A dense forest stretched out like a mighty green ocean, where each tree seemed to strive to reach the very sky. The powerful trunks of ancient trees formed a dense canopy through which sunlight barely пробивалось, creating a причудливый pattern of light and shadow on the ground.
The forest was filled with unique sounds and aromas. The birds' singing created an amazing symphony coming from everywhere. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves, creating a whispering accompaniment.
The air was filled with the fresh scents of the forest, grass, and flowers. This unique forest aroma calmed and energized.
Suddenly, the singing stopped; the animals that were hunting their prey, as well as the prey itself, stopped to listen to their surroundings, even the rustling of the trees suddenly ceased.
Suddenly, in the middle of the dense forest, an ancient castle appeared. It happened so unexpectedly that the animals nearby didn't even have time to move and perished.
At the same time.
An old vampire woke up on the throne. His gaze lingered on the weapons carelessly scattered around.
Each of these weapons held its own story. This blade, for example, he had torn from the cold hands of his fellow vampire; those pistols lying around were taken from Jade, the vampire hunter—she was a fiery one, the number of extra holes she put in me was countless.
Next to him lay Tristan's silver two-handed sword, another vampire hunter. That scoundrel used incendiary grenades. He gave me quite a bit of trouble before I could defeat him. I had to do it on the third attempt, and even then he managed to burn down half of the forest where I lived.
Looking at them, I suddenly remembered how I had started.
My name is Nomat. This isn't my real name. When I woke up in another world, in a damn coffin, I was overcome by an enormous thirst for blood. Why? I used to be an ordinary human, but what I saw forced me to abandon the name given to me by my parents. I was ashamed of what I had done under the influence of my bloodlust. That's why I took the name Nathan — the nickname I used to play video games in my youth. As they say, your first nickname stays with you forever. After all, you choose it yourself.
After quenching my thirst, I discovered magic — magic that allowed me to build! With every drop of blood, unknown knowledge suddenly appeared in my mind, like how to master various weapons or how to create a shelter for myself using magic.
At first, I lived in a dense forest where no human foot had ever stepped. I learned to create primitive tools, and that was the beginning of my development. It was unusual. As a modern person, I wasn't strong in combat with cold weapons, but the memories that surfaced in my head after I drank animal blood helped me.
Before I knew it, I was fighting a five-meter-tall wolf, then humans, bandits who lived near me.
After some time, I was able to build my own castle, and then my "relatives" began to awaken.
It was terrible. In my naivety, I let them get too close and was seriously wounded.
With their arrival, the situation escalated. Before, people didn't pay much attention to me — I mainly killed bandits — but with the appearance of other vampires, vampire hunters started to emerge, and the cities I could enter without much disguise began to be adorned with sacred regalia that caused a burning sensation in my posterior.
And the conflict began to escalate. I didn't understand why my own "relatives" wanted to put me to rest again, but after the second time, when I almost died for the second time, my patience ran out, and I started to destroy everyone.
A decade passed like this. All that time, the only thing I did was fight — I had no time for anything else. I fought, killed, devoured my own kind, drank the blood of humans who came into my territory. In rare moments of silence, I spent time in the forge, creating ever more deadly weapons. Due to constant conflicts, I honed my combat magic to an absolutely terrifying level of effectiveness. Chaos magic, blood magic, unholy magic, illusion magic, ice magic, storm magic — all six types of magic were honed to automatic perfection over those ten years. And in the tenth year of this slaughter, everything changed.
Dracula woke from his sleep and began to gather vampires under his banner. Everyone, except me. I… I'm not sure why his call didn't affect me. Perhaps it was due to my origin, or maybe because I had devoured too many other vampires.
And frankly, I didn't care. For me, nothing had changed — I fought both humans and vampires. Or so I initially thought.
I noticed that the number of vampires began to decrease for the first time. I'm not sure what triggered this, but one day, while I was involved in yet another massacre against everyone, I saw him.
A monster whose mere presence made humans faint, the weak-willed died instantly, and clergymen lost their divine magic.
And then I froze. Upon seeing him, my blood boiled, and my mind was clouded by an uncontrollable desire to destroy him! To tear him into small pieces, to devour his heart!
I came to my senses on a mountain of corpses, both human and vampire. My armor was destroyed, my weapons were broken, I couldn't see out of my right eye, and my left arm was missing, but in my right hand, I held the remnants of a heart. Dracula's heart.
Surveying the battlefield, I realized a simple truth. I was alone. I couldn't sense a single human within hundreds of kilometers, nor could I smell any vampires.
I had won.
Groaning and quietly cursing, I made my way to my ruined castle and began to rebuild it. After drinking a regeneration potion I had saved for a rainy day, I was able to heal almost all my wounds — all except for my eye, which refused to regenerate no matter how many new potions I drank. Giving up on that, I restored my armor and weapons, fixed my castle, and sat wearily on my throne. The fatigue was too great, causing me to fall asleep right there.
And now here I am, in my throne room, cluttered with the weapons of enemies I defeated.
But something was wrong. A strange feeling of wrongness, as if I wasn't safe. Frowning, I got up from my throne and headed towards the exit. Opening the gates, I was greeted by a tropical forest. A forest…
- That I didn't recognize.
Looking around a bit, I noticed something with interest — a crocodile, a crocodile that walked on two legs.
- How interesting.