For the rest of the night, many of the guards were on edge. It was understandable, after everything they had been through. But just because you understood your emotions didn’t always mean you could control them.

Nevertheless, their constant vigilance, even to the point of jumping at innocuous shadows, helped them get through the night with few more disturbances.

At most a few beasts wandered through the area, searching for the source of the blood spilled, the scent of which still clung desperately to the air, but they were swiftly dealt with.

Breakfast was eaten in silence, and when dawn bled into the sky, they set off and trundled along peacefully for the rest of the day.

Belladonna sat on the back end of Midas’ carts, the old and new one having been strung together like train carts, as she turned a crystal over in her hand. The crystal in question was the source she had taken from the body of the final Man-beast, the one that had been locked in the cage.

Killing it like that was pretty easy. Shadow Veil in, cut off the head and crush it for good measure. She did have to be let out by Midas, however, as something about those cage’s design meant that her source gained abilities stopped working and she felt incredibly weak within them.

So she destroyed it before they left, although she allowed Midas to take some of the chain. It could have been useful if she lost it in a [Blood Frenzy] again.

There was a reason she hadn’t eaten this source remnant however, and that was its colouration. Much like the Man-Beast themselves, it was a strange mixture that she had never seen before. A mixture of pure white and crimson. They mixed together, constantly shifting inside of the crystal, melding together and yet fighting against each other at the same time.

As if they could not decide whether they wanted to unite into one or kill each other, like that one dysfunctional couple that always broke up and got back together every single week.

This volatile nature caused the crystal to gain a few large cracks, which made it look ready to crumble apart at any moment, although it never did.

The colouration, mainly the crimson, suggested that Belladonna would be able to use it to gain another ability. But she wasn’t entirely sure if it would work, considering what it came from. To add insult to injury, whenever she sniffed it to test its quality, it would have a different scent, as it constantly shifted between smelling sweet and pleasant, to smelling vile and disgusting much like the Man-Beasts blood.

Sighing to herself, Belladonna stashed the crystal away, before resting her hand on her lap and making a gun shape with her hand.

Her heart pumped as the blood swirled inside of her body, rapidly gathering in a single ball that coated itself in iron, before Belladonna dropped her thumb like the guns hammer.

An iron musket ball tore through the tip of her index finger, blasting it apart to make room for itself, before flying through the air and puncturing into a nearby tree, leaving just a small hole that burrowed half way into the trunk.

Without missing a beat, and with a bored expression on her face the entire time, Belladonna raised her thumb and tilted her hand to point at a different tree, before firing again. However this time, she stirred her bloodline ability into action as the blood bullet entered her finger.

Her entire finger exploded as the bullet tore itself free, letting out a loud boom like a proper gunshot. It ripped through the air at an incredibly speed, closing the distance to the tree faster than its sibling, before plowing into the wood and leaving behind a fist sized hole that cleaved clear through the tree and impacted into another.

Belladonna raised her hand like a gunslinger and gently blew in her severed finger stump like it was a smoking barrel, as an irritated voice came from the head of the cart train.

"Do you really have to keep doing that? I mean it’s one thing to test it, but it’s just gross now. How many times have you blown off your finger just to grow it back? Even if it doesn’t hurt, you have to understand it’s disgusting to look at and incredibly disgusting to listen to."

"Yeah yeah, whatever. You’re just worried I will get blood on your stuff." Belladonna said with a roll of her eyes, as she glanced at her finger which was already starting to regrow thanks to her advanced vitality.

"Oh no, feel free to get blood on anything you want." Midas replied, glancing over his shoulder with a smirk, 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

"Because if you stain it, then you buy it. And I still haven’t decided on the prices of a lot of those items. So I could really do with some inspiration to help me decide."

The pair glared at each other, having a mini staring contest that pitted the intimidating vampire queen against the humble merchant, until Belladonna finally looked away. Her will broken by the impregnable greed and shamelessness of the peasant merchant.

At the very least, she had proven her theory correct. Since the bullet covered itself in iron from her blood to create its shell, Belladonna was able to use her bloodline to manipulate it.

Not only had she upgraded from her Stonemuncher magnetic sling shot, to a [Blood Bullet] blasting gun, but she could also further upgrade it into her very own hand-cannon railgun. Using her bloodline massively amplified the destructive ability of the projectiles, which was both an upside and a downside, as her body was destroyed even more.

If she fed even more blood into the bullet to make it even stronger, there was a strong possibility that the hand cannon could become a true cannon, although she dreaded to think how much kickback that would have if she railgunned it.

Maybe she could borrow Revenants Dragon for a rematch, and see how well this bloody railgun holds up against a real threat.

"I see the gates!" A cry of relief came from the front of the convoy, followed by a wave of sighs and a few people shedding tears of joy, as the next stop of the convoy came into sight. Not only did it signify their destination, or at least a pit stop for some, but if they could see it then it meant that the city’s guards would be patrolling the area.

Finally, they had made it into a truly safe place, and had officially survived this horrible journey.