My Vampire System

Quite some time had passed since Vorden had sent out his first message. No matter where Fex was, it shouldn't have taken him as long as it did for him to arrive. It wasn't as if the boys were joined by the hip, and they couldn't do anything themselves. But it was more like there was nothing else to do. The event was the only thing happening right now.

Other than Quinn and them, Fex didn't get along with anyone else being a level one. So he had no one else to watch the show with either.

"Hey come on, did you miss me that much?" Fex said, looking at Vorden who had a strange look on his face. He was still wondering about what could have taken him so long. "Look, don't worry I just had something that really upset my stomach yesterday and was in the toilet, trust me you don't want to go into the boy's toilet by screen four, I think you can still smell it."

Vorden looked at him even stranger now, and even Quinn was starting to feel slightly awkward, and it wasn't the bad jokes.

'Did vampires even get stomach aches?' Vorden thought. 'By bad meal is he talking about blood.'

"So I heard that you guys dealt with the Zac problem all okay huh, why don't you tell me about that. What happened with that." Fex words when spoken were quick and to the point. he wasn't even giving enough time for the others to reply to what he had already said.

Fex was acting really strange. He usually joked about a lot and often, but it felt as if he was trying to force himself this time.

Quinn noticed this and a few other strange things straight away. As soon as Fex arrived, he was sweating; Vampires often didn't even sweat from strenuous activity as they had high amounts of stamina. This was different; this type of sweat was from something else, as if he was scared.

The other thing that made Quinn think this was his heartbeat. The stronger a vampire was usually, the less their bodily organs needed to be used. Their heartbeats were able to be slowed, and the amount of blood and oxygen that needed to be carried around their body was lessened.

So the fact that Quinn could hear that Fex had a fast heartbeat he knew something was up. He wasn't in control of his emotions right now.

'Damn it they know, calm down will you.' Fex said to himself in anger. Seeing that the others weren't buying his act.

"Hey, you said you're friends number 33, right?" Sam called over, "Well, it looks like he isn't doing too well."

Their attention was focused on Fex this whole time that they had forgotten about the competition. When looking at the screen, the camera was once again focused on Logan, and still, he hadn't touched anything.

"Well, it looks like he doesn't care about the event then," Said Vorden.

"You're probably right," Quinn replied.

Hearing this, Sam was quite shocked. How could someone waste an opportunity like this on such a grand stage? Not only were the big four watching, but so were many factions from all over. A forger was highly sorted after so even if the one displayed a little bit of skill, they could quickly join a faction and live the rest of their lives peacefully.

The two decided to question Fex later; acting strange wasn't a call of emergency, it couldn't have been something urgent. Otherwise, Fex would have informed them immediately. They both trusted him now after the many times he had helped them out before.

The timer continued to go down for the event until, eventually, the buzzer had sounded singling the end of the competition.

Using his advanced eyesight, Quinn quickly looked down at all the items that had been made and used his inspect skill.

It allowed him to see each item's stats clearly displayed out, as a screen hovered above each one, at first Quinn was doing this individually looking at an item but then suddenly, a familiar sound was heard.

[Inspect skill has risen to Level 3]

The number of times he had used the skill while looking for Zac and now during the contest had helped greatly and finally, it had risen to level three.

Know when looking at the items, all of them immediately had a screen displaying their stats. There was no longer any need to use the inspect skill on each item individually.

Seeing this, he could see the level of equipment made significantly varied. It seemed like they were only given a basic crystal to make an item.

Some had chosen to make ranged weapons out of the crystal, some chose regular melee weapons, and a few decided on armour. It just went on to prove how difficult a forgers job was. The fact that not everyone had made the same item meant it wasn't; easy to decide what the crystal would be best used for.

However, when Quinn looked using his inspect skill, he could quite clearly see. The ranged weapons and armour had an extra description, saying whatever stat the current weapon was at would be halved. Some of the poorer made equipment only allowed an increase of one strength. With the 50 per cent stat decrease, it practically meant the weapon was only a little better than using one's own fist.

The melee weapon was the right choice giving the user an extra two strength when being used. The perfect melee weapon that could be made from the item was a long sword. Whoever had made a long sword out of the items, it would give an additional three strength. There were very few longswords that had been made with the crystal.

