Vampire Core: Reborn as the Hot Evil Vampire Lord, But I’m Socially Awkward

- [Vampire Lord Inkume] -

Mirrors.

The Vampire Lord strolls through his gloomy castle, his eyes wandering across the many rooms that he’s found. There’s such a broad variety of chambers and places, many of which seemingly have no clear purpose that he can understand other than to be currently empty monster closets. But others are more clearly defined in their purposes. For example, he found an art gallery full of paintings and portraits — but all of the pictures seem to be missing the people inside of them. Only blank silhouettes remain where there were once men and women standing.

[{Destroyed} Haunted Gallery]

{Ghost Spawning Zone}

Once a house for ten thousand souls, trapped within the paintings displayed here. It is now simply an empty mass grave. In past eras, the souls of those who died within the castle were imprisoned within these paintings and turned toward the service of the master of the castle.

However, they have all long since been released.

Room Effects if Reactivated:

• All [Living Object]s would gain a secondary attack ability, making them more viable in combat.

• Would increase the standard loot drop value of monsters defeated in your castle.

The room is inactive; the castle is destroyed. No monsters are currently spawning here.

An alchemical laboratory, but the empty bottles are all filled with dust and cobwebs. Most of the equipment has been destroyed or thrown over, and any liquids that had remained after the castle siege have long since evaporated.

[{Destroyed} Alchemy Lab]

{Poison and Slime Type Spawning Zone}

This dark series of connected chambers down within the castle’s eastern wing were dedicated to the creation and research of concoctions and potions meant to empower the undead legions of the Vampire Lord.

Room Effects if Reactivated:

• [Poison] and [Slime] type spawning rates would be increased by 100% within the castle grounds.

• [Potions] of many varieties would be added to your castle’s [Treasure Pool] and would be randomly found from slain monsters and pilfered chests.

• All rooms requiring alchemical wares would be restocked.

• All {Poison} traps would be reactivated.

• Would restore your personal access to [Poison]-related abilities.

The room is inactive; the castle is destroyed. No monsters are currently spawning here.

He’s found a small hut and greenhouse, once belonging to somebody who isn’t there anymore, out in the gardens within the castle grounds. The roof has collapsed in, and the door has fallen off of its hinges.

The gardens themselves have gone wild. The once-present paths and walkways are overgrown with ivy and dense trees, turning it into a secluded forest, surrounded by castle walls. The ponds and waters have become black and murky, and there might still be things swimming deep below the surfaces, but he couldn’t identify them in the stagnation.

[{Destroyed} The Blackflower Gardens]

{Plant and Water Type Spawning Zone}

Outside within the castle grounds sits this once beautiful garden, full of rare flowers and exotic plants collected from all around the world at the behest of the Vampire Lord by his dutiful servants. However, it has long since been overtaken by the very plants that were brought here. Its caretaker is missing.

Room Effects if Reactivated:

• [Beast] and [Plant] type spawning rates would be increased by 100% within the castle grounds.

◦ Beast and Plant monsters would now rarely spawn within [The Haunted Forest].

◦ Rare alchemical ingredients would grow abundantly in the garden.

• Your personal [Beast]-related abilities would now also work on [Plant]-type monsters.

The room is inactive; the castle is destroyed. No monsters are currently spawning here.

But one thing he has found everywhere he goes throughout the castle are mirrors. Every few rooms he finds one. Either there is a small one sitting on a broken end table in a boudoir or a massive floor-to-ceiling mirror that is large enough to reflect a giant within a grand chamber. There is one next to his coffin’s pedestal too. They’re all around the castle. He just can’t really tell why. It seems pointless for a vampire's castle to have mirrors, let alone so many.

— Then again, he could say the same about the windows.

Inkume stops, a flash of red catching his attention.

Oh. It’s just some old fabric from a wall rug.

He sighs, rubbing his face. His mind has been darting today. Any time he sees something even vaguely red, his attention shoots toward it in an instant.

He’s starving.

The only blood he’s tasted since being reborn as a vampire is a few drops from that rag he sucked on once. That was three nights ago now. He’s pretty bad at being a vampire. But what is he going to do? Kill innocent people? He’d toy with the idea of eating the wolves, but now he sold Snatch that whole spiel about him recruiting them, so that’s out too now. He’s put himself in another fine mess with his big mouth. Maybe he really will have to hunt some rats.

As the Vampire Lord walks, his thoughts wander to the idea of blood, to the sight of it, to the smell of it. He’s practically salivating. God, he wants to eat someone so badly.

‘Someone’?

— Something.

Inkume corrects himself in his thoughts. His mind is getting a little fuzzy on the edges.

Before he knows it, he looks up again, having no idea where he is. He was just thinking about blood for a while there and got lost in a daze.

The room around him is large and circular, sitting on the side of a tower. It dangles out precariously over the edge of the castle, some many, many stories up above off of the ground. A massive, broken telescope sits in the center of the room, aimed up toward the sky.

It’s an old, forgotten observatory.

He humors himself, walking through the space and looking into the broken telescope in the center of the large, half-dome room after dusting the eyepiece off. But he can’t really see anything through it, at least until the fat owl that has made its nest up top scoots to the side. He was staring at its bottom from below, apparently. Now all he can see instead is the blurry, broken sky through fractured glass. For a second, he thinks that there’s a silhouette in the distance that he can see up in the sky through the telescope, but that’s impossible. By the time he focuses his vision, it’s just the normal night sky. Maybe the clouds made an odd shape for a moment there?

