system to evaluate it but if done a rough comparison that its grade had already reached a high-rank spirit tool.
Rex reached out and made a small cut on the bird's shoulder, a small drop of blood came out and fell on the bracelet, as soon as it did the former got absorbed by the latter. Then Rex extended the bracelet to her right leg near the claw area.
Surprisingly, the bracelet gave off a blinding white light, and when the light disappeared it was already equipped on her right leg.
The bird raised her leg and looked at it in surprise.
{Little Blue, now that you have obediently accepted my gift, I won't restrict your freedom too much. You can freely move around the area in the city as long as you follow certain rules. for now, I will tell you the basic ones - rule no.1 do not harm anyone for no reason, rule no. 2 don't try to remove or break the bracelet and lastly rule no. 3 don't you dare leave the city area or try to escape.
If you broke any of these rules then you will be on Lerna's dinner plate on the next day, I may not even get your bones for a proper funeral, you understand what I mean… right? Don't do anything foolish I will spare no effort in nurturing you, as for your living quarters Hmmm… the whole garden is yours, you can also choose a free area in the forest to live in if you want, all you have to do is show your face at least once a day to me or someone else here in the castle, that's all for now,} Rex said.
The second he finished, the bird turned around and ran with her two legs without a single pause, she looked like the students that have suffered deeply under the boring lecture of a teacher who took over the free class of an absent teacher in succession after it's on.
Rex was at loss for her words when he saw the supposedly Eagle running like an Ostrich.
There was still time until night so Rex went to a secluded area in the forest and took out the dead body of the sect master of the Monster Hunting Sect.
He planned to use the new soul seal and make him into an undead first but now he had changed his mind.
'If I am going to walk on the path of blood cultivator from today's onwards, then it's better to recover my lost blood essence as much as I can,' Rex thought.
Before Rose had told him that he had lost 20 years of blood essence during his evolution which was used to strengthen the newly adjusted meridians in his body. With his total lifespan that much lifespan didn't have much of an impact but no matter how little weakness is, it's better to overcome it as soon as possible.
Rex took a deep breath then looked at the body with a firm gaze, four tentacles came out of his back and fluttered around him like they were going with the wind flow.
..Zittherr….
In an instant, the feeble looking flesh tentacles moved at a lightning speed and pierced the dead body of the sect master.
'Essence Devourer'
Blood flew out of the wounds of the body but when it came in contact with the fleshy tentacles it got absorbed like water to a sponge.
A slight pulse can be noticed from the tentacles, they were like straws made of sponge. The dead body of the old man was drying at a speed visible to the naked eyes.
Several notification windows started to pop up in succession.
[+ 0.05% VIT]
[+ 0.03% END]
[+ 0.01% STR]
[+ 0.06% VIT]
[+ 0.04%....]
Even if he was old, his body was a Golden Core stage cultivator, which won't rote for more than a month even if Rex wouldn't have put it in his Inventory.
The body of the sect master started to shrink, his skin lost its elasticity, wrinkles appeared all over his body. If he was a plump old chicken before now he was like a salted dried fish.
At the moment, Rex was looking at the ceiling, his eyes were turned upwards, his cheeks were slightly flushed, his breathing was unnatural, overall he looked a little drunk.
Although he didn't use the taste sense of his tentacles but he still felt like he was drinking a wine similar to the one Zakiya gave him, a cool sensation was embracing his heart, this pleasure was new to him but it seduced him in the very first encounter.
'It feels like... I can get addicted dammit,' Rex thought as he touched his lower lip and slightly licked his fingers.
Ria's image appeared in his head, his eyes were locked onto her soft swan-like neck.
By this time, the body of the sect master had already turned into a dried corpse which looked like a dead ghoul.
[Are you alright?]
Rex's eyes trembled a little, he quickly sat down on the floor and used the Transcend Heart Tempering Mantra.
After half an hour, he opened his eyes and exhaled deeply. His face was not flushed anymore and his breathing was also normal.
