War is no game. War is blood. War is death. War is the loss of all that is innocent and the rise of all that is evil. It is through war that nations rise and fall, peoples come and go, and a boy becomes a man. It is through war and all of its great tragedy that I would place my race upon a pedestal and face down the coming strife of the Eight.
It was year thirteen of my time in this world when the gates to my castle opened and my legions of Blood knights began their march. At the head of the column I rode upon a steed of pure blood and at my sides rode Carmine and Ucelia. We rode together for around ten miles before we split from one another, each of us splitting away from one another with a different target in mind.
Ucelia rode south with a column of knights three thousand strong. Her goal was the mines the Demi-humans of the region were constantly fighting over, if we could cut their flow of metal the war for the local region would progress far smoother.
Carmine moved west towards the Ilthenian tribes, a race of bat-lizard-human hybrids that dominated an area around thirty miles wide. They were the most populous Demi-humans in the regions and as such I deemed them important enough to set Carmine to the task and assign him four thousand knights to accomplish his task.
That left me with three thousand knights of my own to accomplish the goal which I had set for myself. Instead of moving in any one cardinal direction I spread my focus and my forces wide. I had no singular target or goal of conquest that I would leave to my Children. My task was the slow and methodical conquest of all lands surrounding our own in a slowly expanding sphere.
Unlike myself Carmine and Ucelia didn't have the ability to truly control their knights over large distances and vastly spread out. Their connection grew weak, and they eventually lost the ability to command them beyond a five mile range. I had no such weaknesses.
It was a simple task for me to split my armies into dozens of cohorts a hundred strong and personally direct each of them. I even commanded the scouts for all of the armies since they couldn't use them as effectively as I could. It was natural really, twisting my perception over a vast distance and into multiple bodies as if I was a god and the knights my slowly expanding domain.
It was an intoxicating feeling I will admit, the power and the vastness I felt while controlling so much so easily. That feeling only grew as the war began in earnest.
I was the first to encounter resistance from the Demi-humans. I had made no secret of my invasion and the tribes were aware of my presence nearly instantly. The attacks upon my lines began within a week of my legions leaving the safety of my Castle.
They were pathetic I will admit, and easily crushed under my knights bloody boots. The tribes were weak, their fighters out of practice or simply green from the lack of conflict in the last half a decade. My efforts to kill the warmongers had paid off it seemed, even if that had not been my original goal.
The Demi-humans had never been a particularly united bunch, and it only became more apparent over the course of the war. War parties, maybe a hundred or two strong, would stand and fight against my legions, always made up of only a singular race of Demi-humans fighting desperately against my advance.
They would always route nearly immediately after the lines met and my Knights didn't stop when faced with their roars and posturing. Like beasts they fled and like beasts they were slaughtered. I made sure to try and capture as many of them alive as I could, drinking from day-old bodies just wasn't the same as drinking fresh from the source.
It was the end of the second week when I stormed the first Demi-human village. They fought as best they could of course. When faced with destruction by myself and my knights they fought harder than any of the others had before, and they fought with a tenacity that even saw a few dozen of my knights destroyed.
It wasn't nearly enough. I slaughtered all of the males above five feet tall and drank deep of their blood, it was a slaughter unlike any I had previously indulged in. Six hundred Demi-humans knelt in rows as I drained them one by one. I could feel my power grow as the veritable sea of blood flooded into my gullet.
When I could drink no more my knights cut their throats and their blood was stored within specially made jugs that I had created. When I was done all that remained were the women and the children of the village. Them and a singular male that I had spared from the slaughter. He was tall, nearly seven feet of pure lean muscle and ferocity.
He alone had killed five of my knights in combat, using his natural abilities as a Dracotaur he had been a devastating force of destruction against that had required my personal intervention to deal with. He had impressed me, and when I spoke to him after I had finished my grim task he revealed him to even be quite well spoken.
While not quite to the level of intelligence displayed by Ucelia and Carmine he was still more than aware of the reality of his situation and the power which I possessed. He made a good case for his tribe's continued existence, and he did his best to argue for why the children at least should be spared even if he and the women were not in the end.
I liked his spirit, I liked his strength, but more than anything I liked his dedication to the protection of his tribe, that was something I could respect. I gave him the gift, and with a bit of focus I was able to ensure that he would inherit the Aspect of the beast, I felt like it would suit him well. When he woke I used the blood of his tribesmen to awaken him, though it did take far more than it had with Carmine and Ucelia, a hint at the differing natures of each of the bloodlines.
