Thin gray, diffused light was bleeding through the gaps in the heavy curtains when Arthur finally managed to wake up.
He stared blindly at the intricate Victorian ceiling for a long while before letting out a deep heavy sigh.
"Hah, so it wasn't a dream," he muttered to the empty room. "I truly have transmigrated to the Victorian era."
He was feeling refreshed after a few hours of sleep, even though a lingering, bone-deep ache still radiated through his joints. It wasn't enough to be truly painful, but it was enough to make him feel quite lazy.
A quick glance at the mechanical clock on the mantle confirmed it was just past one o'clock in the afternoon.
It's so late, he thought.
That was such a refreshing sleep, but I still feel tired. Maybe I should sleep a little bit more. No… I need to wash up and brush my teeth.
My hair feels sticky.
He sat up lazily and then swung his legs over the edge of the mattress. The moment his feet touched the ground, he let out a groan of pain. His ankle had swollen a little, and his shin was throbbing in pain. His limbs felt heavy, as if they had been filled with wet sand. The sharp, hyper-aware vitality he had possessed last night was also completely gone, replaced by a full-body lethargy. He was back to feeling like a regular human once more.
He stumbled into the adjacent bathroom, opened the faucet, and splashed some cold water on his face from the porcelain washbasin before grabbing the toothbrush and toothpaste. As he stared at his pale, dark-haired reflection in the mirror, the reason for his exhaustion finally clicked.
It was because of the sun.
Even hidden in the safety of his room, the sun still had quite an influence on him. While the [Day Drinker] perk was a passive ability, because of it his overall health and attributes were effectively halved, and his vampiric edge was stripped away until dusk. He was, for all intents and purposes, back to being a normal human.
It was not something that he had expected. He didn't know much about thin-bloods. While he sure had read the Vampire: The Masquerade core rulebook in the passing, he hadn't read it thoroughly enough to remember all of the details. All he knew was that they had a cool punk vampire aesthetic going on with them, along with stuff like Disciplines, Blood magic etc.
Blinking away the grogginess while brushing his teeth, he mentally summoned the system interface.
The glowing translucent text flickered into his vision. His Sanity was stable and seemed to have increased by 2 whole points, which meant sleeping somehow restored Sanity and might also be the reason why he could think more clearly now. But his eyes immediately locked onto a new change in his profile, namely his Sparks.
Sparks Held: 10
He blinked in surprise, spat out the toothpaste, rinsed his mouth, and dried his face with a towel. The system didn't have a notification log or a history tab to explain where the sudden influx had come from, but it didn't take a genius to figure it out.
I spent my initial three Sparks on unlocking Auspex last night, which means these ten are entirely new ones. That can only mean one thing: this was a reward for rescuing Clara and closing the Abernathy case. It was the only thing that made sense.
Curious, he opened the [Profile] tab to see how he could spend them. When he focused his intent on the attribute numbers, a small tooltip expanded with an arrow linking directly to the Sparks chapter of the [Tutorial], which explained the scaling and purchasing mechanics. Upgrading an attribute cost Sparks equal to the current level multiplied by four.
He did the quick mental math. His Strength was at Level 1, which meant upgrading it to Level 2 would cost 4 Sparks. Dexterity was at Level 2, so reaching Level 3 would cost 8. His Constitution was by far the most highest stat at Level 4. To push it to Level 5, it would cost exactly 16 Sparks.
What he really wanted was survivability, but his Constitution was already at a manageable level. Maybe a bit of Strength wouldn't be such a bad idea.
As for Spirituality... he still didn't know what it did. He could open the attribute chapter and read the massive wall of text, but in his current lethargic state he really didn't feel like doing it.
No. I should actually do it. Going in blind is unwise.
So while he prepared the bath, he decided to give the tutorial a thorough read.
He lowered himself into the ceramic tub and scrubbed his skin with a loofah and soap, while also applying some in his hair, washing away the grime and the lingering stench of the Eastern Borough. Once he had drained and refilled the tub with fresh water, he settled in to relax, opened the system interface again, and navigated to the tutorial.
He started out with the Blood Potency first.
