“Uhh…”
Diana’s tightly shut eyelids trembled.
“Sis! Are you awake?!”
As her scattered thoughts gradually returned, she could hear her younger sibling’s urgent voice nearby.
It seemed her sibling had been waiting right next to her, caring for her all along.
“…Yeah, I’m okay.”
With a hoarse voice that barely formed a whisper, Diana slowly propped herself up.
Her head was a bit dizzy, but other than that, there wasn’t any particular pain.
Well, it was only natural since she had been overpowered without any resistance due to her complete lack of combat abilities.
‘So it really wasn’t a dream after all.’
As she cautiously scanned her surroundings, familiar sights from her home came into view.
That cozy place where their family had been staying ever since they settled in this new land.
Of course, the atmosphere was not as peaceful as usual, given they had just gone through a major incident.
“Diana! You’re awake!”
“I’m so relieved! Rafi woke up earlier, but I was worried because he wouldn’t open his eyes at all…”
Her uncle and aunt quickly approached, hugging her and comforting her.
Her aunt, who had gone grocery shopping at the time of the incident, and her uncle, who had gotten off work late, had timed it just right to avoid the chaos.
However, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows just because they were happy their children and niece had escaped calamity.
They let out a sigh of relief only after confirming Diana was awake.
Fortunately, the youngest, Rafi, was unharmed due to the protective spell he had received, unlike the others who had fainted since the onset of the incident and thus remembered nothing.
“…That’s a relief. It’s better for Rafi since he’s still young…”
Diana, who had been absentmindedly nodding along to their conversation, suddenly stopped speaking.
As her reasoning ability began to return, a memory fleetingly skimmed across her mind.
“Wait! Grandma! What about Grandma Mirorfa?!”
Startled, she sprang up from her bedding.
Her quick movement caused her to stumble, but her sibling was there to catch her; still, she couldn’t bother with that right now.
The last image of the old woman she had seen flashed in her mind.
‘No!’
The image of the grandma from next door, who had done everything she could to buy them time while holding Rafi and collapsing after spitting blood.
Diana realized for the first time that the grandma had been an extraordinarily powerful person.
If it hadn’t been for that desperate effort, she wouldn’t be able to see her family’s faces again.
“Don’t worry too much, sis. Grandma is safe too.”
“Yeah, we’re on our way to check on her right now. Since she lived alone, we brought her to the guest room for care.”
“Yeah, yeah. Plus, the Holy God’s saint personally checked on her! It’s the first time in my life seeing the saint with my own eyes…”
Diana, feeling relaxed by her family’s words, sank back onto her bedding.
With the thought that they had avoided the worst-case scenario, a sigh of relief escaped her lips.
“A saint, you say…?”
“Yup! You haven’t seen her yet, right? I saw the moment she descended from the heavens! Wow… I’ll never forget it. She truly is remarkable!”
Aaron animatedly described the majestic scene he had witnessed, using all his gestures.
A gentle smile appeared on Diana’s face as she looked at her brother.
But contrary to her sibling’s words, the image of Saint Heinrich was firmly planted in her memory.
‘Back then, I wasn’t in my right mind, and I wondered if I had imagined it. But it turns out what I saw wasn’t an illusion after all.’
It was evident that the figure in her brother’s description and her memory belonged to the same person.
Right after being overpowered by the assailants, during her fading consciousness, the saint of the Holy Church had appeared thanks to a strong will.
‘But…’
Diana’s expression subtly changed as she listened to the conversation.
Even though she retained some memory from that time, since her state of mind had been muddled, it wasn’t all clear.
Now, the only information she could recall was a few striking elements.
And among those, the clearest thing was—
Naturally, it related to the sense she was most confident about.
The familiar scent that intermingled with the unmistakable stench of blood, in an atmosphere that felt more chilly than warm.
It was a fragrance she hadn’t experienced in a long time, providing a nostalgia more reminiscent than the scent she caught daily from Hubert.
‘Uncle Heinz…’
Reconnecting with him as a vampire was a first since she had moved to this place called Tarak.
However, since she was with Hubert every day, it wasn’t difficult for her to discern the traces of the ‘uncle’ she knew within that scent.
After all, she had been thinking from the very beginning that the two were the same person.
‘But…’
There was just one thing.
Something even she herself found incomprehensible.
And that was—
‘That person must surely be a saint.’
The familiar smell she sensed wasn’t from just one person.
Although it was warm and comforting, another familiar scent was undoubtedly mixed in.
At the time, she couldn’t think deeply due to the chaos, but now that she reflected, it was indeed a strange matter.
