C1: Nightmarish dream
Welcome everyone to my newest book. I won't say much to avoid spoilers but if it's not obvious we are starting in Blood-borne. After that though, the reasoning for the progression will make sense later down the line. Please read the 'about me' page if you wish to get a feel on what my goal for each chapter to be (word count and style).
Fair warning: This will be in first person (usage of 'I' to refer to MC).
I have also set up a patreon where I have already posted a few chapters there ahead of time. With the first few being free while after that will be payment. The whole book will eventually be made free as I Post the chapters here
This is to let anyone who is very interested in my books to support me in my hard work while others who dont have money or dont like paying for the book can just...wait... for when i publish it on Webnovel or other pages. comments are enabled so please judge my work fairly so that I can improve as an author. ill try to fix details or spelling errors as they pop up in the story. But be warned that edits delete all comments on the chapter that is edited.
As a final warning I will say. This shit about to get graphic. You have been warned, Fear The Old Blood.
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"Huh?" I call in confusion as I find myself in an empty void. Strange whispers resound in my ear like someone is talking to me.
This is especially strange for me since the last thing I remember was being dragged to an operating room for brain surgery since I had a little nugget which was making me feel a little like spider man in Endgame.
But yes the voices, I could originally hear the echo of the wheels of my table which then led to doctors whispering about the 'egg' before those voices fade and new ones emerge.
These ones are a bit special because they are accompanied by an old film reel movie like it's the 1900s again and black and white movies are 'hip'.
He sees a child raised in an orphanage in a very Victorian era-style city by the name of Yharnam. It was there that at the ripe old age of 7 that the child was adopted by an elderly fellow by the name of Gehrman.
He was not the only one as a few others joined him in this little ceremony but compared to what could be considered a normal home, that was not what was offered to them.
From an early age, all 9 of the children were put through the ringer, physical training that would make even the laziest amongst them into Schwarzenegger grade body builders at that very nice young age since it's very easy for children to build up muscle but harder to retain it as they grew older.
Throughout the next two years, and at the sparkling age of 9 did the children finally understand what all of this was for.
The Hunt.
Due to the children's precarious upbringing, they were delayed in being warned about the beasts as Gehrman's role was to mentor the children so that they were strong enough to survive in the first place even if they didn't know or understand something. Yet he failed to properly train their instincts and as such, this is something that not all of the children got the memo about.
After all, what was to be expected when the children were randomly dragged into the woods for training and then effectively left behind as a full moon rises in the night and howls of unknown beasts echo through the trees.
Panicked, the children departed from their designated camp site. After some traveling, the children finally ended up on a small hill where they spotted their new 'father' doing what he does best, hunting.
And what was he hunting you might ask, other people. While the children were most definitely confused on why he was doing this as it simply appeared like plain murder, under his burial blade scythe. Not long after, the sudden rustling of the bushes revealed one of the 'men' appearing behind the children.
Sickly pale with worn dirty clothing that even I can tell smelled like literal shit. This man stumbled forwards to the children who while strong for their age, were clueless to what was to come next.
Blood.
Once within range, the man had lunged towards the nearest of the nine children, his hands grasping their shoulders before lunging their head in to bite.
The children couldn't push the man off in confusion as by that child's expression, they didn't want to get sick with whatever this adult had when his meager efforts to wrestle out of the grip proved futile as the man's teeth bite into the child's neck. Then with a pull, a fountain of blood shot out. The smell of it made the beast hunger for more as he kept tearing apart the child's body.
The rest including the one I'm paying attention to all began to run away from the mad man, some of them screamed in terror which alerted the hunter of their sneaky presence. He rushes in and kills the beast. A saddened expression on his face that soon steels itself as the first hunter explains to the rest of the children that they are to become like him, hunters.
I was confused why he didn't bother to explain anything to them earlier but technically all the signs were there, the nightly outings, torn blood soaked clothes, dirty used bandages and the plentiful vials of blood scattered around the house for easy usage.
