HAHAHAHA I am BACK! Again. But here you go! Give me your thoughts like usual!

—

The heavy stench of blood filled Central Yharnam's cemetery. The residences would tell you that the Tomb of Oedon was one of the only places in Central Yharnam that had soft soil. The rest of Yharnam had been reinforced with stone and bricks when the hunts had first started. Mostly to keep clean up of the aftermath easier. But they had always taken pride in the cemetery for its soft soil.

Soil Izuku was taking advantage of. The idea had struck him as he was on a search for bloodstones. Since the stones could only be made of a substance in beast blood that congeals together and crystalizes, Izuku decided to act on a theory he had. It took nearly two hours of digging but, he eventually made a pit in the soft dirt of the tomb… Which he preceded to slaughter the beasts of Central Yharnam and drag their bleeding corpses into the hole. And thanks to a recent investment in the KirkHammer, An obtuse stone cube that hunters use to mash beasts into paste… Something Izuku would take advantage of.

The entire process to nearly five hours, from the digging, killing, and dragging of the bodies. To the crushing and pulverizing of the bodies. And to make the process faster, Izuku used a rake he took from one of the mob to scoop up the less liquid remains. And as Izuku sat, staring into the deep crimson pool… He couldn't help but laugh. The slightly mad chuckles turned into crazed giggles and then into deranged sobbing as it donned of the poor hunter what he was doing.

And the worst part? He did not even feel bad. Not for desecrating the graves, of the bodies, not the murder and the bloodlust he had trouble dousing in a battle. He felt dirty… even when he went back to the serene Dream and sat with the Doll and or Gehrman. When he was in the forge, working on a project or reading to learn something he needed to know. He felt itchy, his hands felt heavy and, he could not help but scratch and scratch until blood was drawn from his hands and arms.

Eventually, he came back to his scenes the pool of cold crimson blood had shrunk. Peeking from the thick liquid were shards, some larger and doubled, and others normal-sized shards. And while scooping through the sludge, Izuku found quite a haul but, it was not enough… He'd need to do this again.

—

The… ah… Gatling Gun? It wasn't advanced enough to be a minigun, but it was still much too advanced to be the Gatling gun from his world… Anyway, it was advanced much more than his meager pistol, but also much too large for him to just… take and use. But that did not mean he couldn't disassemble it and write down the steps and mark each piece with a number then, send each piece with the messengers.

And so he did exactly that; With a jar of paint and a handful of tools, Izuku set to deconstructing the nearly five-foot monster of steel and gunpowder. Hours had passed, and he had just managed to get the almost a thousand part gun into the hands of the messengers. And back to the Dream... The number of unnecessary bolts and segments was really causing Izuku to have a migraine.

—

Izuku had always been a diligent studier. For every test and every lesson, he poured over the material until he could recite it by memory… even though his teachers made sure to keep him at the bottom of the class. So learning gunsmithing and weaponsmithing turned out to be a breeze. With the help of Gerhman in the forge and The Doll, in the sewing of his new armored garb, Izuku donned his new gear.

His new hunter's grab wasn't the bland black fabric that generic hunters use. Instead, it was a rich deep brown with green accents. Under the garb was chainmail that covered nearly his entire body. It was forged from the steel and bloodstone and weighed quite a bit but thankfully didn't hinder his maneuverability. In his right hand, he held a modified pistol. Using parts, Izuku had scavenged from the Gatling gun. And a few pieces from a repeater pistol, he had an oddly shaped hunk of metal. Which allowed him to fire bullets faster than with the original pistol. In his left hand, he wielded his cane. It had been reinforced as far as he could with the materials he had. It was longer than what he had used before. Tts blades in whip form had been refined and soaked in his blood while he worked on the rest of his gear. It had glowed an eerie red from the moment he pulled the still warm steel from his blood.

Izuku felt more than ready to fight the beast that dwelt in Old Yharnam.

—

"O Flora, of the moon, of the Dream. O little ones, O fleeting will of the ancients... Let the hunter be safe, let him find comfort. And let this Dream, his captor... foretell a pleasant awakening... be, one day, a fond, distant memory..."

She had heard this little prayer from her porcelain creation many times over the years. It was one of the only things that made her feel real at times.

When she first ascended into being a great one, she made a promise... a promise to stop the others from destroying the little colony of small people. But eventually, as time passed, she could not keep her eyes open forever and, she fell into a deep slumber. To say she wasn't mad at the little people for defining the other's old corpses for their blood would be a lie. But her body was much too far in the dungeons to ever be discovered by the little people, so she just watched in fascination as their queries called out to them. She gave them a smidgen of her power, a burst of moonlight, fused into a sword. She watched as the mortals fought against the taint they had been infected with. But even still, the little people were losing. The beasts the other's blood had held were too powerful, and the small people were losing too many to ever fight back. So she accepted the call of that first hunter.

