If you liked this, throw me your Power Stones!
At 200 Power Stones, I'll drop another bonus chapter.
×××
Die.
Nobody sane would like to experience death, even if someone promised them that after dying they'd receive a juicy reward worth the suffering.
What if it's a lie? What if it doesn't work?
Those were doubts that would normally go through their heads.
That doesn't apply to me, of course.
The moment the raspy voice in my mind told me the conditions to evolve, I accepted immediately without thinking twice.
The condition of dying.
Although it scared me at first because the idea of dying intentionally is terrifying even for someone like me, I accepted death's scythe, or in this case the vampire's claws, with open arms.
Then in my state of death, my soul finally evolved.
An evolved body more than it is, which can be described as amazing compared to how it initially was when I was born as a pathetic zombie, accompanied by a weak soul that hasn't evolved even once...
One can notice the incongruity in that. It's a dangerous imbalance.
If my body evolved once more without my soul strengthening, my soul would leave my body like water overflowing from a full glass, and as a consequence my body would become an empty shell without will or consciousness.
I don't know where such rules came from, however I experienced death and mutation at the moment of dying under the guidance of that horrible voice.
And I also realized something. Because my soul was quite weak at first, I couldn't remember much from my previous life. Even the reason I was born imperfect, to such an extent it can be considered a "walking dead."
All that was because I had a very thin soul that wasn't capable of supporting heavy loads like memory, proper brain processing, or supporting the healthy body of a normal human.
No wonder that every time I ate supernatural beings and my physical body evolved, I suffered from sharp pain that made me writhe.
I always thought my body was the one suffering so much that even I, who's not supposed to feel pain, started suffering in those moments. However, all that time I was wrong, completely wrong.
Because the one suffering was my soul.
It's a blessing that until now my soul didn't abandon my body despite all the evolutions I've forced.
I don't know what that being is that speaks unpleasantly and raspily in my mind, but I can be sure it's the same one that speaks when I receive new horrifying abilities about creating mouths and eyes. And it may also be the source of those hallucinations and the noises of incomprehensible voices I hear when my soul is crumbling under pressure.
But despite those terrifying drawbacks, it doesn't take away the fact that this time I received great help, otherwise I would have undoubtedly died trying to evolve by consuming the vampire's flesh and blood without proper preparation.
Once my soul fed enough eating what seemed to be floating souls in that death space under that voice's guidance, my own soul became more robust and stronger.
In a matter of seconds, my soul had returned to my body that properly evolved during my death, and merged once more becoming complete as it should have been from the beginning.
"Y-You... How?"
I'm met with the vision of a vampire pale as a notebook sheet, looking at me with disbelief in his crimson eyes that almost pop out of their sockets.
Yes, it's normal for him to be surprised because...
"You're not supposed to have this regeneration!"
Moreover...
"You... Are you a vampire? No, impossible... You're a ghoul! You can't be a vampire! But how? I'm starting to smell that you're also a vampire... Arghh!"
Mr. Vampire seems to have lost some neurons and started pulling his hair with his hands, resembling a person about to go crazy.
The being he previously saw as weak ghoul prey, suddenly upon awakening from death has a vampire smell mixed with ghoul. He must be quite confused right now.
Above all, his mouth drooled copiously.
The vampire says with a trembling voice.
"No matter, since you smell even better than before..."
He has eyes bulging with hunger.
'For him to look at me this way... This is bad. Is my scent now that tempting to this vampire?'
I smell my arm, but don't notice anything different.
Well, if I smelled as good as these beings smell me, I'm sure I couldn't have resisted the temptation to feed on my own flesh and blood. Which is terrifying just to imagine.
"Attack him! Bring him to me!"
The zombies' bodies tremble before reacting and approaching me roughly, dragging their feet on the ground.
I smile coldly under my oni mask.
"It's a shame the corpses are dry and no longer have blood after I absorbed it all... Then..."
I dodge one of the zombies trying to grab me and cut from the junction of his arm with his armpit using my fingers transformed into blades.
Blood spurts in torrents from the open wound.
"Then I just have to draw out some blood."
Instantly a strange scene occurs that makes the vampire recoil in surprise.
The blood that hasn't even touched the ground yet, suddenly floats in the air defying gravity, clusters and forms what appears to be an elongated rope of blood that writhes like a snake.
