The White-Eyed Wolf King
The Silver-Horn Queen Bee, the giant Frost Ogre, and the emperor of the empire.
There was not the slightest resemblance between the three of them, and yet they shared one thing in common: each stood at the pinnacle, ruling over their own kind.
The lifeforms of the empire had evolved by endlessly culling the weak and the lesser.
And in most species, there was always a leader to govern the pack— a king.
Penrix, king of the wolves, considered himself one of those beings as well.
“Red eyes, and white hair, you say.”
“Y-yes! That’s right!”
Carpen barely managed the answer, his tailbone curling inward with the kind of fear that came from even recalling the sight.
He had run here without stopping to report, and he was still breathless.
“Are you certain?”
“Absolutely! I saw it with my own eyes…!”
At the terror laced through Carpen’s voice, Penrix, seated on his throne, gave a low, unpleasant growl. At that one sound, Carpen’s whole body went rigid.
But what had put Penrix in a foul mood was not Carpen’s cringing behavior; it was the content of the report itself.
A white-haired vampire had appeared at the Meyer manor. Red eyes, as chilling as the abyss.
Fragments of old legends were fitting themselves together inside his head without his permission.
No way.
Penrix frowned without realizing it.
The progenitor of vampires, who had vanished from history in some distant age.
The first mythic being, the true king who wielded blood sorcery and a sword soaked in blood, and who brought all living things to their knees with nothing but his presence: the Vampire Lord.
Carpen’s report matched the old descriptions of that being with eerie precision.
How strange.
Had the elderly elder of the Meyer family made a desperate gamble and awakened some ancient existence in one final act of defiance? He knew, in the back of his mind, that such a thing should have been impossible, and yet an ominous premonition kept crawling up his spine.
“…Tell everyone. For the time being, they are not to go anywhere near vampire territory.”
“Yes! Of course!”
As if he had been waiting for those words, Carpen bolted out of the throne room like an arrow loosed from a bow.
“The Vampire Lord…”
Left alone, Penrix propped his chin on one hand and murmured softly. The weight of that name pressed down on the air around the throne.
More than anything, it was the white hair and blood-red eyes. From Carpen’s account alone, the one he had seen was highly likely to be a direct descendant who had inherited the Lord’s blood most purely.
This is becoming a real headache.
And of all times, it had to happen now.
The Kron Mountains, known as the Demon Realm, were an ecosystem of survival of the fittest, where countless species tore at one another within limited territory.
The wolves held the west, the snakes the south, the trolls the north, and the wyverns the east, while the most fertile central region had been seized by a small number of vampires.
The justification was only one thing: an agreement once reached long before any of them were born, between the mythic species.
Penrix, king of the wolves, had joined hands with the snakes in the south for the sake of his long-held ambition of invading the center, and at last he had driven those haughty bats to the very edge of the cliff. The trolls in the north and the wyverns in the east had quietly lent their support as well; it was an opportunity that would never come again.
And then this sudden development had gone and erupted out of nowhere.
Those bastards are as stubborn as cockroaches.
Grrrrr.
With a low rumble in his throat, Penrix recalled the final words left behind by the previous king.
If ever the scarlet vampire, or even the faintest trace of him, should awaken, you must not even think of opposing him. Everything exists for the prosperity of the clan….
As a child, he had dismissed those words at once. To someone as strong as he was—stronger than any king before him—they had sounded like nothing more than the needless worry of a weak ancestor.
In truth, had he not already won the first one-on-one duel in wolf history against a vampire elder?
And beyond that, he had been born with pure white fur, the same color as Fenrir, the legendary progenitor of the wolves.
Along with the clan’s ancestral hand-to-hand combat techniques, Penrix also knew how to wield claws steeped in dark power, and for that reason all wolves supported him without question.
Once his thoughts reached that point, the last trace of unease melted away like snow, and arrogant confidence took its place.
Yes. No matter how ancient that being may be, he’s just a fledgling who has only just awakened.
Snikt.
Steel-hard claws sprouted from the back of his hand. His golden eyes flashed with greedy light.
I’d better see it for myself first.
The Vampire Lord? The scarlet bloodline?
So what? At the end of the day, he was still just one bat. Besides, even Carpen—far weaker than he was—had encountered the creature and lived to tell the tale.
He could test the waters, and if things looked bad, he could always pull back.
If I’m lucky, I may be able to seize its essence all for myself.
If that happened, there would be no one in the empire capable of stopping him, now that he had inherited the mythic line.
Grrrrrr—!
With a bloodthirsty howl, Penrix rose from his seat.
*
Why?
I was sitting atop a pile of wolf monster corpses, looking blankly down at my palm.
My body was moving according to my will, and yet it wasn’t the hand I knew.
It was not the rough, callused hand of the Imperial Knights’ Grand Master, but a pale, clean palm that looked as though it had never so much as held a sword in its life.
Worse still, the reflection in the mirror was a face I had never seen before.
White hair as long as Silvia’s.
Paler than before, perhaps because I had absorbed wolf blood, but still white skin.
And limbs so slender and thin that there wasn’t a trace of muscle to be found.
It felt awkward.
This won’t be the look Silvia would like.
But more important than the appearance was the change in what I was.
“Lord! The cleanup is finished!”
“…I see.”
I was no longer human.
