Several months later Lilith was flying over the sandy plains near the edge of the Neptune duchy. Her wing membranes stretched behind her as she flew. She wasn't consciously doing so, nor was she consciously flapping her wings. All of these actions were completed with no input from her.
The creative interpretations of her abilities she had come up with during the trip had come in rather handy over the past few months. She still had to split her consciousness to turn into bats. Even taking a part of those bats still require she split her consciousness and depending on the size of the bat/appendage it could take a significant amount. Yet it would take that much to control the wings anyway.
Thus Lilith now had wings and a (mostly)fully functioning mind. She couldn't be happier for it. Her face didn't show any hint of a smile but Lilith was alone right now and didn't need to mimic human expression. Exasperation and curiosity also need not be shown.
Though she certainly felt them as below her Lilith saw an all too common sight in recent months and her current research subjects. Mutated animals A.K.A monsters. They had started appearing a few days after Lilith left the capital though she theorised the beginning of their mutation happened during the implementation. It changed everything around her.
Lilith had met several such specimens and now travelled with one. Unfortunately the creature below her was hostile. Something that had become more and more frequent during her encounters with them. Normal animals still had normal instincts, what little of them were left. Monsters however were far more aggressive and this specimen was no different.
Below her was something akin to a gazelle with it's green and yellow coat like the grass around it. Yet it didn't blend into it's surroundings. That would be because of the antlers on it's head that stuck out like a crater in a forest. One was pitch black the other stark white. They each had their own unique characteristics as well with the white one having golden veins and the black one having red veins.
Lilith had been seeing more of these creatures lately. She had taken to calling them stazelles for the sake of convenience. An awful name perhaps but Lilith's suggestion was gazelle mutation cp0001. This was immediately rejected and the name stark gazelles or stazelles for short was implemented on the spot.
Lilith swooped down and immediately beheaded the creature with her claws. A single strike from above was often all it took. Lilith didn't need to worry about her momentum carrying her into the ground either as a moment later Lilith became a swarm of bats and darted off in each direction. They soon reformed into Lilith with wings. She then continued her flight as if nothing had happened grabbing the stazelle along the way. Her shifter abilities didn't carry inertia properly.
Once reformed and ready to fly Lilith dragged the stazelle corpse along with her on her flight. She was looking for something specific today. Unfortunately monsters weren't on that list but they were an interesting find nonetheless and something Lilith would be happy to run into again. Today however she was looking for a settlement.
Lilith scanned the ground from the sky above. She should perhaps not be flying so low as to be able to spot the stazellles but Lilith found she couldn't waste the opportunity to get more food. It meant her search would take longer. Lilith didn't mind though since she had all night and while she couldn't search during the day there was actually very little she could do during the day. It was equivalent to sleeping for humans. Except she was awake the whole time.
Well couldn't was wording it too strongly. She could but she absolutely refused to walk in the sun and flying in the sun was downright suicidal. She would survive the fall. That didn't mean she wanted to be shot down out of the sky by the sun and that disgusting feeling like taking a dip in oil. Lilith mentally shivered just thinking about it.
Soon she spotted something. A grouping of what appeared to be huts was arrayed below her and Lilith internally smiled this time. That was the proof she needed. They were in the Neptune duchy now and- Suddenly Lilith halted her flight and her mood became noticeably more sombre.
Staring at the ground she noticed immediately something wasn't right. The air here was salty and being in summer made the place rather warm and humid. Which meant there should be some activity. The weather was ripe for washing clothes, playing outside and doing farm-work. Yet when Lilith looked down she saw no one.
Swooping down to take a closer look let Lilith realise the problem. Some of the houses were torn to shreds and had become entirely unusable while others were only mildly damaged. They were all soaked though. Soaked with water in the middle of summer and having wear and tear that very clearly did not come from natural rain.
The ground was muddy and the occasional corpse could be found on it's surface. None of them human, which was strange. They were all monsters of some sort and Lilith recognised a few of them as stazelles while others looked like large insects or perhaps a new species of amphibian. All of them were large and colourful however. They were monsters.
Lilith landed in the desolate village and took a look around. She folded her wings to regain her full mental faculties and it felt like she was whole again. She didn't know how much she missed part of her mind. She felt like she was drunk for the past several hours and she was only now starting to sober up. It was an interesting new experience.
Lilith soaked in it and processed the sensation. She appeared to have the time as she saw no immediate threats to her survival. She stood there almost completely still. This lasted several seconds until Lilith pulled herself out of it. That was enough to understand the difference.
She now wandered around the village and investigated each new thing with interest. First was the placement of the water. It appeared to be concentrated in certain locations more than others. This was more often than not a street. Though the occasional house or whole in the ground was also soaked.
Next was the damage to the village. The majority of the structural damage actually seemed completely unrelated to the controlled flood that seemed to focus on specific targets. There were bite and claw marks on some of the buildings. Others had crumbled or started to rot and there were even signs of something melting straight through the wood like it was eating it.
The final oddity Lilith noted was a graveyard. Villages sometimes have graveyards that they built themselves. Especially if they recently lost a number of people. This one however seemed recently built and was rather primitive. Sticks had been used as religious symbols. Stones marked the graves in a way that suggested the person making them didn't know much about the person.
