The sky was the color of ash. Black particles drifted downward through the still air, settling onto a landscape where nothing grew, bare ground as far as the eye reached, and at the crests of the distant hills, purple lightning struck in continuous volleys, the thunder rolling back and the crows’ cries rising beneath it, the only two sounds this place had ever known.
Until Raphael walked into it.
His blue eyes reflected what was in front of him: a shallow pit, and in it, what the First Hunting Ground had made of the being formerly known as Blitz.
The Ground always composed a portrait from the manner of death and the symbolic residue of a life, in this case, the head on a stake, jaw hanging slack; the body in two halves, the cold that Miguel’s ice had left behind still visible in the purple-black of the frozen flesh; the frost still crystallized on the surface.
[Demon Contract: Vampire Baron.]
[Demon Level: 5.]
[Cardinal Sin: Superbia.]
[Matching sin. All mutation skills extracted.]
[Blood Frenzy: Physical functions enhanced to 200%. Full moon: additional +100%. Blood moon: additional +200%. Maximum ceiling: Lv8.]
[Vampire’s Constitution: Grants self-regeneration and blood consumption. Internal organs lose their function as vital points, organ damage can be repaired by consuming corresponding tissue, and the healing rate doubles when blood is available. The body can store significant quantities of blood. Sensitivity to blood is heightened; the user can distinguish fine differences in blood by taste, identify the source of blood by scent, and can replace ordinary consumption with blood intake.]
Blood Frenzy hadn’t changed. The Vampire’s Constitution, on the other hand, had evolved significantly from what the artificial vampire’s contract had provided, which made sense, given the contrast.
The artificial vampire’s version had been incomplete from the start, a degraded derivative of the genuine article. This contract came from a genuine pureblood, and a noble at that.
He continued reading. The vampire’s skill list was extensive, particularly for a Lv5 Baron, and several of the entries had detailed multi-part descriptions that suggested the System had been doing organizational work, consolidating related but distinct mutation skills into unified entries.
This was the difference between the Hunting Ground’s contract and a Demon’s own written agreement. The Ground sorted things intelligently.
[Blood Master, Quartet: Ability to manipulate the user’s own blood or unowned blood in the immediate area. Arcane energy provides structural integrity; arcane marks allow remote control of detached blood, which can be shaped into various configurations according to will.
First movement: small volume of blood plus low arcane input constructs a blood-arrow rain. High penetration. The arrows are physical while in flight and can temporarily receive magical augmentation to increase versatility. Physical laws apply.
Second movement: large volume of blood plus low arcane input constructs blood-spears. Can be launched like arrows at additional arcane cost. The spears carry the structural properties of actual spear weapons.
Third movement: small volume of blood plus high arcane input constructs blood-wire. Extremely sharp, with high tensile strength from the compressed arcane energy within. Can cut through very hard materials when sufficient momentum is available. Flexible, controllable at the fingertip, operable at range.
Fourth movement: large volume of blood plus high arcane input constructs a blood-sword. Hardness and sharpness comparable to an actual sword, with superior adaptability, blade width and shape can be adjusted according to will.]
He’d seen the first and second movements used during the fight. The arrow rain for suppression and area denial, the spears for focused penetration, both had made a strong impression.
He hadn’t seen the third or fourth. From the descriptions, the wire was a precision instrument for closing distances and dismantling defenses; the sword was the generalist heavy option. A well-rounded set.
He moved to the next entries, and found, as expected, several significant gaps. The blood-dispersal technique, Blitz dissolving entirely into a liquid state, wasn’t listed, nor were the bat wings that had sustained his flight.
Same principle as Alp’s Shadow’s shadow-immersion: the technique was bound to a physical structure that Raphael’s body didn’t share. As long as he remained human in basic construction, usage rights couldn’t transfer regardless of the contract.
[Blood Master, Surge: Forcible control of all blood within a defined range. Large volumes of unowned blood can be shaped into wave-like formations, capable of physical impact through mass and arcane reinforcement, or used as a surface to carry or transport the user.
