Free Web Novel“...I was scared out of my mind for a second there, thinking maybe it wouldn’t work.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s nothing.”
To be honest.
Even I hadn’t been certain about this.
If things went according to plan, I had been sure I could bring down the grand duke.
The real question was whether or not I could return to being human afterward.
'It was possible in theory, but....'
The skill I had obtained.
And the power of the “Matron” that had once flowed out of Jang Youngwoong’s dead body.
If I combined those two things,
then in theory, I should have been able to return my body to its previous state.
The problem was—
'The skill had already been placed on my body, so that part was one thing, but....'
The Matron’s power
was a little different from the skill I had arranged to trigger automatically.
'The Matron’s power was something I had to choose for myself.'
Even now, somewhere in my veins,
the bloody tear the Matron had left behind for Jang Youngwoong was still flowing.
Unlike the skill, the one using that power was me.
And if things had gone wrong—
'I almost got completely devoured before the skill could even activate....'
If my personality had already been fully transformed by then, then even if I had spat out Luca’s serum afterward, I would not have been able to use the Matron’s power.
More precisely, it would be more accurate to say I wouldn’t have chosen to use it.
'That serum... is far too dangerous.'
I had tried this based only on the story that Ariella had become a vampire and retained her personality,
but my case had been a little different.
And at the same time,
there was something I could feel instinctively.
'I came back now through the Matron’s power, but.'
To begin with,
that power was not the kind that turned time back into the past.
At its core,
it was power meant to comfort a child weeping in sorrow and regret.
It was not power that solved the underlying problem.
'Rather than solving the problem... it’s closer to [overlaying] something on top of it.'
In the end, it was only a power that showed a false illusion so that the child would not feel sad.
Even now, I too—
just like Seoul in the past, when the city reshaped by Jang Youngwoong’s regret had been laid over reality itself—
'underneath, there’s still....'
The me that had been corrupted by the Progenitor’s blood was probably still there, entrenched as my true nature.
'...It won’t be a problem for now.'
But if I were to take that serum again someday in the future,
well... who knows.
By then, after so much of me had already changed,
I might not be able to make the choice to come back a second time.
...Taking that into account, maybe the right thing would be to destroy this serum right now.
In fact, Luca had also advised me to dispose of it.
'...But.'
At the same time, I closed my eyes and recalled a few minutes earlier.
To begin with,
the reason Luca had made that serum for me was to restore my body perfectly and remake me into a stronger being.
And... just as intended—
'A strange sense of omnipotence.'
When I had been using that serum,
...I remembered that a power beyond anything I was capable of now had been lurking inside me.
The problem I was facing now—
as a result of returning my physical state through the Matron’s power,
even after drinking that serum, my body was still afflicted with the [Vital energy loss] debuff.
'But that wasn’t true after I drank the serum.'
The lost vital energy had been completely replenished by the power contained in the Progenitor’s blood, freēwebnovel.com
and at the same time my body had ceased to be human and become a vampire—
more than that, a being of exactly the same species as the Progenitor itself.
...That final battle with the grand duke.
In the end, it was true that we had been able to win that battle because my trickery had weakened the grand duke’s power, and then Jinlei had joined in.
But.
With a face full of strange certainty, I thought:
'Back then.'
At that point, before Jinlei had begun controlling the grand duke’s blood, Ariella had already drained a great deal of blood from him,
but even so, the grand duke had still been stronger than Ariella.
And yet, even with his fist clenched tight,
he had not been able to strike me with it right away.
'Even if the grand duke had thrown that punch.'
I was certain of it.
'...It wouldn’t have made much difference.'
...Even if he had thrown that punch,
probably,
the result would still have been the same as now.
'It’s a dangerous power, but....'
I looked for a moment at the serum in my hand,
the vial that could turn me back into that state at any time.
'It may also be a power I’ll need.'
I tucked the serum back inside my uniform.
***
“Are you all right, Commander?”
“Did something happen to you after all...?”
“It’s nothing like that.”
