The Reincarnated Vampire Just Wants To Enjoy Her New Life

Chapter 1: Prologue

“Fire again! Aim for the eyes!”

A volley of projectiles made from various materials flew through the air, striking the monstrous creature ahead of us. It closed its eyes, trying to protect them.

Unfortunately, we wanted to blind it, not just make it flinch. The massive, 30-meter scaled beast—a magma drake—roared in frustration. We had succeeded in luring it from its lair, but we hadn’t managed to do any serious damage.

This was the perfect time to deal with it—while it was still weak from hibernation but before it could harm our lands.

But our efforts weren’t enough. Maybe we lacked firepower, or our strategy wasn’t right. Perhaps I wasn’t leading well enough.

“Damn, it’s not enough. First and second parties! Focus on its right flank!”

Sixteen figures rushed up the right flank, spreading out into formations. They coordinated their attack on the massive lizard, enduring the heat from its sizzling scales while trying to cut through them with swords and spears. Mages provided support, casting spells on the enemy or enchanting their allies.

The party leaders and their assistants worked hard to coordinate their troops, but their efforts were in vain.

The magma drake barely noticed them, treating them like flies. Instead of dealing with the soldiers attacking its flank, it focused on the command group and support units—where I was standing.

The drake drew in a deep breath, signaling its next move.

“Mage units! Barrier, front and center!”

I yelled at the defensive mages with my unit. Without hesitation, three robed figures formed a tight group in front of us and erected a magical barrier large enough to shield everyone.

Just as the barrier went up, the magma drake unleashed a torrent of fire. We were engulfed in light and heat, but the barrier held strong.

A dozen seconds later, the flames dissipated, leaving behind scorched earth and a perfectly circular oasis where we stood.

The barrier dropped, and the mages took a deep breath but stayed on alert. They were disciplined, ready to follow any order for the glory of our nation and leader.

Realizing its fire attack had failed, the magma drake roared and charged.

“Fall back! I’ll stop it!”

The mages’ barrier was great against ranged attacks but wouldn’t hold against a full-on charge. I stepped in front of my unit, raising my shield to protect my comrades from the charging beast. The mages immediately cast support spells on me, strengthening my resolve.

I was grateful for my excellent subordinates, though I was disappointed I hadn’t been able to use them effectively.

I dug my feet into the dirt, bracing myself to stop the drake’s charge. Then, I heard it.

“Glasgow, seven steps left.”

I followed the command without hesitation.

I knew that voice, as did everyone here. It was the voice of our goddess, and it was absolute.

Just in case, I re-braced myself as the magma drake neared.

Out of nowhere, a flash of blue and white shot past my right side, followed by a hellish screech and a rumble that shook me to my core.

When I opened my eyes, I realized I was staring at the drake’s eye. But it wasn’t looking at me—it was focused on something above, and I saw fear in its eyes instead of anger.

A shadow flitted from above to the other side of its head.

The drake let out another screech, desperately trying to retreat, but it was pinned in place.

The light faded from its eyes as its cries grew weaker.

I dropped my shield and rushed around the drake’s head. As I circled it, I saw a giant lance of ice impaling its left foreleg. When I reached the other side, I saw a small figure cloaked in robes blacker than the abyss standing at the drake’s neck. A soft sucking sound came from the figure.

Every part of this person’s body was covered, shielding them from the light of the sun.

This was our goddess—a creature of the night. Yet, she didn’t shy away from the day, using it as effectively as the night.

I stopped and knelt, lowering my head.

Even kneeling, I was still taller than her. She was small—almost childlike—but to us, she was greater than any being in the world. I felt it was almost unpardonable for my head to be above hers, but lowering it further might seem disrespectful. So, I pushed aside my feelings and waited.

“Ah, sorry for taking first blood,” she said.

I looked up as best as I could without raising my head. Under her hood, I could just make out her white skin and a single streak of blood dripping from the corner of her lips, curved into a faint smile. I felt blessed to see her up close.

“The first blood to the last drop—the entire kill belongs to you, as do our lives!” I declared.

It almost felt like blasphemy to refuse her apology.

“That’s right,” she replied.

“It’s as the commander says,” someone added.

Before I knew it, the rest of my unit was behind me, bowing to our master. I almost felt ashamed I hadn’t noticed them, but our goddess came first—above all else.

“Well, if you feel that way, just make sure not to waste any of it.”

“Understood!” we all answered, raising our heads and looking at our goddess.

With a small wave, she rose into the air to join her aides, who were waiting in the sky, before they all flew off to wherever they were headed.

Chapter 2: New Project

Before I knew it, I was standing in a line.

I was surrounded by people wearing a confused look on their face. It seemed like I wasn't the only one who didn't know what was going on.

The man standing in front of me suddenly started to grope his front, patting across his stomach.

"I, I thought I was gonna die...was it just a dream?"

His hand stopped just above his belly before he stared at them.

(Die?)

My mind went back to my last memory.

I was working on an indie game, but I encountered a game-breaking bug less than a month before the release. My bank account was almost empty and my credit cards hardly had any leeway left in them. I spent the last two weeks trying to rewrite a third of the game to get rid of the bug and put the game into a playable form, sacrificing pretty much all my sleep along the way.

I didn't eat much either during then, not like I could afford the time or money it took to go shopping.

I gambled everything on this game. After years of working dead-end jobs, I had enough and wanted to do something I was proud of. The result was the depletion of my life savings as I desperately coded my own game for over a year.

The night before release, I was suffering chest and head pains, but I bulldozed through that, and managed to send the final build to the publisher minutes before the deadline.

After that, nothing came up. I probably fell asleep, but that didn't connect with where I was.

No, in a sense, it did.

The man in front of me clearly thought he was stabbed and was on the verge of dying, but now he's fine and is standing in a mysterious line along with tons of others who are just as confused as we both are.

(I must've died, and now this is the afterlife.)

All I could do was crack a wry smile at the thought. I gambled a year of my life away, and in the end, I died without seeing the fruit of my labours?

It wasn't like I was hoping to get rich and famous, but at least make enough to survive until I could release another game.

Now I wouldn't know if any of my work would've paid off at all. Even if it had, even if it became some sort of impossible smashing success, I wouldn't know.

Well, I would actually. I wasn’t conceited enough to think that such a thing would happen. And I knew my game better than anyone else. It probably would've flopped. The reception to what little advertising I could afford was lukewarm, and the state the game was in at the end was barely playable.

The best I could hope for was paying off my credit card bills and keeping me going long enough to find another dead-end job.

In a sense, it was a relief. Now that I was dead, I didn't have to worry about any of that. I didn't have to go through the crushing humiliation of a year of my life wasted, the thought that the best I could do was virtually dick all.

The line continued to move as I thought to myself.

"She's not here, is she?"

The man in front of me was muttering to himself all this time, his head swivelling around trying to check people out in the line, occasionally returning to hug himself, chewing on his thumbnail.

He must've had a traumatic death if he was acting like this.

It didn't take long before the barren hallway we were following opened up into a large, mostly featureless room. All along the walls were an incredible number of identical doors with a light strip affixed above them. Most of them were red, with a few being unlit. Occasionally one of the red lights turned green, and someone would walk over from the line and enter the door. The light turned red again once it closed.

As I got close to the beginning of the line, I saw a huge man wearing a colourful toga standing guard, guiding each person to the rooms with green lights.

He looked a bit like a friendly police officer I sometimes saw that looked like he lived in a gym when not at work. Well, aside from the toga, at least.

Sometimes people would ask questions or argue with him, but he patiently gave people instructions. When they didn't listen, he dragged them by the arm or collar to one of the green rooms before coming back.

I was pretty curious what was behind the doors. A closer inspection revealed that each one had a plate with a word or two on them, but I couldn't read what was said on them. The script of each was different, and there didn't seem to be any sort of pattern to connect them. It was like each plate was written in a different language.

My curiosity about the doors was growing overwhelming, especially the doors with unlit light bars. It looked like nobody was going into them.

Was it because they weren't currently in use? Or was it a difference reason?

The only way to know was to check for myself, but the guard was paying close attention to everyone in the line.

Not only that, but while I saw tons of people enter the doors, I never saw anyone exit one once. It seemed like people went somewhere else after going through those doors, yet it was strange to think that there was more hallways beyond them. There were simply too many doors, and the architecture needed to make it work was insane.

Then again, if this really was the afterlife, then common sense wouldn't apply, nor logic or physics at that.

A few more minutes pass and I had become second in line, with the fidgeting man being next to dissapear.

Without warning, the giant guard pointed to a green-lit door.

"C'mon, it's your turn"

"Huh? No. What's that?"

The guy started to argue back.

"Sorry, I can't answer your questions. Just calm down and go through that door"

"No way man! How do I know you're not gonna torture me over there?!"

"As long as you stay calm and do as you're told, nothing bad will happen. We accommodate everyone the best we can"

"How can I trust you?! Nobody's come back from those doors!"

I was a little surprised. I didn't think he was in a state of mind to notice that.

"That's because these doors are one way only. You're holding back the line. Please just go through the door"

"Nuh uh. No way! Screw that! I can't trust you at all!"

The man backs away. It looked like he was thinking of making a break for it.

"Whoops, can't have you break the rules"

Faster than I could see, the guard grabbed the man's arm and started to drag him to the aforementioned door.

Despite the scene and everyone staring at the spectacle, the thought that went through my mind first was something quite different.

(This is my only chance)

Without sparing a second thought, I ran while making as little noise as I could towards the first unlit door I saw. I only had one shot at this. While I had no idea what the consequences of my actions would be, I could argue that any punishment they tried to give me for doing this was fundamentally unfair, since there was no indication that I wasn't allowed to do this.

"Hey, wha...?"

Someone noticed and whispered a cry, but I ignored that person. Instead, I quickly reached the door and turned the knob.

It wasn't locked, no was there anything to it beyond what I expected.

Without any hesitation, I slipped past the door and closed it quietly behind me.

The room beyond the door was properly lit, yet there wasn't anyone there.

(Talk about a waste of electricity)

...presuming the lighting was powered with it.

What greeted me was what appeared to be a small office. There was a desk sandwiched between two chairs and a pair of house plants standing in pots in the far corners. I didn't recognize the plants, but that didn't mean much in the first place. The desk was lightly cluttered with some personal belongings and a large crystal orb propped up on a stand.

Aside from the orb, everything on the desk resembled random office toys, but as expected, I didn't recognize a single one. It was like a universal rule that if someone had actually seen your office toy before, it's a failure of an office toy.

Leaving the pointless gizmos aside, the only thing that might've not been useless was the crystal orb. Normally I'd have discounted it as just an oversized office toy, but in this place, my common sense didn't apply.

Without anything to lose, and me possibly running out of time before someone figured out where I went, I tried placing the palm of my hand on the orb.

Reacting to my touch, the crystal orb lit up for a few seconds, pulsating almost like a slow heartbeat, before settling on a dim glow. From there, a pair of screens appeared, one in front of each chair.

They were hovering in the air like holograms.

What was displayed on the screens looked like some sort of form. A profile picture of my face was plastered on the top left of the form. Beside and below it were a series of entry fields, most of which were empty, including my name for some reason.

While both screens looked to display the same thing at first, a few seconds of looking at each revealed a simple difference: the one for the chair away from the door was prompting for additional input.

It looked like normally I was supposed to meet someone in the room, who would fill in the various fields while taking my requests into consideration.

If that was the case, then rather than letting someone else dictate what would go into my information, I'd rather do it myself. At the worst, I'd get booted and forced to go through the procedure properly while under more strict supervision...most likely.

I sat down on the soft office chair and had a closer look.

At the top of the form, the words [New Incarnation Settings] was clearly labelled.

Most likely, the form was to set up my initial starting conditions on my next life.

(To think that these rooms were for setting up our reincarnations!)

If this was some sort of dream, then I didn't want to wake up.

I tried to touch the name field, but it was greyed out. It made sense, since normally your parents would name their new baby, not some sort of celestial power.

The next field was destination world. The word [Terheim] was already set, and touching the field didn't allow me to change it.

(Perhaps the rooms designated which world the reincarnator was going to go to?)

Following that was species. [Human] was placed there by default, but when I touched it, a drop-down box opened up, revealing a wide range of possibilities. The possibilities were nearly endless, but it quickly became obvious that almost all of them were automatic rejections. While most of them were things I'd never heard of, the fact that random animals and even bugs were on the list, the reincarnation process would allow me to become something that wasn't even sentient.

I wholeheartedly rejected that notion.

Lots of the staple fantasy races were on the list as well, but the one that stood out for me was the vampire.

Vampires had it's own unique set of strengths and weaknesses, but that in itself made them more interesting than any of the more typical fantasy races. I just hoped that they weren't considered to be a universally evil race or something.

When I selected vampire for my species, a whole slew of additional options were added a little further down.

The first of the new options was [apparent age]. It seemed like I could select what age I started as. Vampires weren't born as babies in this world it seemed.

I wasn't too surprised by that fact, since most myths have vampires be ageless, so they always had the same appearance as when they turned. I was a bit skeptical about how it would work for someone born as a vampire from the beginning, but didn't concern myself about it. There was no point in worrying about something you had no information about.

For age, I selected 16. I figured that it was old enough that I'd be fine with it for the rest of my next life, yet I'd get a few extra years if I did grow beyond that. Regardless of the world, it was also old enough to be independent, but young enough that I wouldn't be at a social reject for not being already married or something.

The next were a series of options regarding physical appearance.

For hair colour, I selected silver. For a vampire, black and silver are the only real options. I refused any other possibility. My own hair was near black, so I wanted something different for my next life, hence silver.

Eye colour was fixed to red. I couldn't change it.

Same with skin colour. It was fixed to pale.

The next option was height. Rather than simply just a drop-down box, this, as well as the rest, were all accompanied by sliders. The default settings on all of them were [Normal Distribution Random] and the sliders were greyed out.

When I opened the box, the revealed options were various other distribution patterns for random, with manual at the bottom.

I selected manual of course.

For height, I moved the slider to a bit under a quarter from the bottom.

My current height was well above average, just a bit over two meters. Frankly, my excessive height gave me no end of trouble, and I was eager to take the opposite end of the spectrum without hesitation. I've always envied people who could fit on a bus seat between two others without problems, or could walk through public places without worrying about hitting their heads on stuff.

Short people always envied tall people like me, but from my perspective, the world was designed for short people, and generally it was at the expense of the tall. At least that was my personal experience.

The next setting was physical attractiveness. That was maxed out. No doubt in my mind, there was no reason to go any less than that. Any debate there was a waste of time and energy.

I continued to play with the sliders a bit, but since there was no feedback, I wasn't sure about the effects. It wasn't like my portrait picture changed as I fiddled with my appearance settings.

Half unsatisfied, I moved on.

The next option almost blew my out of my seat.

The label for the section was [Skills].

At first, I wasn't sure what it meant, but looking further down, the meaning dawned on me. The [Skills] didn't refer to techniques that a person accumulates through knowledge and practice, but are quantified abilities built into the person themselves.

The first few entries proved that point splendidly.

Below the label [Skills] was another sub label [Default Skills], which had a single entry [Local Language] included. Touching it opened a tool-tip that described it in detail.

[Local Language]: Knowledge of the languages used in the incarnated world. Available by default for any users incarnated outside of standard birthing.

In other words, it gave me the ability to communicate with the people of the world because I wouldn't have a few years to learn under parents. It was a pretty considerate skill. It made me realize how odd it was that I could read the form in the first place, but I waved the idea away with the presumption that any power that could reincarnate people across multiple world would find the ability to adjust systems to allow anyone to understand them was a pretty paltry ordeal.

Below [Default Skills] was another sub label [Racial Skills], and under that was the two skills [Blood Sucking 1 (Vampire)] and [Natural Weapons 1 (Vampire)]. I opened the tool-tips on them to read their descriptions.

[Blood Sucking 1 (Vampire)]: Allows one to suck a target's blood or similar fluids and absorb their essence.

[Natural Weapons 1 (Vampire)]: Strengthen one's own body as if it were a weapon. Exclusive to claws and fangs for vampires.

The sight of this made me want to jump for joy. It seemed like the world I had inadvertently chosen was ruled by game mechanics. It was like many of those books that had grown popular lately.

The fact that the skills had a [1] on them implied that they could be improved further, and that the world quantified the people's abilities in a tangible way. Once something was systematized, the possibility of loopholes and exploits appeared. The thought of finding such a thing excited me.

Unfortunately, the fields stated that I had zero available points to purchase starting skills. Reexamining the fields again, I saw that [Local Language] cost zero points, [Natural Weapons 1 (Vampire)] cost one point, and [Blood Sucking 1 (Vampire)] cost a whopping four points. As the latter two were both racials, I couldn't remove either to get some points back. Not like I'd remove blood sucking. If I didn't have that, I doubt I'd survive long as a vampire. I had no idea how normal food would effect a vampire, but I doubted I'd get much nutrition from such a thing. [Local Language] was a freebie, so I didn't touch that even to see if I could remove it in case I couldn't figure out how to get it back.

Below that was a few more options labelled under [Miscellaneous], and among them was one of particular concern for me: [Memories upon incarnation].

The default option was erase. I impatiently changed it to preserve. I absolutely didn't want my memories to be erased. It would ruin the whole point of everything I was doing. If I didn't remember who I was, then it was the same as doing this all for a complete stranger, rather than myself.

The next option I looked closely at was [Starting Location]. The default option read [Racial Default]. The tool-tip only gave the vague message of starting in locations typical for the chosen race. I imagined that simply meant being born from a mother like normal for a human or being more likely to be born in a big city, but the message was too vague and generic to satisfy me. The lack of context made me extremely uneasy.

I went through the options, but they were all pretty vague and generic. Each one was in the vicinity of something generic, like a city, lake, mine, mountain, etc. This form was probably made to work for any world, so there probably wasn't any options to get more specific than that.

Then I noticed one option that was a bit different from the others: [In the vicinity of rich resource deposits preferred by chosen race]

The tool tip implied that it would put me near a location that was one of the highest concentrations of resources that were considered extremely desirable by the race I chose. The impression it gave was that for a place with lots of small rodents and birds for a fox, or maybe a literal gold mine for humans?

Just like the others, it was vague, but it felt more reliable than the others. Especially when I had no idea what kind of landscape would be preferable for vampires, nor what kind of association other races had with them as well.

Finally, I reached the bottom of the form, and a strange field was waiting for me.

[User Privilege Level]

When I opened the drop-down box, it revealed four options: Minimal, Standard(default), Moderator, Administrator.

I selected the fourth option without any hint at hesitation. When the admin option exists, always pick it. That was my belief.

But before closing the box down, a warning window opened up.

[Warning, administrator rights can only be given to a limited number of users per world. In addition, rights cannot be changed until user returns to the Life Settlement Facility. Available administrators in chosen world: 1/1. Do you wish to proceed?]

It was a bit unfortunate that if I hit yes, I'd be taking the only admin slot for the world, but I couldn't bear with not taking the privilege while I had the chance, so I unwaveringly hit yes.

With that, all the fields were completed, so I hit complete at the bottom.

[Confirm settings]

Of course I hit ok.

With a smile, I sit back. I had no idea if what I did would actually do anything, and even if I had succeeded, I had no clue as to what came next.

To me left was the sound of paper being rolled out.

I sat up in surprise and grabbed the sheet as it came out from a slit on the left side of the desk.

When I looked at the sheet I was lightly pulling on, I saw the details of the form I had just completed was being printed out, starting from the bottom.

While I wasn't sure what would come next, it looked like I had done everything right up to this point.

Suddenly, a pillar of light descended from above, surrounding me. Little motes of light rose up and my body felt like it was losing it's weight.

*Rrriiippp*

While I was distracted, I accidentally pulled too hard on the printed sheet and it ripped into two.

Before I could do anything about it, the light grew stronger, blinding me. My feet rose off of the ground, then everything went dark.

Chapter 3: First Steps

I opened my eyes.

When I came to, I was lying on a patch of grass under the shade of a tree.

