The Summoner of ■■ (46)
“Is that supposed to be an answer?!”
A roar thundered through the air hard enough to make it crackle. An arm swept out and smashed into the desk; the wood could not withstand the force and split clean in half. The wineglass perched atop it shattered, spraying dark crimson across the floor in a wide arc.
The man who had created the scene was a middle-aged figure with long golden hair combed neatly back. At a glance his frame looked slender, almost delicate, yet the broad cut of his clothes could not hide the dense, corded muscle packed beneath.
“Five already. Five of our kin who managed this city have vanished!”
Even in the dim room his crimson pupils blazed with raw emotion, and his face was twisted into a snarl.
“I don’t want information about some low-rank trash who got taken out by a damned cleric. I want the identity of the slippery little bastard who’s been slaughtering our people and then vanishing without a trace!”
“My apologies, Lord Frederick… but no matter how hard we search, we cannot find a single trail.”
The middle-aged man addressed as Frederick made no attempt to hide his fury as he strode straight toward the youth. Power flooded his fist; his arm blurred, leaving no afterimage.
A wet crunch exploded through the room.
“…Ghk?!”
The youth’s belated apology twisted into a look of pure shock, but Frederick’s fist had already caved in his face far faster than any reaction could manage.
“Grrrk…!!”
Clutching a half-collapsed, unrecognizable mess of features, the youth writhed and thrashed across the floor.
“Tch.”
Frederick regarded him with the cold disdain one might spare a crushed insect. Instead of the ruined desk he seized the wine bottle resting on the arm of a chair and upended it over the youth’s ruined face.
Glug, glug, glug, glug…
The liquid was far too thick and far too red to be ordinary wine. It poured in heavy rivulets, soaking the youth without mercy. The reaction was instantaneous.
Sizzle—!!
“Guhhh…!”
A sound like meat hitting a hot grill rose as the youth’s breath returned in a ragged moan. The face that had been crushed beyond any hope of human recognition slowly pushed outward again, like a dented ping-pong ball dropped into warm water, knitting itself back together.
“Gulp, gulp! Hah… hahh…!!”
Even with his features still half-warped, the youth opened his mouth wide and drank every last drop falling from the bottle as though it were the water of life itself.
Drip… drip…
When the bottle finally ran dry he still panted like a starving ghoul, long bestial fangs now jutting from his jaws.
“Sniff… sniff-sniff!!”
Driven by pure instinct he flared his nostrils, then—finding nothing more coming from the bottle—dropped to the floor and began lapping up the spilled liquid with a greedy tongue. He looked exactly like a junkie chasing the last of a high.
“Even using this on trash like you is a waste… but time is short, so consider it a reward. Get up. Worm.”
“Urgh…! Thank you. Thank you so much!!”
At Frederick’s arrogant tone the youth immediately slammed his forehead to the floor in a deep bow, then sprang to his feet and bent at the waist once more in frantic deference.
“If His Excellency Valencia—who is only here for a brief rest—learns of this, we will all pay dearly. Hell, he may already know… In that case we must at least show him we are throwing everything we have at the problem. Do you understand what I am saying?”
“Yes! I will stake my life on uncovering the enemy!!”
“…No. That alone is not enough.”
Frederick’s crimson eyes flared as he looked down at the youth. A bloody aura began to writhe and coil around him.
“Relay this to the house—to the Blag Count’s household. Frederick Blag commands it. Dispatch the family knights at once and purge every last damned rebel.”
The youth’s eyes flew wide.
House Blag was a noble lineage famed even among aristocrats for its blood-based swordsmanship—the Bloodblade Arts. Every knight of the house was an elite among elites, each one a high-ranking vampire. To deploy forces meant for open war against mere humans was pure theater, a show of force. Yet the youth could not stop thinking it was still excessive—like using an executioner’s greatsword to butcher a chicken.
He kept the thought locked behind his teeth. The killing pressure rolling off the man in front of him was simply too terrifying.
“Wipe them out completely. Not a single rat left hiding in the livestock pens. That is the work of low-ranks like you.”