[{Destroyed} The Astral Observatory]

{Mystical Spawning Zone}

Jutting out of the castle’s northern wing is the astral observatory. It’s a large, round stone chamber with an exotic telescope built into its core that is large enough to see far into the heavens in order to preempt their machinations before they arrive in the mortal world.

Room Effects if Reactivated:

• [Hidden]

The room is inactive; the castle is destroyed. No monsters are currently spawning here.

Maybe he really could eat some rats?

The Vampire Lord can’t think about anything else at this point. He’s so hungry. He’s even starting to feel a little weak on his legs. The idea of trying to turn into a bat to get around easier seems like far more effort than he can muster.

Fine. Enough. He’s going to have to do away with his pride. If he has to eat a few rats, he’ll eat a few rats. That’ll tide him over until he sorts this mess out.

“Snatch,” calls Inkume, realizing he hadn’t seen the ghost since last night. When he woke up, she was gone from the coffin, much to his surprise. She’s great at catching small critters. He could really use her help right now.

However, the ghost doesn’t respond to his call, not appearing next to him like she always does.

A hot pulse runs through him, and he stumbles. His hand catches a bronzed metal frame to hold himself upright, his palm pressing against the cold glass of a mirror.

Something moves inside of the mirror glass — a silhouette of a faraway person. But he doesn’t notice that, being barely able to stay standing. Something feels wrong.

His red eyes begin to dilate. His pupils go wide.

! [WARNING] !

You are entering starvation mode.

Your magical abilities are dwindling. The castle cannot sustain itself and you without a regular supply of magical blood. Your minions are desummoning. Your powers are draining. You will soon become fully feral if you do not consume lifeblood within the hour. If you still do not manage to feed before the night is over, your magical reserves will run dry, and both you and the castle will perish forever.

Time Until Sunrise: 09:59:59

- [Snatch] -

The ghost howls. She can feel the Master’s call, but she can’t go to him.

— Nothing can be heard from her other than a tiny, high-pitched squeak.

She’s devolved, having run out of magic. Her once drippy, almost human-sized shape is now nothing more than a small streak of droplets that run through the cracks of a pair of bricks.

The castle is running out of magical power.

It was fine on nothing for a long time, just digesting the ambient natural magic of the world to sustain itself, her, and a few other nick-nacks. But now with the Master being resurrected and consuming so much of its power himself to maintain his new life, there isn’t enough energy left for her to sustain herself with if he doesn’t add more power to their reserves. Essentially, they’re burning more metaphorical oil than the lantern is being fed with.

She’d feel despair at the matter, but Snatch is confident that the Master knows what he’s doing. She won’t question his plan, even if she’s about to die-die, because she has faith that she won’t. The new Master is very diligent and sharp. He has a scheme, she’s sure.

The ghost still doesn’t quite understand his reasoning for not simply devouring the entire village in one fell swoop, but it isn’t her place to question things! She just does what she’s told, and now she’s even being praised for it. It’s finally all starting to look up for her! She’s so glad that the new Master finally came to them.

If only she wasn’t too weak to answer his summons. “Forgive me, Maaaster~,” dribbles the splotch of ooze on the floor, evaporating away more and more by the minute.

- [Azalea] -

The old castle.

She made it. Azalea holds herself to stay warm, stepping into the large front entryway of the crumbling ruin. She’s been told for her entire life not to come near here, starting with her mother’s grim stories. It’s dangerous. There are things here that the conventional mind can’t explain away — things that are hungry. There are things in the castle that have sharp, gnashing teeth and razor claws that would like nothing more than to take little children into the night and devour them whole. Those are the sorts of things that lived in the old ruin up on the hill.

“H-hello?” calls the priestess timidly, stepping inside. Her voice doesn’t seem to get very far, being swallowed by the space that is larger and grander than anything she’s ever seen before. It’s crumbling, hole-pocked ceiling is higher up than ten village houses stacked together. The columns that fight like old bones to hold it aloft are like those of a giant, and the gargoyles that adorn them seem to watch her like bats on high perches from above as she takes another step into the ruin.

The door slams behind her, shutting loudly.

Azalea screams in surprise, lifting a hand straight toward it. A soft, iridescent glow of many pastel colors that all stem from white emanates from her palm — holy magic. It’s no good against things like wolves, but against ghosts and spirits it ought to be very effective.

— Not that she’s ever tried.

Apart from the three years she spent training to reach the minimum qualifications to become a village priestess in a place as remote as this one, she’s never used her magic much to do anything grander than heal a farmer’s cut arm or mend her brother’s head after he hit it on something again. She can heal small wounds, the kinds that people get working out in the forests and fields, but that’s about it. In theory, she knows how to repel a lesser evil. But she’s never been in a fight before with anything bigger than her little brother Cvet, and even those she seems to always lose. The dumb asshole grew bigger than her a few years ago.

Gulping, Azalea turns forward again and keeps walking, the glow of her spell illuminating the way like a torch.

It must’ve been the wind.

She can hear it howling throughout the old castle, traveling in and out through its many breaks and holes. The place is dilapidated. As old as it is though, it is a miracle of sorts that it even has managed to stand upright in the state it is in now, rather than fully collapsing into a heap of rocks. For her entire life, she’s seen its silhouette in the distance and wondered how it could be possible.