Sitting up, I had a look around.

I was in the middle of a forest. The trees were pretty big, but I could see the dark blue sky easily in the many breaks in the canopy.

Through one particularly large break, I could see the peak of a large mountain. I repeatedly blinked, confirming and reconfirming what I could see surrounding that peak.

...For some reason I could see the stars even though it was the day.

...For some reason there were three suns, each a different colour.

...For suns, they weren't that bright. I was forced to squint, but I didn't get bright spots in my eyes for looking directly at them.

Still, it was a strange feeling to see a red, green, and blue sun rather than a single yellow sun.

As weird as it was, such a thing was a minor point for me right now. It was much more important for me to get my bearings.

The last thing I remembered was confirming the form entry in that weird office after slipping out of that strange line.

(That's right! I reincarnated!)

I quickly looked down to confirm my new body, but my excitement was quickly washed away with confusion.

The view as I tried to look down at my hands was pretty alien to me. The various shapes and sizes didn't match up with anything I was used to. My hands were tiny, and my limbs were slender. On top of that, it looked a bit like someone stuck their butt in front of me, but at an impossible angle.

A quick glance around me confirmed that I was alone, so I raised my hands and grabbed hold of the bulbous mounds that were blocking my sight.

I could feel my fingers sinking into the soft flesh as I squeezed.

My mind reeled. This feeling that was foreign to me was clearly being transmitted to my brain.

Hoping against hope, I put a hand between my legs and felt around, but that last desperate wish was shattered when a completely alien sensation started to signal my brain.

No longer having the energy to keep myself propped up, I flop back down onto my back and stare at the sky.

Now that I was looking at it more properly, the sky was strangely dark looking. It was more of a dark blue with some splotches of colour here and there, along with all the stars and three suns. It was hard to imagine it was the midday sky, but everything below that suggested it was so.

The vegetation around me didn't look too different from Earth, but the sky, and of course my own body was.

I looked at my own hands. They were tiny and so frail looking. My arms were like sticks. It wasn't like there wasn't any meat on them, but even the bones underneath were small. My fingers overlapped when I wrapped them around my wrist. I couldn't do that before. They wouldn't even touch.

There was so much I didn't know about myself or this world.

No, in a sense, I didn't know anything yet. It was possible almost all my knowledge and common sense didn't apply in this world. There wasn't anyone around me to help either, so I was stuck figuring it all out on my own.

Being dropped into the wilderness with nothing to my name, I had to start with survival in mind.

Rather, I didn't even have a name, now that I thought about it. I could certainly use the name from my last life, but considering how much changed about me, it didn't feel right.

Well, my name didn't matter if I didn't have anyone to call me by.

I dug into my memories, and found some stale, half-baked knowledge about survival that I picked up randomly online at some point.

"When it comes to survival in the wilderness, always keep the rules of three in mind" I mumbled to myself.

The cute, high pitched voice that reached my ears made my back itch. It felt so unnatural for such a sound to come out of my mouth, but I had to get used to that.

(The rules of three state that you can only survive for three minutes without air, three hours without shelter, three days without water, three weeks without food, and three months without hope)

Well, I was breathing fine, so I had already cleared the first step. The second was my next concern. Shelter didn't refer to a structure hide in, but rather something to generally protect yourself from the elements. In other words, clothes. Something I was really lacking in.

I looked at my bare skin and sighed. If I was looking at this body from the third person, I'd have been pretty excited, but the first person perspective ruined it for me.

The three hours without shelter most likely referred to suffering from exposure and freezing to death, but I wasn't cold in the slightest. The environment didn't feel particularly warm, but I didn't feel cold despite that. Even still, I did want to protect my dignity at least, even if nobody was around to strip me of my modesty.

After that, water was next on the list, and food after that. There was no harm in looking for all three at the same time, but it was important to properly prioritize.

With that thought in my mind, I quickly rose up, and almost came crashing down just as fast.

My centre of gravity had drastically changed, making it more difficult to stay balanced. Not only that, but my legs were further apart than in my last life, making my steps awkward.

To think simply standing was so difficult in a new body. I wondered how much of that was attributed to my differing sex and how much was simply because it was a new body.

I took a few careful steps to confirm my new balance before taking a look around.

There really wasn't much remarkable about my surroundings. I was surrounded by trees, ferns and bushes grew scattered all around, with patches of grass marking where the light of the sun filtered through the broken canopy.

To my side, though, there was one thing that was out of place. Aside from myself, of course.

That was a flimsy piece of white something that didn't look natural at all.

I picked it up and had a glance, to reveal that it was that sheet of paper that I grabbed right before I was transported to this new world. The top of it was ripped off so my old portrait wasn't on it, nor was the first few settings.

The first line was torn, making it hard to read, but I made out the words [Sex: Female]. The entries below that were the appearance settings I went straight to after I selected my species. It was pretty obvious I skipped that line because my eyes were attracted by the options below it. To think I made such a blunder.

It made me worried I had skipped over any other important information and I skimmed through the form just in case. In the end, I didn't see anything else wrong. When it came to oversight, that seemed to be the only real blunder I had made back then, but it was a big one.

I didn't want to live out my second life as a woman, but it wasn't like I had a choice. I had no idea how to get back to that strange space aside from dying, and even if I succeeded, there was a high chance that I wouldn't be allowed to get all the things I wanted, like keeping my memories, or remembering my past, or especially preserving the knowledge of my previous lives. Not being able to be the same sex as my previous life sucked, but it wasn't as bad as it could be, and it was only a matter of time before I got used to it.

I scratched my head, but gave up thinking about it. Survival came first, and the consequences of my mistake could be left until I met some of the locals.

Stepping away from the tree I arrived beside, I took the torn paper with me. It was the sole physical memento I had of my previous life, even if it neither existed while I was alive, nor did it have any information regarding my old self, but I was reluctant to dispose of it, and leaving it for someone else to find was dangerous.

I folded the sheet and held it firmly in the palm of my left hand as I started to trek across the forest, careful with my steps. I was barefoot, so any little thing could cut my soles, limiting my ability to get around many-fold.

My balance was extremely unsteady, but the actual act of moving around was surprisingly easy. Either my new body was stronger than my old, or I was simply that much lighter. Or both. Most likely both. The last year especially I spent most my time secluded indoors as I worked my failure of a project.

I couldn't help but keep touching my chest as it swayed. If anything, I was really starting to want something to hold it in place. I dreaded the idea of having to run while the pair of flesh globes bounced around trying to get me to trip.

Frankly, it might've been because of my perspective, but they were big. Not as big as some other women I've seen, but way bigger than what I'd have liked on myself. Which was to say I wish I didn't have them in the first place, but that was nothing more than denying my reality.

The reason felt a bit different, but I did need to adhere to the second of the survival rule of threes.

With no particular goals, I headed towards the mountain I could see through the occasional break in the tree-line, the only distinct landmark I had.

As I walked, I admired everything around me, staring at one new sight after the next.

The strange shapes of the bushes to the large trees that rivalled the tallest I've ever seen in pictures.

My feet frequently stopped. At first it was because I lost my balance while staring at something as I walked past it, but eventually it changed to me just stopping to have a closer look at things. Sometimes it was an oddly shaped leaf on the ground, or others it was a bug I've never seen before crawling or flying around.

This world was simply mysterious, and surprisingly beautiful. That thought was even more impressive considering that I was fundamentally the indoor type in my last life. Maybe it was because I was happy with everything I could see from my computer monitor before, but here, where I had to physically move to see something, walking around and exploring was an exciting experience.

That said, I was worried about my ability to survive on my own. I had never taken any survival courses, and the closest thing I did was some outdoor activities during summer camp as a kid. I did read some bits and pieces on the field online, but it was all fragmentary, and hardly from reliable sources. Even more importantly, it was all knowledge from Earth. It was easily possible that none of it applied here, a world with three suns.

But there was nothing I could do but keep trying things until I find those that worked, and hence I kept walking. I picked up a rock and a strong looking stick for self defence. I didn't know if I was weak, but the stick took quite a bit of effort for me to break to size. Hopefully it would work as a decent club. Hopefully I wouldn't have to find out.

As I continued to walk, I noticed that the suns were moving to my left in the sky, suggesting I was moving north. Or south, depending on what the standard orientation was in this world, if there was even a common consensus regarding it.

I was growing hungry as the hours passed, but it was hard to find anything. I had no knowledge regarding foraging for food, especially when it came to figuring out if anything was edible or not. I tried sniffing a few fruit I found hanging in some of the trees, but they didn't smell very appetizing at all. Wary about eating something poisonous, I avoided them, but if I didn't find something to eat soon, I might be forced to gamble on it.

Suddenly, I smelt blood in the air. The scent was surprisingly strong, and it was easy for me to follow it.

There was barely a breeze blowing, so the smell probably wasn't coming from far away. But the strength of the scent probably meant that there must have been a lot of blood around. The worry that I was heading towards the scene of a slaughter was diminished by my hunger. The thought of fresh meat almost made me drool a bit.

I quickly moved from tree to tree, peeking out before each dash, trying to keep myself in cover as much as possible in case some great danger was responsible for the scent.

It wasn't long before I found the source of the smell, only to be greeted by a single small creature dancing around a small fire while holding the body of a bloody rabbit.

No matter where I looked, there weren't any other creatures nearby. My first reaction was annoyance that my initial reaction was so far off the mark, but it was quickly replaced by the thought that I had found an excellent opportunity.

The creature was humanoid, and was holding what looked like a rabbit in one hand and a simple spear in the other. It was pretty short and it's skin was moss green, and its face was ugly as all hell. It was entirely naked aside from a dirty loincloth that looked to be little more than old pelt hung around it's waist with string. It was yelling out while dancing in a circle. The yells didn't sound like intelligible words, and more like random animal howls.

It didn't look to be much more intelligent than a chimp.

All put together, it looked pretty much like that one fantasy monster: goblin. If my guess was right, then it was the cockroach of the fantasy world, meaning that killing it was a good thing. There wasn't anything to feel bad about the act, or rather, I'd be doing the world a favour by doing so, and I'd get an easy meal as a bonus.

With my mind made up, I threw the stone I was holding past the goblin. It sailed cleanly through the air and thumped hard against the ground.

The green stubbie dropped the rabbit and looked towards the sound, holding it's spear in both hands.

At the same time, I jumped out of my hiding spot behind a tree and dashed at the goblin. A few seconds late, the monster noticed the sound of my footsteps rushing towards it and turned to look my way.

"Hyaaah!"

I yelled out as I swung my stick with all my strength, doing my best to ignore how cute my yell sounded.

The goblin turned it's body to try to intercept my attack, but it was too late, and the blunt end of my stick smacked it clean in the forehead, knocking it down to the grown with pure force.

Hardly without any hesitation, I raised my improvised club and swung it again, impacting it against the goblin's skull. And again, and again.

By the time I stopped, it's head was clearly caved in, and any residual twitching had nothing to do with it's ability to fight back.

I fell onto my butt as I breathed heavily. It was the first time in both lives I've ever killed something bigger than a bug.

Despite that, it didn't feel as bad as I feared it might. I wasn't sure if I was inclined towards such a way of life in the first place, or I was more desperate than I realized and that just made it easier for me to throw away any previous inhibitions than I would otherwise.

The smell of blood was stronger than ever, and I could even tell the difference between the rabbit's blood and the goblin's blood.

Unexpectedly, it did nothing but stimulate my appetite even further, so without further ado, I took the goblin's spear and used it to cut open the rabbit.

The rabbit was a bit bigger than anything I've ever seen on Earth, but what really made it stand apart was it's incisor. In particular the top ones. They were much bigger and sharper than what rabbits normally had. It reminded me of the pictures of beavers I've seen before.

Frankly, they looked pretty dangerous for something that people normally associate with cute. It was a reminder that my common sense didn't work in this world.

I took the goblin's spear and used it to cut the animal open. The spearhead was made of stone, chipped into a pair of edges, and kept in place with some sort of string. The basic design was the same as those primitive spears often found in museums.

This, combined with the fact that it was wearing clothes, even if it was just a loincloth, compared to me, who was naked and wielded nothing but a broken branch, made me cry a bit on the inside. A fantasy cockroach was living a more civilized life than I had managed since coming to this world.

I, a human, the species of tool makers was beaten at that very act by a goblin.

(Wait, homo sapian meant wise man. Homo hablis was the handy man. By that logic, humans aren't defined by their ability to create and use tools, but their ability to use their heads)

I satisfied myself with those thoughts and continued to skin and cut up the rabbit.

Once I was done and lay the cut chunks of meat on top of the flayed hide, I went around and gathered small sticks and used them to spear the meat and stuck them near the fire the goblin had been dancing around.

Frankly speaking, the smell of the cooking meat wasn't that appetizing, and I couldn't help but keep checking to see if I had burned any of it or not. Instead of a nice roast or barbecue, it smelled like just burnt meat to me. Maybe it was because there wasn't any seasoning, or maybe that was the nature of this rabbit?

After a short while, and constant checking, I removed a fully cooked piece of rabbit meat and bit in.

End result: it was terrible.

It was sinewy and tasted like wet plaster, or at least what I imagined such a thing tasted like. I forced myself to chew the meat, but the juices that came out just made it worse.

In the end, I forced myself to swallow it, but even the feeling of the lump going down my throat felt bad. I couldn't help but wonder if I'd get sick eating something that tasted so terrible.

Just looking at the rest of the cooked meat made me groan and I just turned my back to the fire.

By accident, I ended up turning towards the goblin corpse. Without the smell of burnt meat constantly overpowering my sense of smell, I could smell the goblin's blood clearly. For some reason, despite how bad the meat was, the scent stimulated my appetite again.

It was strange that when the scent of cooked meat was disgusting to me, the scent of blood smelled delicious.

I unconsciously licked my lips.

As my tongue ran whetted my lips, it ran across my elongated canine.

The strange feeling made me realize my mistake.

These canines weren't those of a human, at least of the kind I was familiar with. That was because I had not only changed my gender, but my species as well.

I had completely forgotten about that fact due to the fact that I had been wandering around under the sun without any problems. It wasn't like there weren't any vampires that couldn't handle the sun fine in fantasy stories, but I just presumed that being under the sun equalled not vampire.

With that said, I couldn't help but stare at the base of the gooey mess I had made earlier. The goblin was getting cold, and a lot of the blood had already been soaked by the ground, but there was probably enough for a small snack.

My revulsion of drinking it's blood was actually much lower than I expected. It was probably related to how good it smelled and how hungry it was making me.

With a bit of trepidation, I flipped the goblin corpse onto it's front and put my lips to it's throat...and almost hurled.

Now that I was so close to it, the goblin's body odour became overpowering. Combined with the disgusting meal I just had, my body tried to reject everything it didn't like all at once.

I wished I had a bucket of water with me, but without such a thing, I grabbed some of the cooked meat and rubbed it along the goblin's neck. Careful as to avoid burning myself I held the meat using the stick. It was weird using perfectly good food to clean something so dirty, but for me now, meat was little better than garbage.

Once I had removed as much of the foul odour from the goblin neck as I could, I threw the remains of the rabbit meat into the fire and tried again.

The neck was slick with grease, but the smell was much more tolerable. With a bit of nervousness, I used my fangs to bite into the neck, then sucked the trickle of blood that came out.

The blood was a bit thin and tasted like a frozen dinner salisbury steak drenched in cheap gravy, but for me right now it was like drinking artisan honey after being starved for a day!

Forgetting myself, I sucked harder on the puncture wound. In the back of my mind, I was aware that I wasn't just drinking through my throat, but also through my fangs. It turned out they were hollow, and I was able to suck deeper using them.

I was ecstatic, and kept trying to suck more blood out even after the trickle ran dry. In a desperate attempt, I raised the goblin's legs up, hoping some blood welled further down the body after it's heart stopped. I was rewarded for my efforts with a few drops, but even that ran out much faster than I desired.

I released the goblin's corpse and flopped onto my back.

I grit my teeth in frustration. It was like being served a tiny sample of a dish from a first class restaurant after spending the day starved while waiting in line, only to be told I wasn't allowed to eat anymore.

(If only I remembered I was a vampire faster, I could've drank all of that goblin's blood.)

Such thoughts weren't productive in the slightest, so after a few minutes of rest, I got up and got ready to move out again.

I grabbed the goblin's spear and the rabbit pelt. It wasn't properly processed, but I figured the pelt could be used to make clothes once I worked on it a bit, and the spear was better than anything I could make on my own. In addition, I removed the goblin's loincloth. It was the dirtiest thing I've ever touched, previous life included, but if I could make it even remotely clean, it would help to restore my modesty.

That said, it stank to high heaven, so I hung it on the end of my new spear and carried that on my shoulder so I could stay as far away from the smell as I could. I also grabbed the rock I originally threw. Despite how primitive and simple it was, it had a variety of uses.

Now ready, I took off, continuing in the same direction I left off.

As I walked, I opened up the sheet of paper again. I had forgotten I was a vampire, so I wanted to confirm what settings I had set. For now, the important ones were my skills and the admin privileges I got. The latter I had no idea what to do with, or even what it was for, but the former suggested that I was capable of using special abilities. I had three skills according to the sheet: [Local Language], [Blood Sucking I (Vampire)], and [Natural Weapons I (Vampire)]. [Local Language] was pretty useless until I found someone I could talk to, [Blood Sucking] I had demonstrated already. I hoped to be able to use it again soon. [Natural Weapons] was the last, and the only one that was likely useful, but I hadn't tried yet.

The [Natural Weapons] for vampires were their claws and fangs.

I looked at my hands, specifically my nails. They were long and pointed, but hardly looked like claws. More like just typical women's nails, though on the shorter end of even that spectrum. Playing with them revealed the truth though. They weren't flexible like normal nails, and resisted my attempts at bending them. Not only that, but they were sharp. Very sharp. They really weren't like human nails, and more like the claws of the cat I used to have, despite it's shape.

Not only that, but when I tensed my fingers with the will to claw at something, they grew in length and curved inward a bit, showing their true form.

Aside from that, my fangs obviously made good weapons. Human teeth worked decently as weapons if you ever had the chance to actually use them, and my fangs were much longer and sharper than any human teeth. Even without any benefits given to me by my skill, they would've made fine weapons, presuming I got close enough to bite my enemies.

But with such game-like elements in play, I couldn't help but wonder what other game-like features existed in this world. Was it like a lot of the stories where there were levels and stats as well? If that was the case, then I'd definitely need to figure that sort of thing out.

As well, how to get new skills, on top of how to raise the skills I already had. Did they go up through usage, or was there more stringent requirements? Could I learn new skills by doing things, or was there something specific I needed to do to get them?

(For that matter, since this was a fantasy world, what about magic?)

If magic existed, I really wanted to learn the skills for it. I wanted to know about anything and everything that was impossible on Earth.

Instead of getting distracted by every new thing I saw, I ended up wandering around while my mind floated through the clouds as I thought about the possibilities.

Suddenly, I heard a strange yelling.

I perked my ears and heard more yelling. Rather, it sounded more like the cries of a wild animal, rather than coherent yelling. And it sounded familiar as well. It was similar to the cries made by that goblin.

It sounded like there were three distinct voices, but since the goblin cries were pretty incoherent and carried little meaning, it was difficult to tell. That said, I quickly crept up, dropping everything but my weapons in a bush.

When I peeked out from behind a tree, I saw three goblins squabbling, just as I expected. It looked like one was trying to get the other two to do something, but they were mostly ignoring the first one's demands, occasionally taunting as extra measure.

I felt pretty pathetic. The first time I got to see any social interactions in this world, and it was a group of squabbling goblins. Their so-called speech wasn't even coherent enough for my [Local Language] to pick up as anything intelligible.

Be that as it may, I was already licking my lips. I had a prime opportunity to get three goblins worth of blood right now if I succeeded. I couldn't forget the taste of my first kill.

All three goblins were dressed just like the first one I found, naked aside from a single loincloth each, and each carried a primitive weapon. The one yelling at the other two had a stone hatchet, and the other two spears like the one I had.

