Chapter 2442 – 2442. Dark Moon
“Oh, I’ve been found out. It’s a fantastic concoction that would knock out any normal person with just one sip, but it seems it doesn’t work on mages and druids.”
It does work.
It’s just that as soon as I noticed the anomaly, I scattered my mana to block the poison gas.
‘The fact that he didn’t notice me manipulating mana means… his skills are below par.’
That’s why he’s resorting to cheap tricks and bringing in warriors.
“Sharok. Capture those guys alive if you can. If it’s too difficult, you can kill them.”
“Understood, Chieftain. Those who tried to harm our Tiat tribe and played with Nesha…! Garga, I will never forgive you!”
I could feel a tingling fighting spirit from Sharok.
I took out a dagger from my inventory. The warriors seemed surprised by the sudden appearance of the object, but they quickly regained their composure and prepared for battle.
‘It’s just like hunting. Sharok draws attention, and the other warriors support him from the side. It’s a tactic I’ve already seen once.’
I slashed my left palm with the dagger.
Blood flowed down. The blood dripped onto the floor, drawing a magic circle.
“Eisa. Step back.”
“…Are you sure you’re okay? It seems like it’s hard for you to use magic, should I help you?”
“This is nothing.”
Magic being suppressed and interfered with? Compared to when I faced that monster, Akar, directly, this is nothing.
“Kuaaaaaaaah!”
Sharok charged forward, letting out a roar.
[Blood Spike]
The blood that had fallen on the floor instantly increased in volume and turned into spikes. The blood spikes spread in all directions except behind me.
“Is that all you’ve got!”
Sharok advanced, blocking the spikes with his axe. The spikes pierced his limbs, but they didn’t inflict any fatal wounds.
“Sharok. I acknowledge your toughness and willpower. But I can’t say the same for the other warriors.”
“……?!”
From the beginning, Sharok wasn’t my target.
I knew that fighting Sharok head-on would be difficult to take him down in one go. He’s a monster when it comes to enduring. So, I went for the easier option. Killing the others first, not Sharok.
“Looks like you’re alone now, Sharok.”
“You bastard!!!”
The axe came down with a powerful strike. Mana was imbued in it. If it hit, even a vampire’s body would be split in two.
Kwaaang!
The blood pooled on the floor surged up and solidified in an instant, blocking the axe.
“Kuaaaaaaak!”
Sharok didn’t give up. He moved to the side, swinging his axe in a direction where there was no blood wall. It was meaningless. The floor was already covered in blood. A blood wall rose again from the floor, blocking the attack.
“You can’t kill me with that method. To kill me, you’d need overwhelming power to break through the blood wall, or be able to swing your weapon at a speed I can’t react to. Sharok. You’re neither.”
“Shut up, Garga! Why the hell did you come to our tribe and disrupt our peace?!”
“Peace, huh? I guess you could have felt that way. But in the end, you’re all test subjects. Guinea pigs that will be disposed of when the experimenter doesn’t like the results or when the experiment is over. You have no value beyond that.”
“We’re just living day by day!”
“That’s not the reaction I wanted. …Ah, I see. You’re set up not to understand the experiment.”
Sharok started to feel like an NPC rather than a human.
I got tired of dealing with his attacks and waved my hand. Blood magic was activated. The blood wall crumbled and changed its form into swords, slashing Sharok to pieces.
I couldn’t cut Sharok into pieces. If nothing else, Sharok’s toughness was the real deal.
‘I could focus more and invest more mana… but there’s no need for that.’
Sharok was already fatally wounded. The battle was over.
“I, I’ll curse you even in death! Akar will take your life! Ah, ahhh! I can hear it! Akar’s whispering voice…! Th, this is… hatred…?!”
Thud.
Sharok’s head exploded, and his eyeballs popped out and fell to the floor. The eyeballs moved on their own, staring intently at me. It was a very unpleasant gaze, as if observing my existence.
