Chapter 5: Midnight

Sitting alone in a chair in his room, Qin Yuan gazed out into the thick darkness beyond the window, waiting for the restlessness in his heart to finally cool.

Only then did he have the leisure to carefully explore the rest of the information.

First was the panel representing his character data.

The information recorded there was actually quite simple: on the left was his character information, including level and experience points.

On the right was a straightforward display of the items carried in his pack.

For instance, the initial quest to find a village or town had already been completed, and the twenty silver coins had been directly added to his inventory.

But no new quests had appeared afterward.

"Hm?"

Just then, Qin Yuan suddenly noticed a tiny line of text in the lower-left corner of the interface, something he had completely overlooked before.

It read, in effect, that the time remaining until his next return was 9:07:42.

Twelve hours after returning, he would enter the Land of Souls again.

What... did that mean?

Qin Yuan fell into thought.

He had a vague feeling that this meant he would return to the real world in nine hours, and then, twelve hours after that in reality, enter this world once more.

The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed. After all, even crossing worlds and magic had happened. What, then, was impossible?

A few minutes later, a server brought in a tray of food and set it down. After she left, Qin Yuan gave a whistle, and in an instant a snow-white owl appeared out of thin air.

"So fragrant!"

As soon as Feather emerged, it immediately noticed the sausage with yellow mushrooms on the table.

It swallowed hard and then, without any ceremony, began to devour it greedily, grease shining at the corners of its beak.

"This was what I promised you before, so of course I'll keep my word."

Qin Yuan smiled as he looked at the rather adorable owl before him, unable to resist reaching out to stroke it.

Feather shifted its body slightly while eating, as if reluctant, but in the end it did not avoid his hand.

Watching Feather eat so happily, Qin Yuan found himself hungry as well. He stabbed a piece of meat with his fork and put it into his mouth, chewing as his brows slowly furrowed.

The meat was very tough... and the flavor was a little strange... sour.

It was not unbearable, exactly, merely a matter of taste. He simply was not used to it.

He sampled each dish in turn and discovered that two or three of them were acceptable enough.

There were also one or two that struck him as outright inedible dark cuisine.

...

Before dawn.

Most of the villagers were already sunk in sleep.

The streets of the village were empty, with only the occasional night watchman passing by on patrol.

And on one street, a patrol team had just completed a scheduled inspection and, yawning, returned to their post to rest.

Meanwhile, somewhere else in the village, a human-shaped figure was moving with unsteady, halting steps.

At a certain corner, under the faint moonlight, one could see that it was an adventurer in coarse clothes, covered in dust, with a vacant stare and hollow eyes, slowly making his way toward the outskirts of the village.

His movements were stiff and sluggish, and from behind he did not look like a living person at all, more like a zombie.

But if anyone familiar were here, they would certainly recognize him as Qin Yuan.

His condition was extremely strange. His gaze was dull, and on his forehead, a crimson blood rune flickered in and out of sight.

Before long, Qin Yuan gradually left the village behind, but his feet never stopped as he headed toward a patch of woodland to the north.

The moment he stepped into the woods, his figure seemed to lose all strength. After pausing there for a few seconds, he slowly collapsed to the ground.

In the quiet grove, aside from a gust of wind and the rustling of leaves, there was no further disturbance.

A few minutes later, perhaps certain no one had followed him, a red-skinned figure slowly rose from the grass.

In the moonlight, it could be seen that this was a humanoid monster. Its skin was dry and shriveled, with the veins beneath the surface faintly visible. On its back were a pair of folded flesh wings, its hands ended in sharp claws, and two pointed fangs jutted slightly past its lips.

The vampire creature looked at the prey before her and eagerly extended a tongue more than a foot long, licking her lips.

As a wanted fugitive from the village, she should have stayed hidden for a while.

That had indeed been her original plan.

But this human she had encountered today was, she swore, unlike every other person she had ever met.

In her peculiar sense of smell, this human was constantly emitting an aroma of fatal temptation.

It was an unprecedented feeling.

If she could drink this sweet-smelling blood...

Even imagining it made her body begin to tremble with a bliss so exquisite it was nearly unbearable.

In the end, reason could not suppress this hunger.

She changed her mind and decided to act.

Even if it meant taking some risks.

"Hmm... now, at last, it's time for a proper feast..."

She swallowed hard, feeling her belly already empty and aching with hunger.

In her excitement, her body even trembled faintly.

Just as she was about to strike—

From some corner of the forest, a blade of wind suddenly drifted out.

It flew rapidly toward the monster.

"Hm?"

The winged vampire reacted swiftly, twisting aside and dodging to one side, so fast that only afterimages remained in its wake.

Even so, a thin line of blood was still left behind on the ground.

"Who is it?"

The monster's cold gaze turned toward the trees.

In the moonlight, it could be clearly seen that a deep wound to the bone had opened on her left arm, with dark red blood slowly seeping out.

Her movement had already been extremely quick, but the attack had come from ambush. By the time she reacted, the blade of wind was already near, and she had still been struck.

The wound throbbed with pain.

Seeing that her position had been exposed, the one hiding in the dark and launching the ambush no longer bothered to conceal himself, slowly stepping out of the shadows.

It was a snow-white owl, its two sharp eagle eyes seeming able to see through everything, sending a chill down the spine.

"An owl?" the monster said, crimson eyes flashing with surprise, then quickly realizing something. "You followed him here?"

The owl landed on a tree branch and stared at it coldly, unmoving.

The monster waited in silence for a moment, receiving no answer.

"You're asking for death!"

Two rows of sharp fangs bared at the corners of her lips. "If you want to die with him, then I'll send you both to the grave."

With that, the vampire monster's gaze sharpened. Her wings spread wide across her back, and the claws in her hands gleamed with a sinister cold light.

In the next instant, her entire body shot backward like an arrow released from a bow—

Then she turned and fled at full speed!

With the power of her wings, her speed was astonishing, leaving trails of afterimages behind her.

While she had been speaking, the vampire had actually been secretly observing her opponent the entire time.

That owl gave her an intense sense of danger.

It came from her bloodline gift, a keen intuition that could sense certain enemies impossible to defeat.

So even though the food she craved was right before her eyes, as a hunter skilled in ambush, once she encountered a foe too strong to face directly, she could only grit her teeth and retreat first.

That was the secret to her surviving for so long in the human world.

If the situation looked bad, run immediately!

After all, no matter what, her own life was the most important thing.

Even if she could not win head-on, she had great confidence in her own speed.

For a vampire, after all, the ability she was most proud of was the pair of flesh wings that granted her speed far beyond others of the same rank.

Flying through the air, the vampire recalled everything that had just happened, and at the thought of the meal that had reached her mouth only to fly away, she could not help but sigh deeply, heart aching with regret.

Yet very soon, she suddenly felt another surge of intense danger enveloping her.

And the source was behind her.

"Wh... what is... going on?"

She instinctively turned her head—and saw a blade of wind rapidly enlarging in her vision.

"Shh!"

Blood flashed through the air. The spacing of the two blades of wind was controlled with such perfection that one came from the left and one from the right, severing the monster's wings completely.

"How... so far..."

"So accurate..."