Yugioh Card Summoner

CH.231 Dhampir Brawler

“Brian, it’s time for breakfast.” A soft female voice woke me up. 

To be specific, it was the voice of my girlfriend. No, not Laura. She… well, you know what happened. My current one, Lua.

“... just a … bit more…” I muttered. “...it isn’t time… for the swap yet…”

“That is over already.” Lua said, as she ran her hand across my cheek. “But breakfast is soon. Aren’t you hungry?”

As she said that, my stomach let out a little growl. My appetite didn’t take nearly as big of a hit as it did with Lua, but I still didn’t eat as much as I usually do yesterday. And waking up multiple times during the night didn’t help either, so yes, I was hungry.

So with the multiple things piling on top of each other, I decided to just get up. 

In my room, there were a total of three people. Well four, if I count myself. The usual trio, and one of the manor’s maids. The maid seemed to have some medical experience, as she was doing basic tests on Ria. 

Ria, Ria, Ria. She actually didn’t change much with the evolution. No extra appendages, or anything else crazy. The noticeable changes are her hair, and her muscle structure. Her hair grew out about 10 cm, or so. I don’t know if that is something that always happens when you evolve, considering that the same happened with Lua, but it could be. Now as for her muscles, they had grown to be somewhat more noticeable. Ria was never a thin girl, she had a good body structure, but it got significantly more refined after the evolution. It would likely be the first thing you look at after you see her.

As for her status, well.

A Dhampir Brawler. These ‘races’ really sound more like classes, than races. Both Brawler and Monarch sound more like a class than a race. Well whatever.

In terms of her stats, her strength and HP had the biggest change. Then defense, but mana and magic barely grew at all. Her defense was actually lower than her magic before the evolution, but now it is higher. I guess Brawler, so it fits, but I just find it strange.

I entered the bathroom and quickly got dressed. I wish storage had an ‘equip’ feature where I could directly swap my clothes with it. … Wait, does it? … No, it doesn’t, right? But maybe if I install Tailor of the Fickle, it will get that? I’ll ask Laura and Tahlia about that later.

“So, Ria, how are you feeling?” I asked, before leaving for breakfast. The maid had finished the little checkup she was giving to Ria, so I didn’t interrupt it.

“Good. Well, I am hungry, but I’ll eat soon.” She answered.

“That’s good to hear.” I said.

“Brian, we should go.” Lua reminded me.

“Yes. Try to take it easy and enjoy your breakfast.” I said to Ria, before I turned to leave the room.

“Yes.” She answered. “... and thank you. … for taking care of me.”

“Of course.” I turned back to answer. “I promised to take care of you, didn’t I?”

Of course I made sure to tell everyone about the situation during breakfast. This led to us, Ria, Lua and I, being called into the Earl’s office afterwards. For no other reason than he wanted to know more about my cards. He didn’t ask too much, but he did ask if I could ‘force’ someone to evolve. 

Now the obvious answer is no, as the evolutions are a byproduct of leveling up, but the actual answer is yes. Considering what happened with Jenna, if I use Polymerization to fuse someone with one of my monsters, that will basically let them evolve. It isn’t technically the same, but the race does change, so it could be called an evolution. But of course based on the one time I tried it, Polymerization does come with that one little problem called conflict of interest. The person used might want to do one thing, while the monster wants to serve me. At least that is what happened last time. You might get around that by having the master of the person used in the fusion be the one to activate the Poly thought. Again, based on what happened with Fusionist and Cherubin when Alice and Ria summoned them, fusion monsters do seem to have some level of ‘loyalty’ to their first summoner. So if instead of me performing the summon, it would have been Christina, it might have worked out. Well, Christina didn’t have Card Summoner at the time, so that would have been impossible.

I did tell the Earl as much, because I trust him. But as I was still trying to keep the entire Polymerization thing a secret, I did request that he not tell anyone else about it. Again, resurrection is one thing, but installs for skills, Level Up! for gaining levels and Polymerization for evolution are all a bit more … questionable. If someone found out about all of that, they might want to abuse me by doing … unkind things to people I hold dear. And that would lead to a whole leap of problems, least of them being the fact that I’d likely burn the entire city to the ground while saving those close to me.

“... yes. I understand. I shall keep all of this to myself.” The Earl replied. “Might I ask, does anyone else know about any of this?”

“Only Christina and Brandon. And they don’t know all of it. … Actually, Christina does, but Brandon only knows about Poly and the resurrection stuff.” I answered. “Well, if we take others into consideration, Lua, Ria and Alice know it, but I trust them, so that should be fine. And, of course, there are a handful of people that know some part of it, but no one else should know all of it.”