Vampires and saints were generally thought to be an incompatible combination.
‘No way?’
Lost in thought, a gasp naturally escaped her lips.
Her eyes widened as she suddenly lifted her head.
“Sis?”
It seemed she had fallen into her own world without even hearing her sibling’s voice anymore.
She was deep in thought about a sudden hypothesis that had appeared.
‘If that’s the case…’
Diana clenched her delicate fists.
*
“Thank you, saint!”
“Did you see it? The phenomenon that covered the entire sky back then…”
“Pfft, you! You really think anyone in Tarak could have missed that thing?”
“Oh! Are those the ones? The ones I only heard about in rumors…?”
“Is Mercenary King Harley not here? What a shame! I wanted to see that hero of Tarak just once.”
The terrorist incident targeting the Hubert Association’s executives ended without major damage.
The outlaw had cunningly devised a bold plan to kidnap the second-in-command of the association by targeting the area around their residence, but fortunately, a party of heroes visiting Tarak quickly caught on to the situation and were able to respond in time.
‘It’s better to be prepared like this.’
Since he was confined within the Abyss, not many would understand talks of gods or fragments of prophets.
Due to the God’s record-erasing technique, there was nearly nobody left on Earth who knew of its existence, let alone a scrap of information.
‘It seems there are also restrictions on spreading information about it.’
The more people recognized and revered the mythological existence, the greater influence it had.
Naturally, the fallen god and its apostles would have tried that method as well.
Yet the fact that the situation remained the same indicated that information about its existence was forbidden by the world’s laws.
‘The fact that he operates only a few apostles is likely part of that restriction. I, being an otherworldly being, am exempt from that.’
In that sense, the apostles he followed were very peculiar entities.
Even though they certainly grew up in this Auterica, it was curious how they ended up there.
Of course, they must have their own reasons.
For example, there was Temiran McClair, who was right here now.
“Guhh… Urgh!”
From the depths of the dark room, a stifled groan escaped.
The stunted sounds, hardly able to give way to screams, starkly exhibited the sheer extent of his suffering.
“Is it true that even fallen gods are still divine? The resistance is considerable.”
Temiran, rigid and bound by chains of blood on the examination table, lay there as Heinz stood over him like a surgical doctor, his hand plunged into Temiran’s heart, muttering softly.
‘It’s not a pretty sight, but there’s no help for it.’
A gruesome crime scene, one that could hardly bear a justification, involved a young child undergoing some biological experiment and an adult man piercing through his chest and grasping his heart.
But it couldn’t be said that he was torturing him for interrogation.
It would be more accurate to describe it as a procedure for healing.
‘It’s natural for such major surgery to involve pain. After all, it’s better than just dying, right?’
Heinz was here in this dim room for Temiran’s sake.
He was still an apostle of the god trapped in the Abyss against his will, and the only remaining avenues were to either die or remove the apostle’s power.
However, extracting the divine power given to an apostle… The process of forcibly extracting traces embedded in the body would certainly not be easy!
“Just a little longer; you can endure it. Don’t be too resentful. I’m sharing the same pain as you.”
“Grr!”
Temiran glared at Heinz with bloodshot eyes, as if in protest against the lie.
However, Heinz’s statement was no lie at all.
He only appeared calm because, as usual, he filtered unnecessary sensations through the “Mind Hub.”
…Well, technically, it was a lie that he was almost done.
‘The base should certainly be Obaifo, but it has been quite significantly altered. The influence of the Abyss seems pretty considerable. Things would have been easier if he had genuinely been a pureblood Obaifo; what a pity.’
This alteration was probably one of the changes that had occurred after becoming an apostle.
Yet, it wasn’t all bad news.
‘Fortunately, he remains in an imperfect state. It has been 20 years since Temiran was designated as an apostle, and this is the level he has reached…’
As previously mentioned, creating an apostle was not a simple matter for a god whose name and even existence were erased by the laws of the world.
Until now, it seemed the being had spent extensive time and effort methodically progressing the task, but as the situation began to change rapidly, his limits started becoming apparent.
‘To send an incomplete apostle into the world means he must have felt a considerable sense of urgency.’
He must have thought that if he didn’t act, the remaining arrangements would collapse soon.
By all accounts, it wasn’t a hasty judgment.
From the progress, it appeared Temiran would need at least another 10 years to fully become a proper apostle.
Ten years was far lengthier than the time he had spent operating in Auterica.
Considering everything that had transpired in that short period, no one could guarantee how things would stand ten years from now, which made it easy to comprehend the sensation of crisis he must have felt.
“Cough! Almost… done… how long…”
“Ah.”
