I walk up the hill and a bunch of knights rush at me, I decide to practice my stealth and I snap their necks. I then slip inside an empty room lined with trophies and some of them are made from fancy and rare metals, so I quickly take them.
I slightly open the door while sending nanocams to peak around the corner and add cameras all along the wall, I soon find the entrance to what I'm assuming is the drug lab. It's a area that descends and it's barred off with a bunch of stuff in front of it. Knights, wooden planks, barrels, it was all there.
A bunch of other knights patrolled the lower floor while maids and butlers were always active on the top floor. As I open the door I start walking downstairs while snapping the neck and hiding the body of any approaching person.
I slip to the staircase to the basement and I take my guns before making sure no noise could leak as I test the piecing power to find the bullets went clean through the helmets. The knights at the bottom start to look around while I kill the rest of them.
After walking down the staircase I remove all the barricades while Angelica cleans up the bodies. As I walk inside I see a man strapped to a chair with a bunch of people running around the room. They all then stop to look at me while I look around the room.
I see a bunch of blood running out from the guy but nothings happening to his body, he's not showing any changes and he doesn't look like he's being hurt. As I keep looking at the pipework blood starts splattering everywhere.
I look back to find the now dead bodies of the and Angelica looking disgusted, I start cleaning them up while also unhooking the tubes from the guy. I just wait after all the tubes are unplugged but nothing happens, I wait for another five minutes be he stays the same.
I look at his soul to find none, meaning the body would always stay the same no matter what, and it seemed his blood has addictive properties. I take some blood before analyzing it and finding it's one scary drug.
It took just one accident and once you consumed it, your body was fully addicted and if any activity didn't have this involved your body wasn't very happy. You could dilute the blood so the effects were less but it would still be very potent.
I start looking over a few logbooks and gather that this is in fact, no government approved. This is what seems like a religious groups way of making holy water. I was never planning to destroy a religion, but I mean this is to much.
I look over the logbooks and find out that this corpse has been in their possession for centuries, they have also been using these nobles as puppets because the sixth prince was involved and made a few of them small time nobles.
It then cuts to tests of trying to find the talent of the body but it comes out as no talent due to the lack of soul. It then keeps going until it mentions a log of how they've finally found a talentless girl to use.
It keeps going on about the tests, how some have to be delayed because of the church and other events they have to attend to keep up the illusion of still being nobility. It then has a logbook listing their multiple attempts to get their hands on Angelica.
A part of sticks out to me and I flip through to find around where I came in the story.
Progress Log 554
We have somehow managed to get an arranged marriage between the holy son and the talentless girl, she should be arriving in a few days. After that the holy water production will be doubled and we can the run more churches. They holy son said he wanted to have some fun before we test her. While a shame there's not much we can do.
I then send a shadow sword through all the bodies just to be safe as I then burn the body to no results. I wasn't really expecting much so I them take some wood and I make a coffin while making a massive hole in the floor.
I lower the body into the floor. I then close the pit up as I take a moment of silence for the man as I engulf the room in my shadow, taking everything before incinerating with some stored fire spells. I then start making the spells in my shadow again as Angelica reads the logbooks.
I wait around 10 minutes before I see someone headed down towards the basement and I quickly pull the same shadow step stunt to teleport back to the town while I hold the blood in while I start walking and Angelica follows.
I look over my body to find that it's still somehow in peak condition despite the blood I just threw up. I look around to find my shadow shrink back to it's regular size.
I keep walking and we soon exit the town on a different path then the first time. I keep shadow stepping to try and find why my shadow step made me cough up blood and I find the stamina drain was gone for short distance jumps.
I keep trying things out and find that it was only shadow step that had a noticeable change, it was less like moving inside shadows and more like teleporting, though it was like that before. It was like I was playing a game without cooldowns and stamina, it was a feeling to get adjusted to.
When we set up camp for the night I had a basic understanding of why the shadow step took less energy. It was because the energy I used to travel through shadows was nothing, but now with [Light's Bane] extending my shadow was a lot easier. I had no idea why I kept coughing up blood but for now I'm assuming overuse of my power directly affects my respiratory system.