When he woke I explained now what he was, and what his purpose would be. His tribe would survive, and in return for my protection he would fight in my armies at the vanguard of my conquest. He bowed in deference and asked only if he would be allowed to spread my gift to his tribe. I allowed him to turn five with the expectation that he would shoulder all responsibility for them.
A week later I was offering the same deal to a tribe of Bafolk, a week after that a tribe of naga, and so on. My conquest only gained speed and momentum with every tribe conquered and integrated into my growing Kingdom. After a month I received word from Ucelia that she had finished her conquest south and the mines were now mine.
She had conquered a further five tribes and each chief had been given the gift. They had subsequently been forced into the vanguard to act as rabid attack dogs until they fully regained their sanity. With the mines secured she began her second phase of the conquest. While the mines themselves had been secured, the tribes fighting and using them were largely still independent, and her task was to bring all hundred of them into the fold.
I smiled when I received her letter, happy that the conquest was going well, especially when she told me only a single cohort of knights had been lost. Three months after that, and a further twenty tribes subjugated that I received word from Carmine in the west.
He spoke of gigantic battles where thousands of Demi-humans faced off against his Knights in orderly battle lines using genuine tactics and strategy to outmaneuver and overstretch his lines. The Ilthenian tribes fought hard and a dozen cohorts were lost over the course of a dozen battles that saw him nearly pushed out of their lands.
They were not the best fighters, and they had a habit of relying on their overwhelming numbers to lock down his lines in grinding melees. However they were brilliant tacticians that knew how to capitalize on their advantages and minimize their weaknesses. Their wave tactics were not without merit, and usually just a distraction meant to pull their enemies' focus away from the real threat.
It worked against him many times as he was hard pressed to coordinate the entirety of his army against such a numerically superior foe. Despite that the Ilthenian hordes broke against his lines time and time again, and even when they almost pushed him out of their lands they couldn't finish him off for good.
Ultimately he learned, he grew, and he turned the tide against the Ilthenians. Soon enough they were on the retreat and he had begun to conquer village after village, tribe after tribe. That was the real turning point, unlike his wife who used those she turned as attack dogs while they were still in the midst of their frenzies he followed my Example.
Each chosen he turned was given enough blood from their own kin to quickly bring them to consciousness. Aware and sane once more he trained them in the basics of their bloodlines and gave them a cohort of knights of their own to command. He even allowed them to turn three of their own as I had taken to doing, something many of them did.
According to his report, that gave him more than enough newborns to act as a rabid Vanguard to spread chaos and disorder among the Ilthenian lines. Those that survived would inevitably become commanders of their own cohorts, and those that didn't were dismissed as necessary casualties.
That was only the first month, the next three were spent slowly sweeping up the tribes and their armies. The sheer size and density of the tribes had been a concern during the beginning of the campaign, but by its end it was a godsend. His Line had grown greatly over the course of the conquest, and blood was needed in immense quantities to feed them all, and the nearly three hundred thousand Ilthenians were more than capable of providing it all.
When he was done he had immediately sent me a letter detailing the success of his conquest along with a detailed report of everything lost and gained. Eighteen cohorts of blood knights destroyed, Four second generation killed when their cohorts were overrun, and eighteen third generation killed while fighting in the vanguard. Eight tribes exterminated for blood constituting five thousand Ilthenians.
A further eighty-nine integrated into the Kingdom and a Second generation assigned to keep them in check. Eighteen thousand blood slaves captured from the Ilthenian armies, eight-hundred twenty gallon vials of condensed blood filled, Eight cohorts created to replace those lost, tribal territories integrated into expanding borders, and one-hundred and fifty thousand Ilthenians added to the Kingdom's population.
Word of his success caused a wave of relief to wash over me. I knew he was alive of course, and a bit of what was going on through coordinating his scouts, though even that became less reliable as he began relying on his Children to scout instead of the knights. However I could only guess at what was truly happening, having expected the conquest to be over far sooner than it had been, a sign that I had underestimated the Demi-humans and what they could do when united.
I quickly sent him his new orders when I received his report. Unlike Ucelia who had the task of conquering further south and uniting the tribes in the region he would focus on consolidation. Not only were the lands we had conquered so far quite vast, nearly two hundred miles wide, and forty tall it was also quite diverse. My Kingdom may not have been the largest in the world by a large mile, but it was mine and I had no intention of overextending it.
He was given the task of actually integrating all the tribes we had conquered so far and setting up a governmental system which could oversee and administer them all. I also dumped the task of actually introducing the system of taxation, shared language, customs, and military service we had created in the conquered territories.
While he did that I focused on the ongoing war with the Demi-humans, a task made much easier when the majority of the blood knights that had been under his command entered mine and reinforced the conquering cohorts. Nearly two thousand Knights to aid my own was a major boon when my cohorts were so spread out across the front.