'Dammit, although Essence Devourer is somewhat similar to the blood-sucking ability of blood race but it doesn't focus just on blood but the overall essence of the whole body so I thought it won't result in me facing the blood-sucking urges but now it seems like I do have to focus on controlling my urges. I need to increase the mastery of this technique as soon as possible, it's not safe to use Essence Devourer without it,' Rex thought.
Rex has Calm Mind which doesn't have any debuff in his base form, furthermore, his initial mastery of the Transcend Heart Tempering Mantra was at Full Mastery but it was still not too easy for him to overcome his bloodthirsty state without drinking the diluted wine given by Zakiya once a week.
If a normal person knew that he can't control his urges even after having Calm Mind and Full Mastery of the meditation technique, they would think that this doesn't make sense or Rex has no control over his urges.
But in truth, it was because of his carbonite human family. the carbonite human Familia is unique to Rex, the Race in this familia are more like living weapons than living creatures.
They mostly won't receive any critical hit, their limbs can regrow, have high mental resistance, have lesser fear of death in the battle state, can break past their limits more easily, and most importantly they won't feel tired or go totally out of breath even when they have just 10% Stamina left.
But heavens never let any existence reach perfection. With all these advantages Rex got two disadvantages, the first one was less fertility rate which he didn't mind that much now that he already had Aru and the other one is... over hormone production, any hormones in his body is a few times more than a normal human to increase his overall capabilities and letting him fight at his 100% even when he is on the brink of collapsing.
The extra hormones production won't interfere with Calm Mind's work and won't bother Rex but once he got the bloodsucking urge just now, those hormones worked as a tonic to boost his urges and rebelled against Calm Mind.
'So how much blood essence I was able to extract?' Rex asked after calming himself down, he decided not to do something so reckless again and keep some distance with other people for a while if he did that.
[+16 Years]
[If you had better control then I believe that extracting 25 years of blood essence wouldn't be that hard but the unexpected situation resulted in wastage of a lot of essence during refinement. Well, considering that you can only absorb up to 100% of your current lifespan, you won't be able to extract and absorb more than 20 years of essence anyway, now that there are only 4 years of lost blood essence it won't make that much of a difference,]
"Hmm..." Rex said then he went back to the castle after destroying the dried corpse using Atomize.
After arriving at the castle, Rex directly went to the 1st floor or ground floor of the spirit tower and cultivated the meditation technique.
At night...
Rex was still cultivating the meditation technique but then he suddenly opened his eyes and looked at the side.
A black-furred fox with an appearance somewhat similar to a wolf was lazily lying on a black-red couch as she intently stared at him.
"For how long have you waited?" Rex asked as he looked at the red-eyed fox.
"Not too long, It's not every day that you cultivate that diligently so I decided to wait for a while," The fox said in a humane voice then she stretched her body and walked down from the couch heading towards him.
Rex nodded then stood up.
When the fox was just a few meters away from him a black glow covered her for a brief moment before it disappeared but when it did, Zakiya was standing in the place of the fox.
Rex wasn't surprised by her fox form as he had seen it many times.
There was a time when he asked her to show him her half-beast form where she has fox years and tell, as a result, he was rewarded with a few fists on his head and his training time being extended by six hours.
"Now I don't want to waste any more time, so let's start now," Zakiya said with a serious expression.
Rex nodded. He was well aware that body cultivation was way painful compared to the easy Qi cultivation and because Blood cultivation was similar to it, it should also be a - no pain, no gain path.
"It's good that you understand, now remove your clothes," Zakiya said without any change in expression.
"Pardon?" Rex blinked his eyes, he was thinking if his unnatural state from earlier also messed with his sense of hearing.
"Don't make me repeat myself, remove your clothes," Zakiya said in slight annoyance as she took out the 1 Star grade pill.
Rex gave her a strange look, then he measured her body from head to toe.
"Er... teacher, by any chance, is the Blood Cultivation path similar to the Dual Cultivation path?" Rex asked in an uncertain tone.
...Boom...
[-124 HP]
After a few minutes...
Rex was obediently sitting bare-chested on the ground as he rubbed the slight bump on his forehead. He was staring at Zakiya who was making some kind of around him.