The me who had died, stabbed by the swords of my trusted subordinates, had not been completely erased. And yet I was not alive in the same way as before, either.
My body was gone, but my soul remained, dwelling within this strange flesh. I was still Evan Erche, and yet at the same time, I was something else.
“Are you going to hunt down the wolves now, every last one of them?!”
Thud—
The boy asked as he tossed a wolf corpse at my feet. His voice and expression were full of expectation and excitement he couldn’t hide.
It seemed I no longer frightened him.
Perhaps the savage crimson haze had lifted, and my reason had returned.
“Lord!”
The boy was still looking up at me with shining eyes.
He seemed to have had quite an intimate relationship with the fallen man, but whatever else he might be, he seemed to have extraordinary mental fortitude.
“…What’s your name?”
“It’s Cabin!”
“Cabin.”
“Yes, Lord.”
At my call, Cabin bowed deeply at the waist.
“Do you know about the Bernice Empire?”
I had no idea why I had been resurrected as the progenitor of vampires.
But what mattered was that I was alive, and Silvia was still in danger.
Ironically, I now possessed a power far beyond anything I had known in the days when I had been called the sun of the empire.
If I put my mind to it, it feels like I could do anything.
Perhaps because I had absorbed so much wolf blood.
The body felt light, as if the wolves’ sharp senses had seeped into my flesh.
A sense of omnipotence, as though every cell in my body were boiling with an unknown force, now dominated me.
“The Bernice Empire… You mean the greatest nation founded by humans?”
“Yes. You know of it.”
“I do! I’ve never been there myself, but I’ve heard a great deal about it from the elder. It’s the most prosperous place among the human nations.”
“…Do vampires go out into the human world?”
“Of course! Some who are recognized for their abilities blend in among humans to gather information, or….”
Cabin’s continuing words barely reached my ears.
If that was true, then it meant vampires were mingling among humans even now.
And yet, there haven’t been any reports of crimes involving blood, or anything like that.
If no one had noticed the slightest hint of it while I was serving as Imperial Knight Commander, then these creatures were far more formidable than I’d thought.
“I see.”
“But Lord, why suddenly ask about a human nation…?”
“I am going there.”
“…Pardon?”
Cabin stared at me in bewilderment, his voice rising with confusion.
Meeting those disoriented eyes, I asked again.
“Which direction leads from here to the Bernice Empire?”
“Lo-Lord?”
Apparently not expecting that answer, Cabin floundered helplessly.
I already knew what state the Meyer vampires were in.
After regaining control of my body, I had heard the rough outline of the situation from Cabin.
The vampire Meyer family had been driven back in the struggle for power against the other monster races, and stood on the brink of extinction. The old man who had awakened me beneath the earth was their elder, and he had treated awakening me as his final gamble.
It was a pitiful situation, but I had something far more urgent to do.
“Cabin, I’m sorry, but right now the wolves are not the problem.”
“Uh….”
Cabin’s eyes darted helplessly, unable to settle anywhere. He seemed to have believed I would naturally stay behind and wipe out the remaining wolves in order to avenge my clan.
If I had no other purpose, I might have done exactly as he hoped. As a knight, I was also tempted to test this uncontrollable power of mine.
But I had a duty far more important than such trivial desire.
“There is someone I must protect, beyond the survival of my clan.”
Various emotions seemed to churn across Cabin’s face at my words, but at the very least, I was not lying.
I had to protect my fiancée, Silvia.
Fiancée.
The moment I thought of that word, bitterness washed over me.
Even now that I had become a vampire instead of the human Evan, was she still my fiancée?
Even if I appeared before her like this, would she recognize me?
And yet, I have to go.
“I’ll explain the details later. For now, you’d better survive on your own, like the rest of your clan.”
Whoosh.
Without waiting for Cabin’s reply, I kicked off the ground and leapt into the air.
I had already done my part by saving him from the wolves’ attack.
Now this second life of mine would be spent entirely for Silvia.
But before that…
Where am I?
The night sky was still buried in darkness, yet to my eyes the surrounding landscape stood out as clearly as daylight. All I could see, however, was an endless sea of trees and, far away, the faint outline of a gigantic mountain range.
Time is short.
Had I ended up in a more remote place than I’d expected? It seemed it would take quite some time to find any trace of humans.
Then I heard Cabin’s frantic voice from below.
“Lo-Lord!”
I gauged the direction from the air and slowly descended back to the ground. The moment I landed, Cabin dropped to one knee before me.
“Please, let me go with you too!”
His voice was desperate.
“If not for you, Lord, I would already be a cold corpse lying among those bodies! Please, let me have the chance to offer this life to you…!”
“You are not needed.”
And then—
If the wolves had not appeared underground, the one who would have died by my hand would have been you.
Swallowing words I could not bring myself to say aloud, I refused him once more.
“I command you again: survive on your own.”
“But…!”
Cabin was just about to shout something else in a voice thick with frustration when I sensed something approaching from far away at terrifying speed.
Its momentum and pressure were on a completely different level from the wolf that had run away earlier.
Fast.
Fwoosh—!
In the next instant, whatever had been charging toward us in a fury finally revealed itself.
Pristine white fur, untouched by a single speck of dirt. Golden eyes blazing like lanterns even in the dark. And a massive frame that dwarfed the other wolves.
Oh?
It was a white wolf, moonlit and gleaming, its eyes burning with killing intent.