UCPA Chapter 77: Against the Light

Chapter 77: Against the Light

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: PlumSauce

 

When Liz and Carolyn arrived, Carl was crawling on the ground, crying — half from pain, half from fear. His body felt weak, and he couldn’t even stand while leaning on a tree, crying so hard that his tiny fangs showed.

Liz’s flashlight beam fell on his face. He squinted, and in the light saw a golden-haired girl advancing toward him, fierce and determined… For a moment, Carl felt as if he were seeing a deity. Trembling like a tormented groundhog, he reached out his hand.

Carolyn nudged his hand aside with her foot and crouched to place a blood pack in front of him. Liz adjusted the beam to a softer glow.

“My light… my holy grace… my revered princess…” the bloodkin mumbled incoherently.

“Hurry and drink it! Stand up!” Carolyn tugged at his hair, pressing his face against the pack. “Do you want me to shove it between your teeth?”

“Be gentle,” Liz raised an eyebrow.

The golden-haired girl stood, frowning. “Not good at it. Who have I ever been gentle with?”

“Mariana and me,” Liz said.

“Thanks… I’m honored?”

 

By the time John arrived with the two partners from the Engrity company, the construct was already dead.

“Dead” wasn’t quite accurate; it hadn’t truly been alive.

It had permanently lost mobility and structural integrity, charred by fire beyond recognition. Its body lay in fragments, its head shattered by a heavy blow.

John was stunned. Only Coraci could have done this — but Coraci was nowhere to be found.

Mark and Alette were unbothered; the construct would have needed to be terminated anyway.

John recounted the words the construct had said, asking what they meant. Mark explained that the “one who gave me life, cared for me, whom I loved” hadn’t been a real human; these were designed beings within the false world.

In the original design, an evil necromancer created the construct with a soul, and the construct and the necromancer’s apprentice acted out a story of love and hatred — all preordained. When the space was upgraded to a Physical Sandbox, those characters were removed — erased entirely, vanished without a trace. But the construct remained unchanged, retaining its former emotions, living alone as a monster in the forest of the fantasy-adventure world.

“Discomforting, isn’t it…” John muttered, staring at the pile of remains.

“Yeah,” Mark said. “Humanlike creations that closely mimic humans are…unsettling. I’ve never seen real constructs, so I don’t know if they’re like this…”

“No,” John interrupted, his voice cold. “Not constructs. I mean these Engrity sandboxes. They’re truly unsettling.”

 

They didn’t continue together. Each team member spread out across the virtual space, searching for lost people. Every half-day, they regrouped at the empty village. Alette led anyone who wanted to leave through the rift; the rest continued searching.

A day and a half later, John wandered alone through the undulating mountain forest and stumbled into a cave.

It was close to the canyon where they’d encountered the construct. As soon as he entered, John sensed it might have been the construct’s dwelling.

A few feet inside the entrance, a worn lantern rested on the floor. The stone walls had niches carved into them for holding torches. Further in, faded wool blankets hung; crude wooden beds were topped with thick quilts. Another chamber held weapons, winter gear, water buckets, and even a wooden goblet in the corner with a bunch of withered flowers.

John stood there, unable to move for a long time. The scene was simple but undeniably lived-in. This was a home. He thought of the construct saying, “Long, long ago, I loved someone…” and of its destruction, reduced to a pile of broken bones. He couldn’t see it as merely virtual anymore.

He pressed a hand against the stone wall, closing and reopening his eyes. There was a strange sensation in his palm — something on the wall he hadn’t noticed earlier.

Bloodkin eyesight allowed him to see in the dark. The walls were carved with dense short vertical lines, stretching from one chamber to another. The construct had used them to count days.

John followed the lines out of the chamber. At some point, the marks became chaotic, sparse, and eventually disappeared. Perhaps from that day forward, the construct had stopped counting.

It was now daytime. Against the light, someone stood at the cave entrance. They seemed to want to step inside, but hesitated, shoulders slumped, unsure.

“Coraci.” John’s voice echoed slightly in the stone cave. Coraci stood there, motionless.

“He was going to attack me,” Coraci stammered, voice low. “It’s true… He fixed his arm himself. He was going to attack me…”

John’s biggest concern wasn’t that. “Where have you been? Have you been following us all along?” In the sandbox world, he couldn’t sense Coraci’s position — but Coraci had tracked him flawlessly.

“I know something’s wrong with me!” Coraci suddenly shouted. “So…maybe it’s hard to believe…but…it’s true. I had no choice but to destroy him…”

Before he could finish, John was suddenly in front of him, pulling him into a tight embrace, smothering Coraci’s last words into the hollow of his neck.

When facing the construct’s corpse, John had felt a shiver — not from the scene itself, but from the subtle fear of Coraci, of how much he had changed in three years, and the uncertainty of what he might become.

