Chapter 21
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 21
Chapter Title: I'm Not Dead
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I'm not dead.
Her breath hitched sharply, over and over.
The blood wouldn't stop.
Pale skin and twitching limbs—clear signs of severe blood loss.
No, she was hardly moving at all now.
The quality of that potion the woman had mentioned was the real deal. It possessed a restorative power unmatched by any potion Yuria had ever seen.
"...Demonic energy has eroded it."
Of all things, the demon had chosen self-destruction, allowing the energy to seep deep into the wound.
Yuria's sunken, chilling gaze looked down at Ian's body.
This was beyond anything she could handle.
The demonic energy had already reached the area near his heart. Blue veins were bulging visibly on the man's chest—a sign of how dire it was.
That foolish woman had told her to fetch a potion right away, yet she was struggling against a mere ten demons.
Yuria lifted Ian's arm—which still held a faint trace of strength—and pressed it to his cheek.
"...Master?"
She spoke on the off chance, but there was no reply, as expected.
What could a hound without its master possibly do?
As his arm fell limply into the air, her parched eyes sharpened, tears welling up.
A cooling body.
It was a chilling sensation.
She had experienced this before.
"..."
The mansion seemed to sink into an even more eerie chill.
Unless she ripped out his heart and replaced it with a new one, there was no hope.
Naturally, that final method was impossible even for the highest priest.
It was a technique unique to vampires eroded by demonic energy.
"...If I had turned Master into a vampire from the very beginning."
A fierce, dark-red glow enveloped the woman.
Hotter than the blood of the man cradled in her arms.
Waves of blood surged around her, as if peering into the depths of her soul.
"I love you. I loved you. I still love you. Forever, even as a corpse, I will serve you eternally. I love you once more, Ian."
Her trembling hands pulled the Master's cooling body into an embrace.
Somehow, it felt even colder than before.
No more strength remained in his arms.
There was no time for regrets.
The scent of human blood began to waft through the air.
The woman acting as the Family Head's proxy had reached her limit.
A crucial memory suddenly surfaced.
If this continued, she would never avenge Ian.
Absolutely not.
She couldn't let a single one escape.
She would shred them all to pieces.
"I will kill them all and return."
Every last demon left in this world.
The ceiling was distant.
Her vision split into two, then three—dizzying.
She had charged at Rachel, slipping out of Yuria's barrier range, and taken the full frontal impact.
And that ominous sensation, combined with Yuria abandoning her and returning in that state...
'Demonic energy.'
In the end, that bastard had aimed straight for his heart.
It felt like a body lying in the morgue suddenly reaching out to grope him.
A cold corpse stirring.
But this was still early in his time in this world.
One of the unique traits Rachel had bestowed upon him was sustaining his lifeline.
[Unique Attribute Resonance]
A trait that heightened his understanding of his own attribute and skyrocketed its precision.
And by sheer luck, his attribute was lightning.
A tiny burst of mana had accelerated the demonic erosion even faster than usual.
But its target—the heart—had stopped.
Thus, the purposeless demonic energy began slowly seeping out of his body.
Having roughly calculated in his head when it would all be gone, he had preset a magic formula to move his body automatically.
His hand rose to his chilled chest, igniting golden lightning.
"Huuuugh!!"
Ian snapped back to consciousness.
In a heart-stopping panic, he clutched his chest and looked around.
"....!"
What met his eyes was a blood-red sky.
No—black blood drenching the grand mansion.
Yuria was unilaterally massacring the demons, the scene filling his entire field of vision.
Demons were fleeing.
The moment he saw it, a single thought flashed through his mind.
".........Fuck, I'm screwed."
A short, simple word.
No other expression could capture his situation—or his feelings—quite so perfectly.
Before the stunned Ian could even rub his dry face, there was something he had to do first.
In the midst of the slaughter, not a single sound reached Yuria's ears.
The boiling rage she was feeling for the first time was far too intense.
Her awakened mana raged wildly, shaking the heavens as it began forming a barrier over the entire mansion.
She had skipped straight through the intermediate processes, manifesting five auras and circles simultaneously. Yuria's body now resembled a neatly folded sheet of paper that had been crudely shredded with scissors and forcibly pieced back together.
It was pain enough to make even a grown man writhe and scream on the ground—but the mental torment was far worse.
Above all, the agony radiating from her chest tormented her the most.
The man who had gifted her one final warm embrace.
