The Awakening of Blood
Is this what death was like?
Then death was a place of utter nothingness.
Blackness so complete he could not even tell whether his eyes were open or shut.
Not just sight, but hearing, touch, smell, and taste as well. It felt as though every sense that had once made up his body had been stripped away.
All that remained was a drifting shard of consciousness. I gathered that fragment with desperate force, driven by the primal terror that if even this scattered, it would all be over.
So I thought.
Of only one person: Sylvia.
Her platinum-blond hair, fluttering in the sunlight. The way the left corner of her mouth would habitually lift just slightly whenever our eyes met.
The way she would grumble about the grievances she’d piled up against His Imperial Majesty or her sisters, yet always became defenseless like a child in front of me.
Even the faint freesia scent that drifted from her when I held her close, and the warmth that seemed to melt straight into my heart, all of it rose vividly from the darkness.
And what surfaced at the very end was a voice full of sneering laughter, as if denying all of it.
Dangerous.
As I let my thoughts linger on Sylvia, the realization naturally reached this point.
Sylvia was in danger. His Imperial Majesty was in danger.
These were the people who had even thrust a blade of betrayal at me, the one called the sharpest sword of the empire. There was no reason to feel safe just because she was a princess.
I didn’t know who had plotted it, or since when, but the seed of treason had been planted within the empire itself.
Whatever happened, I had to stop anything from happening to Sylvia.
No matter what.
If necessary, I would even go beyond death itself.
That was when it happened.
Flinch—
...Just now?
In the state of numbness where he felt neither his senses nor his body, a tiny crack appeared in that world of insensibility.
Ugh…!
The sensation of his fingertips, faint as it was, had returned. That was the signal.
Like a dam collapsing, every gate that had sealed away his senses burst open at once.
With a headache as if his skull were being seared directly, torrents of information poured unfiltered into his brain.
Drip… drip…
Something falling from his body. A person’s frightened breathing. And from much farther away, the pounding footfalls of dozens of beasts.
Then, after the feast of sensation, a smell stabbed into his nostrils.
A thick, ancient scent of blood he had never smelled before. What perfume or banquet in the world could compare to this? It was a noble fragrance that no human or monster could ever give off.
A moment later, the sound of a massive door opening brushed his ears, and then a faint shimmer of light began to spread through the darkness.
“Hah!”
He gasped without thinking and opened his eyes.
The searing agony that had burned through his limbs was gone, but its aftereffects still lingered as pain throughout his whole body.
Hot.
He should have been dead. So what on earth was going on?
“W-what, what is this…!”
At the voice, he reflexively pushed himself upright.
The first thing that met his eyes was the white stone sarcophagus he had been lying in.
Several candles flickered around it, illuminating the grim altar.
And beside the altar, on the floor, lay an old man bleeding from the chest, while next to him a boy with a deathly pale face stared at him.
So they aren’t enemies.
He could roughly piece together the situation.
The boy looked too young to be a warrior, and the man beside him had the weathered look of experience, though he was now collapsed with a mortal wound.
Since they weren’t radiating killing intent even after seeing him awaken again, they must have been the ones who recovered his corpse.
They had smuggled out someone the knights had nearly hidden away and, even while being pursued, had still tried to show him proper respect.
“Ah, ahhh…!”
……It was only natural they would be shocked. After all, he had supposedly died once and then opened his eyes again.
He was deeply grateful to them, of course. He would absolutely repay the debt of them risking their lives to protect him.
But not now. He didn’t have the time to explain the situation to them.
Sylvia is in danger.
He had to return to the empire as fast as possible.
Just as he was about to drag himself fully out of the sarcophagus with that thought in mind—
“Ahh….”
A low, involuntary murmur slipped from his lips. His gaze, no—every nerve in his body was seized by something all at once.
Under the old man’s body, collapsed beside the boy, was a pool of blood.
He could instinctively tell that this was the source of the luxurious scent he had noticed a moment ago.
Blood…
And not just any blood.
The blood of the strong.
Thick, deep.
Thump—
It was strange.
The instant he saw blood, what welled up wasn’t revulsion but a maddening hunger.
Hunger and thirst.
Thump—
Was that why?
The sight that had finally returned blurred once more. But it was not the same pitch-black darkness as before.
It was red. The whole world was being dyed a vivid crimson.
Good.
The senses that had returned along with pain were once again drifting far away.
No, to be precise, it wasn’t the senses that were receding.
It was the control over them.
What is this?
In the blood-red haze of vision, he saw his own hand extend, though he hadn’t intended it.
It was an alien, deeply unpleasant sensation.
His body was moving on its own, beyond his control.
No—was this even his body to begin with?
I reached toward the blood pooled on the floor.
All he could do now was watch the bizarre actions of himself through that red-tinted sight.
Yet apart from the turmoil in his mind, the body’s movements were utterly natural. As if he’d known how to breathe from birth, it seemed to instinctively understand what to do with that blood.
He extended a hand and drew the blood in.
Whoosh—
“W-wait, h-hold on…!”
Ignoring the boy’s horrified groan completely, the blood pooled on the floor writhed like a living thing.
It gathered into droplets, then turned into dozens, hundreds of red threads that shot toward him.
Thump—
He felt the blood on his hand, not his tongue, and somehow could still taste it.
