Eleven years, three hundred twenty three thousand dead Demi-humans, two hundred and eleven thousand dead humans, twelve thousand dead Kindred, two of the Kings permanently killed in the fighting, another two dead but soon resurrected. Six of my First born dead, five of the Clans extinguished, their bloodlines lost for all of time.
The forests that had once been all consuming across the vastness of the Demi-human lands were now gone, either destroyed or cut down to be used in the ever hungry war machines of the never ending armies mustered by both sides. My kingdom's Eastern provinces were in ruin, a dozen provinces lost, retaken, and lost again a hundred times.
It was the cost of war made manifest, and despite the great losses that I and the Kings had suffered the war seemed as if it would never end. Their resources and power were far too great for me to bleed them dry through attrition, and their armies never seemed to run out of bodies to send my way.
I on the other hand was running out of options. The Kings were powerful individually and my every fight with even a singular one of them was a fight to the death I was in no way guaranteed to win. Despite that they recognized the fact that I would win the majority of the time and as such stalemated me every time I entered the field of battle.
I had only been able to kill one of them a year before after he had teleported into the battle a little too close and I had drained him dry before either he or his fellow player could react. The power boost had been great enough in the moment that I had forced the other King to retreat on the spot, winning the battle. It hadn't been nearly enough.
While their armies were endless mine were only so large, so capable of replenishing themselves, so capable of experiencing a thousand pyrrhic victories and a hundred defeats before the manpower available to me began to run thin. I had vastly underestimated the amount of NPCs the Eight had brought with them, and that had been my downfall.
In the beginning at least our forces had been matched. My Clan Lords were powerful, their subordinates competent, and my armies growing at a rate unprecedented. The Eight arrived at the head of a vast human army numbering nearly two hundred thousand strong with eighty NPCs, a number I didn't even think was possible in Yggdrasil. At least until I remembered how broken Nazarick was and that they were just one of the player guilds that did their best to break Yggdrasils systems.
Four level 100 players, eighty NPCs ranging from level 55-80, and two hundred thousand human soldiers. It was a force poised to conquer the entirety of the world with barely a fight, and I and my Kingdom had stood strong for over a decade now against such an overwhelming and powerful engine of conquest.
It wasn't enough, it had never been enough.
Maybe if I hadn't forbidden the mixing of the bloodlines, or if I had focused more on raising the personal power of my Bloodlords, or if I had gone on my own war of Global conquest then I would have been able to stop them.
As I watched their armies spanning across the vast horizon lay siege to my capital I could only stare. My own armies were still fighting them across four miles of wasted landscape and destroyed terrain. The rain had brought mud, and mixed with the blood of ten thousand martyrs fighting in the name of their Kings and Lords it created a hellscape.
Spells of a power unseen in this world blasted across both sides lines as my remaining Bloodlords and their clans tried desperately to match the gathered might of all six kings and nearly a hundred NPCs. Even as powerful as they had become, most of them nearing ascension or as was the case for Carmine and Drafin already achieved it, they couldn't stand against such gathered power indefinitely.
However even as I knew my people needed me I was afraid. For the first time in decades I was truly at risk of dying, at risk of being struck by a power that I could not overcome. So I watched and even when I watched Finerfin die trying to protect Carmine I did nothing.
I was a coward, a coward and a fool. One who had sentenced hundreds of thousands to death on the vain hope that I, an absolute fool, could somehow change history. It was only when Carmine himself called out for me that I finally moved from my position.
Slowly I walked forward, and as I walked my body began to shift. I grew, from seven, to nine, to twelve, to thirty, and finally to nearly seventy-five feet long. No longer was I bipedal, I was a beast, a great winged chimera with the head of a wolf, the body of a lizard, and wings of a bat, and the limbs of a tiger.
I roared into the night sky as I took flight and suddenly my armies buckling lines seemed to grow imperceptibly stronger as I made my appearance on the battlefield. The warriors morale and their ferocity only grew when I slammed into the Greed Kings lines and killed thousands in my first strafing attack.
Soon enough the battle began to shift as I decimated the human army, their bodies nothing but frail blood bags against my adamantium claws. I was a hurricane, a whirling bringer of death that seemed larger than life. I made myself known, displayed my threat, and made sure everyone knew that finally I, the First Lord of all Vampires had arrived.
It was barely ten minutes before I was being attacked on all sides by nearly a dozen NPCs. They were powerful in their own rights, some of them were even level 100 from what I could tell, either having been made that way or having gained the levels during the war. I killed them all one by one.
