[Ezra Dornath POV]
The Vorigan Containment Unit. That's what we decided to call ourselves once we were geared up and deployed to the starting point of this whole mess, Koladar city.
I and the rest of my team knew that time and secrecy were of the utmost importance and urgency. A day—nay, even an extra hour—we gave to the current survivor who possessed such a highly ranked bloodline was one more disadvantage we were adding unto ourselves.
The bloodline we were hunting down was not a simple one. Famous for matters of blood and energy manipulation, many had thought that the Vorigans were vampires at first. But once anyone conducted even the slightest investigation, they'd realize that the entire clan was human down to their very last cell. Imagine a human with vampire-like capabilities. Normally that alone would sound frightening and make said human dangerous. But then the Vorigan clan took this an extra step further, their talent showing even more impressively than the known vampires who lived on a separate continent.
Imagine being able to control a person not through their thoughts or manipulations, but by keeping them alive and moving them since you were manipulating their very blood—the one thing containing and supplying them with life force—to your whims, with little to nothing they could do in defense.
That was the sort of monsters we were meant to deal with. Lower-ranked bloodline members of the clan could barely keep up with most of the inherent and known capabilities of the Vorigan, but the higher-ranked ones? I genuinely did not want to even think about them since it took the director of our organization to personally intervene to subdue their clan patriarch way back then.
I stood at the window of our temporary base, a modest three-story dwelling tucked into the eastern district of Koladar. The building itself was unremarkable—purposefully so. Its weathered sandstone facade blended seamlessly with the neighboring structures, the once-vibrant blue paint around its shutters now faded to a nondescript gray. The interior was equally unassuming: sparse furnishings, bare walls, and minimal personal touches. Only the basement level betrayed our true purpose, converted into a command center with maps of the city, tracking equipment, and specialized detection arrays.
From my vantage point, I could see the sprawling panorama of Koladar's eastern quarter—a maze of narrow streets and crooked alleys where the working class and those with questionable professions made their homes. Laundry lines stretched between buildings, creating a patchwork canopy of faded fabrics. Street vendors hawked their wares from rickety carts while children darted between the legs of passersby, their laughter a stark contrast to the gravity of my thoughts.
Beyond this district rose the middle ring of the city—taller buildings of finer construction, homes to merchants and minor nobility. And further still, dominating the skyline, stood the upper ring and the ducal palace—a monument to power and privilege that glittered in the afternoon sun, its white marble spires almost painful to look at directly.
"Commander, please tell me you have some good news…" a soft female voice spoke behind me.
I turned to see Mira Shadowheart approaching, her movements fluid and predatory despite her deceptively delicate appearance. Her dark hair was pulled back in a severe braid that emphasized her sharp cheekbones and the cold calculation in her eyes. The others trailed behind her, each donning masks of seriousness that mirrored my own.
"We need to start moving," Mira continued, crossing her arms over her chest. The simple gesture made the concealed weapons beneath her plain tunic shift slightly. "I seriously don't want to stay too long without searching. Any more time waiting makes me uneasy as time passes."
The rest of the team filled the room, their expressions grim. Valerian Thorn lounged against the doorframe, his posture deceivingly casual though his eyes missed nothing. His fingers drummed a silent rhythm against his thigh, betraying his impatience. Lyra Moonwhisper stood rigidly by the table, her back straight as a sword, while Thorne Blackwell methodically checked and rechecked the array of detection instruments arranged on the table before him.
Honestly, I couldn't blame them for their impatience, since I felt the same urgency gnawing at my insides. But using my special abilities of blood tracking was proving difficult. Even with the sample from Saintess Wystra and being taught how to identify the flow of life force and energy in her blood to recognize the unique blood call technique, nothing out of the ordinary had manifested.
For our organization as well as other imperial researchers, being able to sense just this technique had taken hundreds of years of toil and labor, only to realize that using a dead Vorigan to identify the technique was a lost cause—only a live one would work. And even then, having a living Vorigan actively not using said technique wouldn't make it appear at all. It was only when they deployed it, no matter how subtly, that certain ripples or frequencies would travel deep through the blood cells and exit to whatever void was present there, since it appeared all dark to me and other detectors.
It was armed with this knowledge that I now found myself in the current frustrating situation.
I held up the reinforced glass orb filled with the Saintess's blood. The orb itself was a marvel of craftsmanship—perfectly spherical, its surface etched with microscopic runes that contained and preserved the vitality of the blood within. The blood inside pulsed with a subtle glow, like embers slowly dying in a hearth.
"I know and understand," I replied, watching the dull crimson liquid swirl sluggishly within its glass prison. "Even after a whole month of quietly scouring the entire city, the technique has never gone beyond its current passive state. Even with my senses and walking everywhere hoping that it'd work, it hasn't reacted at all…" I acknowledged dispiritedly, knowing my comrades were feeling the same mounting frustration.
