My Life in Wednesday With a Vampire System

Chapter 119 118 : Dark One

Ethan tilted his head slightly as something rolled across the ground toward him.

A skull.

It bounced once against a gravestone and came to a stop near his boots. The empty sockets faced him as the jaw began clacking open and shut.

"Hehehehheh…"

The skeleton laughed like a terrible comedian who had just told the world's worst joke.

Ethan bent down and picked it up.

He turned it in his hand, studying the laughing skull as it continued its dry rattling cackle.

"Hmmm."

"Hehehehheh…"

The jaw kept snapping open and shut like it had finally found an audience.

"You know," Ethan said calmly, "I'll take you as a souvenir."

The skull kept laughing in his hand, the empty jaw clacking like it had found the greatest joke in the world.

"You'll work nicely as an alarm," Ethan said, weighing it in his palm.

Around him the cemetery erupted again. The corpses that had clawed their way out of the graves rushed forward together, dragging broken limbs through the fog while their hollow eyes fixed on him.

Ethan didn't step back.

He lifted his hand.

The blood scattered across the ground responded instantly.

It surged upward in violent streams and split apart in midair, forming dozens of massive crimson crosses that hovered above the charging dead. The moment the corpses reached him, the crosses dropped.

The impact was brutal.

Each spike of hardened blood punched straight through rotting torsos and skulls, slamming the creatures back into the earth.

Bodies jerked violently as they were pinned in place, dozens of them suspended on the crimson structures like grotesque decorations across the graveyard.

Ethan watched them struggle.

"Your old graves were weak," he said calmly. "They let you crawl out."

His fingers slowly crossed together.

"But this won't be weak."

The blood surrounding the crosses began to spread across the ground like a living tide. It crawled up the pinned bodies and wrapped around them, dragging them downward as if the earth itself had turned into liquid.

"As a progenitor I've had this ability for a while," Ethan continued, watching the process with quiet interest. "I simply never had a reason to try it."

The cemetery vanished.

Everything drowned in red.

A vast world of blood stretched endlessly in every direction, an inner domain that existed inside Ethan himself. Rivers of crimson flowed through the air while massive pillars formed from hardened blood rose across the landscape.

The animated corpses appeared there instantly.

Each one was impaled on the towering spikes, imprisoned within the crimson world where escape did not exist. The blood began draining them slowly, pulling their remaining strength and will into the domain itself.

Ethan stood there for a moment, observing the scene.

"Hmmm," he murmured.

"This trait is quite useful."

The draining continued, their resistance weakening with every passing second.

"Your willpower will soon be mine."

The inner world closed.

Back in the cemetery the blood vanished as if it had never existed. The graves stood empty once again, the fog drifting quietly through the crooked stones.

Ethan tied the laughing skull to his waist with a thin vine.

The skull kept cackling as he started walking again through the silent graveyard.

Following the compass needle, Ethan moved through the fog until the cemetery ended and the ground opened into a cliff.

Cold wind rose from the darkness below as the land dropped away into a deep chasm. The compass needle in his hand stopped moving.

At the edge of the cliff stood a figure.

Tall. Still.

In its hand was the Book of the Dead.

Ethan slowed and stopped about ten steps away. His eyes narrowed slightly as he studied the stranger.

There was no blood in his body.

Not even a trace.

For someone like him, that meant only one thing.

Not human.

At the same time, the space below the cliff gave him a strange feeling. The darkness rising from the ravine carried a presence far heavier than the deadites he had already faced.

This was different.

The figure didn't turn immediately.

"You came," it said, its voice calm and distorted, like several tones speaking at once. "I was curious who you were. After the dark times, this world was left to mortals."

The wind moved through the cliff as the figure slowly turned around.

"But you are clearly not mortal," it continued. "You are a monster… just like us."

Ethan's expression tightened slightly.

The figure's face was wrong.

It wasn't a face at all.

The skin looked mangled and stretched, deep black lines cutting across it while thin slits opened and closed like something crawling beneath the surface. The texture reminded him of centipedes moving under flesh, constantly shifting in small unsettling motions.

Ethan looked at it with clear disgust.

"Yeah," he said flatly.

"That's one of the ugliest things I've ever seen."

"Hmmm?" the figure tilted its head slightly. "You speak of appearance. Why?"

The voice sounded calm, but the shifting slits across its face kept moving, tiny ridges crawling beneath the skin like insects under glass.

Ethan didn't look impressed.

"Because it's offensive to the eyes," he said bluntly. "And your face is currently attacking mine."

The thing watched him in silence for a moment.

Ethan studied it carefully now.

The lack of blood, the unnatural presence, and the way it spoke of the dark times as if it had lived through them.

That narrowed the possibilities down a lot.

During the ancient age known as the Dark Times, creatures far worse than deadites walked the earth openly. Before humans forced them back, there existed a group of demonic entities responsible for creating the cursed texts and rituals that later became the Necronomicon.

The Dark Ones.

The ones who wrote the Book of the Dead.

They were the architects behind Kandarian demons and the possession rituals that spawned the deadites.

Eventually humans pushed them back—sealing them away along with their creations into other dimensions.

Ethan exhaled slowly.

"So that's it," he said. "You're one of the Dark Ones."

The figure didn't deny it.

Wind moved through the cliff as the creature held the Book of the Dead loosely in its hand.

Its distorted face shifted again, the slit-like lines across its skin opening slightly as if it were smiling.

"And you," the Dark One said, studying him in return, "are something unusual."

Its gaze moved slowly over Ethan's body.

"Your blood is… ancient."

*****

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