Since that day, she had been the shepherd in a way to the small hunters. She chose them on a whim. Their hopes and dreams, their hates and dislikes... they were what she looked into deeply; Jacob, Samuel, Djura, Eileen, the countless other hunters she had blessed. But not one had been so desperate, so scorned, so hated and full of sorrow as the little green. So she whisked him away and blessed him. She left him on the doorstep of one of her believers and his companion. And he gave the little green some of her own blood… It was hard watching her follower cut and suture her little hunter. It was even harder to watch her little hunter fight her help.

But her blood had changed him. He was the first hunter to be able to influence her Dream. The first hunter to protect her host from his nightmares and the porcelain being from her woes.

She had let each and every hunter go at some point. She had to... they would hunt the other great ones and inevitably hunt her. But if she had to die to the little green… then so be it. There were worse deaths than to someone she could not help but have her eyes open for.

—

The sickly sweet stench burned into Izuku's head as he walked up to the massive and beaten cathedral in front of him. His mind was buzzing with blood lust as he stepped foot in the large building. His hands twitched and grasped his weapons tighter. Down the corridor of pillars stood a beast, its bones protruding from its stretched flesh. The dried blood that caked the walls and floor seemed to shiver and crack as Izuku walked deeper into the corridor. The red glow of his whip called it to awaken.

When Izuku had soaked the blades of his whip in his blood, it seemed to bring something out of the bloodstone-infused blades. Blood stuck to his whip, creating a sickening red crescent with every slash; Blood resonance, the connection between the weapon and master forged from blood.

The beast in front of Izuku seemed to shiver. Its eyes locked on the wave of blood that cascaded across the whip as it trailed behind him.

The battle started with the beast looking to end the engagement early, a quick swipe to the head. But The strike hit open air as Izuku rolled under it, quickly slashing at the beast's exposed bones through the thin skin and malnourished muscle. A horrendous shriek filled the once quiet Chapple as the beast went into a blind fury. It swiped and clawed, but Izuku was a few steps ahead of every swipe. A gunshot rang out, splitting the weakened bone of the beast's leg. It staggered for mear moments, but that was enough, swinging the bloodied whip it wrapped around the beast's forearm. Shrill screams filled the air as a muscle and bone got shredded and ripped until the wet thump of a dismembered arm filled the air. It was not deterred, however, by its lost limb like a wounded beast. It fought even more vigorously. Swiping at the young hunter, ripping through the front of his garb and sinking an inch into the chainmail that covered him. A flash of panic that would have caused his death got drowned out by anger and hatred. It took him days to learn to make chainmail, much less make it.

Pushing through the pain of his injuries. A click filled the air as Izuku speared his cane into the beasts gaping maw. Another click responded as he wrenched upward, splitting the head of the beast. The air was thick with rot and poison. The blood clotted at his feet as he popped an antidote to clear the pain in his head. But the deep gasping breaths he took did not get him the air he needed as he shook, and the rage did not go away with its death. Its miserable death did nothing to alleviate the burn that blossomed through his chest. His wound was not deep; It was not even the problem. It died too fucking fast.

—

The ripping of an envelope filled the quiet apartment. Izuku quickly read over the letter from one of the high schools he had applied to. Sure it was early but, he had taken the tests to move up and pass a grade… He just wanted out of the hell he was stuck in. But the hope cracked in his chest as he read the letter… The first of many.

"We are sorry to inform you Mr. Midoriya, but our distinguished school does not accept people who are not up to our standards. While you did apply a whole ten months early to our school, with the grades to go ahead and move up. We do not accept quirkless. We as an establishment reserved the right to turn away anyone we please. Once again Mr. Midoriya we apologize but you cannot make it to our school."

Izuku hurriedly ripped apart the letter of rejection. Whipping the beginning of tears from his eyes, he moved on.

"We apologize to inform you Mr. Midoriya, but we just can not accept a quirkless-"

"I am sorry to tell you that while your grades would normally guarantee you a spot, we receive seats for those with quirks-"

"Denied."

"You are not accepted into our school."

"We cannot accept you into our school, while academically you are the safe bet, we cannot support a student that will never find a job."