For owned blood, blood currently within a living host, this ability applies a stimulant effect. The affected target becomes more irritable and prone to aggression, and bleeding from wounds accelerates.]
[Blood Master, Recruitment: By expending a portion of the user’s blood-source essence and transferring it through a bite, the user can forcibly convert the recipient into a Vampire’s Servant.
The recipient gains the baseline characteristics of the Vampire’s Constitution. Any holder of a Blood Master mutation skill has the authority to command a Vampire’s Servant directly, an effect that operates at the psychological and blood-lineage level, though it can be interfered with by certain mental-type skills.]
He noted the one meaningful downside: any Vampire’s Servant he created could potentially be commanded by another blood-master. He filed that for later.
Overall, the vampire’s skill set was notably clean. No transaction-type double-sidedness, no Alp-style compensatory costs attached to individual abilities.
That made sense, Alp was a commerce-oriented Demon, every gain balanced against a corresponding debt, the ledger always symmetrical.
A vampire’s abilities were organized around one axis: blood, and what blood could do in combat.
He looked at the cost column.
[Contract Cost: Each use of abilities granted by this contract burns a variable number of days of life, scaled to the number and intensity of skills in use. The depletion operates at the conceptual level, affecting fate itself. The outward expression is accelerated aging, time being skipped rather than lived. Minimum consumption under passive use: one day of life. Maximum consumption under full unrestricted activation: one year of life.]
"Burning life."
He said it quietly, and felt the weight of it settle.
He had never encountered a cost in this category before. The arithmetic was straightforward and alarming: ten full activations at maximum output would consume a decade. Not taken from the end of his life in some abstract future sense, but expressed immediately, appearing in his face, in his body, in the way a mirror would reflect him back. Sustained complete activation over a handful of months could shift him from where he currently stood to somewhere in middle age without the years between.
The artificial vampire’s contract had been incomplete, degraded, barely functional by comparison. Its cost had been minimal, periodic blood intake, easily met. This was something else.
He stood at the signature line for a long time.
Long enough that the thunder in the distance was continuous. Long enough that the earth began its slow movement beneath him, the unseen creature deep below surfacing to raise new hills in the landscape.
He thought about what was still unresolved. The official who had provided cover for all of this, still in his position. Evelyn’s situation, with no clear path visible from here. His own exposure, his own wanted status, the walls closing in from multiple directions simultaneously.
He needed capability he didn’t currently have, not just enough to survive the next encounter, but enough to exercise some control over how the story ended.
He signed his name.
Across the Ground’s landscape, a second staked figure went dark and fell to ash, the artificial vampire, the first contract, dissolved by his own hand. The remains dispersed into the barren earth.
[Contract: Artificial Vampire.]
[Contract voided by holder. Residual sin recovered: +3.7.]
[Current Sin: 99.45 / 160.]
[...]
[Contract: Vampire Baron.]
[Contract established.]
[Disconnecting from First Hunting Ground...]
His consciousness rose fast, and the landscape fell away, and he came back.
He was sitting under a roadside tree. He opened his eyes and found a taxi idling in front of him, the driver apparently having read his stillness as a medical situation and stopped to check.
Raphael looked at him for a moment, feeling the particular unreality that followed the Hunting Ground, the sense of having been somewhere entirely unlike this and now being asked to sit in a cab.
A brief, quiet smile.
He stood, opened the door, and got in.
"Camps Street 21, the Oulin Guesthouse. City center."
Looking at the changing scenery outside the window, Raphael sighed slowly. There were still many things to deal with, such as those important figures who colluded with Blitz.
There was also the promise to "take a break together" with Elena, the commitment to find Evelyn, and the dilemma of how to reunite with Eva. These things, these troubles, piled up on his head like one mountain after another.
Raphael yawned. The long period of mental tension had left him exhausted, and even a slight relaxation made him feel sleepy.
He slowly closed his eyes; before those things, he would reward himself with a period of rest.