Chapter 6
Creak. Creak.
Cold darkness.
A prison with no entrance.
Inside that cramped, suffocating space.
“P-please... save me. I don’t want to die. Save me. Please.”
One voice tore itself hoarse, bound hand and foot, while I crouched in the corner, gnawing at pain with teeth that would not stop chattering.
Creak.
It hurt.
And I was starving.
I was so hungry I felt like I might go insane.
How many days had it been since I was locked up in here?
I forced my trembling jaw to move, chewing through the pain.
Creak.
But the hunger never went away.
I wanted nothing more than to let my mind slip away, but I couldn’t. This body was mine, and yet there wasn’t a single thing about it that answered to my will.
“What are you doing, you stupid disciple, curled up in the corner like that?”
Snap-
I stopped chewing by reflex and lifted my head.
I couldn’t see anything, but at some point a gentle scent had filled the cell. I could never forget that scent.
“Ma... master?”
“Yes. It’s me.”
Clack. Clack.
The sound of heels striking the floor, each step bringing a chill that rose from the ground, came like thunder and stopped in front of me. A moment later, something cold and delicate wrapped around my face.
Was it Master’s hand?
“My kind, foolish disciple. I told you to eat, and you ignored it and tore into your own flesh again?”
“S-sorry... I’m sorry.”
I shrank in on myself. My heartbeat raced as if I had committed some terrible sin, and hot tears spilled from eyes that couldn’t see.
“Haah... my first disciple really is a handful.”
At that weary sigh, I bowed my head even lower. I had disappointed Master. I was still the same useless wretch I had always been.
Smack-
Sharp pain flashed across both cheeks, and my mind snapped awake. My face was forced upward, and I could feel Master’s hot breath against my skin.
“Again. You’re doing it again. Don’t act like you’re about to die, you stupid disciple.”
“Master...?”
“You won’t die. I want that. And what I want must come to pass.”
The breath drew away. My face, held in place, turned in another direction.
The reek of blood I had stubbornly tried not to notice all this time came rushing at me at once, sharp and sweet.
“Hhk.”
“Eat.”
Master murmured toward someone bound in the center of the cell.
“If you eat that thing, you can live.”
“Ugh. Master. I-I can’t do that. How am I supposed to eat a living person...”
“I like your nonsense. Just not now.”
Master’s voice turned cold.
The air around us grew heavy.
“Stupid disciple. Do you remember what I told you when I starved you and threw you into this tiny prison?”
“......”
“That thing isn’t human. It’s not a person. It’s the vampire that turned you into this.”
Master’s words drove straight through my skull.
The vampire that had made me into this body.
The monster that had torn me apart and smashed me like a toy.
“P-please...”
“Huh?”
The voice that came from the monster was thin and ragged from use, and Master surged up in outrage.
“What did you just say?”
“P-please spare me. Lady Anaxias.”
“You’ve got a mouth on you, so why do you keep spouting nonsense? Hey, your nonsense isn’t funny.”
“I... cough... I was wrong. I won’t do it again. Never again. Please, just this once. Show me mercy...”
“What? Mercy?”
Hahahaha!
Master’s bright, ringing laughter rolled through the silent cell.
Then, all at once, it stopped.
“House of Valentine of Montglasia.”
Master’s voice had changed.
All her usual teasing was gone.
Only one sovereign remained there.
“This true ancestor considers herself a fairly generous king. I adore bonds forged in blood. If they’re one of my own kind, I can forgive almost any sin with a smile.”
But:
“There are only two things I will never tolerate. I even issued an edict forbidding them. Tell me what they are, House of Valentine.”
At that soft question, the bound monster began to tremble.
The scale of its fear brushed against my skin.
“D-don’t increase the number of our kind by a-any means other than reproduction...”
“Why?”
“A-after a while, the kind created through blood will die...”
“Not that one.”
“......Because the blood of the dead becomes a fatal poison to us purebreds.”
“Correct. And the other?”
“D-don’t perform any experiments on our kind...”
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Master applauded.
“Excellent! You remembered both of the prohibitions I laid down.”
