A glance to the sky tells me it’s already close to midnight, so I have maybe five to six hours before I have to seek shelter.

The cobblestone road leaving the city connects to a larger dirt main road in a T-crossing about two kilometers ahead. For the moment I don’t sense anything other than the movement of some quietly clacking skeletons and the sound of some nightly insects. I dash to the crossroad.

The main road, which used to be in so well maintained in the past, is now just a very wide trail mostly taken over by invading grass and various weeds. It leads directly to east and west.

To my right, which would be the west, I can see the road connecting to another crossroad, which in turn splits to lead either to the western gate or to the hill overlooking the capital from the southwest. I’ve ridden over that hill five times in my memories.

Following that road should lead me through a couple of smaller villages, until reaching Fort Dennis about 200 kilometers away. Or what’s left of it, anyway. Only 27 people from the fort survived of the original 10,000, after the walls were breached by the Paladins of Theocracy of the Sun and the sorcerers and soldiers of Magisus rushed in. I can’t know if it has been rebuilt, demolished or something else since then, of course.

But going there would take me some hours, even if I can run at high speed without getting exhausted. It’s not my objective for now.

There are signs of a smaller road leading south from here, but the trail is well camouflaged by grass. I guess I’ll check that way another night.

But tonight I’ll head for the woods beyond the hill in the southwest, which the main road passes through. It should have the best chances of providing me with some food in the form of animals. The hill itself is about ten kilometers from here, so the woods shouldn’t be much further away.

…

Since I can finally dash at full speed thanks to my clothing, it doesn’t take me long at all to run to the woods, some ten kilometers from the southern gate. The edge of the woods has spread further uphill over the decades. It now almost reaches the top of the hill.

The woods seem to get dense quite fast, so I leave my iron spear at the edge of the forest, stabbed into the ground. It would get impractical to carry it around. I don’t think anyone would find and steal it from here.

I’ll just try to get practice using my daggers instead. Although my fangs and nails make for good weapons, I should still try to learn some proficiency with some normal weapons. When I eventually meet some humans or other races, I’ll want to be able to act naturally.

Cresta might be a Moon magic using country with broad mindset towards different elements, but even they see vampires and the undead as dangerous. I don’t think most living beings would like the idea of tagging along with someone, who might suck them dry the moment they get careless or their companion gets hungry. I wouldn’t like it either if I had to travel with a holy Paladin who, for whatever reason, would want to befriend me. No matter how friendly-looking, a predator is dangerous.

And unless something has changed over the last decades, I’m quite sure the rest of humanity dislikes Moon magic and the undead quite deeply, some of them bordering on hatred, such as the Theocracy. So I’ll have to learn to hide my… infamous traits and abilities, the best I can.

Well, for the time being, there’s only a small chance to run into anyone anyway, unless I find a way to move outside during the day.

…

I go into the nightly woods, which appear only slightly dark to my eyes despite barely any moonlight reaching down to ground level. I slow down as the foliage thickens in effort to avoid scaring away potential prey.

The tall evergreen trees grow their branches so densely, that it would be difficult to use them as steps.

I make less noise by using my supernatural agility to carefully hop around onto rocks, trunks of fallen trees and animal trails et cetera with less undergrowth.

I keep hearing various nocturnal birds, but they are hiding too well for me to spot them in the trees.

15 minutes into wandering slowly and aimlessly around forest, I start getting frustrated by the lack of prey. ‘Are nocturnal animals really this rare here? Or do I just suck at being sneaky?’ My stomach’s starting to growl again.

That’s when come into a small opening in the forest, full of bushes heavy with ripe and delicious looking, small reddish berries. I’m not quite sure if my vague memories are correct, but I think they are called raspberries. They were being sold sometimes in Estmoor’s market.

Vampires are supposed to only feed on blood, but I shouldn’t die from eating these, right? At least we pure vampires should be safe.

I’ll just… try a bit. I’m getting famished and they look so good. I pick a handful of the berries and examine them closer. They are very soft and don’t smell much of anything. With uncertain feelings I throw a single berry in my mouth crushing and swallowing it without delay.

My mind reels as I cough and start spitting the horribly bitter taste out of my mouth.

My next five minutes are spent in what would probably look like some lunatic barbarian’s dance from a third party’s perspective, as I walk and stagger about, coughing and spitting, while rubbing the back of my hand against my tongue. Eventually I try biting my own arm to wash over the taste with my own blood. It’s pretty tasteless but effectively washes over the horrible aftertaste from the berry.

I scream some profanities into the forest in frustration, not in a state of mind to care about scaring away any potential blood bags.

Okay, any normal foods are out. I probably won’t get sick from them or die, but I don’t want to experience that again. This… food problem seems to be a problem to consider in the future as well, if I ever want to try blending into daywalker societies.