The villagers never spoke of it, and when she would ask them, they would be quick to hush her again, lest the night hear the foolish questions of a child and get dark ideas. Her mother, while she was still around, strictly reprimanded her if she ever so much as looked toward it.

“Inkume?” calls Azalea, holding her other hand by her mouth as she takes a random path and heads up the right side of a grand staircase that spreads down along both sides of the entrance hall. The left staircase is collapsed, resembling a broken fang.

— Something moves.

A girl?

Azalea stops, looking quickly as she only catches a glance of a darting silhouette at the end of the dark, gloomy corridor. “Wait!” cries the priestess, looking after the stranger, who runs to the side down a hallway and vanishes. But after catching up and standing at the spot, Azalea doesn’t see anything except her own reflection in the mirror that she’s arrived at.

Did she imagine that just now? Azalea is sure that she saw somebody. But maybe it was just her own reflection?

Wary, the priestess' eyes look down the next hallway.

No, wait. There she is. She sees her. There really is a girl standing there.

The other girl is young, hardly past her late adolescence, judging by her build. A dress in a very old style that Azalea has not seen anywhere except in drawings in tomes in the church archives is wrapped around her gaunt frame. The strange girl’s long, straight hair is tied up on either side of her head into two unwound large tails that loop into a series of ornamental hairpins. “Wait! Excuse me!” calls the priestess, waving to the other person. “Please wait!”

Azalea hurries down the dark hallway, the glow of her spell illuminating the tattered, frayed carpets and rugs that hang on the walls, doing their best to cover up the pockmarks and sores in the brickwork like loose bandages. Broken vases litter the moonlit corridor, together with the faces of destroyed busts and sculptures — making them look like mangled corpses. The decorations block off many, many doorways, leaving only one path to follow. It’s like somebody put them there on purpose to have her come this way.

But at the end of the corridor she arrives at, there’s nobody there again, just like before.

Azalea finds herself staring into another foggy mirror, confused. She stops, looking at herself. Mirrors are very rare and very expensive, especially out here. She hasn’t seen herself in full in a long, long time now. Mother used to have a mirror, but Azalea sold that a long time ago to the merchant after she left them to pay for food for her little brother and herself.

It’s not the time or the place, but Azalea can’t help but notice that she herself has grown a lot since the last time she saw herself. For a brief, confusing instant, she almost thinks she sees her mother staring back at her. But then the details come into focus in the darkness, and Azalea notices that the eyes and face are wrong and more like her father’s. She did always take more after him than her brother had.

Something rattles. Metal.

Afraid, Azalea slowly turns her head back around, looking down to the left of the T-intersection where she was just at.

There are suits of armor standing there behind her now — dozens of them. Curiously, she notices that they are all blocking off various doors and paths she hadn’t tried yet.

She turns her head, looking back behind herself, down the way she came from to start with.

That corridor that she had just come through, the one with all the broken statues and rugs — it’s gone.

Instead, a closed, solid wall sits behind her only a foot away, as if it had always been there.

The castle’s layout changed while she looked away. It keeps doing this to her.

“What is this place…?” mutters Azalea to herself, confused and panicked and not really sure what to do. Her mind is screaming at her to run and that she’s in danger. She shouldn’t be here. But the feelings of Azalea’s heart are overriding the hammering fear that it itself is pumping through her body. Sweat runs down her cold palms.

She has to be here. It’s the right thing to do. She needs to help.

A noise.

Azalea looks. It’s her again — the other girl.

The young girl with the very old clothes stands there in the distance, shrouded in a nebulous void. Very cautiously and slowly now, watching everything around herself as she goes, Azalea wanders that way. Slower now than before, her eyes nervously glance at the suits of armor next to her. They’re empty, hollow. But if she didn’t know better, the priestess would insist that they’re turning their helmets to watch her as she creeps past them.

“Please wait. I need to find Inkume,” says Azalea, convinced that she isn’t hallucinating. The other girl doesn’t run away this time. “Do you know him?” she asks, cautiously approaching the stranger with her glowing hand held outstretched so she can navigate around the holes and pitfalls in the crumbling floor. “Please.”

This time, the other girl stays where she is. Her mouth moves, but Azalea doesn’t hear a sound from her pale, flat face.

The priestess steps closer, looking, her heart striking desperately inside of her chest. Her legs are shaking, and her knees are coming close to knocking together as they rattle. It’s all she can do to keep her sweat-filled boots planted firmly where they are as she sees the secret.

The other girl, the one in the fancy dress, isn’t really there at the end of the hallway.

Azalea looks into the mirror, reflecting back a scared priestess her way with only a feeble light in her hand that does very, very little to compete against the total blackness that has consumed her. The mirror doesn’t reflect the castle anymore, only herself, surrounded by blackness. Like foul blood filling a carcass, the night has coagulated here and stiffened into something unpliable and thick.

And somewhere between Azalea’s real body and her reflection stands the other girl inside of the mirror down below her at chest height. It’s like she’s on the other side of the glass. She’s inside the mirror, but not outside of it. Her mouth moves as she says something again, but Azalea can’t hear it.

“A… a ghost?” mutters the priestess nervously. “Are you a ghost?” repeats Azalea. The little hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, the tips of her long ears freezing cold as the blood of her body stops reaching through the thin veins inside of her extremities. She’s read about ghosts before, but she’s never seen one for real.

They’re trapped spirits, lost within the world of the living, unable to move on to the well of souls where they can be reborn.

