It truly was a strange experience for me.

I ended up finishing the entire stage with a single unexpected move, and I was actually even about to receive rewards from whoever was in charge of the damned trials.

To make it even more complicated, the Princess Louisa had actually passed out due to a lack of blood!

"By the looks of it, she's actually on the brink of death. I think I would need to give her my super rare super powerful super valuable blood to save her life." I thought to myself as I glanced at her for a short moment.

"Fine. I will save her for the sake of her continued participation and for the rewards." I finally sighed and started to try to revive her.

I was able to break through my own skin and draw a small drop of blood which I dripped into her mouth.

For a moment, nothing happened.

But then, the drop of blood on her lips suddenly disappeared, as though sucked in by her body.

And in that instant, I discovered an earthshaking development.

I could sense a connection slowly came to be between Princess Louisa and me!!

"What the hell?" I couldn't help but mutter aloud in amazement. "My blood has such great power??"

But that initial shock over the creation of that strange connection was soon completely buried under an avalanche of even greater shock as the nature of that connection revealed itself to me.

"What is this feeling? Do-dominance? Authority? No.. CONTROL!!"

My jaw dropped.

"My blood has the ability to take over human beings and CONTROL them? What the freaking hell??"

However, my shock was rather short lived.

As my blood's regenerative powers kicked in and somehow triggered a recovery effect in Princess Louisa's mind and body, I felt my control over her slowly fade away under the oppression of her mental strength.

"I see. My strength in control is still rather weak. Over an unconscious person, I am able to exert control. But over a conscious person, specially one whose mind is as well trained as this particular battle hungry princess, my power over her gets completely submerged under her conscious mental strength." I thought to myself as I analyzed the situation.

In front of me, Princess Louisa's pale face slowly regained colour and turned a healthy pink once more before her eyeslids fluttered lightly.

I looked at her pretty face which was such a deceiving facade for a cruel and ruthless heart, and suddenly felt a very strong urge to give her a slap.

"This is a girl who would very willingly kill me just to get something on me that she fancies. What an evil person. Slapping her is but a tiny return for her wicked ways!" I reasoned to myself as I grappled with my sudden urge.

My hand twitched lightly.

"She deserves this slap!" I thought.

And so I did exactly that.

PIAAKKKK!!!!

"How's that for a wake up call, O beautiful and mighty princess of the wicked European Empire?" I smirked at her.

My super powerful slap caused her head to swivel strongly to the left and accelerated her waking up process by a very, very huge margin.

If the process of waking up is like a slow walk through the tunnel between the player's waiting room to the main field of a massive stadium, then what Princess Louisa experienced was probably being dragged out of that tunnel by a high powered race bike.

Whoosh!!!

She woke up instantly.

She turned her head around to look at me with her beautiful round eyes.

Strangely, there was no trace of anger in her eyes. Instead, there was a whole lot of confusion, and a mild streak of joyful surprise that flashed for a very brief moment.

"Wha.. What's going on here? Where are the monsters? Did you kill them all?" She asked hesitantly. It was probably just the very tip of the barrage of questions that was flooding her heart.

But she held back all the questions and merely focused on the obvious ones.

The lack of anger in her voice as she asked those questions despite my seriously powerful slap took me slightly by surprise.

"Could this be an effect of my blood and the power of control over her?" My mind raced as I stared at her intently.

And as I did so, the unthinkable actually happened.

She.. Blushed!!

And she turned her head away shyly!!

"What the.." I was taken by surprise.

I did not expect that the evil princess of the European Empire could actually blush just because I was staring at her intently.

I mean, I knew for certain that it was an effect caused by the power of my blood which was infused with the power of Control.

It somehow made her heart gain positive feelings for me.

But nevertheless, it was the first time a girl blushed that way in front of me, and whether I wanted to or not, I kind of liked it.

I didn't like HER.

I just liked that she was blushing because of me.

Still, a part of me found it rather jarring. Afterall, I did just give her a pretty violent slap on her face.

It was a strange development indeed.

I stared at her and wondered just what the hell I was supposed to do with a European Princess who started liking me in the middle of my abduction by aliens intent on putting me through stupidly insane and dangerous trials.

At that moment, a soft whirring sound rang out from above us, and a large drone of sorts appeared from the greenlit sky and floated gently down.

"Rewards!" My eyes immediately left Princess Louisa's beautiful face and focused on the far more beautiful sight of a large reward-bearing drone slowly making its way down to me.

Bommm.

It landed rather heavily and cause my already wide eyes to widen even more in greed.

"Such a heavy landing! It must contain something heavy and epic!" I thought excitedly.

"Reward granted. You may unlock them now if you wish to by saying, "Reward me, reward me now. Ha. Ha. Ha."" The disembodied voice said flatly even though the words it said were better suited to be shouted in enthusiasm.

I winced slightly at the extremely corny voice command trigger, but I did what he said and shouted the verbal password out with enthusiasm.

A reward was waiting for me, and I was extremely curious to find out what it was exactly.

Whoosh.

A small door opened, and revealed its contents towards me.

To my dismay, there weren't any visible giant sized stuff that would have been an extremely clear give away that it was the reason the drone landed so heavily.

The impressive sounding hardware was not for me!

"Damn it all. I did score higher than her, why would she get all the good stuff?" I grumbled. "I need to get my hands on the heavy reward!"

But from within the mini opening in the drone which just opened, I spied 2 white vials.

"To the leading survivor of the first trial, to live as one of the inhabitants of a Mini Terrestrial Bogland, you will need strong bloodlines that can nurture a powerful body as well as a grow formidable soul. Your rewards are these two powerful bloodlines. Drink them as you will." Came the voice once more.

"Bloodlines?! That sounds like a really imbalanced reward!" I reached my hands into the drone's opening and took out the two small vials.

I conveniently shelved the topic of "Mini Terrestrial Bogland" to the back of my head to be analyzed at a later date.

My focus fell upon the two vials where I could sense a pair of powerful latent energy lurking within them. Interestingly, they were both also very synergistic, as though they were drawn from two lifeforms who lived their lives depending on each other.

I spent exactly one second thinking whether I should drink it, and then the next four seconds uncorking the vial and gulping down its contents.historical

Gulp gulp gulp.

Pshhhhhhhh!!!

Smoke began to appear from all over my skin, and a searing pain ripped through my body in that instant.

My eyes bulged out and my mouth widened in shock.

"F********ckk!!! What a potent drug!! Ahhhhhhhhhh!!" I shouted loudly.

Princess Louisa sprang forward to my position and quickly poured a small vial of her own into my body.

Pssshhhhhhh!!!!!!

My eyes bulged out even more at Princess Louisa's surprising move.

"Is this her sneak attack? She intends to kill me??" My thoughts ran wild and for a moment, it seemed as though I was right as yet another wave of frightfully painful sensations swept over all of me!

But after a little while, I realized that my body was rapidly strengthening once more.

And after another couple of seconds, the pain disappeared, and my brain finally regained control of itself.

I blinked.

My body felt strangely liberated and powerful.

I turned to look at Princess Louisa.

"What did you give me just now?" I asked.

"My blood." Princess Louisa replied.