Ratatatatata.

‘Where… am I? Ah… my head…’

I woke up on my back with a splitting headache, and it didn’t help that the floor was rattling. I seemed to be inside some sort of moving vehicle, illuminated by a single mana crystal embedded into the ceiling.

When I reached up to rub my sore temples, something impeded my arm from moving. I tried again, only to feel a simultaneous tug on my other arm. Groaning, I strained my neck slightly to see what was going on.

'Fuck.'

My wrists were bound in chains. Two metal clamps, connected by a thick, linked chain imbued with a black glow. I couldn’t feel my mana, which meant that these shackles were probably siphoning it away. I dropped my head back onto the floor in frustration.

‘This goddamn headache… fuck. Who would do something like this to a beautiful young woman like—.’

Wait.

My eyes widened. There was a more pressing question than that, and it caused my breathing to quicken. I racked my brain for several seconds for an answer, but I couldn’t find one.

‘Who am I?’

…

I had some semblance of who I was supposed to be, but the exact details escaped me. I could remember things like the advanced theory of blood magic and the names of various plants and manabeasts, but I couldn’t put my finger on how I learned them. More importantly, what was my name?

My head started pounding.

The last thing I remembered… well, to sum it up in one word, it was hell. I was forcefully chained to an altar, and I had tried everything I could to escape. Suddenly, every inch of my skin split, cracked, and boiled simultaneously while a strange, purple light enveloped my body. And then, darkness.

‘What the fuck happened?’

For some reason, the more I thought about it, the more my upper right torso itched and burned. Curious and annoyed, I strained my neck forward again to look for a rash, only to see a complicated looking magic circle tattooed on my skin. It was penta-layered with a six-point seal, four of which were connected in the shape of an hourglass. I understood immediately. It was a curse. Probably to seal me somehow. But there was something else that grabbed my attention.

Did I always have such a small bust? Why am I a washboard? Was the curse… intended to turn me into a child? Have I been captured by a lolicon?

A cold sweat ran down my spine, as the vehicle pulled to a stop.

“Get out, you filthy vampire,” a polished, malicious sounding voice said from outside.

‘Vampire? Ah, that’s right… that’s what I am,’ I remembered.

The doors opened behind my head and a man clad in black appeared, an ominous black aura oozing from every pore on his skin. He wore a black mask that covered his mouth and nose, and a large scar ran down his right eye. His left eye was a wide hazel color with a dagger-shaped iris. I swear that bloodshot eye was lusting for my body, because his breathing became ragged and he started to inhale more deeply.

My worst fears confirmed, I struggled as much as I could to trouble him, but he grabbed me by the shoulders and easily dragged me out. He forced me to my knees, and set a bowl of gruel and bottle of water in front of me.

“Eat,” he commanded.

Was this some kind of cruel master foreplay?

In any case, as I suspected, I could tell that I was much shorter than the man, despite being in a kneeling position. My arms were thinner and shorter, and I had long, brown hair rather than my usual… black… I think. The bust that I had once possessed was gone. Nothing left. Zero, zip, zilch, nada. There was no doubt that I was sealed in a child’s body.

We were in the middle of a dark, forest path that I didn’t recognize. Then again, I seemed to have amnesia. On either side of the path was a dense thicket of coniferous trees that seemed to go stretch far into the wilderness. The dungeon ceiling was high, but there seemed to be clouds above that glowed dimly.

I brought my focus to the garbage food in front of me. I was hungry, but I didn’t want to risk eating that gruel. Not only did it look like it came from the man’s ass, but I was also afraid that it would have some sort of aphrodisiac or incapacitating agent. I wouldn’t put it past a perverted lolicon.

“What, not hungry?” he said, as I stared at my food with disdain. By his tone, the man seemed to be losing his patience.

I half-smiled and half-glared at him, probably resembling some sort of angry, mocking look, I guessed. I was likely on the mark, because it earned me a nice, solid slap.

“Fuck you too.” I responded.

“Hah. A funny one, are you,” he retorted, giving me another slap.

I fought back the desire to respond aggressively, eyeing his belt. The handles of two daggers protruded from behind his waist.

A plan began to form, but I had to buy myself a few seconds of time.

“Mind telling me who you are? And where we are?” I asked, pretending to grab the spoon to start eating. I tried to keep his eyes on me the entire time by staring at him intently. It seemed to work.

The man stared at me incredulously, as if he wasn’t believing what I was saying.

But then he frowned.

‘Shit. Was I not supposed to have amnesia? Should I not have said that?’