"As much as we would love to have you as a student, the call we made to your father-"

Paper after paper… forty-one schools across japan that were relatively near him. Forty-one letters of rejection. Ten schools with heroics classes outright refused to read his letter. Twenty of the worst high schools in japan called themselves Prodigious and refused to tarnish their good name. And eleven schools that he had just sent a letter to out of desperation…

Izuku had never felt so disheartened before… but there was one final hope. The sounds of the last letter being opened filled the air. The red symbol of UA on a wax seal was broken and, the contents were laid bare to Izuku.

"Dear Izuku Midoriya, we at UA are all-inclusive, and while we would love to see you this year, we feel like most people your age will need to wait to join our school. This, however, is not a rejection letter, seeing as you have applied to forty-one other schools, and from the investigation, you have been denied admission. We will keep a chair open for you Mr. Midoriya. It is not every day we get someone who passes the out-of-level test with scores like yours. We as staff hope you can wait the next ten and a half months for your acceptance letter to our general education course. If you wish to move to either support, business, or heroics, you will need to pass their additive tests.

Sincerely yours, Nedzu. The principle of UA High School."

That night the cold of the Midoriya household felt a little bit warmer.

—

Izuku had been very confused when the door that had been locked in the Chapple mysteriously opened while he was gone… not that he was complaining about it opening. He had been stuck on where to go for a couple days. Scouring the tiniest cracks and crevices in all of Yharnam to find out where to go. So he ascended the elevator up to hopefully the place he needed to go.

Then swiftly got filled with quicksilver bullets… where the hell did they learn to put Gatling guns on wheelchairs?

After riding the elevator up again, Izuku sprinted around the wheelchair-bound gentleman hiding in the opposite corner of the doorway. The poor guy could not turn fast enough to intercept the sharp edge of Izuku's cane.

Besides, the now-deceased man was a large chest, its contents? Some odd stone slab with a weird etching in it. Deciding to just keep it for later Izuku, handed it to one of the waiting messengers, who gladly took it with a small chirp.

Continuing down the only path, Izuku was once again almost killed upon entering the now open area. He stood on a bridge that led to a massive tower in front of him. The sides of the bridge were guarded with fragile rails that then dropped down to the melancholy streets yards below. Leaving the only cover from the volley of bullets to be the doorway behind him.

With a quick spurt of focus quickening activated, the handful of bullets phased through the young hunter as he launched himself across the bridge to the only ground floor defender he could see. Quickly dispatching the elderly mob member Izuku, gingerly stepped into the first floor of the tower… Only to be met with a scimitar to the left shoulder, the enraged yell of the mob member that struck him drew the attention of the small group, two with a butcher knife, two with an ax and torch, another with a gun, and one with their flimsy wooden shield. And the one with their sword in his shoulder.

Swiftly Izuku swung his cane now, transforming into its whip form he cleaved through a charging ax man and butcher. While placing a bullet into their rifleman's forehead, the burning pain of the scimitar in his shoulder being pulled out called for Izuku to roll to his right. The sword, narrowly missing Izuku. Another swift bullet ended the offending attacker. The final ax man narrowly missed with his torch and was met with a swipe of Izuku's blood-red whip. The shield man Izuku had rolled past charged, knocking into Izuku as he shot the other butcher. A swift click and Izuku's cane were buried inside the man's head.

With a deep breath and a quick injection of Yharnam blood, Izuku was scavenging the room for all its valuables. In a chest, there was a new bloodstone. A good amount of blood vials littered the floor, and the rifleman had a pouch of bullets. Izuku proceeded to give the weapons to the messengers. He could always use the material.

Continuing his ascent up the tower, Izuku peaked his head quietly over the stone railing of the stairs. In one corner, there was another wheelchair-bound, Gatling gun guy. And beside him was another mob member with a scimitar. Crouching close to the ground, Izuku sprinted around the railing, quickly transforming his cane into a whip he cleaved through the gunman's neck and the swordsman's chest, his whip pulling the streams of blood into itself. Quickly finishing off the swordsman a low grunt came from the doorway behind Izuku, and he was launched across the room with a massive cinder block. The thin chainmail cracked from the impact; small bits dug into Izuku as he rolled across the dusty floor. His side screamed at him as he moved to get up, bones protesting as he injected another vial.

The quick relief from the burning pain almost caused Izuku to miss his opportunity in the giant hunchback's charge. A swift bullet in the massive man's shoulder had him careening off course and slamming into the wall. Running behind the colossal man, Izuku jumped and stabbed down from above. His cane, digging into the man's back, and with a click, bones and flesh were severed and destroyed as Izuku pulled, ripping his whip and most of the man's shoulder out of his body.

