Jumping up from the ground he walked quickly from body to body, and on each one, dead and alive, he did the same procedure - he put his hand to the wound. The skin absorbed the blood as well as before, and as greedily and insatiably.
Nineteen bodies lay on the road, seven of them still alive. As it turned out, the blood of the dead was just as likely to give all the information about the owner and just as likely to bring strength. Also - assimilating the memory of the blood became not so overwhelming.
And if just now it took him half an hour to move away from the emotions and memories of one person, then the next eighteen he internalized instantly in time, although he experienced a lot of different sensations that almost stopped his internal time.
Years seemed to pass between the moment he put his hand on the wound and the moment he removed it, though partly so, for in those few seconds that he held his hand on the wound he experienced the whole life of a man, from birth to death, with all the emotions, sensations, and knowledge.
Now he knew how to shoot a bow, how to fight with a sword, how to make fire, and he knew that osha fruit tastes absolutely disgusting until you soak it in water and boil it. He knew a whole lot of things, from small to great. Most importantly, he now knew two languages spoken in the area.
The wounded man, who began to move, Alexander simply hit him on the head and he passed out. After looking around the place of mutual beating, he first of all began to look through the clothes of the soldiers, and it was two squads of soldiers, who had organized a small war in the forest.
Naturally, they had arranged it not of their own accord, but at the will of their employers. The local kingdoms were at war, and the squads that met in this wild forest served different warring parties.
Quickly finding similarly built men, Alexander stripped them of their armor and clothing and put them on himself. It was disgusting to put on something worn by another person, especially considering that they had never heard of hygiene. Pants in general had to be searched for with special care.
The first three of the much-needed articles of clothing had been soiled by their previous owners not just badly, but very badly - they smelled unbearably of feces. His newly acquired knowledge gave him a solution - one of the vigilantes had bought new leather pants only five days ago.
When he approached the corpse he made sure that his knowledge did not fail him - the pants were new, and the man was a bit bigger than him in size. But deciding that more was not less, Alexander pulled the pants off the body and put them on. The shirt from this body was torn mercilessly into shoelaces, the boots were taken off a young man of about twenty (in fact, he was not even seventeen, as Alexander knew for sure) and turned out to be just right, as well as a light leather jacket from the same guy.
He had to walk around to find a shirt, but he couldn't find one that wasn't stained with blood, so he chose the cleaner one. After that the new image was supplemented with a good bandage and a good sword, or rather the best sword from those that were armed with these warriors.
After he got dressed he began to think about what to do next. He knew that both groups were scouts and that they would be here tomorrow night at the earliest. It would take almost twenty-four hours to take all the spoils, let the men drink the blood of the wounded and cover their tracks.
So now it was time to return to camp. And the question arose: What to take with us? At first he wanted to take a wounded man with him, then he thought of clothes, and then he remembered the general advice after which he had gone on this reconnaissance. Weapons.
We must take weapons and distribute them to like-minded men, and they must be brought here. It is impossible to allow that cutthroats like Alexey Gennadyevich or hysterical Olga Viktorovna to have power over the crowd. If they were on Earth, Alexander would not even think of challenging the supremacy of his superior, but here everything was different. Therefore, it was worth thinking about power or influence over it.
And for now, power would go to those who were stronger. Weapons and strength given by blood allowed to believe that the stronger would be him and those who think with him on the same wavelength. So quickly grabbing a few swords, axes and a couple of spears and a bow, he made his way back to the place where they appeared in this world and became vampires.
The most important thing was, of course, to decide on like-minded people. The elemental council had provided a lot of information to ponder.
People were obviously confused and didn't know what to do, didn't know who to listen to; giving them a general idea and not allowing them to choose from too many options, in Alexander's opinion, was the best solution to the problem now.
He didn't like it, but he didn't see any other options, so he went back to thinking about like-minded people. His coworker friends came to his mind first. Then there was that couple who had spoken at the meeting. Something about them appealed to him.
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