The ghost’s clothes, her hair, the way her court-makeup has been dolled on — these things all hint to her being from a time that has now passed a long while ago. The spirit must be trapped here, bound to the mirrors for whatever reason.

As a priestess, it would be a part of Azalea’s duty to help this spirit move on from its resting place. But that needs to wait.

“I need to find Inkume. He’s hurt,” explains the elf. The ghost keeps moving her lips, saying something. But there’s no sound. “Do you know him?”

She can’t hear her. Despite that, the ghost keeps talking.

Azalea leans in closer and closer toward the mirror glass, until her face is almost pressed up flat against it. Her breath fogs up the mirror, obscuring her own reflection, but not that of the ghost that hovers an inch away from her on the other side of the wall.

It speaks again now that she’s close enough to hear her.

— An icy hand reaches out of the mirror, breaking through the surface as if it were a pool of water. The small, freezing cold palm lightly holds the side of Azalea’s face.

“Behind you,” whispers the ghost into Azalea’s ear.

Horrified by so many things at once, Azalea screams in surprise, jumping back and spinning around to flail her arms in terror as she swipes her hands over her own face as if a spider had landed on her. Her terrified expression looks at the mirror again. It’s empty. The ghost is gone. Azalea looks behind herself.

Everything has changed again.

The corridor she was just in is completely gone. She’s somewhere else now. The castle changed its layout and took her somewhere deep within itself while she was distracted — no, lured.

It brought her here.

Immediately, a hissing black silhouette barrages out of the darkness, slamming into Azalea and sending her tumbling down over the ground as it easily overpowers her. The priestess cries out in terror, kicking and fighting uselessly as two strong hands grab her wrists and pin them down to the floor. The magic of her holy spell flickers out because of the tightness of the grip wrapped down below her hands, constricting the blood from them. A pale face with barred, razor-sharp fangs hovers over her. Blood-red eyes shine alight like wildfire on a moonless horizon as an almost serpentine hiss fills the air. A heavy weight holds her down, pinning her back flat against the broken stonework.

“Inkume!” calls Azalea, immediately recognizing the stranger who saved her. But he’s different now, changed. The regal, almost noble features he had carried have all vanished and now have been replaced by something dangerous and wild. His eyes flash with a killing intent — a hunger — that she recognizes as an animal’s. He bares down over her. “It’s me, Azalea!” she explains desperately, unable to fight him off. He’s so much stronger than she is that it isn’t even close to being possible. “We met the other night, by the river,” explains the elf as quickly as she can, shaking her head. Her long ears flop from side to side, slapping against the floor either way.

After a second, his eyes soften, and he recoils, pulling back. The vampire lets go of her, instead immediately clutching his contorting face in agony. “Why…?” he starts, his long, sharp nails digging into his own skin as he falls back off of her and rolls onto his knees. He tries to crawl away, trying to fight something back that’s inside him. “Why are you here, Azalea?!” shouts the vampire at her over his shoulder. He barely rises back up to his feet, not able to stand straight anymore. One hand clutches the wall, not as if to hold himself upright but rather to hold himself back. His fingers dig straight through the old brickwork, breaking off a piece of it that crumbles to dust inside of his clenched fist.

The priestess slowly gets back up, lifting her hands placatingly toward him as she starts to approach him like she would any mad creature. “You were hurt at the village. I came to help,” she explains. Very gently, keeping a respectful distance, she tries with one hand to reach out his way.

He strikes her arm away and falls to his knees. “Run,” growls the stranger straight away at her, his hand covering half of his face as he keels over. One eye remains human and whole in shape, but the other obscured half of the hunter behind his fingers glares at her with killing intent through the shadowy gaps. “You need to run,” he explains in a tone that isn’t a suggestion but a warning. “I haven’t fed in days. I can’t stop myself anymore, Azalea,” says the vampire. “I’ll hurt you. Go!”

Azalea steps back, the intensity and volume of his words breaking through all of her built-up resolve as she looks at the wild animal, barely able to stop itself anymore from going mad and coming after her.

It’s going to kill her. She has to get out of here — that’s what the voice in the back of her head is screaming.

Just like ghosts or really anything other than a small slime or a goblin, she’s never seen a vampire before, but she knows what they do and what they need — the blood of the living. Vampires are wretched, foul monsters that will remorselessly steal infants from their cradles and husbands from their wives to nourish themselves, to gorge. They’re cruel, evil, spiritually misaligned things that the world of the living is better off without. For as long as there have been people, there have been stories of hungry beasts that stalk the darkness outside the light of the fires kept by tribes and societies, waiting to snatch the careless and the unlucky.

— And here is one before her now, exactly such a specimen.

As a priestess of the Holy-Church, it is her duty to protect the goodness of Heaven’s creation by destroying any such befoulment that walks the night. It is her sacred duty to protect her spiritual flock from the wolves that would take her precious sheep away from her.

She sees all of those things, yes. But she also sees, through the lens of her pounding heart, something else.

Azalea sees a monster that is quite literally starving to death, because despite having had the chance to take her twice now, both times it has resisted. Both times the vampire could have harmed her, it hadn’t. The stories are likely true about other examples of the species; she doesn’t know, but this one here is still more man than beast. She can see it in the single eye that is red, yes, but is fighting off the change being forced onto it by the deep hunger. Wordlessly, in that second as she watches him suffering, it pleads with her to leave as fast as she can, before something unspeakable happens — something that the man inside the skin of the beast is resisting with the last of his will.

