I Awakened The Ancient Vampire System

Chapter 83: Chapter 83: Transcendent

Four months had passed since the France zombie expedition.

Six months into the academic year now. Lucian had arrived at the start of the second month, which meant seven months total at the European All-Star Academy. Five months remained until the session ended.

In those four months, everything had changed.

Dungeon runs arrived weekly now. Missions from the Hunter Guild annex paid in academy points. Lucian had accumulated over so much academy points — enough to rent the top-tier cultivation room for hours at a time without feeling the cost. The room was buried three floors beneath the Combat Department building, reinforced with mana-absorbing formations that prevented energy leakage and external interference.

100 academy points per hour.

He sat cross-legged on the cultivation mat. The room was small — bare stone walls, a single mana lamp in the corner, formation lines glowing faintly on the floor.

He reached into shadow storage and pulled out a fruit the size of a fist. It glowed with inner light — deep blue, like a star compressed into fruit form. Veins of luminous energy ran through its skin.

Abyssal Star Fruit. One of the top ten global ranking rewards. It contained an absurd concentration of refined mana — equivalent to three hundred low-grade mana stones compressed into organic form. More importantly, it purified meridians and expanded mana channels when consumed during cultivation. A single fruit could permanently increase mana capacity by a small percentage.

Lucian bit into it.

The taste was indescribable — not sweet, not bitter, but something in between. Like drinking liquid starlight. The mana hit his core like a tidal wave. His meridians hummed. His veins glowed faintly beneath his skin as the fruit’s energy dispersed through his body.

He placed his remaining 21 low-grade mana stones on the ground in a circle around him. Most of his stones had gone to Ryan’s research over the months — the universal cure project was consuming resources at an alarming rate. Twenty-one was all he had left.

The Blood Eclipse Art activated. His cultivation technique circulated mana through his meridians in the specific pattern the system had provided — a loop that wove blood energy and mana together, reinforcing each other. The efficiency was fifty percent higher than standard circulation, and the pull it created on ambient mana was extraordinary.

The low-grade stones began dissolving. Raw mana streamed from them into Lucian’s body like rivers feeding into an ocean. His core — currently at Peak Neophyte, packed with compressed liquid mana — began to vibrate.

Six hours passed before Lucian swallowed the Emperor Grade Core Condensation Pill.

The effect was immediate and violent. The pill didn’t just add mana — it restructured. His mana, which had been a dense sphere of liquid mana, began to crystallize. But not into a normal solid core. The Emperor Grade pill introduced something foreign — a lattice structure that interwove with the crystallizing mana, creating layers within layers, fractals within fractals.

The pain was extraordinary. Lucian’s jaw locked. His fists clenched so hard his nails drew blood from his palms. Eternal Regeneration healed the wounds instantly, but the core restructuring continued its relentless work.

Four hours into the pill’s effect, his core had shifted from liquid to a semi-crystalline state. But it needed more mana — far more than the fruit and low-grade stones had provided.

Lucian’s Blood Eclipse Art pulled harder. The ambient mana in the room began thinning.

Outside the cultivation room, students in adjacent chambers felt it first.

A first-year student named Pascal opened his eyes during a standard circulation session and frowned. His mana flow had slowed. The ambient energy that usually filled the room like warm water was draining — slowly at first, then faster.

He wasn’t the only one. Six cultivation rooms on the same floor reported the same phenomenon. Students stepped into the corridor, confused, annoyed.

"Someone’s hogging all the mana."

"Which room?"

They found it quickly. The formation lines on Lucian’s door were glowing white-hot, straining to contain the energy being drawn inside. The air around the door felt thin — like breathing at high altitude.

A student banged on the door. "Hey! Some of us are trying to cultivate in here!"

No response.

"Open up!"

Nothing. Lucian was so deep in meditation that he couldn’t hear the door. Couldn’t hear anything. His entire consciousness was focused on the core forming inside him — every strand of crystallized mana, every layer of the lattice, every fraction of a percent of completion. A single distraction could shatter the delicate process. He’d lose the pill’s effect. He’d lose the chance at a Transcendent Core.

And his face had settled into a frown. The mana wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.

The students grew angrier. One of them — a first-year with a fire ability — raised his hand. "I’m breaking the door."

"Try it," said a cold voice from the end of the corridor.

