“Mm...”
Diana’s tightly shut eyelids quivered.
“Noona! Are you awake?”
As her scattered mind gradually returned, her younger brother’s urgent voice reached her from nearby.
It seemed he had been nursing her right beside her, waiting only for her to wake.
“...Yeah, I’m fine.”
Diana murmured in a hoarse voice and slowly pushed herself upright.
Her head was a little dizzy, but that was all. Nowhere else particularly hurt.
Well, since she had no combat ability whatsoever and had simply been subdued without being able to put up any real resistance, it was only natural. ‘So it wasn’t a dream after all.’ As she carefully looked around, the familiar sight of her home entered her eyes.
The nest where her family had stayed ever since settling in this new land.
Of course, since they had just gone through such a grave incident, the atmosphere was not as peaceful as usual.
“Diana! You’re awake!”
“Truly, what a relief. Rafi woke up some time ago, but you just wouldn’t open your eyes, and we were so worried...”
Her uncle and aunt hurried over, embraced her, and patted her reassuringly.
At the moment the incident broke out, her aunt had just happened to be out shopping, and her uncle had been late getting off work, so they had fortunately avoided being caught up in the commotion.
But with their children and nieces and nephews nearly suffering disaster, it was not as though they could simply rejoice over their luck.
Only after seeing Diana wake did they finally let out sighs of relief.
Fortunately, the youngest, Rafi, had also been protected by sorcery just like Aaron, so there were no particular aftereffects to speak of.
Rather, since she had been unconscious from the very beginning of the incident, she remembered nothing and had merely been a little startled.
“...That’s good. Rafi is still young, so that’s better...”
Diana, who had been listening and nodding blankly, suddenly cut herself off.
As her ability to think slowly returned to normal, a certain memory abruptly flashed through her mind.
“That’s right! G-Grandmother! What about Grandmother Miropa?!”
Startled, she sprang up from her bedding as if she had been launched.
Because she rose so suddenly, her body swayed, and her younger brother beside her caught her, but right now she had no attention to spare for that.
The old woman’s final appearance from that time surfaced in her mind. ‘No!’ The sight of the grandmother from next door, who had done her utmost to buy them time until the very end so they could escape, collapsing while vomiting blood with Rafi in her arms.
This was the first time Diana had learned that the old woman was such a powerful ability user.
If not for that desperate effort, she likely would not have been able to look upon her family’s faces so unharmed now.
“Don’t worry too much, Noona. Grandmother is safe too.”
“Yes, I was just on my way back from checking on her condition. She lives alone, so we brought her to the guest room to nurse her.”
“Aye, aye. And none other than the Saint of the Main God Church personally looked after her condition! Good heavens, to think I’d see the Saint with my own eyes in my lifetime...”
At her family’s words, the strength left Diana, and she sank back down onto the bedding.
A sigh of relief escaped her at the thought that the worst had been avoided.
“The Saint...?”
“Yeah! You haven’t seen him yet, right, Noona? I saw the moment he tore through the sky and descended with my own eyes! Wow... I’ll never forget that for the rest of my life. He really wasn’t called the Saint for nothing!”
Aaron launched into his story, using his hands and feet as if to describe the majestic sight he had witnessed.
A gentle smile formed on Diana’s lips as she watched him.
But contrary to her younger brother’s words, the image of Saint Heinrich was also clearly left in her memories. ‘I wondered if it was because I wasn’t in my right mind back then. So what I saw really wasn’t an illusion.’ The person described by her brother and the person in her memory were unmistakably one and the same.
Saint Heinrich of the Main God Church, who had abruptly appeared in her fading consciousness right after she was subdued by the attacker, at the moment when she was barely holding on thanks to her extraordinary mental strength. ‘But...’ Her expression subtly changed as she listened.
Though she retained some memories from that time, she had been in a daze, so not everything was clear.
Now, the only information she could recall consisted of a few especially memorable elements.
And among them, the clearest of all was,
Naturally, an impression related to the sense in which she had the most confidence.
What she had felt in an embrace whose atmosphere was cool rather than warm—
An unmistakable bloody stench mingled with a familiar scent.
It was a fragrance subtly different from what she smelled from Hubert every day, one so long absent that it felt faintly nostalgic. ‘Mister Heinz...’ It was the first time she had encountered him as a vampire again since moving to Tarak.
But after spending every day with Hubert, she had no difficulty finding traces of the “mister” she knew within him.
Since she had thought from the beginning that the two were the same person, it was only natural. ‘But...’ There was just one thing.
One thing even she could not understand.
And that was— ‘He’s definitely the Saint.’ The familiar scent had not come from only that one person.
Unlike Heinz, a warm and gentle fragrance had been predominant, but mixed into it was also, without a doubt, a familiar smell.
At the time, her mind had been far too chaotic for her to think deeply about it, but now that she considered it, it was certainly strange.
After all, no matter who thought about it, a vampire and a saint were hardly a fitting combination.
