It had taken a few tries, but finally the marking had succeeded, granting Quinn control over a Dalki of all things. As soon as the red mark had appeared on its back, it had stopped all its resistances. All of its aggression, its anger, everything seemed to have seeped out, reminding him of Peter when he had just been turned. However unlike his undead friend, the creature before him was still very much alive, standing straight and awaiting instructions.
‘Great, so I don’t have to worry about them going crazy wild like the Marked from the trees. Now to test out a few things.’ Quinn thought.
The description had stated that the User of the Branching Link Amulet could do two major things to his Marked, Control and Energy Transfer. The former was split up between Partial Control and Full Control, whereas the latter allowed the User to either enhance the Marked by sending them his energy or strengthen himself by draining them, although at least the latter case was just a temporary boost.
‘Let’s try controlling it first.’
It was a strange feeling, when activating the Demon tier Amulet he could feel a connection to the Dalki in front of him, yet it was different to the one he shared with his family members. It felt more as if he had grown an extra limb that he could now control.
There were a few simple tests that Quinn had done, for one he tried to make the Dalki use his own martial arts which worked out surprisingly well. Its body was stronger and taller than the Vampire Lord so it took him a while to get used to.
Next Quinn tried to control the Dalki while also using his own body. Moving both bodies was easy enough, but when he tried to spar with it, that was when problems started to arise. The Cursed faction leader already had some experience in regards to splitting his attention to use his shadow powers, but mixing in the control over a Dalki made everything far more complicated than he had anticipated.
‘It’s only going to get more difficult the more Marked I’m going to add, so I need to get the hang of it.’
There had to be a solution to this problem, so instead of fine controlling the Dalki, a feat that a puppeteer like Fex might be better suited for, Quinn went into the forest to try and control it through basic commands. With his sharp nose it didn’t take them long to find a suitable test dummy.
It was an Intermediate tier beast that looked like a boar, so it wouldn’t be too hard for him or the Dalki to defeat it, yet the goal was still for Quinn to learn about the limits of the Demon tier Amulet. On the way here, he had already confirmed that a mental command to ‘follow’ him was sufficient for the Dalki to act. There was no need to control each individual movement like its leg.
Its brain still had some self function capabilities, however questioning it was not something that could be done, still this gave him an idea. Instead of outright ordering it to ‘attack’ the beast, Quinn informed the Marked that ‘beast = enemy’, curious to see how it would react. As soon as the Dalki’s eyes landed on the boar, it rushed forward to finish it off, but just before he connected Quinn sent out another command ‘beast = ally’.
The Dalki immediately stopped, short of the boar’s forehead. The Intermediate beast, jumped backwards before it charged at the Dalki for daring to attack it. To Quinn’s surprise the Marked just took the hits, without retaliating.
‘So the Marked can differentiate friend from foe if I tell them to, they can follow at least simple commands and they fight like they usually do. Something more complicated like making it use my martial arts appears to require my own control. Hmmm, if I took the time to teach it to them, could it perhaps use it on its own? Perhaps I should make one join Nate’s training in the future.’ Quinn thought, but since they were at war and he had a Quest that was practically a race against time, he quickly proceeded to the next test, Full Control.
Activating the amulet again, Quinn instinctively knew what he needed to do, so he closed his eyes to tighten his senses.
‘So this is Full Control, huh.’ Quinn looked at his hands, yet they weren’t pale like usual, instead they were large and covered in scales. Standing opposite him was a human that looked small, his eyes closed.
‘This is far better than I thought, I can control the Dalki body completely like my own.’ To familiarise himself with his new body he took a few practice kicks and swings and this time there was no delay and no awkward feeling like when he had used Partial Control.
However, he then wondered what about his own body, was it now just standing there like the Dalki did before it. Even though the Dalki did not have the amulet, Quinn could still feel the time and its uses the same way he could do before. He attempted the Partial Control and it worked. Quinn’s body was moving him as it was directed.
Next Quinn wanted to test out the Energy Transfer to see how it felt. Even while his consciousness seemed to be fully inside the Dalki’s body, he could tell that he was able to do this. Soon small amounts of energy entered the Dalki’s body, its strength was growing at an amazing rate, but he could feel his original body was getting weaker.
‘This is good. I could improve the one spiked Dalki to have a power of a two spike or three spike with my powers, which means my plan will work.’
Commiting to this test even more, so he himself went away from his original body, and tried to transfer energy once again, and still even at a distance the skill of the Demon tier had worked.
There was just one last thing Quinn wanted to test and that was the simple commands in his original body, while he was still in the Dalki body. The reason for this was Quinn’s body was the one with the system, however while in the Dalki body he was unable to access any of the system information, like using the Inspect skill on the boar-like beast who was fleeing after realising the futility of its actions.
The next test started with Quinn sending his own body the command to protect itself at all costs. He wanted to see whether it would just use the Vampire Lord’s natural strength or also utilise all the blood powers, shadows powers and beast gear he had access to without the need for Partial Control.
This was of the utmost importance since it would decide how safe Full Control actually was. Dalki Quinn walked up to his vampire body punching his fist out, only for it to get caught in Vampire Quinn’s palm. Something he had seen bullies do to him a while ago and he felt like imitating.
‘Being this tall sure is nice. No wonder the Dalki aren’t scared of humans, we look so… small.’
From his position he used the Dalki body to do a thigh kick. The muscle structure was slightly different, but the power was supreme. Just before the kick would make contact though, Quinn’s body jumped back and moved away.
‘Do I have to make my body see the Marked body as an enemy for it to attack me? That would be hard to do, unless I could see what both of me are seeing at the same time, but I only have vision from what I am fully in control of. Let’s just see if I can get it to attack me.’ Quinn thought.
He charged in again, this time throwing out multiple punches which were blocked and parried away. Getting frustrated, Dalki Quinn stomped the ground lifting up pieces of the rubble, and started to punch them towards Vampire Quinn.
Next he ran behind, hoping to trap his original body and went to punch even faster. So far he had been a little cautious after all he didn’t want to hurt his own body, but then a shadow had risen, stopping one of the blows from hitting him.
‘I guess if it’s life is really on the line it will use abilities as well, but it still hasn’t attacked back!’ Quinn quickly went to the ground and did a long sweep across the floor with his leg, that’s when Quinn’s body jumped up in the air, and landed on top of the Dalki head.
‘I never realised how annoying and fast it could be to fight myself!’ Dalki Quinn grabbed Vampire Quinn by the thighs, and tried to smash him into the ground, but just as his body was about to hit the ground, it twisted in flexible ways to break free. Jumping off the Dalki body, his original was free from injuries once again standing there.
“What the…how did you even do that?” Quinn questioned his body. While that was something he could do, after all, he had just himself doing it, it was nothing he would have ever attempted to do unless someone had told him to. Grappling techniques wasn’t something he had really studied. It was at that point a smile had appeared on the body’s face.
“I tried my best to hide it from you, but I think we have played long enough. It looks like you’re still lacking when it comes to fighting. It’s been a long time since I had a body of my own, and yours is truly strong, but I guess you still can’t beat experience.” The body replied.
‘My body, it’s speaking, and what the hell is it saying?’ Quinn thought completely confused, it was then that he remembered what Shiro said to him after looking inside.
There was more than one consciousness inside his body.
‘It couldn’t be…’
*******
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