Ten hours since leaving the campsite.
The sun had vanished without a trace, and in its place the moon showed its face in the east.
I thought I had run for quite a long time, but I still had not reached the tomb of the Blood Lord.
But even that would be soon.
If I could just climb the rocky mountain before my eyes, the Blood Lord’s tomb would reveal itself.
‘My body’s in decent shape.’
Though my heart felt like it might burst and my legs felt like they might fall off, I had no injuries.
Unless it was a wound that might kill me, any other pain could simply be endured.
Still, it was regrettable that it had taken longer than I expected.
‘No, don’t think about it.’
There were only twelve hours left at most. It was too early to be feeling regret.
For now, the right choice was simply to focus on the problem before me.
‘Can I climb it?’
I quickly scanned the entire cliff, and my judgment immediately tilted toward impossible.
The height was one thing, but the problem was the slope.
At first it was still close to vertical, but the higher it went, the more it became less like climbing a wall and more like hanging from a ceiling.
Only someone with a death wish or a fool would climb this place without professional equipment.
‘Then I’ll be a fool.’
If that was the price for saving my companions, wasn’t it worth it?
Especially for the senior who, for three years, had been the only one who never laughed at my dream. For that, this much was nothing.
One step. Another step. Little by little, I made my way upward.
I gripped sharp edges and tore my palms open, but I endured it.
I misplaced my footing and nearly fell, but I never let go with my hands.
Even when I slid along the wall until my entire body was covered in wounds.
Even when there were crises where I almost fell, again and again.
Trusting my body to tiny cracks, I continued upward.
Ignoring the threat of death and the exhaustion of my body, I climbed the cliff with nothing but the will to protect.
By the time the moon, which had been high in the sky, leaned a little to the west, the summit that had been out of sight came into view.
I squeezed out the last of my strength and moved my body.
At last, the summit.
With my feet planted not on a narrow crevice but on solid earth, I stared blankly up at the sky.
‘I’m here. Judging by the moon, did I spend about an hour climbing the cliff? Then I have eleven hours left.’
Good. It was still fine.
Catching my breath, I shifted my gaze forward.
Then a huge cave, its mouth gaping open, filled my vision.
The Blood Lord’s tomb. The place where the knight once called a vampire met his end.
I wanted to rest right away, but I ignored that urge and headed into the cave.
**
For a while, a passage without a single point of light stretched out before me.
I had fairly good night vision, but this darkness was somehow different.
A foul sensation, as if the surroundings had been painted over with black blood.
If the path had not been straight, I might have surrendered myself to the instinct that screamed at me to flee at once.
To shake off my fear, I organized what I knew about this place in my head.
The ruin, the Blood Lord’s tomb.
As one could tell from the fact that it was a ruin and not a dungeon, it honestly was not a very important location in the game.
There were no monsters, so it could not be used to earn experience, and the equipment one could obtain was not particularly powerful either.
The Blood Lord’s spear, Thornwood, suppressed the opponent’s regenerative ability. In exchange, its power was dreadful.
The Blood Lord’s armor, Dracul, could withstand a fatal wound once a day. In exchange, its defensive power was worse than that of most leather armor.
Equipment closer to trash than a legacy worthy of the fearsome knight called a vampire.
But since it could withstand a troll’s blow and suppress a troll’s regeneration, it was equipment I absolutely needed.
By the time I finished thinking, the corridor had ended, and a vast hall welcomed me.
The scenery was more fitting for an underground fortress than a tomb.
Though hundreds of years had passed since the Blood Lord’s time, the walls flaunted their presence without even the slightest sign of weathering.
Realistically, it would be impossible for present-day humanity to create something like this.
No, perhaps even the humanity of the world Kim Yuhan had lived in would be unable to make such a thing.
Seeing it made this truly feel like a world inside a game.
‘Maybe all of this is meaningless.’
That thought suddenly came to mind.
If this was a game, then there should be a fixed scenario. Perhaps my efforts to save everyone were meaningless.
Doubt stretched out from deep within my heart.
To shake that doubt off, I forced myself to slap my own cheek hard.
The pain in my cheek made me realize that this place was reality.
‘Fate? Fine.’
