Ch.7474. Vampire Messenger

How much time had I spent?

‘Work complete, that’s a wrap!’

After finishing my task by directly modifying the souls of the five sinners.

As I was about to shift my consciousness to the wolf avatar for a rest, as I often did, a thought suddenly occurred to me.

‘…Playing the role of a god with all this gravitas is more exhausting than I expected.’

It seemed like quite a heavy thought, but well. As if a real god would feel that way.

With all my stats, including those related to mental judgment, being overwhelmingly high, any stress heavy enough to be mentally harmful would simply dissipate.

So this emotion I’m feeling now is probably… just the annoyance of having to maintain a weighty presence all the time.

But even so, I couldn’t completely ignore this feeling.

If a god’s attitude is too casual, people might lose trust, potentially reducing the amount of faith I collect.

At the same time, if a god lacks authority and gravitas, one might question if they’re even a god. Following my personal values, I’ve been diligently acting as “the excellent god I envision”…

But after maintaining this attitude consistently for so long, how should I put it…

Yes, after having to display such a transcendent attitude all the time, I feel the need for communication?

Divine beings inherently possess self-completeness, so they don’t feel loneliness. This emotion was too complex to express in words… but one thing was certain.

‘I want to be more comfortable…’

Being worshipped as a sacred existence while maintaining gravitas all day might be fine for a day or two, but I need some time to act freely in a more comfortable manner.

Following this desire, after much deliberation, I came to a decision.

‘Herald, one was starting to be insufficient anyway, right?’

One herald was gradually approaching its physical limit.

I decided to acquire another avatar that could serve as a herald, separate from the wolf avatar.

Considering that the wolf avatar originated from a wolf deity,

one might think that obtaining a god’s avatar wouldn’t be easy…

In fact, conventionally, there’s no classification for a “god’s avatar,” and the wolf avatar I use is simply a sturdy, soulless body—a physical form with high spiritual compatibility capable of withstanding a god’s possession.

In short, a god’s avatar is merely an empty vessel that a god can possess… However, it’s also true that bodies that are sturdy enough and have high spiritual compatibility aren’t common, making it quite difficult to obtain a god’s avatar in practice.

In the case of the wolf avatar, it fulfills spiritual compatibility as a wolf deity, and being a first-grade physical monster, it also satisfies physical durability…

Realistically speaking, beings that meet both of these demanding conditions aren’t very common… Wait.

‘Hold on. Come to think of it, aren’t there quite a few?’

The beings that came to mind satisfying those conditions were first-grade divine blood vampires.

In the original game scenario, by the time I mainly played, most high-ranking vampires would have gone into seclusion, died, or disappeared…

But now is a period when most high-ranking vampires are still alive and well.

Even among the vampires who have become my believers, there are many I’ve never heard of, and some of them might have self-destructed due to their thirst for blood, been exterminated while rampaging, or committed suicide out of despair over their condition.

Perhaps because of this, while high-ranking vampires would be rare according to the original history… now is different.

Not long after the curse of the previous Blood God occurred, true-blood and higher vampires are quite common now, meaning there are many vampires with enough potential for me to possess.

Any existing souls can simply be cleansed and devoured, and a first-grade divine blood vampire is almost like an elemental spirit, so its appearance would change according to my soul’s influence. The body could be received as an offering, so there’s no problem.

And even if I need a physical body, I have no intention of sacrificing my believers unless they’re on the verge of death.

Sacrificing believers who send me faith, strengthen me, and trust me completely…

As a god who must remain a pillar and hope as an object of worship, this is absolutely forbidden.

Just as there’s nothing worse than not taking responsibility for one’s position, this is something that should never be done, beyond concepts of good and evil.

Therefore, I planned to capture first-grade divine blood vampires who weren’t my believers, particularly those with serious crimes, and process them into bodies suitable for use as avatars.

Even if they became vampires as victims of the curse, there are quite a few whose methods and personal character don’t align, or who have become intoxicated with their vampiric nature.

After checking with my 100% monopolized vampire deity status,

only about 40% of the original vampires created by the previous Blood God’s curse are my believers.

Of course, the remaining 60% aren’t all villains, and among them are those who rejected my offer out of wariness or those who are already dead.

Excluding those, about 20% remain.

Some live in hiding while attacking humans for blood, some have turned entire criminal organizations into vampires and taken control, or some act as lords or kings in unexplored or remote places.

Commonly, those who operate intelligently and have established their own domains might be slightly irritating from a modern perspective, but by this era’s standards, many are quite acceptable…

But among them, there are clearly evil individuals, especially malicious ones.

For example, the first male vampire that caught my eye had hidden in a brothel.

He turned the prostitutes there into vampires for his greedy days, while simultaneously kidnapping civilians to turn them into vampire prostitutes as both a source of income and toys.

‘…Ugh, this is too much.’

I initially considered him as a candidate, but his actions were so filthy that I couldn’t stand the sight of him, so I just sent Lisa to crush his soul along with his base using a wide-area divine miracle. He was utter trash.

The second case, while slightly less trashy, still involved individuals not worth keeping alive.

They had occupied a city-state located in a remote mountainous area inland and were openly running human farms while acting as tyrants.

…Actually, I wanted to erase these guys too, but as they were the only ones currently meeting the conditions…

‘Go, Lisamon!’

Having no choice but to decide on this vampire as my avatar, I dispatched Lisa on a vampiric dragon.

In just 10 minutes, Lisa devastated the city with wide-area magic and, following my instructions, successfully kidnapped the vampire.

It was summer.

※ ※ ※

Afterward, the vampire’s fate was as good as sealed.

“You, you! What are you trying to do to me! I won’t let you get away with this! I won’t—”

[…I offer this to you.]

WHOOSH!!!

The vampire, who had the appearance of a mature yet decadent woman, was engulfed in flames, and her body and soul, offered through the flames, were transmitted directly to me.

“(Gurgle…)”

And when this vampire, transmitted to my divine realm, saw my true form… she suddenly foamed at the mouth and collapsed to the floor.

‘…What’s with this woman? Why is she acting like this?’

Though I felt somewhat perplexed by this sudden behavior, I could easily determine its cause.

Even when I was a lesser deity, simply projecting my appearance into reality could turn an entire city into a place of madness. The moment this vampire saw my true form as a middle-ranked deity now, she glimpsed my essence.

If she had been below high-rank or not a vampire, it might have ended with just a drop in mental strength.

But she was unnecessarily powerful and simultaneously resonated well with me…

Information about my essence was injected into her mind beyond her brain’s capacity, depleting her mental strength to the extreme and causing her self-identity to collapse. She ended up like a human encountering some cosmic horror deity from a novel.

So I looked at her with somewhat burdened eyes, but… only briefly.

‘Well, it doesn’t matter.’

Satisfied that the troublesome task of extracting her soul was gone, after a moment’s consideration, I decided to leave some of her soul intact to use as a kind of controller.

This way, I could maintain definite control while simultaneously allowing an independent self to form, which would reflect my personality but still be a distinct entity.

Looking at the final result, there would be almost no chance of being discovered, which was actually beneficial from my perspective.

So when I put this into practice:

“I look forward to working with you, my other self.”

‘…This is too cringeworthy. Is this right?’

Black Gothic Lolita-style dress, a frilly dress at that, and a character who speaks formally.

Specifically, it feels strange, like I’m looking at a pile of my dark history.

“Cringeworthy… I am another aspect of you. Don’t reject me.”

And decisively… since our souls are bound together and we can understand each other without speaking, the fact that she speaks like this specifically suggests… chunibyo?

Somehow, it seems like another character with a strong personality has emerged to follow that love-sick guy.