Blood Corpse

Biodata

Power Progression

Blood Corpse ranks combine mental capacity with combat strength. Within Antos’s lineage, advancement requires the grand duke’s personal approval 396.

Other Forms of Strengthening

• Self-devouring: Starving Blood Corpses consume one another, producing stronger, fiercer survivors. These survivors usually collapse from bodily imbalance unless continued feeding sustains them 437.
• Cross-lineage absorption: Muller gains the York lineage’s Shadow Traversal after killing and absorbing an enemy count 874.
• Collective enhancement: The seven grand dukes’ True Blood Alliance strengthens Blood Corpses throughout their ranks 874.

Background and History

Before the Demonic Tide, “Blood Corpse” narrowly referred to servants raised by certain vampires as blood supplies. They appeared capable of speech and thought, but human accounts regarded them as effectively dead. Vampires called them Blood Servants or Blood Slaves 281.

The Demonic Tide overturned those limits. Goblins, ogres, beastmen, and even devils became Blood Corpses or their subspecies. Their ability to assimilate other races helped the vampires’ strength grow as the Tide intensified; Luoli’s account describes a Corpse Tide sweeping across half the continent 281 777.

Human forces countered these armies by assassinating their commanding counts and marquises. When those leaders were too powerful, attackers instead targeted untitled intelligent Blood Corpses, disrupting command sufficiently to exploit the horde’s poor maneuverability 640.

Several grand dukes and their descendants were subsequently sealed away. As the seals weakened, weaker Blood Corpses revived first, followed by increasingly powerful individuals. Blood Corpses also supplied their own blood to nourish a reviving count inside his coffin 360 362.

The lineages trapped in the Demon Realm continued developing while their sealed counterparts stagnated or weakened. They spent another seventy or eighty years converting the life-forms available to them, producing armies with large nonhuman contingents 1330.

Appearance

• Typical coloration: Pale or gray-white skin, scarlet eyes, and blackened claws. Some specimens have purplish-black veins and extremities darkened by accumulated toxins 285 308 1331.
• Body condition: Many have taut skin and firm muscles rather than extensively rotted bodies, although older specimens can be visibly decayed or mutilated 283 308.
• Physical variation: Size and anatomy depend partly on the original race; examples include short goblin forms, enormous ogres, and a minotaur twice an ordinary human’s height 281 311.
• Mutations: Documented examples include a face split into four flaps and an arm six or seven times thicker than normal 284 384.
• Retained clothing: Gray encounters both recently infected nomads wearing monster pelts and older corpses wearing unfamiliar, ragged clothing 283.

Behavior and Organization

Intelligence and Command

• Ordinary Blood Corpses operate largely on bestial instincts. Near an intelligent individual, they readily abandon their own limited judgment and follow orders 385.
• Untitled intelligent leaders may possess only rudimentary commands such as “this way” and “charge”; vampire nobles can direct armies far more precisely 311.
• Higher-ranking vampires dominate lower-ranking members through psionic energy transmitted along bloodline connections. This control can extend to their minds 417.
• Command has a range limit. Bennett secures control of a group after drawing it beyond a rival commander’s reach 767.
• A progenitor can address descendants mentally and direct coordinated work, including the excavation of orderly underground entrances 798.

Feeding and Activity

• Blood Corpses gather in shade during daylight and become dangerous roaming predators after nightfall. Darkness can also enhance their speed 318 358 379.
• Fresh blood can lure an isolated individual from shelter, and their hearing is notably sharp 319 358.
• Roars provide simple communication and can excite nearby captive Blood Corpses 282.
• Extreme hunger causes cannibalism, making food supply an important limitation even when Blood Corpses are used as machinery 418 437.

Corpse Tides

• A hundred or more Blood Corpses can form a small Corpse Tide capable of overrunning ordinary settlements. Large tides are treated as natural disasters 282.
• Numbers compensate for individual losses: hordes climb over one another, overwhelm defenders, and use specialized mutants to breach defenses or throw companions onto walls 283 309 384.
• Their poor judgment makes them vulnerable to kiting. Players can even lure two pursuing groups into colliding with one another 310 796.
• Progenitor-led forces can reach enormous scale; Rosalind fields a million-strong horde against the alliance 1399.

Abilities and Skills

Vitality and Physical Combat

Ordinary Blood Corpses chiefly threaten opponents through strong vitality, infectious claws, and bites 294 943.

