Not a single drop of blood remained where the vampire had swept through. Shey and Peru buried the dead and tended to the wounded.
It was a grave incident—the leadership of an entire city had vanished. The citizens of Cloudia, plunged into chaos, believed the vampire had attacked because they had angered the heavenly gods by seeking their forgiveness. Neither Shey nor Peru bothered to correct them. It was easier to let them cling to their own understanding than to make them accept the truth.
At least there was one small mercy—the Thunder Guardian of Cloudia and the Lord of the Thunder Assembly had no family or close relatives. They were aberrations chosen by fate... cast out by their families, with no one to take them in except fate itself.
So Cloudia could turn its grief into pure, undiluted fury against the duchy. Whether that was truly a mercy, Shey wasn't sure.
Yet the chaos in Cloudia did not last long.
The Thunder God had vanished, and the Lord of the Thunder Assembly was dead. In their place, a new Golden Lord emerged. Moreover, the Golden Lord wielded both the power of the Golden Realm and the power of the Thunder God. To the people of the Ten Nations, who had lived under the terror of two demon gods, the Golden Lord's appearance felt like divine revelation.
A sign that they no longer needed to flee from the Ten Nations.
In the midst of strange excitement and tension, Peru—the one bearing all their expectations—was now lying among the patients in the lightning shelter tower.
Shey clutched his head as he watched the groaning Peru.
"Ugh. What am I supposed to do about this? Why are you lying there with the patients?"
"...Ngh."
"Forget it. Don't speak. Just focus on recovering."
Peru, drenched in sweat, lay back down. Shey looked out at the endless line of wounded and let out a sigh.
The Thunder cultivators were helping, but their strength and experience were negligible. Disaster had already struck, and Peru was needed to resolve it. But with Peru herself bedridden, the situation was maddening.
"As if I didn't already have enough on my mind with that human king..."
Shey trailed off mid-soliloquy, lost in thought.
The human king. The predecessor of the King of Sin, and perhaps the key to resolving all of this.
But thinking about it tangled the threads of causality. In the future Shey knew, the King of Sin originated from the same source as the human king, yet was a distinctly different entity. A catastrophe that wielded countless demon gods like tools and destroyed everything. Aside from having a human form, there was nothing in common with Hues.
Not even in appearance or gender.
"The timelines don't add up... Even if Hues died the moment we met, and a new human king was born that very instant, it couldn't happen like that. Besides, I never sensed any extraordinary power from Hues."
Still, it was hard to doubt that he was the human king. The actions he had shown so far were far too outrageous. Even if one conceded a hundred times that it was just a madman's rampage, the fact that the Holy See had authenticated it meant Hues was indeed the human king.
"In that case, if I hadn't gone to the Abyss, then Hues..."
It wouldn't be surprising if Hues survived... but even so, trapped within the Abyss?
Shey shook his head at the looming possibility.
"Ah, forget it. It's something I can confirm later. For now, first things first."
He could abandon Peru and leave, but Peru was also an existence acknowledged by two demon gods. She was necessary to quell the chaos in Cloudia and stabilize the demon gods for the time being.
More than anything, he couldn't just let her die.
Having sorted his thoughts, Shey made his decision. As long as Hues was under the progenitor's protection, he wouldn't be in danger.
"I need to save the Lord of the Vile Green first."
Once the decision was made, he had to choose a method.
Peru was sustaining her ruined body with her Authority. Neither elixirs nor energy arts had any effect. As far as Shey knew, there was only one being capable of healing her.
The Healing Sage, Lir Nightingale.
"At this point in time, she hasn't created any Bloodborne yet, so Lir herself is the only one. For the crime of killing Luscinia, she should be wandering near the duchy until Tirkancjaka returns... Wait."
Shey stopped mid-sentence, his expression darkening.
Lir had killed Luscinia and taken her true blood. She had committed the grave sin of Elder slaying, but under the laws of the Mist Duchy, no Elder could punish another Elder. Only the progenitor could judge an Elder.
Lir's sentence was suspended until Tirkancjaka's return. The only thing forbidden to her was the creation of Bloodborne, so she had been going around the outskirts of the duchy, treating people with the medical skills she had learned. Rather actively, one might even say... greedily.
That was why Shey had assumed she would quickly find her way here, to this place overflowing with wounded...
"Tirkancjaka has returned to the duchy!"
Lir might have run into Tirkancjaka on her way here. Or perhaps she was detained until the judgment was concluded.
"And what's more, Tirkancjaka is unharmed right now! The progenitor has no reason to show mercy! Damn it. I have to go rescue her...!"
The only reason Lir had been forgiven for the grave sin of Elder slaying was because she had aided in the progenitor's treatment. That merit was so highly valued that she escaped eternal annihilation and got off with mere exile.
But now, with the progenitor safe and sound, no one knew what Lir's judgment would be. Shey had to move to avert the worst possible future.
