The hissing and pacing of the caged cat continued for a little longer, it even tried scratching the bars of its cage, confirming my suspicion that Shadow Cats had some way to magically augment their physical attacks. The faint, dark energy around its claws didn’t do anything to the solid steel but it was a good datapoint to have if these things ever tried to come after us.

“Are you certain that this is a good subject to convert?” I asked, wondering if turning the aggressive and hostile cat into a Vampire was really a good idea.

“It worked with Alex, didn’t it? A fungus controlled them at the time of the conversion but it still turned out well, so why wouldn’t it with the cat?” Lia nodded to herself, apparently convinced of her idea. I wasn’t as certain as she was but it sounded like an interesting experiment, especially in regards to the actual control we had over the created vampires. Testing it on a creature neither of us would mind disposing of was a better idea than using some random human, there were too few of those for me to be comfortable. I didn’t want humans to die out, who would do my chores in the future, who would tend the crops and all that annoying labour? No, until I was certain that humans weren’t in danger of going extinct, I wouldn’t casually kill one of them. Not unless it was truly necessary, either to preserve the life of one of my party or to avoid some serious hassle. Maybe if there was some unique opportunity to gain a major boost in power but that’d have to be considered.

Catching my train of thought, I focused on the hissing cat and started with the simple things, namely Observing it. If the level was too high, I’d reconsider but given that it was only a level thirty Shadow Cat, I doubted it could get enough power to become a challenge, even if it gained some vampiric traits.

Looking past the simple Observe, I started to carefully parse out the magical emanations of its body, studying the roiling shadows around the creature while looking for other possible elements. Only, there were none, it could only use Darkness Magic, granted fairly powerful Darkness Magic for its level, but that was it. Darkness Magic and the physical prowess of a fairly large cat, though far from any real ‘big cat’. Without magic, I doubted it’d be able to take down prey the size of a human, unless it managed to come across somebody deeply asleep, though magic was the great equalizer in that regard. I wasn’t sure what the creature could do with its skills, I’d have to study a lot more, but I had some measure of magnitude.

To gather more information, I started to magically prod the thing, mostly using Water and a bit of Lightning, nothing that would cause permanent harm. Amusingly, it avoided the water with far more alacrity than its reactions to the lightning would suggest, making me wonder just how much it disliked water. And then, it seemed to almost disappear into the darkness of its cage, turning almost invisible. I could still sense it in there, it couldn’t walk the shadows just yet, but it had impressive stealth, not just for its level but in general. If I wasn’t a lot more powerful and adept with Darkness Magic myself, it might have managed to evade me, depending on the way its skill might grow with level. A demonstration that specialisation, especially hyper-specialisation into one or two skills, made those skills truly remarkable, instead of following my very generalist approach.

“Impressive,” I mumbled, before using a bit of Darkness Magic to strip away the concealment, taking note of its quality and power as I did. From the way the concealment faded, I could tell that it was a lot less substantive than what I’d use, making it easier to break but also cost less Astral Power. A trade-off, maybe one the cat had to make, but not something I’d want to incorporate into my own spellwork.

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Continuing with my testing, I conjured a bit of Ice into the cage, trying to make the cat attack it with its magically augmented claws. After the previous prodding, it didn’t take a lot of provocation for it to fly into a snarling furball of rage and claws, trying to tear the innocent bit of Ice apart. From the feedback, I could glean some measure of its augmentation and, again, had to nod. It wasn’t bad, a lingering curse that would act almost like poison, causing wounds to bleed a lot longer than normal. Even small wounds, if there were enough of them, could become fatal with that kind of curse in them. Death by a Thousand Papercuts, it made me wonder if I could do something similar if I combined a Darkness Curse with my Ice Magic Snow and a Spout Blood Rune. The Snow shaped into hundreds, if not thousands of tiny Icicles, too small to cause real, lasting damage but big enough to make someone bleed and bring the curse into their system. Not my usual style of combat using overwhelming power but something slower, more insidious. Not as outright deadly but just as ultimately fatal, with the added bonus that it would work against those I couldn’t just smash with power. Bleeding from countless wounds would slow an enemy down, even if they had enough strength to smash my normal attacks aside. It only wouldn’t work if the opponent had thick enough skin and Endurance to simply ignore my attack or enough Vitality to overcome the curse.

Given how strong I currently was in comparison to the enemies I had faced thus far, I doubted that there were many foes I had to fight that way but having a tool and not needing it was a lot better than needing a tool and not having it.

How much more could the cat do? Did I have any ways to tease additional skills out of it or should I just continue with my examination and try finding out what went wrong with Lia’s previous attempts to give it vampiric traits?

After a moment of consideration, I decided to start testing, as I simply didn’t know if there was more to find. I doubted it, the two skills the cat had shown thus far were potent enough for its level, but I would remain cautious.

Using a frozen blade, I drew a little blood from the cat before extracting it from the cage. I had no desire to put anything scratchable into the reach of those claws, even if I had no doubt that I could dispel the curse by virtue of superior skill and power. Still, I’d rather not get cursed in the first place.

Smelling the blood gave me an even better idea of the cat's abilities. There was the obvious Darkness Astral Power I had noticed but alongside it was some Blood Magic of a familiar type. Lia had obviously given the creature some of her blood, likely magically charged, and the blood was influencing it. I started to wonder if Lia’s blood had made the skill to augment its claws even stronger, as I would base my version at least partially on Blood Magic. There might be a connection but without a control group, I couldn’t find out.

Not that it truly mattered, it was merely a consideration, so I focused back on my examination. The blood drawn from the cat wasn’t magically imbued, I’d have to use Blood Magic for that, so I couldn’t tell as much as I’d have liked but what I could find didn’t fill me with hope.

Letting my tongue flicker out of my mouth, I got a small taste of blood, allowing me to parse its qualities even better, though still not good enough. From what little I could tell, I could only be confident that the cat was fighting against Lia’s strain of vampiric blood, though I couldn’t tel the ultimate outcome. Maybe an even further evolved cat, maybe an actual vampire or some sort of hybrid, it was too early to tell, but I doubted it would be the vampire, not without further action on our part.

Good thing that we were here and ready to take action, otherwise, we might simply make a hostile and aggressive creature more powerful. I doubted it would start hunting us down but one could never know, nor be too cautious.

“So, we’ll have to increase the amount of vampiric blood in the cat, or the cat will simply subdue the virus. At best, we’d get some sort of hybrid and I have no idea what form that might take. We can experiment with that sort of thing further when we have an actual place to stay, but for now, let’s try and make this kitty into a real vampire. We can see where we’ll take it from there,” I explained, before using some mild Mind Magic to render the cat unconscious. Now, we could really start to work.