Steve Chapter 906: Blah... blah... (Patreon)

“Did I… lose?”

Shaken by Fang Mo’s thunderous shout, Alucard stared blankly at the white-haired loli in front of him. “How… did you do that?”

“What exactly are you asking about?” Fang Mo shot back.

“Those who throw themselves into the abyss can’t be saved.”

Alucard looked dazed—hair a mess, eyes unfocused, like a dying man on his last breath. “For a monster like me, the nightmare has no end… I can only wander in the dark forever, until some pitiful death swallows me.”

He’d barely finished when—

Without warning, Fang Mo smashed a fist straight into his face.

“…crk!?”

Now reduced to a mortal, Alucard took the punch full on; his nose collapsed, and a mouthful of blood sprayed out.

It hurt—

but the pain actually cleared his head.

A weird sour numbness bloomed in his mouth, blood flooding his tongue with a rusty, salty reek; a few teeth had been knocked loose. The feeling was both familiar and alien… and somehow, it made Alucard so moved his eyes blurred.

How many years had it been?

How many?

Blood no longer tasted rich and sweet—now it was like iron filings, like some rank, salty sludge that made you gag.

And yet that nauseating taste…

calmed him, filled him with a profound, quiet peace.

Just then, Fang Mo grabbed a fistful of his hair and hauled him upright. “What nonsense are you spouting now, small fry?”

“‘Those who dive into the abyss can’t be saved’?”

“‘A monster’s nightmare never ends’?”

“What dog-donkey drivel! There’s no nightmare you can’t wake up from! Those who fall into the abyss can absolutely be saved—and why? Because I said so!”

Clutching his head, Fang Mo roared with imperious force: “You tried it just now, didn’t you? And the result? The result is you were fated to be punched awake by these two hands! Tch—there’s nothing in this world that can’t be corrected!”

“Personality? Thought? Bloodline? My fists can rewrite the lot!”

“The world is what’s wrong?”

“Fine! Then I’ll keep punching it until it fixes itself!”

Riding the high, Fang Mo suddenly drove a fist into the ground. White light erupted; the next second, the whole of London began to tremble uneasily.

Deafening booms rolled everywhere, as if the earth’s veins were tearing.

Everyone felt their bodies sink without cause; the distant horizon dropped, vanishing below the edge of the world. It looked like the world was collapsing—though in truth, the opposite was happening.

“Wh-what… did she do!?”

Someone noticed the clouds overhead seemed to be getting bigger.

“Wait! Don’t tell me—”

Unlike the others, Integra’s face changed the instant she saw it—her worst fear had come true.

London…

really was taking off.

“Wang Jiangchen! What do you think you’re doing!?”

No time to fret over Alucard—Integra charged forward without thinking. “This city’s already drowned in filth… can’t you let it go!?”

“What? I’m just teaching this vampire a lesson!”

Fang Mo looked utterly unfazed. “As long as the magnetic fi—no, as long as your fists are hard enough, your power is fierce enough, and your will is firm enough, there’s nothing you can’t set right!”

“That’s… enough…”

Right then, the Alucard in Fang Mo’s grip spoke up.

He steadied himself with effort, wiped the blood from his face. “The proof is right in front of me… Even if I don’t want to believe it, it’s useless. You don’t have to keep going.”

“Mm, that’s better.”

Fang Mo finally smiled. “So—will you leave this place with me?”

“Alucard!”

Integra couldn’t hold back. She reached out, as if to stop him. “Don’t—”

“No. Sorry, Integra.” Alucard was calm. Bloody-faced, but smiling. “I—the immortal king—have died.”

“B-but…”

Integra started to speak—

when a strange sound rolled through the air.

A wet, bubbling gurgle, like thick liquid set to boil; an eerie unease spread outward.

“Hm?”

Hearing it, Fang Mo swept her gaze around.

The ground nearby was bleeding. The blood pulsed as if alive, squirming, congealing into black-red shadows—uncannily like Alucard’s tricks.

“This is…”

Fang Mo frowned.

Others began to notice too.

“What’s with this blood?”

Walter, lying on the ground not far off, stared. The blood was slowly crawling toward him.

Flat on his back, he watched it pool before his face, forming a shallow, gleaming puddle—radiating a powerful temptation, coaxing him to lick it.

“This is…”

Walter blinked, dazed. “Are they trying to turn me into a vampire?”

He wasn’t stupid; after working for Integra—a vampire expert—for so long, he knew the lore about True Ancestors.

Aside from pure men and women bitten by vampires—

there’s another way: under the right conditions, swallow cursed blood… blood that almost seems to have a will of its own.

“Will I… become something like Alucard?”

The blood’s pull was intense. Heat surged through Walter; his throat burned with thirst. He wanted to drink it. Alongside it rose a fierce unwillingness—

his deepest fear:

Aging. Being forgotten. Becoming useless trash.