"Huh... W-what?!"
The vampire instinctively retreats and the zombies stop consequently, confused by their master's mental disorder.
Then, blood rope undulates and produces a sound of splitting air like a supersonic whip. Leaving a crimson trail that shines briefly, the rope moves at blinding speed before stopping abruptly.
It seems nothing happened.
But more meticulous observers would have noticed a terrifying scene.
Fine lines appeared on the zombies' stomachs and thighs. They're so thin they're barely visible. From there thin lines of blood can be seen slowly spurting.
But the vampire doesn't seem to be a meticulous observer to notice that, and instead shouts at his slaves.
"What are you waiting for to attack him?!"
They move again obeying the order. And because they moved...
"Hahahaha!"
While I laugh out loud, the zombies' upper parts fell forward sliding over their cut hips, and their legs fell backward in the opposite direction. Intestines spill on the floor along with blood splashing in puddles.
—Splat! Splat! Splat!
"Wonderful! Absolutely wonderful!"
I observe this scene with delight. I move my finger upward and the spilled blood regroups before forming first a very sharp blood sword, then a spear, a halberd, and finally transformed into hundreds of small floating blades.
I abruptly fix my finger pointing at the vampire, and as if all the blood knelt and obeyed my will, the blood blades produced horrendous sounds in the wind.
—Fwoooosh! Fwoooosh! Fwoooosh!
The next moment, the vampire doesn't even realize what happened, but his body filled with holes that let you see what's behind him as if he were Swiss cheese.
"Huh?"
He looks down and is incredulous seeing the holes in his torso.
Still, he's a vampire so he can regenerate quickly. He seems to have that kind of confident expression on his face.
But then, the blades that flew through him melt and form liquid ropes that surrounded the vampire's body.
The rope tightens around his body and the vampire tries to resist by strengthening his muscles. At that same moment, the rope gains edges that cover along its entire surface, and thanks to that they easily entered the vampire's body cutting muscle and bone.
"W-Wait—!"
His word vanishes the moment his entire body is cut into small, uniform pieces. If it didn't have a red color, and instead the flesh were white, you'd think they were small pieces of freshly cut tofu.
"Heh..."
I laugh mockingly while observing the vampire pieces fall to the ground.
It's true I was weaker than the vampire before evolving. His attacks surpassed me in speed and strength, but I still trusted I could escape if things got very bad. In fact, that was my intention at first after chewing his flesh and drinking his vampire blood, simply flee and evolve in peace.
However, I was informed by that raspy voice that my soul would escape my body before I could properly evolve, and that my soul would be dissolved into nothingness if I didn't die externally first.
So I had acted weakly to make the vampire's job easier, letting myself be hit without resisting much.
But that's in the past.
Now I'm confident I can even fight several of this type of vampire at the same time without sweating or exerting myself too much.
I look at the zombies' floating blood and make a disgusted expression before throwing it away with a gesture of my hand.
"Ugh... rotten blood. Disgusting."
Then I manipulate the vampire's blood that's scattered everywhere. His crimson blood floats in front of me forming a pulsating liquid sphere.
Opening my mouth, the blood begins to be sucked.
—Gulp! Gulp! Gulp! Gulp!
I drink more than four liters of vampire blood in the blink of an eye.
"Delicious..."
Um...?
My vision becomes blurred, and I'm forced to transport to a different place.
I'm standing on top of a building.
I look toward the horizon, and see smoke rising toward the sky until forming thick black clouds. I hear voices, screams and cries of men, children, women and elderly.
I look down at the city.
Cars have collided, concrete from walls has collapsed. In the midst of this scene of destruction, there are vampires laughing sinisterly while commanding hordes of zombie ghouls to attack humans.
Men and women dressed as police and military empty their magazines at the human devourers. But the bullets from weapons don't hurt them.
Human flesh is torn by sharp teeth, and their blood is absorbed by vampires. Few ghouls among the humans use their kagunes to protect themselves from the hordes.
In that brief second I was there, that's all I could observe, because suddenly, I'm dragged from that vision to reality.
I look at the pieces of flesh scattered on the floor.
This... is mr vampire's memory?
Is it a memory from the past?
No. That doesn't make sense.
"It's a vision of the future."
×××
You can read 20 advanced chapters on my Pa treon
pa-treon.com/OlwinMoriarty