The Transformation

Without a doubt, the one who had shut the door was Blade Warrior Brooks. After taking care of the doorman, he used Kivat to bite his left wrist. The toxin, partially synthesized from biological material, was injected into his body through the hollow fangs.

The transformation didn't take the twenty seconds Wei Xiuming had told Brooks it would. The moment the toxin made contact, his cells began to mutate. He could clearly feel his bones, muscles, blood vessels, and other bodily structures dissolving rapidly, then swiftly re-forming into new structures under the influence of the vampires' self-healing ability.

The changes began at the two healed wounds on his left wrist and spread throughout his body. Brooks's limbs quickly became metallic. His skin hardened and clumped into plates, taking on a sheen found only in metal, as if he had donned a suit of armor. Yet the joints remained flexible, and the fine hairs on his body hardened into bristles like those on an insect's abdomen.

Even with only his left arm transformed, the strength he gained already exceeded anything Blade could have imagined. Before, when fighting vampires, he had relied on silver-plated weapons, firearms, garlic extract, and other vampire-repelling tools to drive them back. Now, his physical strength alone was enough to make vampires no match for him.

With a casual swing, he sent one of the vampires leading the charge flying back into the crowd, faster than it had come. It was like a high-speed truck hitting a schoolgirl carrying a piece of toast just after she left home in the morning.

That level of injury wasn't serious for a vampire. Even if one was burned to charcoal by sunlight, it could recover by replenishing its blood before it was reduced to ash—quickly and effectively, like using a first-aid kit in a battle royale game. A few breaths after being sent flying, the vampire got back up and prepared to charge Blade again.

It wasn't that he wasn't afraid of dying. If they didn't fight back when the Daywalker came for them, they'd truly be as good as dead. Blade never left vampires alive. His slaughter of their kind had already alarmed the Pure Blood Thirteen Elders, and the bounty on his head had risen to who knew how much. Blade wasn't carrying any weapons today, and this was a rare opportunity. If luck was on his side and he managed to kill him, he'd live in wealth and luxury from then on.

Then premium blood bags like Willis would become regular items on the menu. He wouldn't have to painstakingly pick and choose, only to end up with a single taste.

But halfway through his charge, the vampire suddenly stopped. Something felt wrong with his body—something he had never experienced in all his years as a vampire. Looking down, he saw the spot where Blade had struck him beginning to rot. His flesh, blood, and bones dissolved into a foamy slime, and the rot spread rapidly until his entire body dissolved into foam.

He wasn't the only one. None of the vampires could last a single round against Blade. Every one he struck suffered broken bones and torn tendons, then began rotting from the wounds, dissolving into foam that evaporated within a few breaths.

After repelling the vampires' first wave of attacks, Blade had completed his transformation. The figure standing there was no longer human, but something like an extraterrestrial life-form. His entire body was covered in black exoskeleton with a metallic sheen. Its sharp, angular contours had a mechanical beauty, even though it had formed from living tissue.

Especially his face: Blade's head had become batlike, and a pair of compound eyes protected by transparent crystals took up most of his face. If the vampires hadn't seen it with their own eyes, they would have thought Blade was wearing a fully enclosed Mechanical Exoskeleton.

And because this was the Marvel World, whose rules had to be obeyed, the changes to Blade's body didn't affect his clothes. They weren't burned away, nor did the biological armor cover them.

Blade's original clothes still clung to his body, and the upright collar preserved a touch of mystery.

This made the vampires stop in their tracks, afraid to fight him for the moment.

Blade himself didn't feel good, either. The more metallic his body became, the more his brain throbbed as if it were being corroded.

For a time, claims about how much of the human brain people used were very popular. Some pseudoscientists believed that people like Einstein had such high intelligence because they used more of their brains than ordinary people. They imagined that if humans used one hundred percent of their brains, they would reach the realm of the gods.

#bbr#But this was all based on misconceptions. Though it wasn't obvious, even normal human activities like breathing and moving depended on the parts of the brain that seemed unused. Take Blade, for example. After the toxin transformed his body into biological armor, his brain couldn't bear the strain. His pain receptors sent feedback to warn Brooks that he needed to take measures to change his situation.

Following Wei Xiuming's instructions, Blade Brooks clipped the transformation device to his waist. The little bat immediately linked up with the muscles, blood vessels, nerves, and other tissues in his abdomen, suppressing the toxin's further transformation of his body and sharing the burden on his brain.

Blade's compound eyes glowed a dim red, and everything in his field of vision changed with them. It was as if he weren't looking through his own eyes, but at a high-tech display panel, with everything processed as data.

A data model formed of everything within sight. The vampires were included, their rough, human-shaped outlines running through hundreds of simulations in a short time. Their possible actions were fully calculated, leaving him only to respond to their moves. Even if someone other than a battle-hardened fighter like him had transformed, they would have achieved in seconds what others spent decades training for, gaining the greatest results at the smallest cost.

What followed was a massacre of the vampires at Blade's hands. Compared to before, this time his actions were incredibly swift and efficient. To use a gaming analogy, the old Blade had been playing a ranked match. He relied on superior attributes, gear, and experience to win. The numbers made things difficult, but he could still come out on top. He only occasionally lost when he ran into someone at his level or better, or when enemy players infiltrated his team and an idiot teammate held him back. But with the protagonist's plot armor and Whistler, an amazing teammate, there to save the day, Blade could still turn the tables and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Now, transformed Blade was playing against bots—bots so poorly programmed that even when standing face-to-face in full high-level gear, they couldn't land a basic attack. Killing a fish was harder than this.

Watching the whole thing on a screen, Whistler was left dumbfounded. He had never imagined Blade could unleash such destructive power.