Then the applause stopped as if it had never been.
“And yet, why did you do it?”
“P-please spare me.”
“No. That isn’t the answer, House of Valentine. Don’t beg for your life. Answer the question I asked you, yes?”
“Ghh, k-khrrrgh!!”
Had Master done something?
The monster let out a pained groan.
“Only two things. Not exactly difficult. And yet you violated both of them so brazenly, and now you want mercy from me?”
“Krrraaaagh!!”
“You abducted humans from our territory to recklessly increase the number of low-bloods, and on top of that, you pushed ahead with human experimentation? Did you think that because war was happening in front, your little scheme in the back wouldn’t be found out?”
Riiip.
The sound was like flesh being torn apart.
Something splattered onto the floor with a wet slap.
“And what were you trying to do with all that? Kill this true ancestor? Plot treason, did you?”
“Gueeaaehggh.”
“Does it hurt? I only tore off your lower jaw. Compared to what you did to this child, it’s nothing.”
Master was very angry.
The gentle scent had been stained with fury.
And I was afraid of Master like that.
I crawled forward on all fours, reached out, and groped blindly until my hand found her collar.
The moment I clenched it tightly, I felt a gaze like a blade on my skin, and tears burst from my eyes again.
“M-master.”
“......Haah.”
A long sigh.
The sharpness in her gaze softened, and the breath that had felt suffocating turned gentle again.
“Poor, foolish disciple. Do you even pity a thing like this?”
I shook my head hard.
I was only afraid.
Afraid of Master when she was angry. Afraid of the monster in front of me.
“My, my. You really are terrified.”
The crisp, ringing tone returned.
Master was back the way I knew her.
“But, foolish disciple, there are things you have to do even when you’re scared.”
I lifted my head.
In the darkness I couldn’t see, a look of pity seemed to fall over me.
“If you don’t eat this thing now, you’ll die soon enough, just like the other low-bloods. Like I said before, I don’t want that.”
“Master. I-I...”
“You said you didn’t want to die, didn’t you?”
“......!”
Master’s hot breath brushed the side of my face.
“You told me you wanted to live, and I said I would make that happen. That’s why I brought this thing here instead of executing it.”
“......”
“A low-blood has to eat the pureblood that gave them blood if they want to survive. Only by eating can they become pureblood themselves and continue living.”
I remembered.
Those were the words Master had explained to me before I was locked up here.
But I still couldn’t do it.
No matter how much of a monster it was, no matter how much it had turned me into this state, eating a living person was impossible.
The mere thought made my stomach heave.
The last scraps of humanity left in me screamed in desperate refusal.
And then, right beside my ear, Master whispered:
“Live. Didn’t you say you wanted to see your parents?”
I jolted as if my breath had been cut off.
“M... parents.”
“Yes. Your mom and dad are waiting for you. You said you didn’t want to die.”
That was right. My parents.
My mother and father, who loved me and worried about me.
Even now, they were probably desperately searching for their hopeless son who had vanished.
I wanted to go back to them.
I wanted to see them alive.
“Then eat.”
“...Eat.”
“Eat, live, and go meet your mom and dad.”
“...Right. I have to live. I have to go back... and see them.”
A cold hand guided me toward the monster.
The stench of blood was sticky and nauseating.
And yet it was sweet.
My mouth watered.
“Eek-aghh!”
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry—
But I want to live.
I want to see my parents.
So...
Crunch—
Crunch—
- Year XX of drifting through another world. In the sweet prison. On the day I abandoned hunger -
***
A goblin in white armor.
Gobra lifted his head at some point.
“Goreuk?”
The scenery around him had changed.
The environment shifted without any warning at all.
This was definitely...
Only once in the distant past had something like this happened.
Forced summoning!
A phenomenon that appeared only when the master was truly in danger.
It was one of the conditions sealed into the oath of his servitude.
“Huk. Huaaang.”
Shocked by the childlike sobbing, Gobra spun around.
“M-master?”
“H-heck... Bra... Braaaa...”