Considering the difference in length, the spears were a bigger threat to me, since I also had one, though since they were only about two thirds my height, my overall reach was better.

With that in mind, just like last time, I opened up with throwing my stone past the group.

When it impacted the ground, all three jumped and looked at the source of the sound, tightly gripping their weapons. The moment their heads turned, I sprinted out from my cover. I made almost the entire distance before they realized the real threat was behind them.

With a great swing, I bashed the first spear wielding goblin in the side of the head with my stone spear. A satisfying crack resounded, and the smelly green creature fell over lifelessly.

Without losing any momentum, I tightly gripped my spear and thrusted out with it at the second spear wielding goblin.

But to my surprise, while the spear did hit it's mark, the head broke off from impacting the monster's skull. I had damaged the cheap weapon in my last attack, and now it didn't do nearly as much damage as it should've.

Unperturbed, I take another step and try thrusting again. The initial impact knocked the goblin off balance, giving me a big opening. This time, the broken shaft found it's way into the ugly face's eye and broke through the thin bone behind it, braining the creature.

I tried pulling my weapon out, but it got caught and the goblin came with it, as if it had some sort of morbid attachment to my weapon. I let it be with it's fetishes as I turned to the third goblin empty handed.

The green cockroach had a look of shock at the fact that I took out two of it's comrades so quickly, but it composed itself when it realized that I had let go of my weapon.

With a sneer, it raised it's weapon and charged at me.

I, in the meantime, grinned and counter-charged.

The ugly goblin, surprised at the gap between us closing much faster than it anticipated, hesitated before swinging it's weapon. A fraction of a second too late, instead of burying it's stone axe into my body, it's shaft hit my left shoulder as my extended arm stabbed into it's chest.

The light quickly faded from it's eyes, but I was too busy to worry about that. Instead, I closed my fist and pulled on it's ribs, bringing it close to me, and I bit into it's neck as fast as I could.

The sweet taste of it's blood flooded my mouth, intoxicating me.

Words entered my head, but I was too preoccupied to worry about them.

Instead, I revelled in being able to taste this living nectar once again, and I desperately sucked it up, as if someone was threatening to take it away from me.

But the feeling disappeared all too soon. There was so little blood in the bodies of these goblins.

I limply dropped the goblin's body and turned around.

There were two more bodies on the ground.

The ecstasy of drinking blood made me forget, and I quickly rushed to the next body to fill my stomach of the honey-like fluids. Then once again on the third goblin.

With all three goblins drained of all of their life fluids, I collapse onto my back, rubbing my warm belly. I couldn't help but grin. I wasn't full, but I was satisfied. Never before had I ever felt so satisfied by anything.

I thought about how I didn't like blood much in my last life, and how it was thrown away by the meat industry like sewage, yet all I could think about was how much of a waste such an act was. If I was still on Earth, I'd have gone to one of those factory farms and found a way to buy it all.

I'd swim in it, and drink until I burst.

Without any hint of my smile fading, all I could go was giggle. I didn't even notice how girly and cute sounding it was, nor the disparity between my expression and my thoughts if viewed by an objective third party.

While basking in the afterglow of my meal, I was unable to realize how much my thoughts had changed already while I rested.

Chapter 4: The Nature of Things

After a short break, I got back up and started to loot the bodies.

These goblins were even poorer than the first I found. All I got was two spears, an axe, and three exceedingly dirty loin clothes. They smelled just as bad as the first one I found, so I tied them to the end of one spear and slung both spears over my left shoulder while I carried the axe in hand.

I considered grabbing my broken spear and dropped stone, but I was just about at my limit as to what I could carry by hand.

Instead, I went back and retrieved the rabbit pelt and my last loin cloth, and tied both to the end of my carrying spear before continuing my trip.

As I continued to walk north, I noticed that the ground was slowly sloping upwards. It seemed like I was climbing a gentle hill or something, but the trees blocked my line of sight too much to get a good picture.

(If this keeps sloping upwards, it's probably not the way to civilization, is it?)

I hadn't really thought about trying to find any cities, but practically speaking, that would've been the right thing to aspire to as my first goal, aside from just surviving. But now at this point, I started to wonder how good that would be before I got my bearings.

Just minutes earlier, I lost control over myself. Drinking blood really was a powerful urge. Surrounded by people, I wondered how well I could control that urge if someone got cut near me.

Maybe choosing to be a vampire wasn't such a great idea? Maybe a beast person would've been better? I saw a few of those on the list. But vampires were practically unaging in almost every media. That was pretty hard to resist. Maybe an elf? Some have them also being unaging.

Then again, if I could control this urge, then living in a city wouldn't be a problem. I needed to get practice doing such a thing. Even if I ended up not living around other people like my previous life, not being able to control my blood lust would be a serious detriment.

(But it really was tasty...)

Before I realized it, I was licking my lips again.

(No! No! Bad vampire!)

I hit myself in the head, admonishing myself for getting so caught up in those feelings.

This might be harder than I thought.

That aside, when I was drinking those goblins' blood, I heard some words in my head. I dismissed them at the time because I was so engrossed in feeding, but they sounded important.

The first one, thinking back, sounded like 'You have reached level two!'

The more I thought about it, the more I was sure that's what the voice said. I gained a level, like in a game.

A smile crept up onto my face.

(A level. It wasn't just skills!)

I didn't particularly feel any stronger, but that could just be because the feeling of having my first real meal overwhelmed me.

(But there were more words after that)

After that first announcement, I heard one more while drinking from the second goblin, and then again from the third goblin.

Thinking back, the pretty-sounding woman's congratulatory voice said 'You have gained the [Breeding 1] skill!' and 'You have gained the [Spear Technique 1] skill!'

(Ugh, how terrible)

One sounded good, but the other sounded pretty nasty.

From what I remembered, the [Blood Sucking] skill not only let me drink a creature's blood, but let me absorb their essence as well. I thought that it meant that it allowed me to digest the blood as food, but maybe that wasn't what it meant.

The level I gained could've come from the skill, or from the fact that I killed four goblins already. The [Spear Technique] skill likewise could've come from the fact that I killed two goblins with a spear, aside from the fact that my spear was broken while I used it on the second one. But that nasty sounding [Breeding] skill couldn't have come from anything I did myself. I was a virgin in both lives, so strictly speaking, nothing I've done should've allowed me to earn such a skill in the normal way.

That left only one possibility: I can gain skills by drinking the blood of my targets.

(Wow, just wow!)

I didn't know how hard it was to get skills normally, but this gave me a massive edge! Being able to gain skills I haven't even practised, possibly even raising skills I already had, the extremely high value of blood kept going up inside of my mind.

(This...is going to make it hard to live an ordinary life)

Not like I intended to in the first place. I was going to live how I wanted after all, not conforming to what people expected from me.

But if I was going to gain a lot of skills this way, it was going to be difficult to manage if I couldn't view them when I wanted. Not only that, but it was important to be able to know what the skills did.

While I was in that other space, I was able to touch the skills to get a description. If I could somehow do that here as well, then I wouldn't have to worry about my skills doing things I couldn't predict.

That said, the staple of these game-like worlds was some sort of menu or character sheet opening up through one technique or another.

With that thought in mind, I tried every permutation of opening a way to see my skills and information on my own I could think of.

(Menu. Open Menu. Select Menu. Main Menu...)

Rather than go through the most likely commands first, I tried to keep my trials organized to prevent repeats as much as possible. It wasn't like I was in much of a hurry, no matter how much the thought excited me.

(...Status...oh!)

In the end it didn't take long, and a transparent screen opened in front of my eyes.

The screen was filled with my personal information, as expected.

(Hmm...[Name:]...it's blank)

Not like I really expected much from that field. It wasn't a priority, so I left it for later.

([Species: Vampire], [Sex: Female]...)

I've already been reminded of those two facts more than I liked today.

Below that, I started to find actually useful information.

------------------------------------

State: Normal

Level: 2

XP: 8/12

HP: 32/32

MP: 20/20

STR: 6

CON: 9

AGI: 12

DEX: 11

INT: 10

ANI: 8

Skills:

Default Skills:

Local Language

Racial Skills:

Blood Sucking 1 (Vampire)

Natural Weapons 1 (Vampire)

Breeding 1

Primary Skills:

Spear Technique 1

------------------------------------

I could clearly see my information put into quantified values. When I touched each part, I was able to get a tool-tip filled with the selected item's description, just like in that other space.

Level: The collective strength of a person's base abilities. Raised by gaining XP.

XP: The representation of spiritual growth when slaying foes or through actions of intense labour or creativity.

It looked like I could gain levels though means not just by killing monsters, but the description was a bit vague. I'd have to experiment with it. Not only that, but looking at the values themselves, I was probably one or two goblin kills away from reaching level 3.

I wondered if I also got XP from sucking their blood?

[HP]: Hit Points. The amount of injury one can sustain before perishing.

[MP]: Mana Points. The amount of mana available within one's body to be used.

[STR]: Strength. One's ability to exert physical force upon the world.

[CON]: Constitution. One's ability to resist injury.

[DEX]: Dexterity. One's ability to move accurately and precisely.

[AGI]: Agility. One's ability to move quickly.

[INT]: Intelligence. One's ability to manipulate mana to create a phenomena.

[ANI]: Anima. One's ability to resist unwanted magical manipulation.

The attributes were pretty straightforward, and pretty much as expected. Though it was notable how low my [STR] was, without something to compare against, the numbers themselves didn't mean much to me.

[Breeding 1]: Allows one to breed with other creatures, regardless of compatibility. Offspring will always be of the parent with the higher [Breeding] skill.

[Spear Technique 1]: Increases one's ability to use spears and spear-like weapons.

Well, that answers my question on the [Breeding] skill. The effect was a bit depressing, but not really surprising. Goblins were often depicted as a monosexual species that captured females to propagate. This looked like proof that they were also like that in this world.

It was a depressing skill to have, but I just had to avoid using it.

(Did I just decide to become an eternal virgin?)

Actually, looking a bit closer, the skill was greyed out. There was the fact that it was classified as a racial skill. Maybe because I wasn't a goblin, the skill didn't work for me? I hoped that was the case, but I couldn't help but worry that if someone saw I had this skill, they'd label me as a slut or something.

On the other hand, the [Spear Technique] was pretty nice. I hoped that I could figure out how to make my own spears or get my hands on a quality one to take proper advantage of this skill.

As I was thinking about my skills, a new sound entered my ears. It was faint, but it was the distinct sound of water.

Despite some problems, I couldn't help but feel that my first day's been pretty fortunate so far.

I was slowly, but steadily getting stronger, gaining useful equipment, even if they were exceedingly primitive, found a good way to feed myself, and now I found a water source. I was still naked and I hadn't found a single hint of real civilization yet, but considering I basically started with nothing, I felt like my progress was pretty good.

And being naked wasn't as bad as I feared. It was still embarrassing, and frankly I was glad I hadn't found anyone yet due to that, but this area was sufficiently temperate. I hadn't felt cold even once since arriving.

For once in my life, luck was really on my side.

Even if I had to die for that to happen.

My steps hurried. While I wasn't thirsty, I felt dirty. Touching those goblins so much made my body grimy and the feeling was disgusting.

I burst out from around a large bush.

What greeted my sight was a small river flowing roughly from the northwest to the southeast. There weren't any signs of any creatures nearby aside from some animal tracks. It looked like it was a popular watering hole, but despite that, it was currently deserted.

Not minding such a detail, I hurried to the water's edge and put my things down before quickly wading into the knee-high water.

As I was about to bathe, I noticed my reflection in the water.

I haven't had a chance to actually get a look at my new body yet, so I was quite curious as to how I looked.

Though the rippling water, I could more or less see my own face. Starting from the top, my hair was an elegant, shiny silver, long and straight, coming down below my hips. My eyes were large and round, appearing to be half-filled with wonder-lust and curiosity, and half-filled with penetrating intelligence. Below that was a small, bit of a button nose, with slightly pouty lips, all framed by a small chin and round cheeks.

The reflection was like a cute girl that was still halfway into becoming a beautiful woman.

The unsteady reflection made it hard to see clearly, but she looked like she'd grow up to become a top-tier woman.

If I met her in my previous life, I wouldn't have hesitated to tap that ass.

That's a lie. If I had actually met her and she tried to talk to me, I would've been completely intimidated by her. Not only were her eyes pretty striking, but the thought of interacting with a girl who was leagues out of my range would've instead made me break out in a cold sweat.

And that girl was now me.

I was never a popular guy in my last life, rather I was mostly a loner in general. I had no idea how to act with a face like then when the time came to actually talk to someone in this world.

Frankly, the thought alone was a bit scary.

I shook my head.

There was no point in worrying about something that might not crop up in a while.

I pulled back a lock of hair that fell into the water when my fingers touched my ear, but the shape wasn't familiar. It was pointed, like an elf's from fantasy tropes, but it wasn't too long. The point only stuck a couple of centimetres further than human ears.

Vampires often had pointed ears like this, but a lot of the time their stories were on Earth, so it had nothing to do with any other species. It made me wonder how they compared the elves of this world however. Would people who saw them think I was an elf? Or maybe a half-elf? Were halves even possible? If such a thing was on the species list, I didn't see it. but the list was insanely long, so I could've easily just missed the entry.

Turning my mind back to present matters, I tried drinking some of the water. Despite being cool, it tasted extremely stale to me and difficult to swallow. It made me pretty sure that vampires didn't need to drink water. Blood was probably enough hydration.

Finally, I got down and sunk my body into the river.

The cold water ran over my skin, but the feeling of it taking away the dirt and oil from my skin as I wiped my body with my hands was invigorating.

I paid acute attention to every little unfamiliar curve of my new body as I explored it for the first time while I washed. It was ironic that the first woman I got to intimately touch in years ended up being my own body.

Taking my time, I made sure to remove every trace of the muck from those goblins off of my body.

When I was done, I lay on the riverbed, enjoying the feeling of the water flowing over my skin.

I didn't notice it before, now that I was paying attention to it, my skin felt more sensitive. While I wiped my body, I could feel every detail of my fingers on my body, and now I could feel the tiny whirlpools of water as the river flow broke against it. I wondered if it was because it was a new body, or it had something to do with being a vampire, or if it was something else.

Not like it mattered. It was a nice feeling.

After a few minutes of rest, I got back up and wiped the excess water off of my body.

Strangely, while my body had chilled a little, I didn't feel particularly cold. Was the water warmer than I thought, or did it have to do with my new race?

Packing that thought to the back of my mind, I went over and grabbed the pelt and loincloths I was carrying around and dumped them into the river water to wash.

Almost immediately a black haze drifted from the scraps of leather I got from the goblins and flowed away with the water.

I hoped that it was just dirt, not something dangerous for anyone who decided to drink down river.

Taking my mind off of my unfounded worry, I thoroughly washed the rabbit pelt. No matter what I did though, the inside stayed wet and sticky, and pieces continued to peel off. It was feeling like a lot of work I didn't know about was still left to be done if I was to actually use it.

Next I started on the dirty leather left by the goblins. These were a much bigger ordeal, but it was still in the realm of my knowledge.

I rubbed the black sheets against each other and against the sand in the river bed, and plumes of black fog erupted and were washed down. The sight was a bit unnerving, but I took it as proof that the leather was getting clean.

After what felt like hours, but was most likely less than 30 minutes, all four loincloths had become a light brown colour. With a careful sniff, I confirmed that almost none of the stink remained.

Happy with the result, I tossed all the clean hides to the side and I scrubbed my hands with the sand on the riverbed, removing all trace of that goblin stink.

Once I was finally finished that too, I sat down under a tree beside the river to rest. My hands were red and my arms sore. Even my back hurt, after being hunched over for so long. But at the very least, the looted leather was now in a usable form. It wasn't ideal, but I didn't have to worry about getting some sort of strange infection from them anymore.

I leaned back against the tree and looked up at the sky.

For some reason, it had started to grow even brighter than before. The sky to the east had grown to a bright red.

(Was there a fourth sun in this world?)

It was the only explanation I could think of, and frankly, it wouldn't have surprised me.

As the sky grew brighter, rays from the fourth sun started to peak through the breaks in the canopy. The river was quickly engulfed with light so bright it reminded me of when I'd focus sunlight with a magnifying glass to make a newspaper catch fire.

It was a bit difficult to look at, even when squinting, so I turned my head away while I waited for my eyes to adjust.

What greeted my sight were more points of bright lights that fell through the smaller gaps between the leaves as they slowly moved while the sun rose.

As one such point slowly made it's way closer to me, I amused myself with the image of a giant with a magnifying glass trying to burn things using the sunlight.

But against my expectation, a sudden pain flared on my arm!

It was like someone was scraping the point of a red hot iron rod against my skin!

It wasn't just the feeling, but I could smell the scent of burning meat as well!

In a panic, I roll over and get away from the spot I was at, and hid my body on the other side of the tree I was leaning against.

I looked at my arm, trying to figure out what just happened.

To my surprise, my right arm and a part of my torso was had black burn marks on it, complete with smoke rising from it. The shape was like if someone unsteadily tried to draw a line across the side of my body.

I thought I was attacked, but the burn marks looked drastically different from any sort of attack that I could've come against, unless if someone tried to use a laser against me.

The thought was stupid, as everything so far suggested that this world was most likely more primitive compared to Earth. At the very least, goblins wielding stone weapons most likely wouldn't exist if the technology to create a portable laser weapon existed.

I tried to wrap my my mind around what happened when I noticed that there were quite a lot of those bright spots moving around in the forest.

They weren't as bright as the ones before, as my eyes had mostly gotten used to the light, but those spots were obviously just the light of the fourth sun passing through the gaps in the foliage.

But something suddenly felt off in my mind as I thought that.

(Why is the fourth sun so much brighter than the other three combined?)

It wasn't just that, but things that I just passed off as different because this wasn't Earth and was governed by rules that I didn't understand, might not have been as different as I thought.

It was weird to see stars in the sky during midday. It was weird that one sun would be so much brighter than three others. It was weird that I could stare at any sun without suffering from bright spots at the very least.

And, why could vampires walk around in broad daylight without any consequences?

The answer, they couldn't.

I made a fundamental presumption that was entirely wrong.

I arrived in this world, not during the day, but the night.

Vampires were creatures of the night, so it was a given that they'd have superior night vision compared to humans. It was a given that they'd primarily operate during the night and hide during the day like any other nocturnal creature. And, as with the common lore of vampires, it was given that their biggest weakness was sunlight.

My burns didn't come from someone with some sort of mysterious weapon out to take my life or something, it was the effect of being under direct sunlight.

Suddenly those bright spots moving around started to look much more threatening than they did mere seconds ago.

Here I was, under the flimsy and unpredictable shade of a forest, and dawn had come.

I didn't have a moment to lose.

Without any real options, I turned around and started to stab at the soil in between the roots of the tree I was hiding under with my claws. The canopy didn't offer reliable protection against the deadly sunlight, and if the wind blew, the movement of the rays would be completely beyond my ability to predict.

I needed solid cover, and the only thing that could give me that right now was the ground itself.

Not worrying about the fact that I was scraping away the skin on my hands, I desperately dug, flinging soil behind me.

My heart pounded in my chest more than it ever had. I could smell blood as my hands bled from the reckless digging, but rather than stimulate my appetite, all it did was remind me of my mortality.

Quickly, as fast as I could.

As the minutes passed on, as the brighter the surrounding world became, the more I was pressed into a corner, both figuratively and literally. I started to push my body into the small hole as I dug it. I was desperate for the small, tangible safety from the greatest threat to my life.

I didn't know how long it took. Possibly mere minutes, but it felt like hours. But I managed to dig a hole big enough to fit my entire body inside of awkwardly, lying on my back, my legs folded above me, I covered all but a small hole to both breathe through, as well as to see, even if the world outside was inverted from my position.

Even still, I was careful about it. The hole was small and level to the ground. But just in case sunlight poured through it unexpectedly, I held onto some loose dirt to fill it in, even if I risked suffocating because of it.