Izuku only gave himself a few seconds to breathe before he continued on the doorway led to a walkway without fencing, and in front of Izuku stood the two who tried to shoot him when went to walk across the bridge. Running forward, a quick swipe of his cane to one of their throats ended the first one. However, the other had pulled the trigger. Pain blossomed in Izuku's chest, but he carried on, ending the other with a couple strikes.

The pain continued to grow as Izuku leaned against the wall of the tower. The bullet had entered his right lung and, there was no exit wound, meaning it was nestled somewhere in his chest cavity. Sliding down to the hard stone floor blood, started filling his throat. A blood vial would heal the wound with the bullet in it. Acting as quickly as he could, he reached for the ground next to him, a messenger showing up in time with his medical supplies.

Grasping the longest pair of tweezers in the kit, Izuku pushed it into the bullet wound. The pain caused spasms in the muscles the tweezers were going past, and the shredded muscles caught the searching metal. Until he brushed against the offending object lodged in his chest.

With a mighty pull, the bullet came loose and out of his chest. One of the smaller messengers responded quickly with a vial, causing mass mitosis and blood creation. The cracked and snapped ribs knit themselves into place and mended as the organs and muscles healed rapidly.

Izuku sat there for thirty, maybe forty minutes coughing, up blood and chunks of dead flesh. The messengers, clinging to his hands and legs, looking on with their little eyes in worry. Some came and went as the blood did its work. Brining small tablets of minerals and vitamins his body needed to heal correctly. Some brought him chunks of grilled meats, and one of the biggest brought half a loaf of bread.

The healing took longer, essentially due to malnourishment. Izuku had forgotten to eat in the Dream many times. Leading to loss of body fat and nourishment. And reducing the recovery of vital body parts.

The effort to stand was great, but the supply of food and liquids thanks to the messengers got him back into fighting shape within two hours. Walking with a minute stagger from his small worried companions, Izuku started climbing the ladder that led to the next layer of the tower.

Once Izuku had made it to the top of the ladder, he began his search for the doorway, and once he found it headed inside. In front of Izuku was another man in a wheelchair. However, this time with a bird mask and a flame sprayer in his hand. To Izuku's left, hiding in the dark shadows of the large circular room, another scimitar wielder was hidden, and down the hallway in front of him, another flame sprayer man in a wheelchair. With a click, Izuku was off the blood that had clung to his whip sprang out when he swung. Increasing the already deadly range of his whip to cleave through the entirety of the room. Cutting the scimitar man in half and the head off the first fireman. Not wanting to be set ablaze, Izuku rushed forward towards the second, stopping halfway there and heaving his whip downward towards the man, embedding deep into his head.

Another breath and, he was searching the corpses and the room for more items of interest. One of them was the flame sprayers. And another was an item in a chest, a shining sword crest.

—

After the initial run through the tower, Izuku found more books! The walls were lined with old hunters' weapons and tools. Small stacks of books on their creation and implementation in battle were strewn about. Old tomes and notebooks that once laid abandoned were dusted off and whisked off to the Dream. There were even some... naughtier books for Gerhman...

But that did not deter the young hunter from sprawling out on the floor of the more open workshop. Ever since the first influx of books, the building had only gotten larger; More space for books and more benches for devices and items. The desolate nothing that surrounded the floating island of the Dream seemed farther away. The small patches of flowers looked healthier and better cared for as the Doll had more tools to attend to them with. The old graves surrounding the edge of the island's limits had been re-chiseled with names and dates. The once dim moon that hung above the Dream seemed to gleam.

The Dream was more alive than ever. Izuku learning different trades kept him busy when he needed to think. The once small cramped bedroom hidden behind the workshop Gerhman used had become spacious enough for his rickety old wheelchair to get through. The ledge the Doll sat on lost its sharp edges as Izuku spent hours sanding it.. even when the Doll explained it was not a problem for her.

Small items appeared as Izuku worked on tools, sometimes sleeping Gerhman would wake to find a quilt that was never in the Dream. And sometimes, the Doll would find small tokens and papers that rambled about heros. Even Izuku would find things he thought he would never see again. Pages of old notes burned by Katsuki and his old friends. Once, he had even found a small photo he did not even know existed. One that would fit inside a locket that showed the Midoriya family before Izuku turned four.

The items from Izuku's world worried the two who had lived in the Dream for decades. They could not tell if the objects or the larger area of the Dream was Izuku's doing... or the moon. Even the marking on Izuku's arm had become more intricate. The Hunters rune was layered in moon runes. Intermittently layered with runes for guidance and protection... They could only hope the moon had taken a liking for the boy... because the other options were worrying.

