Belladonna tilted her head as she gazed down at the Strangers body with uncaring coldness. His chest was still rising and falling. It was doing so weakly, and with shaking breaths from the broken ribs puncturing those lungs, but it was still going nonetheless.

As it turns out, beating yourself to death was harder than it seemed, especially when your body was robust and powerful, with an extraordinary regenerative ability to go along with it.

The Stranger had eventually beaten himself unconscious, wasting all of his energy on pummelling himself to a bloody pulp that made Belladonna shake her head in disappointment. She gazed idly at the scars marring his swollen pulp of a face, as they persisted no matter the damage that he did to himself.

A punishment, no doubt. Punishment for what, she had no idea. But no doubt he deserved it. I mean look at him now, he couldn’t even follow a simple instruction to completion. Well... If you want something done properly, do it yourself.

Belladonna crouched down, dipping her finger into one of the many pools of blood, before lifting her hand up to her nose. She sniffed at the blood and immediately turned up her face in disgust. Just like with the Wolf-men, there was no desire to consume there.

It smelled and tasted absolutely repulsive, but she could see how such a scent could be tracked. It truly was like no other.

She took a few more disgusted sniffs, committing the scent to memory, before flicking the blood from her finger and placing Beans down on the ground.

Grabbing the strangers head and planting her foot on his chest, she tore his head from his shoulders. She raised it up, amused by the dangling spine that hung from the stub neck, before placing her hands either side of the head and pushing inwards.

The skull resisted for a good few seconds, before finally giving way in an explosion of sanguine and grey matter, as Belladonna’s hands touched together in the middle. Excessive? Perhaps. Effective? Definitely. Fun? Oh it absolutely was.

A warning sign of her degrading mental health? Uh... Let’s just ignore that one and move on. On the plus side, she got about eight different notifications for levelling up. So that was always good.

After cleaning herself off, Belladonna searched the body and found some jewellery to sell, but nothing of importance or that was worth mentioning, which was a shame. So she moved from rooting around inside his pockets, to rooting around inside of him.

Her hand plunged into his chest like a spear, her expression changing as she blindly felt around inside his chest cavity, before finally she felt something hard and ripped it out.

The disgusting blood dripped from her hand, which was completely coated in crimson up to half of her forearm, as Belladonna inspected the crystal in her hand. Unsurprisingly it was a source, the same colour as the blood that covered her hand, to the point that it looked like the blood had simply gathered together and crystallised itself.

"What do you think? Should I give it a try?" Belladonna muttered with a smile, glancing at Beans as he rested on the grass, idly lapping at a blood puddle like it was a bowl of milk.

"Mreow." He responded weakly, before going back to lapping at the blood for reasons that were more about self satisfaction than nutrition. Plus, he was a little curious about why Belladonna was always so obsessed with the stuff.

Honestly, he wasn’t seeing the appeal all that much, but surely he had to be missing something.

"Yeah, I guess you’re right." Belladonna interpreted, "Can’t know if it’s bad unless you try. What would the history of poisonous substances be without idiots eating everything they found." She muttered to herself with a slight chuckle, before bringing the crystal up to her face.

She sniffed it cautiously, then switched hands and wiped it on her chest like she was polishing an apple before sniffing it again. Now that the disgusting blood was off of it, she tentatively licked it.

The crystal dissolved wherever her saliva touched, becoming a sweet and sticky liquid that coated her tongue and tasted surprisingly like melted strawberry ice cream.

At that realisation, Belladonna licked it a few more times, savouring the taste, before tossing the full thing into her mouth and swallowed the liquid it dissolved into. A moment later, power flooded through her body, focusing entirely on the blood that flowed through her veins.

She let out a few grunts of pain, as her heart beat in her chest. That alone was a strange feeling in this body, and I guess in her real one too now, but with every beat it felt like something other than blood was being forced through her veins.

It cycled through her entire system once, slowly and painfully, then made a second loop that was much more comfortable. The third and final loop actually made Belladonna feel good, before her heart resumed its usual activity once more.

[Source Devouring Constitution Activated!

Purifying Source... Purification complete!]

[Congratulations. You have gained the following Benefits from the purified Source;

Strength + 90

Vitality + 80

Perception + 40 ]

[Congratulations. You have gained the following skill from the purified Source;

Racial Skill: Blood Bullet]

[Blood Bullet:- Controlling the blood in your body, gather it into a singular mass within yourself before firing it out of your arm in a controlled projectile, at the detriment of your own body. The projectile is coated in the iron of your body, to add greater penetration.

Adding more mass to the projectile increases the damage dealt to both the target and yourself.]

"Damn... Those are some very tasty bonuses. That puts my strength well over 200 now. Vampire sources are good eating.

Ooh, the skill even comes with its own little description this time, isn’t that useful? Detriment to myself... is that why? It’s telling me because it doesn’t want me to hurt myself? Or is it because it’s a racial skill instead of a normal one?" Belladonna muttered to herself, reading over the skill description.

It sounded simple enough, and the name was self explanatory a lot. Shoot a bullet made of blood, so call it a blood bullet. Simple.

However the mention of the iron coating gave here an idea that, despite the kind description of the system, required her to do some testing regardless of the detriment to herself. For Science!