< Unknown Threat (5) >
“Hmm···.”
Diana’s tightly shut eyelids fluttered.
“Sister! Are you awake?”
As my mind slowly began to regain its clarity, I heard my younger brother’s urgent voice nearby.
It seems that he was just waiting for her to wake up, taking care of her right next to him.
“···Yeah, I’m fine.”
Diana slowly raised her upper body, mumbling in a hushed voice.
My head felt a little dizzy, but that was it. Other than that, there wasn’t any particular pain.
Of course, it was only natural that they were completely subdued without any real resistance due to their lack of fighting ability.
‘It wasn’t a dream after all.’
As she carefully looked around, a familiar scene of the house came into view.
The home where their family has stayed ever since settling in this new land.
Of course, as it was right after something big had happened, the atmosphere wasn’t as peaceful as usual.
“Diana! You’re awake!”
“I’m so glad. Raphi woke up a while ago, but I was so worried because he wouldn’t open his eyes at all….”
Her uncle and aunt came over in a hurry, hugged her, and consoled her.
My aunt, who happened to be out shopping at the moment the incident occurred, and my uncle, who was late getting off work, were able to avoid getting caught up in the commotion thanks to their good timing.
However, it is not possible to simply be happy and say that one was lucky when one’s children and nephews almost suffered misfortune.
They finally breathed a sigh of relief when they saw Diana wake up.
Fortunately, the youngest, Raphi, like Aaron, was protected by magic, so there were no particular aftereffects.
Rather, since I had been unconscious since the beginning of the incident, I don’t remember anything and I was just a little surprised.
“···That’s fortunate. Raphi is still young, so that’s better···.”
Diana, who had been nodding absentmindedly while listening to the story, suddenly stopped talking.
As her thinking ability slowly began to return to normal, a memory suddenly flashed through her mind.
“That’s right! Ha, Grandma! What about Grandma Miropa?!”
She jumped up out of bed in surprise.
Her younger brother, who was next to her, caught her staggering body as she suddenly got up, but she didn’t have time to pay attention to that right now.
The last image of the old woman she had seen then came to her mind.
‘no!’
The sight of the old lady next door, who was doing her best until the last moment to buy time for them to escape, hugging Raphi and collapsing, spitting out blood.
This was the first time Diana had learned that her grandmother had such strong abilities.
Perhaps, if it weren’t for that desperate effort, she wouldn’t have been able to see her family’s faces normally.
“Don’t worry too much, Sister. Grandma is okay too.”
“Yes, I’m still on my way to check on her condition. She lives alone, so I brought her to the guest room to take care of her.”
“Yes, yes. And on top of that, the saint of that religious order personally examined my condition! Who would have thought that I would see the saint with my own eyes while I am still alive···.”
Diana, who had lost strength at the words of her family, sat down on the bed again.
I let out a sigh of relief at the thought that the worst had been avoided.
“A saint···?”
“Yeah! You haven’t seen it yet, sis? I personally saw the moment when he tore the sky and came down! Wow… I’ll never forget that for the rest of my life. I told you he wasn’t a saint for nothing.”
Aaron tells a story using gestures as if describing the magnificent sight he saw.
A soft smile appeared on Diana’s lips as she looked at him.
But contrary to her brother’s words, the image of Saint Heinrich remained clearly in her memory.
‘I was not in my right mind at the time, so I had a hunch. But it turns out what I saw back then wasn’t an illusion.’
Anyone who thought about it would think that the person described by his younger brother and the person in his own memories were the same person.
In the moment when you are barely holding on thanks to your extraordinary mental strength in your fading consciousness after being subdued by the attackers, the saint Heinrich of the Shinshu Sect suddenly appears.
‘however···.’
Her expression changed subtly as she listened to the story.
Even though I still had some memories of that time, I was in a state of confusion so not everything was clear.
Even now, the only information I can recall are some elements that were impressive.
And the clearest of them all is.
Naturally, it was a short essay about the sense in which she was most confident.
I felt a familiar scent mixed with the unmistakable smell of blood—a cool rather than warm atmosphere.
It was a fragrance that I hadn’t smelled in a long time, faintly different from the one I had smelled from Hubert every day.
‘Mr. Heinz···.’
This was the first time I encountered him again as a vampire since I moved here to Tarak.
However, as she spent every day with Hubert, she was able to easily find traces of the ‘uncle’ she knew in him.
It’s only natural since I thought they were the same person from the beginning.
‘however···.’
Just one thing.
There was one thing even she couldn’t understand.
That’s right—.
‘He must be a saint.’
It turns out he wasn’t the only one who felt a familiar smell.
Unlike Heinz, it had a warm and cozy scent, but there was also a distinctly familiar smell mixed in.
