[You have died]
I read the prompt and inwardly screamed, I was way to cocky. How did I think I could take down something 6 levels above.
I opened my eyes and found myself in a field very similar to where I started the game. Looking around I saw a small village, it had wooden palisades and quaint houses. As I walked towards the village, a rift appeared in front of me and Amelia walked through it.
I felt relieved because I thought that she had died. Deciding she would be safer if she wasn't with me I pulled out my strongest undead creature and tasked it with guarding her. It was a lv9 Flaming Tiger, I then sent Amelia into the forest with her escort.
After dealing with Amelia, I resumed my journey to the village, it took me about 10 minutes to reach the gate. Nodding at the guards at the gate, I walked towards the entry.
I was blocked, an invisible barrier formed around the village stopping me from entering.
[Only humans and those allied with them are able to enter villages. This is not the case during sieges or events.]
Inwardly cursing, I walked away. This certainly hinders my plans to get clothing. I would have to make my own clothes if I wanted to stay in my vampire form.
After entering the forest, I started to hunt for levels.
After a few hours, I had killed 205 beasts and reached lv12. It was incredibly difficult to level up; I would have to find higher levelled monsters to get significant amounts of XP.
Walking through the forest for a while, I saw a large beehive. It seemed to be imbedded into a huge tree, I walked up to it and a swarm of bees rushed out of it, each of them lv9. I instantly used (Eagle's Screech) and stunned the bees. Trying something, I used (Curse) on about 20 of them; they immediately woke up and started infecting the others in the swarm.
After a minute, all the beast that had come out of the hive had been infected and they joined my undead army. A few minutes after sending them inside the hive, they had infected every bee inside, including the Queen Bee which was Lv12. Ordering them to come out, a rush of a thousand bees filled the area around me. The queen was twice the size of the rest and had significantly higher stats, I let them continue doing what they were doing. They looked almost exactly the same they did before I turned them except they had a dark black flame on their stingers.
I realised I had created a powerful army, each new bed would be undead and they were immortal unless killed.
Now I had a reliable way to grow my army without having to expend energy doing it myself. I then ordered them to corrupt all the beehives in the area and continue to increase my army. By the time I left it was night time and the moon was high in the sky.
Carrying on my journey, I walked towards the mountains in the distance, on my way I saw a small camp of people. They looked like Players and extremely weak, I walked over with my sword in hand; I reached their camp and approached one of them.
"Hey look it's another player!" One of the campers exclaimed,
"He's got a really nice sword on him, let's take it," another said in a hushed tone.
Oh so they are bandits, I thought with a grin, it's fine if they join my army then.
One of the players came over to me and tried to shake my hand.
"Hi there, welcome to our camp!" The man said, his words sounded sweet and welcoming but he couldn't hide the malicious intent in his eyes.
I swung my sword and instantly decapitated him, a smile appeared on my face as I moved through the camp. Each swing brought a rush of XP and another warrior to my army, I left the strongest player for last. Covered in the blood of his friends, I trudged over to him, he had fallen on the floor and screamed; I rushed forward towards his exposed neck and sunk my fangs into it like it was fresh meat.
As soon as I did, I felt waves of pleasure as his stats rushed into me, my arms bulged with the added strength and I could feel myself get faster.
With my newfound strength, I snapped the mans neck. I had drained as much stats from him as possible so there was no point prolonging his suffering.
After that night rumours surfaced of someone who could steal your stats. This shook the world as no had even heard of the ability to steal stats, it seemed overpowered.