“... I see. May I ask one more thing?” 

“Sure, go for it.”

“If a national emergency would come up, say a war, would you help us with that?” The Earl asked.

“Yeah. But this has nothing to do with that.” I answered. “A war would likely be simple to win. I could likely annihilate the entire enemy army with a few dragons. Probably. The real problem is that I don’t want people to think I’m anything more than an OP summoner.”

“Yes. I understand.” The Earl said. “I’ll try to make that into a reality. But what about your resurrection capabilities? Where do you fall with that? Are you willing to use it in a situation where others will see it?”

“... depends. I already did use it once, so doing it again isn’t that much worse. But it really just depends on who.”

“I see. I shall keep that in mind.” The Earl said. “You may go now, unless there was something else you wished to discuss.”

“No. I think we are done for the day.” I said as I got up. “Thank you for your time.”

We spent the rest of the morning practicing. Some dance and some weapon skills. We, well I, was taking it easy, just so I could make sure Ria wouldn’t overdo it. There was a clear difference to what she was doing. To the point where even I could see it. She was faster and her punches were sharper. And she didn’t even get a new skill, or anything.

(Laura, do you know what advantages her new race has?) I asked.

(Yes. Other than the simple stat buffs, she can now obtain skills related to close quarters combat easier, as well as the racial skill Brawling.)

(... okay, that’s a nice boost. What does it do?)

(It helps in fist fighting, as well as continuous fights.)

(... that’s it? I was expecting more.)

(Well, you can’t get everything.)

(Speaking of, what about Lua? She evolved, so can’t she get a new racial skill?) 

(Potentially. But what Miss Lucia experienced was a ‘double evolution’. She essentially skipped a mid evolution, and went straight into the highest known evolution of her class. That might make it more difficult for her to obtain the new racial skill she has access to.)

(Oh yeah. Mia did say something about Vampire Monarchs being the highest class of magic specialized dhampir. So there would be something lower class as well?)

(Yes. Maria unlocked some information about it, and there is at least Dhampir Sorcerer. That is the class Miss Lucia skipped.)

(... sorcerer. Jenna was a sorcerer when she was fused, right? And she had a racial skill, didn’t she? So could Lua get that skill?)

(That is possible.) Laura answered. (However, I have no real information on that skill. Maria might have, so I shall ask her.)

(Yes. I did gain basic information about it.) I heard Mia say. Was she listening in again? (However, as my Mistress skipped that step, she can no longer obtain that skill. She however does have access to its evolved form, Monarch of Magic.)

(... wow. That sounds… strong.)

Monarch of Magic, huh. I feel like the only step above that would be ‘God of Magic’ or something like that. Or would Master of Magic be higher than Monarch of Magic?

(I believe so as well.) Mia confirmed. (However, it doesn’t seem to be easy to obtain, and the system does not give any solid information on how to obtain it. All I know is that Mistress must get better with magic.)

Better? She can already use two attributes, and the racial blood magic. True Blood Magic, at that. And both her TBM and water magic are level 8. Well, part of that is because she can use Level Up! on them, so maybe the answer is just practice, practice, practice. Level Up! might not be all powerful in the end. 

Well, I kind of knew that already. It does cause that ‘disconnect’ feeling between your skill level and your actual skills if you don’t practice daily. But thankfully, we are able to practice daily, so we don’t have to worry about that too much. As long as we spread out the level ups to multiple different skills, none of them will reach the level where they can overwhelm us.

In the afternoon, Lua and I headed out to do some shopping. As well as a test fitting for my suit. That was actually the more important part. Apparently, because of all the orders the tailor got from the members of the Earl’s family, they were quite busy, so they struggled a bit to make mine on time. And because of that, the test fit was pushed back to just a few days before the party. 

The ‘suit’ fit just fine, and I was happy with it, so they would be finishing it in the next two to three days.  

Lua also looked around that store, and she ended up buying some nightwear from them. She did get one given to her as a guest of the Earl’s manor, same as I and Ria, but she wanted some of her own. I also picked up two sets of my own PJs, as I was here. And price doesn’t really matter to us.

Other than that, Lua picked up a few things, like tights, knee high socks, and underwear. Some she said she would use to experiment with, and others were just for use. Well, I wouldn’t mind if she wore some.

After the clothing store, it was time for us to raid … I mean to purchase a lot of spices. And that led us to a shop specializing in that stuff, recommended to us by the mansion’s kitchen staff. Of course because this was the store they also use, I’ll have to be a bit careful to not buy too much.

