novelraw Chapter 166: The Fear of “The Blood Tonic”
Chapter 166: The Fear of “The Blood Tonic”
The red moon still hung high. Morning was a ways off. The moonlight was cold, the crescent smirking like something hiding in the night sky—chilling and detached.
Aldrich stood at the window, staring at that sliver of moon. A memory seemed to grab him. He suddenly reached out, seized the edge of the heavy curtain, and yanked it shut.
Whoosh—
The thick fabric dragged with a heavy rasp, sealing the entire glass wall. Every bit of light was cut off. The study plunged into pure black.
Only in Aldrich’s eyes, which slowly opened in the dark, was there a faint, unnatural glint. A third-rank Corpse-Plague Acolyte was far from human in many ways; this level of darkness couldn’t blind him.
Darkness. The pure, total kind. It was a space he knew well, and one he’d made on purpose.
Right now, that familiar dark was like a key, turning in a rusty, dust-covered lock deep in his memory.
Eleven years ago…
Same darkness.
Same study.
That study wasn’t anything like this one—not big, not fancy. Just a normal room in a normal house from the old world. Back then, he wasn’t “The Blood Tonic” yet. He was just a regular kid, almost sixteen.
At the birthday party, the music was loud, the cake was sweet, his parents were smiling, the family’s wishes were warm.
Then, everything broke in a second.
Those warm, familiar smiles locked and twisted. A sick gray spread under their skin. The whites of their eyes washed out into a muddy yellow…
Screams. The crash of overturned plates. Shattering glass. And… the first wet, inhuman hiss of a zombie.
Chaos. Running. Pure dread.
Covered by his best friend’s desperate fighting, he scrambled and crawled into the second-floor study. His friend wedged himself against the door, screaming at him to hide!
He curled under the wide desk, hugging his own shaking shoulders.
Outside the door was his friend’s weakening struggle, the awful screech of nails on wood, and… the wet, crunching tear of flesh.
Inside was endless dark, and his own sobbing, choked down until he thought he’d break.
That dark had weight. It crushed the air from his lungs.
That dark had sound. The dragging, heavy footfalls outside the door. The low, rattling hiss from a ruined throat…
BOOM—!!!!
A dull, wall-shaking slam exploded in the absolute black!
Aldrich’s fist smashed down on the hardwood desk in front of him, no holding back. Wood chips sprayed across the floor. His face in the dark was twisted, savage. Veins bulged at his temples, his neck, the backs of his hands like writhing snakes.
He poured everything into it—using the rage in his chest, hot enough to burn his thoughts to ash—to scorch, to crush, to rip apart that damned, unwanted memory of fear!
Burn it!
Destroy it!
I am The Blood Tonic Aldrich!
Not the garbage shaking under a desk!
No!!
He ground his teeth. A coppery, bloody taste seeped from his gums.
A long time later, he finally drew in a slow, deep breath. Then let it out. The churning fury in his chest seemed forced back down with the air. His face smoothed back to its usual calm. Only a shadow remained deep in his eyes.
He wasn’t that person anymore. He had power now. Status. Resources. Connections normal people couldn’t touch. What was there to be afraid of?
In the dark, the corner of his mouth twitched into a faint, mocking smile—laughing at his own little “loss of control.”
But…
Just as he tried to reason it away, a weak voice, like a devil whispering from the bottom of his heart, sounded.
“Two years…”
“It’s been… exactly two years.”
His talent wasn’t bad. You could even call it good. He’d been lucky, getting his hands on a lot of Corpse-Red Mist. Before hitting third rank, his climb had been smooth. A little over a year to break past first rank. A little over three years to make second.
Now, counting from the Night of the Change, it had only been eleven years, and he was already near the peak of third-rank accumulation. He could even feel it—the distance to attempting the breakthrough, to charging for that higher realm of Master Demon Hunter… it didn’t seem far.
That strange, fluttering “premonition” the Academy teachers had hinted at, the sign before advancement… he’d first felt it two years ago.
That was good news. It proved he was a “genius.” A genius who survived the Night and rose fast.
But…
He’d been stuck with that “premonition” feeling for nearly two years. Two whole years!
In all that time, no matter how hard he trained, how many potions he drank, how many rumored methods to “promote good mutation” or “break the Corpse-Plague barrier” he tried… that “sensation,” that “flutter”…
Never changed.
It was so close he could taste it, but he couldn’t reach it.
Even though he was a skilled brewer himself. Even though the tailored boosters he took were better in quality and quantity than anything a normal apprentice could hope for…
After the brief surge of focus and fullness from a potion faded, he couldn’t feel any real “progress.” That dragging, stuck feeling clung to him like a bone-maggot.
Deep down, a fear he didn’t dare look at directly had started to grow.
Don’t tell me I’m stuck at third rank?
No!
Impossible!
He shoved the thought away the moment it appeared.
He was a genius! He was The Blood Tonic Aldrich! How could he stop at third rank? He was meant to be a Master Demon Hunter, to leave this damned ruined city and see the wider, wilder world outside!
But when he thought of the real top-tier monsters in the Academy records—the ones the teachers whispered about, the freaks who finished their third-rank accumulation in four or five years, triggered the premonition, and advanced…
His gaze sank again. Down into the dark, where no light reached.