Two years. That's how long my first war with the Demi-humans would last. Two years of death and conquest across over three hundred miles of ever expanding front line combat. By its end my kingdom was about equivalent in size to modern Hungary. I had planned originally to conquer far more, but the tribes had grown more difficult to fight against the longer we fought.
Even with my steadily growing Vampiric forces the Demi-humans had united against me and soon enough I was no longer expanding, but defending against their constant attacks across a dozen fronts as my armies weakened while stretched so thin. I had to personally deal with nearly three dozen tribes and their chieftains to bring peace, and swear to never again declare a war of conquest upon their tribes, but in the end I had been able to secure peace.
Even then the only reason they had agreed had been how draining the war had been on them and their peoples. Tens of thousands of their warriors lay dead, dozens of tribes and races had been either wiped out or put to flight, and to their eyes at least my kingdom was as powerful as ever. I could have continued the war of course, and possibly even won, securing the entirety of the Demi-humans lands for myself.
However that was not my goal and it would have in fact been counter-productive. I needed the Demi-humans strong and united, I needed them to present a united front to all outside threats and I had accomplished exactly that. They were more unified than ever before, and they would recover their losses soon enough, of that I was certain.
The possibility of defeat also weighed heavily on my mind and that was a risk I was not quite willing to take. At least not until my power base had been sufficiently solidified and my armies expanded.
Which brings me to my new Kingdom itself. When I had begun the war only three Vampires existed. Myself, Carmine, and Ucelia. Now nearly six hundred of them existed, all of them powerful and veteran warriors who had survived their youth to become strong and skilled warriors. Including Carmine there were now ten first generation Vampires and from them came ten bloodlines, each unique and different from the one that had came before.
None of them were as powerful as Carmine himself, but they were all powerful warriors whom I had personally chosen and crafted to be my generals. The fact that I had extracted oaths of loyalty from them and used my magic to ensure it stuck only made me happier with them. I named them Bloodlords, and when the war came to an end I decided it was time to finalize its power structures.
Obviously I was at the top with Carmine and Ucelia as my seconds, and that worked when the kingdom was still expanding and everything was in flux. It would not work in the long term however and I knew that to be the case. Hell, even during the war many of my generals and commanders nearly came to blows due to the fluid nature of the hierarchy and the unclear nature of how power flowed.
I will admit that I let a part of myself that I hadn't touched in a long time come into play and I got a little nerdy with the titles that I gave to them, but it was fun and I know that they were not complaining. Vampires were known for their arrogance for a reason, and flowery, powerful names appealed to their nature. I have a feeling they would have done something similar if I hadn't done so first anyways.
Power flowed as such in my kingdom. At the top of the pyramid was myself, The First Lord and Progenitor of our race. All power held finality within myself within the borders of my kingdom, and the whole of the Vampiric race was expected to pay me fealty whether they lived within my kingdom's borders or not.
After me came the three Aspect Lords, they were Bloordlords who were the most powerful with their inherited aspects even above the other Bloodlords. More of an honorary title than anything else, the three were given positions of merit above even the other Bloodlords, they were even given the right to demand I meet with them privately. I even gave them the right to openly speak against me, respectfully of course.
They would act as the voices of the Bloodlines in my court and as such they were given privileges the other Bloodlords didn't have. The first of them were Carmine Lord of Blood, Drafin the Lord of Beasts and Second of the Bloodlords, and Finernin Lord of the Soul third born of the Bloodlords. Carmine even among the Aspect Lords, Carmine stood out as the most powerful, and at the time at least he alone could have put down his fellow lords.
Below the Aspect lords were of course the Bloodlords. The First Generation created personally by myself, ten they were and ten they would remain for decades to come. It was they who were entrusted with the administration of my Kingdom, each given a region to oversee and rule with the help of their clans.
Four of the Bloodlords had inherited the aspect of blood, Two of the soul, and Four the beast. Each of them was a powerful and dreaded existence who by war's end stood around the player equivalent of level 40 by my estimate. Carmine Fiend-Slayer, Terthinas the Viper, Ysgrmair Troll-Bane, Heinrich Old-Blood, Uthelian the Blade, Jackon the Soul stealer, Kalen the weaver, Drafin the Dragon, Finernin Lord of Souls, and Ithelos the Passionate.
Below them were the Clan Lords, second generation Vampires whom the Bloodlords most trusted and gave territory of their own within the limits of the clan's borders to administer. Clan Lords were those given the right to give the gift of Vampirism, and handle the affairs of the lower Generations. Whether that be simple matters like housing, hunting grounds, complaints and disputes, or more Complex matters.