“Fuck. I warned them that this might happen,” he grumbled, turning away from me and scratching his head in thought.

‘Chance!’

I forced my wrists out of the metal cuffs with all of my strength. The gruel was the perfect lubricant, but pulling out still hurt like a motherfucker. My thumbs dislocated, the skin on my hand tore, and I had to stifle my whimpers by biting my lip. I tasted blood. Which tasted pretty good, if I might add.

Like I thought, the cuffs were mana siphons. As soon as they were off, I felt a surge of energy wash through my body. As an empty vessel, my mana core served as a vacuum for the mana in the atmosphere. Similar in principle as the blood collection tubes that restaurants used to collect food from their manabeasts and human slaves. Unfortunately, my mana core's capacity had been severely restricted, likely because of the curse on my chest. Nevertheless, it would do.

Of course, this shift in mana flow attracted the attention of my captor immediately, but I was already behind him. I grabbed one of his dagger handles and infused the blade with my vampiric blood, hardening and sharpening the edge exponentially, and enabling me to slice it into his ass through its sheath. It went through like a baby’s bum.

“YOU BITCH!” He roared.

In that moment, the man reinforced his body with mana and smacked me away, eyes livid. However, not before I activated an intermediate neurotoxin spell directly in his bloodstream. His face scrunched up in pain as the toxin took control of his nervous system, sending him into a state of chronic seizures. To my amazement and shock, my mana perception showed me that he immediately responded by manipulating his mana to forcefully close and reopen the sodium channels in his nerves to counteract the toxin.

I had used my spell to synthesize something called tetrodotoxin, a molecule that blocked sodium channels in the neurons that transmitted electrical impulses between the brain and the body. Effectively, this would lock the channels in place and seal all nerve activity. However, the fact that he was responding this quickly meant that in a split second, he recognized the molecular mechanism by which the toxin was incapacitating him, and deployed a direct counterstrategy to negate its effects.

I didn’t think I had much time before he recovered fully. Perhaps five minutes, at most. If my body wasn’t so weak right now, I would’ve been able to take advantage of this opportunity to completely incapacitate him, but as it was, he could probably still manage to kill me in his state, before I could get close enough to strike.

Thus, I quickly clambered to my feet and dashed into the woods, hiding my presence as much as I could. It was dark, cold and scary. Unfortunately, I had no choice.

One minute in, I ducked under a branch and shifted my travel angle 45 degrees to the right, splattering mana-imbued blood ten meters to the left as a distraction. I had a two-minute lead against that creep, and I intended to make the most out of it. That meant making it as difficult as possible for him to track me.

But… where was I going to go? Would I be able to find help? How far away was civilization? Could I trust anyone even if I came across them? I felt so lonely…

Warm tears ran down my face, but I resolved to keep running. I would survive, no matter what I had to do. I would find out who I was, and how I got here.

Definitely.

An entire day passed without any sign of sentient life. Just trees. So many fucking trees. I was about to give up right there. I cursed myself for not grabbing the gruel before I left. There was nothing to eat here, except for dirt, leaves, or bark. The only silver lining was that I hadn’t run into that creep yet.

‘Just keep moving. Just keep moving.’ I chanted inwardly. It had become a mantra of mine.

Another day passed by without anything interesting happening, and it was approaching dusk. I could tell because the clouds above had begun to dim, as they always did before nightfall. The hunger pangs were excruciating. With this child-like body, I had to still be growing, right? I needed to eat to grow big and strong.

By the way, could anyone do anything about these trees? That’s all I’ve been seeing these days. I can’t even tell if I’m travelling forwards or backwards at this point. Just two steps away from insanity, is how I feel.

‘Just keep moving. Just keep moving.’

Night fell, and I was about to faint from exhaustion. I hadn't stopped to rest since this shitty journey began. Should I just give up? Or at least take a nap? I deserve one, don’t I, after all of this hard work? The forest was silent, as if it was agreeing with me.

I collapsed onto the forest floor, fully prepared to take a long nap even if it spelled my own doom.

BOOM.

‘Boom? I said doom.’ I commented in my brief stupor.

You have to forgive me. I was starving and half-mad.

‘Oh fuck, wait. That sound came from somewhere closeby! Maybe it’s a person!’

Grumbling about the fatigue in my legs, I pushed myself up and approached the source of the noise. I tripped a few times on some tree roots in my excitement. A dim, blue light glowed through the thicket of trees ahead.

A clearing! It was actually a clearing!

