Chapter 29: Invisible Force
Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: PlumSauce
John’s chest rose and fell steadily, his eyes unable to leave Coraci’s neck. The scent of blood was close — too close — and Coraci had invited him to feed… In hunger and exhaustion, few young bloodkin could resist such temptation.
“Coraci, I…”
John’s fingertips began to tremble. He knew what he had become: eyes blood-red, pupils shrunk to pinpoints, skin losing its usual near-human color, turning pale and bluish.
If I could, he thought, I want to kiss that neck, not bite it.
As he gripped Coraci’s shoulder tightly, that thought surfaced in the deepest part of John’s mind.
Even long afterward, he wasn’t sure whether it was “the remnants of human reason” or “a side effect of fading sanity”. Now, he had no time to think — the instinct crushed that thought, burying it in the furthest corner of his mind.
He pressed Coraci against the wall and leaned down, burying his face in the other’s neck. Coraci shivered slightly, then immediately relaxed.
“So it really doesn’t hurt…” Coraci’s voice was faint — John couldn’t hear it clearly right now.
Over John’s shoulder, Coraci saw the demons by the pool growing restless. Maybe the spider’s pressure was too much for them; they couldn’t focus on the bewitching charm, Coraci thought vaguely.
His own thoughts didn’t last long. From lack of rest and continuous blood loss — including the time he’d cast a spell on the Lizardman’s heart — his consciousness grew hazy, and his body weakened.
John wrapped his arm tightly around Coraci’s back, preventing him from falling, like a scene straight out of a movie or novel about bloodkin feeding.
Syringes and blood bags could satisfy hunger, but not the fangs. The vampire’s sharp teeth longed to pierce skin, just like humans with skin hunger crave the feeling of a hug. John hadn’t used his teeth in so long that he felt a brief intoxication.
Suddenly, a vision flooded his mind. At that moment, he didn’t know what it was or that it was strange; he just accepted it silently.
At first, there were confining walls and complete darkness. Someone led him down a narrow corridor, an arched wooden door slowly opened, and a blinding light spilled out.
He saw instruments and tools he couldn’t name, a beautiful blonde woman speaking softly to him, the scent of coffee mixed with blood in the air. People walked back and forth, speaking in a language he didn’t understand. He was shouting a single word…
After a brief darkness, he saw another scene: he was running, thorns cutting his skin, a night owl flying over branches, the wind and screams near and far like a demon king calling a child into his arms. Someone ahead urged him on, took his hand, stretched out their arms wanting to embrace him.
Like a film cut into pieces, the vision didn’t last long. He saw endless sky, unknown white flowers swaying gently beside his head, and a man’s voice whispering in his ear, “I have something I must do. I cannot protect her anymore. Please help me one last time…”
Then came silence.
Until a howl from behind jolted John awake.
Bloodkin were defenseless while feeding but had an instinct to sense danger. That instinct stopped him, snapping him fully alert.
He held Coraci tightly and realized the other had lost consciousness. John’s mind was a mess; he could barely decide whether to make sure Coraci was okay first or face the demons.
The situation didn’t allow him to choose. The spider approached the pool’s edge, the mud-demons coughed harshly, jostling each other in panic. They knocked over the pepper bottle, which rolled and fell into the water. The Abyss minotaur shook its head — they had found food inside: two foreign creatures smelling of blood.
The Abyss minotaurs weren’t like the ones in human myths — they weren’t herbivores. They loved to eat faces, chewing on facial features like they were chewing on leaves, whether human or monster.
“Wait for me.” John gently laid Coraci against the wall and kissed the top of his head.
John turned toward the pool just as the minotaur lowered its head and charged at him. He grabbed the monster’s sharp horns and used its momentum to throw it down.
The mud-demons closed in. They were no match for John; he threw them one by one into the pool. The black netting instantly stuck to them as the spider’s mouthparts moved closer to them.
While John was dealing with the mud-demons, the Abyss minotaur crawled back up and lunged toward Coraci by the wall.
Its throat was pierced from behind, and it collapsed heavily three steps away from Coraci. John pulled his hand free from the dark, bloody flesh and looked up to see Coraci’s eyes open.
“Use its horns,” Coraci said briefly.
John immediately understood what Coraci meant. He tore off a horn from the minotaur’s corpse to use as a weapon. His goal wasn’t to defeat the spider but to break the netting. Of course, that wasn’t easy — the horn kept sticking to the black threads, and it took him considerable effort to rip open a gap.