“Y-yes, sir…”
With those final words Frederick turned away. The youth, body still trembling, steadied himself and fled the room as fast as he could.
He hurried out of the mansion and wound through dark alleys for a long while before suddenly stopping dead. He had left the range of the noble’s “domain.”
Crunch.
The moment his instincts confirmed it, the youth ground his teeth hard enough to crack. He pressed at his still-sunken nose bridge until the bone popped back into place.
“Damn it! Useless nobles who can’t do a thing without us…”
Rage burned, but beneath it lay a deeper, bitter helplessness.
A vampire’s power was decided by blood from beginning to end. Drinking superior blood strengthened one’s own power and thickened the concentration of the bloodline itself. Only when one could finally wield a “domain” through that blood was one recognized as a high-ranking vampire.
The time required was so long that even long-lived vampires often gave up. The gulf between those born into noble houses—raised on fine blood—and the rest was simply that vast.
He wanted nothing more than to leave the city and gorge himself on blood to his heart’s content. But that was impossible. Beyond the borders waited hunters ready to purge vampires at any moment. Outside this city—kept in perpetual night by His Excellency’s power—a low-rank like him was utterly helpless under the sun.
Just a little more. Just a little more power. He had endured, swallowing his pride and flattering the nobles for years.
And half of the power he had spent a lifetime gathering—the very essence of his blood—had been blown away by that single blow just now. The blood Frederick had given him afterward had restored his body, but it was nowhere near enough to replace the essence that had been carved out.
“Shit…!!”
Bang! Clatter!
Unable to contain the fresh surge of fury, he kicked a nearby trash bin. Its contents spilled and scattered across the ground. The sight overlapped with his own earlier humiliation, and he bit down even harder.
Blood. He needed blood.
Purer blood. Stronger blood. If he could only get his hands on that, even the high-and-mighty nobles who sneered down at them would become easy prey. He would become a high-ranking vampire himself.
“…They said there’s a nun, didn’t they?”
A woman who had appeared inside the city out of nowhere. At first he had assumed she was a cleric infiltrated by the forces of Radiance, but that turned out not to be the case.
Recalling the livestock who had risen in rebellion, cheering about “rest” and “the Saintess,” a new emotion finally joined the rage in the youth’s eyes.
Greed.
“If I drink that woman’s blood… I can become strong.”
And while he was at it, he would sample that beautiful body as well. Vampire instinct whispered that the girl was pure—untouched by any filth.
“Heh… heh-heh…”
As he murmured the thought aloud, a filthy, mismatched greed began to gleam in his crimson eyes. The blood he had drunk earlier must have been high-grade; even now the excitement refused to fade. As the pain receded, only feverish emotion and the endless urge to feed remained.
Drunk on the feeling that he could do anything, the youth panted roughly, unable to hide the leering smile that twisted his face.
“Caw!”
“…Huh?”
A crow landed in front of him and cried out. The pure-black bird suited the night perfectly, yet for an instant an inexplicable chill crawled down the youth’s spine.
What the hell?
He was only a low-rank, but he had survived years on these streets. His instincts screamed a warning: beware that crow. Get out of here right now. He obeyed. No—he prepared to scream and summon every ally he could, not to eliminate the danger, but to buy himself a chance to run.
“Ene—my…! Ghk?!”
Something clamped around his throat with crushing force. The darkness hid whatever it was, but he felt it clearly—something had seized him.
Enemy. An enemy.
He thrashed wildly, trying to tear the thing from his neck.
Why… won’t it…?
The more he struggled, the tighter it constricted. No matter how much strength he poured into it, he could not break free. The sticky, clinging substance only hardened further, wrapping every part of him except his eyes in unbreakable bonds.
Even a vampire’s strength—enough to pulverize stone with ease—could not free him.
Fear began to flood the youth’s face.
Footsteps approached, slow and deliberate.
“I let you live and you still cross the line, you mosquito bastard.”
His heightened hearing caught the voice. It was low, almost flat, yet the cold fury and killing chill it carried made the high-ranking vampire he had just served look like a harmless kitten by comparison.