“Akar. Are you watching?”
I stepped on the eyeball, crushing it.
“Mr. Eugene! The corpses! The corpses are wriggling as if they’re alive! This doesn’t feel good at all?!”
“…I can feel the presence of blood. Normally, when death comes, life force should disappear. But the fact that life force remains means… I see. Akar is the source of these guys. They’re made from Akar’s flesh.”
“Is this the time to be calmly analyzing?! Let’s run away! Or burn them!”
“There’s no need to make a fuss. I’ve already taken care of it.”
Blood magic, strictly speaking, isn’t about the red liquid called blood, but about manipulating the life force contained within it.
Life force not disappearing from the corpses and overflowing? That’s actually a good thing. Even if Akar is a god, the one here right now is me, a true-blooded vampire.
[Blood of]
All the blood around me began to gather and compress in front of me.
“Did you compress and store the blood into one?”
“Does it make you uncomfortable? Still, bear with it. This will be our lifeline.”
“It still doesn’t look good. And the smell of blood is strong. Can’t you store it in your inventory?”
“If I put it in the inventory, the magic will be undone. Once the magic is undone, most of the amplified life force will disappear.”
I approached the chieftain, Rag, who had been quietly watching, rolling his eyes and sizing me up. The Blood of followed me, trickling behind me.
I grabbed the chieftain’s neck.
“Cough!”
“The characteristic of a mage known to the public is that they are curious. You’re going to have to satisfy my curiosity.”
I injected some blood into the chieftain’s body.
He was struggling, his neck in my grip, completely unaware of what was happening.
“Cough, cough! I, I understand… let go of my…! Cough!”
I threw the chieftain to the ground. The guy, who had been coughing for a while, got up, his body trembling. Blood flowed from the wound on his neck where my fingernails had dug in.
I smashed the Akar statue in the graveyard. I thought the power that was interfering with magic would disappear… but it didn’t. The subject of the sanctuary wasn’t just the statue.
The chieftain, who had recovered somewhat, trembled.
“I, I knew you were a strong mage, but to do this in Akar’s sanctuary…!”
“Just answer my questions.”
“……”
He looked at me, pressing down on his bleeding neck as if to stop the bleeding. There was fear in his eyes.
“First question. There must be a central control room that manages everything here. Where is it?”
“N, north. The headquarters is on the north rocky mountain.”
“You’re being brief. Do you still not understand the situation?”
“…The headquarters is on the north rocky mountain.”
I nodded. It wasn’t just to hear him use honorifics. These things had to accumulate to gain psychological dominance and make interrogation easier.
“First… shall we go up? The air here is bad.”
I floated into the air and went outside. Once I left the underground graveyard, Akar’s influence disappeared.
I enjoyed the refreshing air and broke the chieftain’s arm.
“Kuaaaaaaak! Why, why are you doing this?!”
“I’m just letting you know what will happen if you don’t answer my questions properly.”
“The headquarters is really on the north rocky mountain!”
“I figured. Is Rahul the person in charge of this project?”
“No. The person in charge is Department Head Ott. He’s a man who proved his abilities at a young age. He also directly handles the work of assisting Rahul.”
“Are Rahul and Ott at the headquarters?”
“Yes. They don’t move from the headquarters unless there’s something special.”
I asked him about other things as well.
I had a rough idea of their power.
In military terms, it was about the size of a battalion. Of course, this was the power excluding Rahul. Rahul himself was a strategic weapon. He was among the top of the 6th grade. Fully prepared, he could even fight a 7th grade.
“How many clones does Rahul have?”
“I don’t know much about Rahul. I’m just a low-level worker in the field….”
That was true.
Those with power and authority don’t work directly in the field. Let alone a chieftain of a tribe? Would they be crazy to do such a thing?
“Is the job of chieftain fun?”
“Yes? Ah, it’s quite fun. We rotate every year… and as you can see, the test subjects are very obedient.”
