Vampire Till I Die (Part 2)

WholesomeModest was invincible, and I was a god.

It was all thanks to this horn she had handed me long ago that I had managed to stay so perfectly safe up until now.

“Basically, as long as I don't screw up myself, no one's ever going to find me, right?”

As long as I took sensible precautions and refrained from doing anything that gave away my position, discovery was virtually impossible. It was, quite simply, an utterly broken cheat item.

Or so I had complacently thought.

Wuuuung—

“The hell?”

That was before an unfamiliar portal materialized right in the far corner of my bunker room out of thin air.

Clack!

My body moved on pure survival instinct. Snatching my shotgun from its wall rack, I immediately ducked behind my sturdy bed frame for cover.

Not feeling safe enough with just the bed, I purchased and hefted a heavy ballistic riot shield to reinforce my perimeter. Thank goodness I had splurged the extra points on the reinforced high-grade model just in case. Between a wall of hardened alloy and a loaded shotgun, I possessed more than enough firepower to reduce any run-of-the-mill monster bursting out of that thing into a puddle of past-tense meat.

“Wait… nothing's coming out?”

Yet even after holding my breath and waiting for an eternity, the portal showed no sign of activity. Aside from its swirling, blood-thick crimson hue looking exceedingly ominous, nothing emerged.

“Is this a one-way portal too?”

Dimensional Rifts were strictly one-way until a Wave officially triggered; you could only enter them from the outside. Furthermore, unlike standard Rifts, this vortex didn't give me a splitting migraine, nor had it violently smashed through the bunker's structural foundations when manifesting. Sensing no overt hostility, I crept forward with cautious steps toward the glowing vortex.

“Can the system scan this thing?”

Hoping for the best, I pulled up the system analysis window, and to my immense relief, a detailed diagnostic popped up.

“Erzsebet? Wait, that's Godjukheup!”

The mysterious anomaly turned out to be nothing more than my assistant mod stirring up trouble. A Paddak had literally dropped an unauthorized gateway inside my personal residence. What was this? Was she launching a surprise raid to take revenge on me for never paying her a mod salary?

On top of that, there was an active countdown timer. Seeing that remarkably brief duration ticking down made my stomach knot with an inexplicable, nagging urge to jump through right that second.

“Why on earth did she send this to me, though?”

Abandoned Castle Mariaka was the private lair of my assistant moderator, Vampire Till I Die. Leaving aside the staggering mystery of how she had pinpointed my coordinates in the first place, I couldn't fathom why she would beam a personal doorway straight into my room.

I fired off a flurry of pings in the admin backchannel, yet Godjukheup remained entirely unresponsive.

Something had undeniably gone sideways. If she hadn't run into a catastrophe, there was simply no way that a chronically online gallery addict like her—someone whose sheer screentime rivaled my own—would ever stop browsing and posting.

“Still, waltzing in there myself feels like a terrible idea…”

Diving headfirst into the unknown was completely off-brand for me.

“If something legitimately disastrous happened over there, wouldn't I just get instantly vaporized the moment I step through?”

Godjukheup was, by my personal reckoning, practically the strongest entity in this entire setting. If someone or something managed to take her down, a simple pump-action shotgun wouldn't do jack squat. Besides, socializing offline was a strictly bannable offense. It wasn't that I was just being lazy or anything.

“Nope! Not happening!”

When an internet shut-in suddenly decides to act out of character, bad things happen. If a basement-dwelling degenerate like me leaped into a magic portal on a whim, that would be an immediate ticket to the series finale of my life. Shaking my head, I burrowed right back under the warm blankets of my bed, determined to resume skimming through the forum's Hall of Fame posts.

Or rather, that was my intention.

Until that piercing, shrill alert went off in my head, that is.

“Damn it…”

An indefinite inactive state. The system had just confirmed my darkest suspicions. If I sat here and twiddled my thumbs, Godjukheup would remain completely incapacitated for who knew how long.

“Where the hell am I going to find another Paddak like her?”