I bared my fangs as I glared at the world that was so bright it almost hurt my eyes.

(Damnit! How could you? How could you take away half the world from me?!)

Hate filled my heart as I stared at the moving bright spots created by my nemesis.

In my head, I understood that the hate and anger was completely unjustified, that it wasn't a malicious attack by someone out to get me or something. But emotionally, I couldn't accept it. I had known when I chose to become a vampire that I most likely wouldn't be able to walk around during the day. I knew, but I didn't realize how different it was to know when compared to understanding.

Now, squeezing my body into a tiny, dirty hole, the feelings that welled from within were as dark and dirty as the dirt around me. I couldn't accept the fact that I was being denied the daytime, even though almost all living creatures on Earth, including myself, were forced to give up between a third to half a day just to sleep.

Such logic couldn't temper my thoughts as I just stared and loathed.

The fact that my wounds wouldn't stop throbbing didn't help in the matter.

Chapter 5: Dungeon Discovery

No matter how terrible it was, the sun eventually went away.

On the other hand, I didn't manage to get a wink of sleep the entire time. The sun just continued to overbearingly pressure me the entire time.

Once I was sure that it was gone, I opened up the entrance to my dugout.

I poked my head out and looked left, right, and up, making sure there weren't any traces of the sun.

With a sigh of relief, I pulled myself out.

(So much for my bath. I immediately got covered in dirt and blood again)

I looked down at my hands. Just last night they looked so soft and smooth, but now they were ragged and bloody. If I didn't find a way to properly protect myself during the day, my maxed initial appearance settings were going to go down the drain.

(Gah, another thing to hate the sun for!)

Before I realized it, pain was shooting up from my hands, and I unclenched them.

The need to make progress had gotten much stronger, so I hurried to the river bank.

There, I found the things I left behind yesterday...most of it.

The rabbit pelt was gone.

It seemed like some animal took it since everything else was still there. While it was annoying, for me it was actually the least important bit.

Without further ado, I quickly rinsed myself in the river, then put in some work to modify the goblin loincloths.

Using my claws, I made some quick snips here and there and tied other parts together. What resulted was a leather bikini. The absolute most I could do with my skills and available materials.

It was pretty embarrassing to wear, but it was better than being naked. Barely.

Unfortunately the top did nothing to support me, and only acted as covering. If I was more skilled, I probably could've gotten a bit of support out of it, but the thought only lowered my mood even further.

There wasn't anything more I could do, so I picked up my weapons. Even just holding my weapons hurt my hands, but I grit my teeth and bore with it. While they weren't much, they did increase my survival chances. Bearing with the pain, I crossed the river, and continued towards the mountain I could occasionally see.

It didn't take long before I found a pair of goblins. One armed with a stone axe, the other a spear.

They were lazily walking together. It looked like they were sleepy, as one of them yawned.

My stomach started to complain to me that it was empty. I didn't have any reason to refuse it.

With that, I threw one of my spears at the pair and went into a mad dash, a spear in one hand, axe in the other.

The thrown spear didn't quite hit it's mark, but it did graze the spear wielding goblin, making it flinch long enough for me to close the gap and stab it through the eye with my second spear.

I let go of it and turned to the second goblin, who was still in the middle of recovering from it's surprise.

Without waiting for it, I closed the extra step in between us and swung down my axe, leaving a large gash through it's right shoulder.

It stumbled a step back as it lost it's balance, but I closed the difference in an instant, and without any hesitation, I bit into it's neck, loudly slurping it's blood. Once it was drained, I pounced on the first goblin and emptied it as well.

Only when there wasn't a drop left for me to drink did I come up for air again, and with the cool air entering my lungs, did my mind clear enough for me to think again.

Once again I had lost myself to my blood lust. It was definitely going to be difficult to handle, but absolutely necessary to be able fit into any society I find...unless if it's a vampire society.

As I reached out to pick up my weapons, I noticed that there wasn't any pain from my hands anymore.

I looked down, and realized that they had healed up completely. There wasn't any trace of the tears from the digging. I touched the skin on my palms and fingers and marvelled how they was just as perfect as when I first arrived in this world.

The only conclusion I could come up with was that drinking blood also healed me.

The fact wasn't too much of surprise, but how quickly I healed due to it was.

I also touched the burn marks on my arm, and while they were still there, it didn't hurt as much as before. A few more goblins and even that would disappear without a trace.

In terms of consolation, this was a pretty decent one, I thought. It made me wonder just how much I could heal this way, but I wasn't eager to do any experimenting.

With a bit of a skip in my step, I picked up a pair of spears and an axe, and continued on my way.

As I walked, I confirmed my status again.

I had gained another level, and learned the [Axe Technique] skill. All my stats had risen a little thanks to the level as well.

Some more good things to happen to me since coming here.

But that aside, I had noticed that the slope I was climbing had been growing a bit steeper. I hoped that it meant that I'd find a cave soon, as no shelter would be as good as that for me. If not, then I'd have to dig myself a hole again, though this time I knew to prepare it earlier.

A few more hours of climbing, and I had reached a dead end.

Rather, the ground grew more rocky and the slop had suddenly increased to the point where it wouldn't be called hiking, but rather something closer to rock climbing.

For a second, I considered climbing the steep slope to get a view of my surroundings when I noticed an odd feature on the mountainside. There was a break in a particularly rocky part of the cliff.

With my curiosity piqued, I tried having a look at the only distinct feature I could see.

The break revealed itself to be a small cave, just big enough for two people to comfortably walk side by side through.

I sniffed the air and listened carefully, but couldn't detect anything in particular. It seemed like the cave was vacant. If that was the case, it would make a perfect base for me.

A bit eager, I stepped inside, lightly tracing the walls with a finger. The stone was smooth and dry, though highly irregular. The cave itself wound back and forth lazily, but despite not being able to see outside anymore, I could still see just barely. There was a faint light from further in that provided just enough light for me to not walk into one of the walls.

Suddenly, the cave opened up into a large room.

It was an almost perfect dome about as big as half of a basketball court. The floor was even and flat, and the walls were smoothly carved from the rock face. The room was empty, save for a stone structure sitting off to one side.

It was an elegantly carved stone fountain. The circular rim had a nice, wavy pattern on the outside, and the flat lip was both high and wide enough to comfortably sit on. The water was clear, and it looked like it was properly drained through small holes at the water's edge on the rim. In the middle, there was a large, cylindrical pedestal. Water was shooting out of a ring of holes from the pedestal's sides, projecting outwards only a little and making a crisscrossing curtain of water that splashed down.

The waist high pedestal itself was large enough for an an adult to stand on comfortably, but was empty for some reason.

I leaned my weapons against a wall and brushed my hand against the fountain's edge. Quite a bit of dust had accumulated on it, suggesting that it hadn't been used in a long time.

It felt like a good place for me to make my base. It was a nice sized room that came with it's own water source. I didn't need it to drink, but it would be great to be able to not worry about water for cleaning and washing. Prey seemed to be plentiful outside, and best of all, the short but twisting corridor that lead to this room blocked the damnable sun. If I could make a sturdy door, then I didn't even have to worry about animals or monsters wandering in and attacking me.

That said, I wanted furniture. Or at least the equipment to make some furniture, like a bed, or a bed, but especially a bed.

I hadn't slept at all in the last two days.

(Huh?)

I chalked it up to the stress earlier, but now that I was more relaxed, I noticed that I wasn't feeling sleepy at all. I've been going on for more than 24 hours already, yet there wasn't a hint of being sleepy.

Did my body now work on a completely different circadian rhythm? Or was it simply just better able to deal with sleep deprivation that much better?

It was apparent that I had a ton to figure out about my new body.

I splashed the water from the fountain onto the rim and started to scrub all the dust off of it. Then I moved on and washed the pillar itself before cleaning myself.

When I climbed back onto the fountain ledge, I saw that the water had gotten cloudy. I hoped that I didn't mess the fountain up, and that it would be able to refresh the water on it's own.

Now that it was clean, I climbed on top of the pedestal, put my hands on my hips, thrust out my chest, and yelled in the best, deep and booming voice I could let out.

"Bow down pathetic mortals! For now, I.Am.Your.GOD!"

...

Despite my best efforts, the voice that bounced around the hard walls was still light and girly.

But even still, I didn't regret it in the slightest. A pedestal like that existed for someone to use to look down on others, even if I was the only person in the room.

Satisfied with my foolishness, I lay down on the fountain lip to rest a bit, but a surprising sight greeted me instead.

The ceiling was covered in little glowing dots, like it was trying to be a recreation of the stars outside.

I had forgotten, but it was strange that I could see in this room so clearly. Without that glowing ceiling, the cave should've been pitch dark after the first few bends, but instead was probably brighter than the outside.

This clinched it. This was going to be my new home for the foreseeable future. It would've been a shame for something this nice to be left abandoned.

After a short break, I noticed that there was another entrance on the other side of the fountain. Thinking about it, it was pretty obvious, but I had gotten completely distracted by the strange sight of a fountain inside of a cave.

Piqued, I tried exploring this path.

Just like the other path, the cave winded back and forth gently for a short while before light from the other side started to reach me. But unlike the first time, the light on this side was much brighter, making it difficult for me to see. I put a hand on one wall as I followed the path, blinded by the strong light.

Suddenly I stepped on what felt like grass. The cave floor was hard stone all the way through, so there was no way for grass to be growing anywhere.

The rock wall ended, but I took a few more steps, feeling out the grass.

My eyes finally adjusted to the brightness and I froze at the sight before me.

What greeted me was the sight of an open field. A giant plains that continued for as far as I could see, the ground covered in tall grass.

Somehow, I entered a mountain, and after walking less than 100 meters, I ended up outside again.

There was no way I had somehow gotten to the other side of the mountain so quickly, nor could it have been some sort of clearing hidden inside of the mountain or something.

I felt like I was having heart palpitations. My hands were shaking and I was hyperventilating.

This scene was absurd, and went straight beyond simply not adhering to my own brand of common sense.

This was wrong. So extremely wrong that I couldn't wrap my head around it.

I rotated my head skyward to give myself some breathing space, but instead something bright entered my eyes, forcing me to squint, right before my eyes almost shot out of their sockets.

Everything was pushed aside for a single emotion: terror.

Turning around, my feet took me back the way I came, faster than I could think. I didn't have time for that, nor the leeway.

I slammed into the cave wall, but it hardly did anything to slow me down, as I just dragged myself back to my feet and continued running, bouncing off the walls in the narrow hall like a pinball.

Soon, I ended up back in the fountain room.

Without a single thought, I dove into the fountain and hid my body behind the pedestal under the curtain of water.

I held my head in my shaking hands, tears running down my face as I desperately drew breath.

...

(How did I even get back?)

Once I had calmed down enough for my brain to reboot, the most obvious question struck me.

I had been standing under the sun for a good ten seconds before I freaked out and ran for the shade. If my previous experience proved, it took only a fraction of a second for my my skin to start incinerating like a paper airplane being shot down by a sci-fi plasma cannon.

I looked down at my hands and there weren't any burn marks on them. I stretched around and inspected my body the best I could without a mirror and couldn't find a single mar on my skin outside of the partially healed burns from the previous day.

Somehow, I had come out of that ordeal completely unharmed.

The very thought and inconsistency with my sole previous experience was so mind boggling that I thought my brain was starting to overheat as I tried to process it and simply dunk my head into the water in a desperate attempt to distract myself.

...

Once my lungs started to burn from the lack of oxygen, I surfaced and leaned against the fountain's pillar, too mentally tired to properly support my body as I tried to wrap my head around the situation.

Sunlight was deadly against vampires like me, just like in the stories. The effect was instantaneous, as I had experienced. But the sun in those plains had no effect on my body.

Either there was some sort of hidden factor that, combined with the sun, caused me to spontaneously combust, or that sun wasn't real.

It was then that I came to realize a suspicious point, and got up.

I'd been unnerved enough that I was shaking as I got out of the fountain, but if I'd regret it if I didn't check out the truth.

With unsteady steps, I made my way to the first entrance and slowly made my way outside with my body pressing against the wall. After a few gentle turns, I reached the end of the tunnel.

One glance was all it took for me to confirm it: it was still night. I could see the stars and three coloured objects in the sky, which were most likely moons, not suns. I reached out and let the light touch my skin directly to further confirm that I wasn't hallucinating or something.

Now that I had confirmed this, I went back into the cave, past the fountain, and reached the other side.

I was this time greeted by a vast, open plains. And on this side, it was day. It wasn't possible for me to have lost track of time to the degree that midnight had turned to midday in the less than hundred meters I had travelled just now.

With a shaking hand, I reached out to test the light on this side of the cave.

The tip of my claw grew light from the sun, but aside from that, nothing had happened.

But that wasn't enough proof. It was possible my claws were simply impervious to such an issue, so after I steadied my breath, I reached out a bit further, and let the light touch the tip of my finger. Then the first knuckle, and the second, then the palm of my hand.

I kept moving out further and further, before my entire body was bathing in the light of the sun, except that was impossible from my own experience.

If I was standing under sunlight without turning into ash, then the only possible answer was that I wasn't actually standing under the sun in the first place. The fact that just on the other side of the cave it was still night was proof of that. I hadn't somehow teleported to the other side of the world or something, but I was in a place that simply seemed like it was outside during the day, rather than actually be that.

A space that simulated an environment, that defied the physical limitations of location. A place perhaps bigger on the inside than the outside. In all sorts of games and stories, there was one that fit that description: the dungeon.

Especially in recent books, dungeons were a magical space that simulated various environments including outdoor ones. They endlessly spawned monsters and were either impervious to or automatically repaired any damage to the environment within. They also often automatically removed anything that wasn't alive if they weren't carried by something that was after a certain amount of time. On top of that, treasures of all sorts existed to be harvested from within. Their purposes varied from being something intentionally created by an intelligent force to draw people inside to spontaneously coming to existence as a physical phenomena that existed in the world.

There were a lot of rules I needed to figure out, but it was probably safe to assume that the fountain room was most likely a part of this dungeon. If this wasn't the only one in the world, then it was pretty likely that fountains existed at the beginning of every dungeon.

That being said, it was weird for there to be such a thing. A room that indicated the beginning of the dungeon wasn't too strange, but a fountain specifically was weird. Why water? Anything could've been used to greet people, and anyone who purposely came to a dungeon would've brought their own water source. It wasn't like the nearest river was that far in the first place.

I couldn't figure out the reason, so instead I came back from my tangent.

Frankly speaking, I was still shaking. The incident the previous day had obviously traumatized me, and just standing in this artificial sunlight really put me on edge.

But on the other hand, I had found a dungeon. Dungeons were pretty much always treasure troves in fantasy stories. Even if there weren't any literal treasure, there were monsters, which meant I had an endless supply of blood to feed off of. For me, that meant food, XP, and free skills. For a vampire, I imagined that these were more important than any kind of treasure that could be found in any chest.

Since I declared that fountain as my new home, this dungeon was my backyard. It was only natural that I'd conquer such a thing!

(But maybe tomorrow)

I was a vampire, so I operated better at night. If it was daytime inside the dungeon, then I'd simply wait until it was night here before I started any hunting.

With that thought, I turned around and walked back to my home and lay down on the fountain lip.

The stone was a bit cold for sleeping on, especially with how skimpy my outfit was, but it wasn't unbearably so.

So with that, I went to sleep for the first time since arriving in this world.

Chapter 6: First Floor

...

(I can't sleep...)

It seemed like I've been rolling around and changing positions for a few hours now, but I just wasn't tired at all. No matter how much I closed my eyes, my mind wouldn't drift off to the lands of dreams.

I ended up getting up from all the boredom and gave in.

If I couldn't sleep, then I'd just face the music and go do something.

But if I went outside, if it wasn't day already, then it would be day soon, so the only direction I could go was deeper into the dungeon.

With my mind set, I picked up my looted weapons and my feet brought me back to those plains, despite how harsh the bright sun was on my eyes.

Looking at at the plains, it was obvious that it would be a pain to hunt there. The tall grass did an excellent job at hiding any monsters, and the vast featurelessness of it all made it easy to get lost. At least the entrance itself became a landmark, but that depended on how far everything went.

But standing around wouldn't do me any good, and with an unsteady step, I started my exploration of the dungeon.

It didn't take long for me to notice that the plains weren't entirely featureless. While most of it was composed of chest-high grass, even from the entrance, there was plenty of short, ankle-high grass as well, and that short grass made a path. It felt like things were designed so I was supposed to stay on the path while exploring.

Well, being ambushed in the taller grass and being forced to fight something that could easily hide in it was scary, so I naturally avoided trying that route.

But as expected of a dungeon, there were even corridors and everything set up. The paths were generally pretty straight and ended with junctions or sharp turns. I did my best to remember the route I was taking, even occasionally looking back to confirm my orientation relative to the large stone that marked the entrance.

I was glad I had honed my internal map-making skills as a kid, as this all reminded me of all those maze-like dungeons that often showed up in the older retro games.

After a handful of turns, something appeared on the path. It was a white rabbit.

Except it wasn't like one from Earth. This one was big, and when it noticed me, it bared it's teeth, some of which were easily as long as my hand. It was the same animal that I found the day before that the first goblin had, but this one was a live.

Without warning, the big rabbit charged straight at me!

I figured that it would run away instead like a normal rabbit, so it's actions took me by surprise, delaying my reaction.

As it tried to snap at me, I leaped to the side, letting it glide past me mid-leap. The rabbit landed just past where I was, wherein I turned and swung down my axe, cleanly bisecting the small monster...or rather, more like crushed it. The axe wasn't as sharp as I thought, so the big rabbit's guts were splattered on the ground, giving me a huge whiff of it's blood.

The next thing I knew, I was holding the rabbit corpse in my hands and was licking off the traces of blood from my lips.

I wasn't that satisfied though. There wasn't much blood in a creature this small. It was even less than that of a goblin, which was further reduced by the amount lost when I crushed it's guts with the blunt axe.

Rather, I ended up sucking it's blood without thinking at all. The more I drink, the more it was like my body was going on autopilot to get any blood I smelt into my body. This was extremely dangerous. Not only could I end up trying to drink in the middle of a fight at this rate, but someday, I might try to drink the blood of something I shouldn't, like a person who only cut their finger.

I would never be able to live around other people if I didn't get control over my urges.

That said, I dropped the rabbit corpse and checked my weapons. It seemed like I dropped them all while I was engrossed in feeding. The spears looked fine at a glance, but the axe head had cracked. It might still be usable, but only barely. I still had two good weapons, and even my claws if those broke, so it wasn't much of a loss.

*poof!*

There was a sudden flicker of light and puff of smoke behind me, causing me to stagger back and lose my balance as I fell onto my butt, acutely aware and annoyed by how my chest continued to bounce up and down for several seconds after I had stopped moving. The rabbit corpse has disappeared, and in it's place was a soft looking pelt.

I got up and inspected the white fur. The size and shape looked like it was the hide of the rabbit I had just felled, but it was entirely undamaged, without a single trace of the crushing I had given the monster. The underside was soft and dry, a nice light brown coloration of treated leather. Even when I sniffed it, there wasn't a trace of fat or blood on it. Somehow the monster had turned into a perfectly processed pelt.

All I could think of was that it was how dungeon monsters worked. When one was defeated, it would turn into an item drop after a few seconds. But the fact that I managed to drink it's blood earlier, and didn't feel any hungrier after the monster disappeared, it looked like if you can extract stuff off of the bodies before the despawn you can keep them.

It seemed like dungeon monsters were strangely realistic in weird places, while not in others. Especially the way they disappear and drop items made me hesitate to consider them living creatures. They really felt more like a group of bits that jumped out of the computer that generated it.

As I was about to move on, I saw a small grey gem on the ground. It looked it it was buried under the pelt. It was small enough that I could fit a dozen in my closed fist without any problems. I wasn't sure what it was, but it was soft like a gummie candy.

