In a room, at the very top of the castle, as the moon shone light through a window onto a blood coffin, a rasping sound could be heard.
The coffin's lid slid off as a brown hand with long, sharp fingernails pushed it aside.
Emyrs rose out of the coffin, coughing uncontrollably as his pale skin began to flush back with color.
He was taller. He now looked closer to being a full adult rather than like someone who was enjoying his teenage years.
"Interface, show me my status."
Name: Emyrs Ambrose Baptiste
Race: High Daemon Vampyre (True)
Age: 502 (18)
Level: 53
Titles: Primordial; Unseelie; Seelie
Bloodline: Primordial?
Generation: Originator
Clan: None
HP: 10 000 / 10 000 (semi-immortal)
MP: 70 000 / 70 000
"..." Emyrs failed to speak. There was so much wrong with this picture starting with his age! "500!"
[UI: Five hundred and two to be precise.]
"I do not need to be precise. How can I have slept for longer than I have been awake?"
As Emyrs got angry a terrifying aura began to surround him.
[UI: Due to the physical strain that was put on your body as well as the damage done by suppressing two evolutions then amplified by the use of your berserker skill, you needed time to recover and evolve.]
"I do not get it. I heal pretty quickly. I do not see why I had to spend three hundred years asleep. I was asleep for two hundred years before that. Now I am five hundred years old. You have to be screwing with me."
[UI: I am not at fault. Your healing ability relies on your magic power however that power was being burnt away by the two evolutions that were being suppressed.]
[UI: You are at your weakest during an evolution, hence the crystal coffins to protect your body from powerful entities and protect weaker beings from the energies that are affecting your body as well.]
[UI: During this time, you are helpless. Your body healed slowly, without the aid of skills or other abilities. This was the best that could be done with the circumstances given.]
Emyrs tried to think up a counter argument but could not come up with one.
If what the Interface was saying, if it was true, then even if he had evolved first in the weakened state he was in, his body could have been irreparably damaged.
That is why it was important to heal first and recover before anything else.
"Fine but please let me know next time if I will sleep that long!" Emyrs had started speaking calmly but his frustration got the better of him.
[UI: Understood.]
"What is up with my species?"
[UI: True High Daemon Vampyre is the result of all the blood and skills you have absorbed from all the beasts you killed while 'grinding'.]
"Are there any benefits to being a True Daemon Vampyre?"
[UI: Respectability. That is all.]
Emyrs blinked twice then groaned. He had such a scary sounding species name but that was all.
"What about these new titles?"
[UI: The titles are a result of what the sentient beings call the aura you and the castle radiate.]
"Sentient beings? You mean there are people out there?"
[UI: Currently, there are people and beasts that think and speak according to the Protector.]
"The Protector?"
[UI: I believe you know him as the Beast of Gévaudan. He has secured the Protector title from the local settlers.]
"I have been asleep for three centuries and the Beast established a cult?"
[UI: It was not intentional.]
"I really do not care. Tell me about the people."
[UI: It would be best for you to see for yourself.]
*****
The gates opened as Emyrs walked out of the castle. Piles of bones greeted him as he stepped out.
Some looked human while others looked like they were from monsters.
"What the fuck?!"
A fresh pool of blood stagnated in front of him. He crouched over, dipped his finger into the pool then sampled it. He was a vampire after all.
[Lycan Language has been learned.]
[I can learn a new language by drinking blood?] Emyrs thought with a smile on his face.
Emyrs paused and turned his head further away, past the bones.
He heard them coming. He could smell them. And now he saw them.
Beings with a humanoid shape, brown skin, silver eyes and black hair, were making their way toward the castle.
They looked mostly human except for their eyes.
They were tall and naked save for the skimpy, beast skin clothes they wore over their most private areas.
They were filthy. Emyrs did not know if he had inherited the stupid sense of vampire superiority in the legends but he could not help but feel he was looking at lesser beings.
He decided to go meet them.
*****
Karr was the Voice of the Protector. At least that is was the villagers thought.
Karr was actually an opportunist and he fucking loved it.
He had been alive for along time (fifty years) and was basically an elder in these troublesome times.
When Karr was born he was a nobody.
He could not hunt. He was not skilled at killing. He was too much of a coward even when it came to protecting others.
But no one in the village could scheme like him.