—

Gerhman had always liked gardening. Ever since Izuku came to the Dream... it was like the Dream was trying to appease them, small items from Izuku's past and now even his. A new plot had appeared with fertilizer and seeds. So he took advantage of it. It was like farming on a smaller scale. And Gerhman had not thought of farming in years. As a kid, he had hated his father's old rickety shack that was towered by the slow-growing stone metropolis that Yharnam was becoming. The large fields of wheat and other crops were his father and brother's lively hood. But Gerhman had always been caught thinking of what kind of jobs existed in Yharnam… And what kind of girls lived there... He really never got to find out.

The teasing drawl of his brother reached young Gerhman's ears as he stared at the growing city in the distance, "Ya will neva get strong with carrying those small stacks Gerhm! The swinging of'a scythe and tha cutting of grain, It'll do ya some good! Those scrawny arms wou'd neva get you a girl at this rate!"

Gerhman's face flushed in embarrassment, the high stack of itchy wheat nearly slipping from his arms.

"Peta'! stop tesin yer brother! We need to get this cut befor night! And German, hurry on that stack! You can daydream later!

"Okay, Pa!"

It had happened many times in his youth the teasing about being on the shorter side... and scrawny used to bother him, but being short, worked in his favor against beasts.

By the time he was in his upper teenage years, his father had gotten ill… and the medicine that had been in Yharnam had not been enough to get him better. So he worked the fields. He and his brothers modified their scythes to allow them greater efficiency in cutting the thick crops. The offers from Yharnam to buy their land looked more and more enticing every day as the medical costs piled.

Until the Healing Church came to his door with experimental treatment to cure his father. The next day their father was out of the bed for the first time in months. Their father had started hauling and cutting the wheat early… he had even let them sleep in for once.

Since the treatment was so effective, the church offered them a cask of medicine for a small part of their land. They were foolish to accept it.

At first, they only used it in dire emergencies. Gerhman's oldest brother had broken his arm in three places when he was fixing the wagon and, it collapsed on him. But soon, broken bones turned into deep cuts, which turned into minor injuries and sickness. Soon all his brothers had used the blood but him.

The harvests had been high the year the beasthood first appeared. Gerhman was in his early twenties when it first appeared on his father. First, the excessive growth of hair on his old man's once ballad head. The sickening cough would not go away, the nights where his father would stand in the field… and just stare blankly.

At one moment, he would look at them and not even remember them. And then during the midnight of a blood moon, while Gerhman and his brothers celebrated their largest haul in years. He watched what was once his father chew the throat out of his younger brother.

They pleaded at first. Gerhman's father was all they had left but each other. He stayed when their mother refused to. He taught them that those in the city would never second guess a dollar increase in wheat prices as long as it came from the farmer. He taught them… and now he was killing them. His younger brother had his throat torn out, his oldest brother tried to grapple their father, but the strength of a beast was unlike anything they had ever seen and, he was torn to shreds. Gerhman and his last two brothers ran after that. Gerhman ran to the shed where they kept the scythes while the other two screamed behind him.

The rest of the night was a blur after he grabbed his scythe. He woke to the Healing Church pushing a paper that employed him as the first hunter. A job that made killing his profession. A job where he eventually found out the truth of the medicine, where he made some apprentices and friends and taught them to fight. Where Sigmund dared him to ride a dark beast… And where he obtained a deal with the moon.

—

Good, whatever time you read this chapter! It is once again my pleasure to give y'all a new chapter! Once again it took longer than I wanted due to school work and the like. But hey! It's done 4792 words all for y'all.

If you are wondering about Hollow Hero the rewrite is getting there. I'm adding onto what I already had and rewriting it all using the old one as a base. It follows the same beat as before but slower. Character reactions I feel work better and it is just written better. I can't wait to release it to you all hopefully soon. Oh! And I am splitting ch up for it. I had a 12000-word ch and just rewriting it in one go will give me an aneurysm so the longest planned ch will be 4000. But don't worry! The word count will increase a lot, I turned ch 2&3 into 4 2-3 thousand chaps! So it's an increase of about four thousand or so in all… and that is not counting when I get to ch4,5, & the unreleased 6th ch… BOI will there be a lot of stuff!

But don't worry! This fic should get chapters about the same speed as usual! If you want to join the discord the links are in older chapters and on ff it doesn't like to work so look for the AO3 version or Wattpad.

I hope you all have a lovely day! And I'm going to start ch8!