Villages were extremely well connected. Everyone knew everything about every person in the village. There were no secrets here. The idea that a villager would make such an impersonal grave for their fellows was preposterous. This was made by an outsider and they were in a hurry.
They seemed to have the proper respect for the dead however. Some items were placed next to each grave. They likely didn't know anything about the people so they used items to mark their graves instead. It was all they had on hand combined with all they knew.
Sadly if Darren saw this he would likely not allow Lilith to perform experiments on the corpses. There were the monster corpses Lilith supposed but she couldn't actually create anything from a monster corpse. Apparently human or at least intelligent corpses had to be used to create ghouls.
Which meant these graves hid valuable corpses. Lilith wasn't going to waste that opportunity and started digging immediately. She only had her claws on hand. Thankfully Lilith had learned several new tricks for controlling her abilities over the past few months. She had a lot of time during the day.
Her claws became thick and heavy. They now acted like spades with their wide edges scooping up dirt. 'If only blood soul worked this easily.' Lilith thought internally. All the improvements she'd recently made to her abilities were to do with her shifter properties. They were just the most intuitive to use.
Her partial bat transformation, the thickening and thinning of her claws, the fact she now knew how far her mist form could disperse before she lost thoughts and body parts. These were all useful tricks for the shifter abilities. Her others were less easy to control.
While she dug up the graves, took the bodies out and re-filled them like nothing happened she thought about the more difficult ones. Thought acceleration was intuitive but not intelligent. If her mind started revving up by itself and slowing down the world around her then it would activate. Otherwise it wouldn't. Even if Lilith wanted some time to think she couldn't activate it consciously.
Lilith hefted the body of a large muscled man out of the hole she was digging and started to re-fill it with her right claw. She placed her left into the man's body and he started paling. Lilith watched the process with an intense curiosity and noted the transformations that took place. Red eyes, the entire eye this time. Pale skin, purple blotches down the back of his body in accordance with Livor mortis.
This was all expected and Lilith continued thinking on her abilities. She couldn't test the mystic eyes or Dracula's abilities obviously. The group would immediately get suspicious and Claire already had a rocky relationship with her as is. She didn't need anything worse.
This was when the interesting part of the turning process started and Lilith stopped her work just to observe. Red veins began poking through the flaky skin. It's eyes were clouded and unfocussed like a corpse and it lost all the hair it had on it's head and presumably the rest as well. Then the claws grew in. They were large and thick like most Lilith had seen apparently the opposite of the creature's teeth.
The old and blunt teeth fell out and were replaced with sharp black fangs glinting in the moonlight. Unlike the vampires, they spread throughout the creature's mouth. Which itself was slobbering with drool and opening before it released a guttural roar like a predator released from it's cage. The sound merely echoed emptily in the night sky.
It stood up and awaited further orders so Lilith told it to use it's claws to dig up the graves and stop when it spots a corpse. She went back to thinking on her abilities. The ghoul could do all the digging for her now and her instincts wanted her to sit back and let the creature do all the heavy lifting. Despite her stamina being infinite.
It was inefficient but her instincts were rather hard to ignore. She would rather give in on this occasion and not have to be forced into fighting an opponent for longer than she had to and giving away precious information. Like what happened with Wyatt. So Lilith merely stood nearby and watched the creature work while she thought about her abilities.
Camilla and Elizabeth's abilities had been interesting even if some of them were completely useless to her. Elizabeth's ability to create eternal youth from the blood of innocents for example. Lilith could just turn someone into a vampire and thus didn't see the need for such an ability as she could just turn those she deemed worthy of eternal life.
Camilla's ability to hide was tremendously useful and Lilith thought the mark was an attack at first. Lilith had imagined it would be easy to mark someone. She could then simply look through their eyes and slowly drain their blood as she did so. It was two birds at once. Unfortunately the mark was extremely difficult to use and anyone she could kill with that method could've been dealt with faster and easier in other ways.
She had to literally carve the mark into someone's skin. It was very detectable and very large. It would take a considerable amount of time to carve. It was thus useless against fast targets. It was even more useless when you considered that Lilith's fangs were far stronger than her claws and her primary attack method.
Wyatt was an example of someone she couldn't mark for this very reason. So that was two of Camilla's abilities that weren't very helpful. Though they were actually helpful with tracking weaker targets or those who started out weak but became stronger afterwards. Lilith was fairly sure it would keep anyone with potential down.
She looked over to the ghoul and noticed it had stopped digging. It was also eating the corpse. A visceral rage built in Lilith from her instincts but her body didn't show it. She flew over to the ghoul at full speed. Then she punted it with as much strength as she could muster straight into it's back and watched it sail full force into the ground. It dug slightly into the dirt.
Lilith looked down on the annoying creature with a foot on it's back and barked "I told you to stop!" Lilith had actually told it to stop digging when it hit a corpse. That meant the creature had the freedom to start eating it afterwards. It didn't thrash underneath her. Lilith merely heard groans of protest that were muffled by the ground covering it's mouth and nose.