An old man stood there. White hair in a simple knot. Closed eyes. A cane in his right hand.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The fire student’s hand dropped. His face went pale.

"Get out," Allistar said.

The students ran. They didn’t know who the old man was, but the killing intent that leaked from his casual stance was enough to erase courage from anyone below the even the Grand Core Realm.

Mickey Adeyemi had been watching from the far end of the corridor, his own cultivation interrupted. The number one ranked student in the academy leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, a grin spreading across his face.

"Finally, someone interesting," he murmured as he turned and walked away.

A few teachers arrived minutes later. They took one look at Allistar standing guard outside the cultivation room and left without a word.

Inside, Allistar’s expression was annoyed.

"Must you cause a ruckus everywhere you go?" he muttered. Then his frown deepened. He could feel the cultivation technique Lucian was using — the way it pulled mana, the specific pattern of circulation. "What type of cultivation technique is that? Is he trying to form a Transcendent Core?"

His closed eyes widened slightly.

"This kid."

He raised his hand. A white barrier expanded outward from his palm, covering a five-hundred-meter radius. The barrier served two purposes — it isolated the mana inside from the rest of the academy, and it prevented the thinning effect from spreading further.

Then he reached into his storage ring and pulled out five mid-grade mana stones. One mid-grade stone contained roughly the energy of one hundred low-grade stones. Five of them equaled five hundred low-grade stones.

He placed them on the floor beside Lucian.

The Blood Eclipse Art latched onto them instantly. The mid-grade stones dissolved in minutes rather than hours. Lucian’s frown eased. The core’s crystallization accelerated. The lattice structure deepened, layer upon layer, fractal upon fractal.

Allistar watched through the barrier. "Faster than I expected. The pill and the technique are working together."

Then the five stones were gone.

The core was still forming. But it seemed it still wasn’t enough to form a transcendent core.

"Damn it." Allistar cursed under his breath. He pulled out five more mid-grade stones and placed them down. "This brat is going to bankrupt me."

The second batch dissolved even faster than the first. The Blood Eclipse Art had adapted to the denser energy source, pulling with even greater efficiency. The ambient mana inside the barrier began spiraling toward Lucian like water down a drain.

The core’s crystallization reached critical mass. The lattice structure completed its final layer. The semi-crystalline state solidified — not into a normal core, but into something that pulsed with internal light. Fractal patterns glowed within the crystal, each one containing compressed mana at densities that shouldn’t have been possible at the Core Realm.

The room shook. Not from impact — from the sheer pressure of the mana being compressed into the newly formed core.

Lucian’s eyes opened.

A strong aura exploded outward from his body — dense, heavy, crackling with contained power. The white barrier Allistar had erected flexed but held. The formation lines on the floor burned bright enough to leave afterimages.

The system notification flashed.

╔═══════════════════════╗

║ ✦ BREAKTHROUGH ACHIEVED ✦ ║

╠═══════════════════════╣

║ Host has broken through to the EARLY CORE REALM ║

║ Host has successfully formed a TRANSCENDENT CORE ║

║ Core Quality: Transcendent ║

║ ├─ Mana Capacity: +480% ║

║ ├─ Regeneration Rate: +215% ║

║ └─ Spell Efficiency: +150% ║

║ CURRENT MANA: 60,600 MPU ║

║ (Base: 12,625 MPU × 4.8 multiplier) ║

╠═══════════════════════╣

║ BLOOD ECLIPSE ART — UPGRADED ║

║ Spell power bonus: 50% → 65% ║

║ BE cost reduced by 15% ║

║ Mana circulation speed +40% ║

╚═══════════════════════════╝

Lucian looked up at Allistar.

The old man stood with his arms crossed, eyes closed, expression unreadable.

"Ten mid-grade mana stones," Allistar said flatly. "You owe me."

Lucian smiled. "Thank you, Master."

"Don’t thank me. Pay me back." He turned and walked toward the door. Tap. tap. tap.

At the doorway, he paused.

"Transcendent Core at Early Core Realm. If word gets out, every clan and government on the planet will try to recruit you or kill you. Keep your mouth shut."

The door closed behind him.

Lucian sat in the empty cultivation room, surrounded by dissolved stone dust and fading formation light. His core pulsed inside him like a second heart — dense, powerful, alive.

He was finally in the Core Realm.

And he was just getting started.