[Blood Potency
—Blood Potency describes the degree of power vampiric Vitae bestows upon a character. Vampire characters begin their Requiem at Blood Potency 1, and may increase it through age, experience and diablerie.
As Blood Potency increases, so does the relative difficulty of a vampire's unlife. Namely, feeding them becomes much harder. At Embrace, they can feed from anything with blood, including animals. Once they reach the third dots of Blood Potency, animals no longer sustain them. At seven dots of Blood Potency, they can only gain nourishment from the blood of the unnatural beings. It also makes rising in the evening more difficult.
For every twenty years a vampire spends in torpor, they lose a point in Blood Potency. For this reason some elders choose to fall into voluntary slumber in order to ease their feeding restrictions.
Thin-blooded vampires on the other hand have no Blood Potency whatsoever. And hence gain no other benefit from the Blood, save for the slight ability to surge it.]
He felt like he understood a little bit more about Blood Potency, and as he scrolled down, he found definitions for Vitae and Blood Surge that it had mentioned earlier.
[Vitae
—Vitae is the Latin for "life" and is the essence that conserves the undead. In the most basic sense, Vitae is a term used by vampires to refer to blood.
From a mage's perspective, Vitae is the essence of the universe, the invisible energy that penetrates reality at every level of being. The mythical Tass, and hence is a very good catalyst for most magical rituals.
Blood that contains vitae is slightly darker, and has an almost syrupy quality. It has all the normal metallic smells blood should, but also has a subtle, sweet smell, like a dessert wine. It tastes like ambrosia.
Furthermore, vitae is almost always more "condensed", meaning that while vampires have the same amount of blood in their systems, they possess more points of vitae. The maximum amount of vitae in a vampire's body is determined by their Blood Potency.]
[Blood Surge
—Blood surge is like a mystical adrenaline… ]
Arthur continued reading on as he got out of the bathtub, drained it and then got dressed in a clean set of pants and a loose cotton shirt.
There was a lot of information on attributes: Strength, Dexterity and Constitution meant what they literally meant.
Like Strength referred to the raw brute force my body could exert. While the Dexterity Attribute measured my general physical prowess. It encompassed my speed, agility, and overall quickness, as well as indicating my ability to manipulate objects with control and precision. Also included under Dexterity's heading are hand-eye coordination, reflexes, and bodily grace.
On the other hand the Constitution Trait reflects my health, toughness, and resilience. It indicates how long I can exert myself and how much punishment I can withstand before suffering physical trauma. Strangely enough it also includes a bit of psychic fortitude.
Beyond that there were some interesting details too. Like how 0.5 to 1 is regarded as normal human 1 to 2 is regarded as trained human 2 to 3 as Olympic level and 3 to 4 as above average, 4 to 5 was considered superhuman and so on as so forth.
On the flip side Spirituality like its name was quite enlightening. It was indeed a separate power system all together from the Vitae, one that originated from the soul, though there didn't seem to be any section on the soul itself, so he wasn't able to learn much about it. From what the system relayed, Spirituality was a catch-all term that covered both unnatural perception and supernatural energy. What was disappointing was that the system simply told him to read a book if he wanted to understand it more.
After that he headed downstairs, feeling like he had read too much things, and his head felt quite bogged down.
He headed downstairs to the kitchen, grateful that the [Lifelike] perk still allowed his digestive system to function normally.
He put water on the cast-iron stove, which ran on charcoal, intending to brew a strong pot of red tea. He had never liked coffee; it always made him sleepy. He then found some stale slices of bread in the pantry and set them on the counter while he considered what to do with them. Immediately he heard a sizzling sound and saw that the tea had overflowed from the pot.
He quickly shifted it to the side so that it received less heat and was only simmering slowly now.
"Hah… why is this stove so complicated to work with?"
At that moment he decided he could just eat the bread the usual way: by dipping them in the tea.
While he waited, he looked over the chemistry setup.
It was large, occupying the dining table and much of the counter space along the right wall. He decided to close all the open vials and flasks making sure no chemicals were exposed, though he had to admit his predecessor was quite organized and had been meticulous about keeping everything sealed.
He looked at the centrifuge and figured it had likely been commissioned by the previous Arthur.
