Platinum Void

Year 47 Day 14

When the sun, set again I clambered out of the ditch. Some light had come through and I had streaks and dots of extreme burning. One of them was almost the size of a bee. And the burn had genuinely scorched a blackened hole into my flesh that smelt like burnt pork. My lungs felt disgusting as they had holes and black powder inside them. I could hardly breathe but I managed to walk back to the wall and climb again. That time I actually successfully got up. Around me was some kind of semi-open field. It looked a bit like a tundra with coloured grasses and small thorny shrubs sparsely dotted around but. There were also a few conifers dotted around. They weren't very frequent but it made it clear that I wasn't quite in a full-on tundra. It was likely somewhere along the boundary between taiga and tundra. likely closer to the tundra side as there would be far more trees if I was close to a taiga. I then started to head off to get to the nearest settlement. I walked in the direction I had been given by the woman when she mentioned taking me somewhere. I decided to jog just to get a better chance of arriving before sunrise. After about 3 hours I came across a path. The path was clearly rarely used. I then jogged along the path for about 2 hours at a constant reasonable jogging speed. I then came across a sign. It had an arrow pointing the direction I was going and one-pointed from where I came from. There were words which read. Rebelto 1170v and Sorella 370v. They were both in the direction I had been jogging away from. I had been going in the direction of Gjangfreed which was 7095v away. I didn't know how far that was but I knew I'd much rather do 370 of it than 7000! I changed direction and went back on myself. I ran at my fastest long-distance run. I was going much faster than a sprint in my old life but it felt like a heavy jog. I felt as if I could go an entire hour at that speed. After what felt like an hour and a half I arrived in a tiny village. Sorella. It was much smaller than Calgarii had been and looked to be similarly wealthy. The sun would likely rise soon as it felt like a lot of time had passed since it set. I went through the village avoiding the delicious-looking guards and Entered somebody's house much the same was I had in Calgarii. However this time they noticed me right away. They all had dirty blonde hair and green eyes like the woman who drove the statue. They were terrified of me by the fact I had just broken into their house. I probably wasn't too scary to look at but after breaking into your home anybody could be frightening. I jumped at each of them and drained them in a jiffy. I was done so quickly that the first victim's body still twitched slightly even after I was done with the last one.

6 more people in my belly. Refuelling my magic. Fantastic!! I thought. Now that my blood magic was back up again my game like regeneration continued. I could see my wounds becoming less severe and eventually fading away before my eyes. I was so relaxed after finally getting a meal I fell asleep right in the middle of their floor. Surrounded by crumpled up dry corpses. It was truly magnificent.

I woke up still inside the house but I had been tied up. There were ropes around me and I had been pinned to a pole. There was a guard nearby and a whole bunch of people around me. The guards started to shout at me in their slightly funny language that was clearly similar to English but not quite there. Perhaps they had the same root language? I thought to myself. "Did joo zorg kase peppol?" Said a man wearing clothes with some colour to them. He was likely wealthier than the rest as he seemed cleaner, better groomed and taller than everybody else. He also wore robes with hints of red and green in them, unlike the brown simple damaged clothes the other villagers wore.

I pulled a puzzled face showing that I didn't quite understand what he was saying. He got angry and shouted. "Langij!?" Probably meaning language. He was asking me which language I spoke. I didn't know what the name of English would be there so I just decided to threaten them in English and see if he picked it up. I wasn't very hungry but it wasn't exactly like I was unwilling to have an extra feast. "If you don't untie me now you little piece of shit I'll tear your head off!" I said in a very calm and pleasing voice so that his reaction would tell me whether or not he understood me.

He looked fuming. His face had gone a funny crimson colour and he stamped his feet in anger. "You could have just said you spoke Curgish!!" He yelled with a familiar but slightly odd accent. It sounded as if a scouse and a Dutchman had had an accent baby. I smiled at him. "You can't get out anyway. These ropes are strong. We will send you over to the capital to get you slaughtered" His English seemed very good for somebody in a dark ages like environment. Why would he know a foreign language? Perhaps they had visitors every now and again. It only took a few days to get there so it couldn't have been too far from the border.

