Vampire Cultivation System in a Hidden World of Monsters

The academy grounds were directly connected to the vampire territories. There wasn't even a wall separating them. Surrounding the academy ground on three sides were the wide open caverns of the vampire territories.

They didn't think it was an issue because they'd never had a problem before. They'd never had any reports of monster attacks before. They'd had a few students go missing here and there but they assumed that was related to inter family politics and the assassins that seemed to freely roam the school grounds whenever they wanted.

Blackhammer was in a rather cramped vehicle he had brought with him. The body of the vehicle only seated one person so I rode alongside him on my motorbike. It had tank treads on either side of the body.

There was a tube that held balloons with lights attached to them in it. The tube was designed to open and close to release balloons up to the ceiling to reveal if there was anything crawling on the ceiling.

And it had these huge long spikes on each side of it that would go into the ground and send strong vibrations into the ground, disturbing any creatures that burrowed beneath the earth.

Now the vampire territories didn't have very deep earth on the floor of their territories. The vampire territory caves were pretty deep so they didn't have natural sediment floors.

In caves close to the surface, dirt can get washed onto the floor to create a small layer of soil for mushrooms to grow, but that generally wasn't the case in deep caves. Deep caves had rock floor because they were created by the erosion of rock by water and they weren't close enough to the surface to get sediment.

So the vampire association had to ship in literal tons of soil to cover the cave floor of the territories. That was the most development they had ever done for the territories. They had plans to develop further but it had been decades and no one had done anything.

I made sure to ask Lead Elder Bader and Elder Ravenkin for permission to begin extermination in the territories. They both approved it and said if the Vampire Association had a problem with it, they would tell them it was their idea. They also said, it was about time someone tried to increase the safety of the territories. People would go out to portals and never come back.

People assumed it was because they died in the portals, but there was always the possibility of monsters lurking in the darkness. No one had ever discovered evidence of monsters in the territories. At least no one who had survived. But that didn't mean they weren't out there.

Since the soil had been shipped in, it wasn't deep enough for large monsters to be lurking under the surface of the soil, but Blackhammer insisted anyway. He said he wouldn't be doing his job if he didn't at least check.

So we started with that and nothing really happened. The ground shook a bit, but that was it. After that we were going to check the ceiling with the lighted balloons.

We were still only about a hundred meters out into the darkness of the territories when we started releasing balloons up to the ceiling. I asked Blackhammer why we didn't just use lights to shine up and scan the ceiling.

He said he preferred this method because often times ceilings were too high to see clearly by just shining lights up, and more importantly, the balloons acted as monster magnets and protected us from harm.

If we shined lights up to the ceiling and there were monsters, they might attack us because the lights were attached to the vehicle. Whereas if you let a lighted balloon up to the ceiling, the monsters would just attack the balloon and might not necessarily notice us and perceive us as a threat.

When Blackhammer released the first balloon we were legitimately shocked by what we saw. And I don't get shocked easily. There were several large car sized bats hanging from the ceiling.

And that was only because the balloon light only shined so far around it. From my estimate, if the rest of the ceiling was as packed as the part we illuminated, we could easily have been looking at hundreds of van sized bats.

And that was just in this area surrounding the vampire sect academy. If there were more farther out into the territories, it could be thousands of bats.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

When the balloon went up, it hit one of the bats in the face. The bat bit and popped the balloon, dropping the light back down on us. The bat made a squeaking sound multiple times and then it looked at us.

I say looked at because that's where it aimed its head. I didn't know if it was actually seeing us. Bats have eyesight but its poor and mostly used to detect time of day for hunting.

Regardless of whether this bat was seeing us with its eyes or detecting us with echolocation, it noticed our presence and it attacked. It swooped down and attacked the cage that Galvin was inside of.

It bit at the cage, but when it realized it couldn't get through, it implemented a different strategy. It grabbed the vehicle with its feet and began lifting it into the air.

I grabbed my soul beast and we flew up beside the vehicle being lifted. "You're going to have to jump to me. I'll catch you. Otherwise, its going to drop you and you won't survive the impact," I said.

"Ok, but you better catch me!" Galvin said. He opened the side door of the cage and got on the edge. He leaped out toward me.

He didn't jump as far as I expected him to, so my soul beast and I had to swoop down to catch him. But we did catch him.

I was getting tired of calling it my soul beast. It needed a name. This seemed like a terrible time to be naming it, but I never had the best timing, so I didn't care.

After the soul beast and I set Galvin on the ground, I said to the soul beast, "I'm going to name you Midas because of your golden features and the fact that you love gold."

Midas smiled at that. He seemed to like the name.

"Who are you talking to?" Galvin said.

"My soul beast, Midas," I said. "He's the one who flew me up to catch you."

"I don't see anything," Galvin said.

I concentrated and Midas appeared in physical form. Galvin jumped slightly at seeing him, but he said, "Oh. That is one bizarre looking animal, but if it's supposed to represent someone's soul, I guess I shouldn't expect it to be normal."

"Yeah, he's a weird one. But we should be worried about those bats," I said as I pointed up and looked. When I looked up, I saw the bat drop the vehicle, and it was right above us.

"Oh sh*t!" I grabbed Midas in one arm and Galvin in the other and dove forward, out from under the falling vehicle. It slammed into the ground, making a really loud metal snapping sound as something within it broke.

"I'll pay for that!" I said, wincing.

"You better pay for it. I don't have insurance," he said.

"You don't have insurance? Why?" I said.

"Do you know how high insurance costs are with all the monsters running around underground now that these portals have shown up? I can't afford it. No one can," he said.

"Ok, I trust you," I said. "But we should be worried more about the monster bats than about that right now."

"Speak for yourself! I spent a fortune on that thing!" He said.

"Ok, but I'm not going to argue with you right now. I'm going to try to save our asses," I said.

Several bats detached from the ceiling and swooped down on us. I didn't see them until they were already halfway down to us. I drew my sword, Muramasa's Blood Fiend, and activated Blood Draw, creating a small puncture wound on my hand.

Through the wound I pulled as much blood as I could get onto the sword without passing out. Holding my katana horizontally, I extended the blade with blood as far as I could.

The blade became fifteen feet long. When the line of bats got near, I slashed through them with the extended blade. I cut four of them in half, but the others swooped in from the sides.

[Blood Honing activated: The blade grows sharper (future notifications hidden)]

[4 Carbats defeated: Gained 20,000 life essence (future notifications hidden)]

Two of them went for Galvin. I slashed at them again, cutting them in half diagonally. Then I pivoted to do a 180 degree turn and dove onto the ground, grabbing and rolling with Midas to get him out from under the claws of the last bat.

I slashed at the bat after it passed us, cutting its wing and making it crash to the floor. I ran over to it and chopped its head off, since it was trying to get back up.

I looked up and saw nothing but blackness as I looked at the ceiling. I hopped on the broken vehicle, aimed the floodlights on the back at the ceiling and turned them on. They had an emergency back up battery in case the vehicle battery died.

The bats were not only continuing to swoop down at us, but some of them were heading over to the other source of light nearby, the vampire sect. I couldn't let them attack the school, but I was being tied down by the need to protect Galvin.