Inkume lurches, falling off the wall toward her in a stumble as his body rises up from the ground. It almost looks like a puppet being moved, like something is attached to him and forcing him to start lumbering her way. He’s pulling against it, but there isn’t much pull left to his resistance.

She lifts her hands again, his way, like before. As a priestess, it is a part of her duty to destroy evil and put undead to rest.

But it is also her mission to protect the living, good things of the world and care for them until their time comes to meet Heaven’s desires for their lives’ ends. This man here before her is clearly still one of them, at least in a part large enough to matter to her. Even if her brother doesn’t see it, nor do the rest of the villagers, she does. She sees him, lost within a maze inside of himself that he’s built up to contain an inner demon that he — the man in the body — is chained together with. Azalea imagines that this horrible self-infliction is not designed to do anything but spare the rest of the world from him.

So selfless.

Azalea, her one boot having stepped back a part of the way, replants her feet firmly forward and walks toward him as he writhes like the possessed.

She makes her decision.

“…It’s alright,” consoles the priestess softly, reaching out again and laying her hand on top of his. His fingers bulge and crack beneath her hands that do little to cover his. “You saved me,” she explains, looking at him as he lifts his tormented eyes toward her. He’s an inch away from breaking. “Let me save you,” offers Azalea, her other hand undoing the upper stringing of her robe’s collar and pulling the simple fabric down over her shoulder. The loose, white cloth falls down far enough to matter. She turns her exposed neck toward him, pulling a strand of her auburn hair away to the side.

Azalea closes her eyes, feeling only the coldness of his large hand beneath her fingers and a single drop of nervous sweat running down her now bare skin that she has never shown any man before. “J-Just enough for you to manage, okay?” she says nervously. “I’m trusting y -”

Before she can finish that thought, Azalea immediately releases from herself a pained, sharp, but confusingly ecstatic breath from her deepest core. Her harpish exhalation is visible in the cold air as fog releases from her parted lips. Without a second’s hesitation more and before she can finish, his hands take her to him with force. Her body fully presses against him as both a man and a beast — unable to resist their primal hunger — pull her into their shared possession at the same time.

He bites her.

Fresh, stinging ache runs down through her bones as two fangs thrust into her porcelain skin in an unnatural defilement of the sanctuary of her body. Her hands immediately grab his shirt and cloak, clawing down tightly as she holds on, resisting the sudden feeling of herself falling down that pulsates through her mind. A strange heat courses throughout Azalea from head to toe in waves, crashing over and over her again and again in an almost itching, burning pulse that contrastingly makes her extremities fall cold and tingle. Her fingers and toes feel icy and cold, but her body feels like its starting to sweat. All the warmth from her arms and legs is being pulled into her chest. It feels like a fresh, high fever is overtaking her by the second. Everything is going numb on the outside, but it also burns hotly on the inside. Azalea feels something running along her neck; it’s wet.

Her breath pushes out from her lips in only the second exhalation of that single moment that seems to last forever as her rushing heartbeat and lungs misalign with one another. The vampire’s hands clutch her more selfishly tightly than she’s ever been held before. One arm is held around her back with a grip that Azalea knows she could never hope to pull free from if she tried to. His other hand holds the side of her head closely to him. His fingers wrap down over her skull below her hair, inadvertently pulling tightly on the long strands that flow through the gaps of his fingers.

She doesn’t know what it is — maybe some kind of venom, but an electrification fills Azalea, running down her insides from the top-down. It overpowers her instinctual desire to fight and scream, and run. The priestess grows weaker and weaker by the moment inside of his arms for so many reasons. Azalea's weakened legs shuffle below herself over the stonework, having nowhere to go but feeling like they need to move. Her mind is going blank; the fear is receding. Her form writhes, trapped in his grasp where she feels like it belongs. She feels good. Something bubbly is in her head.

He drinks more of her. She can feel him in her neck, draining her, taking her essence. With each draw from her body, Azalea’s shoulders fall a little more slack than before. She leans her head forward against the forceful monster, barely able to lift an arm up to the side of his head to stroke his hair.

His clothes smell like… him. It seems like an obvious thing, not worth mentioning really. But her nose pressed down against his shirt breathes in deeply, taking in the smell of the man she really just met, for all intents and purposes. She places it somewhere deep inside of her memory, and together with it comes the radiance that fills her body. It all interlinks and paints the mirage of a perfect man that she's saving who she’s creating in her mind.

He’s still going.

The priestess’ knees shake and then give out beneath her as a new wave of that burning feeling inside of her saps her strength away. Her eyes start to go dark. She falls down, not able to stand anymore by herself. But she only falls far enough for his arms to support her now in full. They slump over together onto the floor, with him on his knees and her laid out over them.

He drinks.

There’s nothing left in her, it feels like. But he’s still taking even more.

Then, finally, his hand around her head loosens its grip somewhat. It’s still holding her, but not as desperately now as it was before, as he’s already gotten most of what he desires and what she isn’t going to take back.

“It must have been hard for you,” consoles the priestess quietly, feeling an emptiness in her blanking mind as her senses begin to fade. She can feel a throbbing in her body, every weakening strike of her heart pumping another rush of herself into him through her. She’s a little scared he won’t stop, that he’ll take everything from her, not just her blood. Some strangely illucid part of her almost wants him to. She’s lightheaded and in a body-rush at the same time. Her senses are gone. Azalea is out of the life force that she needs to stay upright and awake, but her mind has just enough juice to continue to exist in a heated, feverish dream-state delirium for a few seconds longer. “— Being alone for so long.”