She browsed the gallery twenty hours a day. She tracked down real-life troublemakers to hand out offline bans with extreme prejudice. She was an absolute pillar of deterrence for the Otherworld Destruction Gallery, not to mention my primary lifeline and insurance policy rolled into one. If I wanted to fix this—or at least discover what kind of mess she had landed in—my only option was to dive through that portal before it shut for good.

While I vacillated, the seconds relentlessly trickled away. At this rate, I really was going to end up forced to replace my veteran mod.

“Do I go, or do I stay?”

For a guy whose absolute life motto was safety first, standing at this crossroads was pure agony.

Hummmm—

Suddenly, the Holy Sword suspended from my bunker ceiling, which had been emitting a gentle luminescent glow, floated smoothly down toward me.

“Wait… that's right. I've got you!”

Vwooom!

The Adrian Holy Sword, presented to me as tribute by the Crown Prince himself. And hovering right alongside it was the dwarf-crafted Masterpiece Sword—formerly serving duty as my bunker's ventilation fan. On top of that, I had my trusty, reliable modern shotgun strapped across my chest!

“Hmm. With this kit, maybe I actually stand a chance?”

Even if some grotesque mutant beast had somehow managed to ambuscade Godjukheup, this loadout ought to let me put up a decent fight. And if worst came to absolute worst, I could always slap on a gas mask and flood the room with horrific chemical agents without caring about collateral damage. Above all else, Godjukheup was far too valuable an unpaid laborer to let die and be replaced.

“Screw it, whatever happens, happens!”

Before the timer struck zero, I hurled myself straight into the swirling light.

Instantly, reality twisted around me. The cozy, familiar walls of my underground room vanished, replaced by an oppressive hall drenched in deep crimson and an endless, foreboding audience corridor stretching out into the gloom. In any brawl, the first strike decided the victor. Without a second thought, I raised the shotgun from my hip, aiming dead ahead to seize the initiative.

“Hands where I can see them! Freeze! Move a single inch and I'll blast you, slice you, blow you to bits, unleash chemical warfare, and drop a nuke on your head!”

Consumed by tension, I completely botched any formal password challenge and just belted out a manic barrage of threats. But in that very next second—

“Head Mod…?”

A faint voice rasped from the floor. A woman lay collapsed on the stones, looking up at me through disheveled strands of dull, silvery-white hair. Beneath them, two crimson eyes stared back in complete daze.

“Godjukheup?”

The sovereign of the ruined fortress, and my shitposting assistant moderator. Erzsebet was sprawled across the floor, half-dead.

She was draped in an exquisite, dark-toned aristocratic gown, collapsed in an unceremonious heap. Her shoes had been kicked off somewhere, her pale, bare toes curling weakly against the stone. The bizarre girl blinked blankly up at me, murmuring in a voice so faint it was barely a whisper.

“S-so hungry…”

The drooping corners of her eyes and her miserable, listless expression were painfully obvious. I didn't even have the luxury of marveling at the fact that this cold, gothic beauty was actually the very same gremlin who spent her days trolling the forum.

“Why are you looking at me when you say that?”

An ancient progenitor vampire was currently starving to death. And she was staring at me like a piece of meat. Every single survival instinct in my brain began screeching in unison. Jumping through that portal had been an enormous mistake; I should have exercised ten times more caution. At this rate, wasn't I just a prime sirloin steak that had politely delivered itself to her front door?

“J-just one sip is all I need…”

Rule of thumb: when someone says 'just one sip', they mean every last drop until the carton is bone dry. All of a sudden, a nightmarish vision of an imaginary forum post flashed across my mind's eye.

“Oh hell no! Absolutely not!”

I hadn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠even finished reading the latest batch of Hall of Fame threads yet. There was no way in hell I was dying in a dump like this.

“Go, Holy Sword!”

Vwooom!

Right on cue, my faithful divine blade shot forward through the air, hurtling straight toward Godjukheup to intercept her!

“Ugh… go away…”

Wham!