In a very bad mood I dash away from the berry bushes of evil.

I spent the next two hours or so furiously running around the woods, getting to know the area and searching for something edible by relying on my superior night vision, smell and hearing. During that time I found a total of three large rabbits, four minks, a skunk which I avoided far and wide after getting a very unpleasant surprise, and two foxes.

All of them were very delicious, although I didn’t try the skunk. My eyes still get blurry as I think of the smell. I could just not breathe while catching and eating them, but this one caught me by surprise and I’m not sure if the stink would latch onto my armor if I get too close. I think I’ll be better off avoiding them in the future like human food, but for a different reason.

I’ll pass on catching minks for now as well, even if I get the chance to hunt them. They have so little blood it takes me only a couple of seconds to suck them dry, when I lose myself to the bloodlust. The minks are also so nimble and thin that they are hard to catch, making them not worthy of the effort.

With bloodlust I refer to when I pretty much lose control of myself at the sight, smell or taste of blood. It seems to happen more easily if I’m hungry, because I exerted some control of myself when I was feeding on my last couple of catches, after several small feeding sessions.

The rabbits were only slightly better than minks, but are still too small and only hold enough blood to give me a taste.

I wanted to practice using my daggers while hunting tonight, but the rabbits and minks weren’t really the best targets for that, with their small size. I ended up hunting them with my claws and raw grip power, which is quite inelegant in my opinion.

The two foxes had more blood and I got my first awkward kills with a dagger. I accidentally almost obliterated the first one I found, by throwing my other dagger at it with force, in my excitement. I lost a lot of its blood as a result and learned from the mistake, killing the second fox I found later by stabbing it calmly.

I could use the pelts of the animals for clothes, but I don’t have anything to carry the materials in so for now, thinking about it is pointless.

Speaking of using the materials from the animals, obviously I didn’t bother tasting the meat of any prey I killed. I already learned my lesson. It’s a bit embarrassing thinking back on what happened with the berries.

…

With my belly more satisfied than last night, I reach the road going through the middle of the woods and check the sky for time. I should have at least two more hours to spare, but I’ve fed fairly well tonight. Guess I’ll start heading back.

I walk to the edge of the woods and leave the road to grab my spear before returning to the capital.

I return to the road with my spear and skip towards the top of the hill, humming a random tune while grinning and imagining the view I will get upon reaching it. The city was always so beautiful in my memories when looking over from the hill, but it had slipped my mind when I came here in search for food. I had forgotten to look back before entering the forest. I don’t really hold any special feelings towards the capital itself, but the memory of the sight and my memories regarding the capital in general are mostly nice.

As I reach the top of the hill and look at the view around the capital, my excited grin is extinguished in a flash and turns into expression bordering horror. I feel lightheaded and have to lean on the spear to support myself.

I had expected to see the familiar plains surrounding the beautiful, white-grey capital built of stone. Well, the city is in ruins so I expected it to look significantly worse from its glory days, but it should have still been a nice sight. How optimistic that had been.

My eyes are staring at the unbelievable sight opening wide in north of the capital.

Where there used to be similar plains, like in other directions, and some far away mountains and forests, now opens a gigantic hole in the ground. Or maybe I should call it a crater, because it’s filled with water. Water, just water as far as the eye can see, from northwest to northeast, with a few small islands visible far in the horizon.

“Wh-wh-what…” a whisper escapes my lips and my eyes dart towards south as well to make sure I hadn’t just imagined seeing the plains in that direction earlier tonight. The south is still plains, to my relief, though that feeling is greatly overshadowed by dread.

“What the hell… happened here? Is… this the result of the [Wave of Death]” I speak in a shaky tone to nobody in particular, just to calm myself. “The spell must have failed somehow. Horribly, beyond horribly. I can’t think any other reason. It’s just a death spell, not… whatever this is.”

Somewhere in the back of my mind I feel like I have a clue as to why the spell must have gone wrong, with my understanding of how magic works in general. Strong, mixed feelings of confusion, anger and frustration, with a tinge of sadness, are swirling in my mind. “What were you thinking, casting something like this!?” I scream out in the general direction of the capital and the crater.

The wind brings forth an unfamiliar salty smell from the north. I probably hadn’t noticed the sea’s smell before because of the overpowering smell of death and because the wind was coming from the southwest.

There shouldn’t be any large bodies of water north of here. And the shortest distance to the northern coast is at least 600 kilometers. If this really is the same northern sea, it would mean this crater has a minimum diameter of 600 – 700 kilometers, assuming the old Tower of Magic Research to be the epicenter. I can’t see the end of the crater in the north or the northeast. I can at least see its edge towards the northwest and as it turns towards north, eventually disappearing into the horizon.

No wonder the capital is dead.