Such as a lower Vampire wanting to turn a loved one or chosen mortal, or rivalries between different clans and their own members. Not all of the second generation were a Clan Lord, it being a position of honor and responsibility in line with the status of an Aspect Lord for the second generation just like the former title was for the Bloodlords.
Below the Clan Lords were the regular Lords who would rule over a singular piece of land such as a village, tribe, castle, city, etc. While not technically confined to a specific generation it was usually those of the second and third who would be assigned to these positions by their Clans for their meritorious service during the war.
While a basic system it worked well enough, and the laws I had made with Carmine ensured they would not be abusing their mortal subjects too greatly. Mortals would be protected within my lands, and hunting grounds would only include animals and wanted criminals. No mortal citizen of my Kingdom would be hunted like prey by their Vampiric masters, I made it clear that I would personally deal with any who thought to harm my subjects.
Instead a basic blood tax would be implemented. The average Vampire required around a singular human body's worth of blood per day to survive and grow, or around 1.3 Gallons. With six hundred and twenty Vampires living in the Kingdom, I conducted a census soon after the war's end, that was 806 gallons a day per Vampire.
It sounds like a lot more than it actually is. After my census I found my Kingdom had around three hundred thousand Demi-humans living within it. Their blood tax was as such set at only five ounces of blood a day to be deposited in their villages specially created blood banks. Basically a large three hundred gallon cauldron that Finernin and Carmine had created that would store blood and keep it fresh.
Honestly I could have put in place a much smaller blood tax, but I knew that the current number of Vampires wouldn't stay so small forever, and with peace would come a population boom. Among the mortals and the Vampires both. It was better to get ahead of the problem now while it wasn't a problem than later.
Paperwork wasn't my only reward from the war. I had gone to war to become more powerful after all, and it had paid dividends. Forty thousand blood slaves, over three thousand twenty gallon cauldrons of condensed blood, thousand personally slaughtered and fed upon whether they be fresh or killed recently. All of it was for my personal use and needs.
The Cauldrons I put in storage to be used in times of crisis or if we struck a famine and I had no other options. I would add more cauldrons in the future as the blood tax showed its worth and more blood was produced than could be consumed. The Slaves however I drained within a fortnight, I needed power and they had been combatants, they were warriors and none of their hands were clean.
I shunted the moral ramifications of all actions I took in the war to the back of my mind, and I did so again when I fed upon the ocean of blood that the slaves had in their veins.
The power afterwards was… indescribable. I had been powerful before the war, around the player equivalent of level fifty I believe. I had only grown in power during it, my power evolving, twisting, growing with each new body drained, memories absorbed, animal traits integrated and stored. When it finally came to an end I was vastly more powerful than I had been at the start, around what I believe to have been level 75, though I'm not sure as I'm not a player myself.
After the festival of blood as my children would come to call it though I was ascendant. My very presence seemed to exert a physical force upon the world. The aspects flowed through me with ease, their power unlocked to me in ways I had never even conceived of, and my physical abilities were nearly insurmountable, and yet I still didn't feel complete.
I knew I still wasn't on the level of a player like Ainz or one of the Six, but I was close, closer than I had ever been before. My power terrified my children. After the festival even the Bloodlords treated me with a more obvious deference and cautiousness. I had outstripped them in power before obviously, but now I was like a god to them, a God of Blood who could never be touched or reached.
Obviously I knew that wasn't the case but I didn't correct them, loyalty through fear was fine as long as it was tempered with the knowledge that I had their loyalty through love as well.
Time passed and things changed in the world. Twenty years after I had arrived in the world, the first of the six died when her aging body gave out while fighting against one of the Dragon Lords. Two years after that another died while fighting a horde of Demi-humans that had united behind an Apelord of surprising power.
Like dominoes they fell one after another. One to simple old age, but most because their aging bodies weren't able to keep up with their minds and abilities. In the end, just like the original timeline only Surshana was alive thirty years after my arrival in this world.
In the north the Elves were growing strong under the rule of a particularly charismatic King who had united the wood and dark elves under the banner of a new Elven Empire. They had already begun expanding outwards into the lands that would one day be controlled by the Re-estize kingdom. By my estimate they controlled an area of land nearly equal to that of the Slane Theocracy.
That was another thing that had happened, in the wake of their deaths the Six's Empire had morphed into the Slane theocracy nearly instantly. Their descendants of course held the majority of the power still, but the church grew more powerful with every passing year, and it wouldn't be long before it held the majority of the power. While they hadn't yet split I knew it wouldn't be long before human kingdoms started splitting from the overextended theocracy.
