Chapter 03 – The Nature of Things (2/2)

The unsteady reflection made it hard to see clearly, but she looked like she'd grow up to become a top-tier woman.

If I met her in my previous life, I wouldn't have hesitated to tap that ass.

That's a lie. If I had actually met her and she tried to talk to me, I would've been completely intimidated by her. Not only were her eyes pretty striking, but the thought of interacting with a girl who was leagues out of my range would've instead made me break out in a cold sweat.

And that girl was now me.

I was never a popular guy in my last life, rather I was mostly a loner in general. I had no idea how to act with a face like then when the time came to actually talk to someone in this world.

Frankly, the thought alone was a bit scary.

I shook my head.

There was no point in worrying about something that might not crop up in a while.

I pulled back a lock of hair that fell into the water when my fingers touched my ear, but the shape wasn't familiar. It was pointed, like an elf's from fantasy tropes, but it wasn't too long. The point only stuck a couple of centimetres further than human ears.

Vampires often had pointed ears like this, but a lot of the time their stories were on Earth, so it had nothing to do with any other species. It made me wonder how they compared the elves of this world however. Would people who saw them think I was an elf? Or maybe a half-elf? Were halves even possible? If such a thing was on the species list, I didn't see it. but the list was insanely long, so I could've easily just missed the entry.

Turning my mind back to present matters, I tried drinking some of the water. Despite being cool, it tasted extremely stale to me and difficult to swallow. It made me pretty sure that vampires didn't need to drink water. Blood was probably enough hydration.

Finally, I got down and sunk my body into the river.

The cold water ran over my skin, but the feeling of it taking away the dirt and oil from my skin as I wiped my body with my hands was invigorating.

I paid acute attention to every little unfamiliar curve of my new body as I explored it for the first time while I washed. It was ironic that the first woman I got to intimately touch in years ended up being my own body.

Taking my time, I made sure to remove every trace of the muck from those goblins off of my body.

When I was done, I lay on the riverbed, enjoying the feeling of the water flowing over my skin.

I didn't notice it before, now that I was paying attention to it, my skin felt more sensitive. While I wiped my body, I could feel every detail of my fingers on my body, and now I could feel the tiny whirlpools of water as the river flow broke against it. I wondered if it was because it was a new body, or it had something to do with being a vampire, or if it was something else.

Not like it mattered. It was a nice feeling.

After a few minutes of rest, I got back up and wiped the excess water off of my body.

Strangely, while my body had chilled a little, I didn't feel particularly cold. Was the water warmer than I thought, or did it have to do with my new race?

Packing that thought to the back of my mind, I went over and grabbed the pelt and loincloths I was carrying around and dumped them into the river water to wash.

Almost immediately a black haze drifted from the scraps of leather I got from the goblins and flowed away with the water.

I hoped that it was just dirt, not something dangerous for anyone who decided to drink down river.

Taking my mind off of my unfounded worry, I thoroughly washed the rabbit pelt. No matter what I did though, the inside stayed wet and sticky, and pieces continued to peel off. It was feeling like a lot of work I didn't know about was still left to be done if I was to actually use it.

Next I started on the dirty leather left by the goblins. These were a much bigger ordeal, but it was still in the realm of my knowledge.

I rubbed the black sheets against each other and against the sand in the river bed, and plumes of black fog erupted and were washed down. The sight was a bit unnerving, but I took it as proof that the leather was getting clean.

After what felt like hours, but was most likely less than 30 minutes, all four loincloths had become a light brown colour. With a careful sniff, I confirmed that almost none of the stink remained.

Happy with the result, I tossed all the clean hides to the side and I scrubbed my hands with the sand on the riverbed, removing all trace of that goblin stink.

Once I was finally finished that too, I sat down under a tree beside the river to rest. My hands were red and my arms sore. Even my back hurt, after being hunched over for so long. But at the very least, the looted leather was now in a usable form. It wasn't ideal, but I didn't have to worry about getting some sort of strange infection from them anymore.

I leaned back against the tree and looked up at the sky.

For some reason, it had started to grow even brighter than before. The sky to the east had grown to a bright red.

(Was there a fourth sun in this world?)

It was the only explanation I could think of, and frankly, it wouldn't have surprised me.

As the sky grew brighter, rays from the fourth sun started to peak through the breaks in the canopy. The river was quickly engulfed with light so bright it reminded me of when I'd focus sunlight with a magnifying glass to make a newspaper catch fire.

It was a bit difficult to look at, even when squinting, so I turned my head away while I waited for my eyes to adjust.

What greeted my sight were more points of bright lights that fell through the smaller gaps between the leaves as they slowly moved while the sun rose.