The video continues as I watch on helpless since there is little else for me to do since I can't move.
The years pass by and more than half of the remaining 8 died similar gruesome deaths, most of it from some of the cockier kids that tried to sneak out of the workshop on the nights of the hunt to get their own prey, utilizing poison daggers to hunt.
One specific idiot thought it was smart to lick his own dagger and get poisoned. With no antidote in sight, he had only been found the next day dead from it. Another was a bit smarter and didn't do that and had even taken a few down but when the beastly men gathered, this one was soon cornered and overwhelmed. At least he had a proper open casket burial as Gehrman made it in time for just after they snapped the child's bones and he died from shock.
A third somehow got his hands on black powder and promptly blew himself up when he had his makeshift bomb right next to him. This one had a twin amongst the 8 who had been with him when this happened. Naturally, he was traumatized by his twin's death but from that point on, he became better at explosives and in the years to come, had become the first leader of the powder keg hunters.
The fourth was unremarkable as she simply fell off the roof of a building she was scaling. The heavy rain of Yharnam can be considered a proper hazard in any terrain.
With the exception of the 5th who was the twin that went off on his own in the years to come, the remaining two got stolen by the healing church and made into their hunters.
Only one remained with Gehrman past the age of 12.
His body slimmed down, his mind…likely psychotic from having buried so many of his childhood friends and abandoned by the others. He too was offered training by the church but he declined. Instead he stuck to Gehrman to get stronger but not without establishing the strangest sense of humor Yharnam has ever known.
Of course the aged hunter would attempt to correct the child's bad antics and jokes but stupidity is not so easily contained.
"What a second, is that retard me?" I ask as I recognize a few of the child's features as my own but receive no answer as I simply keep watching.
With just one child left, Gehrman chose to expand their tool sets together, forging new hunter tools and tactics together as the aged hunter relied on the young hunter's quick mind for possible plans, correcting him when the plan wouldn't work or was just plain stupid, which was often. The child eventually got his first official hunt by himself. Hunters Axe in one hand and pistol in the other, he had worn the mad huntsman down before finishing him off with his axe.
Gehrman recognized his effort and the two began to hunt far more often, slaying one after the other but it never seemed like the end was in sight as new beasts would always be made.
It was only when the boy turned 14 that Gehrman suddenly brought home a new person, a young girl that seemed at most a year or two older than him with ashen white hair and chestnut colored eyes. She looked like a noble woman and effectively perfect in terms of demeanor and posture. The child was confused by what the point of having a girl joining them at such an old age would be for.
It seemed the girl took offense to the younger child's rude remark of being called 'old and useless' and promptly taught him a lesson. He was nursing bruises all over his body and even a black eye after she was done. It certainly didn't help that even though he had never seen her before, she was far more skilled than him, especially in her specialized weapon, the Rokuyo.
The young hunter never bothered to learn her name after that as he seemed pretty vindictive over the abuse he had 'wrongly' faced. The closest the child had gotten to learning their name was when Gehrman was talking to her and heard part of her name, "Mar-".
So continuing being vindictive, he always referred to the girl as Mar. never bothering to accept anything else even when she kept beating him to say her name right. Granted he couldn't since he still didn't know and frankly, he was learning her patterns which helped him escape her clutches.
These interactions gave birth to a sense of carefree-ness between the two as the years passed by and the worst day of their lives came to be.
As the years went by, the young hunter became 23 while Mar turned 25. Gehrman had been approached by the healing church about a certain research lab outside Yharnam proper. They hoped Gehrman and the two young adults would work with the church temporarily to guard against beasts and experiments gone wrong as they investigate a nearby fishing hamlet that had tales of mutated townsfolk.
The freelance hunters were certainly confused as to why the church selected a clock tower of all things to set up a hospital and lab.