Sweet. Thick.
Whoosh—
The blood that had pooled on the floor touched his palm and, in an instant, all of it was absorbed into his hand.
T-this is…!
The old man’s corpse, stripped of all its blood, had become a dried-out mummy. A horrific sight, but one that stirred nothing in him now.
“Ahh….”
The voice escaped his lips as well, entirely on its own.
From the fingertips saturated with blood, a hot, vivid energy spread through his veins and across his entire body.
“Y-you, could you possibly be…!”
Then the boy seemed to realize something and murmured in a trembling voice.
Meeting the boy’s eyes, where terror and awe had mixed together, the corner of his mouth slowly tilted upward.
Dangerous!
His hand shot out toward the trembling boy. He resisted desperately, but it was useless. Just as he was resigning himself to the boy turning into the same thing as the old man—
Rrrrroar—
A new presence surfaced in the crimson flood of sensation.
From the stairs, several four-legged beasts were rushing down with ferocious momentum.
“Awooooo—!”
Fortunately or unfortunately, he took his eyes off the boy and looked toward the wolves charging in. The moment the leading wolf leapt high and bared its fangs—
Click—
The version of me in the scene flicked his index finger lightly. A single bead of blood formed at the tip and shot out soundlessly. It carried a razor edge, like the swift blade techniques I had once wielded in Bernice, like the magic bullets of a high mage.
Almost at the same instant, two wolves racing down the dark staircase toppled to the floor without even managing a scream.
Both of them had clean holes drilled straight through their foreheads.
“H-hic—!”
Whoosh—
Over the boy’s astonished head, blood also streamed from the corpses of the slain wolves like spiderwebs and was absorbed into my hand.
The quality was far inferior to the old man’s blood, but it was still not bad. Especially in a situation where blood was so scarce.
Step— step—
At last, I turned completely away from the boy and began climbing the stairs the wolves had descended.
“…Not bad…….”
My own voice sounded strangely alien.
My body still wasn’t moving according to my will.
*
“Keh-heh-heh-heh.”
Carpen, the commander of the wolf beastkin, burst into a sinister laugh as he looked around the vampire mansion’s lobby.
Just how hurriedly had those bastards fled? Priceless works of art and jewelry lay scattered everywhere.
“Brothers, our victory is assured!”
“Awoooooo—!”
At Carpen’s cry, dozens of wolves answered with a triumphant howl. He joined in the roar while using his claws to rip even more deeply into the emblem of those bat bastards writhing beneath his feet.
So they were all about dignity and pride, were they? What a sight.
Their precious symbolism.
The vampire pricks who had strutted about so arrogantly, and the Myer mansion that had once seemed like an untouchable domain, were finished now. His only regret was that he hadn’t personally seen the backs of those who’d lost their nest and fled in all directions.
Tap—
“Hm?”
Still basking in the afterglow of victory, Carpen reflexively turned at the touch that brushed his shoulder without a sound.
It wasn’t one of his own kind.
Long silver-white hair. Skin pale as if sickly. A man wearing an antique robe with its collar raised like a blade.
Was there someone like that here?
“Who are you?”
Carpen put some distance between them and took a defensive stance. The wolves around him bared their fangs in unison and growled at the unfamiliar intruder.
“I don’t know where the hell you crawled out of, but….”
Carpen raised his sharp claws and crouched to spring. The situation had changed suddenly, but nothing else had. The bastard was alone, and they had dozens.
“Awoooo—!”
Just as Carpen was about to cry out and signal the attack—
...Huh?
Chill—!
Every hair on his body stood on end like needles.
He didn’t know why.
Don’t move. Get away from that thing. The survival instinct burned into the deepest part of his brain screamed at him.
“Awooo—!”
But the signal had already gone out. Ignoring the warning of their instinct, the other beastkin surged toward the white-haired man all at once.
And Carpen witnessed something that defied all reason.
Slash-a-a-ak—! Thud-thud-thud—!
As if they had all been cut apart at the same time by a giant blade, his comrades’ bodies exploded apart in midair and rained down onto the floor.
It happened in the blink of an eye. Even with Carpen’s sharp vision, inherited from noble blood, he couldn’t make out what had happened.
They had all rushed at that white-haired bat bastard, and then simply died.
Every last one of them.
Shudder, shudder, shudder.
Carpen’s tail drooped, and his hind legs trembled like saplings in a storm.
It was a primal fear he had never felt once in all his decades of life.
“Inferior…….”
At the voice that made his spine go cold of its own accord, Carpen instinctively backed away.
The body that had so arrogantly stood on two legs was already down on all fours. Solely to run away. In just a few seconds, the battle had been completely reversed.
Step—
And the moment the man took a slow step toward him—
This is my last chance.
Carpen turned and ran like a madman without looking back.
Thudthudthud—!
Faster than when he had stormed this mansion by several times over.
“Mon-monster! A monster has appeared!”
Even as he shouted, Carpen’s mind remained vividly filled with that figure.
Most of all, those horrifying red eyes.
Even he, a monster himself, had had his thoughts shut down by fear for an instant. It was the kind of majesty that only the legendary mythical species from old tales should possess.
Quickly, I have to report this to the King…!
There was no time to think.
Carpen squeezed out every ounce of strength he had and threw himself into the darkness of the forest.
---