Chapter 452: The Return of Luke Moon

“Is this appearance acceptable to you, Jonathan?” the creature rumbled, its voice echoing with a depth that shook the air.

“N-no… c-can you go back to the old one?”

The devil stared him down. “You failed, Jonathan. You were supposed to kill that Luke.”

As the creature closed in, Jonathan kept retreating. His mind spun in panic, scrambling for any way out, but there wasn’t one.

“I… I tried.”

“Tried?” The creature’s voice was calm, yet simmering with irritation. “After I helped you find a sword infused with disease, gave you a familiar, and even a class mutation.”

It looked at him with contempt. “And still you failed, even with everything handed to you.”

The creature snorted like an enraged bull. “Such a pitiful fool. You were easily subdued by a dying human with barely a sliver of HP. What do you have left, Jonathan? Other than being an even more insignificant worm. That’s your fate now, crawling through the filth of your own rot.”

Slowly the monster began to warp, shrinking until it took the shape of a man with black hair, a goatee, obsidian horns curling from his head, and eyes like a serpent’s. “The mistake was mine, Jonathan. For thinking someone like you had value. That someone weak and pathetic could surpass that Luke. And even against a frail human, you still managed to lose.”

Jonathan’s fist tightened, but he didn’t dare speak.

“Are you… going to take my soul?”

“Your soul, Jonathan?” the figure said as he settled onto his throne. “And why would I want the soul of a loser?”

He pointed a finger at Jonathan, and a scroll materialized before him. “I’m a Guide. I’m here to help you with the post tutorial phase. This scroll explains everything. Good luck.”

Jonathan began reading, his body still trembling whenever he glanced at the demon. He was convinced he’d pissed himself, though he didn’t feel anything wet. As he read, he understood: this place was a dream. That explained why he wasn’t actually soaked.

He didn’t ask anything else. The scroll laid out everything, from the gods’ invitations to the way he could access a shop.

In the past, Jonathan had earned the class mutation Plague Mercenary, but when he reached level fifty, he switched to Bounty Hunter, abandoning the path of the Blight order. All for a single goal.

[Blight has invited you to a conversation.]

More notifications appeared, one after another.

“It’s up to you, Jonathan. Choose a god to speak with, or deal with everything on your own with me,” the demon said, his tapping fingers on the throne betraying his impatience.

“I’ll… choose a god,” Jonathan replied.

Among all of them, there was one he wanted to speak to. Not about the tutorial’s reward shop; he doubted it held what he sought. He wanted a true path to power. Something that would make him lethal in battle. And of everything he’d gained in the tutorial, items, weapons, skills, there was one thing he valued above all.

The god emerged through a doorway, a monstrous humanoid creature. Just looking at it sent a chill down Jonathan’s spine. He felt like the being could kill him with a glance. And that was exactly the kind of power he wanted.

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“Who would’ve thought I’d run into you here, Vampire God King,” the demon remarked.

***

Charlie had fallen asleep against Luke’s shoulder. That was new for them. It was the first time she had ever slept. She could drift off the same way he could use Meditation; the vampire slipped into something close to hibernation and recovered stamina and mana far faster.

Is that why they always slept in coffins in the movies?

Luke glanced at Charlie’s Blood Core.

[Blood Core: 19/100]

It had dropped by one point. He did the math. Ever since she’d fed, she’d spent more than three hours outside his soul. Between breakfast and dozing on the bus beside him, that meant…

Charlie burned eight to ten Blood Energy a day just to maintain her Vampiric Hunger, without using a single skill.

That was a lot. Way more than he’d expected. He’d hoped she would spend maybe one point a day, which would give her twenty days without needing to feed. Learning that those twenty points barely lasted two days forced him to rethink everything.