Quinn smiled.
But to get it, Quinn would have to hunt a predator far stronger than himself. He would have to expose what he was. And he would have to decide: was he still Quinn Talen, the orphan who just wanted to live? Or was he something else entirely—the first vampire in a System that had no rulebook for monsters?
While other students at the Atlas-7 Combat Academy trained their flashy Firebolts and Steel Skin, Quinn lurked in the margins. He fed in shadows. He grew stronger. By the end of month two, his Blood Rank rose to C-Rank (Fledgling). New skills unlocked: Mist Form (escape), Claw Rend (combat), and the most terrifying of all— Blood Puppetry (control a bleeding target’s body for 3 seconds).
The Lurkers’ own blood, black and viscous, erupted from their wounds. Quinn shaped it into a dozen spinning discs, each one a razor of frozen gore. He didn’t just kill them. He harvested them. Every drop of their blood became his ammunition, his shield, his sustenance. My Vampire System
And that was his power.
His only solace was a glitch. Because he was a “forced integration,” the main System didn’t recognize him as Awakened. But it also didn’t recognize him as a monster. To scanners, he was a Level 0 Null. Invisible. Forgotten.
He looked at his bloodstained hands. The hunger purred. Quinn smiled
He survived on medical waste and the blood of butchered livestock. Each feeding healed his lesions by a fraction, but the hunger… the hunger grew louder.
Let the games begin.
[New Title Unlocked: The First of the New Blood] [Quest: Devour the Alpha. Reward: Cure for Cellular Decay.] And he would have to decide: was he
Quinn Talen had two problems.
And then the new System screen appeared.
Not for him, of course. The System—a galaxy-spanning, game-like interface that granted Skills, Classes, and Power Levels—had descended upon humanity ten years ago, turning every sixteen-year-old into an “Awakened.” It was humanity’s great equalizer. Everyone got a System.
He stared at the screen. Then, with a thumb that trembled only slightly, he pressed . The pain was not transformation. It was deconstruction.