The members of my unit had worried looks on their faces after seeing me standing there lost in thought,
but I shook my head and said,
“More importantly, what happened to the situation? I think I blacked out for a moment. How much time has—”
“You did collapse briefly, sir, but you opened your eyes again almost at once. Just a few minutes...”
“Really? That’s a relief, at least.”
Well, it made sense.
The way I had returned to normal hadn’t been by healing my body or anything like that.
It had been by overlaying the information of my past self onto my body through the Matron’s power.
The fact that it had been another being’s power did bother me,
but since the Matron had, for some reason, permitted me to use it, it had never been likely to take long.
“Then the others—”
“For now, they’re focused on gathering the wounded from the battle. But...”
At that moment, the soldier frowned.
“There’s a bit of a problem....”
“A problem?”
At those words, I had only just begun to wonder—
when, at that very moment—
“Why are you refusing treatment...?”
A voice came from somewhere nearby.
I turned my head toward it.
And what I saw there was—
“Jinlei?”
“...That’s the problem.”
Jinlei, dying, surrounded by soldiers.
***
“There wasn’t much trouble while everyone’s attention was fixed on you, Commander.”
The soldier scratched his head awkwardly as he spoke.
“After you collapsed, we took care of you first and then told everyone else there was no need to worry. To be honest, we didn’t really know whether it truly was the kind of situation no one needed to worry about, but...”
“Still better than letting people notice something was wrong and throwing them into confusion. You did well. What happened next?”
“Once everyone’s attention shifted away from you, Commander... it turned somewhere else.”
That meant it had fallen on that man.
Jinlei.
“It didn’t matter much to us, but to the people here, he seems to be someone with a rather complicated meaning. Things have quieted down now, at least, but....”
“...Sounds like they caused an uproar.”
“Yes. They insisted on killing him with their own hands somehow....”
I looked around.
Awakened were busy running all over the place.
They were moving so busily for the selfless purpose of collecting the wounded,
but whenever their emotions brushed against the area where Jinlei lay, something in them shifted.
'...That’s spicy enough to make my face go numb.'
What I could feel from them was an intense sharp heat.
Their fury toward Jinlei seemed considerable.
“So?”
“At first, we thought maybe we should just leave it to them, but....”
As I walked closer to where Jinlei was,
I soon began to make out the people standing nearby as well.
“It was stopped on the squad leader’s—sister, I mean, reconnaissance squad leader’s orders.”
“Ah.”
“She said the decision on what to do with him should be made by the Commander. So they backed down, albeit reluctantly.”
Jeong Sua.
She and several of the others from my unit were blocking people from approaching Jinlei.
And after that, I didn’t need to hear the rest to know what had happened.
Once they had stopped people from getting to him,
they must have tried to treat him using Luca, who had now become our unit’s medic.
“...You’ve come, Commander.”
“You have arrived, my benefactor.”
As I approached,
the people surrounding Jinlei—Jeong Sua and Luca—greeted me.
“Good timing, Commander. I was just running into difficulties with the treatment. I need your help.”
“You, of all people, are having difficulty treating someone?”
I had only just experienced the effects of the substances this bastard could make.
No matter how much less scrupulous he had become than before,
it was hard to believe there was anyone he couldn’t treat.
“Of course not. What do you take my skills for?”
“......”
“The problem is that the patient is refusing treatment. If not for that, I might not be able to cure him completely, but at the very least keeping him alive wouldn’t be difficult....”
At my words,
Luca frowned as though personally insulted.
“He’s refusing the most important part—the transfusion.”
“...Ah.”
“He’s not merely resisting physically, either. He’s using his own ability to block it....”
The reason Jinlei had ended up in this state was that the grand duke had stripped every drop of blood from his body.
To fix that, he needed a transfusion.
But the man himself was refusing it.
Even using that power that interfered with blood—a power even the grand duke had not been able to resist.
“...I’ll speak to him.”
At that.
After a brief moment of thought, I stepped past the others and stood in front of Jinlei.
“...You’ve come.”
Then,
that corpse-like man looked up at me and spoke.
“I hear you’re refusing treatment?”