As he waited, his thoughts started to wander as he pondered about his own presumable "death" back home. After all, transmigration and isekai always needed something extraordinary like truck-kun, heart attack or something along those lines. Absent-mindedly he went upstairs, retrieved the orange notebook, and started taking notes.
First: his own death. There was no clue beyond a creepy dream and falling asleep.
Second: Detective Arthur's death—an assassination as he had investigated earlier. What might the original him have been investigating? Need to find answer.
"Usually, the hardest part of a homicide case is getting the corpse to talk," he muttered to the empty room. "Luckily, I happen to be on excellent terms with the victim."
He let out a dry chuckle at his own joke. The punchline, of course, rested on the grim absurdity of being both the lead investigator and the deceased. And as everyone knows, a joke is only ever made better when you explain it yourself.
Arthur sighed, his feeble attempt to cheer himself up had fell completely flat.
Shaking his head at his own morbid humor, he poured the red tea into a bowl, he didn't like using mugs or cups
And taking the stale bread he went to the front parlor.
It was mildly sunny today after yesterday's heavy stormy night. Thankfully, the indirect sunlight filtering through the skylight didn't burn him.
After setting his makeshift breakfast on the small table, a fragmented memory resurfaced regarding a newspaper subscription. He walked to the front door, and sure enough, resting on the floorboard beneath the mailing slot thing was his daily morning paper.
That I am going to read in the afternoon hehe.
He picked it up, shaking off the slight dampness, and carried it into the living room. It was named the Tussock Times. Unfolding the broadsheet, he scanned the front page. Right in the center was a sensationalized article detailing the constabulary's heroic midnight raid on a human trafficking ring in the Eastern Borough, with Thomson and Thompson's pictures on the front. A bit of reading cleared up his earlier confusion: both of them had been there to investigate something, though it didn't say what, which still left him somewhat confused whether they were referring to his tip or something else he didn't know. Thompson had also evidently kept his word and left Arthur's name entirely out of the report.
Below it was a smaller column about a mysterious explosion that had happened at a different warehouse in the docks a few days prior. The rest of the pages were standard filler: mundane house advertisements, a decent political cartoon, a short story, a joke, political posturing, and a society gossip column praising a young noblewoman named Audrey, referring to her as "Backlund's Most Dazzling Gem."
Arthur froze, his pale finger hovering over the ink.
Backlund.
Loen.
Audrey.
It was as if some final missing piece of a puzzle was found and had been slammed into place, bringing with it a crushing wave of existential dread.
He wasn't just in some generic Victorian world.
He was in the world of Lord of the Mysteries. A world governed by maddening cosmic entities or at least, that was what he had heard, secret organizations, and terrifyingly powerful Beyonders. But thankfully, he didn't actually know much about them. In fact, he could confidently say his practical and theoretical knowledge was next to nil; he didn't even remember a single potion formula. No… that was not true he remembered some of them but not all. Sitting there, he realized with grim irony that he remembered more about stuff from Harry Potter than LoM.
But beyond that he was a newly minted thinblooded vampire who had initially thought that he was in a World of Darkness Victorian setting because of the vampire mechanics, but no. He was sitting squarely in the capital of the Loen Kingdom.
This was both good and terribly, terribly bad.
Bad, because I know very little about this world.
Good... also because I know very little about this world.
He vaguely remembered reading forum threads back home, where fans debated why this was the worst possible world to transmigrate into, especially as a reader. They emphasized that in this universe, simply possessing knowledge about higher-tier entities meant they instantly knew everything about you. Beyond that, they could corrupt and mutate your very being. Some comments had even joked about forced pregnancies, though he wasn't entirely sure if it was a joke, or how seeing a single monocle meant you were entirely cooked. But he hadn't been corrupted upon waking up. Nothing horrible had happened... until now.
So, I guess I am safe, my ignorance is protecting me. Or maybe the system is acting as a shield. Either of those things could be true.
But still.
Fuck!
He gripped the edges of the newspaper, his knuckles turning white as he crumpled the cheap paper a little.
I still need to figure out what case got me killed. Hopefully, it wasn't some Beyonder incident. Otherwise, I am totally cooked.