Soon enough it all made sense now. The ceaseless cries of pain, groans of agony, blood splatters on the walls. Shadows bumping in the night and soon enough the Gehrman and the two get called by Laurence, the first vicar of the healing Church.
The young man learned that both his 'father' and coworker, Mar, were both acquainted with the Vicar which only confused him but nevertheless they were finally informed of the true horrors that plagued this land.
Soon enough, the three hunters finally were released into the fishing hamlet itself. What they witnessed there, what they were forced to do, the guilt of it all, was far too much for any sane mind. The younger hunter's mind which was already teetering, had shut down.
Yet not all was lost for him, as they made their way back, they were ambushed by a rabid beast popping out from the water aiming at Mar. Without hesitation he lunged in front of Mar, yet the guilt of his actions had made his axe far too heavy for him to lift and fight off the beast.
Sharp claws sliced across his body, sending him flying as Gehrman rushed to finish off the beast.
"NOOOO" "AGHHHH" Mar called out, her originally pale skin grew ashen in the fright that her companion of nine years would fall here, protecting…her. At the same time, I felt multiple lacerations cross my 'body'. A deep scar across the nose, 1 across his shoulders and collarbone, another just at the edge of his ribs and across his elbows. The fourth across his waist, nearly gutting him as my hands are nearly torn from my body as my wrists nearly are sliced in two. The final cut lands across both thighs.
I hover in this void of mine panting and in pain from the injury. My vision grows dim but I still capture the last few moments of the film.
The two hunters rushed the young hunter's body to doctors where he is sewn up but the blood loss combined with the trauma seemed to put him in a coma. Once they put him back together, they would transfer him to Yharnam for further treatment.
The hunter fell into the coma and no immediate hope was seen. That perturbed the two hunters but they could only continue to do what they do best.
Yet not all was well as one of the last lines I hear from the adoptive father, Gehrman, that "Mar… has disappeared. I'm sorry to you both."
Darkness finally took me as my confusion was at an all time high as the supposed point of this entire interaction. Yet it is only when I properly fall 'asleep' that the movie I just watched starts repeating itself in my mind over and over again. The harsh upbringing, hunter training, the hunts themselves, and his final moments in that fishing hamlet.
'What is the point of all this?' I ask myself in mindless pity until a new voice calls out to him.
"Oh dear, well I can't just leave you like this, not on the night of the hunt. I'll just have to give you a little something special and hopefully you'll be all better now. I'm sure this is why that girl gave this to me so long ago."
I feel my mind ease but not before I sense a creeping dread flow through me as even with my eyes closed, I can feel a red ink like liquid seep around me in this dark hollow.
"I don't want it, I don't want it. Ahhhhh, no, stop this fucking pain. STOP IT" I try to yell out but as I try to reach out, I'm suddenly shaken as my hand actually moves in this semi conscious state of mine.
"Stop it" I jump awake as I open my eyes for the first time in what seems like an eternity as I am surrounded by things I do not understand in a location I have never seen before.
"AGH" I grab at my chest as the injury throbs across my chest, needing a moment before it fades into the background but permanently still there.
I slump back into bed staring at the ceiling with focus gradually returning to my eyes. I can only groan out one last curse as I take in my surroundings properly.
Slowly getting up now, I take in the familiar medical suite with its tables, bookshelves and that combined with the 'new' memories regarding hunters and eldritch horrors beyond human comprehension I gained from this other version of me, only one thing can be said.
"Aw shit, I'm in Bloodborne."
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I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. It's a high average in terms of word count (min of average 2k with peak average being 3k) and I had written the vast majority of it in one sitting with a second to finish it up and adjust a few details as I looked into the lore of some characters and items.
on my discord, I shall be listing half of the next chapter every time the newest one is released early. This is especially useful for anyone who doesnt want to pay for the next few chapters or get the membership to alleviate their boredom with half chapters. discord channel:
https://discord.gg/rE6gtg28XH