Chapter 92: The Former Blackmoon
Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: PlumSauce
“I have a question,” John asked at this time. “Don’t laugh at me — I don’t really understand these things. Just how powerful can a devil actually be? I know that a soul breaking free from the sacrificial rite grows stronger, but how strong would this devil become?”
Coraci thought for a moment. “Roughly as strong as…a bunch of me?”
“And it would spread,” Liz said, cradling a book in her arms. “We’ve never witnessed a devil soul awakened from a sacrificial rite, but we can look at the records to see what devils used to be like.”
She flipped open the thick book to a marked page. “To keep Carolyn, Carl, and the others from getting lost, I won’t recite the spell details. I’ll just mention some representative events. For example, the domain bloodkin Ruwe family perished under a devil attack, and once, the Templar Order lost a thousand men in a single night while fighting devils…”
Coraci said, “No need to be too pessimistic. Think of the past — various beings once joined forces and wiped out every devil…except me. So why couldn’t we win again? Even if the sacrifice grows stronger, there’s still only one of him. We have the Association, the hunters, and dark creatures scattered everywhere — we’re countless. There will always be a way to kill him. Let him come out.”
“You make it sound like a world war,” Instructor Jere reminded him. “How many ordinary people would get dragged into this?”
Coraci smiled. “If that’s the case, I have a suggestion. It might be worth trying.”
“What is it?”
“It’s an ancient form of magic that’s rarely seen nowadays. Because of its high cost and long preparation time, it’s considered impractical, so very few are willing to use it.”
John guessed what Coraci meant; after all, they had been through it together. “You mean…”
“Yes. A Physical Sandbox space.”
“A sandbox space!” The exorcists gasped. “In theory, it could work. We could use the Blackmoon family’s land as the cultivation pool and even include the sacrifice inside the sandbox. That would certainly reduce casualties. But wouldn’t the devil break free from it?”
“Perhaps not,” Liz said, lifting her eyes from the brittle pages of her book. “According to surviving records, casters in the past once used sandbox spaces against devils. To protect densely populated regions, they trapped both themselves and the devil inside until they either won or died. But there are two problems.”
She turned to Coraci. “First, the records suggest devils can’t wreck a sandbox space, but a revived sacrifice is stronger than devils of old. Second, even if it can’t be destroyed, the devil could still walk out of a sandbox space through a proper exit. There are many such records. As far as I know, Coraci himself walked out of one not long ago — the exits and entrances don’t have the ability to distinguish between races.”
“We have a way,” Coraci said, planting his hands on the table with a smile. “If we cast a bind spell with his true name on the exit, he won’t be able to leave.”
The exorcists all stared at him. One finally spoke. “Uh…let me confirm. The devil’s true name…that’s also your true name?”
“Of course. I already admitted that.”
“And if we cast a spell with your true name…you’re not worried?”
“Worried about what? That I’ll be bound too?” Coraci shook his head. “I’m not worried. For example…if I wanted to kill everyone in this room right now, you wouldn’t be able to stop me. True-name magic can’t be used in time. You’d have no way to deal with me, so you’d have no choice but to work with me. Likewise, if someday you used my true name against me, I wouldn’t be able to stop you — I’d have no choice but to yield.
“So right now, whether you live depends on whether I want to slaughter. In the future, whether I live will depend on whether you trust me. See? Since neither of us really has any choice, we can only walk this road together. What’s there to worry about?”
Everyone knew Coraci’s words weren’t just a metaphor. He truly did have the ability to kill every single person present.
Maybe someone could “dissuade” him — but no one could “stop” him. At least, not anyone in this room.
John tugged his forearm and lowered his voice. “Coraci…”
“What is it?”
“Your tone sounded a little too frightening…”
“Oh…”
Coraci lowered his head, staring for a while at the floral patterns woven into the Hilton home’s carpet. “Sorry. I was telling the truth, but my way of putting it was…inappropriate. I just wanted you all to know that my decisions were my own, not dependent on whether you believe me or not. Right now, the most urgent matter is dealing with the demon sacrifice.”