The northern fifth of the city doesn’t even exist; it’s just cliffs falling down a couple of hundred meters into the sea. The city has only survived intact because it’s built on solid bedrock, has sturdy walls protecting it and has many stone buildings.

I never noticed any of this while being inside the city, probably because I’ve only been in the eastern, southern and southwestern districts and the castle that is in the middle of the city, over the past two nights. I found it weird how all buildings were damaged, but the tremor caused by… this, must have done the damage. And the shockwave has scraped off the tops of the tallest buildings that reach higher than the walls. I would’ve noticed the crater if I had been able to climb the northern side of the castle, but it had collapsed.

I let myself collapse onto my butt on the spot and start thinking about how the existence of this crater changes things.

My expectations of the history of the past decades were off. And I have to readjust my plans on what to do now. My old plans are as shattered and obliterated as I imagine the remains of Tower of Magic Research to be.

I had been holding onto small and naïve hope that the death in the capital would only stretch north from here, towards the Tower.

If just the crater is that large, I can imagine how much this has affected the surroundings. Even in the best case, where the spell actually failed so catastrophically that it ‘fortunately’ wasn’t even a death spell but just a huge explosion, the shockwave alone should have killed everyone much further than where this crater ends.

But I don’t believe in best case scenarios, not in this situation anyway. I remember clearly seeing something dark swirling from the spell, so it did have the element of darkness to it. It couldn’t have been just a pure explosion.

In a worse case, it still worked like a death spell with an additional explosion effect or whatever caused this crater, and indiscriminately killed everyone within a large area, up to or even past the entire kingdom’s borders. The nearest foreign border from here, from before the war started, should be about 250 kilometers in the west: the Magisus kingdom.

There are various in-between scenarios as well, but I don’t believe I can find any settlements of the living within 200 – 300 kilometers from the capital, even though it has been decades since the actual event happened. That’s because the lingering Moon element mana in the area is quite dangerous in large quantities for those who are not proficient in the use of Moon magic, which most people are not.

Moon mana corrupts easily if one is not used ho handling it. Corruption’s lovely side effects can be any of the following: death, mutation, madness or getting turned into a literal monster. The last one is probably worse than death. Crestans are the only humans who I believed and foreigners suspected to be capable of using Moon magic commonly without problems. Past tense, because I’m not so sure anymore if there are any of them left alive after I’ve witnessed this sight.

Earlier I used the term ‘a worse case’, because I don’t even want to start imagining the worst case scenario. Nope, I don’t want to think of it. There are obviously still living beings existing on this continent as I haven’t seen many animal corpses and I’ve seen small animals this close to the epicenter. But that doesn’t prove much about the state of civilization.

…

I pull myself up after thinking about various scenarios and plans, and start quietly running towards the open western gate of the city as the horizon in the east is starting to brighten significantly.

There are no signs of my earlier good mood from having my first decent meal.

I feel like shit, like I’ve been splashed with mud water, even though I’m quite clean, all things considered.

I take a beeline to the royal castle as it’s quite some distance away and I still have things I want to do there. It’s decently intact compared to other buildings, so as long as I’m careful of windows and holes in the walls and the roof, I should be safe there for the day.

…

I arrive to the western castle gate, which is closed.

“Well, might as well try this, I’m more strapped for time than last night,” I say to the large iron portcullis, as I drop my spear to the other side through the latticed grille, grab it firmly, and lift up.

Escorted by loud clangs and creaks, the portcullis slowly opens. I have to get a new gripping point a couple of times as I keep lifting the gate up. After lifting it up to a bit above my head’s height, I slip under the gate and allow it to drop behind me with a humongous bang that reverberates in the surroundings for a moment. I involuntarily let out a hiss in pain as my ears hurt from the noise. The lattices are a twisted on the points where I lifted it from.

There was quite a bit of friction when lifting and I would guesstimate the gate’s weight to be 20 to 40 tons, judging from its size. It’s vague, but I’m not a professional on the subject, okay?

It felt quite heavy, but nothing I couldn’t handle. I would probably have trouble lifting it with one hand though.

‘My strength really is insane… and I haven’t even eaten that much.’

Just how strong will I eventually get, if I feed on proper life essence from intelligent and larger beings such as humans or elves, and absorb their strength and experiences? It’s a bit unnerving to think about.

The sky is getting quite bright, forcing me to shield my eyes again, so I grab my spear and rush inside the castle.

There are a few places inside the castle I want to check later, but for now I’ll just look for a place where I can make sure to be hidden from my hateful nemesis and hopefully not be bored to life.

“Ahh, damn it, –” I look back outside “…I should’ve brought a couple of more skeletons to experiment with to pass the time! I still didn’t try everything I wanted to with Mr. Skeleton. “

Oh well, no point in crying over spilled blood.

I flounce towards my objective, the royal library deeper inside the castle, hoping it to be still intact.