• They feel no pain and may continue attacking despite severe facial injuries or imminent lethal blows 308 381.
• They do not need to breathe; suffocation is not an effective means of neutralization 379 944.
• An intact brain can sustain a Blood Corpse even after the loss of its lower body 801.
• Stronger variants can gouge brass armor, charge through defensive lines, or destroy wooden watchtower supports 284 309 311.

Corpse Poison and Transformation

Corpse Poison is a psionic toxin transmitted through bites and scratches. It progressively converts the victim’s current body, with the infection rate affected by wound area and the attacker’s rank 314.

• Losing Plant and Animal Compatibility disables abilities belonging to those systems. Fully transformed players also lose access to teleportation trees 314 315.
• If a transformed player’s Will falls below 2, the lineage’s progenitor can influence them through whispers or hallucinations, pushing them toward a mindless state 314.
• Transformed players can infect others and may gain special abilities determined by the infecting lineage 314 634.
• A count’s personal transformation can grant Count’s Gift, suppressing some instincts while imposing obedience to that count. Aluode nevertheless retains his independent intentions and uses his transformed body to infiltrate Bennett’s forces 361.
• Complete bodily reconstruction or at least eight hours inside a Tree of Rest removes both Corpse Poison and completed transformation 314.
• Prompt amputation can stop an infection from spreading, but a weapon contaminated with Blood Corpse blood can worsen the situation 315.

Blood Curse

Blood Curse automatically marks whoever delivers the killing blow to a Blood Corpse 314.

• Each lineage’s curse is independent. It reveals the bearer to vampires of that lineage, not to every Blood Corpse indiscriminately 294 314.
• Detection range depends on the pursuing vampire’s rank. Killing more Blood Corpses—or higher-ranking ones—strengthens the curse 314.
• The documented removal conditions are the bearer’s permanent death or the destruction of every Blood Corpse belonging to the relevant lineage 314.

Lineage Abilities

Vampire nobles receive derivative abilities from their lineage. Their effectiveness depends partly on individual aptitude and training 958.

Progenitor Possession and Observation

• Grand dukes can act through subordinate bodies. Antos uses Howling Pothos’s transformed body to fight Antiya Lisi, although his sealed condition limits the power available to that vessel 679 680.
• Rosalind takes over a Blood Corpse of her own lineage while recovering. Even one drop of her True Blood risks bursting an ordinary host 1427.
• Hall develops large-scale surveillance through Blood Corpses and blood mist, observing through tens of thousands of eyes while directly controlling only a few hundred bodies 1427.

Weaknesses and Countermeasures

Uses and Technology

Mobile-Fortress Engines

Several decades before Gray’s journey, a Graycast Corridor mechanic placed a Blood Corpse on a pedal mechanism and sustained it with minimal food. Further development produced the first small mobile fortress ten years later 282.

• Gray’s fortress initially carries fifty live Blood Corpses as power components, captured in the Demon Realm by professional corpse fishers 282.
• The Corridor generally prefers unintelligent, low-level specimens controlled by mechanical structures. An escaped count or marquis could endanger an entire satellite city 758.
• Gray and the Soul Returners test a wooden neutralization machine that removes fingers, toes, and teeth before enclosing its captive 450.
• The engines are not inexhaustible: strenuous travel kills power-source Blood Corpses, eventually prompting the Antasia’s crew to replace all fifty stations with Soul Returners 1116.

Labor and Biological Materials

• Excavation: More than a thousand Blood Corpses dig at Oliver’s sealing site and pass rubble through four assembly lines 425.
• Hauling: Transformed players command mindless Blood Corpses to pull loaded carriages toward White Wax Town 442.
• Plant cultivation: Ed directs players to grow plants using slain Blood Corpses, allowing him to recover value from bodies outside his immediate territory 347.
• Machine Spirits: Blood Corpses serve in Machine Spirit technology and are packed into crates as Psionic Energy Ammo Packs. Ed later develops plant-and-animal organisms capable of replacing them as the basis for new-energy Machine Spirits 1129 1474.

Story Role and Major Arcs

Later Player Protections

• Corpse Poison Immunity (Intermediate): Blood Corpses of any lineage below high tier can no longer infect players involuntarily 1455.
• Blood Poison Adaptation (Intermediate): Players attacked by an infected creature can choose to accept infection, transform their current body, and gain special abilities 1455.
• Both protections automatically upgrade to Advanced once a player’s level exceeds 60. Living players activate the new benefits after teleporting or respawning 1455.

Legal Restrictions

• The Graycast Corridor screens travelers for Blood Corpse infection and investigates the transport of vampire nobles 490 491 492.
• Corridor law permits anyone to kill a Blood Corpse that enters a town without registering 1075.