“...I’m sorry for causing trouble, but yes. That is what’s happening.”
“Why?”
This man may once have hated humanity.
But even then, he had never shown any particular desire to die.
Even his attempt to let the grand duke devour him had only been part of his plan toward a larger goal.
He had never struck me as someone who actually wanted his own death.
So when I asked in confusion, he opened his mouth with difficulty.
“After listening to you... I ended up betraying the grand duke. And the extinction of humanity, which I had long been planning... has failed as well.”
I thought to myself.
When I had been dragged before the Progenitor,
the Progenitor had said my choice was a gamble with low odds of success.
That abandoning the humans of this land and fleeing back to the Legion would have given me better odds,
and that I was a fool for staking the survival of all humanity on a low-percentage gamble.
“Yes, and then...?”
But.
I saw it differently.
“And thanks to you, a lot of people survived.”
I had been certain my operation would succeed.
The only question had been whether or not I could return myself to being human—not whether the grand duke would be defeated.
The reason was simple.
'Because I believed this bastard would ultimately choose humanity’s side.'
An operation that could not fail as long as the ingredients were in place.
And.
Even if my preparation regarding Jinlei had been a little lacking,
when it came to the final moment,
I had believed he would choose to help humanity.
To begin with, if he had truly wanted to wipe out humanity,
he had already had several chances to do it before then.
Especially—
“I heard about you from General Kaio.”
“...The General.”
“He asked me to look after you. He pushed himself to deliver me that message, and because of it, the old man is probably still lying in bed.”
Beneath that capital.
When the grand duke had gathered all of humanity’s strongest before him.
At that time,
this man had let the General live.
He had spared someone there had been no reason to spare.
Because of that,
humanity had learned of the vampires’ appearance a little sooner,
and had been able to hold out against the bloodlines for at least a little longer.
'Karhin made contact with humanity only some time after the vampires had already appeared.'
If General Kaio had not escaped from underground and warned everyone of the danger,
most of humanity would have perished before ever even meeting Karhin.
It seemed that even he himself did not quite understand what he had done.
But I knew.
'This bastard... even while hating humanity that much, still wanted to believe.'
Even in the midst of his despair and betrayal by humanity,
some tiny fragment of him
had still wanted to believe in humans.
That was why, when it came to a wicked being of the kind he so loathed—
a being General Kaio did not fit—
he had not been able to bring himself to kill him.
Even that conversation I had with him at the end—
what I had done was not persuade him.
'The hope he already carried within him—the hope that he still wanted to believe.'
All I had done was give him a chance to make a decision in accordance with that tiny hope.
Even without my intervention,
he probably would have made the same choice in the end.
“The sins you’ve committed are grave. But it’s also true that people survived because of your choice. Even so... are you saying you regret your choice?”
At my words, he stared blankly and said,
“I don’t know. I really... don’t know.”
As though in pain,
he lowered his head.
“For now, I do not regret what I have done. The humans I had seen until now were trash that deserved extinction, but....”
His eyes brushed past me.
“I learned that there are exceptions.”
“......”
“If they were people like the General, or like you... then perhaps they might be worth believing in.... I think that thought also played a part in the choice I made. But....” freewebnoveℓ.com
From that dried-out body,
tears spilled and dampened his skin.
“I’m... so afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Right now, I do not regret it. But I feel as though later on, I may come to regret this choice of mine.”
At those words,
I could only stare at him, speechless.
“You never abandoned people to the very end. That is why I thought you were someone I could trust. But... what if, just what if, even you were to change someday?”
“......”
“What if even people like you, or the General, were to change with time and become like the trash I once knew?”
Clutching his own body,
he trembled in fear as he spoke.
“What if, when that time comes, I find myself thinking it would have been better to destroy them back then after all? And what if I then realize there is no longer any way to reverse that choice? If the choice I made today becomes the cause of failure in the future?”
“......”
“I, I... do not think I could endure that. So....”
He looked up at me and said,
“Please let me close my eyes now, while my conviction that my choice was not wrong is still stronger....”
