A makeshift bed, put together from several tables, had been set up in the town hall. Luka lay on it, moaning in pain. Her left hand and left foot were gone, and blood dripped steadily over the edge of the tables, forming a small red pool on the floor. When I pushed the door open, the smell of blood in the air nearly sent me into a blood frenzy. If I hadn’t already tasted the supreme delicacy that was vampire blood, I might’ve thrown myself down to lick up the blood on the floor.
“Rosen,” I said, turning to the hunter captain, who was covered in blood. “What happened? How did Luka end up like this?!”
“We ran into a bear in the forest,” Rosen said, his face full of guilt. “Luka suggested we go around it, but I made the wrong call. I thought the few of us could take it down. But then… then… It’s all my fault.”
Bears hide in caves and hibernate through the winter. They don’t come out at all. If you run into one in winter, it’s a beast that’s woken up from hunger—and it’s extremely dangerous! Damn beast. I’ll end you soon enough!
But saving Luka was the priority now.
After a quick examination, I found that Luka had received only basic first aid. The fact that she’d made it back to the village alive was a miracle in itself. As I checked her ribs and internal organs, Luka suddenly grabbed my hand.
“Elsa…” she said through the pain. “I’m like this now… I can’t hunt anymore. Just let me die…”
“Don’t say that! And don’t you dare give up!” I glared at her. “Come witness a miracle with me.”
With that, I pulled the advanced healing potion from my pocket and popped the glass bottle’s cap off with my thumb. The liquid inside was as red as blood. Everyone there stared in shock. They’d never seen a healing potion like it, but one look at the immense magic it held told them this was no ordinary stuff. In front of everyone, I shoved it into Luka’s mouth. Her emerald eyes widened, but she still gulped the potion down. Golden light immediately shimmered across her body. Under everyone’s astonished gaze, bloodstained bones burst through the rags wrapped around her wounds. Blood vessels and muscles wound around the bones and grew at astonishing speed, followed by skin and nails. Luka’s left hand and foot regenerated right before our eyes, and the wounds all over her body quickly vanished.
Whoa! I was stunned myself. So that’s what an advanced healing potion can do? Never mind the damage to her internal organs and ribs—even her missing hand and foot grew back! Now I finally understood why this stuff cost 500 gold coins a bottle. It was hundreds of times more expensive than a mid-grade recovery potion! Their effects weren’t even on the same scale. They were products from completely different dimensions!
“Could that potion be…?” The mayor’s usually narrowed eyes suddenly flew wide open. “God’s Blood!”
“God’s Blood!” everyone cried, myself included.
“That’s right.” The mayor’s old body seemed to fill with new life. “In my youth, I was a holy knight—until I took an arrow to the knee and came to this remote place to serve as mayor.”
“No way!”
“The mayor’s a holy knight?!”
“That’s it, the mayor’s finally senile! Hahahahaha!”
As everyone voiced their doubts, the mayor lifted his cane slightly and struck it against the ground. With a thud, a shock wave spread out and knocked everyone down in an instant. Faenda, who’d been laughing the loudest, hit the ground face-first.
“In my youth, I followed the great holy knight, the Saint Cecilia,” the mayor continued. “Once, I was gravely wounded in battle, and Her Holiness used her treasured God’s Blood to save my life. I’ll never forget that scene, like an angel descending from heaven, or the God’s Blood in Lady Cecilia’s hands.”
“The Living Saint, Cecilia! No way!”
“Wasn’t that fifty years ago?”
“I wasn’t even born yet.”
“Me neither.”
“So the mayor’s actually that incredible?”
Watching the mayor’s reputation rise all over again, I couldn’t help wondering: if God’s Blood was so amazing, why hadn’t he used it to heal his arrow-shot knee? That old man was sly and rotten to the core. He’d even stared at Fenny’s butt once, so I believed maybe thirty percent of what he said at most. He’d probably really seen God’s Blood, and maybe even the Living Saint Cecilia—but I was certain Cecilia had never made him drink any God’s Blood.
“Elsa,” Luka’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “I don’t even know how to thank you… I… I’m so grateful…”
As she spoke, the strong girl burst into tears right there in front of everyone.
“Luka, does anything else hurt? Let me check.”
“Mm.” Luka flexed her left hand, returned to her at last. “My arm feels kind of thinner, though.”
“Can’t help that. You’ll have to train it again.”
While everyone crowded around the mayor, clamoring to hear stories about his youth, I slipped out of the town hall. I pulled up my hood and hurried toward the town gates.
Once I was outside town, I activated Sprint and ran over the fresh snow as easily as if I were on level ground. A faint smell of blood drifted through the snowstorm. It was Luka’s blood, and it led me to the place where they’d found the bear. I’d expected it to take some time to track the beast down, but there it was, sitting in a snowdrift and gnawing on something. The stench of blood hit me full force. The bear’s lunch was Luka’s leg!
Luka was a good friend of mine, and this beast was happily devouring her leg. Was that any way to treat a beautiful girl’s leg?
At the thought, two Bloodletting Swords appeared in my palms. I leaped high into the air and drove them down into the brown bear’s neck. The blood-red blades burst out through the front of its throat. The hollow grooves running down the center of each blade formed a needle-like channel, and steaming blood gushed out. I immediately activated Blood Sucking, drawing in the spraying blood and gaining the “Blood-Drunk” buff. I pulled the Bloodletting Swords from the bear’s neck and stored the massive beast in my item box. Bear meat was gamey and tough, but it’d make decent jerky for emergency rations. And as for the hide… Heh. Looks like I’ve got my bear-skin coat.
Just as I was about to leave, a sense of danger stirred in the snow. I stood still and calmly scanned the surrounding forest. Through the swirling snowflakes, one black-robed figure after another appeared from behind the trees. They moved strangely across the snow, as if they had no weight at all. Before long, they’d surrounded me, forming a perfect circle.
The black-robed figure in the lead walked toward me. She lowered her hood, revealing a delicate face. She looked about sixteen or seventeen, and her innocent appearance made it hard to associate her with a vampire. But her black eyes with red pupils were unmistakably a vampire’s mark.
She could take human form, so she was at least a mid-rank vampire.
“My name is Lilith, loyal servant of the Vampire Lord Dunglar.” She bowed politely to me. “Honored guest, might I ask your name?”
This was bad. They were all vampires.