Then finally, there was a difference in the quality and skill of the forger. The ones that had made a longsword, each one of them looked quite different from another. Some just had a basic plus-three in strength, and there was one with a plus-four.

But in Quinn's eyes, there was a clear winner out of them all. For one of the students managed to make a sword with a plus-three to the strength stat, but also it had an added weapon skill.

"The judges have made their decisions. First of all, students who made armour or ranged weapons. You have been knocked out of the competition."

After this was said, about half of the contestants had left the stage, while the rest had passed. The weapons were then further inspected by the judges, but nothing was said as they had all passed anyway. Before the next event was to start, organizers interviewed two students.

The first student was the one that had created the long sword with the added weapon skill. The audience members were a little confused about why he was chosen to be interviewed as they weren't informed about who had made the best weapon, but Quinn knew why.

'Maybe if I don't become a traveller in the future, my skill could be used to become an inspector of beast weapons.' Quinn thought. With just a single glance, he was able to tell a lot of information about a weapon.

The next student who was to be interviewed was Logan, which came as a surprise to many.

"Logan, we just wanted to ask you a question. You were the only student to not make anything out of the materials presented today is there any reason for that?" The female asked as she shoved a microphone directly to his face.

"I am not a forger but an inventor. I find making weapons quite tedious and boring, to be honest with you. I felt because I don't respect the art of forging like others this was not my stage." Logan replied.

From the side, a few of the forgers started to chuckle. "Yeah right, what a good excuse, more like he doesn't know how to forge a weapon. He would just have been embarrassed with whatever he had made." The student had said this quite loudly on purpose trying to embarrass Logan.

Logan then grabbed the mike closer to himself and faced the student. "I assure you, creating something that would best that would best the weapon in your hand would only take a few minutes."

The interview had a huge smile on her face. She loved drama and entertainment, and it was moments like this the crowd loved as well. "Very well, would you like to redeem yourself, Logan, why don't we allow you to create a weapon now and a judge can come over and decide?"

Usually, Logan wouldn't have done something that placed him in the limelight so much. However, he hated it when others said that he couldn't do something when he could. It was as if they were calling him a liar.

"Very well."

Logan walked back up to his section in the arena; all of the equipment was still untouched from before. The event organizers allowed this as usually there was quite a bit of set up time before events and they would delay it with useless speeches or question and answer segments. This was far better than any of those.

They had planned to give Logan the same amount of time as the other contestants thirty minutes; however, Logan didn't need it.

The forgers were allowed to use their abilities, many of them had abilities that would help in the forging process, and Logan was no exception. The little spiders that covered his costume in a small suit started to break down and reform. They gathered on his back and then started to sprout out three individual arms on each side. When they finally finished forming, it looked like Logan himself was a giant spider.

"That's kind of cool, I'm not going to lie." Vorden said.

The arms went to work, and now with eight of them, he was able to do multiple things at once. After five minutes had passed, he had finished creating a longsword.

The crafting speed alone was enough to have the other impressed. They didn't even really care about the quality of the weapon. Still, the judges standing by the side could already tell while watching Logan make the weapon that it was one of decent quality. It wasn't the best weapon to be made today, but for the amount of time it had taken it was better then they had expected.

The interview grabbed the long sword created by Logan, and the one made by the heckler forger from the crowd. She lifted both in the air, and then struck them both against each other as hard as she could.

"We have a clear winner." She said.

As she lifted the sword made by the heckler, the camera zoomed closely on the sword. and there was a reasonably large chip that went in around halfway into the side of the sword. When they turned to look at the one Logan had made, there was but only a small scratch.

The crowd cheered in excitement, as they saw this. They loved someone who could back up his word. They were far too used to braggers who could never achieve what they said, and it seems like Logan was not one of them.

"Your friend is a strange one." Sam said, "If he could do that all along, then why didn't he?"

Quinn started to laugh, as he looked around at the other two, and then Logan down below.

"We're all a little strange." He replied with a smile.

As the crafting event had ended and the judges were discussing what to do with Logan. They had wished for him to continue in the contest, hoping to see his skills once more. However, rules were rules, and they were not able to make an exception. Logan was disqualified and could now return to the others above.

Deep underground, it was time for the next set of contestants to prepare themselves. Layla took in a deep breath, for now, it was time for the Ranged event. Shortly after her's, it was then Peter's turn as well.

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