The mud-demons were still struggling, and the spider’s attention remained focused on them for the moment. John returned to the wall and wrapped his arms around Coraci. Then, using his bloodkin speed, he leapt through the gap in an instant.
The black strands sensed new prey approaching and coiled behind them in pursuit, almost catching on to their legs.
Birdsong came from nearby, and the leaves on the ground made a rustling sound as if pushed by a breeze… When John opened his eyes again, they were lying in a forest at dusk.
John held Coraci tightly, and Coraci cradled the Lizardman’s heart against his chest. They lay still for a few seconds before slowly getting to their feet. Their clothes were completely dry, and the spider and demons were gone.
“Where are we?” John asked, looking around. It seemed like an uninhabited wild jungle.
“We need to find where people live first,” Coraci said. “Sidov’s old lair might be far from West Bay City. When he uses his ‘anchor point’ to return, he can be teleported straight inside the building, but coming out from the inside doesn’t necessarily put us anywhere predictable.”
Coraci was very weak. For a human who had gone so long without sleep, food, and with heavy blood loss, standing and walking was already a great effort.
John, however, had regained his strength. Thinking back to his feeding, he felt ashamed — yet amid that shame, he sensed something was off.
He had seen a vision. Though he couldn’t recall every detail, he remembered the general images. In the last scene of the vision, someone had said a sentence, but now he couldn’t recall what it was.
In some movies and novels, bloodkin could see memories of their prey when using their fangs to feed. It was a romantic fantasy; vampires couldn’t actually do that — unless they were being corrupted in turn.
When feeding, the “food” would fall into a numb paralysis. The feeder wasn’t better off either — if the prey’s soul was too strong and decided to control the feeder, the feeder could be easily subdued. The male Witch Blood Descendant trainee once proudly said his ancestors had lured vampires to feed. While the vampire was intoxicated by blood, they blended chaotic memories with control commands, confusing the vampire first, then implanting the commands into its soul to control the bloodkin in return.
John was quite sure Coraci wasn’t controlling him. What puzzled him more was the amount of power he’d gained from Coraci’s blood — it was far beyond what an ordinary human could provide.
Maybe it was because Coraci was a Knower… John told himself that.
Now wasn’t the time to discuss this. He planned to tell Coraci slowly about the vision once they returned to the Association.
As night fell, they found a path through the dense forest. Following it, they saw an abandoned hotel.
The hotel looked like it had been built before the 1960s. Coraci said there were invisible enchantments on its exterior walls. Judging by the scale, this had to be the place where they’d just been. They had escaped, but inside the building, countless low-level demons and strange creatures were still struggling and fighting.
“Even if it’s just ruins, at least it means we’re not far from civilization,” John said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Coraci nodded. “Just now, you sounded exactly like Bear Grylls.” (Note 1)
“Who’s that?”
“Never seen his show? He’s the British special forces guy who’s eaten just about everything.”
…
In the Association’s office area, the receptionist turned on rock music, cranking the volume to the max and blasting it through the speakers in every room. The screams from the isolation chamber had become unbearably loud… They feared the companies on the adjacent floors might hear them otherwise.
A few hours earlier, Sidov had finally given in for his own survival.
He could sense that Coraci and John had already left his old lair. There was no point in holding out any longer. He agreed to reveal the location to the Association so they could mount a rescue — on the condition that he would be spared.
The Association agreed not to kill him but to exile him back to the Abyss. Stripped of his resistance, Sidov allowed the exorcists to prepare the magic array, awaiting the moment of banishment.
“Besides that, we have one more thing to do to you,” Lucian said as the array began to hum to life, stepping toward Sidov.
He circled the demon, pulled out a sharp silver blade, and began slicing off the bony wings.
Sidov’s screams tore through the room. Outside, Instructor Jere and the other staff listened, stunned.
After a while, the screams stopped. Lucian had removed the demon’s wings and carved a sigil into the exposed shoulder blades, ensuring Sidov could never return to the human world.
The door to the isolation chamber opened, and Carolyn walked in, dragging the handcuffed Mitchel behind her.
“Hey, demon. To thank you for your help, here’s a little bonus,” she said, pushing Mitchel into the magic array, which began glowing red.
Sidov, battered and bruised, smiled — a rare bright moment after more than a dozen grueling hours.