“...No way?”
As she sank into thought, an exclamation escaped Diana’s lips without her realizing it.
Her eyes widened, and she snapped her head up.
“Noona?”
Her younger brother’s voice no longer reached Diana, who had already slipped into a world of her own.
She merely fell into serious contemplation over a certain hypothesis that had suddenly occurred to her. ‘If that’s the case...’ Diana tightly clenched her delicate fists.
***
“Thank you, Saint!”
“Did you see it? Back then, the thing that covered the entire sky...”
“Come now, man. What nonsense. How could there be anyone in Tarak who didn’t see that?”
“Ohhh! Are those them? Are they the ones we only heard about in rumors...?”
“Is Mercenary King Harley not here? What a shame. I really wanted to meet the hero of Tarak at least once.”
The terror incident targeting an executive of Hubert Company concluded without major casualties.
The culprit had wickedly schemed a bold plan to target the entire area around the residence in order to kidnap the company’s second-in-command, but thanks to the Hero’s Party, who happened to be visiting Tarak at the time, quickly detecting the abnormality, they were able to respond before it was too late. ‘It’s better to leave it at that.’ Even if he spoke of a god imprisoned in the abyss, an apostle, or a fragment, there would not be many who could understand.
Above all, perhaps because of the Main God’s sentence of erasure from all records, not only was there no one on the surface who knew of that being’s existence, but not even the slightest piece of information remained. ‘There also seems to be a restriction on spreading information about him.’ The more people there were who recognized and revered their existence, the greater the influence a god could exert.
Naturally, a fallen god seeking resurrection and that god’s apostle must have tried to use that method as well.
Yet the fact that the situation had not changed much meant that information about that existence itself was forbidden by the laws of the world. ‘The fact that he operates only a small number of apostles must be part of that restriction too. I’m probably an exception because I’m from another world.’ In that sense, the apostles who followed him were extremely alien beings.
They had undoubtedly been born and raised here in Auterica, so how had they ended up setting foot on that side?
Of course, they too must have had their own circumstances.
Yes, for example.
Like Temiran McClair, who was here right now.
“Guuugh... kk!”
A suppressed groan flowed out from the darkness of the sealed room.
The broken groan, unable even to become a proper scream, plainly revealed just how much pain he was feeling.
“So even fallen, a god is still a god? The resistance is considerable.”
Temiran lay stiffly on the operating table, his limbs bound by chains of blood.
Standing before him like a doctor performing surgery, Heinz, who had thrust his hand into the boy’s heart, murmured quietly. ‘It isn’t exactly a pleasant sight, but it can’t be helped.’ A child who looked as though he were being subjected to a live experiment, and an adult man who had pierced his chest and was gripping his heart.
It was the scene of a horrifying crime, one for which no excuse could be offered, but Heinz was not torturing him to interrogate him.
Rather, it would be more accurate to call it a procedure meant to heal him. ‘Pain is only natural in a major operation of this scale. Even so, it’s better than just dying, isn’t it?’ The reason he was doing this in this sealed room was all for Temiran’s sake.
Regardless of his own will, he was still the apostle of the god trapped in the abyss, so the only remaining options were two: death, or the removal of the apostle’s power.
But the task of ripping out the divine power granted to an apostle... the process of forcibly extracting the traces lodged in body and soul, could not possibly be easy.
“It’s almost done, so endure a little longer. Don’t feel too wronged. I’m sharing the same pain as you.”
“Guuuup!”
Temiran’s bloodshot eyes bulged as if to say, Don’t lie.
But Heinz’s words were by no means false.
He only appeared calm because, as always, he was filtering out unnecessary sensations through 「Mind Hub」. ...Well, in truth, the part about it being almost done was indeed a lie. ‘The base is definitely Obaifo, but... it’s been altered quite a lot. The influence of the abyss seems fairly strong as well. If he had been a pure Obaifo bloodline, things would have been easier. What a shame.’ It was probably one of the changes that had occurred when he became an apostle.
But there was not only bad news. ‘Fortunately, he is still incomplete. The fact that he’s only at this level even though twenty years have passed since Temiran was chosen as an apostle means...’ As mentioned earlier, it could not possibly be easy for a god whose name and even existence had been erased by the laws of the world to create an apostle.
Until now, he must have been proceeding carefully over an immense span of time, but as the situation began to accelerate, his limits were gradually being exposed. ‘To think he’d send even an incomplete apostle into the world. He must have been fairly desperate.’ He must have judged that unless he did this, before long even the remaining arrangements would all collapse.
Considering the matter carefully, it was not a hasty judgment.
Judging from the progress, it seemed Temiran would need at least another ten years before becoming a complete apostle.
Ten years was more than twice the amount of time he himself had been active in Auterica.
When he considered all the things that had happened in that short period, no one could guarantee what the situation would be like after another ten years had passed, so he could fully understand the sense of crisis the other party felt.
“Cough! You said... it was almost done...! Just how long...”
