For a long moment after their conversation ended, neither Wren nor the System spoke.
The forest remained quiet. The deer remained dead. The blood remained on her hands.
Eventually a new window appeared.
[Emergency Beginner Quest Generated]
[Quest: Vessel Stabilization]
[Objective: Feed until nutritional requirements are met.]
[Current Progress: 3%]
[Rewards]
[- Full Personal System Binding]
[- Beginner Package]
[- Additional System Functions]
[Failure: Death by Starvation]
Wren stared at it.
Then she stared harder.
"Beginner Package?"
"What is it?"
The System paused.
[Suprise!]
Wren blinked.
"Of course, it is."
[Correct.]
[I think you'll really enjoy it.]
"I hate that answer."
[Your feedback has been recorded.]
"Where?"
[In the feedback section.]
Wren wasn't entirely convinced the feedback section existed.
The cheerful crimson window didn't appear bothered by her skepticism.
She folded her arms.
"Do I really have to do this. Isn't there another quest or something?"
The System remained quiet for several moments before another window appeared.
[Creation Mana Support Buff]
[Remaining Time: 1:30:24]
Wren stared.
Then slowly looked upward.
"...What is that?"
[Remaining support time.]
The smile she'd never noticed on the System somehow felt smug.
[Current vessel remains heavily nourished by residual creation mana.]
[Once support expires, vessel will become dependent upon natural nutritional acquisition.]
Wren frowned.
"You mean blood."
[Correct.]
"Only blood?"
The System didn't answer.
That was answer enough.
Her eyes drifted back toward the deer.
The silence stretched.
Neither side seemed particularly happy about where this conversation was heading.
Eventually Wren groaned.
"Fine."
[Clarification requested.]
"I'm not agreeing with you, but I'll do it. Starving to death doesn't sound all that pleasant anyways.."
[Clarification appreciated.]
For some reason that response felt even more irritating.
The rabbit never had a chance.
Several minutes later, Wren found herself crouched behind a fallen log staring at a small rabbit-like creature nibbling on glowing grass. It looked harmless. Fluffy. Cute. The kind of thing fantasy protagonists were supposed to befriend rather than eat. The rabbit twitched its ears. Wren twitched in response.
This was ridiculous.
She was crouching in a magical forest preparing to murder a rabbit because a cheerful crimson window had informed her that she was apparently an extremely hungry newborn vampire. Life had become strange.
Very strange.
"Maybe I can just scare it and..."
The rabbit looked up.
Their eyes met.
Something inside Wren moved. Not physically. Instinctively.
The world blurred.
A crack echoed through the clearing.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
Then silence.
Wren froze.
The rabbit hung limply in her hands, its neck bent at an angle necks were generally not meant to bend. For several seconds she simply stared at it while the forest became unnaturally quiet around her.
"...Oh."
[Ding!]
[Successful Hunt! Good Job Host!]
"No."
[Very Successful Hunt!]
"Please stop."
[Extremely Efficient Hunt!]
Wren briefly considered throwing the System into a lake before remembering that it technically lived inside her soul. Unfortunately, that complicated things considerably.
The real problem came afterward.
The rabbit was dead. That part was done. Now came the feeding.
Wren sat on a nearby rock and stared at the rabbit for nearly ten minutes. The rabbit itself remained entirely unhelpful. The System, meanwhile, proved considerably less capable of silence.
[Host possesses food.]
[Recommendation: consume food.]
"No."
[Counterpoint: yes.] This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
"I need to mentally prepare myself first.."
[Further Counterpoint: Starvation Imminent. Please feed!]
The worst part was that the System wasn't wrong.
Eventually hunger won. Or perhaps survival won. The distinction felt important somehow, though Wren couldn't quite explain why. Slowly, reluctantly, she lowered her head.
The first bite made her flinch.
The second made her hesitate.
The third...
The third wasn't terrible.
That realization disturbed her far more than the feeding itself.
The blood tasted warm. Rich. Comforting. Like finally drinking water after wandering through a desert for days. It wasn't delicious. It wasn't addictive. It was simply exactly what her body needed.
Which somehow felt worse.
When she finally finished, another window appeared.
[Vessel Stabilization]
[Progress: 7%]
Wren blinked.
Then blinked again.
"Seven percent?"
[Correct!]
"I just ate an entire freaking rabbit."
[Correct!]
"I also drained an entire deer earlier!"
[Correct!]
The System seemed entirely too pleased with itself.
Wren immediately stood.
"I feel full."
[Incorrect.]
"I do."
[You do not.]
"I absolutely do." She tried to argue.
[Current vessel disagrees. Please continue feeding!]
Wren hated when the System made sense.
Wren stood up from the rock she was sitting at preparing to argue some more, before the thought ended abruptly.
Not because either side won, but because the timer reached zero.
[Creation Mana Support Buff]
[Time Remaining: 00:00:00]
For a brief moment nothing happened.
Then everything happened.
Wren doubled over.
Pain erupted through her stomach with such violence that it stole the breath from her lungs. The feeling of fullness she'd experienced seconds earlier vanished completely, as though it had never existed. Her stomach became a bottomless pit. Her fangs began aching as they pushed out further from her gums then they were before. Her heart thundered heavy slow beats inside her chest.