Now, that same fear hit him again, sharp and undeniable.

He wanted to say: I know. You must have had a reason. I trust you… But the words wouldn’t come out. He didn’t know what to do. He could only hold Coraci tight. He wasn’t even sure who drew more comfort from it — Coraci or himself.

“Were you just trying to explain that?” John whispered into Coraci’s ear.

“Yes. It’s important.”

“Coraci… I don’t want to deceive you,” John said after a moment, letting go and resting his hands on Coraci’s shoulders. “Seeing the construct’s remains… or rather, its fragments… I was surprised. But whether it was out of trust in you or in rational judgment, I don’t think you did anything wrong.”

Coraci shook his head lightly. “It’s not about right or wrong.”

“Then what is it?”

“I can’t really say,” Coraci sighed. “I don’t regret what I did. But afterward…something felt off. Maybe the original ‘Deville Coraci ’ wasn’t like this — different from ‘Coraci Devlin’…”

John started to interrupt, but Coraci held up a hand. “While following you, I kept thinking. Today, it was a fiend, a construct… Tomorrow, what else might I decide to kill? I didn’t notice it before, like a person without a protractor cannot measure angles. But when I found you, when I saw Liz and the others… everything came back. I realized that, even though I haven’t fallen into darkness, I’ve already drifted off my path. Just a little, subtle, but no one can guarantee I won’t drift further in the future.”

“You won’t,” John said firmly. “I won’t let it happen.”

They were silent for a long while, until John said, “This afternoon we will be meeting at the abandoned village. Engrity staff will take another group out. You will leave today.”

Coraci looked up at him. “Of course… My god, you used an imperative again.”

“Uh…sorry…”

“It’s fine. I was willing anyway. We really can’t operate together. I’m afraid Carolyn and the others might recognize me.”

Just as he was about to move, Coraci glanced at John. “You’re not doing well. I can see it.”

“In what way?”

“You haven’t eaten for days. You’re weak.”

“I’m fine. There’s no danger here now, and I’ll be leaving soon enough.”

“Don’t you need it?” Coraci stepped closer, tilting his head up. “You also know…a little of my blood gives you a lot of strength.”

“No…”

“Think of it as a proof of trust?” Coraci smiled, teasing, tempting John as if he had to.

Smiling back but unyielding, John said,“If you really want to help me, then close your eyes now.”

He leaned in, tilting his head to kiss Coraci on the lips. Encircling him against the stone wall, John’s hand lightly cradled the young human’s neck, feeling the pulse of blood beneath the skin.

Coraci’s warm breath brushed his cheek; every broken inhale and heartbeat rang vividly in John’s superhuman senses.

When their lips parted, John gently brushed Coraci’s mouth corner with a peck. To be able to kiss like this…freely…was unimaginable for him before. Calm on the surface, his excitement inside was almost stronger than hunger.

“Have you kissed another vampire before?” John asked.

“What?” Coraci feigned surprise. “I had a wife, am divorced… What do you think?”

“No, no. Smith doesn’t count. I mean…a vampire.”

Coraci genuinely frowned this time. “Does it make a difference?”

“Yes,” John said, “just now — you licked the gums near my fangs! You did that on purpose.”

Coraci lowered his head slightly, curling his hand into a fist and pressing it to his lips. “That… was just a sudden thought. Last time, in the abandoned village…outside that house, when you kissed me, you lightly bit my tongue with your fangs. It felt…kind of strange.”

John watched him closely. “Your ears are red…”

“Oh, are they? So what,” Coraci stepped away from the stone wall, putting a bit of distance between them. “You too. You think bloodkin don’t blush at all?”

“Do we?” John asked.

“You do,” Coraci said. “Don’t forget, bloodkin have blood flowing through them — not pumped by a heart, but stirred by the soul. It’s slow and covered by the aura of the undead. When you get emotionally excited, your face flushes like a human’s — most people just can’t see it. But under Eyes of Truth, it’s perfectly clear.”

“Wait… Then how did my face look just now?” John called after him as Coraci started to leave. “Was it… black?”

“You want to know?”

“Yes. Tell me the truth.”

Coraci thought, One more command sentence. Well, he didn’t really care. “You should know that usually, bloodkin look a bit like corpses to me. You have that bluish tint. When you get excited, you look a bit better — like a corpse that hasn’t been dead very long.”

As Coraci walked away, a strange thought flashed through John’s mind. For you, I wish I could stay emotionally excited all the time.

He said, “See you in a few days,” and found himself looking forward to the morning when Coraci would return home.

As for whether the construct had actually attacked Coraci, John didn’t want to think about it. Everything was over. He was too afraid to dwell on it.

 

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