"I'd like to see you try, I smirked." I was loving it. I mocked him and played with his strings knowing fully well I could break out of the ropes. The ropes had magic nullifiers on them but no magic that would make them any harder to break. My physical strength would be enough. Then I noticed a fatal error. Outside was pure daylight. I couldn't go out like that. I'd burn to a crisp long before I got anywhere. And where would I go? I didn't know how big Rebelto would be. For all, I knew it could be even smaller than this village. But it didn't really matter a whole lot at the end of the day. No matter what speed I ran at I would never be able to reach Rebelto before burning to nothing.

I decided I would just go to sleep while I waited for sunset. I was tired. I had been exercising a lot recently and had also used up a lot of magic. It had replenished but was still exhausting.

I woke up to find a blade inside my neck. Somebody had tried to slit my neck with a small dagger. The man was short and hairy with dirty blonde hair and green eyes. Like everyone else there. It felt so weird that there was so little difference between the natives. Everyone had the same hair, skin and eye colour as each other. It wouldn't surprise me that you'd be able to tell somebodies birth country just by glancing at them. I wondered where I looked like I was from. Perhaps that was why they knew I was a vampire. Perhaps I told them I was from somewhere unrealistic. Was the capital really such a strange place to say I was born in? Perhaps I had to say a whole different country or something to be believable.

Well, that's not really the biggest problem right now. The main problem is that somebody had just tried to slit my throat. The dagger started to carve through my skin when I woke up. I instinctively tried to flash magic into my neck to reinforce it but the ropes were holding me in place. I stretched my arms out will all my strength and only just managed to break the ropes. They were incredibly tough and much stronger than I had expected. I then pushed blood magic into my neck. The dagger had already started to penetrate my trachea so I put a magical barrier there. I then started to break the dagger down with tiny bursts of black magic. The dagger slowly turned to dust as it got deeper into my throat. Then my black magic burst too large and took half of my throat off along with the whole dagger and the guy's hand. I quickly pumped extra blood magic into my throat to accelerate the healing but I hardly worked. I pumped oxygen into my lungs using blood magic to help me breathe whilst my trachea was rebuilding. I could hardly move. I was in terrible pain, not to the level of sunlight but still extreme. After about a minute of healing, I was back to normal. Surprisingly all the magic release had hardly affected my magic supply. I still had loads left. I had only used a smidgen of my dark magic and about 1/30th of a human with my blood magic. But now all the villagers were cowering. They were afraid of what I could do. They had seen me disintegrate a hand a dagger and my own fucking neck! They probably thought I was even more of a psycho than when all I had done was kill a family. Probably rightfully so. I smiled. "Who's next?" I beckoned. They started to run away but I simply built a crimson wall in front of the door. The wall looked just like a blood clot but was significantly harder. Villagers were hacking at the door with hatchets and knives and any tools they had handy. It did them very little good. Even when the did manage to crack or chip the wall I would simply increase the magic dosage and harden it. I wasn't really sure how to repair it but Strengthening it would work too. Despite being less magic efficient. But it didn't matter. I could keep the wall like that for 2 days using the magic of a single human. I slowly trotted over to each of them and slurped up their red juice. It was a great experience. I was starting to feel a bit stuffed but Still wanted more. Even after eating 30 people I still ate. It physically made me feel ill eating more. But I continued. I didn't want any witnesses. After the 38th person, I was done. They had crammed what was likely the 38 heads of families in the village hall to prosecute me. They all seemed middle-aged and relatively high brow. They probably had families at home that wouldn't be able to survive by themselves. But that only made it easier for me. I didn't have to eat so many people. And! I could save a couple for later. Take them along with me. Take info from them. Use them as a little travel meal.

Mmm...

That was a good idea.

(What had I become)