Studying the unconscious cat up close didn’t reveal anything new. It was still a mangy thing that desperately needed to be washed but other than that but other than that, it was nothing special. Feeling the thing with my Blood Magic, I could detect some damage, mostly from Lia’s capture of it, I could feel the remnants of my Mind Magic attack to knock it out, overshadowing possible subtler parts of its innate magic and realised that I wouldn’t be able to find out a lot more while it was in this state. Restraints might allow me to glean some additional information but I wasn’t totally convinced. Still, it was worth a shot, so I gently, I didn’t want to wake the beast before it was bound, stretched the cat out across the table and quickly conjured some bindings. Nothing fancy, just bands of solidly conjured Ice going around the metal structure and encasing the cat’s legs, immobilising its joints. It wouldn’t go anywhere, not unless it broke my Ice or I released it. Neither was likely, but either were possible, so I took a pair of bicycle locks, placed them across its back and used Crystal Magic to fuse them to the table, too. Now, the thing would have to break the Ice and the metal, both of which were likely complete and utter overkill. But better safe than sorry.

With the cat now completely restrained, I purged my Mind Magic from its system as much as possible, waking it in the process and, just like earlier, it was spitting mad. Hissing, snarling and writhing to the best of its limited ability in a fairly impressive threat display, though not impressive enough to threaten me. No, it made a lot of aggressive noise, but nothing could come from it.

Nodding to myself, I did another check while Lia used her own magic to try something. I wasn’t quite sure what exactly she wanted to accomplish, but it used a small amount of her Blood, some Astral Power and, from the scent of it, Blood Magic. I could feel the magically infused blood enter the Cat’s mouth and its system, making me wonder what exactly the mechanism was. Most of the blood never made it to the cat’s stomach, it all diffused into its blood and flesh in some strange, oozing way. It was a fairly interesting effect, one that made me wonder if it could be replicated to introduce poisons into our opponents with greater effect, turning something that would normally need a wound or to be ingested into a topical effect could be huge. Something to consider, but not now, now I had to figure out what exactly Lia’s blood did to the beast.

Other than making it just a little stronger, that effect was fairly apparent, at least for someone who studied the cat’s internal structure as the blood was introduced. The effect wasn’t huge but unless I missed my guess, it would likely be cumulative in some way, the more blood introduced, the stronger the thing gets.

“You are trying to turn it again, aren’t you?” I was making an educated guess after looking at the way Lia’s blood had propagated through the cat and was now adding to the current effect. From the looks of it, my guess was correct, as Lia nodded before speaking.

“Yes, did you notice anything interesting, Mother?” Lia replied with some hope in her eyes alongside the usual formality.

“Mhm, could you tell me how much strength you currently get from your Vampirism traits and how much you originally received?” I prodded, getting an answer after a brief frown. The list of attributes, not just strength, was quite impressive, though not as insane as my own Dragon-Touched trait.

“From what I can tell, the cat gets more powerful, likely by gaining attributes, as you feed it your blood. Maybe, you’ll have to feed it until the attributes it gains from your blood equal those it would gain from vampirism. However, I have no idea where to go from there, how to bind the effect into the creature and maybe bind it to your will. Given just how angry the thing currently is, I don’t think I’d want to have it with us while this aggressive, especially not with a powerful boost in attributes,” I explained, getting a quick nod in response. Neither of us wanted to have an aggressive stalker after us, even if it wasn’t an actually powerful one. Things like that could crop up at the worst time, giving them far more impact than their power would suggest.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

“That might be the key. And with Alex, the Withering had already replaced some of their system, adding its own attributes to them. Then, when you destroyed the fungus and I replaced it with my blood, those attributes were incorporated or something like that?” Lia mused, giving a possible explanation for the mechanism but I doubted it was only that. There had to be something more than just drinking blood from a vampire, at least I felt like there should be more. But what, that I wasn’t sure. Some sort of sacrifice, something that ended the previous existence and introduced the new one, it would fit with the old vampire legends.

While I wasn’t sure if they would actually apply, there had to be a reason why the system had assigned Lia the race Vampire, some connection to similar beings, or to those described as such. So, either vampires from local, terran legends or vampires from the system itself, from some other world like Mundus or even further afield.

“What does the ritual you used last time actually accomplish? It was some sort of magic circle, but it was odd, unlike my own magic, as if it was translated or something like that?” I prodded her a little, remembering Alex’s turning.

“It made the blood more efficient, I tried using it yesterday but it wasn’t enough,” Lia admitted, channelling some extra magic to manifest the circle. I could feel power oozing out of it, but the exact details remained unclear. It seeped into the cat and I thought there was a faint connection between the circle, the cat and Lia, but it was incredibly weak. Barely there, barely able to let any real volume of power flow through it.

But now, we had a place to start, or rather, we had two of them. The first place was to see whether we could improve the connection between them, hopefully also adding a control component on Lia’s side of the equation. Or on my side, I wouldn’t mind acting as leash and controller for some vampire cat but it ultimately was Lia’s creature and experiment. So, she should take control and responsibility.

Sadly, even with some of my power donated to Lia, via infused blood, she remained unable to increase the link between her own power and the at. When I tried to add myself into the mix, either by directly manipulating Astral Power or with my Mind Magic, failed fairly spectacularly. The magic circle created by Lia simply shattered, breaking into countless motes of crimson Astral Power that spread the scent of blood in the damp cellar we used to experiment in.

With that small setback out of the way, we continued our experiment after a quick break to regenerate our power and refresh the air a little. The scent didn’t help Lia, making her hungry, while I was a little distracted by it. Normally, Blood was a scent I recognised as the scent of danger and battle, bringing with it a mindset not suitable for proper experimentation.

Once that was done, we tried the other way, at least after Lia reestablished the circle. Sadly, the connection was even weaker, making me wonder if there was a connection between the breaking of the circle and the weakened connection. Something to investigate, but for now, I watched as Lia poured blood and power into the feline.

I could feel it working and, remembering what I had done when Alex was turned, I added my own efforts into the mix. Not so much replacing what Lia’s power did but improving it, giving guidance where I could and helping to spread her influence further around the cat’s body.

It wasn’t easy work, but I could feel the cat’s existence fade away as it was replaced with Lia’s power, the cat quite literally dying from the changes happening to her body and, most importantly, within her mind and possibly even soul. While I was still unable to truly sense souls, I was slowly touching upon their domain, but it was still a long way off. For now, I could get a faint impression, one that was changing little by little.

After a while, I could feel a qualitative shift and the magical formation surged with crimson light. For a moment Lia and I were bathed in it, only for the light and formation to shatter, sending Lia to the ground with a moan of pain.

In that moment of distraction, I wasn’t looking at the cat and suddenly, I felt a surge of Astral Power enveloping it, taking it away. A teleport, quite similar to the way I stepped through shadows. Reacting, I activated Overflow and struck with a blast of Mind Magic, using the fastest attack I could.

Moments later, a notification popped up, telling me that I had killed the cat but the body was gone, already teleported away. It had been insanely close but it hadn’t managed to get away.

Now, I only had to take care of Lia.