And then the heartbeats arrived.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Life.
Life everywhere.
Every living creature within miles suddenly announced its existence to her senses. The rabbit. The deer. The countless animals hidden throughout the forest. Everything living became a blazing beacon in the darkness. Invisible threads seemed to connect her to every heartbeat around her, tugging relentlessly at instincts she barely understood.
She collapsed onto one knee.
"Wh-what..."
The System's usual cheerfulness vanished immediately.
[WARNING]
[Vessel entering critical starvation state.]
[Remarks: Host must feed and fast!]
"W-what..." Wren struggled to read as her vision swam.
[Insufficient nutrition.]
[Vessel growth exceeded projections.]
For the first time, panic crept into the System's responses.
[Wren.]
[You need to feed, now!]
She tried to stand.
Failed.
The world tilted.
The smell of blood filled her thoughts.
Not nearby.
Everywhere.
Everything became hunger.
Later, Wren would remember fragments.
Not events. Not a coherent sequence she could replay from beginning to end. Just fragments.
A heartbeat echoing through the darkness.
Then another.
Then hundreds more.
Moonlight flashing between ancient trees as the forest blurred around her. Branches exploding apart beneath feet that moved much faster than she consciously intended. The silver gleam of antlers. The scent of blood. The sudden warmth spreading through her body each time she fed. The System calling out her name.
Somewhere during it all, fear vanished.
That was the part she found hardest to remember afterward.
Not because the fear disappeared entirely. Because the fear stopped mattering.
The hunger became larger.
Larger than fear.
Larger than guilt.
Larger than thought itself.
At first she remembered arguing with it. Fighting it. Trying to hold onto herself while every instinct screamed for more. Then the arguments became shorter. More infrequent. Harder to finish.
At some point she stopped thinking in words.
At some point she stopped thinking altogether.
The world narrowed.
Heartbeats.
Blood.
Movement.
Nothing else seemed important.
Nothing else was important.
Then darkness.
When consciousness finally returned, Wren found herself sitting beneath an enormous tree beside a still lake. For several long moments she simply stared ahead without moving, her thoughts sluggish and disjointed. Moonlight reflected across the water beneath the twin moons slowly disappearing into the distance, turning the entire lake into a sheet of polished silver. Gentle ripples disturbed the reflection whenever a breeze crossed the surface.
The scene was beautiful.
Wren felt strangely detached from it.
Slowly, awareness returned.
Her body felt heavy.
Exhausted.
Satisfied.
The realization sent a chill through her.
Satisfied.
The hunger was gone.
Completely.
Then she looked down.
Blood.
Her hands were covered in it.
Not splatters.
Covered.
Dark stains stretched across her fingers and beneath her nails.
Wren froze.
Slowly she looked lower.
More blood.
Her still bare body.
Blood.
The grass beneath her.
Blood.
The smell hit her a second later.
Metallic.
Thick.
Fresh.
Her stomach twisted.
Very slowly she lifted her gaze away from herself and toward the clearing around the lake.
The clearing told a story she did not want to hear.
A deer lay near the tree line. Several smaller creatures were scattered nearby. Broken branches littered the area. Deep tracks carved through the soil. Torn vegetation marked a path through the undergrowth. The scene looked less like a forest clearing and more like the aftermath of a storm.
Or a predator.
Wren swallowed.
The satisfaction remained.
That was somehow the worst part.
Not the blood.
Not the bodies.
Not the evidence.
The satisfaction.
A part of her remembered the hunger. The unbearable emptiness clawing through her body. The instinctive desperation. And now that it was gone, a small, traitorous part of her felt relief.
Slowly, she pushed herself to her feet.
The movement felt wrong.
Not physically.
Emotionally.
The deer wasn't some nameless blur from a half-remembered frenzy anymore. It was right there. Real. Tangible. Dead because of her.
Wren took a shaky step forward.
Then another.
She stopped beside the closest body.
The creature looked small. Harmless. The sort of thing she probably would have stopped to admire yesterday.
Yesterday.
The thought hit harder than she expected.
Yesterday she'd been excited.
Excited to be reincarnated.
Excited to be a vampire.
Excited to have a second chance.
Now she was standing in a blood-soaked clearing trying very hard not to count how many things she had killed in a single night.
A laugh escaped her.
Short. Empty.
The sound immediately turned into something dangerously close to a sob.
Her knees gave out.
Wren sank back against the tree and buried her face in her hands.
"What is wrong with me?"
The question escaped before she could stop it.
"Is this really what I am now? A monster.."
The forest offered no answer.
Only silence.
For several minutes she simply sat there trembling. Anger. Fear. Guilt. Relief. Disgust. Every emotion crashed together until she couldn't separate them anymore.
Because the horrible part wasn't that she'd fed.
The horrible part was that it had worked.
The hunger was gone.
The pain was gone.
Her body felt warm and alive.
Healthy.
Satisfied.
And some small part of her knew, with awful certainty, that if she became that hungry again...
She would do it again, and she would enjoy it.
That realization terrified her more than the blood ever could.
For a long time Wren simply stared at the lake.
Then at her hands.
Then back at the lake.
Eventually a familiar crimson window appeared. This time there was no enthusiasm in its messages.
[Quest Completed.]