It didn't need to breathe so Lilith could keep it there indefinitely. Unfortunately she still needed a worker. With reluctance she let it back on it's feet and ordered it "Dig everywhere that is marked by stones until you uncover a corpse. Then proceed to the next area marked by stones. Do not touch the corpses you find." Her instructions were much clearer this time.
It shambled back up to it's feet and Lilith noticed she had cracked it's ribs and collapsed it's lung. A bone was protruding from it's chest. She ignored that however. She watched it go to work and started timing the regeneration comparing it to her vampires. Meanwhile she inspected the corpse with her shadow magic.
Now that Lilith could see she was relying on it far less but it was still an excellent way to multitask. The corpse had a few bites taken out of it's torso. It would be an experiment in the use of damaged corpses to create ghouls then as it seemed this was the perfect opportunity. Thanks to a certain someone.
She stuck her claws into it without even looking. She still had her shadow magic however. She could watch the corpse as it changed into the same monstrosity currently digging in front of her while still watching that very monstrosity. Speaking of magic…
Lilith noticed she had three types and had been learning about all of them. If people could now have three affinities that could be interesting. Perhaps it was just her species however and the fact that they were all part of the dark genus suggested that it had at least something to do with her species. Regardless she now had curse and corruption.
Lilith actually quite liked corruption. It didn't seem to work on her but it worked excellently on living beings as evidenced by a few especially rotten monster corpses back in the forest. The affinity was always nice to have as a hand to hand combatant. Assuming she could still be considered that especially since her mana stat appeared to be far higher than her physical stat.
The ghoul finally rose to her feet and Lilith only now noticed it was probably a middle aged woman. She had completely forgot to look at their face. Their belly was slightly protruding and the several bite marks still made it larger than Lilith's by quite a large margin. The creature stumbled to it's feet and seemed to lose balance. Then it got up again.
Lilith was interested in the different reactions given that these creatures appeared to be mindless and incapable of speech. Perhaps their personalities or talents are still there? There might be differences between the ghouls based on the people they were when still alive and that could make powerful people's corpses more valuable. Regardless Lilith sent it off digging. Though she noticed it's claws were significantly thinner and sharper than it's brethren which was another difference she noted.
Back to magic, the biggest problem Lilith was having was curse and her mana stat. She wasn't making full use of her abilities and she knew it. The fact that physical attacks were still her main means of causing damage when her mana stat was significantly higher meant something was wrong. There was a bottleneck here that she wasn't seeing. Be that experience, talent, skill or something to do with the system that hadn't been implemented yet.
Perhaps it would come with the territory update? The name alone suggested that Lilith needed a territory for it to affect her however. Did she need one of her own? Her instincts' answer was a resounding yes and that settled the matter for Lilith. She couldn't ignore them. As much as she wanted to ignore the vanity and disgusting pride that came with being a progenitor this was her life now.
Lilith needed to at the very least keep them in check and she wasn't totally opposed to getting a territory of her own in the first place. It wouldn't be as lavish as her instincts would demand though. Lilith's loathing for inefficiency and spending on vanity was still ingrained in her and she would not let her instincts force her into that. They seemed to take that as a challenge.
Regardless the bodies were nearly all dug up now and Lilith decided she should start working now. There was literally no one else capable of this. As if her instincts were spiteful of her decision to keep her territory modest, they protested when she went to do this but Lilith entirely ignored them.
She stuck her claws into the random corpses and thought about the final abilities she'd gained. These were the ones she couldn't control. Blood soul that came with lifeblood and soul authority. She didn't understand the majority of those terms but she knew they would be powerful and perhaps provide an insight into the way the universe worked.
Unfortunately they were beyond her. The moment she tried to shift, Lilith felt her instincts become significantly more pronounced and her mind felt like it was tearing itself apart. Her body was also literally tearing itself apart. The shattering of bones and rending of flesh ringing in Lilith's ears didn't even register beyond the pain. She had never felt pain like this since becoming a vampire. Wasn't she immune to pain?
Regardless as soon as she felt her instincts start to take over Lilith had clamped down on the transformation hard and never let it complete. There was a risk she would lose her mental faculties. That was equivalent to losing her life and Lilith would not risk that for anything short of saving her life. Even then she'd try to think of another way.
While remembering the experience her ghoul army had been assembled and she ordered them to re-fill the graves. Roughly 50 ghouls had been raised from the graves. Now she just had to find where she could put them and a means to feed them without relying on human corpses. Claire was a valuable asset and she would not enjoy watching that.
Lilith presumed they would burn in the sun like the vampires and thus needed a way to remove the sun from play. She couldn't just destroy it. Instead she would need a means to hide them from the sun during the day and allow them to still follow Lilith and Claire. The two could only stick with Darren's group because they could travel significantly faster. These ghouls might travel forever but they would likely not be able to travel any faster than a walking pace.
Ideally there would be some sort of clothing that blocks out the sun but Lilith would not currently have it even if it did exist. She needed another solution temporarily. She couldn't store them in the abandoned buildings because the group would come here tomorrow and obviously notice them. Darren would take offence and attempt to kill them all. That would be a waste so Lilith intended to take them elsewhere instead.