Mitchel tried to escape the array but didn’t get far. Sidov grabbed his ankle and dragged him back. The red light swallowed them both, the scent of the Abyss filling the room before the glow quickly shrank and then vanished along with the red lines on the floor.
“Happy honeymoon!” Carolyn said to the last flicker of the array’s light.
“Now we need to figure out how to find Coraci and John,” Instructor Jere said as they returned to the small conference room. He opened a computer and began scanning maps.
Lucian lost interest in the conversation and excused himself, with Liz escorting him downstairs.
Carolyn watched the two formally dressed figures’ backs. If not for the large age difference, the Blackmoon siblings could almost be mistaken for different-gender versions of the same person — same hair color, eye color, and equally serious and refined expressions. But where Lucian’s calm was icy, Liz seemed much warmer.
Back in the conference room, Instructor Jere and the staff continued their discussion.
“Coraci didn’t bring a phone, and John’s phone can’t be reached. Should we just go look for them directly?”
“That’s probably the only option. The area is huge; finding them will be difficult.”
“Not necessarily. If they managed to escape, they should be close to a nearby village. With John around, a vampire’s sense of smell rivals a hunting dog’s — they can get out of the forest quickly.”
“Where did the demon say they were?” Carolyn asked.
“In the demon’s secret base. Of course, by now they should have escaped…” The receptionist, Erica, opened her laptop. “Do we need to arrange ID and plane tickets immediately?”
Instructor Jere nodded. “Yes, ASAP. Also, there’s no Association branch there. We should contact the local Demon Hunter Society and ask them to keep watch.”
“They need plane tickets? Where exactly are they?” Carolyn leaned closer to the screen.
“In Romania. The Danube Delta.”
Author’s notes:
Note 1: Bear Grylls is… well, the man at the top of the food chain. Surely everyone knows him by now, but just in case, here’s a little note~
… Somehow, in a way, Sidov and Mitchel count as a happy ending, right? Looks up at the sky
==========
Here’s a little extra (like before) — some fun tidbits!
These are not authoritative, only related to this story, and purely fictional. If there’s any similarity to reality… well, maybe I’ve uncovered some hidden truth of the world (…):
Demons living among humans:
Sometimes, they are actually weaker — well, weaker compared to themselves, not compared to humans. They’re still way stronger than the vast majority of humans.
It’s like being out of one’s element, like water and soil not agreeing with you.
Some magic can only be used by demons, not humans; others are for humans only, not for demons, or at least it’s very hard for demons to learn.
Humans might not survive more than a few minutes in the Abyss, while demons live pretty comfortably in the human world due to their overall superior abilities. But they’re not stronger in the Abyss itself.
Why do they still want to come here? Because the human world has more fun stuff, tastier food, and is very fashionable (hey). Also, they’re just a bit weaker compared to themselves and don’t meet powerful exorcists everywhere — most humans are weak, so demons aren’t afraid.
By the way, coming to the human world is very hard — much harder than sneaking or migrating between countries for humans.
Mortal-born vs. Abyssal species:
It’s like the saying, “On this side of the river, these oranges; on the other side, those oranges…” They’re related but very different. Humans aren’t very strong. Among Abyssal species, apart from low-level demons (the dumb ones who just eat and sleep like monsters), basically all are stronger than humans. Some humans might not even beat low-level demons.
Bone wings:
No wings < bat wings < bone wings < feathered wings
That’s roughly the order.
Demon habitats:
The Abyss ≠ Hell.
To reduce religious overtones and describe more like a “magical nature” (…), I use “Abyss” instead of “Hell”. You can think of it like a demon world in many stories.
Of course, it’s inspired by the idea of Hell, but it’s not the same thing.
In this world, there may be devils or fallen angels in a “hell”, but that’s not the Abyss. Maybe because of other reasons, it only has a one-way connection with the human world, so those things don’t appear here…
If many powerful and terrifying things exist in this world, then strict limits must hold them back. Absolutely. Otherwise, humans wouldn’t be as prosperous as they are today~
Oh, and Sidov without his bone wings is indeed much weaker in the Abyss, but he is at least at the level of an ordinary Abyssal species.
As for the mortal-born Mitchel… generally, mortal-born don’t dare return to the Abyss — they’re afraid they won’t survive, hahaha… So of course… I believe Sidov won’t let him die.
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