She exhales again.

Everything goes fully dark.

The elf’s body rattles one last time, her fingers splaying open wide as a final surge of the toxin fills her from empty head to her curling, empty toes, and then Azalea fades away.

— Happy.

- [Vampire Lord Inkume] -

What is he doing?

Inkume’s eyes go wide.

He tears himself off of the priestess, his teeth sliding out from inside of her neck. His grip over her loosens. His claws had dug in so tightly that they tore through her robe. His fingers pressed so firmly that her arm and side are red and bruising. Blood runs down her neck in a single streak.

[Vampiric Drain]

Active Ability

• While Active: Using your razor-sharp fangs, you can drink the blood directly out of the body of a living creature. This is the most efficient way for a vampire to feed, allowing a full, direct extraction of fluid with nearly no loss or oxidation of the liquid.

[Ecstatic Infusion]

Passive Ability

• While Active: In order to stop your prey from resisting being consumed, your fangs secrete an extremely serotonergic venom that releases a cascade of neural firings within the victim’s synapses. The resulting intoxication will result in extreme feelings of sensual ecstasy and dopaminurgic connection for the duration of the feeding.

[Experience Points Gained]

You have drank a large amount of the blood of a young priestess!

It’s magical properties are significant but untapped as of the moment.

*★✧+- [LEVEL UP!] -+✧★*

You are now level 102!

You are now level 103!

NEW ABILITY

[Forbidden Tongues]

Passive Ability

• You now are able to fluently understand, speak, and read in any dead language of the world!

NEW ABILITY

[Summon Skeleton Maid]

Active Ability

• While within your castle grounds, you are able to summon a skeleton maid who will take care of all manner of household duties, such as sweeping, cleaning, and washing the laundry.

Oh God.

The Vampire Lord looks down at the quiet thing in his hands. She’s not moving.

Everything shakes, the castle walls rumbling and quaking as Inkume sits there on the ground, holding the priestess’ sagging body in his arms.

Is she dead?

His thoughts fire immediately, feeling incredibly sharp and agile all of a sudden in full contrast to the last odd hours. It’s like the lights in his brain have been turned back on. A thousand ideas race through him at once as he looks around the room that he doesn’t recognize at all. His eyes are sharper than they’ve ever been. He can see every crack in every brick. The room is full of mirrors on all sides; there are hundreds of them. He hadn’t even noticed before in his frenzy. They’re on the walls and the ceiling, strung from the rafters, and leaned against the doorways.

The mystical light of a fading moon cascades in through the windows, bouncing off of each and every one of them, making the dark room so much brighter than any other space within the shaking castle. Inkume watches as broken shards of glass rise up off of the floor, drifting back into the mirrors as if time were reversing.

Broken bricks in the walls tighten their forms and restructure themselves back into perfect alignment, pushed by an unseen force.

The castle’s thousand doors rattle and slam, opening and closing a hundred times over by themselves as if an army of ghosts were raging all around him.

A ripple runs through the broken brickwork floor, causing it to rise and fall unnaturally, like a wave of water. Him and the floor-set mirrors rise up and clatter back down again. Destroyed windows behind him clatter, repairing themselves the same as the old mirrors had done.

Wild, cascading energy runs through the castle, pouring out from him in the shape of bats and screaming skulls, in the shape of whispering ghouls and shrieking spirits with faces that meld together into abominations.

*★✧+- [Dungeon Core Functionality Restored] -+✧★*

The castle awakens! You have consumed enough blood to restore the base functionality of your dungeon!

Status: Active Boss Spawning: Inactive

Existing Room Management: Active (Minimum) Monster Spawning: Active (Minimum)

New Room Spawning: Active (Minimum) Traps: Inactive (Manual Reactivation Required)

Trap Spawning: Inactive Treasure Spawning: Inactive

Inkume looks at the window and then down at the priestess.

— Her chest rises ever so slightly. She’s breathing.

The Vampire Lord sighs in relief. He really thought for a second that he had just killed someone there. It’s not that he isn’t thankful for her, but what the hell was she thinking, just barging into a vampire’s castle of all places? Why is everyone in this world insane?

This could have gone so badly, so quickly.

“Master!” calls a gravely voice from the side excitedly. Snatch suddenly pops into existence just next to the Vampire Lord. “I got my body back! I heard you calling before, and -”

The sweaty ghost freezes, looking at the partially exposed human draped over Inkume’s arms. Snatch’s features contort, and she suddenly screams, her eyes bulging wide as she cries out into the night. “It should have been me!” howls the spirit and then vanishes again just as quickly as she arrived.

Inkume stares at the blank spot where Snatch just was.

“…I don’t know how much longer I can do this for,” he says, sighing. He pulls Azalea’s robe back up over her shoulder and rises to his feet.

He looks down at the elf as he carries her away. What is he supposed to do with her? He can’t bring her back to the village, not after last time. He can never go back there ever again after that mess, especially with Azalea looking like this. This is a bad look — a very, very bad look.

There was some kind of bedroom chamber on the way here somewhere. He vaguely remembers seeing it.

The Vampire Lord carries his castle’s sleeping guest there as the fortress writhes and groans around him, as if it were a living thing waking up from a deep sleep and stretching itself out.