He was intelligent and believed that just for being smart, he deserved more.
He wanted the least amount of work to get the best results for himself.
It was a hard life even with the Holy Mountain and the Protector.
Food still needed to be hunted and gathered.
Hunting was the cause of death for many Lycan men then followed by the Misery.
The beasts took the young men and the Misery took all.
Karr had accepted this. That one day he would hopefully die of the Misery but definitely not from being some beast's snack.
By some stroke of luck the village leader died.
That luck had been Karr hitting the leader with stone to the back of his head repeatedly while the Leader relieved himself.
Karr being the next in line to inherit leadership as he was the next oldest took to leadership like a charm.
Men would no longer hunt.
He issued that every few months the least productive members of their society would be taken to the Holy Mountain and their body's be cut to let their blood out.
The blood would attract beasts and the Mountain would slay them.
The beasts would die and the Lycans could reap the benefits.
Of course this idea did not sit well with a lot of the people but Karr was the leader. The leader was absolute.
Those who thought like Karr instantly agreed and a debate quickly sparked up between them and the former brave hunters of the group.
Karr quickly thought of a way to turn all to his side. That is when he claimed to be able to understand the howls of the Protector.
Many were stunned. They had all seen the eyes and shadow of the Protector. They believed he was the one that gave power to the Holy Mountain.
Many questioned this but dared not argue.
*****
Karr was now tracking up to the Mountain to collect whatever may have been left over by the Protector.
Karr would also release the people he deemed unproductive if they were still alive and use them again in future if necessary.
Sometimes the beasts got to them before the Protector got to the beasts and that was fine by Karr.
He used it as a way of reinforcing fear and his authority.
"The worthy and loyal would be saved. Those who aren't pure in love and trust or the Protector and his Voice will not be spared."
This had gone on for some time.
But this time Karr got a massive surprise.
As he and a few Lycans went to collect as much beast meat as they could as tall being appeared over a pile of bones.
His long silver hair danced in the wind.
The strange cloths he wore covered his entire body and inspired terror.
His eyes held a great radidance within them as though they contained the sun.
"Wh-who are you?" Karr tried to sound intimidating but he was terrible at it.
He did not know this entity. He wanted to at least not make an enemy of him yet.
*****
"I am Emyrs Ambrose Baptiste." Emyrs spoke in the Lycan language. He could hear his tongue form each word and was pleased.
He wanted to introduce himself as Lord of Midnight's Castle but the Lycan people did not have a word for Lord or Castle.
"Where do you come from?" Karr felt a sense of security after the strange being began to speak their language but what the being did next began the rapid decline of Karr Lycan.
Emyrs pointed to the Castle.
"That is my home. I have been sleeping in there for some time and only woke today." Emyrs said pleasantly.
He tried hard to hide the displeasure on his face.
The smell from these people was utterly overwhelming.
This whole century smelt wrong to the elder vampyre.
A lot of murmuring came from the people behind Karr.
"Impossible! How can you come from the Holy Mountain? That is the home of the Protector." Karr began. "You are a liar!"
Emyrs began to chuckle.
"That is not a mountain. That is my home and the one you call 'Protector' guards it."
The Lycans were not completely stupid.
They were quite intelligent on their own, if not too naive but even they realised that the place they worshipped did not look like a mountain.
They could see that this person they had seen did not look like anything they had ever seen before.
"Emyrs..."
"Emyrs..."
"Emyrs..."
The Lycan people behind Karr began to say his same. Karr began to panic. Emyrs was confused.
Karr drew a dagger made from bone and tried to attack Emyrs.
He began to climb the bone pile. He looked away for a second then felt a gust of wind hit hard against him.
When he looked up again Emrys was gone.
"Where did he go?!" Karr asked in shock.
He turned his head and found all his subordinates looking up into the sky.
Karr looked up and froze in terror.
Emyrs had brought out his massive wings and went eight feet into the air.
He stopped flapping his wings and glided around the air above them gracefully.
[World skill Hover has been learned.]
[World skill Glide has been learned,]
Emyrs came down slightly grabbed Karr and tossed him aside.
"Do not pull your weapon on me." Emyrs said calmly but a frightening killing intent spread out toward the Lycans.
None of them had felt that much pressure, not even from the beasts that populated the wilderness around them.