Unlike her usual routine, she had whispered her love to him every day. Now, all she could do was sigh at the fact that she could no longer claim him.
If only she had barged into his study first, locked the door by force, and taken him then—he would have eventually yielded to her.
Just like when he had first bestowed his blood upon her.
But she merely stared down the demons with cold, lofty eyes, betraying no hint of her pain.
She raised her hand.
Now fully awakened both emotionally and as a vampire, the final boss was at a level where she could one-shot most episode bosses.
As proof.
Vampiric pupils began pulsing in the sky above the mansion.
[Level 7 Dawn's Distortion]
[Wide Area Debuff/Curse]
- Reversal magic. Exhibits the exact opposite effect of the original spell.
- User's proficiency is 120 or higher. The barrier is further strengthened.
Blood surged forth in an instant, blanketing the mansion.
The demons flapped their wings in despair, but it was already too late.
Countless kin poured from the sky like a gate ripping open.
It looked as if a hole had torn through the heavens, spilling blood as they reemerged.
"..."
Her right hand split open, blood pouring out, but Yuria regenerated it without a second thought.
Dark-red arrows rained down densely like a storm from the sky.
Innumerable kin swarmed the heavens and earth without restraint.
In a scene hellish beyond hell itself, the demons were surrounded.
A level 7 great magic.
Something a five-circle mage could cast? Insane—even with a demon contract, six was the limit.
For reference, Rachel's ice magic was around level 3.5.
Double that? No, squared—and not just 1 or 2, but around 50 squared in power.
By that calculation, the output would skyrocket to absurd heights.
Normally impossible. That summed it up.
A five-circle spell was typically capped at around level 4.
Without a blessed dantian like Yuria's, it was out of reach.
Mad scientists might squeeze out an imperfect level 6 by staking their lives, pulling tricks.
Humans resorted to all sorts of hacks just to half-ass their way to level 6.
Yuria casually pushed to level 7—and instead of going for 8, she perfectly unleashed a 7.5-level spell.
If the Magic Tower Lord saw this, he'd leap to his feet in applause and try to recruit her on the spot.
The genius Yuria had flawlessly blended Ian's modern education with academy fundamentals, making it possible.
All of it—his knowledge.
"But..."
The memory of Ian made Yuria gasp inwardly.
Trying to flee? After leaving her beloved like that.
Her clenched fist trembled violently.
"..."
Rachel could only watch the scene in a daze.
Among them was what looked like a decent mid-tier demon—a succubus.
But even she, surrounded by the undying kin, flung spells relentlessly.
As time passed, corpses piled at her feet—but the numbers swarming from all sides more than doubled them.
Soon, a vampire seized a split-second opening and sank its fangs into the nape of her neck, hidden by black hair.
The dream demon screamed and shoved it away violently, but her hand merely swiped at empty air.
Agony twisted her face, gradually mingling with ecstasy.
As if feeling the very pleasure she herself had inflicted.
In the end, her body shuddered as she let the spear slip from her grasp.
The moment her legs buckled, the horde of kin pounced as if waiting.
This place was hell for mid-tier, low-tier, bottom-tier alike—no mercy.
The battlefield reeked of nauseating blood. And the one to end it all was a single figure.
"...More, more painfully. I must engrave Master's suffering onto these demons. So they'll never even dream of leaving hell again. If the gates of hell open, I'll gladly step in—after all, that's where my enemies' sires and dams reside. I'll slaughter them without mercy."
Like an orchestra reaching its climax and drawing the curtain.
Or perhaps the fanfare heralding the beginning?
Yuria, now quietly seething, drew even more mana.
Her power had long surpassed enough to raze an entire city.
That thorn in her side, Rachel, had vanished from sight.
What her mana-linked vision revealed was...
-Ian...? How are you here...? More importantly, d-don't hug me. Can't you grasp the situation...!
-One moment, if you please. There's definitely...
-Stop! Ian, please don't do this... Sob,
Her mind blank with shock, Yuria stared at the scene.
"....Huh?"
He had said her embrace was the best.
Yet here he was.
Hugging her?
Were the demons now mocking her with illusions?
Or...
A chuckle escaped Yuria's lips as her red eyes gleamed. The sight terrified even the demons; their jaws chattered as they could only watch.
"No way... is this cheating? Of course not.
Master isn't the type.
So, die."
Yuria's hand fell.