Rise from the coffin and rebuild the vampire empire

Chapter 18 The Difficulties of Building a Castle
Under Karen's manipulation, the blood that filled the room rose from the container and gathered into a stream in the air.

The stream swirled, curled, and condensed, shrinking smaller and smaller like a whirlpool. Karen raised his right hand, and the blood vortex continued to condense in his hand, finally settling into the size of a football.

Karen held the football-sized blood-colored vortex in his right hand and began to carve it with his left hand. Threads of blood energy overflowed from Karen's five fingers, merging with the blood-colored vortex and attaching to it.

As Karen's five fingers moved, mysterious and strange patterns were outlined, changing the direction and speed of the blood-colored vortex's continuous rotation, making it irregular and chaotic.

The Blood Castle Core is the key to the operation of the Blood Castle. With it, the vampires can freely control everything in the entire castle.

Moreover, the core of the Blood Castle will continuously release blood energy, making the environment more suitable for the survival of vampires. In the area covered by the core of the Blood Castle, even sunlight can no longer harm vampires.

The blood of twenty people was fused together, plus Karen's own blood. It took Karen half a day to carve the core pattern, and this ultra-small blood fortress core was finally refined.

It is the size of a football, floating in the air, with blood surging and flowing along the lines, endlessly, like a beating heart. It is not wrong to say that it is the heart of a castle.

This is a simplified version that omits many features.

"We have the core, all we need is the castle."

Karen put the Blood Fortress core into his backpack. Looking at the things in the backpack, he felt relieved and a little regretful at the same time. He was relieved that the commonly used weapons and equipment were all in it, but he regretted that he didn't bring his own Blood Fortress core with him.

The core of his former Blood Castle was not comparable to the current one, but that was all in the past. Let's focus on the present.

"More than 400 people, nearly 300 of them are young and strong. The number is still too small."

To build a castle, materials and workers are naturally needed. Karen looked at the census form and found that the number of people was still a little too small. The key point was that there were too few workers with professional skills.

But this seems normal. How could a skilled worker with professional skills come to this desolate new world?
The Cremona family spent a lot of money to hire a doctor, and this was even though the other party had already intended to come.

"Eight carpenters and one stonemason apprentice."

Looking at the numbers on the census form, Karen couldn't help rubbing his brow.

For ordinary people in the empire, wooden houses are still the most common, and many wooden tools are still very popular. In addition, the employment costs and technical difficulty of carpenters are not very high, so carpenters are relatively easy to recruit in the empire.

Stonemasons are different. In comparison, they are more professional and skilled workers. They mostly serve lords, nobles, national municipalities, wealthy businessmen and powerful people, building castles, city walls, manors and the like for them. They have higher income and social status.

Therefore, naturally, fewer people were willing to come to the New World. In the entire camp, there was only one stonemason apprentice who had learned the craft for two years.

"How do you build a castle?"

Karen was a bit frustrated. He couldn't just build a wooden one, could he? There was no shortage of wood in this primeval forest, but a wooden castle was a bit too fragile and undignified for him.

To be honest, Karen is not very good at governance, coordination, and planning. To put it bluntly, he is not a political talent.

Otherwise, the emperor of the Blood Empire would not be Leon Uridel Bloodrot. It was obvious that Karen was the better fighter, but Karen knew that he was not cut out to govern the country, so he simply gave up. It was also good to be an unrestrained prince.

Facts have proved that this is a very correct choice. Leon Uridel Bloodrot is a man of great talent and strategy, and he has developed the Blood Empire very well. Karen did nothing but benefited from it.

Well, it's not like he didn't do anything. At least Karen is a capable fighter, a deterrent to pagans and neighboring nations. And, as to whether Karen is truly capable, Lady Night has something to say.

"Since we have so few people, we can try to capture some beastmen. Those strong guys are definitely useful for hard labor, but they're not easy to control. It would be much better if we had a skilled person from the Mith clan."

By summarizing past advanced experiences, Karen came up with a good way to solve the problem of insufficient manpower, which was to capture beastmen as slaves, but this method could not be implemented for the time being.

Other races, whether humans, elves, dwarves, or orcs, can all become slaves because they understand fear and obedience, and they may temporarily put aside their dignity in order to survive.

The reason why beastmen are beastmen is that they are too uncontrollable and too crazy, and the threat of death is not enough to control them.

To control these beastmen, one needs to use some magical means, such as mind control, which is what the Mith clan excels at.

"We still need to expand the size of the blood clan."

Karen estimated that he would be able to continue transforming his bloodline in two days. The process of transforming his bloodline would consume a lot of Karen's blood and essence, and he would need some time to recover.

Karen's recovery speed is quite fast, about ten days, but this does not mean that Karen can quickly create a bunch of vampires.

Because the first embrace does not have a 100% success rate, not everyone is qualified to be transformed into a vampire. People with poor talents may die during the transformation process or become mad monsters. The probability of this is not low.

This is also one of the reasons why the number of vampires has never been large. The self-control of the vested interests, coupled with the difficulty of conversion, has led to the fact that the number of vampires was not large during the imperial period.

"Maybe you can convert players?"

Karen suddenly thought that now was different from before. A new group had emerged, the players, and they could be resurrected.

Then, Karen thought of Banju. That guy's blood tasted terrible, and his talent was extremely poor. Couldn't all players be like that? Although players could be resurrected, with such poor talent, the success rate would indeed be pitifully low.

Thinking of this, Karen opened the internal test panel.

【Internal test:
Current power size: Small village

Available internal test quota: 20
The number of internal test participants has been released: 0

The internal test panel has changed. The scale of power has changed from individuals to small villages, and the number of internal test quotas has increased to 20.

Obviously, the Cremona camp has now been regarded by the system as Karen's sphere of influence, so the panel has changed.

"More than 20 people, able to summon players."

Karen couldn't help but be amazed. This number was not too many, but not too few either. However, for most testers, it should not be easy to control more than 400 people.

Of course, this has a lot to do with the background of the testers. For example, if Lyle is ruthless, it is not impossible for him to replace Uther.

(End of this chapter)