The bedroom door that he had opened just an hour before, having revealed it to be a destroyed ruin, is now fully restored and in good shape. The walls and the floor are both repaired. The shattered, decayed furniture is standing there well and whole. A burning fire crackles in a small stone hearth against the wall, filling the cozy space with a warmth quite rare for the old castle. That welcome heat is kept inside the tapestry-adorned walls now that the windows are fixed and even sealed in part with heavy curtains. In the center of the small chamber is a large, banistered bed.

[Dungeon Safe Room, Bedroom - Thirteenth Floor]

In order to preserve its magic, the castle has many rooms that do not have dedicated monsters or traps inside of them. These 'safe rooms' are often chosen by adventurers who delve into dungeons for extended stays as home bases while within the depths.

This particular chamber is a small, secluded bedroom overlooking the forest toward the south from high up in the castle. It is furnished with luxurious, if not outdated, amenities and has a deep, glowing warmth held inside of it. It feels like an unusually kind place.

Room Effects:

• Monsters and Traps will not spawn inside of safe rooms.

• Monsters will avoid entering safe rooms unless directly provoked.

The room is active! No monsters can spawn here.

The Vampire Lord lies the priestess down there, boots and all, simply covering her with the remanifested sheets.

By any other standards, it would be quite the nice room. It’s regal, noble, and elegantly furnished. There isn’t a single ghoul, zombie, or monster anywhere he can see. It should be safe enough here.

But he doesn’t want to just leave her lying here unconscious in this castle, though. He doesn’t know it all that well. Who knows what is lurking in here that he hasn’t discovered yet? There’s for sure one or two monsters that would love to find a fresh meal just lying around.

Besides, the priestess is certainly going to be confused when she wakes up, and he might not be here then.

Inkume almost hates to admit it at this point, but maybe one of his new useless abilities is actually going to help him here.

Inkume has used: [Summon Skeleton Maid]

Nothing happens.

The Vampire Lord stands there, looking around himself.

Still, nothing happens.

Did he do it wrong? Confused, he waits there with crossed arms.

Then, not a minute later, as he begins rereading the ability description to see if he missed something, he can hear the sound of something slapping against the stone corridor outside — running feet hurry down the castle hallway.

The door bursts open, slamming against the wardrobe behind it as a disheveled mess of a… person… runs in and then stops. They hold themselves against the wall, panting for breath as if they just ran a marathon, despite very clearly not having lungs.

A skeleton stays there in the doorway, wearing a soaking wet, grimy, and very frilly maid’s dress. She’s holding a wet feather duster.

Seeing him, the skeleton immediately stands upright and then strikes a cute model’s pose, exaggeratedly kicking one leg up behind itself and the other holding the feather duster over its angled hollow face as it flashes him a peace sign. “Welcome home, Mas~ter~!” says a surprisingly squeaky and sing-song girl’s voice that comes from her lipless face. In his mind’s eye, he can see the emojis and cutely drawn hearts drifting past her bony silhouette.

— Inkume doesn’t really know what else he expected, honestly.

The skeleton maid grabs her uniform skirt with both hands, lifting the edges up as it starts to spin in a twirl, moving a little further around the rotation with each word as it strikes a variety of deeply exaggerated poses as if in the middle of a glamorous photo shoot. “How can kawaii Fi-Fi help yooou~?” she asks, finishing the question by blowing a kiss his way with an outstretched finger in a far too forward bend that he is sure would show an exorbitant amount of skin if the skeleton actually still had any.

The Vampire Lord holds his hands together, his index fingers tapping against each other as he stares at this latest monstrosity.

“Hi,” says Inkume, raising an eyebrow. “Please don’t speak in the third person, Fi… Fi,” says Inkume, not sure if he got that name right.

“Oooh~” replies the squeaky skeleton, fanning herself with one hand. “Yes, Master~!” she sings.

“Also, please never do that again either,” notes the Vampire Lord. “Why are you all wet?”

The skeleton looks at him and then down at herself, as if studying herself for a second. After a minute, she looks back at him. “I was down out at the bottom of the pond when you summoned me,” she replies. “Sorry, Master.” Seeing his questioning expression not change, she adds on. “— That’s where I died.”

“I see,” replies Inkume. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“That’s okay, Ma~ Ma~ Master,” replies the skeleton in a little song, stepping into the room. She grabs the edges of her maid’s dress. “Would you like me to slip into something more… comfortable?” she asks, pulling away the fabric to reveal its utterly fleshless thigh.

There’s a popping sound nearby.

Snatch remanifests inside of the room, hovering next to Inkume. “I’m back. I’m sorry for my outburst, Master,” explains the ghost. “I just got -”

Snatch stops, looking at the undressing skeleton and then back at him.

“Damn you, Fi-Fi!” howls the ghost, pointing a finger at the maid, and then vanishes again a second later, an ethereal scream traveling through the still rumbling and moving castle.

The Vampire Lord takes in a long, deep inhalation and then looks back toward the skeleton. He’s going to need to find Snatch in a second and calm her down. She seems to have gotten some misimpressions. But first, this. “That’s okay.” He gestures behind himself to the bed where the priestess is lying. “Can I trust you to look after her while I’m away?” asks the Vampire Lord. “Keep her safe.”

The skeleton maid salutes him with two fingers and then jumps up into the air, the feather duster making it look like she’s a cheerleader with only one pompom. “I’ll~ do~ my~ best!” exclaims the undead entity, jumping and posing with each word she sings until she finishes with a flourish, shaking out the old, damp feather duster.

