TW - Mentions of Suicide
*****
This must be the effect of the new skill I just acquired. It's not really anything bad, but the fact that she has some kind of autonomy always brings in the risk of a betrayal.
SHING
So, I quickly took care of that with a stab of the Lance of Longinus. It tore right through her head, leaving the lower half of her body to fall limp to the ground. But to my dismay and utter surprise, I saw her head suddenly regenerate. Her smile was wide, and those two sharp fangs of hers dripped with juices of anticipation.
"Hmmmm… Hey, say 'Status' and tell me what pops up," I grinned, an idea appearing in my mind. And as the woman muttered it to herself, her eyes widened, and she stumbled backward, nearly falling and tripping onto her ass. "So, what happened?"
As the vampire's lips quivered, I noticed a pair of black pieces of keratin rise from her head. She winced in pain as she grazed the sore spot where two new horns formed, almost resembling mine but just a bit shorter. '
"Huh… haha… hahahahaha!" I laughed hysterically as I quickly put on some clothes and dove right into the juicy details of this evolution. This brand-new ounce of power could allow me to go further than I could have ever imagined before. Ideas immediately flooded into my mind, and with a single question, I couldn't stop shaking with excitement. "Hey… can you summon other beings?"
The vampire looked up at me, gulping down a large drop of saliva as I stood above her. She was still trying to figure out just what was happening while writhing in pain on the ground. So as she looked up at me and saw my hysterical expression, she shivered under my gaze, a wave of nerves immediately beginning to flood every inch of her body.
"Yeah… it says I have a new skill… [Summon: Vampire]."
Upon muttering those words, a vampire similar to her, but this time a man, appeared right in front of her. He was cloaked in tattered black cloth and immediately understood his position. But instead of bowing to the one who had summoned him, he turned towards me and lowered his eyes, taking a knee and uttering… "Congratulations, Sir. I understand your intentions."
I smiled as the man continued to bow towards me, and seeing this utter respect coming from her new summon, the previously evolved vampire then bowed towards me and muttered the same thing. It was as if my ideas were flowing into their brains, allowing for quick and easy communication for just what I had planned.
"Continue to camp out in the same place as before. Torture the survivors for information, and then I'll present myself. I was planning on working together with them, but with this power… fuck… I don't need them anymore."
My excitement overflowed joyously into the vampires in front of me, so without any hesitation, I summoned four more of these trusty servants. So, I now had two women vampiric demon servants and two men vampiric demon servants. They all bowed toward me, their faces, expressions, and bodies looking almost identical to each other.
"From right to left, we will have First General Magnus, Second General Alba, Third General Linus, Fourth General Fastina, and Fifth General Lucious. Now, go and keep summoning vampires until your mana pool runs out. Make sure not to overwork yourself, but I hope you all manage your servants correctly. Create an army. A good one. I don't want to see anybody out of line when I visit them."
…
The next day, I headed out once more, and this time my morale went through the roof. Aisa and Wu were both confused as to why I was so happy, but I didn't see the benefit in telling them yet. So, I made sure to keep my mouth shut no matter how much they begged to hear whatever it is that made me so giddy and jumpy.
"Ugh… seeing you so happy makes me mad for some reason," Aisa grumbled to herself, kicking a passing rock as we walked through the slums.
Once again, we were on our way to find a mysterious man who could supposedly sell me the one thing I was looking for, a blooming carnivorous rose. It couldn't be fully bloomed, nor could it be not blooming at all. It had to be in its blooming state and the only way to buy this off of somebody, rather than picking it yourself, as if it was contained in extremely cold ice.
"Hey, I read the information on this guy we're buying it from, but uhhhh… is he really a merchant?" Aisa asked, and as I turned my head towards her, my wide grin only getting wider, she clicked her tongue. "Tch… are we stealing it from a poor old man?"
"That's only if he declines our offer," My grin continued to widen.
As we turned into a long alleyway, we were greeted by a few doors. They were made of metal and had the stench of sewage emanating from them. Just from the smell, I could tell this place was the dump of the dump. Even living on the dirty streets would have been better than this.
"It smells like shit… literally," Wu pinched her nose as we turned towards the door farthest into the alleyway. The corpses of dead rats were scattered across the ground, and a trail of water creaked out from under the doorway. "Is that… the sound of running water?" She muttered under her breath.