At the time, I was so out of it that I couldn’t think deeply, but now that I think about it, it was definitely a strange thing.
Because a vampire and a saint is a combination that no one would think would go well together.
“···no way?”
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An exclamation burst out of her mouth without her knowledge, as she was so lost in thought.
Her eyes opened wide and she raised her head.
“Sister?”
Before she knew it, she was lost in her own world and couldn’t even hear her younger brother’s voice.
He just has a serious expression on his face, lost in thought, thinking about a certain idea that suddenly came to mind.
‘If that’s the case···.’
Diana clenched her two slender fists.
***
“Thank you, Saint!”
“Did you see that? That thing that covered the entire sky back then…”
“Hey, you guy. Talk nonsense. How could anyone not see that in this Tarak?”
“Oh! Is that them? Those are the ones I’ve only heard rumors about….”
“Isn’t the mercenary king Harley here? What a pity. I really wanted to meet him, the hero of Tarak.”
The terrorist attack targeting executives of Hubert Trading Company ended without major damage.
The villain devised a bold plan to kidnap the second-in-command of the company by targeting the entire vicinity of the residence, but thanks to the warrior party that happened to be visiting Tarak, they were able to quickly identify the abnormality and respond in time.
‘I think it would be better to leave it that way.’
Even if you say things like “god imprisoned in the abyss”, “apostle”, or “fragment”, not many people would understand.
Above all, because of the Lord’s destruction of records, not only was there no one on Earth who knew of its existence, there was not even a single bit of information left.
‘It seems there are also restrictions on disseminating information about him.’
The more people recognize and worship God, the more powerful his influence becomes.
Of course, the fallen god and his apostles who were seeking resurrection would have also tried that method.
The fact that the situation had not changed much, however, meant that information about its existence itself was forbidden by the laws of the world.
‘The fact that he only operates a small number of apostles must be part of that limitation. I’m an exception, though, since I’m from another world.’
In that sense, the apostles who followed him were very heterogeneous beings.
You must have been born and raised in Auterica, but how did you end up there?
Of course, they each have their own circumstances.
Yes, for example.
Like Temiran McClair, who is here now.
“Ugh… Ugh!”
A suppressed groan escaped from the darkness of the closed room.
His moans, which were cut off and not even a proper scream, clearly showed how much pain he was feeling.
“Is it true that God is still God even after he has fallen? The resistance is considerable.”
Temiran, stiff and bound with bloody chains on the test bench.
Heinz stood before him like a surgeon performing an operation, his hand buried in the boy’s heart and he muttered softly.
‘It’s not a very nice scene to look at, but there’s nothing I can do about it.’
A young child who looks like he’s being subjected to a vivisection, and an adult man holding his heart, piercing through his chest.
It was a crime scene so horrible that there was no excuse for it, but they weren’t specifically interrogating the guy torturing him.
Rather, it would be more correct to say that it is a procedure for treatment.
‘It’s only natural that a major surgery like this would be painful. But it’s better than just dying, right?’
The reason he’s doing this in this secret room is all for Temiran.
Regardless of his will, he was still an apostle of the god trapped in the abyss, and now there were only two ways left: death or the removal of the apostle’s power.
But, the task of removing the divine power granted to the apostles… wouldn’t it be an easy process to forcibly remove the traces of the spirit and flesh?
“It’s almost done, so just hold on a little longer. Don’t be too hard on yourself. I share the same pain as you.”
“Eww!”
Temiran’s bloodshot eyes glared at me as if telling me not to lie.
But Heinz’s words were never a lie.
It just looks calm because, as always, I’m filtering out unnecessary feelings through “Mind Hub”.
···Well, actually, saying it was almost done was a lie.
‘The base is definitely Obaipo… but it’s been transformed quite a bit. It seems to have been influenced by the Abyss as well. It would have been easier if it had been a pure Obaipo bloodline, but it’s too bad.’
Perhaps this is one of the changes that came with becoming an apostle.
But it wasn’t all bad news.
‘Fortunately, it’s still in an incomplete state. It’s been 20 years since Temiran was chosen as an apostle, and yet it’s at this level…’
As mentioned earlier, it would not have been easy for a god whose name and even existence had been erased by the laws of the world to create apostles.
Up until now, he had been working calmly and steadily, but as the situation began to gain momentum, his limitations were slowly being revealed.
‘He must have been quite impatient, to the point of sending an imperfect apostle into the world.’
They probably thought that if they didn’t do this, all the remaining arrangements would soon fall apart.
If you think about it, it wasn’t a hasty judgment.
Judging by the progress, it seemed like it would take at least 10 more years for Temiran to become a full apostle.
Ten years was more than twice the amount of time he had been active in Auterica.