In that moment, a gasping sound drifted from below.
His body had become drenched in blood, forcibly drawn into the bloodstream through the reaction of the blood pooling around his heart.
Heinz also forced his body into control, appearing outwardly fine, but internally, he was no different from Temiran.
‘There’s no point in delaying further; it won’t yield good outcomes.’
Everything was ready.
It was only a matter of executing the remaining parts.
“Bite your lip. This time it will hurt even more.”
“What?! More pain right now…!”
Temiran, unable to finish his words, let out a croaking scream, but Heinz, already deeply focused, didn’t hear him anymore.
As a vampire with the Holy Blood, and as the “Blood Master,” he maximized his control over blood, injecting the “Refined Blood Essence” imbued with the power of “Hybrid Evolution” directly into the heart to elevate dominance.
‘Ultimately, it’s a battle over which side has the greater dominance—whether he’s an apostle or a vampire.’
If Temiran had become a complete apostle like a revolutionary, it would have been nearly impossible for Heinz to seize control. Still, fortunately, he was not at that level yet.
The repeated expressions of disrespect towards the god he displayed during their earlier dialogue likely reflected that inner struggle.
Crack— Crack—!
The small body bound by chains of blood began to squirm and evolve forcibly.
Bones and flesh merged together and gradually reformed into a new appearance, collapsing and reshaping like clay.
Stronger, tougher, more resilient… more mature than before.
“Ugh! Ugh! Stop! Stop—!”
As Temiran, now in his mid-teens, flailed and spewed bright red blood, Heinz did not flinch at all.
He calmly collected the blood, drawing it in to construct the blood magic circle that would assist in consciousness using “Blood Mystery.”
Found it.
After some time passed, something anomalous was detected in his insight.
A mysterious sanctity squirming at the roots of Temiran’s soul, sensed through the essence of blood inherent in vampires.
The entity confined in the Abyss was of human divine origins, yet paradoxically, pure humans couldn’t fully embrace the powers of an apostle.
The durability of the vessel-like body would become a problem, and the moment it connected spiritually with the being in the Abyss, it would immediately begin to corrupt and transform into a mindless monster like a White Giant.
‘Didn’t they say that the one who first introduced the traits of vampires and werewolves into Auterica was him?’
Whether that was done purposely or not was now irrelevant.
Regardless of his motivations, all that mattered was that before Heinz, who was beginning to grasp the essence of blood, it was all meaningless.
As “Existence Denial” manifested through the assimilated blood, the link with the divine was loosened even further.
And at that specific moment, the “Origin Regression” acquired through the Holy Blood activated.
Standing alone at the pinnacle of being a vampire, the power that was gradually nearing completion.
As it circulated through Temiran’s heart and blood across his body, the intruding substance— the apostolic power— began to fiercely revolt against his complete identity as a ‘vampire.’
“Gaaah—!”
Temiran, now appearing in his late teens, screamed as if he would throw up his heart.
Thus, Heinz decided to willingly aid him.
Puhwah—!
By completely removing the heart that had been inside him.
“Cough!”
“Phew. This is getting ridiculous.”
He gazed silently at the heart, which was pulsating vigorously in his palm.
Temiran, who had finally passed out, was not a cause for concern.
To Heinz II, who was bound to Temiran’s bloodline as a proper Pureblood Vampire, a mere heart was just a replaceable part.
The faith that was forcibly entwined had been turned on its head to become an extreme benefit for him.
‘Now, then…’
Thump— Thump—
A new red heart, pulsating and brimming with the divine power to grant apostolic abilities, squirmed within his grasp.
For some reason, he felt as though he had locked eyes with someone far away.
“It feels nice to see this way.”
Heinz chuckled softly.
This was a power that couldn’t be taken lightly.
If mishandled, one might end up like Temiran, a mere puppet.
‘Delicious, indeed.’
Of course, that was only true under normal circumstances; for Heinz II, who was already building his own divinity, it mattered not at all.
For him, the divine energy existing isolated was merely a highly digestible and rich restorative tonic.
Puhwah!
The heart he had in his hand exploded.
Yet, the spattered blood did not scatter everywhere.
As if drawn by some unseen force, the crimson liquid swiftly pulled back into his fist.
《Collecting new vampiric genes. Due to the influence of the special skill “Hybrid Evolution,” the individual’s divinity further grows. Skill “Subjugation” acquired.》
A satisfied smile crept across Heinz’s face.
He thought he could hear a roar of fury from somewhere, but it was probably just his imagination.
There were only two of them in this room: the unconscious Temiran and Heinz.