I’m going to die. I’m definitely going to die. The youth writhed in mad desperation.
“Mmph! Mmmphhhh!!!!”
“Shut up.”
A precise strike slammed into his gut. He tried to scream, but no sound emerged. The pain was so absolute that his vocal cords simply refused to work. For a heartbeat his brain could not even classify it as pain. It felt as though his mind itself would burn away.
This… this was the sensation of life being carved out. Every previous agony had been a pale imitation; his entire body convulsed with the truth of it.
Blood—his own or the blood he had just drunk, he could no longer tell—surged back up his throat. His thoughts blurred.
What dragged him back to awareness was a searing, branding-iron pain that raced up his spine and slammed into his skull.
“Ghhhk…!!! Hhhk…?!”
His heart. The core of a vampire, the vessel that held his power, had been seized by something. Whatever it was had sliced through flesh, bone, and organs to reach it, and now it squeezed without mercy. The youth’s eyes rolled white. His breath stopped. Then the next wave of agony forced him conscious again.
After three or four repetitions he no longer had the strength even to thrash. A nightmare. This was a nightmare of the worst kind.
Or perhaps he had already died—his head casually crushed by the noble’s angry gesture. Was this hell, then?
The thought was cut short as his head was forced upright. A black mask filled his vision. Smooth and featureless, it molded perfectly to the face beneath, giving the brief impression of a skull.
The figure cloaked entirely in darkness shifted; crimson eyes glowed from within the mask. Beside that condensed, far darker and more sinister presence, a small blue flame flickered.
Then vampire instinct whispered to him.
The life force radiating from that small body was impossibly vast—stronger than anything he had ever felt. The youth’s eyes flew wide.
A person. A human. Not a monster or a reaper, but a living being.
Hope flared. I’m still alive. That single spark ignited every survival instinct he possessed.
The vampire’s eyes, dead only moments ago, suddenly came alive. Looks like he finally realized I’m human. Letting him catch the scent of blood was worth it after all.
It was his own blood, not mine, but blood is blood. From everything I’ve learned hunting vampires, these bastards go completely insane for the stuff.
Lose enough blood and they lose power, then reason itself, until what’s left isn’t even a vampire anymore—just a mindless blood ghoul. Drain them further and they dry into mummies, then crumble into sand like the bones of something that was never human to begin with. As if that had been their original form all along.
Parasites that can’t survive without leeching off someone else. Even the way they get stronger and the way they breed is pure mosquito.
“From now on you answer only ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to my questions. Understood?”
Charisma — laced with killing intent
The vampire’s expression went blank. No—he looked half-unconscious with his eyes still open. His pupils had completely glazed over.
“Answer.”
At the same time I twisted the shadow gripping his heart. Only then did he start nodding frantically in agreement.
Maybe because his heart was completely under my control, he was being far more cooperative than expected. I had no intention of letting him live, but that cooperation made me a little greedy. Using the shadows, I set a trap inside his heart.
One command from me and it would detonate, condensing enough mana to turn his heart into shredded offal and incinerate his entire body for good measure. A bit of a cheat, really. I can’t cast magic, but I can shape raw mana through my shadows, so a crude imitation is possible. Calling a simple clump of mana “magic” is a stretch, but the principle is close enough.
On top of that I planted a spark of Keres’s flame. Vampires can be stubbornly hard to kill, so better to burn him thoroughly just in case.
There. Precautions finished.
Next came the real question: how much information could I squeeze out of this one? I shaped shadow into instruments of torture and pressed in close.
No matter how obedient he looked, I was still going to use Torture. Because this could all be an act. I trust the ones who fold immediately and spill everything far more than the stubborn types who try to play tough. Bat-like survivors who’ve betrayed their way through life are usually experts at lying.
The second things start looking up, they’ll plant insurance—feed false intel, lead you into a trap, then claim credit for it later.
So torture is mandatory. I’ll rip every scrap of truth out of him under the clear threat that silence means death.
The last one I tortured with genuine intent to kill, and he died before giving me anything useful. Most of what he knew was worthless anyway.
I wonder how long this one will last.