Considering all that had happened in that short period of time, and how no one could be sure what the situation would be like in another ten years, it was understandable that he felt a sense of crisis.
“Coolook! Almost… done…! How long will it take…?”
“ah.”
Then the sound of someone dying was heard from below.
He was already covered in blood all over his body due to the counter-effect of the blood flow being forced through his heart.
Heinz also forcibly controlled his own body, so that he only appeared normal on the outside, but on the inside, he was no different from me.
‘If we delay any longer, nothing good will come of it.’
All preparations have already been completed.
Just execute what’s left.
“Grit your teeth. It’s going to hurt more this time.”
“What?! It hurts more here and now···!”
Temiran, who had not finished speaking, let out a frog-like roar, but it did not reach Heinz’s ears as he was already fully focused.
As a vampire of the new blood and the “Lord of Blood”, he maximized his control over blood and directly injected “purified blood essence” containing the power of “hybrid evolution” into his heart to increase his dominance.
‘In the end, it’s a fight over which of the two has more dominance: the apostles or the vampires.’
If Temiran had been a full-fledged apostle like a revolutionary, it would have been nearly impossible for him to usurp control, but fortunately, he was not yet at that level.
The disrespect for God that I felt several times during our conversations earlier must have been an expression of that inner state.
Splash— Splash—!
The small body bound by blood chains began to flutter and evolve forcibly.
The bones and flesh came together, crumbled, and were reborn little by little as if molded from clay, taking on a new form.
Stronger, more tenacious, more solid… more mature than before.
“Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop it! Stop it—!”
When Temiran, who had grown into a mid-teenager, went crazy, bright red blood flew out, but Heinz didn’t even blink.
He simply calmly gathers the blood and uses the “mystery of blood” to build a blood magic circle around him to assist his ritual.
‘Found it.’
After some time passed like that.
Something alien was detected in his “insight”.
An unknown divinity that is rooted and wriggling in Temiran’s soul, felt through the blood that is the source of vampires.
The one imprisoned in the abyss was of human god origin, but paradoxically, pure humans could not fully accept the power of the apostle.
Not only is the durability of the body that will become the vessel a problem, but the moment it becomes spiritually connected with the being in the abyss, it will immediately begin to degenerate and become a mindless monster like a white giant.
‘Come to think of it, wasn’t it you who first introduced the vampire and werewolf genes to Auterica?’
I don’t know if that was intentional, but it didn’t matter anymore.
Whatever his intentions, they were all meaningless to Heinz, who was beginning to understand the divinity of blood.
As the “denial of existence” was expressed through the assimilated blood, the connection with the divine became looser.
And at that moment, the “Return to Origin” obtained by ascending to the new blood was activated.
A power that is gradually being perfected as the ultimate and pinnacle of vampires.
As it spread throughout his body through the bloodstream through Temiran’s heart, it began to cause a strong backlash against the power of the apostle, a foreign substance that interfered with his ability to exist as a complete ‘vampire’.
“Kwaaaaak—!”
Temiran, now in his late teens, screamed as if his heart was going to burst out.
So Heinz was happy to help.
Phew!
By pulling out the entire heart that the finger was stuck in.
“Ouch!”
“Whew. You’re giving me trouble.”
He stared at his heart beating vigorously in his hand.
There was no need to worry about Temiran, who eventually passed out.
For him, who was subordinate to Heinz II and inherited his bloodline intact, becoming a true vampire of the Holy Blood, the heart was just a part that could be regenerated at any time.
It was also a small benefit that the faith that had been forcibly tied together was reversed and became polar opposites to its object.
‘Okay, then now···.’
Thump— thump—
A pulsating, red heart filled with the divine and mutated vampire factors that grant the power of an apostle.
Somehow, through it, I felt as if my eyes had met someone far away.
“It’s nice to see you like this.”
Heinz let out a snicker.
This was a power that could not be taken lightly.
A dangerous item that could easily turn you into a puppet like Temiran.
‘thank you for this food.’
Of course, that was only a general case, and it didn’t matter to Heinz II, who was already building his own divinity.
To him, this isolated divinity was nothing more or less than a tonic, easily digestible and nutritious.
Phew!
The heart I was holding in my hand burst out.
But there was no blood splattering everywhere.
The blood was quickly sucked back into his fist as if it was being pulled by some kind of gravity.
《Collect new vampire factors. The divinity of the individual grows further due to the influence of the special skill “Mixed Evolution.” The skill “Subordinate Domination” is acquired.》
The corners of Heinz’s mouth formed a satisfying curve.
I thought I heard a roar of anger coming from somewhere, but it was probably just my imagination.
Because there were only two people in this place, Temiran and Heinz, who had passed out.
