CHAPTER 196: I AM AFRAID

"Going back to my most recent memory. I was born in the noble house Vizulo, which was a Duke house under the Crown, within the Vampire King Domain... The Dark City of Helheim the most developed domain within the Monster World."

"I was the seventh son of the Vizuo Patriarch. Born into a bloodline feared across the Monster World for one thing...speed. Each of us inherits the ancestral technique known as Step of Darkness, a movement art rooted not in mere velocity, but in the essence of darkness itself."

"Darkness, as we understand it, isn’t just the absence of light, it is a force that exists beneath perception, beneath the laws that define movement, time, and causality. When we activate the Step, we don’t move through space, we move around it. We ride the folds of reality before reality even knows we’ve moved. The stronger members of my family can vanish from one moment and reappear across timelines, moving faster than the very laws that govern cause and effect. They are beyond time, beyond speed... Timeless when they run."

"But me? I’m the weakest. While my brothers pierce through the seams of existence, I can barely scrape past the speed of light. For twenty seconds, total, I can push my body to move just fast enough to outpace photons in the human world. It’s not insignificant, but compared to them... it’s pathetic. They sprint through causality itself. I just run faster than sight."

"Still, even that sliver of our inheritance is enough to make me untouchable to most. For twenty seconds, I move like a ghost between frames, a shadow that even light struggles to catch."

"But even with that, my family still cast me aside. They sent me to the Cain Family, most likely just to be rid of their weakest link. A quiet exile, disguised as duty. I was placed in one of the elite military units under the Cain Family’s main army, an honor on paper, but I knew what it really meant."

"Our unit was led by none other than Kifril Fallenblood, Supreme Commander of the House. He was once known as Kifril Cain, the third son of the Cain lineage, but after countless victories and battlefield achievements, he was granted an independent name, a mark of distinction, and permission to found a branch family of his own. Few earn that right. Even fewer survive long enough to wield it."

"Since then, we’ve been at war...endless campaigns against neighboring domains, whether lesser or greater. Each conquest expands the reach of House Cain, tightening their grip across the continent. And of course, it is all done in the name of the King himself. Hector Cain, known across the lands as the Monster Lord of Body, a being beyond all other Monster’s of the World."

"Our territory stretched far and wide, devouring weaker domains and pushing borders with each passing year. But recently... something changed. A variable appeared, something we hadn’t accounted for."

"At first, we thought it was just an anomaly. High above the clouds, beyond the reach of ground-bound armies, a floating castle drifted across the skies, passing directly over Vampire-held lands. It was the first time Commander Kifril had seen anything like it."

"Stranger still, it wasn’t empty. Through its open gates, fairy like monsters flew in and out, most of them ranked between B-Class and low A-Class. For reference, a vampire at their weakest is considered a Rank B-Race. When determining a monster’s threat level, we scale them based on their lowest recorded output, not their peak. It’s a conservative method, designed to prevent underestimation."

"Which meant... even the weakest creatures circling that castle were on par with our foot soldiers."

"Naturally, Commander Kifril was deployed to assess and, if needed, eliminate the threat. But when he finally came face to face with the so-called King of the floating castle, things took a different turn."

"The castle wasn’t a weapon, nor a siege platform, it was a sanctuary. Inside were monsters of every kind, spanning dozens of species... but the majority were of fairy origin. Fragile in form, destructive and versatile in power. Until that day, we had never encountered their kind before. It wasn’t long before we learned their name, the Sidhe."

"What should’ve been a confrontation turned into diplomacy. Kifril, recognizing the sheer war potential of a compact kingdom housing a legion of monsters under one banner, suggested a peace contract. Surprisingly, it was accepted. That simple gesture marked the beginning of friendly ties between the Cain Family and the Sidhe. Shortly after, the castle drifted away, vanishing into the horizon as it entered another domain. But contact remained. Sparse... but steady."

"Months passed, and the Sidhe King Alustus, as we came to know him had manage to traveled far across the Monster World. He encountered other kingdoms and settlements, forging alliances as he went. When he and Kifril met again, the peace contract evolved. A new agreement was drafted, a network of elite groups, each acting independently but bound by mutual aid when the call came."

"That was their second meeting."

"A few months later, word spread like wildfire, Alustus was dead, killed at random by an unknown third party. The castle stopped moving. Communication ceased. Kifril suspected foul play immediately. His eyes turned toward the Shinso family, whose fortress lay dangerously close to their domain northern border... brushing up against the domain of that dread woman."

"So Kifril, along with the other four Division Heads, called for a war council. That is how me and the others ended up here, his entire squadron, assembled like pieces on a board. But then I opened my damn mouth."

"I asked...no, I demanded to know why we were being friendly with something as minute as this Backwater Kingdom. Why do we the vampire’s need to show respect to some random drifting fairytale castle ruled by a fairy king?"

"And that’s when everything went wrong for me."

"I didn’t see a spell. I didn’t hear a chant. I don’t sense anything. But one blink later, the Arena was gone. And I was somewhere else. A chamber that I was familiar with. I recognized it as Alustus’s Throne Room, and on his throne was another. Only this wasn’t the same doll-sized monster we had come to know."

"NO.... THIS WAS SOMETHING WORSE."

"Sitting on that massive stone throne was a child, no older than twelve. His eyes like twin suns, and royal robes that draped his tiny frame, but nothing about him was innocent. The moment he looked at me, I felt like a crime had been committed just by existing."

"He smiled when he saw me, and I can assure you it was not a warm one, rather empty and unforgiving."

But when he spoke, it was when I truly felt fair properly for the first time in my life.

"For something so insignificant, you’ve got real balls slandering my kingdom while standing on my land. Tsk."

"Then he got up from his throne, his presence beating down on me to the point in bent the knee by force, as I leaned forward, my head rising by some mysterious force."

His hands grabbing my cheeks, and l was force to look him in the eye when he said.

"Take pride in this...your suffering will feed me you undead meat-bag."

From there on after the world bent around me. Pain like no other was all I felt going forward.

Tendrils by the many, black and color, and wet glistening things, exploded from his hands like starving serpents.

They didn’t strike oh no they entered and invaded. They drilled into my eyes, my ears, down my throat, into my nostrils, under my fingernails, through the pores of my scalp, even between the tiny gaps where my hair met skin.

And each tendril, each twisted, writhing thing was covered in twitching eyes and barbed mouths. Everyone of them penetrated, searched, and tasted.

Until they found my brain.

And then when they did, they began to eat to their heart is please.

"Not just the flesh but also my memories. My language. My name. Every second I had ever lived was chewed on like soft fruit. And I was awake the entire time."

"I can’t scream. I don’t even know how anymore."

"I’m scared."

"I’m so scared."

"W-when does this end?"

"It h-hurts."

"I-I hurts."

The clocker thick on, and mercilessly Adam ate his fill till this poor thing was nothing but a hollowed existence.

Satisfied he toss the corpse of the ground and awaited the group, their meeting began now.

His presence higher now went off not enough to kill, but enough to intimidate to the point that most of the vampire coming in here won’t be able to properly cope with it.

Adam did not want to look weak before a potential enemy, hence his cold decision to behave this way.

His heart was set on making this new meeting a beneficial one at all cost. And it was as exactly as he planed Kifril, and another hooded figure came before Adam. They looked at him with wife eye’s not expecting that the king was this young but even then Kifril appeared and did a humble bow while saying.

"Greetings current King of the Sidhe, I am Kifril Fallenblood Supreme Commander of the Royal Army of the Cain Family. And also the 3rd son of the Vampire King Hector Cain, with my introduction out of the way. And if I may humbly asked, who exactly do I stand before in this new order?"