In a place where every direction was covered in blood and chunks of red flesh, Gobra’s master was crying miserably.
“Master. Why are you like this?”
“M-my mom and dad... It’s because of meee!!”
Her wide-open eyes had gone pitch-black.
He couldn’t hold a proper conversation with her.
Her reason had already collapsed.
So even blood domination has been lost.
He looked at his master, crouched and slumped on the floor, shedding blood tears.
His perverted master, who usually went around wearing clothes that weren’t really clothes at all and were made from her own blood, almost never lost control over blood except under extraordinary circumstances.
Even when she had gone mad in the snowy field before, her clothes had held together just fine.
But now she was running wild, bare white skin exposed, vomiting blood and torn flesh from her whole body.
What on earth happened to make her this way?
Her going insane was nothing new anymore, so he could live with that. Usually, if he let her thrash around a bit, his words would reach her before long.
But there had been exactly one time when that hadn’t been possible.
She’s enduring it.
His master knew she was destroying everything around her because she had lost control.
And she was holding it in with desperate force.
Just as she had then, because she didn’t want to destroy the place she was in now.
“Master.”
“Huuuuh. What do I doooo? It’s precious. I can’t break it. I can’t, but I caaaan’t!!”
Something clutched in both hands and pressed to her chest.
What reflected in Gobra’s yellow eyes was a picture of humans drawn with meticulous care.
“Goreuk.”
Though he was badly startled by the sudden summoning, Gobra calmly assessed the situation.
He understood the seriousness of the crisis, and he understood the cause.
“Master.”
“Aaah! Huaaahhh!!”
Gobra looked at his master with pity.
He knew she had once been human.
Maybe that was why he understood better than most how precarious she really was.
But he could not simply stand by and watch her fall apart.
Because:
“Gobra is the master’s familiar.”
Chaaang-
He gripped his greatsword and stepped toward his master, who looked utterly monstrous.
He raised it and pointed it straight at her.
“Goreuk.”
He drew a steady breath.
Then he steeled himself.
Just as he had once done long ago.
“Former assault captain of the cavalry under the Eighth Legion of the Demon King’s Army. Sword Saint Gobra.”
Crack.
“By the oath carved into my soul, from this moment on I will devote this life to my full strength.”
Thud!
“I will kill my master.”
A white flash of the sword sliced mercilessly through the blood-red space.
***
Daejeon City Northeastern Checkpoint Control Zone.
A middle-aged sentry and his junior partner stepped out of the gatehouse, twisted their bodies, and stretched lightly.
“Aaah, finally off work!”
“Good work.”
“You worked hard too, sir.”
The middle-aged sentry watched his grinning junior with a look of helpless amusement, then suddenly turned his gaze through the open entrance toward the outside of the Wall.
As he stood there for a moment, the junior beside him sidled up and asked, “Are you worried about something?”
“Huh? Me?”
“That foreign woman who went out about an hour ago.”
“Ah. Well. Yeah, I guess.”
The red-cloaked woman who had left her mana bike somewhere and wandered over blankly to pass through the reading gate.
She had looked strange enough that he had thought about speaking to her, but when he looked away for a moment, she had vanished without a trace.
“Ah, don’t worry. She might have been taken by a guardian while we weren’t looking.”
“She didn’t look drugged, though.”
“Still, she did seem off. Maybe she’s being checked out or something?”
“You think so?”
“Probably. Come on, let’s go home. If we have to come back for the night shift, we should get in early and sleep.”
With that, the junior turned away.
The middle-aged sentry nodded and turned as well.
Then, at that very moment:
――KWAaaaaaAAH!!!
“Wha—?!”
“Kyaaah!”
“What was that, an earthquake?!”
The ground began to shake violently.
The middle-aged sentry fell hard on his backside.
He turned toward the direction of the explosion and then widened his eyes.
“What... is that...?”
Far beyond the Wall, a massive mushroom cloud was rising into the sky.
The middle-aged sentry went blank at the sight, as if an artillery barrage had just fallen somewhere out there. His gaze trembled violently toward the entrance, which was already sealing shut.
---