“Ah.”
At that moment, a nearly dying voice came from below.
As a backlash from the blood flow within his body being forcibly assimilated through his heart, he was already covered in blood from head to toe.
Heinz, too, only appeared fine on the outside because he was forcibly controlling his own body; internally, he was already in a state no different from the boy’s. ‘Delaying any longer here won’t produce a good result.’ All preparations were already complete.
All that remained was to carry it out.
“Clench your teeth. This time, it will hurt a little more.”
“What?! It’s going to hurt even more than thi—grgegek...!”
Temiran let out a frog-like shriek before he could finish speaking, but it did not reach the ears of Heinz, who was already focusing to the utmost.
As a vampire of divine blood and the 「Progenitor of Blood」, he maximized his control over blood, then injected the 「Refined Blood Crystal」 containing the power of 「Hybrid Evolution」 directly into Temiran’s heart, raising his domination. ‘In the end, it’s a battle over which dominion is stronger: the apostle’s or the vampire’s.’ If Temiran had been a complete apostle like the Revolutionary, seizing control would have been close to impossible, but fortunately, he had not yet reached that level.
The irreverence toward god he had sensed several times during their earlier conversation had likely been an expression of that inner state.
Crunch.
—Crack, crack—!
The small body bound by chains of blood thrashed and began to evolve by force.
Bone and flesh clumped together, crushed, and were slowly reborn into a new form as though being molded from clay.
Stronger than before, tougher, sturdier... more mature.
“Ghk! Urk! Stop! Stooop—!”
As Temiran, who had somehow grown into the appearance of a boy in his mid-teens, thrashed in a frenzy, crimson blood sprayed through the air, but Heinz did not so much as blink.
He merely gathered up that blood with perfect composure and, using 「Blood Mystery」, constructed a blood magic circle around them to assist the ritual. ‘Found it.’ And after some time had passed like that.
His 「Insight」 detected something alien.
An unknown divinity, sensed through blood—the origin of vampires—wriggling as it took root in Temiran’s soul.
The one imprisoned in the abyss had once been a god of humans, but paradoxically, a pure human could not fully accept the power of an apostle.
The durability of the body that would serve as the vessel was one issue, but the moment they became spiritually connected to the being in the abyss, they would immediately begin to fall and turn into a mindless monster like the white giant. ‘Come to think of it, they said he was the one who first introduced vampire and werewolf factors to Auterica, didn’t they?’ Whether he had done that with this in mind or not no longer mattered.
Whatever intention he had harbored, before Heinz, who had begun to awaken the divinity of blood, it was all meaningless.
As 「Existence Denial」 manifested through the assimilated blood, the connection to the divinity grew even looser.
And in that instant, 「Return to the Origin」, acquired when he ascended to divine blood, activated.
The power that was gradually nearing completion as the singular, complete being standing at the ultimate pinnacle of vampires.
As it spread through Temiran’s heart and rode his blood throughout his body, it began to violently clash with the foreign substance that hindered his existence as a whole “vampire”··· the power of an apostle.
“Gyaaaaaaah—!”
Temiran, now appearing to be in his late teens, screamed as if he were about to vomit up his heart.
So Heinz gladly decided to help him with that.
Fwoosh—!
By ripping out the entire heart his fingers had been embedded in.
“Kek!”
“Whew. You certainly make things difficult.”
He quietly stared at the heart pulsing powerfully in his hand.
There was no need to worry about Temiran, who had finally passed out.
Having become subordinate to Heinz II and inherited his bloodline in full, becoming a proper vampire of sacred blood, a heart was nothing more than a part he could regenerate as many times as needed.
The faith that had been forcibly bound to him reversing in turn and making him extremely incompatible with its target was a small gain as well. ‘Now then···.’ Thump
— thump
—The bright-red heart wriggled, filled within with the divinity that bestowed an apostle’s power and mutated vampiric factors.
For some reason, he felt as though, through it, his gaze had met someone’s far, far away.
“Well, seeing you like this is rather nice.”
Heinz let out a faint, empty chuckle.
This was not a power that could be carelessly taken.
A dangerous object that, with one wrong move, could turn him into a puppet like Temiran. ‘Thank you for the meal.’ Of course, that only applied to ordinary cases; it had nothing to do with Heinz II, who was already building up his own divinity.
To him, divinity isolated like this was no more and no less than a tonic that was easy to digest and rich in nutrition.
Fwoosh!
The heart in his hand burst apart.
But the sprayed blood did not scatter in all directions.
As if drawn by some force, the blood was sucked back into his fist in an instant. 《Collecting new vampiric factors. Due to the influence of the special skill 「Hybrid Evolution」, the individual’s divinity grows another level. Skill 「Subordinate Dominion」 acquired.》 The corners of Heinz’s lips curved in satisfaction.
It felt as though he could hear a furious roar from somewhere, but that was probably just his imagination.
After all, there was no one here except the unconscious Temiran and Heinz.