Some fantasy books had the staple of monsters having some sort of magic stone in their bodies that could be used to make all sorts of things. At the worst, I could use it as a decoration, so I placed it into the middle of the rabbit pelt to carry. I still had that sheet of paper from the beginning tightly held in my hand as well. Carrying it like that was a bit of a pain, so I added it to the gem before wrapping the pelt around the two securely then tied it around my neck like a short scarf before I continued on my way.

It didn't take long before I had my next encounter.

This time I was faced with a transparent blue hemisphere the size of a large beach ball that jiggled as it moved towards me. The outside looked like was protected with a thing but sturdy membrane and the inside was entirely filled with some sort of jelly-like fluid aside from a single core the size of a baseball that looked a lot like a cell's nucleus. The nucleus lazily swam around as the main body slowly shuffled my way.

The monster in front of me was a slime. There was no way to call it anything else. The staple monster of most fantasy genres, especially eastern ones.

Once the slime was a bit outside of arm's reach, a part of it extended and formed into a tentacle. Some R-18 thoughts flashed through my mind and made me freeze, but I shook those thoughts away. Such a thing didn't make any sense if you thought about it for even a second.

A soft, squishy sensation wrapped around my arm, bringing my thoughts back to my current situation. The slime pulled on my arm, but I moved a foot and braced myself, resisting it. But against, my expectation, when it pulled again, the blue blob flung itself towards me.

Wary of it trying to eat my face or something, I quickly move to the side, causing the gelatin snack to bounce twice on the ground before stopping. It tugged on my arm again and jumped, but once again I avoided it.

This wasn't going anywhere, but I wasn't stupid enough to allow it a third try. There was a chance it was smarter than it appeared. Before it could jump again, I spun one of my spears and cut through the tentacle. The transparent jelly spewed out from the severed ends before the slime sealed the end and withdrew it's appendage. The remaining bit partially deflated as the fluids spilled out, leaving me with a weird hollow tube wrapped around my arm, but otherwise unmoving.

Not wanting the slime to have time to try something else, I quickly thrust my spear into it, aiming for the nucleus. It may have been moving around, but it was slow and predictable. On my own, the strike might not have been perfect, but my [Spear Technique] skill probably corrected my aim a little and the little orb was perfectly split in half.

The main body slumped down and deflated down to the size of a soccer ball, darkening in colour before it stopped moving.

Cautiously, I stepped up to it and poked the mass. The body jiggled like a gelatin dessert, but didn't show any signs of life.

(Is it possible for me to eat?)

Now that it was dealt with, this was my first question. The best part of killing a monster here was drinking it's blood to both sate my hunger and gain new skills. This slime probably had skills as well, and while one probably wouldn't be enough for me to learn anything, it was filled with some sort of life giving fluid. And as an added bonus, the scent alone was nice, like the faint sweetness of a flower or a freshly baked dessert from a small distance.

With a little bit of trepidation, I picked the slime up, dug my fangs through it's membrane, and sucked on the fluids.

The consistency really was like a jelly, though it flowed much better than any gelatin snack I've ever had. And rather than a fruit flavour, it tasted like a weakened version of a vanilla flavoured short cake. It was just good enough that it was better than nothing, but hardly satisfying at all.

Since I probably wouldn't ever be able to enjoy any kind of cake for the rest of this life, it did make me hope that there would be a monster that tasted similar, but was much more strongly flavoured.

If I could get find a monster who's blood was especially rich, and have it with the life fluids of a monster that tasted similar but much stronger than a slime's, it would make for a full-course vampire meal.

When I started to imagine such a thing, and a grin crept up onto my face as I vacantly looked at the sky. I didn't know where to find such a thing, but it became a dream of mine. Maybe in the future I'd find a wider variety of blood and blood-like fluids I could drink and enjoy.

There were a lot of things for me to look forward to.

For now, I wiped the drool off of my chin and moved to find more prey, and hopefully the way deeper into the dungeon.

But after a couple of steps, I became aware of the feeling of wetness on my neck and chest.

I used the rabbit pelt to wipe myself, but even my bikini top was wet. I could only ignore it and hope it got dry quickly.

The slime corpse had disappeared in light and smoke as well, leaving a small clay jar the size of my fist and a tiny blue gem. The jar was filled with a jelly of some sort, but when I tried eating some of it, there wasn't any flavour to be had at all. It was probably something a bit different from the jelly body of the slime, maybe an extract.

The slime tentacle that had wrapped around my left wrist was still around, so I peeled it off and tossed it aside. There was a bit of discoloration on my skin where it was in contact. It might've been trying to dissolve my arm while it held on, but it was probably too weak to do so without pulling me inside of it's body.

Everything was wrapped up in my rabbit pelt and tied to my neck. The weight was starting to pull at my throat and was a bit uncomfortable, but I had to bear with it if I didn't want to just throw away all my loot.

It didn't take long before my third encounter.

This time I was face-to-face with a wolf in the colours of wet dirt.

The sharp increase in difficulty rooted me until it growled and charged at me.

My instincts kicked in and I dove to the side, avoiding those intimidating teeth. As I clamoured back onto my feet and turned around, the beast had already started it's next charge. My mind blanked out as my chest filled with fear and trepidation. I couldn't decide on how to fight this wolf, and hence my hand froze as I pointed one of my spears at it, without even bracing it properly.

But luck was on my side. The wolf was in mid-jump, and while poorly aimed, the head of my spear struck into the beast's shoulder, the force of it's momentum sliding the spear out of my hand, but rather than be thrown out of the way uselessly, the butt end impacted on the ground and braced the shaft against the wolf's movement, driving the head through it's hide, gouging out a sizable tear in it's flesh.

The wolf tumbled as the excessive force broke the spear in half.

For me, though, the smell of it's blood drifted over and filled my senses. Hunger and desire blew away the fear I was just now harbouring. Only a single thought occupied my mind.

(I wonder what it tastes like?)

The wolf got back up, but the damage to it's shoulder prevented it from using one of it's forelegs. Now that it was hurt, it wasn't able to do the big leaping attacks like before, and could only try to snap at me with it's jaws as it awkwardly tried to move into range.

For me, the fight had already become a simple matter.

I simply stepped into it's side, then drove my claws into it's flank as it tried to turn to face me. The light started to fade from it's eyes as it twitched.

Impatient, I pulled it closer and drove my fangs into the fur of it's neck and bit down. I was rewarded with it's warm life as it filled me. It's earthy taste reminded me of a barbecued cut of cheap meat lathered with a no-name brand sauce. Pretty low class, but tasty despite the price.

It wasn't the most delicious thing in the world, but to me, the dopamine spike I got was like happiness itself.

But like all good things, it didn't last forever, and eventually the wolf ran dry.

Or rather, I did it again. It didn't happen with the slime since it's fluid was much different from blood, but the second I smelt blood again, everything else stopped mattering. Or maybe it would happens with the slimes as well, now that I recognized it as not only edible but tasty, even if it was thin.

Once I finished my small meal and waited for a short while, the wolf corpse disappeared like my other kills, and was replaced with some loot. This time it was two pairs of fangs as well as a small brown gem. The fangs were clearly from the wolve's upper and lower jaws, as they were of different size and shape.

I touched my own fangs and was left with a smile, confident that mine were much sharper than these.

With so many meals almost back to back, I was starting to get a bit full.

I didn't know how vast the floor was, but I didn't want to go back so quickly. My curiosity drove me to keep exploring, even if I'd start wasting my kills soon. Well, I doubted this dungeon was actually made for vampires like me, with having to deal with the harshness of the sun from the first floor, so I was really just taking even more advantage of the dungeon spawns than normal people would.

Speaking of which, I didn't know when it was, but I had stopped shaking. The artificial sun was still painfully bright, but I didn't feel some sort of innate fear to it anymore.

(But the real sun outside...)

...

I squatted down and hugged my knees. That thing was still scary. Even just thinking about it.

I wanted to overcome my fear of it, but frankly speaking, there really wasn't much advantage of doing so unless if I found a way to walk outside under the sunlight. I was able to operate fine here, day or night, and everything I needed was here as well. There wasn't really much of a reason for me go outside and risk being vaporized by losing track of the time.

It was probably a good idea to eventually go and explore the outside as well, but for now, this dungeon was more than big enough for me.

With those thoughts firmly secured in my chest, I pumped my fist and jumped up to my feet, as I was reminded of something that was firmly attached, but not secured, to my chest.

It turned out that the first floor of this dungeon only had four types of monsters. The big rabbit, the slime, wolf, and, it turned out, goblins.

The goblins were pretty much the same as the ones outside, and ended up becoming an easy source of fresh weapons for me.

While early on, the monsters always came only one at a time, after a few hours of exploring, their numbers increased, from two, to three, and finally to four. It also turned out that each monster had more than one drop, though they always dropped the same gems in addition to whatever else that I got from them.

The rabbits gave me either their hides or a chunk of their meat. I took the hides but left the meat. I couldn't eat them anyways.

The slimes dropped a jar of gelatin or a bright green leaf that smelt like mint. When I tried to chew on the leaf, the mint taste was so repulsive that I almost choked and was left gasping for my breath for the next few minutes as the smell invaded my lungs. It was a shame too, since I liked mint in my previous life. I thought I could make toothpaste with it. Maybe it was just too strong? I kept a few but threw most of them away.

The wolves left their fangs and their hides behind. Their hides were fully processed with the fur removed. They were large and tough, and I was looking forward to making clothes using them, although I knew basically nothing about leatherworking and only had the more bare bones experience in how to sew. I kept both drops and even used two of the hides as makeshift bags, replacing my first rabbit pelt. One was strapped onto my back and the other I carried by hand.

The goblins either dropped a sealed glass bottle with a cloudy green liquid inside or a bag of nuts. I tried tasting the liquid in the bottle, but it was extremely bitter and smelt of moss. Both drops were failures to me, so all I got from them were their weapons. Also their gems. They had brown gems like the wolves. They were pretty and it was easy to carry even a large number of them as long as I wrapped them up in a hide properly. Also, there was a new type of goblin in the dungeon I hadn't met before.

They were virtually the same as the other two, but carried a sword, rather than a spear or axe. To be exact, it was one of those Aztec wooden swords with stones embedded in them along one edge like teeth. They cut amazingly well, but also were by far the most fragile of the three weapons. The teeth broke on almost anything hard, and because the stick had a slit for the stone teeth to be embedded in, they were bad at blocking and parrying as well, as they easily broke in the attempt. Unlike a real sword, it was a pure offensive weapon even beyond the axe, which I learned to block attacks reasonably well, though the spear was the best at it by far.

When it came to feeding, I did get some more skills. I wasn't sure what the rabbits gave me, but perhaps [Natural Weapons]? It leveled up while I was drinking from a wolf, so I was sure that they gave it at least. I also got [Fleet of Foot] off of the wolves as well, and even managed to get it to rank two. The latter was a generic passive that raised my [Agility], most likely as a percentage. Thanks to that, my movements had sped up quite a bit, and dodging and manoeuvring had gotten much easier. That alone had also made [Agility] my highest stat by far. I hoped to get similar skills for my other stats. Especially for [Intelligence]. I really wanted to learn magic so high [Intelligence] was important.

The slimes gave me [Alter Form], but it was a racial so I couldn't use it. It seemed that was the skill that allowed them to create tentacles. If I could use that, I could have some great late night fun when I got a girlfriend. Wait, I was a woman too.

(What's the common stance on same-sex relationships in this world anyways?)

[Alter Form] reached rank two as well, even though I couldn't use it.

In addition, I got the [Create Acid] and [Acid Resistance] skills from them and got them to rank two. [Acid Resistance] did as the tin said, but [Create Acid] was quite interesting.

At rank one it was only able to produce a few drops of a weak acid per second, but at rank two it got upgraded to being able to make a baseball-sized blob of acid of moderate strength at a time. I could even manipulate the effects to a certain degree, so if I maxed out the strength and viscosity, I effectively got an acid strong enough to be extremely painful if I hit a weak point, while thick enough for me to throw before it dripped through my fingers. [Acid Resistance] also prevented me from taking damage from my own attack, and when I drank a monster's blood I recovered all my spent MP, making it a quite useful distraction.

I couldn't wait until my acids got strong enough to do serious damage on their own.

From the goblins, I got the new skills [Axe Technique] as well as [Sword Technique]. Those two, along with [Spear Technique] all went up to rank two as well. While rank one only had a small about of benefits, rank two's were pretty noticeable. Despite never having fought anything in my previous life, I could see a tangible amount of skill and ability that went into each of my strikes. It was as if I was an experienced veteran or something.

[Blood Sucking] was such a powerful skill. By the way, it also rose to rank two, though most likely because I used it so much. Nothing else could've given me even a single point towards it after all.

As a side note, [Breeder] had also risen in rank, though I didn't want it to. I wanted that skill to go away, even if it had no effect on my body.

In addition to all the monsters I had killed, eaten, and looted, there were two more things of note. The first was that there were traps.

Most likely because it was the first floor, the traps were generally weak, though they did have the potential to be deadly, as they were often near where I found monsters.

The most common trap I found was a simple foot trap. It was similar to a bear trap, but made with flexible branches and ivy. They simply immobilized me when I accidentally stepped on one, but the sound of them snapping shut often drew attention to nearby monsters, and I had to deal with both at the same time.

It is against my beliefs to mention how my of them I found by stepping on one.

The next common were just a wide pool of thick mud on the ground. Sometimes they were hidden with fallen grass, but they were always pretty obvious. I examined the first one I found a bit closely, but it looked like if you stepped in it, the heavy mud would impede your ability to pull your feet out, making it extremely difficult to move around. It was pretty nasty when it came to traps to deal with while fighting. But maybe because of that, they were the single easiest to avoid, even if they were big.

Lastly, the hardest to find was also the most troublesome. They were basically a miniature pit. They weren't very deep, and only big enough for a single foot to step through. Even if they were deeper, you would only get a single leg stuck due to their small size. But even then, they were only about as deep as a single step on a staircase. What made them nasty was that because the grass still grew from inside, all you could see was a slightly darker spot where the artificial sunlight didn't reach as far down. And hidden inside was a single thin spike that would stab into your foot.

The few times I got caught in one were extremely painful, and fighting with an injured foot was tough. It really made me wish I had construction boots or something. I doubted that those spikes could go through those thick soles.

Fortunately, since I was a vampire, once I got past any ensuing fight, all I had to do was have a meal and my foot was healed. I pitied any normal person who would've had to walk around with a hole in their foot until it healed normally.

Onto the next bit, I also found treasure chests here and there.

The first one I found was suspicious as all hell, and gave me flashbacks to the mimics that would kill me in a certain dark fantasy action game. But no matter how much I examined it, there didn't seem to be any problems, so I warily opened it using the end of a spear.

The wooden chest opened without any fanfare, and when I looked inside, there was a pair of leather pants inside!

I was so happy I actually cried. My first real piece of clothes!

I removed the bikini bottom and put the pants on. They were a bit tight, but fit as if they were made for me. It was especially strange feeling it so snug against my crotch, but the pants wouldn't fit any other way.

It didn't come with a belt, but I figured if I didn't find one soon, I could always just make one from all the leather I had acquired.

There were other chests I found along the way, but they either had metal coins in them or small glass bottles with various liquids inside. Most were a clear blue, but some were different. My experience with the goblin drop was fresh in my mind, so while I took them all, I didn't check their contents.

I didn't know how long it had been, but I found myself in a large, cleared area. It was circular and the place didn't open up into anywhere, but had plenty of space. The middle was barren without any grass, like it was made with a specific purpose in mind. A campfire came to mind, but it felt a bit weird to think that such a consideration would've been made on purpose.

There were many other side clearings along the way as well, but none were as big as this one. A glance made me think that it was about as big as the fountain room I started off in, but it wasn't like I had a measuring tape to confirm it.

The main reason why I even considered spending any time here though, was that just past this 'room' was a chest-high wooden door, and behind it was a staircase cut into the dirt. I couldn't see where the staircase led to since it slowly curved to the left, but a few dozen meters away, I could see a space that was cut away from the plains. It looked like a large, circular area of the plains were simply cut out and stopped existing. It was deep enough that I couldn't see the bottom from where I was standing, but it was most likely the goal of this dungeon floor.

If that was the case, then it was obvious that there was a boss in wait over there.

Once that realization came to mind, I started to debate the merits of facing off against the boss on the spot.

The first consideration was my stuff. I had basically everything I owned on me, though it was also all stuff I had gotten since I first found this dungeon. I obviously couldn't fight while carrying it, not something as strong as a boss. My choices were leave it here so it didn't hinder my boss fight, or take it with me and drop it at the beginning of the fight, and hope it didn't get in the way.

I was pretty worried that anything I left without supervision might disappear, and it would suck if I beat the boss only to find out that my stuff was gone. Dungeons in fantasy stories often had cleanup systems in place, and I didn't know what sort this one had, presuming it had one.

That meant that I pretty much had to take my stuff with me to the fight, in case it's taken away or eaten by something behind my back.

The second consideration was my equipment. In terms of weapons, I had plenty, though most of it was of low quality. Thanks to all the animal hides I had gotten, it became easy to carry spare weapons. I had started to carry several spares tied together by a pelt. Pulling one out in the middle of a fight was dangerous, but it worked great for when I was forced to fight without replenishing my weapons several encounters in a row.

But aside from my claws and fangs, my weapons were the worst. They were good enough for the random mobs that wandered the floor, but I was hesitant to imagine that they were enough against a boss. Since they were simply goblin loot, they rarely lasted more than two or three attacks, so it was easy to imagine even if I was able to continue to retrieve all my weapons as they broke, I might still be forced to fight with nothing but my [Natural Weapons] in the end. It wasn't a pleasant thought against something that could possibly be faster and bigger than me.

When it came to defence, I was stuck with nothing but my leather pants, and I wasn't sure if it would count as actual armour. Since I didn't have any real clothes aside from it, I was also hesitant to actually test it's capabilities. Generally speaking, it was probably better to presume that I had no defensive equipment.

Finally was my own strength. Unfortunately I had no way to really know on this front. What was the typical strength increase for bosses in this world? What was the typical amount of leeway needed for the fight to be considered 'safe'? My level had risen to 5 during my fighting on this floor, and was getting close to 6. Was that good, or was it bad? I had no idea. I was basically curb stomping all the monsters at this point, but if I was supposed to be doing that at the beginning, and then get strong enough to basically walk through everything before facing the boss as a real challenge, then I was still far from strong enough.

I really wished I had access to a wiki or a forum.

<Hey, I'm a level 5 vampire with virtually no equipment. Is that strong enough to take on a first floor dungeon boss?>

The thought made me realize just how much I used to rely on such a thing when the stakes had gotten pretty high. I often paused games I played to look up boss fights if I thought that I'd lose more progress than I wanted to risk if I died against it. Well, it was pretty rare for me to actually lose against a boss when I thought that the stakes were that high though.

But this was real life, not some game. If I lost against the boss, then that was it. No continues, no nothing. I'd be sent back to that white place, and I'd lose everything.

That sombre thought made me realize it just wasn't worth the risk. It wasn't like I was in a hurry. Enjoying my life was my top priority, and fighting these mobs was getting pretty fun. If the treasure chests respawned, then I could wait until I got some more equipment. I could also make some basic stuff with all the leather I had acquired as well. It would be nice to be wearing a full set of clothes when the boss fight happened. I couldn't do much about the quality of my weapons, but I could at least learn to use my claws better first.

I took a second look at the gates that barred me from the boss fight, and turned away.

Since I was only going back, it didn't take nearly as long as it did to get to the boss room. A few time I took a wrong turn, but for the most part my memory didn't fail me.

I didn't have to fight any monsters until about a third of the way back. It seemed like it took a bit of time for them to respawn.

The ones I did fight didn't pose too much of a problem. Any damage I did take was quickly healed with a simple blood snack. I also got a bit more loot thanks to that. I checked a few spots where I found treasure chests, but they had despawned and the rooms were still empty.