The orb felt heavy in my palm, not from its physical weight but from the burden of what it represented—our only lead, our only hope of finding the last Vorigan before they could grow into a threat that even I, a demigod, might struggle to contain.
"Well then, boss, we need to move to the next region," Thorne responded, his voice low and steady as he gestured to the map spread across the table. "Luckily it's a group of towns and minor cities, so it won't be as large as this place."
The map detailed the lands surrounding Koladar—a patchwork of smaller settlements, farmlands, and wilderness. The next logical area to search was marked in red, a cluster of farming communities and trading posts to the north that would take us weeks to thoroughly investigate.
"Yeah. Then let's pack and head ou—" I stopped, literally having to swallow my words as, unprecedentedly, shockingly, and with the greatest timing I could even think of, the orb suddenly blazed to life.
A brilliant crimson light erupted from within the glass, so intense it cast long, blood-red shadows across the room's occupants. The glow pulsed rhythmically, like a heartbeat, filling our meeting room with its ominous radiance.
The change was so dramatic, so instantaneous, that for a moment we all froze, our eyes locked on the now-throbbing orb in my hand. The blood inside no longer swirled sluggishly but churned violently, as if something had disturbed its long slumber.
I felt the temperature of the orb rise, the glass becoming uncomfortably warm against my palm. The blood within seemed to have a life of its own now, pressing against the confines of its prison as if eager to escape, to seek out its kin.
Even the rest of the members, who had been jittery and nervous, all suddenly calmed down, their expressions shifting from frustration to focused intensity. We all knew what this meant.
"If it's glowing..." Valerian began, his voice uncharacteristically hushed, almost reverent.
"Then it means they're inside the city, or rather..." Lyra continued, her face brightening at the possibility, her fingers instinctively moving to the hilt of her concealed blade.
"That they've just entered the city, since we've done an entire sweep," I finished as I tore my gaze from the orb, placing it into my spatial ring while also monitoring its levels of glowing.
The spatial ring on my finger hummed softly as it absorbed the orb, the enchanted pocket dimension within rippling to accommodate the new addition. Even through the dimensional barrier, I could sense the orb's continued pulsing—right now the color was bright and increasing in quality. From what we were informed, the closer we got to the target, it would start flashing as it increased in richness of the reddened color.
I faced my team, looking each of them individually in the eye, seeing the resolve harden into determination. They all knew the danger we faced—even for me, a demigod of considerable power—yet their commitment never wavered.
Valerian's usual smirk had been replaced by a grim line, his normally playful eyes now cold with purpose. Lyra stood straighter, if that were possible, her hands steady and ready. Mira's expression remained unchanged, but the slight flare of her nostrils betrayed her excitement, while Thorne's quiet intensity seemed to fill the space around him like a physical presence.
"Well then, let's begin," I commanded, my voice cutting through the tension like a knife. "Valerian, I want you to monitor the gates. Get into the heads of the guards and those who rotate to read what they've seen, and also keep in touch with any odd entrants and exits."
Valerian nodded, his eyes already distant as he accessed his mental powers. "On it..." And he vanished silently, his form shimmering once before disappearing completely—not teleportation, but a mental illusion so perfect it fooled even the subconscious into ignoring his presence.
"Thorne, I need ears everywhere once more. Any odd question, action, reaction—anything—report immediately..."
"You've got it," Thorne replied, his fingers deftly adjusting the small, flesh-colored devices tucked behind his ears—amplifiers for his already uncanny hearing. Like his comrade, he seemed to fade from perception, though he merely stepped into the shadows and was gone.
"Mira, I need you paired with Lyra to visit establishments and get in touch throughout the city. Get to know who's who and who's new, since they must have just entered the city... Give constant updates to everyone all the time, and ensure you profile everyone properly. No mistakes and no missing anything." I spoke to the two cold beauties before me as they nodded in acknowledgment.
Their partnership was unusual but effective—Mira's ability to blend into any social situation complemented by Lyra's talent for extracting information through means both subtle and direct. They exchanged a single glance, a wealth of communication passing between them in that brief moment, before they too disappeared from the room, their footsteps making no sound on the wooden floor.
Once they left, I wiped a brow of sweat from my forehead, the tension of the moment washing over me now that I was alone. The real hunt had begun, and the pressure settled onto my shoulders like a physical weight.
I moved to the window once more, looking out at the bustling city of Koladar. Somewhere out there, our quarry walked these streets, unaware of the net that was about to close around them. My fingers brushed against my spatial ring, feeling the pulsing energy of the blood orb within, a grim reminder of what was at stake.
I didn't know if it was just a stroke of luck or what, but we would latch onto this chance and follow it to the very bitter end.
Little did I know that I would come to curse my past self for thinking we were lucky to stumble upon the anomalous last descendant of the Vorigan. How fucking wrong they were.
---
[Ryan's POV]
I sighed. Plain and simple.