But I still got a decent amount of both black and white pepper, high quality rock salt, ginger, garlic, cinnamon and cardamom. The store even had some mustard seeds, but unlike the stall keeper I ran into, they didn’t seem to know the recipe for making mustard, as they recommended it as a way to make foods have more heat. I guess unless properly made, mustard itself is quite strong, so most wouldn’t want to use it. But I got the recipe for it, so I bought some more seeds from here, and shared the recipe with them. I don’t know if they will use it, but if they do, so be it. As long as there are some seeds left for me to buy, I’ll be fine. Or even ready made mustard. I don’t need to make it, if I can buy it.

The last ‘spice’ we picked up was sugar. Now sugar didn’t come as the stuff you might think of, but instead, it was this solid piece in the form of a cone. Or something similar to a cone. They called it a sugarloaf. They had ones of different sizes and different qualities, but I just asked for the best quality stuff. The best they had were these small cones, about 15 cm in diameter, and 15 cm tall. I picked up two of those and one larger loaf. The small ones cost over double what the large one was, even though the one large loaf was heavier than the two small ones. 

Of course the price difference was because of the quality. The large one was low+ quality sugar, with a lot of brown sugar mixed in with the white sugar. Whereas the small loafs were excellent in quality, and were 100% white sugar. Of course after storing the stuff in my storage, I used Material Quality Increase on it, and I was able to raise the low+ stuff to intermediate quality, and the excellent stuff became flawless. Flawless seems to be the max quality, and it doesn’t have any + or - addition, like the others do.

So from the bottom, the qualities of items are poor, low, intermediate, good, excellent, flawless. And any but flawless can have a + or - after it, so poor- is the worst you could get.

After the spice store, we entered a travel goods store. I needed some more stuff. Mainly, a sleeping bag and pelt for Ria, as well as another tent. I could probably make a house which I can store into storage, but that’s going to be a longer process, so tents shall do for now.  I could make at least travel pelts myself, from the sword-horn bull hide, but that might be a bit of a waste.

Lua also bought a higher rank pelt for herself. Well, I paid for it, but who's counting. She had one made from a D-rank monster hide, but she was now upgrading to C-rank. There were no B or A-rank travel pelts, by the way. You could only get those with a custom order, and many saw them as a waste of materials. Maybe I really should make ones, just to be a jerk who shows off. … Okay, I’ll save the materials so I can make a bed instead. A-rank monsters aren’t common enough where I want to waste the materials from them. 

… How evil would I be if I tried to artificially increase the power of monsters with my cards? Just so I could kill them and get better materials? Where does that fall in the alignment chart? Chaotic good? I mean, I’m still killing the monster. I’m just powering it up first. And as long as I keep the materials for myself, I won't even disrupt the markets or anything.

The last bits of the day were spent practicing magic, like we do. Still no space magic skill for me. I wonder how reliable I have to be with the space wall spell before I get the skill? I was now at about 95% reliability of it activating when I cast it, and the wall would stay for 20 to 30 seconds. Sure it would still crumble if you put any actual force into it, but you could softly touch it just fine.

Lua and I also had a quick noble etiquette lesson with one of the maids. It was basically a recap for me, but important for Lua. I also confirmed the gift with the maid. That being, the rolls of fabric and the magic fanny pack. She said, as I had assumed, that it was a good gift, but as a dungeon founder, a weapon was, not expected, but would be considered good. So I would just have to make one. 

I’ll do it tomorrow, when I check Ria’s armor. I know my monsters finished it, but I want to see if I can install Metallizing Parasite - Lunatite to it. I’ll do a quick factory test with a copy first, while I give out the rewards for my monsters. So when I install the Lunatites to both my armor, and Ria's, I'll install Twin Swords of Flashing Light - Tryce into that pair of swords I got from the dungeon.

… I still have nothing for Tahlia or Fantasia though … I really need to figure a reward for them. They did a good job with my monsters.

And in the evening, some skill level ups. I was having Ria sit out, for hopefully obvious reasons. I don’t think it would do any damage, but she can sit out one day.

For myself, I leveled up Unity again. Just because why not. Lua on the other hand took her Fast Mana Recovery to LV.10. I guess it won’t hurt.

Tomorrow, well, I have the Lunatite experiment with Ria's blood iron armor. We’ll also be visiting Christina. We have to make the plan on when I’ll go get her. So that is tomorrow's agenda. See you then. Good night.