After speaking, he tilted his head and whispered to John, “Did I scare you?”
John nodded, then shook his head. “Mm…no. Actually, you scared everyone.”
Not everyone, to be exact. For instance, Erica, who had been working at the dining table downstairs, hadn’t heard the exchange at all.
She rushed upstairs, waving Liz’s phone in her hand — the one Liz had left in the living room. “Hey, where’s Liz?”
“What is it?” Liz stood up.
“You got a call. Sorry, I answered by mistake. I keep thinking this place is like the Association’s front desk…”
“It’s fine. Who was it?”
“You’d better hurry over to the hospital,” Erica said. “It was the doctor. He said Lucian’s condition doesn’t look good.”
The bullet had entered from the back and torn through his abdomen, wreaking a severe chain of damage inside Lucian’s body — multiple organs and tissues had been ruptured, bleeding heavily. Now infection had set in as well.
Perhaps because he had been worried about the Blackmoon family’s affairs, Lucian had at first forced himself to stay conscious. But now he had slipped into fevered unconsciousness. Several of his vital organs had begun to fail, and the readings on the monitors hovered at dangerous thresholds.
Smith had stayed behind at the hospital for everyone’s sake. Since he could read surface thoughts, if Lucian woke but could not move, Smith could know instantly what Lucian needed.
“His condition is deteriorating,” Smith told Liz. “At any moment, he could…”
“Did he say anything to you?” Liz asked.
“If you mean what he was thinking, yes. He’s aware of his own situation. He said he wanted to die, but he was too afraid to do it.”
Liz leaned against the wall, twisting her hands together and tipping her head back slightly. She understood exactly what that meant: Lucian was obviously in unbearable pain — anyone would long for release under such torment. Even plunging into darkness the next moment would feel easier than enduring the agony.
However, Lucian knew he couldn’t die. If he did, the Blackmoon family would be reduced to just Liz, and the sacrifice’s restraints would weaken by another layer. The devil could break free that much faster.
More than that, he and Liz were each other’s only remaining family. Even without the devil, neither of them wanted to lose the other.
“Liz, I have a suggestion,” Smith said, taking her by the shoulder and easing her into a seat. “Before you arrived, I communicated with Lucian for less than thirty seconds. Actually, it wasn’t even a real conversation. I asked him one question, he gave one answer, and then his mind locked onto a single phrase. After that, I couldn’t read him anymore.”
“What did you say to each other?” Liz asked.
“I told him,‘There was one way for you to live. But even if you chose it, to the devil, it would be no different from your death.’ I asked him if he was willing to choose life under those terms.”
Baffled, Liz stared at the shapeshifter, not immediately understanding what he meant.
Smith went on. “Lucian couldn’t answer me clearly, but I could sense what he meant to express. He said, Liz, he wanted you to be the one to decide.”
Liz looked at him in confusion. “You mean…are you talking about soul-transfer sorcery through the heart? That won’t work. The Blackmoon family may have studied ancient magic for generations, but we’ve always held a tradition against desecrating corpses.”
“No, no — not that. That sorcery requires a corpse, and we don’t have a suitable one. Besides — look at Coraci, look at Mariana. After a soul transfer, a caster’s abilities, their physical agility, even their sensitivity to spells and ingredients — all of it fades or deteriorates. They have to start adapting all over again. I don’t think Lucian would want to become a clumsy, powerless ordinary man.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
Smith hesitated, still choosing his words carefully. “It’s like this. This way will allow him to keep his personality, his appearance, everything he’s had until now. Plus, he wouldn’t leave you. At the same time, once he uses this way to survive, his life would no longer belong to the Blackmoon family line. He’d become an undead being. The bloodline binding would rest solely on you.”
“I get it!” Liz’s eyes lit up. “I agree — I’ve been thinking the same thing. My god, that really is a solution!”
She immediately dialed a colleague from the Association. “How could I not have thought of this — we have several vampires, don’t we?”