With a feeble, lethargic swat of her hand, she batted the legendary blade out of the air, sending it clattering across the stones. Defeated in a single casual strike. The dwarf Masterpiece Sword, entirely terrified by the display, immediately drifted toward a nearby stone knight statue and wedged itself stiffly into place, pretending to be a decorative prop.

“Oh, right.”

I suddenly recalled that these two useless pieces of scrap had been fast asleep when Adrian's imperial assassins infiltrated my bunker before. They were completely worthless when it counted.

“Don't you dare come any closer!”

I leveled the barrel of the shotgun squarely at Godjukheup's head as she crawled pitifully across the flagstones toward me. In the eyes of buckshot, all mortals were equal. But just as I hovered on the verge of handing my own assistant moderator an offline perma-ban, I hesitated, lowering the barrel a fraction of an inch.

Instead, I brought up the dimensional market interface with blistering speed.

“Even if I take her down, I'll never find my way out of here alone.”

This ruined fortress was saturated with thousands of layers of ancient, lethal curses. Even if I neutralized Godjukheup, the chances of me navigating this labyrinth alive were basically zero. The mathematically sound play was to nurse this half-delirious vampire back to sanity so she could open a return portal and send me back. This was no time to be stingy with points.

I quickly queued up an order for a cooking pot, a portable butane stove, a ladle, bowls, and every necessary utensil.

“Guh…”

Right around then, having dragged herself halfway across the room, Godjukheup collapsed flat on her face, passing out cold from acute iron deficiency. Now was my chance! I immediately set to work assembling the meal kit right there in the grand throne room. It didn't take long at all; all I had to do was tear open the packaging, dump the contents into the pot, throw in some extra ingredients, and let it simmer.

Just in case soup wasn't enough, I bought a few medical blood packs as backup. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠By the time the savory broth began bubbling and filling the damp, dusty air with its rich aroma, Godjukheup's nose twitched, and her head slowly lifted.

“Ah…?”

Sitting right before her eyes was a steaming, ceramic bowl filled to the brim with ox blood hangover soup. Starved past all reason, she fixated on the bowl for a few bewildered seconds before reaching straight into the boiling broth with her ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠bare hand.

Chomp!

She stuffed a massive cube of congealed ox blood straight into her mouth.

“It's… delicious…!”

Life instantly rushed back into her glazed, vacant eyes. Stunned, her crimson irises dilated as she stared in disbelief at the chunk of solidified blood remaining in her fingers.

“How is this…?”

It was unmistakably blood, yet it held a firm, savory jelly-like texture. And there was simply no way that a masterfully seasoned Korean hangover soup loaded with aromatics could taste anything less than sublime.

“It's blood, but it tastes so good! Nom!”

“Whoa, hey.”

Deciding that chewing and talking was an utter waste of time, she buried her entire face straight into the bowl. Within seconds, she practically licked the porcelain immaculate. She gave her lips a lingering, wistful sweep of her tongue, and then, her gaze drifted upward—locking dead onto me where I stood crouched behind the stove.

“Head Mod?”

Godjukheup blinked several times, her gaze flicking back and forth between the empty bowl of blood soup and my living, breathing person. Slowly, her thin lips curved upward into a delightfully sly, vixen-like grin.

“You look… tasty.”

“W-what? Why me?”

I pointed nervously toward the medical blood packs lying right next to her. But she didn't cast a single glance in their direction. Instead, she rose to her feet in an instant, floating upright like an ethereal phantom before closing the distance between us in a fraction of a heartbeat.

“Halt! Freeze! Hands in the air, move and I shoot!”

Overcome by a sudden, bone-chilling dread, I brought the shotgun up once more. But it didn't do a damn thing.

Shhhk!

“Eeeek!”

With a whisper of red light, the steel barrel of my shotgun was sheared cleanly in two. Paralyzed with horror, all I could do was gasp as Godjukheup pounced forward, throwing her arms tightly around my torso in a crushing embrace.

“This is sexual harassment! Stop it right now!”

“Thanks for the meal.”

Crunch!

I really, truly should have been more careful.

Before the thought could even finish echoing through my panic-stricken skull, her sharp fangs sank mercilessly into my shoulder.