The being I met not long ago.
I think of the demon.
What that bastard
used as a pretext to lure us.
“Because your world has no god, I’ll be your shadow... that was it.”
I should have felt doubt right there from the start.
Every other world has a god.
So why
was Earth the exception?
“I thought this Dwarven world... was the same as us.”
Thanks to that,
I just went, Oh, so there are worlds without gods too~, and let it slide.
But I was wrong.
[Divine power: 8]
A stat that enables what exceeds imagination.
Even at a mere 1 it showed power great enough to work miracles.
And the higher the number climbed, the broader the domain in which this stat could exert its force.
And this Divine Power was telling me:
Whatever the world,
there is no such thing as a world that had no god from the beginning.
And if a world still shows no trace of one...
there’s a reason worthy of that absence.
“The reason [Divine Power] led me here is probably this.”
Divine Power
wanted to tell me that reason.
Earth’s god...
did not fail to exist,
nor was it indifferent to humanity’s destruction.
It wasn’t like that.
“It was eaten long ago.”
Just like that Morzan.
As a result of perishing—or suffering damage close to it—
even now, with the world fallen,
it’s a situation where it cannot step forth.
“Whether it fell to something like Morzan did... I still don’t know.”
However,
a god’s death in itself is fully within the realm of possibility.
Even the Lord of Dasmur was hunted by the invaders,
and the divinities who ruled over the worlds of Seohwan and Miho as well—
by all indications, it’s right to say most of them were extinguished.
And if so—
“This Morzan... and Earth’s god, now gone.”
That world called Morzan,
and Earth where I now stand—
“they’re in similar straits.”
Different in kind, perhaps,
but that hunk of flesh, in the end,
was invaded and ravaged at will by an external enemy.
Earth is the same.
I can’t claim it was a world without problems,
but the civilization that bloomed in its own way...
was smashed by an outside foe.
Cr-r-runch...
I clenched my teeth hard enough to crack them.
“Who the fuck do they think they are...”
Why.
By what authority
do they toy with sound, whole other worlds.
Unable to swallow the anger,
I looked at the flesh before my eyes.
The being who was said to be a great god.
Morzan.
It’s a little absurd that I,
a mere human, feel this sort of emotion toward a thing like that.
“But I sympathize with you.”
What it felt when it died—
that grievance and rancor...
I could sympathize with it without end.
“...Whether this is purely my own emotion, I don’t know.”
Because in this space...
the thought it was exuding lay over everything far too thickly.
To the point that I couldn’t tell
whether what I was feeling now was mine
or its.
And then—
[Trait — Hundred Poisons Cannot Invade duration has expired.]
[The trait is removed.]
“...!”
The dish’s duration ended,
and the thoughts like miasma nearby
began pouring into me unfiltered.
The world’s verdict that this was “poison.”
Thoughts so savage and dangerous that poison resistance would apply.
Enormous pain, lamentation, and resentment
flooded into me without a filter.
“...gghrk.”
When it was first loosed,
that rancor was thick enough to exterminate everything on the surface in one sweep.
Even if it’s grown a little blurry from being repeated for ages,
it was still vicious to the extreme.
But—
“...haha.”
I,
even while weeping blood from the pain,
stepped up to that flesh
and set my hand upon it.
“So... you’re stuck like this because you can’t even die?”
—It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts...
A world and its children that should have blossomed beautifully—
it saw the landscape twisted into ugliness.
Because of that rancor and hatred,
even though it could have chosen extinction long ago,
this shard of a fallen god...
was unable to die and kept
screaming here.
“It must be galling.”
—Why only me why only me why only me...
“I feel the same. Those dogshit bastards. Who the hell are they to wreck other people’s lives—shit, shit.”
—Why why why...
Flesh that already repeats nothing
but emotion without reason.
“Even so, you stubborn thing.”
I wasn’t expecting an answer, but...
“Keeping this up... isn’t it a bit much.”
—......
“Just wait.”
I spoke to this ugly-looking lump of flesh,
feeling a strange intimacy toward it.
“Soon... I will—”
The immense mass of emotion pouring out,
that excruciating chain of thoughts—
I took it all in.
And—
“I’ll end your pain.”
I turned my body
and set my steps toward the surface.
****
“Ggghrk...”
Damn it.
Maybe this wasn’t the time to be talking to that flesh.
“I’m really gonna die...”
Thoughts as harmful to the body as miasma itself.
I had to head for the surface fully exposed to those thoughts.
No matter that I had resistance through Nepenthes,
no matter that [Vampire] blood could regenerate wounds—
the thoughts were so fierce I could hardly bear them.
Thud...
My whole body felt like it was melting from the pain,
and in the end,
I dropped to my knees at a midpoint.
“Even so, I can’t die...”
In miasma so thick I could barely stand,
I forced my arms out and crawled along the floor.
[Activating skill — Assistant Chef.]
When even that wasn’t feasible anymore,
I triggered a skill.
My body was in unbelievable agony,
but I hadn’t spent any mana yet.
“Move...”
A big frying pan slid in under my body
and started to carry me toward the surface.
A skill that isn’t very efficient for transporting anything.
I could feel chunks of mana shaving off inside me.