“There must be guys like you in other tribes as well.”
“No. We only directly govern seven tribes. The other places are too uncivilized to endure.”
“Uncivilized?”
“Most of them are cannibals. And aren’t they disgusting to look at? Well, we intended to make them that way. They’re failures of evolution, but… failures are useful in their own way. Did you know? There were some among them who produced jewels from their bodies.”
Chatter, chatter. Once he started talking, he began to spill everything. It was starting to get annoying, but I endured it because Eisa was diligently recording everything.
“Did you send the corpses to the headquarters?”
“Yes. There’s a genetics lab at the headquarters. They’re probably studying Garga’s genes there too. No, the results might already be out. They have the latest equipment there.”
They analyzed my genetic information. My genetic information will be in the hands of Alpha Tier?
That’s very unpleasant. When I frowned, the chieftain quickly added.
“Th, that information probably hasn’t been sent to the main headquarters. Because of the barrier, we’re cut off from the outside, so we can’t connect with the main headquarters. Connecting with the main headquarters is limited to branches.”
“…When did this experiment start?”
“About three years ago.”
That’s when it happened.
Fires began to blaze throughout the village. The chieftain gasped.
“Damn it! It’s the Borpeng tribe! It’s definitely an attack by the Borpeng tribe!”
“A cannibal tribe, huh? You don’t manage that tribe, do you?”
“Those guys can’t be managed. They were made with human genes, but their way of thinking is closer to beasts. C, can’t we get out of here?”
“The Tiat tribe you were managing is disappearing. Is that okay?”
“Huh? Ah, we’ll just make them again at the headquarters. We’ve already initialized them a few times….”
Thwack!
Eisa’s fist struck the chieftain’s jaw. The chieftain rolled on the ground, writhing in pain.
“You’re saying such annoying things. It doesn’t even seem like you’ve been brainwashed, and you’re like this. I really don’t like Alpha Tier. Mr. Eugene. You’re not going to ignore this, are you?”
“……If I don’t ignore it?”
“Nesha is there. I know that you’re not just a cold-blooded vampire, Mr. Eugene.”
That’s right. Nesha had been on my mind since earlier. I didn’t care about the other tribesmen dying. But Nesha was my woman, even if it was only for a few days.
“Let’s go.”
I used telekinesis to lift myself and them into the air and flew away.
It was too late.
The place they attacked was near the hut where Nesha, Eisa, and I had been staying.
The Borpeng tribesmen, with multiple arms, multiple eyes, oozing pus, or insect-like appearances, were killing people and devouring them on the spot. They had also set fires to cook them.
“New food!!”
The Borpeng tribe charged.
A spear of blood shot out from the Blood of, piercing through the enemies. I passed by their corpses and looked for Nesha.
I found Nesha.
“……”
“Huk….”
I was silent, and Eisa’s eyes widened in disbelief.
Nesha was dismembered and being eaten by the cannibals. The moment I saw Nesha’s head, her eyes still open, my emotions surged.
Crackling.
Crimson lightning crackled from the Blood of.
“Kyaaaaaaak!”
The cannibals, who had been eating, charged at me with crude axes. One of them had a mouth that stretched wide to both sides.
I looked at him.
Before I knew it, a blade of blood shot out from the true Blood of, cutting off the cannibal’s limbs. I slowly dismembered the cannibals’ torsos and made a decision.
“I don’t like either of them.”
Nesha.
Was she a special woman to me? No. I had even thought about leaving her here and leaving. Nesha also didn’t meet me because I was special. She was given to me by the chieftain. She would have been given to another man if it wasn’t me.
“Kuaaaaaaak!”
The cannibal, whose whole body had been sliced, let out a terrible death cry and died. Normally, I would have vented my anger more. But there were plenty of targets other than this guy.
I collected his blood. The blood was sucked into the Blood of.
“I’ll kill them all.”
