Book 5: Chapter 50
Kay woke up. He didn’t remember falling asleep, and a good chunk of his body felt really sore, which was weird. He tried to remember what he’d been doing to end up feeling like this, but it as all kind of a blank. The last thing he remembered clearly was… huh. Not much at all. He knew his name, he remembered his family, and his friends, but there was a large blank where everything else should be. He frowned, his eyes still shut as he tried to work his way through what he did remember. High school, college, work after that…
There was a sharp pain in Kay’s side and he could feel a slice cut out of him sealing itself shut. The pain caused him to jolt, and his memories came flooding back. He’d been shunted into another world, and now he was a king. And a vampire! How weird was that? He had magic powers too, ones that could really help with this whole “in pain” thing. He directed mana into his healing Skill and relaxed as his body began to put itself back together even faster.
How was I healing without using my Skill? That’s not something that should work like that… Oh right, vampire! As long as I have blood I can put myself back together, can’t I? I’m glad I had enough to deal with whatever just happened to me.
He took stock of the blood stored within him and frowned when he realized how low it was. He couldn’t remember what had eaten into his stockpile like that, but he’d either been next to death or fighting something insane. Or both. He only had a few dozen gallons left, which was incredibly low compared to how much he’d had the last time he topped up. He mentally reached out to his Inventory and tried to pull out one of his emergency canteens, but it didn’t appear. He got the feeling like something was in the way. Frowning even deeper he tried to open his eyes and see what was going on but found he couldn’t, something was pressing down on his eyelids and keeping them shut. In fact, something was pressing down on his entire body. It felt like he was completely enclosed.
He shifted his fingers slightly, feeling the coarse grains of dirt and small rocks. I’ve been buried? Did I die? Or did someone try and kill me? That would explain how much blood is gone, especially if they did a really good job in trying to put me down. The System did say that I could potentially regenerate from anything as long as I had enough blood, I must have been cut to pieces and then regenerated from a few scraps.
He tried to remember what had happened. Being in a fight felt right, and he followed that feeling. It had been a desperate fight, one that he’d thought he might lose. An image came to him of a crazy storm, with a giant dark shape looming above him. Endless attacks coming from every angle, a bright blue light suspended in the air…
The fucking nanomachines!
He remembered the fight in its entirety now, the investigation team finding that one sample, killing the enemies there, then rushing to the other side of the island to join the defense against the enemies climbing from the ocean. Destroying countless eldritch beings, the core arriving inside its slug, all of the nanomachines fusing into one and the fight against it. He’d been pushing t back under the cover of Alahna’s storm, and he’d thrown Eleniah at the core to take it out, or at least distract it so he could get closer. Eleniah, who’d been at ground zero of a massive explosion.
Kay drew the remaining dregs of blood out of himself and pushed the dirt away from him. He dug to the surface, the wrapping around his body vibrating to move through the soil. He wedged an arm out and pushed, forcing himself above ground. Looking around Kay saw he was at the edge of a deep crater. Bits of black sludge were all over the ground near him, but they were barley moving where they were moving at all, and he didn’t have time for clean up. Ignoring the injuries he still had he threw himself down the slope of the crater and started running toward the center.