When he received Liz’s call and heard that she wanted to save Lucian through a bloodkin’s First Embrace, John’s first reaction was to shout.
“No! No! Absolutely not!”
After a pause, he added, “Of course, I’m not saying he can’t become bloodkin. It’s just…I can’t be the one to do it!”
“What exactly is she asking you to do?” Coraci asked, glancing up from the ancient book he was flipping through.
John clenched and unclenched his fists in the air, visibly torn. “No, Liz. I really can’t. It’s not just a matter of Lucian’s will. More importantly, I don’t have the experience to guarantee his safety.”
At those words, Coraci immediately understood what Liz was asking. “She wants Lucian turned into bloodkin?”
John tried again to persuade her. “You know how strict the First Embrace is. There can’t be a single mistake. It has to be done by an experienced bloodkin. The transformation is agonizing — not so much physically, but in the soul. During the first few hours afterward, the newborn must be guided and soothed by someone experienced, or they won’t survive intact. Their body or even their personality could come out damaged.”
“I know,” Liz said. “But the success rate for a bloodkin’s First Embrace is very high — much higher than lycanthropic infection. I believe you can do it. What, do you want me to ask Carl instead?”
“Neither Carl nor I can do this!” John insisted. If he had still been human, he would have been sweating buckets. “I really can’t take that responsibility. Lucian wouldn’t want me to, either. If the First Embrace worked, I’d end up as his…his elder. That’s just too weird.”
Liz nearly shouted into the phone. “I don’t care if Lucian feels happy about it. I just want him to survive!”
Coraci motioned for John to hand him the phone. “Lizbeth,” he said, “I have a proposal. But both we and Lucian may need to wait a little longer.”
“How long?” Liz asked.
Coraci pulled up a webpage on his laptop. John leaned over his shoulder, and familiar words jumped out at him.
“At the very least,” Coraci said, “two hours. At most, no more than half a day. Can Lucian hold on that long?”
“I don’t know.” Liz gazed toward the depths of the monitoring room, though from where she stood she couldn’t actually see Lucian at all. “I don’t know if he can last that long.”
Coraci pointed at the phone number displayed on the webpage, then gestured downstairs. John immediately understood what he meant and went to contact the person they needed.
“Liz, the man I want to reach is somewhere around Loch Ness right now,” Coraci said. “If he can take a private jet immediately, the whole trip should take about two hours.”
“Who are you trying to bring here?”
“Arthur Menkovár — or rather, Arthur Blackmoon.”
Author’s Note:
On the First Embrace:
Think of it this way — if someone was already dying and then received a vampire’s First Embrace, their body would be restored to health. However, if that person had been born deaf, or had already lost a leg, those conditions would remain unchanged.
On the other hand, if the person had an open wound still bleeding at the time of the Embrace, that wound would be healed during the transformation.
Here are some examples:
- Someone dying of illness → after the Embrace, the illness would vanish, and they would become a healthy bloodkin.
- Someone severely wounded, bleeding heavily → the new injuries would be healed, and they would rise as a healthy bloodkin.
- Someone with scars from ten years ago → the scars would still remain after becoming bloodkin.
- Someone shot and currently under treatment → the pain and bleeding would vanish, but the cavity or fragments left inside the body would remain.
- Someone shot long ago, now suffering nerve compression from fragments → after transformation, they would no longer feel the nerve pain, but the fragments would still be lodged there.
- Someone who had lost an arm to gunfire → they would rise as a healthy bloodkin, but still missing that arm.
- Someone cut in half (or suffering a similarly catastrophic wound) and dying → the Embrace would fail, and the person would still die.
- Someone blind → if the blindness was caused by disease, the transformation would restore sight; if caused by missing eyes or similar damage, they would remain blind.
- Someone who had a kidney removed but was still alive → after the Embrace, they would be healthy, but still without a kidney.
- Someone with missing foot tissue who couldn’t walk → they would still be unable to walk, even as bloodkin.
That’s the general idea. In other words, the Embrace restores whatever is in progress — disease or fresh injury — but it does not undo permanent loss or past damage.
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