In the west the Demi-humans were evolving culturally. Tribal kingdoms and Empires were forming as the various tribes united around powerful kings and chieftains who used my conquest as justification for their own. Tens of thousands died in the conflicts and wars of unification, but I did nothing to stop them.
The more unified they were the harder a time the Greed kings would have conquering them.
The final power of note however experienced little change. The Dragon Lords were as docile as ever. Sure they enforced their rule over the world viciously and as the six died they took a far more active role once more, but for the time at least they were content to sit and wait. They had ruled for thousands of years, and in their eyes at least their rule would continue for thousands more.
Fifteen years after the war and the foundation of the clans my Kingdom was far different than it had been before. Much had changed, most obviously the number of Vampires in the world. Six hundred and twenty had existed after the end of the war, fifteen years later that number had tripled to nineteen-hundred Vampires.
So many Vampires concentrated in one place should have been a recipe for disaster, but my presence kept them in line. When I as the progenitor was so much stronger than even the strongest of the Bloodlords, enough so that I could make them all kneel with my presence alone, few of the lower Vampires wished to earn my ire.
Even still, the clans were beginning to grow restless. Fights broke out more often, small rivalries grew into inter-clan disputes, and when a newborn had been lucky enough to catch the member of another clan off guard and consume his blood tensions only heightened. The newborn stole his bloodline, he jumped a generation from the sixth to the fifth, and he completely changed the way the clans looked at one another.
Up until that point they didn't know bloodlines could be stolen, that the aspects could be mixed once more. With his frenzied discovery everything changed and it took the Aspect Lords themselves stepping in to stop a full on civil war breaking out. In the end the Newborn was presented before me and given the choice between execution, or exile. Of course he would be exiled after I had personally ripped the secondary bloodline out of him by slowly and torturously ripping his soul and body apart to exercise the second aspect from him.
He chose exile and I absorbed the aspect he had stolen, giving me a very small boost in power. Whether or not he spread Vampirism outside the borders of my Kingdom mattered little to me, a fifth generation could only cause so much damage, and any progeny he sired would be far too weak to pose a threat.
In the wake of his discovery new laws were set in place that forbid the exchanging of Bloodlines, to mix the bloodlines was to be a forbidden and unholy act. I will admit freely that I used my near divine status to manipulate them into believing it to be a sin to try and grow closer to my own power in such a way.
Many were disgruntled with this decree of course, but the united front I and the Bloodlords presented meant they could do nothing to fight against it.
However even while my Vampiric children bickered with one another my mortal subjects prospered. The protection of their Vampiric overlords cost blood not gold, and without taxed gold being funneled towards their overlords it was instead used to make their lives better. Public works were always in construction, roads twisted through the once dense forests like snaking rivers, castles and cities rose high, gleaming, and made of smooth stone.
Schools were built, the people were educated, the common language I had created was spread throughout the land, farms spread, mines produced more than ever, walls rose around the great cities of the Vampires, and by the time the twentieth anniversary of the wars end came and went my Kingdom stood singular in the world in its condensed prosperity for the common man.
At the same time new innovations came regularly as my race explored its power and their limits. I myself used my greater mastery of magic to create a way to refrigerate perishables by enchanting custom made boxes with a mixture of cooling spells and enchantments that would last for centuries. It was a simple thing and one that quickly spread throughout my kingdom, to the point where all but the poorest of people had one in their homes.
The Clans that had inherited the Aspect of the soul were the most useful here. While the Blood Clans were busy creating blood rituals and enchanted equipment, and the beast clans were exploring the extent of their transformative abilities it was the Soul clans which ingratiated themselves with the common folk.
Charging exorbitant fees of blood and gold for their services they created hundreds of unique magical enchantments and artifacts. Most of them were even mass producible and quickly spread throughout my kingdom, enriching the lives of its citizens, mortal and Vampire. It was a golden age, and one I would remember forever.
My kin were prospering, if bickering with one another. My people were happy, their lives far better than they had ever been before. I was stronger than ever, and life was good. The only thing that dampened my mood was the knowledge of what was to come.
In forty years time the timer would start, a new century would have begun and the Greed Kings would arrive sooner rather than later.
I could only hope that was enough time to prepare my kingdom for the war to come, and that my ambitious children wouldn't split my kingdom in the meantime. I even considered taking a lover, many of my children had already done so and Camine and Ucelias' marriage was going strong. In the end I decided against it, I did not wish to attempt such a thing when the Greed kings were so close to arriving.
No, my time was better spent preparing. No one would have loved me anyways. Who could love an old monster like myself, knowing everything that I've done?
A sad chuckle washes through the dark halls. "No one," He Whispers.