Maybe chests appeared randomly? I needed to do more exploration in the future.

When I got back home, I dropped everything near the back entrance and stripped down before jumping into the fountain to wash myself.

No matter how strong my blood thirst was, I was still able to resist licking off any blood that had splattered onto my body or spilt onto the ground. I didn't know if it was my personal revulsion that made it possible, or that my blood thirst mostly just aimed me towards drinking directly from a body.

It was nice to get clean, though I was starting to wish I had access to soap. I think it was made from lye and oils? Lye came from wood ash, so I could just burn down a tree to get that, but the oils were a problem. Animal fats worked, but the monsters I fought didn't drop any and looked pretty lean. Or rather, they were pretty scraggly. Maybe I could find something better on a lower floor, but taking weeks or even months of exploring to find a good source of oil wasn't very appealing.

I might be able to get enough by just scraping little bits here and there instead. But to do that, I also needed a container. A jar of some sort at the very least. I might be able to make one if I could find clay. Maybe I could find some if I dug into the dirt in the dungeon?

All sorts of ideas started to form as I bathed. Things I wanted, things I needed, stuff I wanted to do. Ideas kept popping into my mind one after another. Most of it ended up becoming quality of life items like proper clothes, cleaning equipment, furniture, etc.

As I relaxed in the water, I noticed that it wasn't as cloudy as it was when I last left the room. The bottom of the fountain didn't have any residue either, so it was pretty clear that the fountain did renew it's water. I was glad it meant that dirtying the water wouldn't come to bite me in the ass in the future.

Once I felt satisfied, I wiped myself down the best I could with my hands and wrung out my hair as I got out of the fountain. Towels and a hair dryer were pretty high on my list of wants as well. My hair especially was difficult to deal with, being so long. I had never had such long hair before so I kept forgetting about it, but when I did remember, I constantly worried about it getting caught in practically everything.

I thought that women looked better with long hair, but actually having long hair was such a hassle. I was tempted to cut it with my claws, but I was also pretty hesitant about it. I could cut it on my own, but there was no way it would look good, and if I met people with hair that looked like was cut by a lawn mower would leave a much worse impression than simply excessively long hair. In the end, the fact that I could just deal with it when it became intolerable stayed my hand.

When I got as dry as I could manage, I went back to the dungeon and harvested some of the tall grass that made the outer boundary. The grass was pretty strong, but was a cinch to cut with my claws. I cut them to a reasonable length, then took another batch and used them to tie the first set together as if it was string. What resulted in was a crude straw broom head. I had spears I could use as a shaft, but I figured that the broom head was too low quality to work out that well.

Now that my tool was ready, moved all my stuff and put them on the fountain lip then splashed a bunch of water around the ground, then used my impromptu broom to sweep the ground of dirt and dust. Any time I did anything in this room my feet quickly got covered in dirt, and I was sick of it. Taking time to wash my entire body, only for my feet to get dirty the instant I took a step out annoyed me. It wouldn't have been so bad if I had shoes, but I didn't.

I really wished I had a deck brush or something, as the grass broom did a rather poor job of pushing around the water and dirt, but it did get the job done eventually, even if it left broken pieces of grass all around. The dirty water was pushed out of the room and into the dungeon floor to be soaked up by the soft ground over there.

But the floor was still pretty wet and wasn't clean enough for me, so I grabbed one of my rabbit pelts from one of my bags and used it like a rag to wipe up the excess water and remaining dirt, as well as my broom's leavings. I left the dirty pelt outside in the dungeon when I was done with it. I had plenty and it was easy to get more, so one wouldn't go missing for me.

Now that my home had reached the bare minimum of cleanliness, I put my clothes back on, untied my bags and spread out my loot. The first thing I did was take all weapons and lined them out across a section of wall. I had managed to bring back three spears, four axes, and four swords, all of goblin make. Or rather, since they appeared in the dungeon, perhaps they spawned with the goblins?

Next, I spread out the rabbit pelts across the floor. I had twelve, and all together they made a nice, soft carpet, though since they weren't connected, they easily separated and made gaps as I moved on top of them. Sewing them together was a priority once I finished organizing my things.

After that, I lay the wolf hides in a pile. There were nine of them. I had more than enough to make a full set of clothes, though it presumed that I didn't end up wasting most of them. I had never made my own clothes before, so there was going to be a lot of trial and error involved. At least it was easy for me to get more if I kept failing, so there wasn't much pressure involved.

I took one hide and spread it across the floor. On top, I placed all the rest of my loot. There were the slime jars, mint leaves, wolf fangs and little bottles I found in the various treasure chests. I had eighteen jars of jelly, five minty leaves, twelve sets of fangs and five bottles of variously coloured mystery liquids. I took one of the larger wolf fangs, then put the whole set along with the hide to the side by a wall. There wasn't really much for me to do with any of that for now.

The fang I cut down using my claws into roughly the shape of a curved needle. It was hard, delicate work. While my claw cut through the fang reasonably well, it was small, so I kept dropping it or poking my fingers.

The end result, I could barely call it usable. It still had the same basic curvature to avoid making it too weak, but was as thin as I could make it. I had added a hole to pass thread through, but now I was lacking in that very thread to use.

Well, it wasn't like I hadn't planned for that. I had a whole pile of wolf leather. I had already decided how to get my thread.

I took one of the hides and spread it across an empty section of the floor, then while pinning it in place the best I could, I dragged one claw along the edge, following the curvature of the hide as close as I could. I repeated this over and over until a third of the hide was cut down into strips. If I needed more, I could just work on it again later on.

Next up, I took three hides and lined them side by side, overlapping so that there weren't any gaps to make one large, wide sheet. I grabbed my wolf fang needle and a strip of leather, passed the leather through the hole and started to sew leather together...or tried to. The very act of trying to get the needle through the hide was a lot harder than I imagined, and the needle slipped through my fingers twice before I just gave up in frustration.

I knew leather clothes were held together either with glue or stitches. I didn't have any glue nor any idea how to make it, so I went with stitches, but there was no way it could be this hard, or else it wouldn't be used everywhere. At least I thought so.

After thinking about it for a minute, I tried something different. If my needle couldn't easily pass through the leather on it's own, then I just needed to give it an easy path to follow. I used a claw to poke holes through the leather, making a simple crisscross pattern. Then I tied the end of the leather cord and passed the needle through the slits. This time not requiring any pressure at all. The cord wasn't long enough, so I tied the end off then continued with the next strip.

The process ended up not taking long at all, and all three hides became one large piece in no time. I removed any extraneous pieces of leather and squared off the outer edge before I admired my work. It was extremely rough and amateurish, but I was happy with my progress.

Next, I lay on the giant sheet and after finding myself a good position, I pulled the ends over my body and wrapped myself up. From there, I poked a hole in the leather roughly where my shoulders were. I unwrapped myself and found the two slits my claws made, then opened holes centred around them big enough for my arms to easily fit through.

Once done, I got up, picked the leather sheet up and put my arms through the holes before wrapping the whole thing around me again. I felt like an oversized burrito, but this was a necessary step. As straight as I could, I cut the leather at the height of my neck and removed the excess. Now I could see, but the sheet was digging into my shoulders. I removed the sheet and cut up the scrap, and sewed them to the top of the material before trying it out again. The new pieces became the upper shoulders, but I had to fix and redo them twice before it became remotely comfortable.

I cut away the excess on the front as well so that I didn't have a massive amount of spare leather flapping around. Originally, I planned it to simply meet at the middle, but then I realized I had no idea how to make or get a zipper, so I ended up letting the front flap reach the other arm in preparation to be held in place with buttons or something.

Next, I cut up more leather to be a bit longer than my arms and sew them into a pair of tubes, which I attached to the arm holes.

Finally, I adjusted the front and added a row of loops and wolf fangs in place of buttons to hold everything together.

Now that I was done, I tried my new coat out!

Giddy with excitement, I plunged my arms through the sleeves and buttoned the front together.

Overall, it was heavy and stiff, though not as bad as it could be. The leather itself was soft and flexible. It would probably soften up even more as I wore it.

I grabbed one of my spears and went out to the dungeon to try my new coat out.

...

I came back, but was no longer wearing my new coat.

Fundamentally it worked and did a great job of covering my body...but the weight and stiffness worked against me much more than I expected.

It wasn't like I couldn't fight with it on. I was already strong enough that the coat didn't hamper my movements to the degree that it could cause problems there, but despite that, it caused problems somewhere else entirely, which entirely prevented it's use.

The coat would move as one object along my skin whenever I moved around. My shoulders and back felt raw after only fighting a few monsters, but that wasn't nearly as bad as the soreness of my chest. If I didn't eat to heal up and remove my coat, I would've still been bleeding from the way my coat rubbed against my chest. The skin only broke a little, but the memory of the pain involuntarily surfaced when I looked at the coat.

I threw it against a wall and slumped beside the fountain as tears leaked, both from the memory of the pain and all the time I had wasted.

The coat might still be usable if I could layer the inside with something much softer, but until I found such a thing, it was a piece of trash, only good as a reminder of my failure.

After a few minutes of self pity, I took a strip of leather and cut it up and laced some leather cordage through the front to secure it. I put it around my body and fastened the new strip. In only a couple of minutes, I had made a chest wrap.

I tried some simple exercises in my room, and it proved to be quite effective. It was tight feeling, but that was exactly what I needed. My breasts had no space to move, and I was covered properly. At least better than that bikini.

The realization that this was all I needed made me go back into the corner and cry about the waste of time I had created.

Once I recovered, I went to do some more work before I headed back to my backyard, I mean the dungeon.

I took a few more wolf pelts and worked them to create a large backpack. It was modelled after those big hiking backpacks I saw people wear sometimes, and had a couple of big pouches to hold small items like the gems and small bottles. It also had a large waist-band to increase it's security and an additional band just below my breasts to hold the shoulder straps together while I fought.

<You have gained the [Leatherworking I] skill!>

An announcement resounded in my head. The fact that it did happen made me feel a bit better regarding all the work that went into my failed coat.

To celebrate the occasion, and also because I forgot, I made myself a simple belt and looped it onto my pants. I wished I had a belt buckle, but since I didn't, I was forced to simply go with a simple knot. It wasn't too secure, but it felt better to have it than not. As an added bonus, I could hang stuff off of it if I ever felt the need.

As a final project, I cut a rectangular length of leather and used it to securely wrap my character sheet, then made a cord to tie it off tightly. Now I was reasonably sure that it would be safe as long as it didn't get wet.

I grabbed all the scrap leather and threw them into the dungeon to be consumed. I confirmed that everything else I threw out that way before had already gone, so I was sure my guess was right, that anything left alone in the dungeon would disappear after a while.

With everything done, I grabbed my weapons and went back to do some level grinding in the dungeon.

Chapter 7: Second Floor

I spent the next while exploring alternate paths through the dungeon. The paths were pretty complicated, so my mental map had quickly become a jumbled mess. I could roughly remember the main paths, but since it seemed like the routes often intersected and split apart, it was tough trying to figure out where and how they crossed.

All along the way, I killed and ate and looted the monsters, as well as picked up the contents of any treasure chests I found. The monsters had gotten pretty easy to fight. My level was definitely higher than theirs, and their movements were pretty simple, making their actions easy to predict and counter. All the loot that I felt were worth taking were put into my backpack.

Just having a proper bag was making all the difference. It was easy to put things in quickly and safely, yet even when the stuff moved around inside, the bag itself was snug and secure, making it easy to fight without having to remove it. It wasn't perfect, and I kept a mental note of all the places where it needed improvements, like how I should've added little pouches on the waist-band to make it easy to put away little items like the coloured gems.

My biggest complaint was how the leather rubbed against my skin. If I didn't keep healing by drinking blood regularly, the skin directly touching the leather would've gotten raw after an hour of wear.

Since the danger to me was starting to get pretty low, I spent a lot of time trying to resist my urge to feed, but the progress hadn't been going so well. I tried to make my goal to wait ten seconds before eating after a kill, but waiting even a single second was beyond my self control until I had eaten to the point where I had started to feel bloated. By that point though, the urge had weakened enough that it felt like there wasn't much point in practising, but I did it anyways. I held a fresh corpse in my hands and breathed in the scent while resisting the urge to bite down.

I hoped it was helping, because every time I started to feel hungry again I wasn't able to stop myself from biting down immediately.

My exploration speed was going up as I got used to fighting and looting. By the time I returned to my home to empty my bag and clean up twice, my level had reached ten. [Fleet of Foot], [Create Acid], [Acid Resistance], and [Natural Weapons] had all reached rank 3, and I could fell the tangible benefits of them all. My movement was clearly faster, my acids were now strong enough to eat into the monster's flesh in seconds, and my claws developed an extendable aura that could cut through anything I fed them like warm butter.

In addition to that, I had learned the [Throwing Technique] skill after repeatedly throwing my weapons at monsters. The skill simply improved the strength and accuracy of my throws.

If I wasn't strong enough to beat the boss, I had no idea how you were supposed to figure that out without sacrificing entire groups of people to find out.

Every time I went back, I spent a little while working on my equipment. Little changes to my backpack, or replacing my chest wrap as I came up with new ideas. I added additional pouches on the bag to make it easier to use, but the biggest change for me was when I tried lining the entire inner surface where the leather touched my skin with rabbit fur. It was a lot of work to sew it so it didn't move around, but once I did that, the softness of the fur got rid of almost all the chafing all at once.

It was so effective that I considered trying it to redeem my failed coat, but I realized that the problems with it was far more than just the lining.

On the other hand, I tried making a chest wrap entirely out of a rabbit pelt, and it worked out great. So great that I ended up making a few spare and even some panties the same way. Those itched a little, but the results were better than wearing the pants without anything in between.

As I was working on the pelts, I noticed that the rabbit leather was much thinner and softer than the wolf leather. I wondered if panties would work better if I reversed the facing of the material instead. It was something for me to consider in the future when I remembered about it.

Once my gear was ready, I sped through the dungeon, using the shortest path I knew. I only brought my bag and a few of each goblin weapons. I didn't want to bring anything that would slow me down, but I figured the bag would be necessary if the boss loot ended up being big enough get in the way of fighting if I carried it by hand.

I ran past the monsters until I found the clearing right before the boss gate. I had found two more clearings like this in other places, and the only explanation I could come up with were that they were rest places. That said, I didn't need much space or time to prepare for a boss room. I still hadn't felt sleepy once since coming to this world, and my physical exhaustion would be blown away whenever I drank some blood.

That said, once I reached the clearing, I backtracked a bit and intercepted the last group of monsters I blew past. They were chasing me, but didn't get far due to the difference in [Agility]. Three brown wolves. I took them all down with a single spear and drank their blood to top myself off and helped myself to their drops.

Throwing my cracked spear away, I took hold of a new one in my right hand and a sword in my left, then held my pelt of spare weapons untied so it would be easy to grab more if the boss fight ended up going worse than I hoped.

I faced the wooden gate. It was simple, yet robust. Just a pair of wooden posts combined with two side swinging doors with black cast iron frame and hinges. The heavy doors swung in silently when I pushed them. The lack of sound despite their size inversely raised the tension.

Behind the gate, the ground sunk down in the shape of stairs, and softly bent to the left. I took each dirt step deliberately and carefully. A trap after the boss door was crazy, but just because it wouldn't be done in a game was no reason why it wouldn't be done here as well.

But as luck would have it, there was no indication that there was such a cheap trap, and when I made a full 90 degree turn and out of sight of the gate, the ground opened up in front of me.

The floor was grass again, but the area was a large circular depression cut out from the plains. The walls were almost 10 meters high and made from packed dirt. There was another large wooden door on the far side, this time over two meters tall.

In between me and the door was a large brown wolf. This one had white stripes and was twice the size of the previous brown wolves, of which there was a pair of flanking the bigger wolf.

They were laying down as if asleep, but as my foot entered the ring, all three woke up and looked right at me as if they were some sort of machine that suddenly got power.

But unlike a machine, they started to growl and pace around, the smaller brown wolves trying to flank me as the bigger one approached from the front.

It was obvious that if things stayed 3v1 for long, I'd be at a serious disadvantage, so it was the first problem I needed to fix.

With that in mind, when I judged the spacing was good, I threw my bundled weapons at the middle wolf then sprinted towards the one on my right while the line of sight to the big wolf was obscured.

The wolf I charged at froze for a split second before charging at me, it's maw gaping wide as it snarled. For me who had seen the exact same thing dozens of times, it was a simple and easy attack to deal with. With a single thrust, my spearhead entered the wolf's eye before being pulled out immediately. I was careful not to let the stone blade hit the back of the wolf's skull as the bone was hard enough to shatter the brittle spearhead in an instant.

The wolf collapsed mid step, and it's body dragged along the ground gouging up the soft grass before coming to a full stop.

I didn't need to check to confirm that it was dead. Experience had taught me that was enough for these wolves.

The remaining two wolves realized what happened in the second they were surprised by my actions, and changed directions to charge at me directly, abandoning their previous strategy after it had so spectacularly failed.

Just like before, I counter-charged the bigger wolf. But this time, due to the positioning, the smaller wolf was behind and to the side of the boss.

A few steps in, I pulled back my arm and prepared another thrust. The large wolf saw this and instantly jumped to the side to avoid my attack.

Except that I had considered that would happen. Despite being creatures that simply spawn in the dungeon and fight intruders no matter how reckless it is, they did have basic learning capabilities and used their brains a little. I didn't know how much creativity they were capable of, but they were at least as intelligent as a real wild animal despite the fact that I'd never witnessed them retreat, no matter how bad things looked for them. It was as if they were compelled to fight any and all challengers.

That said, even if they would act taking your previous actions into consideration, their ability to adapt was poor from what I saw. They always picked from obvious counters, and just like that, the boss wolf dodged to the side when it looked like I'd try to thrust my spear straight at it.

Instead, I changed my grip on the spear and threw it at the smaller wolf like a javelin. Thanks to the [Throwing Technique] skill's adjustment, the spear flew straight and true. The wolf tried to move out of the way in the last second, but was unable to avoid the spear from impaling it's side.

Without slowing down, I closed the remaining gap and slashed upwards with the sword in my left hand. The serrated stone blade easily ripped through the monster's neck, but was unable to go through it's spine in a single swing. Not like it was needed, with both it's windpipe and major blood vessels in it's neck severed.

The sword on the other hand was in bad shape, and I didn't need to look at the spear I threw to also know that there wasn't much life left in it either.

But I was still in a fight. Stopping my feet wasn't an option, so without confirming anything, I rolled to my left before spinning around.

"Grraah"

I was right. The boss wolf snapped at where I was just standing. If I hesitated even a little, it would've gotten a piece of my side, if not worse.

The wolf growled lowly as it once again slowly circled around me, this time just simply trying to find an opening rather than having any sort of strategy.

Me on the other hand, after losing both weapons to the second wolf, was unarmed.

...

(As if)

While short in range, my claws were far stronger than the cheap goblin weapons I've been using this fight. Not only that, but my fangs were able to crush bone as if they were everyday biscuits. Not like they tasted any good like wholesome biscuits.

(Actually, I want some crackers with liverwurst)

The fact that all my favourite foods were basically inedible to the current me made my heart cry. Recreating any of them in this world was entirely pointless.

The wolf on the other hand had lost it's patience and lept at me.

I cleanly dodged to my right. Such a slow and predictable move had no chance at touching me. When it's attack failed, it tried again immediately, but I dodged to my left.

But after repeating it a third time, I lost my balance and fell onto my butt.

Seeing it's chance, the large wolf pounced at me, eager to tear my throat out.

But rather than crying out in despair, I cracked a smile.

My left hand reached behind me and grabbed the first sturdy thing it touched and I swung it clear at the wolf's face.

I had lured the monster to my weapon cache, and now a goblin sword was striking right at it's face.

But to my surprise, the wolf saw my attack bit down on the sword, shattering it. With my new weapon gone, it tried to bite me again.

While I didn't expect that, the time it took to reopen it's mouth was enough for me to follow up and stabbed my fingers, or to be exact the claws on my right hand into the wolf's shoulder, cutting right through the bone and sinew.