Literal, actual twinkling sparkles fly out of it and drift past her like glitter. The reflections bounce off of her skull.

“…Good,” is all that Inkume can dryly manage to reply with before he walks out of the door and closes it firmly behind him.

— Very firmly.

He pulls on it a few times, making sure it’s extremely tightly shut.

Ghosts and spirits fly past him, gliding down the corridor by the dozens as they race around the castle and then shoot out toward the night in some sort of macabre celebration of the castle’s revival.

The air is filled with noise and chaos. It’s like a party.

— He does not care for parties.

“Snatch,” calls Inkume, walking down the corridor.

It takes a second, but then a blobby splotch of a face appears out of a door’s keyhole, looking his way in a melting grimace. Her sharkish fangs drip and float around her very obvious and somewhat exaggerated frown. Inkume holds out a hand toward her. “I need your help with something,” asks the Vampire Lord.

She pouts, almost to his surprise. “Ask Fi-Fi or your elf. They’re better than me,” replies the ghost, sinking back into the lock.

“Please, Snatch. As if I could rely on anyone more than you,” he says. “— my favorite.”

Her leery, unsure eyes widen. Her face pops back out of the door, looking at him again as her features rubberband back into those of a person’s rather than a shape’s. The ghost’s obvious breathing comes to ear again as she smiles and wobbles. Snatch carefully reaches out, grabbing his hand as he helps her out of her hiding spot.

He doesn’t actually need any help with anything right now. But the Vampire Lord just makes a few random things up on the spot as they walk together down the castle’s reinvigorated corridors for her sake. By the time she’s done helping him do these odd jobs, he almost has more trouble than ever before trying to dismiss her away for his daytime rest as she clings to him.

- [The Village] -

The night blazes alight with dark magic, the glowing horizon cresting with a hollow, deathly pale blue aurora behind the fading moon, which hangs high in the sky behind the silhouette of the changing, dark castle on the hills.

The villagers panic, running amongst themselves, staring out of windows, and gathering in the market square to look out toward the distance as the specter of a beast long since slain rises from its ancient grave. The shining at the end of the world crests and falls. Magical illuminations rise and shoot up into the air in the forms of thousands of screaming and lamenting ghosts that, in the makeup of their collection, form great, swirling pillars. Like whirlpools torn from the sea, they dance out over the world of the living, creating a great gale. Shockwaves of power blast out over the forest, the million trees bowing and bending their sharp crowns as if they were lowered teeth of kneeling monsters. Energy radiates out in a light so cold and bright from the old castle that it comes so far as to reach their very doorsteps here.

Many of the people cover their eyes, many their mouths, and many their ears as they scream amongst themselves in panic and terror. The stories of their grandfather’s grandfathers come to the forefront of their minds as the pillars of ghosts shoot toward the night in sharp streaks that look like the claw marks of a terrible thing in the sky. It’s like a demon has eviscerated the end of the world in a single strike. All of the ghosts rise toward the crescent moon that floats over the world like the blade of the reaper’s scythe.

And the silhouette of the castle itself moves. Towers turn and bend. Walls shift and sway. The keep twists from side to side, like a man cracking his neck. It’s like it’s a living being, like an animal woken from hibernation; the castle itself stretches and unfurls out over the distant mountainside and all the while washed in phantomlight.

! [WARNING] !

[DUNGEON CORE RESTORED]

Having feasted on the virginal blood of a priestess, the dungeon [Vampire Lord’s Castle] has been restored to its former unlife!

It will now begin repowering itself to full strength. With every consecutive night, it will grow in its malicious strength.

Attracted by its dark, magical energies, wild monsters will now spawn in the following regions:

• [Black Forest]

• [Vampire Lord’s Castle Grounds]

• [The Broken Reach]

Cvet turns and runs, bursting through the church doors. The old wooden things slam off of their hinges, the metal handles fracturing off a chip of stonework as they impact into the walls. He tears open the door to the church’s now empty back room he had locked his sister inside of, looking straight toward the broken window.

She’s gone.

He turns his head back around, looking at the castle in the distance through the open church doors.

The Vampire Lord’s appearance here at the village — it wasn’t a failed attack. The wolves were just a distraction.

The beast came here to take his sister.

Twice now, he’s failed her. Cvet rips his sword from its sheath, running toward the resurrected evil as fast as he can. Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe he can still save her. But he doesn’t get far. The older men of the village stop him just outside of the church doors, holding the screaming and fighting boy back from the black forest that almost seems to be beckoning them all into it.

The trees are now seemingly more welcome and inviting than ever before to walk through — as if they were making a way.

And in fact, they are.

The people of the village who had lived there for their entire lives watch in horror as several of the sharp pines that they knew for all of their days now unroot themselves. The curled, knotted roots of the trees limp like spiders with broken legs, only to replant themselves elsewhere nearby in tight clusters. It’s like the forest is making an exterior wall out of itself, with only one clear way in or out. Hundreds, thousands of the trees move, one after the other, eventually reopening an old, buried forest path that winds its way up the hill and toward the looming castle on the horizon.

The road to the old castle that was closed many, many generations ago reopens itself.

But despite the seemingly open invitation, the men of that night only step further away from the old ruin than ever before. The dark light cascading out through its windows makes it look like a skull in place of where the sunrise ought to be.

The way the silhouette of the castle's walls move even makes it look like it’s smiling forebodingly their way.