“Gulp…” Enchanted by the thought, Walter’s eyes went empty and lost. He swallowed on reflex.

His tongue slid out—

he didn’t even realize he looked like a raging red-eyed hound, lowering his head to lap at the blood.

And at that very instant—

as his tongue was about to touch it—

the puddle suddenly bubbled for no reason. Microbes below were fermenting, releasing a chain of marsh gases.

With a few wet pops,

a horrifying enoki mushroom floated up in the blood.

“…”

Walter froze—then jerked as if slapped awake, face twisted in terror, scrambling backward. “Uuuaah!!!”

Splorch!

His recoil sent the blood puddle flying, blown apart by some force.

“Wha… what is this?”

Integra had noticed the blood as well. She stared, then glanced instinctively at Alucard.

“Not me.”

Alucard denied it at once. “Hard to believe, I know—but this guy really beat me back into a human.”

“…”

Integra looked to Fang Mo again.

“Could it be…”

Studying the rivers of gore, Fang Mo rubbed his chin. With power on a different tier, he sensed things the others couldn’t.

This blood felt very much like Alucard’s power.

More than similar—

the aura was identical. As the shadows heaved, Fang Mo glimpsed masses of staring eyes, and several hound-like familiars—exactly Alucard’s style.

“Are these… the lives Alucard devoured?”

While Fang Mo pondered, Integra seemed to reach the same conclusion.

She was, after all, an expert on vampires.

Yes—by this world’s rules, blood is life’s currency. Vampires devour blood—stealing lives—mixing them with their own, becoming monsters made of countless gathered souls.

A vampire

is precisely that collective.

Which is why, after Fang Mo beat Alucard back into human form, the power stripped from him turned into something so abstract.

Honestly, that time-reversal ritual…

is a total bug-fest.

Back in the Fate world, when Fang Mo pretended to be Ciel and used it to rewind Sakura Matou’s body, the Holy Grail’s black mud bugged out and she became a rabid Fang Mo fangirl.

Same story now.

Fang Mo thought it through.

Most likely the ritual rewound only the entity “Alucard,” ignoring the other souls and powers housed inside him—triggering another weird bug. Alucard reverted to a human, while the lives he’d devoured over centuries frothed up as a free-floating mass of power.

“In that case…”

Fang Mo strode straight toward the writhing shadow.

With a flip of his hand, he produced a ring etched with Ender metal, then shouldered through the shadow’s attacks and jammed the ring deep into the blood.

The gentleman’s kindly trait kicked in a second later.

A cold gleam flashed.

Fang Mo’s palm twisted into a terrifying vortex, space itself seeming to warp; torrents of blood howled into it.

“…Hm?”

While he was siphoning, something at the edge of his vision caught his eye.

Schrödinger—the subject of his earlier “research.”

Hesitation over “eating the poop” had made him miss his one chance to kill Alucard. Now, finally resolved, he slashed his own throat, aiming to drown himself in the rushing blood sea.

Simple plan, likely:

If hesitation cost him the kill, at least erase Alucard’s power. Atonement, maybe.

But Fang Mo was already crafting gear.

Poisoned cat-boy blood in the mix? Who knew what chemical reaction that would cause.

“The World!”

In the next instant, Fang Mo triggered the God-Tree Sword’s time-stop. A void-step later, he was in Schrödinger’s face.

The cat had already cut his throat and was falling.

“I was going to spare you, but if you don’t want it, keep working for me.” In frozen time, Fang Mo smacked him a few times with his gag scythe, slipped another ring onto his hand, then drove a fist through Schrödinger’s chest.

“And… time resumes.”

Splurt. Schrödinger stared, aghast, at the fist jutting from his chest.

Too late to run. An enormous suction yanked him inward; his body folded like dough toward his own chest—and vanished into the ring.

“…Huh?”

Fang Mo glanced down. After sealing that quantum freak into it, the ring had changed.

Its deep green had become a crystalline substance.

Blue, grid-like light pulsed faintly within.

At the same time, the ring’s nature had shifted… It only existed when Fang Mo thought about it. Otherwise his hand was empty—couldn’t see it, couldn’t even touch it, like it had winked out of existence.

“…”

Having dealt with Schrödinger in a flash,

Fang Mo blinked back to the battlefield.

Gripping the nearly-unruly ring, he kept drawing in the blood. The blood-river roared; after a while, the sea of gore across London was gone.

With the last drop siphoned into the Ender ring,

this second ring changed as well—unlike Schrödinger’s, it turned a vivid, eye-catching red, as if it might bleed at any moment.

“Mm. Done.”

Weighing the two rings, Fang Mo nodded, satisfied. Snagging two new pieces of gear before heading out—profit.

“You…”

Integra, having watched all that, looked stunned. She pointed at the rings. “Alucard’s power is gone? What… what are those?”

“Oh, these?”

Fang Mo rolled the crimson ring between his fingers and suddenly grinned. “This one is…”

“Aunt Flo!!!”