The force pushed the wolf back, but I didn't let the space between us extend. Instead, I pulled on it's wound and bared my own fangs, burying them in it's neck.

The monster struggled as I fed, enjoying the richest meal I had in my new life. The struggles turned into spasms, which eventually turned into twitches, and finally disappeared entirely.

All too soon, my meal had ended. Despite it's larger size, the boss wolf wasn't enough to fill me. As my [Blood Sucking] skill went up, so did my speed at sucking blood as did my capacity to drink. Drinking quickly was always great if my prey was still alive when I started, but I kept half regretting not savouring the taste more. Then again, it wasn't like I had the self control to not slurp up my meal as fast as I could.

The larger capacity I had gotten was a double edged sword as well. On one hand, it allowed me to drink much more and acquire skills much faster, as I didn't have to stop eating just because I was full as often. On the other hand, it made it harder to control my eating, since it took longer for me to get full. I really hoped that I wouldn't start getting fat because of my appetite.

(How many calories is blood anyways?)

Shaking the stupid thought out of my head, I remembered that there were two more wolf corpses. Without sparing a thought, I lept to the closest and hungrily ate my heart out, then again on the last wolf.

But I found that the other two wolves weren't as satisfying anymore. The boss wolf tasted much better, and while it wasn't like the smaller wolves suddenly started to taste worse, but they just weren't as palatable.

(Is it like eating cheap mac and cheese all your life then suddenly getting a taste of high class food?)

But then again, I had high class food once as part of a celebration, and it sucked.

I gathered my weapons again and took out another spear, my old trusty spear.

As I did that, all three monster corpses disappeared and left their drops. The smaller wolves both left fangs. I was tempted to just leave them, since I had a pretty big pile of them just sitting around back home. The boss on the other hand gave me something new. At least a little new. That was it's pelt.

It was the wolf's entire pelt fully processed and ready to be used. The fur was surprisingly soft considering it came from a wolf, but the leather underneath was very tough. Markedly tougher than the hides from the other wolves.

But these properties made it hard for me to use. The fur was nice, but the leather was too stiff to use as clothes. I could remove the fur and use the leather as some sort of armour, but that also felt like a waste, and that presumed that I could actually make equipment from it that both worked decently and wasn't a pain to use or wear.

The only thing I could think of using it that fully took advantage of it's properties was a rug. It would be soft on my feet and wonderful to lie on, but tough enough that it could survive a long time being walked on.

It felt like a pathetic way to use such a nice pelt, but it did take advantage of all it's properties.

But such things were for later.

Once I packed everything into my bag, I turned to the door at the far end of the boss arena.

Just in front of it, a treasure chest was standing where there was empty space before. The chest was much nicer than any of the chests I've seen so far. It was made of lacquered wood and the metal keeping it together looked like was made from polished steel.

As much as I wanted to rush over open it, I couldn't ward off the worry that it might be a trap.

Maintaining as much distance as possible, I poked the lid with my spear. When nothing happened, I tried applying pressure and cracked the seam open. Since nothing still happened, I opened it all the way then jumped back just in case.

But nothing happened.

I was relieved that nobody had seen it. I was the only one there after all. Nobody else could see what I did.

I stepped over and had a look at the contents.

What greeted me was a pair of black leather boots. They were sturdy, with thick soles and a medium high ankle. The style kinda looked like something I saw soldiers wear in those old world war one pictures.

I cleaned my feet the best I could and quickly put them on. The inside were soft and warm, and the laces tied up cleanly. The fit, just like for my pants, were perfect. There was definitely some sort of adjustment made so that any equipment I find fit perfectly.

With those thoughts in the back of my mind, I stood up and tried taking a few steps.

My gait was unsteady. It had been a while since I last wore shoes of any kind, and despite how well they fit, not being able to feel the texture of the dirt under my feet was a bit unnerving. But it was much better to go around in boots than bare foot, so I had no choice but to get used to it.

The ankles were a bit stiff, making sideways motions difficult, but front and back, as well as rotations weren't a problem.

Happy with my new loot, I headed off to see what was beyond the big doors.

When I pushed on the large double doors, just like last time, the fact that it didn't make a sound was a bit unnerving.

Beyond the door was a set of stone stairs carved out of the stone tunnel itself. It ran down in a loose spiral to the left. I took each step slowly to make sure that I didn't miss any traps or ambushes.

In the end I didn't find anything of the sort, and instead after descending what felt like two or three floors, I reached a wide cavern. It was perfectly circular with a domed ceiling. To one side was a familiar sight, quietly spraying water like nobody's business.

It was a carbon copy of the fountain room at the beginning of the dungeon.

The familiar sight had released all the tension in my body, and without a second thought I stripped down and jumped into the fountain to wash up. I wasn't too dirty, but the feeling of dried blood on my body was a bit annoying.

If there was a fountain here, then that suggested that there was a fountain behind every boss room. Be that as it may, that didn't mean that I could wash up at any time as I wanted, as there wasn't any certainty that I wouldn't get lost or stuck somewhere. I needed to take advantage of the fountains every chance I got.

After a bit of relaxing in the cold water, I put my gear on again and moved out through the other tunnel.

What greeted me was...more tunnels.

Once I got past the initial winding tunnel that had the same shape as the one at the beginning fountain, the passage opened up drastically, but only to reveal more tunnels.

This one looked like it was carved out of a different type of rock. The fountain room was a nice medium grey, but this was more of a dull red/brown. And the walls weren't nearly as smooth either, like it was carved out roughly.

On a certain level, it felt like the dungeon had finally started.

A few turns later, I encountered the first monster of the second floor.

I felt like leaving the dungeon immediately.

What lay ahead basically looked like a giant earthworm. It was a good four meters and wiggled in that creepy squish and push style. It's head reared up and looked at me with whatever it had that was considered to be it's senses.

But what happened next sent goosebumps across my whole body.

The end of it's head opened up, revealing three circular rows of teeth.

(Nope nope NOPE!)

I just turned around and hightailed out of there, back to the fountain room, stripped down and dove in. The very sight of that monster made me feel dirty and I obsessively scrubbed my body.

I could hardly believe that such a monster existed. It didn't look strong, but it's appearance just sent shivers down my spine.

There was a good possibility that the entire floor was filled with similar monsters. At the very least, the floor was some sort of cave, so all the monsters were probably of cave or underground types.

Defeating them probably wouldn't be much of a problem, but when all my weapons broke, I'd have to fight those things with my claws. I didn't want to touch such monsters though. That worm looked pretty slimy, and I wouldn't be able to clean myself off until I returned to the fountain.

But an even worse image cropped up when I imagined my hands covered in goo after killing one of those worms with my bare hands.

(Did these guys have blood in their bodies?)

The resulting image in my head make me pull my knees in and shiver. I really didn't want to know what those worms tasted like, but if I couldn't control myself after killing one...nope. Definitely nope.

If I didn't want to go through such an experience, the only way to make sure was to avoid killing any of them.

The thought of going an entire floor without any XP or new skills was a bit depressing, but it was better than the alternative. I just had to make up for it on the next floor.

With my mind made up, I force myself out of the fountain and get fully equipped once I dried my body the best I could. Once done, I reached the beginning of the cave floor then took off at a quick jog. I wanted to sprint, but I doubted I could last long doing so, and even the shortest route to the boss room would probably take a while if the first floor was any indication.

I saw the creepy worm again and it reared it's head at me when it sensed my presence. Without giving it any chance, I ran past it, giving it as wide of a berth as I could, then kept going.

One after the next, I continued to do the same thing. There were giant ants and millipedes as well, all gross once made so big and I felt like my goosebumps had turned into a full allergic outbreak or something.

Running constantly and taking one sharp turn after the next soon became a heavy burden on my body, but I didn't dare to slow down while any monster was in eyesight. I took short breaks in side rooms, but didn't stay for long. I didn't know if monsters could enter these rooms, but if a few did, they'd block the entrance and I'd have no way out without killing them, defeating the entire purpose of running away from them in the first place.

Not only did I avoid the monsters, but I avoided treasure chests as well. I didn't have the time to check for traps on them nor did I have the leeway to carry a bunch of extra loot just because I got greedy. I did consider dumping the pelt I got from the previous boss, but decided not to, since it wasn't too heavy to be a big deal while it stayed in my backpack.

I found a circular room with the same size and shape as the safe zone by the boss door on the first floor. There, I lay down to rest, reasonably confident that I didn't have to worry about any monsters trying to get in. It never happened in the first floor, and I needed a break.

I also needed a meal. My stomach was getting angry at me after running for so long without a meal, but I refused it with all my might. It was one thing if I had brought something, but since I didn't, I couldn't fill myself. There was no way I was going to touch any of those gross oversized creatures. The very thought of drinking their fluids made me cringe.

Once I was fully rested, I took off again, blindly searching for the boss door.

Without any way to track the time though, I had no idea how long I wandered for. There was no sun or moons, and I never got sleepy, so there was no system in place for me to guess how long I'd been running around at, especially since I'd been leveling up so much on the first floor that any baseline based on my my experiences while I was outside wasn't helpful.

As I my breathing had gotten coarse with exhaustion, I finally found the gates to the boss, and right beside it was another safe room. I gladly entered the room and lay down to rest for the second time since starting my run on this floor.

My stomach's protests had gotten louder again, now that the burning feeling in my over stressed legs had started to fade, but I refused it like Stalin refusing to feed the Ukrainians.

I massaged my calves and thighs though the thick material of my leather pants. Fortunately it seemed like vampires didn't sweat, so I didn't have to worry about feeling sticky and gross, but despite not having fought once on this floor, I still felt dusty and dirty.

Well, I was sitting on this dirty floor and leaning on this dusty wall, so it was bound to happen.

I was looking forward to washing up in the fountain after beating the boss.

But I wasn't looking forward to facing the boss at all. Regardless of the difficulty, it was likely to be a stronger version of one of the monsters I had already seen on this floor. I really hoped it wouldn't, and maybe I'd fight a big mole or something, but such thoughts were nothing but escaping from reality.

(Moles are cute though. At least the cartoon ones I used to see online)

When I felt like I had fully recovered, aside from my stomach, I headed to the boss door. Despite resting, my body felt a little weak from the hunger, but I ignored it.

The doors gave way silently to the pressure I gave off.

With my hands, not my eyes.

This time there wasn't any stairs leading down, and instead the boss room was directly in front of me. It seemed like that change was because this floor was underground and the other was above ground.

Technically they were both underground, but the first floor had the appearance of being above ground.

What stood in front of me was a giant ant with a bloated rear end, flanked by four of the more normal giant ants.

"It's an ant with a huge ass"

I weakly chuckled at my bad joke as I tried to escape reality once more.

Unlike last time, I hadn't had time to get plenty of experience fighting the normal version of the boss monster, so I wasn't sure how to win this fight.

Ants, like all insects, had an exoskeleton, meaning that they were basically naturally armoured. This most likely didn't mean much to my claws, but I flat out refused to expose myself in such a way where I'd be deliberately covering myself with bug goo.

The only alternative was to find ways to beat those monsters with my weapons before they all broke. As long as the next floor wasn't disgusting like this one, fighting bare handed wasn't a big deal. Rather, even fighting bare handed was technically impossible since I always had my claws.

Looking at the monsters in front of me, there was a high likelihood of my weapons breaking against their exoskeletons. At best, they'd break through and mutually destruct, but that didn't seem very reliable. The weak points of an exoskeleton were it's joints, obviously, as well as the eyes.

Those were the way to go.

I took a spear in hand and my spare weapons together in my left hand, wrapped in a wolf pelt in such a way to make them easy to pull out, though I risked them falling out if I wasn't careful.

With nothing more I could add to such a vague strategy, I charged straight away at the closest ant.

Once I got a few steps past the doorway, the fat ant, one I presumed was the queen, moved it's antennae and the other four charged in response. The ants weren't nearly as fast as the wolves, but their gaits were more stable and had less openings. Not only that, but there were more of them.

When I got close to the closest bug on the right, I sidestepped on the outside and thrust my spear straight behind it's head. The stone spearhead tore into joint between it's head and thorax, but the strike wasn't deep enough, so while the big insect staggered, it didn't stop moving, and tried to aim at me while I turned away to reposition.

But ahead of me was the ant closest to the one I struck. It had moved from the wounded monster's right to it's left, as if it anticipated that I'd go that way.

It opened it's mandibles threateningly, but I didn't worry about that, and instead thrust my spear out at it's compound eyes.

The spear impacted a lens, but the shaft shattered under the repeated pressure, leaving only the spearhead left slightly embedded. While the bug was stunned from my attack, I swiftly threw a kick out at the remains of the spear partially embedded in the ant's eye before using it as a springboard to create some distance.

The stone shard was thrust into it's head from the impact, strength clearly was leaving it's body as I backpedalled.

To my left, both unharmed monster bug were in the middle of circling me, while the first ant bared it's mandibles threateningly while approaching from the front.

The smell of the blue fluids that were seeping out of their bodies made my stomach yell out louder in my ears than ever. Before I knew it, I was licking my lips. It wasn't the usual red blood, but it was similar enough to evoke the same response from my body. But I was in a life or death struggle. The fact that I was now being attacked from two fronts was painful, as my eyes kept glancing at both the wounded and dead arthropods rather than trying to keep track of all the living enemies.

I shook my head to clear it even a little.

My spear wasn't working very well. It didn't have the power to penetrate the eye or joints very well. The other weapons were more risky due to their shorter range, but had the power to make up for it.

I quickly removed a goblin sword from my weapon bundle and faced off against the ants as they continued to close in. I went into a run again, and again towards the first ant I attacked. But this time it was ready for me and reared it's body, threatening me not only with it's jaws but it's front most legs as well.

Since it had stopped moving due to it's new pose, I easily sidestepped it and got to it's blind spot. No matter how wide an ant's vision was, there was no way it could see anywhere where it's eyes didn't cover.

With a quick series of steps, I jumped and ran onto the monster's abdomen and placed my sword in beside it's neck and pulled the serrated blade back against the joint.

Already weakened, the stone sword teeth made quick progress on the monster's flesh. But being as fragile as it was, the shaft snapped mid strike.

In a panic, I kicked off of the ant and created some distance, but to my relief, the monster simply shuddered for a second before collapsing. It looked like I had severed something vital.

There were two normal ants left plus the queen. The queen hadn't moved once since the beginning.

(Is it one of those 'I've fallen and I can't get up' scenarios?)

I smirked at the thing that looked so fat it needed a powered electric cart to move around.

As if it understood that I was thinking poorly of it and wanted to prove me wrong, the big ant really did rise up and lift it's bloated rear. My eyes turned into globes at the sight. I couldn't imagine how such thin legs could support a body like that, but the monster had already proved me wrong, and had started to approach me.

It from in front and it's two remaining subordinates from behind. I was perfectly sandwiched in between.

From a positional standpoint things weren't looking good for me, but in reality the queen was so slow I could entirely ignore it. It was as if it was moving entirely on sheer will power, which if it wasn't a monster I would applaud and maybe even cheer it for.

So in other words, rather than a three on one, it was more like a two on one with my blood thirst being an annoying spectator jeering and trying to provoke the actors, or rather just me.

I took out an axe and circled around the ant corpse that was lying in between me and the remaining two threats.

With my legs pumping at full strength, I approached the monster on my right, the closer of the two. As I closed in on it, the arthropod raised a foreleg and tried to stab me with it.

But such a slow and predictable move had no chance at working on me. I stepped to the side and ducked under. The leg simply impaled the stone floor where I was just at a split second before, whereas I was now underneath the monster at kissing distance.

Not like I'd do something like that to such a creepy creature.

Instead, I spun and used my whole body to swing my axe up, driving it through the ant's neck. The joint split apart spraying bug goo all over the place to my displeasure.

Not entirely dismembered, the head flopped down, held by a small piece of flesh with pieces of my stone axe head embedded in it.

Without any time to lose, I used the dead ant as cover to retrieve another sword to deal with the last remaining ant.

Legs stabbed all around me as the monster desperately tried to get to me, who was still trying to extract myself from under the dead monster's corpse.

The difficulty in trying to evade in that situation taught me how poorly planned my last move was, but with a big shove, I lifted the stiff body off of me and escaped with only some minor scratches.

The corpse flopped back down with a big *fwump*. The last ant monster was partially entangled after the sudden movement, and I didn't let that go for.

Squeezing in between the ant corpse legs, I climb it's body with a bound and jump onto the last surviving ant. I grab the base of one of it's legs for stability, then swing my sword as hard as I could across it's neck joint, severing it in one go.

"Wah!"

Suddenly losing it's control nerves, the now dead ant flopped down, it's weight overcoming any tension left in it's legs. With me still on it, I fell as well and bounced off of it's carapace and rolled on the ground, getting covered in more ant juice sprayed out from it's open wound.

With all the enemies down, my tension had started to fall, and the sound of my hunger had suddenly started to scream out loud, desperately trying to urge me to feed. As much as I wanted to, I couldn't avert my eyes from the fresh ant corpses.

*skitter*

But as deafening as my stomach was, it didn't cover the fact that the sound of ants moving around hadn't stopped.

I looked behind me only to see one more ant monster still alive and moving towards me.

It was such a minor threat that I had forgotten that the ant queen existed. It was hard to see it actually hurting me, but it was still an enemy. That alone made it possible for me to push my hunger back and concentrate on finishing the fight.

But the queen was slow, extremely slow.

I took out another axe and with a jog, I circled around it and got behind the monster. It tried to turn around to face me, but when the other ants weren't fast enough to avoid exposing their rear to me, there was no way the sluggish queen could.

Without any reverence to royalty, I jumped onto the monster's bloated abdomen and climbed on top. But instead of continuing to the thorax to cut the head off as I intended, I noticed that the top of the abdomen pulsed with a regular rhythm like a heartbeat.

Intrigued, I lower a hand and touched the surface. Even to my hand it felt just like a heartbeat, although the shape was completely different.

A small corner of my mind registered that there was drool dripping from my chin.

Chapter 8: Hunger

The next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground, looking up at the ceiling.

My skin felt disgusting. When I touched my chest, big threads of goo connected between it and my hand. I tried to shake it off, but there was so much on my body that it didn't make a difference.

When I raised my head, I was still in the boss arena. There were a few random items lying around as well as a treasure chest standing proud in front of a large doorway, but otherwise it was empty.

I thought back to the last thing I could remember, but suddenly I had a massive urge to throw up.

My mind was filled with the images of the last few minutes.

When I went to kill the ant queen, the sight of it's heart beating beating under it's abdomen carapace made me succumb to my hunger, and I bit down, tapping directly into the organ as it sprayed blue fluids around every time it contracted.

I sucked the monster dry, but having lost all self control, I moved from one ant to the next, before finally collapsing with nothing more available to eat.

My stomach was filled with that bright blue liquid and my body covered in the yellow goo that came squirting out as I crushed and ripped the ants open to access their circulatory system.

I wanted to hurl. To reject the fluids from such disgusting creatures, but my body denied me. As I tried to think about how much I didn't want to eat the ants, I couldn't help but remember how good it tasted. It was like deep fried chicken served with a huge helping of sweet and sour sauce.

No matter how much I spit and squeezed my stomach, my body refused to let the blood I consumed go to waste.

After a few minutes, I gave up. My mind and body were obviously at conflict when it came to this floor, and my mind stood no chance at winning while I was still so hungry. Despite their large bodies, those ants didn't have much blood in their bodies.

I took one glance at the monster drops, but turned my head away. I didn't want anything they left, lest it remind me of the taste of their blood.

The treasure chest was different though, since it's contents had nothing to do with the boss.

I opened it to reveal a pair of red leather gloves.

A shirt would've been the best outcome for me, but clothes were clothes. I held onto them without putting them on for now, since my hands were still sticky with ant goo, it was pointless to wear them before I cleaned up. Hopefully there'd be a fountain in the next room just like last time.