I just had to smash even that fate apart.
Coming to my senses, I slowly approached the wall.
From afar, the wall had looked gray, but up close, a faint red aura lingered within it.
Was it the Blood Lord’s power? Or simply magic?
Either way, the answer would be inside that wall.
I placed my hand on the door carved into the center of the wall.
In the game, it had merely been a door painted with a simple texture, but in reality, an intricate image had been carved into it in relief.
‘I never saw this in the game.’
Relying on the light that came from a small hole in the ceiling, I examined the contents of the image.
‘A historical painting?’
It was a painfully common historical painting about how people had once peacefully coexisted with someone, only to annihilate them later out of greed.
The problem was the identity of those “neighbors.”
‘They’ve all been crushed and erased.’
Marks that made it clear someone had forcibly erased them.
Why on earth would someone do something like this?
As I stared at the painting as though bewitched, my gaze eventually reached the ancient script engraved beneath it.
Unlike the other parts, perhaps because it had faced the weathering of time head-on, most of the letters had faded, making even reading them impossible.
Still, with Kim Yuhan’s memories, I could read at least a few of the remaining characters.
Solitude, closure, and choice?
‘That alone isn’t enough to tell what it means. It’s far too long to be a warning. If just a few more words remained, I could at least tell what tone it had.’
Either way, it was a sentence that held no meaning for me now.
Leaving behind the curiosity welling up inside me, I put my strength into the door.
Creeeak.
With a sound that bore the traces of time, the steel door slowly moved.
At the same time, the red aura that had been flowing along the wall also vanished as if being sucked into the door.
And what came into view beyond the gate was…
“The Blood Lord.”
Seated upon a throne, he gazed forward, waiting for the one who had come to find him.
He was not alive. His body, already mummified, had lost all vitality and merely sat there in stillness.
But the throne built from piled human bones—
The thick stench of blood that enveloped his body—
And above all, his corpse, shrouded in a red aura as though drenched in fresh blood—
Clad in armor and holding a spear, he looked forward as if he might rise at any moment.
As I looked at him, even knowing he was nothing more than a corpse, I felt as if my body would be crushed by the pressure.
Enduring that oppressive force, I turned my gaze not to his corpse, but to his spear and armor.
A weapon without a single ornament, closer to a massive stake than a spear.
And scale armor tinged with a bloody crimson like a living creature.
‘Thornwood and Dracul.’
The purpose for which I had come here lay before my eyes.
When I took one step forward, the pressure crushing my body grew stronger.
When I took another step, I could even hear my joints creaking.
As if declaring that it would not permit me to come any closer, the red aura whirled toward me.
‘You think that’s going to stop me?’
Both Thornwood and Dracul were the last remaining hope for me now.
I could not give up after being crushed by a corpse that had already been dead for hundreds of years.
Forcibly ignoring the pressure that continued to grow stronger, I approached the Blood Lord one step at a time.
Before I knew it, the distance between him and me had narrowed to about a single step.
Was it because it had surpassed the limits of what human senses could endure?
My senses went numb, and I could feel nothing.
A tranquil sensation, as if I had entered the eye of a typhoon.
I slowly reached out toward the Blood Lord’s armaments.
And when I grasped his spear, the pressure that had been crushing me until now vanished as if it had been a lie.
‘Have I been acknowledged?’
Relieved by that fact, I pulled the spear from his hand.
No, I was just about to pull it free.
The red aura that had grown calm surged toward my hand as if going berserk.
No, could that still be called an aura?
Like blood, or like mucus.
Something sticky with a physical substance coiled around my hand.
‘Is it a trap?!’
I hurriedly tried to pull my hand away, but the more I did, the more tightly the red fluid wrapped around it.
Slowly, but surely, it was swallowing me.
‘Damn it! There was no event like this in the game!’
Had something changed? If so, what was the problem?
Was it the timing? Or because I was not the protagonist? If not that, was it because of mana occlusion?
Countless answers flashed through my mind, but I could not declare any one of them the truth.
Before I knew it, the swelling fluid had wrapped around my entire body and was about to swallow even my head—
『I. Have. Waited. One. Like. Me.』
Together with a voice seeping into my mind, I lost consciousness.