Just as Shey was gathering Cheon Aeng and Jijan to head out,
Someone strode briskly into the infirmary. Neatly pinned-up black hair wrapped in a headscarf. A short dress resembling a uniform, covered by an apron. Attire that looked like a maid from some noble household.
But Shey knew better. He knew that outfit was for the patients' sake. White had to be close at hand to make the color of blood clearly visible, which was why the Healing Sage always wore a white apron.
Seeing the very person he had just been thinking of walk in left Shey flustered. Regardless, a young Thunder cultivator blocked the barefoot sage's path.
"W-Who are you? You can't just walk in here...!"
"No. This is where I am meant to be."
The Healing Sage, Lir Nightingale, calmly counted numbers even in the face of blood and death. The groaning wounded, the blood seeping from bound wounds, the resentment and fear etched around their eyes.
Unmoved by anything that might stir a human heart, maintaining a cold composure, she declared:
"Now then, all of you are henceforth my patients."
A moment later, one of the Thunder Guardians, realizing belatedly that Lir was a vampire, rose with his spear in hand.
"You! Vampire...!"
His arm, twisted and bandaged, mattered little. Before fury and fear, pain was nothing. Whether he could win or not was a secondary concern. The Thunder Guardian thrust his spear in a fit of instinct.
Lir's gaze turned toward him. Her eyes fixed not on the spear blade, but on his twisted arm. She watched until the spear was almost upon her, and then, in a single motion, drew a thin scalpel hidden in her hand.
Shrrng. The thin, sharp blade flashed. Lir moved past the Thunder Guardian's back. Then, the cleanly severed arm dropped with a thud.
Even if one had inherited blood, an Elder was still an Elder. The Thunder Guardian, his arm taken in a single exchange, writhed in agony.
"G-Gaaaah! Aaaagh! Argh!"
The thin blade had pierced his shoulder joint and severed his arm. Though twisted and ruined, it had been his. Now, cut and fallen to the ground, it was his no longer.
Just when everyone recognized this as the return of a cruel vampire come to kill them all...
Only Shey was relieved.
The Healing Sage, no matter when he saw her, was still the Healing Sage. That woman.
"Your causes of death—I will take responsibility for them all. If you die, it will be because of my incompetence. That is all."
The severed arm twitched. The Thunder Guardian, who had been thrashing on the ground, felt the pain vanishing and was bewildered.
"H-Huh...?"
The blood wasn't flowing.
It was an eerie sight. Blood was flowing out from the severed cross-section. Blood that should have scattered in the air instead formed a stream suspended in space. And then it flowed to where it should have gone if the arm had never been cut.
The red blood connected like threads. As if linking the shoulder joint and the severed arm's cross-section. Severed, yet still one body.
No, from the start. What does it mean to be one body?
"Severing it and reattaching it seems to be the better course. However, I will do that after treating forty-four others. Your death is the forty-fifth in line."
First fear, then surprise, and finally curiosity—using these to seize control of her patients. In the reverent silence, Lir moved, scalpel in hand. Her standard was clear. Those closest to death first. To save everyone, she had to treat the patient who would die soonest first. That was Lir's principle.
Shey cautiously approached Lir. She paid him little mind, focused entirely on using her scalpel to open up patients and assess their conditions. Though she called it treatment, to an onlooker it might seem like a kindly butchering performed on the living.
Shey waved away the Thunder Guardians who were tentatively drawing near, then asked in a small voice:
"Is there anything you need?"
Without even glancing his way, Lir replied:
"Blood is insufficient. I have only thirty people's worth of blood left. From the thirty-first patient onward, I will require fresh blood."
"But you can't just use unrefined blood from others, can you? The body rejects it. If you don't use medicine to suppress that, you'd have to monitor them constantly."
Only now did Lir show interest in Shey. That foreign blood caused rejection was no secret. It was common knowledge among vampires, and those who practiced energy arts also knew.
But the fact that it could be suppressed with medicine was not well known. Not unless one was a Bloodborne of Luscinia, who studied the art of blood energy and the body itself.
Naturally, Shey had learned it from the Lir of the future. Facing the puzzled Lir, Shey pointed to Peru.
"The Golden Lord is injured. If she were in good condition, she could create homunculi. The Thunder Guardians here happen to be those mixed with homunculi. If we had homunculus blood, we could quickly replenish high-quality blood with less risk of rejection."
Where the knowledge came from. How homunculi were created. Whether the rejection was truly less.
He had no certainty. He didn't know. But as long as these people were Lir's patients, all their lives depended on Lir's judgment.
Their lives had to be saved regardless. Even the time spent hesitating was a luxury. Lir made her decision.
"Please guide me."
Lir had a principle. Treat those who would die first. She never altered the order for personal reasons. Doing so would reduce the chance of saving them all.
But... principles meant nothing in the face of death. If bending a principle could prevent death, Lir would bend it a hundred times over.
The responsibility for a patient's death lay with Lir. Not with her principles.
She would never, not until the day she faced eternal annihilation, utter the excuse that she had failed to save a life because she was too busy upholding her principles.