Chapter 3: Blood Tower (2)

“What’s with you guys? Where we headed?”

“Evacuate, evacuate! We found the treasure!”

“Seriously?!”

At the man’s shout about finding treasure, people scattered across the area started gathering, their faces shocked.

For a moment, my eye twitched, thinking they were treating me like some prize, but on second thought, they did dig me up from the ground, so I couldn’t exactly complain about being called treasure.

They’re just stating facts—how could I argue?

“Where’s this treasure?”

“Can we finally go home?!”

“I’m so done with eating slop…”

“Escaping this backwater’s all about brains! Nice one!”

‘Why are there so many of them?’

Are all these guys supposed to be blood mages or whatever?

Well, I already decided to go with them, so it doesn’t really matter.

Even if I refused, it’s not like I have anywhere else to go.

Honestly, the fact that a thousand years have passed is so unreal it’s mostly just disorienting.

For now, getting as much information as possible is my priority.

Since they seem to like me, it’ll be easy to pry some info out of them.

Guess it’s time to figure out what I can learn on my own.

‘Let’s start with the status window.’

I focused on opening my status window while following the guys to wherever they were leading me, climbing onto something and sitting down.

Back a thousand years ago, my status window was completely glitched, useless to me.

I figured it was because of the mod I applied and stopped bothering with it after that.

But…

‘A thousand years have passed—something might’ve changed.’

Even if the mod I applied hasn’t gone away, there’s no harm in trying once.

‘Status window.’

As I muttered it in my head, the status window, which I hadn’t opened since I first arrived in this world and defeated the Demon King, popped up with a clear chime.

‘F*ck.’

I knew it.

Seeing the completely broken status window, barely even holding its shape, I turned it off with a disappointed scowl.

Or at least, I tried to.

‘…What’s this?’

In the glitched status window,

if you looked closely, there was a message that seemed almost readable.

And it took up most of the recent window.

• Cannot find.
• Cannot find.
• Cannot find.
• You have achieved an unbelievable feat! The world marvels at your incredible accomplishment and sends its praises. Your deeds will be passed down among the Transcendent forever.
• Calculating rewards…
• Error! Cannot find object.
• Searching for substitute value… No matching values found.
• AI searching… Data matching conditions found.
• Creating object.
• Applying…
• You are the first vampire to defeat the Demon King.
• Achievement unlocked! 《Birth of the True Ancestor》
• You are a being revered by all that constitutes life. You are the master of all blood and flesh in this land, and no life unpermitted by you may dare tread this earth.
• Congratulations on becoming a Transcendent!

“Hm?”

After that, details about my original job, Vampire, started appearing clearly, without glitches.

Once I cleared the notification window, the status window finally looked normal.

The fact that it was working again was surprising, but what caught my eye even more was that I’d become a True Ancestor.

‘True Ancestor…?’

I know what that means.

The true progenitor, in other words… the first-ever vampire.

‘Does this mean the vampire race from the mod got officially recognized…?’

That’s the only way I can explain it for now.

Either way, finding a clue about my situation in such an unexpected place was a stroke of luck.

There weren’t any other notable notifications after that.

Since the glitched ones didn’t recover even after the system normalized, there wasn’t much left to read.

I stopped checking the notifications and let out a sigh.

‘So, all I know is I’ve become a True Ancestor… and because of that, I fell into a thousand-year slumber.’

In the end, this True Ancestor thing must be what the system calls a “Transcendent” being.

‘So… there’s really no way back…’

And with a thousand years gone by, even if I didn’t spend that time awake, it’s hard to think of myself as just some modern guy anymore.

The gender swap was… completely unexpected, to be honest.

‘I’ve never even tried it…’

I pouted, feeling glum.

What a waste.

As a vampire, my looks were absolutely killer.

For some reason, that damn little elf always got in the way whenever I tried to meet a girl, so I never got the chance.

That brat was such a pain…

Life, man…

Or should I say vamp-life now?

…

Blood-life?

“We’re almost there!”

Already?

I tilted my head.

Something’s off, isn’t it?

“Didn’t you say it’s in another country?”

It’s only been about three hours since we left, so when they said we were almost there, I couldn’t wrap my head around it and asked.

They answered casually.

“Each country has teleport stations. You can go straight to the tower with those.”

“What…”

There’s such a thing?

My jaw dropped.

This was unimaginable in my time.

Teleport stations!

“You’re saying that’s possible?! Teleportation’s a high-level spell even master mages can’t use casually… How can there be stations for it?”

“Lady Eterina, the master of magic and head of the Aether Tower, redefined teleportation and spread it widely. It’s one of the Magical Nation’s prides.”

“Huh, well…”

If the great mages of old heard this, they’d faint, screaming about how absurd it is.

If we’d had stuff like this, we wouldn’t have had to bust our asses so hard to defeat the Demon King.

“So where are we headed now?”

“The Empire’s capital. It’s the only place in the Empire with a teleport station.”

“Hm? Wasn’t it a village near Bayern?”

No way.

A thousand years ago, my mansion was pretty far from the capital.

It’s not like they moved me while I was asleep, and I was buried right there, so there’s no way it’s only a three-hour trip.

That leaves one possibility.

The capital must’ve been relocated.

“Did the capital move? Like, near Bayern?”

“The Empire’s capital is the same as it’s always been.”

“Then how’s it only three hours?”

“It’s taken three hours…”

Have these guys lost all sense of distance?

The Empire’s huge.

“No way, that’s impossible. From Bayern to the capital, it’d take at least a week by carriage…”

“It’s not a carriage.”

“Huh?”

One of the men slid open a window, revealing a vast forest below.

“Uh…?”

And we were looking down from above.

“It’s a small airship. Since the Crimson Tower’s so poor, we’ve only got an old model… Sorry for making you wait three whole hours.”

He spoke like he’d committed a grave sin, but I barely heard him, staring out the window in a daze.

‘What the hell is this…?’

A thousand years.

I know it already.

Back on modern Earth, humanity advanced at breakneck speed in just a hundred years.

Things unimaginable a century ago became commonplace, even surpassed by crazier stuff a hundred years later.

But…

‘What era have I landed in…?’

I suddenly remembered the mage giggling about finally escaping a “backwater country.”

At the time, I thought it was ridiculous to call a place like the Empire backward.

But seeing this airship, I got it instantly.

‘It’s got every right to be called backward.’

And that realization…

“Whoa…”

It solidified the moment I saw the sleek architecture and the futuristic, fantasy-like teleport station, straight out of a sci-fi movie, all while the Empire around it looked barely different from a thousand years ago.