As one such point slowly made it's way closer to me, I amused myself with the image of a giant with a magnifying glass trying to burn things using the sunlight.

But against my expectation, a sudden pain flared on my arm!

It was like someone was scraping the point of a red hot iron rod against my skin!

It wasn't just the feeling, but I could smell the scent of burning meat as well!

In a panic, I roll over and get away from the spot I was at, and hid my body on the other side of the tree I was leaning against.

I looked at my arm, trying to figure out what just happened.

To my surprise, my right arm and a part of my torso was had black burn marks on it, complete with smoke rising from it. The shape was like if someone unsteadily tried to draw a line across the side of my body.

I thought I was attacked, but the burn marks looked drastically different from any sort of attack that I could've come against, unless if someone tried to use a laser against me.

The thought was stupid, as everything so far suggested that this world was most likely more primitive compared to Earth. At the very least, goblins wielding stone weapons most likely wouldn't exist if the technology to create a portable laser weapon existed.

I tried to wrap my my mind around what happened when I noticed that there were quite a lot of those bright spots moving around in the forest.

They weren't as bright as the ones before, as my eyes had mostly gotten used to the light, but those spots were obviously just the light of the fourth sun passing through the gaps in the foliage.

But something suddenly felt off in my mind as I thought that.

(Why is the fourth sun so much brighter than the other three combined?)

It wasn't just that, but things that I just passed off as different because this wasn't Earth and was governed by rules that I didn't understand, might not have been as different as I thought.

It was weird to see stars in the sky during midday. It was weird that one sun would be so much brighter than three others. It was weird that I could stare at any sun without suffering from bright spots at the very least.

And, why could vampires walk around in broad daylight without any consequences?

The answer, they couldn't.

I made a fundamental presumption that was entirely wrong.

I arrived in this world, not during the day, but the night.

Vampires were creatures of the night, so it was a given that they'd have superior night vision compared to humans. It was a given that they'd primarily operate during the night and hide during the day like any other nocturnal creature. And, as with the common lore of vampires, it was given that their biggest weakness was sunlight.

My burns didn't come from someone with some sort of mysterious weapon out to take my life or something, it was the effect of being under direct sunlight.

Suddenly those bright spots moving around started to look much more threatening than they did mere seconds ago.

Here I was, under the flimsy and unpredictable shade of a forest, and dawn had come.

I didn't have a moment to lose.

Without any real options, I turned around and started to stab at the soil in between the roots of the tree I was hiding under with my claws. The canopy didn't offer reliable protection against the deadly sunlight, and if the wind blew, the movement of the rays would be completely beyond my ability to predict.

I needed solid cover, and the only thing that could give me that right now was the ground itself.

Not worrying about the fact that I was scraping away the skin on my hands, I desperately dug, flinging soil behind me.

My heart pounded in my chest more than it ever had. I could smell blood as my hands bled from the reckless digging, but rather than stimulate my appetite, all it did was remind me of my mortality.

Quickly, as fast as I could.

As the minutes passed on, as the brighter the surrounding world became, the more I was pressed into a corner, both figuratively and literally. I started to push my body into the small hole as I dug it. I was desperate for the small, tangible safety from the greatest threat to my life.

I didn't know how long it took. Possibly mere minutes, but it felt like hours. But I managed to dig a hole big enough to fit my entire body inside of awkwardly, lying on my back, my legs folded above me, I covered all but a small hole to both breathe through, as well as to see, even if the world outside was inverted from my position.

Even still, I was careful about it. The hole was small and level to the ground. But just in case sunlight poured through it unexpectedly, I held onto some loose dirt to fill it in, even if I risked suffocating because of it.

I bared my fangs as I glared at the world that was so bright it almost hurt my eyes.

(Damnit! How could you? How could you take away half the world from me?!)

Hate filled my heart as I stared at the moving bright spots created by my nemesis.

In my head, I understood that the hate and anger was completely unjustified, that it wasn't a malicious attack by someone out to get me or something. But emotionally, I couldn't accept it. I had known when I chose to become a vampire that I most likely wouldn't be able to walk around during the day. I knew, but I didn't realize how different it was to know when compared to understanding.

Now, squeezing my body into a tiny, dirty hole, the feelings that welled from within were as dark and dirty as the dirt around me. I couldn't accept the fact that I was being denied the daytime, even though almost all living creatures on Earth, including myself, were forced to give up between a third to half a day just to sleep.

Such logic couldn't temper my thoughts as I just stared and loathed.

The fact that my wounds wouldn't stop throbbing didn't help in the matter.