Phase one occurs when a corpse has just reanimated. At this stage, the vampire is relatively weak, possessing only two to three times the strength of an ordinary person. While their body has regenerative abilities, its resistance is low;

limbs can be easily severed by sharp weapons. However, conventional weapons are already ineffective at causing meaningful damage. Nevertheless, methods like dismemberment or burning can still kill them.

Using a cross can inflict special suppression effects on a vampire. Even placing a cross on a corpse undergoing vampiric transformation can effectively inhibit the change. Furthermore, religious artifacts or images representing God can also cause effective harm. Driving a wooden stake through their heart can deliver a fatal injury.

At this stage, the vampire's appearance resembles that of a person who has been dead for about three hours. The body might show some lividity, and the eyes are turbid, but overall, it still closely resembles a human. This is also the best time for a vampire to hide within a city.

Conversely, they also lack most vampire powers;

only various physical attributes receive minor enhancements. Three Church Knights would be enough to overpower one.

The Church does not consider corpses at this stage to be true vampires because they show no fear of sunlight.

Phase two begins approximately one year after the corpse reanimates. As time passes, the corpse gradually transforms into a vampire. Their skin and flesh gradually dehydrate, the body withers, teeth become sharp and long, and eyes begin to turn crimson.

Sharp teeth and crimson eyes, withered and unclean.

This process is extremely lengthy. During this time, the vampire's strength, agility, and even their Five Senses will increase significantly over time, achieving an all-around enhancement.

By this stage, conventional weapons are completely ineffective, and dismemberment or burning can no longer truly kill them.

However, their weaknesses also become substantially more pronounced. Sunlight begins to cause them some harm. A cross can effectively suppress them, even achieving a burning effect;

driving a cross into a vampire's heart will burn them to ashes, resulting in true death.

Conversely, the harmful effects caused by God's image or holy objects imbued with God's aura actually weaken considerably, possibly because they carry too little of God's radiance.

It is at this stage that the Church officially recognizes them as vampires, because only now do they truly possess the ability to survive indefinitely without consuming blood.

Vampires at this stage also genuinely possess the power to contend with Holy Knights.

The third phase begins after the vampire's body has completely withered. Their abnormal physique becomes even more aberrant.

Firstly, their skeleton develops further, gradually increasing their height until it stops at around two meters or more. During this skeletal development, the vampire's mouthful of sharp teeth will gradually fall out, and their wrinkled, withered skin will fester and slough off. The underlying skin color becomes extremely pale but remains wrinkled, like a child who has been soaking in amniotic fluid for too long.

Even their crimson eyes begin to change color, shifting towards a reddish-brown hue that seems to deepen gradually.

They ultimately present as a bizarre, rotting corpse: a slender build with festering skin and lost teeth.

This is currently researched to be the ugliest stage of a vampire. Their appearance is akin to a decomposing, deformed corpse, utterly repulsive.

However, the Church believes this might be the final stage of the vampire's metamorphosis, a kind of breaking out of a cocoon before rebirth: the emergence.

Pale and slender, decayed and unbearable.

Vampires at this stage are no longer mundane beings. Any ordinary monsters, mundane blades, or flames can no longer harm them.

Holy objects like God's image, imbued with God's aura, cause even less damage, retaining only a slight suppressive power.

But their resistance to sunlight weakens again, to the point that exposure can cause severe burns.

At this stage, there is only one method to kill a vampire: nail a cross into its heart!

After the third phase concludes, the vampire might usher in a completely new Status Hierarchy!

Unfortunately, the Church possesses no information about fourth-phase vampires. This isn't due to information suppression;

rather, their millennia of research and even their captures of vampires have never yielded any fourth-phase specimens.

Even the vampires the Church itself has captured and raised for observation are stuck at the third phase, halted at the final step of complete metamorphosis.

"It seems as if some will is suppressing their transformation. Or perhaps the vampire progenitor Kuba occupies the highest Status Hierarchy within the vampire race, preventing all other vampires from advancing further. Maybe only after Kuba's will completely dissipates will fourth-phase vampires descend upon the world again..." The source of thɪs content is novelFirｅ.net

A very classic concluding statement, leaving a hook to entice people's imaginations.

Perhaps Church personnel, upon reading this conclusion, would indeed follow the author's intent, fantasizing about the so-called fourth-phase vampire, worrying about the dissipation of Kuba's will, yet filled with curiosity about fourth-phase vampires.

But in the eyes of a genuine second-phase vampire, this book is practically forbidden text!

"Stupid book! Had I known, I wouldn't have read it!" Norton slammed the book back onto the table, his heart aching with regret.

Before reading the book, his biggest worries were merely about survival, yet he still lived happily day by day.

But after reading this book...

It's over! He felt like he was about to develop depression!

A growth cap? Not only eternally oppressed by God, but even the final metamorphosis is blocked?

So he's just supposed to pitifully drag around a stinking corpse, waiting endlessly through the ages for Kuba's will to dissipate?

Before reading the book, ignorance brought no worries. After reading it, knowledge arrived, but so did the worries.

Norton simply couldn't fathom that the secret of vampires he had longed to understand for eight years ultimately revealed that he was just a plaything in the hands of a higher-level entity in this world.

While the Church couldn't confirm why vampires cannot advance to the fourth phase, Norton was sure of it!

Just draw an analogy with Priest Abraham, right? No matter how much Priest Abraham evolves, he is Norton's creation and can never ascend to Norton's level.

So why can't third-phase vampires advance to the fourth phase? Isn't it obvious? It must be because the vampire progenitor Kuba's Status Hierarchy suppresses them, preventing their ascent!

"This world is simply one giant pyramid scheme! I've had it!"

Norton felt like he had been trapped in a scheme by God.

God oppresses everything in the world equally, and Kuba oppresses Norton equally.

Norton thought about it and nearly dropped dead right then and there.

"Damn it then! I, Norton, will also oppress Abraham equally! I want to be a slave owner too!"

To this day, all the secrets he wanted to know had been completely unraveled.

"Wait, why is there no record in here about a vampire's ability to develop Minions?" Norton's heart skipped a beat as he flipped through the book on the table.

Even though Status Hierarchy represents everything in this world, and a vampire possessing a thousand abilities is less useful than advancing one level in Status Hierarchy, this is still a vampire ability. Given the Church's extensive research on vampires, they shouldn't have overlooked this ability, right?

Yet the book indeed contains not a single word about it.

It's as if vampires simply cannot create Minions.

Although Norton truly doesn't know how, isn't feeding his flesh and blood to other creatures, turning them into lifeforms a level lower than himself, also a way of developing Minions?

Have neither the Church nor vampires ever tried this? That can't be right!