Right now, I was lodged in a normal simple inn that was close to the adventurer's guild where I had previously signed up earlier in the day. I had gone through their simple test, blowing the minds of many with my performance—you know, the normal weak-ass-looking person turning out to be a monster type of shit—after finishing my trip to the library.
The inn itself was modest but clean—a three-story structure of weathered timber and stone with a sloped, slate-tiled roof that had seen better decades. My room on the second floor was sparsely furnished: a narrow bed with a surprisingly comfortable straw mattress, a small table with a single chair, a washbasin, and a chest for belongings. The single window overlooked the main street, giving me a clear view of the foot traffic below while the ambient sounds of city life—merchants hawking wares, horses' hooves on cobblestone, the distant calls of street vendors—created a constant background murmur.
The scent of roasting meat and freshly baked bread wafted up from the kitchen below, mingling with the faint mustiness of old wood and the beeswax candles that provided illumination. It was a familiar comfort, reminiscent of countless inns I'd stayed in during my previous life, though the details were different—the quality of light more amber, the air more charged with the subtle presence of mana that permeated this world.
The reason for my deep sigh was that after spending five days in the library digging for information about my family, I had found only vague old mentions of their past—the last patriarch, my great-grandfather, and references to some of their infamous techniques. One of these I came to discover was called Blood Call. It was actually a simple technique on paper but much more complex in execution if one did not know its true essence.
And for me, the last living descendant of the clan, I was intrigued by the technique and wanted to cast it. So I went to the only place I knew that had said technique and how to execute it: my living DNA map of knowledge.
It had taken me five days of constant reading and following the flow of my blood to map out the whole thing. My blood cells moved randomly throughout my body, with more dying and being recreated by my bone marrow. Since said technique was imbued deep inside the DNA and into pieces at that, it had taken me a while to have it all down where I could confidently say I had grasped 100% of it.
A week and some days after my arrival in Koladar, with the little info I had on my family, I now earnestly began my search, hoping against hope that not everyone was lost. From what I'd gathered about our immortal ancestor's inheritance, even the 20% my great-grandpa had unlocked was more than enough for him to face a class-5 demigod in the worst-case scenario. But I wasn't too sure if he knew that, and I wanted to at least gamble that somehow, he had a backup plan.
When I executed the technique, I immediately got a response—or to be exact, two responses belonging to the same person, or in this case, a family member. The feeling was weird when I ran the blood call. My blood cells absorbed my energy and emitted a hidden frequency masked with the scent of my blood as a whole. It was like a computer from back on Earth sending a ping to anything that had similar makeup to itself. It was an interesting concept, but I did not dwell on it since I focused more on the responses.
One of the "persons" I was feeling was miraculously close by, to be exact in the exact same Koladar I was in. Following this "path" that the blood call was forming inside me, my senses resonated with the technique, and my vision shifted. Before me appeared a normal-looking building on the other side of the city from where I was.
I canceled the merge with my senses and instead deployed my soul sense to know exactly what was going on.
Since from the very start, I'd had a strong soul and the corresponding soul sense, I was easily able to cover a portion of the city with my hidden soul sense. Even the strongest beings in this world would have difficulty detecting it due to its nature. This allowed me to properly see who had triggered the weirdness I was getting from the blood call.
My soul sense expanded outward from my body like an invisible tide, flowing through the streets and buildings of Koladar. Unlike conventional magical sensing, which could be detected by those with sufficient skill, soul sense operated on a fundamentally different principle—perceiving the essence of beings rather than their physical or magical presence. It was like seeing the world in negative, where only the bright points of consciousness registered against a backdrop of gray nothingness.
As my awareness spread across the city, I focused on the location that the blood call had indicated. The building was indeed ordinary—a three-story structure in the eastern district, its appearance deliberately unremarkable. But what I perceived within made my blood run cold.
Five distinct signatures, their souls burning with purpose and deadly intent. Four of them were at the peak of mortal power—EX rank at minimum—while the fifth... the fifth was something else entirely. A demigod, and not a weak one at that. Their soul signature blazed like a bonfire compared to the others' candle flames, its power barely contained within mortal form.
But what truly set my teeth on edge was what the demigod held—a glass orb containing blood. My blood. Or rather, blood of my lineage, resonating with my own, the connection between them creating the very path I had followed with my senses.
And as I listened, as I observed, their words reached me with perfect clarity despite the distance:
"...If it's glowing, then it means they're inside the city..."
"...That they've just entered the city since we've done an entire sweep..."
A hunter team. Not just any hunter team, but one led by a demigod, specifically assembled to find and eliminate the last of the Vorigan line. Me.
I withdrew my soul sense, a cold rage settling in my gut like a block of ice. My hands clenched into fists so tight that my nails bit into my palms, drawing tiny crescents of blood that my body automatically healed in seconds.
"So there you are, you fuckers," was all I could mutter in cold rage.