Past the double doors, down the stairs, I arrived to the welcome sight of another fountain.

Dropping my things on the dusty floor, I ran and jumped into the cold water, not even taking the time to remove my clothes first.

I submerged my entire body and rubbed my hands against my skin and clothes. Sticky strands of goo drifted away from my body as I desperately tried to remove all traces of those ants from my body.

"Puaaah!"

I burst out from the water when I couldn't hold my breath any longer.

The worst of the goo was now gone, but I was far from satisfied.

I removed my clothes and continued to scrub my body, getting rid of every trace of ant from my body. Eventually there was enough loose goo in the fountain water that it wasn't really possible to get any cleaner.

Slightly disheartened by that, I stood in the fountain stream to at least get half my body completely free of the gunk. As I stood in the cold water, I washed my clothes, then retrieved the rest of my stuff and washed anything that got dirty from that fight.

Since there weren't any traces of this fountain being used before I got to it, I cleaned it up as well so I could lay my things on the lip to dry. Then I sat on the central pedestal to wash any remaining trace of sticky ant goop from my body using the fresh fountain streams.

When I was finally done, the mental exhaustion had finally caught up to me and I just lay on the pedestal, letting my legs dangle over the edge and the water spray lightly massage my calfs.

I reflected a bit on what had happened to me up until now.

The last floor was absolutely terrible for me, with the results from the boss fight being the lowest point of all.

But despite that, I couldn't help but be glad I chose to become a vampire. If I had stayed human, or chosen a normal fantasy race, I would've most likely died already. This dungeon was rich in resources, but it was a bit monolithic when it came to variety.

Not only that, I had no confidence that I could've found enough food to survive for long outside of the dungeon. But inside, there was only meat. It was possible I could find fruits, vegetable, and grains further in, but betting on that was pretty foolhardy. At the very least, even if there weren't any monsters that dropped food on the first floor, I could've tried to cut the monsters themselves up before their bodies disappeared.

But even then, the human body wasn't meant to survive on meat alone, let alone raw meat, since I doubted even now I could start a decent fire to cook that meat.

As a vampire, it was all irrelevant.

While I had been all alone so far, it really hasn't been a problem. This dungeon was providing me with everything I needed as a vampire. Not having anyone to talk to wasn't even that big of a deal. I was pretty isolated the last year due to working so hard on my failed game, and I didn't have much in terms of friends even before that.

And while the last few hours were pretty terrible, I've been enjoying this new life of mine a decent amount.

It wasn't hard to say that I was looking forward to the future.

Sometimes I really wanted to take back my words with all my heart.

After resting up and drying my things off, I got dressed and headed to the next area.

What greeted me was the interior of some sort of ruins made of stone. The entire hallway I was in was lined with stone bricks, and the dirt behind the occasional missing brick suggested that I was underground.

Rather, in an underground zone.

While the atmosphere was pretty creepy, that wasn't the problem. The problem was the first monster I faced was a skeleton wielding a cheap, rusty looking scimitar.

The rattling undead with jerky movements was a bit unsettling, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was the fear that every monster was going to be similar to it. And not because they were undead, or made of bone, or that the very sight made a shiver run up my spine.

It really wasn't. I wasn't scared. Really.

The problem at the root of things was that they didn't have any blood.

My stomach had already been having a tantrum while I'd been waiting for my clothes to dry. I'd only been able to placate it with the thought that I could eat my heart out on the next floor. Those hopes were shattered with the sight of something that didn't even have blood running through it's nonexistent veins.

I sighed in the end. There wasn't anything I could do about going hungry on another floor.

(Way better than trying to fight it from making me eat bugs again)

And of course, the moment when I thought that, a niggling corner of my mind tried to lure me back to the second floor with the taste of the blood of the creatures I wanted to avoid.

I fought down the urge. The skeleton had already approached me while I was in thought and swung down it's weapon.

The monster was still slow despite it being the third floor. Rather, it felt slower than the wolves on the first floor.

I simply stepped inside of it's range and swung my spear at it's neck, entirely ignoring it's attack. Since now I was inside the skeleton's sword arc, what hit me wasn't a sharp blade, but it's bony wrist. The impact stung more than I expected, but I ignored it for the sake of this easy win.

And, while it was a win, it wasn't as easy as I expected.

The hit broke the skeleton's neck, taking the head off with it. But when I stepped back to see what sort of drop I'd get, it's sword arm rose up and swung it's weapon once again.

Surprised by the unexpected action, I dove to the side to avoid the attack, narrowly avoiding an injury.

The skeleton closed in on me and prepared another swing. I rolled away to avoid this third attack before getting back up.

The monster was still moving just as well as before, as if the head was nothing more than a decoration. Rather, now that I thought about it, it probably was nothing more than a decoration, being empty in the first place.

I bit back the wry smile and thrust my spear out from outside the skeleton's range. The cheap weapon impacted squarely on the undead's bleached sternum, and while it did crack, my spear shattered in my hands.

I bit back a curse as I hopped back and took out an axe. I had brought a decent number of weapons originally, but I had already started running out. I had used three against the wolf boss, and another five against the ant boss. I had just lost another spear, leaving me with only a sword and axe left.

In terms of weapons, I was in a dire straight, but while the goblin weapons didn't work well against these skeletons, this one had it's own weapon, and my claws were fundamentally my best weapons from the start, even if I used them the least.

I drew my last axe and charged the skeleton, swinging my weapon with as much force as I could muster. My swing arced down and impacted on the monster's sternum where it had already been cracked. The cracks spread before shattering the front of the ribs. My axe continued it's trajectory and impacted against the spine behind the ribs, separating one of the joints.

The skeleton could no longer maintain coherency and it fell apart. I quickly grabbed it's weapon before the rest of the body disappeared. My axe was now only a splintered handle, and was no longer usable. My claws might've been strong, but the lack of range made them risky to use. It might not actually be much of a problem on this floor, but I didn't know what the next floor would be like, so I needed to be prepared just in case.

The bleached bones disappeared like how everything did in this dungeon, and left me with it's drops. There was a black gem and...a big thighbone.

It was possible that the bone could be used for something if I knew the unique crafting styles of this world, but I didn't. It was nothing but dead weight, and not likely to be useful as a weapon.

Instead, it simply reminded me of a roasted meat on bone without the meat. My hunger was really grating on my nerves, making me think of food that wasn't even edible by the current me.

A little more depressed, I pocked the stone and went on my way.

A bit further into the dungeon, I found another skeleton. This time it was wielding a bow and had a quiver of arrows.

"Tsk"

I clicked my tongue. It had only been the second encounter and yet I had already become irritable. If I wasn't so hungry, I'd have welcomed the fight.

The skeleton slowly prepared it's bow.

I dropped my weapons and raced forward to avoid getting shot. I didn't have a shield, and dodging an arrow looked difficult. I had a shortage of usable weapons here, so carrying them in battle would slow me down, so I ditched them. In addition, I wanted to avoid getting hurt while I couldn't heal by drinking blood.

By the time the skeleton archer fully drew it's bow, I had closed the gap and swatted the bow to the side, making the monster fire it's arrow off at a wall.

Before it could counter, I drove my claws into it's upper arm, splitting it into two. The bone pile reacted by reaching for me with it's left arm, but I simply grabbed it and pulled it past me, breaking the skeleton's balance.

In a mostly smooth motion, I twisted it's arm behind it and mounted it's back, pinning it to the ground. It tried to move and get at me, but it was entirely helpless.

I sighed. This position was perfect to drink an enemy's blood, but this one didn't have any at all.

If anything, my hunger just continued to grate on my nerves, and the thought that I'd continue to suffer like that for the rest of the floor gave me a headache.

I wanted to eat something. Anything. But there wasn't anything to eat, and so it was annoying me to the point where I started to grate my teeth.

(If I couldn't eat anything, then I'll just satisfy myself by biting stuff)

The stupid, childish thought entered my mind, but since there wasn't any problems with doing so, I lowered my head and bit the back of the skeleton's neck, pretending it was the neck of warm wolf, and sucked air through my teeth.

But against my expectations, while I was doing nothing but clenching down on a the dry spine, I could feel something enter my fangs, and it wasn't air like what was entering my mouth.

It was cool and wispy, and tasted faintly like cotton candy despite not touching my tongue.

The skeleton continued to resist against me, but after a few seconds, it shuddered then stopped moving. Simultaneously, the taste disappeared and my fangs were empty again.

I tried biting harder and sucked with as much force as I could, but all I got was a mouth full of bone shards as my fangs pulverized the brittle spine.

Instantly filled with regret, I got off of the monster remains and spat out the fragments.

By the time I was done, the skeleton archer had disappeared, leaving just a black gem and a clay jar about as big as both fists combined. Both my current fists. If it was my old hands, I suspected it would only be as big as one. When I opened the jar, it was filled to the rim with some sort of dull brown powder. It had a slight tinge of blood to it's smell, but the taste was weak and very stale.

It didn't seem to be fit for consumption, even for me despite the faint taste of blood. Most likely, it wasn't actually some sort of blood product.

The jar itself could be useful, but unless if I had a way to get back to my home base quickly, it was a large weight I didn't need.

I only took the gem and moved on. The bow and arrows disappeared with the rest of the body, so I had to remember to grab it more quickly next time.

Even more importantly though, I wanted more of that taste. I thought I wouldn't get anything because they were undead, but to my surprise, I did get something to eat, even if it was weak in flavour. On a floor with nothing but bloodless undead, it was miles better than not getting anything to eat.

The nutritional value was probably pretty low, but getting sugar candies was better than starving.

Once more, I wanted to take back my words.

I had been exploring this level for hours. Unlike the second floor, I actually fought all the monsters I encountered, explored the side passages, and grabbed what loot I could. All the monsters ended up being various types of skeletons. There were ones wielding scimitars, bows, a bardiche, then there was one that was basically a skeleton dog.

None of them gave me any drops aside from bone or bone related materials aside from black gems as expected. I did take their weapons, but soon I reached my limit since I wasn't using them on this level. Skeleton monsters were just too slow to make it worth it. They were more annoying in their relentlessness, and it looked like their attacks had a decent amount of punch behind them due to the markedly higher quality of weapons over the first floor goblins.

Of course, I benefited from that fact by taking them.

I also looted the treasure chests I found, but like the first floor, the majority of the loot were just crystal bottles with various coloured liquids inside of them like the first floor. There were also a few gemstones, but the best item I found was another pair of pants. This time it was made from some sort of sturdy black cloth. I'd rather have gotten a shirt, but the pants were more comfortable and much easier to move in than my previous one. While the comfort came from the nicer material, the ease in movement came from the fact that they were hotpants.

While it was a bit embarrasing, it wasn't like anyone was watching, so I prefered the hotpants to my leather ones for the slight boost in mobility.

That said, I really wanted a shirt. It wouldn't have been much of a problem if I was still a guy, but right now, I couldn't help but feel how inappropriate this was, basically showing off my underwear.

The problem, then, was the fact that eating the essence of those skeletons hadn't been working out for me nearly as well as I hoped.

It wasn't like taking raw sugar to temporarily deal with starvation until you can get a proper meal. It was like eating artificial sweeteners to trick yourself into thinking that you were putting food into your body while desperately hoping that you didn't succumb to starvation.

In reality, it wasn't that terrible, since I got skills out of it, but the more I ate from the skeletons, the harder my cravings hit back after I finished a meal.

And with my cravings hitting me so hard, I was really irritable. If someone saw me, they'd have though that I was a crack addict desperate for her next hit.

In a sense though, food was an addiction so the analogy wasn't too wrong. It was just that food was one that was necessary to live.

I had completely lost track of time though. As hard as it was to keep track of time in a dungeon where nothing changed on top of being a vampire that had no need of sleep, now that it was so difficult to concentrate on anything at all due to my hunger, I couldn't even get a general grasp of how long I've been wandering on this floor.

It could be days, weeks, even months if I was more out of it than I thought. Or maybe it's only been a few hours but my cravings had made every hour so excruciating that the seconds ticked by like minutes.

I was loathing the floor that denied me proper feed, that kept tricking my body into thinking it finally got what it wanted most, only to be cruelly shot down at every turn.

My actions had lost proper sense or strategy. I wandered like a zombie, and any time I found an enemy, I pounced on them like a beast, hoping this time that this monster had at least a drop of blood somewhere inside it's body even though my senses told me that was impossible.

My body had become covered in scratches with some deep gashes here and there. At first when I noticed, I had thought that since I was bleeding, I had finally found some blood to drink. But when I did so, rather than finally being able to sate my craving, my blood didn't taste like anything I had had before.

It wasn't sweet. It didn't remind me of a hearty meal, or even some half-baked snack. It was more like drinking tap water when I had already drank my fill of coffee. It wasn't terrible, but it was plain and unfulfilling. Just the act of sucking on my own wound made the dark void in my gut grow instead of shrink.

That realization made me cry for the first time in this life.

Finally, after so much struggling, I was blocked by a large double door.

"Fufufufufu...wahahahahaha! Finally!"

After so long, I couldn't help but burst into laughter. Just one more fight and I would be free from this hell. I'd be able to rush to the next floor and eat to my heart's content!

Without any mental leeway to create a plan, I simply charged into the room and pounced on the first thing that came into range. It was a skeleton with a scimitar.

I had gotten plenty of levels already, and even raised some skills, so it was no match for me, and I quickly sucked it's essence out before it could even strike.

A hot, searing sensation filled my right biceps just as I was letting go of my empty prey. When I glared in the direction of the offender, I saw a skeleton with a bow pulling out an arrow from it's quiver.

Without any thought, I lept at the archer automatically. A sharp pain came from my right calf, but I ignored it and bit into it's neck bone, sucking it of the energy that made it move.

Only when my second prey was drained that I looked at the source of the pain. It was skeleton dog trying to rip open my leg with it's jaws. But the fact that it had bit me didn't register in my mind. Instead, I simply raked my claws across it's skull, shredding it instantly, and bit into it's spine to get that feeling of feeding for even one more second.

When I was done with my third prey, I looked up and saw two more wielding bardiches. Despite the pain in my calf and arm, I sprinted at full throttle at those two and plowed into the first, violently biting into it's neck, then leaping at the other to drain it as well.

It had probably only been a handful of seconds and broke every rule of engagement I normally followed, but I didn't care. It was still taking too long.

When I rose up again, the only enemy I could find that was still standing was a large skeleton a head taller than the others. It wore a full fledged chest plate, gauntlets and greaves. In it's hands was a sword and shield, and it was in a defensive position as it slowly approached me.

I scowled at it. The shield meant that it would take more time to get close enough to feed on it, and I hated that.

Despite that, I made a mad dash at the offending creature and grabbed at it's shield. But before I could do anything, the shield rushed at me, knocking my entire body down.

The impact disoriented me as I rolled end over end before coming to a stop.

For a second, I didn't know what happened, but the gears that have been gunked up due to my hunger had managed to turn, and I realized that it bashed me with it's shield.

"Waaaaaaahhh!"

I yelled as I charged at the big skeleton again. I was angry. Angry that it didn't have the decency to go down quickly when I was so hungry.

It tried to block my path again with it's shield, but this time I wasn't having any of that.

Instead of trying to pull the shield to the side, I stabbed at it's middle with my claws and easily broke through the metal boss and the bony hand behind it. Without anything to hold it up, the shield that was half as tall as I was fell onto my arm.

I swung my arm to free it of it's weight, but the sharp edges of the broken shield left scratches all along it. I didn't even notice as now I was so close to reaching the next floor.

With my other arm, I grabbed the collar of the skeleton's breast plate and pulled my body up and bit into it's neck.

There was a few dull thuds and a sharp pain in my body, but I ignored it. Fresh blood was so close that I could almost taste it.

The big skeleton finally lost strength and collapsed.

My body hurt all over. There was a big gash on my right arm and I could feel a dull pain in a few other areas. It seemed that the monster struggled more than the others before it stopped.

I didn't care though. The wounds I had would stop bleeding after a minute. It seemed like any cut would stop bleeding pretty quickly with my current body. And the wounds themselves would all get better when I finally got a proper meal.

I was giddy with excitement. I was looking so forward to the feeling of warm blood oozing out of my prey's body. I wondered what the next monster would taste like.

As I did that, the skeletons all disappeared, leaving their drops. I wanted to hurry, but there wasn't any harm in spending a few seconds to gather my loot and leave them in the next fountain while I went to feed. There wasn't anything in between me and my next meal anymore.

I only gathered the gems from the normal skeletons, but from the boss I got it's big breast plate. It was unfortunate, but it felt like a waste on me. Something that heavy would slow me down when I was currently a speed type. My long awaited top was going to go unused for a while.

The treasure chest also contained a breast plate in it for some reason, making me twitch.

Nonetheless, I grabbed it all and dragged them to the fountain past the boss room.

Nothing could lower my mood now that I would get my long anticipated meal.

To speed the process up, I left everything in the fountain room. My weapons, my loot, even my bag. I was only going to have breakfast, so I didn't want anything to weigh me down as I went to enjoy it.

While I couldn't muster the patience to fully clean up for my meal, I did at least wash my hands. It might not have any health effect for me, but being at least a baseline level of sanitary was etiquette.

With a big smile on my face, I headed off to the next floor.

After exiting the fountain tunnel, I was greeted with another cave of some sort. This time it was more of a grey colour, and the rock walls were much rougher, like it was a naturally formed cave.

I wondered what sort of monsters inhabited this floor. Not like it mattered.

(Whatever it is, I'll just grab it and sink my teeth in)

After my second turn, I was face to face with the first monster of the floor, and my smile instantly disappeared.

What stood in front of me was a giant, humanoid thing more than twice my height. But it's size wasn't the problem. Nor was the fact that it's skin was a dull brown with a metallic sheen. The problem was that what stood in front of me was obviously a golem. Another creature that had no blood.

"Why the hell!!!"

I was furious. I would've been happy with virtually anything as long as I could suck it's blood.

Tears crept out of my eyes. It was as if the universe was deliberately trying to torment me.

I ran at the golem and kicked it with all my strength. Pain ran up my leg, but I ignored it. The huge metal object toppled from the force I imparted onto it's dented midsection.

Without any delay, I jumped onto it and started to claw at it.

I wanted to release everything that had gotten pent up in me in the last floor and just let it all out on this big, cold, unfeeling piece of trash.

My hands hurt from the sharp edged as I tore the monstrosity apart with my claws, as I peeled away it's outer metallic shell and stabbed the glowing orb in it's torso.

The golem had stopped moving, so I got up. I felt empty. I was hungry, and miserable, and just felt like there was virtually nothing left to make me keep going.

I started to walk again. Hope against hope that it was just a fluke. That the universe didn't conspire against me.

Something seemed to have been left behind by the golem, but I didn't care. It wasn't going to conveniently be a blood bag or something.

I dragged my feet around one corner, then the next, and what greeted me was a giant. It was a light orangy brown colour, and almost the exact same shape as the previous golem.

That was it. I've had enough.

Tears wouldn't stop falling.

Unable to bear with it, I just ran away, all the way back to the fountain.

I just jumped into the fountain and moved to the far side and hid myself from both entrances, and just cried.

I was so hungry that it physically hurt, yet the dungeon had denied me three times. It was like it was saying that it didn't want me here or something.

Up until then, I thought of the dungeon as a paradise. A gift from the gods for vampires such as myself. But the reality was starting to seem more like that was an illusion. I can get stronger here, possibly extraordinarily so, but only if I could survive through this hell of constant hunger and denial.

I didn't have that sort of strength, and that was presuming that this wouldn't keep going until I collapsed and starved to death.

"This...I can't do this"

There was no way I could continue and finish this floor at this point. Not with how much hunger had weakened me. I wouldn't last that far.

My only option was to go back to the second floor and fill up on those disgusting bugs. I hated the idea, and despite everything I hesitated to do that.

And so, I cried. The second time in this life I cried. I held my knees and hid behind the fountain's pillar and cried my heart out.

"I wish I was back on the first floor..."

And everything went dark.