"Surely he didn't… right?" Aisa looked at both of us, her forehead sweating and her eyes quivering with uncertainty. She was the one standing in front of the door but hesitated to even grab the door handle. It was rusted and even had a bit of mold from the outpouring moisture of the metal box one somehow called home.
Quickly, I moved her to the side before pushing down the door handle. It was open. I pushed the door in, revealing a dark room. It was a single-room apartment with a bathtub in the corner of the damp and moldy box. There was a singular mattress growing with some kind of flower, and where the kitchen seemed to be, a note soaked from head to toe was plastered against the kitchen counter.
"Ugh… fuck… I'm gonna stay outside," Aisa groaned as she saw the dead body of a demon soaking in a bathtub, still running with water. Blood was still pouring out from his corpse, meaning it hadn't been long since he died. But judging from how pale he was, it must've been a few days old.
"Geez… that's brutal," Wu muttered, pushing past me and using her nail to dig the wet suicide note off of the kitchen counter. "Let's see… it's not even a will. It's just the last complaint of some random."
"Lemme see it," I muttered as the body had a resemblance to a guy I had just seen a couple of days ago. He looked a bit similar to the man I had received the soul-infused sword from. Maybe they were family in some way.
Wu quickly handed the note to me, allowing me to read it. It was simple, just like how Wu had described it. It was him complaining about how shit his life was and how his grandpa had left him to rot or something. But towards the end of the note, it was almost like a completely different person as he had realized the true intentions of his grandfather.
He began to understand just why his grandfather had left him and the lineage of a sacred sword that, if he could acquire it, would allow him to take revenge on the people that had murdered his father. It got really messy from there as words went off the page, and others were scribbled illegibly, making it hard to follow. It was as if he was drunk or on some kind of substance.
And then, at the very bottom, an arrow was drawn, signaling to flip over the page. But whatever was written on the back had completely melted off of the paper due to the moisture of the bathtub. The only thing just barely visible, due to how hard it had been written and how large it was, was two words.
"I'm sorry…" I muttered, feeling a chill run down my spine as my eyes drifted up to the corpse still soaking in the bathtub. The water had practically melted the skin off of this man while his empty eyes were infested with maggots.
"That's fucking brutal," Wu muttered, shivering at the sight of the rotting corpse. I didn't feel much towards it since I had no attachment to the man, but I did feel the need to pity it. I didn't bother carrying it out of the room. I didn't even bother taking it out of the bathtub. Instead, Aisa froze it and then shattered the corpse into a thousand pieces.
"Rest in peace," Aisa muttered, causing me to raise an eyebrow. Although, I didn't say anything until we began searching the room, and the corpse had completely disappeared with the shards of ice.
"Hey, why are you so fearful of him? Is it because he committed suicide? You've killed people before without any remorse, but him? You feel bad for him?"
"I only kill people that I know are my enemy. And most of the time, they are shitty people. The few times that I do kill a good person, I still follow through with the assassination, but I will allow them to rest in peace with a few prayers. I won't let their sacrifice go to waste because I don't kill people indiscriminately. I kill them for a purpose. My purpose."
"How do you know he wasn't bad, though? If you knew he had done horrible things to, let's say… children, then you just prayed for a man who is the lowest of the low. You don't know what he's done, so don't bother praying."
"That's right. I don't know what he's done, so the only thing I can do is pray and allow him to rest easy. If he did something horrible, then whoop-de-doo… I guess that's my fault. But from what I know, he's an innocent man who has struggled all his life… And even then, forgiveness is an option. If maybe he did such a thing but realized his wrongdoings and changed, then maybe I would be able to forgive him, even while knowing about his wrongdoings."
I had nothing more to say to that logic. It was her course of thought, and I wasn't about to change that just because I had a different opinion. She is her own independent person who can do whatever she wants… but as long as she's not a hypocrite and doesn't go back on her words, then I won't care.
"Ah! I think I found it!" Wu suddenly shouted from the corner of the room, so we stopped this silly battle of ethics and walked over. She gripped a block of ice with both hands, a blooming rose with sharp razor teeth frozen inside. It was as long and big as my forearm while being as ferocious as a lion. Even as it was frozen, it still emitted a strange amount of bloodlust.
"Alright, let's go. I don't like this place."