“Faster...!”
Even so,
I pushed the Assistant Chef.
I had to get to the surface as fast as possible.
Only then—
“I can quell its rage.”
To that thing suffering because it can’t die,
I could grant a peaceful death.
—...M-maste...r...!
From far away,
a familiar voice reached my ears,
and only then did my tension release,
and I could safely lose consciousness.
****
“Master!?”
Vampires were holding out in a barely tolerable zone for the miasma.
Ariella saw the figure in the distance and was appalled.
[Dark Vision]
If not for this trait the Nobles of the Night are born with, it would have been out of sight—
but there,
a human figure was crawling up like a corpse.
“...tsk!”
Seeing that state, Ariella made her decision as fast as possible.
“Children!”
—Yes! Master!
She turned her head and shouted to the vassals on standby.
They were already far stronger than ordinary humans,
and armed with legion-issue equipment; in average power they even outstripped the legion’s soldiers—mighty vassals.
“You, and you... and you three—five total!”
Among them, Ariella called out five vassals who, as former monsters, had the highest stamina,
then pointed into the dark and commanded:
“Bring the Master!”
—Yes! As the Master commands!
“You may die! Prioritize only the Master’s life!”
—We go to save the Master of our Master!!!
—Kwoooaaaargh!
Fssssssssss...
They had been suppressing the already vicious miasma with vampire regeneration.
When they went deeper,
the monsters’ bodies began to melt at once.
—Gwooooooaaaargh!!!
However,
those huge-bodied monsters had some leeway even as their flesh liquefied.
Grrrk...
The first vampire to reach Sergeant Shin Youngjun—
he grabbed Sergeant Shin Youngjun’s body and managed to bring him about ten paces closer to the surface,
then melted in the miasma and became a handful of blood.
—Next is me!
—Then me after!
The next monster rushed in, likewise brought Sergeant Shin Youngjun about thirty paces closer, then dissolved.
The one after that succeeded in carrying him even closer and melted.
Bit by bit, bit by bit.
Shin Youngjun drew nearer to the surface.
—Kh...huk...
At last,
even the last vassal sent collapsed—
“Hrmp!”
Ariella
thrust her own body into that miasma.
Thanks to the five monsters having brought him as close as possible, it wasn’t extremely far,
but the miasma was still vicious.
“This time...”
She pushed through the miasma,
hauled Sergeant Shin Youngjun over her shoulder, and muttered,
“You won’t get away with paying this... with just a snack.”
And so, in the end,
Ariella succeeded in pulling Shin Youngjun out of the thick miasma.
“If it were only the miasma around here... the original Master would have endured it without a blink.”
Without needing to rely on vampire regeneration,
Nepenthes’s resistance alone would have sufficed.
Yes.
If—and only if—it were the original Master.
“Your condition is far too grave.”
Ssssk...
She saw the shoulder plate of the protective suit melting and broke into a cold sweat.
Her Master wasn’t merely pickled in miasma on the skin’s surface.
All the organs in his body, of course—
even his blood was intoxicated by the vicious chain of thoughts.
“At this rate...”
No matter how fast she moved him to the surface,
it was obvious he’d die before they arrived.
In that moment,
Ariella fell into a dilemma.
“The Master’s death...”
In the past,
back when she was a feeble viscountess, she was defeated by her Master.
It wasn’t enough that her very being was drained as blood—
in the end, she had to offer herself to him with her own mouth.
But now
she was different.
“A viscount... is a rank my original self couldn’t even meet the eyes of.”
This was ages ago,
before she ever came to this otherworld called Earth,
before she was hunted by vampire hunters.
Though she belonged to the mighty Karstein bloodline,
she wasn’t truly a noble so much as...
“I was no more than the head-of-house’s plaything...”
Vampires love beautiful things.
So did Grand Duke Isabella, head of the Karstein bloodline.
The only reason Ariella could become a noble was ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) entirely that.
Simply because
she was beautiful enough to satisfy the great Grand Duke Isabella’s eye.
However—
“There’s no need to grant an excessive station to a flower planted for ornament.”
She was, in the end, nothing more than the duke’s plaything.
The title of viscountess was the same—
merely granted formally because they couldn’t take someone who wasn’t a noble to a lofty place.
What about now?
The past in which she was a noble yet weaker than her kin of knightly rank is gone.
She has drawn a step closer to the true “Nobles of the Night”
she couldn’t even meet the gaze of before.
If Shin Youngjun dies here,
and she uses that power—
“like we dealt damage to those pigs... if I chose to expand my power,”
as she once did to the Green Manes tribe,
she could expand her power at overwhelming speed.
Even if the legion is a mighty force in this region,
she knows its internal information down to the roots.
“If I remove the most dangerous [Shaman], I can manage the rest somehow...”
She was certain.
If her Master dies here,
and she can be let loose—
the other nobles who looked down on her and treated her as a toy,
the daydream she never dared speak aloud under those gazes...
could become reality.
On this otherworldly land,
she could found a kingdom of her own.
****
“......”
She had many thoughts,
but her hesitation was brief.
And a moment later,
having reached her decision, she opened her mouth—
Crunch!
and sank those fangs
into her Master’s body.