I almost cried tears of joy as I emerged from the seemingly never-ending forest. Looking around, I seemed to be at the edge of a lakeshore, and there was a village on the side. That’s when my eyes were drawn to a bunch of delicious looking berries stacked atop a wooden cart. It was propped against one of the most beautiful trees I had ever seen, and had a peculiar hole above as if it was hollow inside. The hole piqued my interest, but there were more important things to attend to first.

The speed at which I moved to the berries was so fast that it put four legged manabeasts to shame. I stuffed a handful of white berries into my mouth, barely savouring their sweetness as they made their way down my throat, before I grabbed a handful of the red ones and fisted them in my mouth. Spicy!

But I didn’t care.

I felt alive again.

I chomped down on another handful of berries, then another, and another. Utter joy filled my heart.

Sadly, it was short-lived.

Sssssssing!

Sensing danger, I immediately ducked, and was able to glimpse the glint of a black blade swipe through the air where my neck was just a moment ago. My eyes widened with realization, and I facepalmed myself mentally.

‘Idiot! Of course if you heard the noise, he would too!’ I thought, using the momentum of the duck to do a somersault forward. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. He had already moved there, and grabbed me from behind, his knife positioned on my neck.

“KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!—“ My scream was muffled by his other hand.

“Shhhhhh…. Do you know… how much trouble… you’ve caused me?” He whispered, panting, or breathing deeply, or inhaling my youthful scent, or something else perverted. I knew it. He was after my body after all.

I couldn't make a single noise. Panic began to set in.

"You bitch. You're going to pay for what you've done. The higher-ups don't care about what I do to you anymore..." he said, his lips almost brushing against my left ear.

'Fuck, if only I had some blood to use my magic with…'

At this thought, the blade on my neck dug a millimeter into my flesh, drawing out a bit of my blood.

'Haha! He made a mistake! I can use my blood mag-- I can...'

I tried to will my mana to use an intermediate metal corrosion spell, but it wouldn't activate. Fuck. The creep must have placed a magic seal on me. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I scanned desperately for help. We were in a village, right? Someone must've heard my scream. Was no one going to help me? Was no one going to--

Wait, was there something in that tree? It looked like a blob of jelly, except it had a protrusion coming out of it, like a tiny arm.

'Hmm? What's that... some sort of pudding? And what's it pointing at...?'

An absurd amount of mana had begun to gather at the tip of the pudding's arm, spiraling into a dense orb of bright energy.

I couldn't tell what it was doing. Mainly because I couldn't feel its mana flow, which was strange. Was it because I had a seal on me? That didn't make sense. I could sense the pervert's mana behind me. All the seal could do was cut off my ability to manipulate my own. So why?

The knife dug deeper and I closed my eyes to wait for the inevitable.

BOOM!

Something extremely fast whizzed by my head and grazed my cheek. It crashed against the mana shield defending the creep behind me, but it penetrated through and exploded on his face. Warm blood splattered on mine.

"PWHUCK!" I heard behind me. The pervert dropped his knife and I could feel his fingers covering my mouth slacken. I bit them, HARD. He let loose a bloodcurling cry.

As expected of a pervert, his blood tasted disgusting.

I spit it out and prepared to run away once more. Before I did, though, I turned around to see a scene straight out of my worst nightmares. The creep’s face was blown off from the nose up, but he was still twitching and moving. The rest of his face was slowly bubbling and reforming as if he was some immortal monster.

'Hurry, hide in here! Adults can't sense this area.' A childish voice entered my thoughts. Who was that? Looking back towards the tree, the pudding was motioning me towards him with his tiny arm.

‘No way... the pudding?' I gasped.

'Who the fuck are you calling pudding?' It asked in exasperation.

I clambered up the tree into the hole to find myself in a mesmerizing area lit with an emerald glow. The flow of mana was strong, calm, and rhythmic, as if it was pulsating with life.

"Who are you?!" I whispered.

The pudding tilted its head to the side with a puzzled expression. Aweh~ It was so cute!

‘I can’t understand what you’re saying.... I think… you have to think it for me to understand,’ it said.

‘Oh, like this?’ I asked.

‘Yep. I’m Bell. What’s your name?’

‘I’m…’ I hesitated. What should I tell her? I didn’t know my name.

My brown hair reminded me of something, though. A nostalgic word that someone close to me had said before…. Who it was, I couldn’t recall. Regardless, it would have to do, at least for now.

‘My name is Coffee. Nice to meet you, Bell.’