Some I disemboweled, others a quartered with my claws, some I ripped into pieces with my teeth, and the unlucky few I ate alive. I had ascended decades ago, and my growth had not been idle. Before the war began I would have put myself around level 105 by Yggdrasils standards, after eleven years of intense war where I had drained the blood of tens of thousands of powerful warriors, including a player? I was easily crossing over into the level 110 territory.
The Npc's were no more effective against me than the human armies that had been arrayed against my capital. It meant little to their masters that I killed them though, they were just the distraction after all.
As I ripped the last Npc in half it came without warning. The world shuddered around me and far behind the lines a magical ritual began. It was nearly completely different than the one Ainz had used against Shalltear in the anime, with the only true similarity being the size and complexity of the magical circles moving within.
The bastards had made their choice. They would rather I and my Kingdom fall at the cost of their entire army than risk defeat at my hands. I immediately called upon the Aspects of Blood and Soul in a desperate attempt to counter the incoming attack. Blood spilled from my body in waves and formed runes in the air, magic flowed from my body in waves, and incantations left my lips at speeds I had never thought possible before.
Around both myself and my capital I forged a shield of magic larger than any that had come before. Reinforced a dozen, a hundred times over by layer upon layer of blood and half visible magical energy I braced myself.
Tick
Tick
Tick
Tick I could hear within my mind as the seconds ticked by and the now silent world braced itself.
Tock. The bell rang as the world bent and shuddered under the immense weight of the spell that had been cast. Suddenly I was no longer flying high above the battlefield. I was on the ground, the bodies of the dead beneath my titanic weight providing a nice cushion, one that swiftly disappeared as I was suddenly thrown into the air as the world tore and rent itself into pieces.
The ground cracked open like an egg, hills rose and fell, the world itself broke before my very eyes. Mountains of jagged stone rose from the ground like lapping waves, magma as hot as the planet's core spilled out in rivers, and struck my magical barrier with a force I didn't think was possible.
All of those not protected by my magic were already dead, and against the might of a Super-tier spell enhanced by the power of six of the Greed Kings eventually my barrier broke. It broke and hell came to all those below.
The walls crumbled, the streets sunk into the ground, buildings were consumed by magma and stone, and my great capital city, home to nearly three hundred thousand, sank beneath the earth. Their screams rippled through the air, overwhelming my mind and sending me into a spiral as my body morphed back into my Vampiric form.
As I fell I watched my entire world fall around me. My Vampiric senses had grown so great that even high in the sky I could see it all. Families burning alive, children crushed by rising tides of stone, Kindred falling deep into the quaking earth before the cracked stone sealed itself. They died, everyone who had been in the city that day died under the assault of stone and magma.
Only those who had been lucky enough to be outside of it survived, and of those only my Kindred with the ability to fly were among those who survived more than the initial quakes.
When I finally struck the ground I felt numb. I had lost plain and simple. The Greed Kings had won, and without myself and my Kin to stop them they would go on to conquer large portions of the world before inevitably falling into infighting, if that even happened in this timeline.
It was only the rage that saved my life in that fleeting moment of weakness as my world was destroyed around me. It was the rage that caused me to observe my surroundings, to acknowledge the presence of the strong aura of power, and to move when the attack came.
It was supremely easy to dodge the spell. I had grown vastly faster than I had ever been before, and I had always been faster than I should have been to begin with. One moment I was on the ground, and the next I was ten feet away, my armor reformed and swords in hand. "Come out and fight cowards. To think such an obvious attempt on my life would succeed is the height of arrogance."
My voice, once the pinnacle of aristocrat arrogance was now low and bestial, filled with nothing but hate and rage. Hate and rage were all that I needed now anyways, arrogance was for the courts alone.
The response came soon enough. "You are quite confident for someone who just lost, or did you not see the ruin that surrounds you?" The voice said as she stepped into the light. The leader of the Kings, and the singular female among them.
She was beautiful. Partly Dragon and Partly Elf she was nearly as tall as myself, her face like a perfectly sculpted statue dedicated to a long forgotten goddess. Her hair was a fiery red, her eyes an enchanting blue, and her figure lithe and powerful. She was a warrior Queen of legend given shape and form, a Demi-god in all but name.
I believe she was the most hideous creature I had ever met in my long life. Even now I look back upon her and sneer in disgust, knowing that her body was nothing more than the creation of a pitiful woman who never should have been given the power she was entrusted with.
"I am more than aware of what you have done to my Kingdom mongrel. I am aware of all that you have done, and all that you will do in time. It's not hard to know the mind of a tyrant and a conqueror and what they will do when their final challenger falls." I spoke, flexing my hands around my swords even while my body was seemingly relaxed.
She chuckled, a breathy and alluring sound. From the darkness the other five Kings stepped forward, all of them the picture of beauty and power given form. "You talk a lot for a creature such as yourself." She said.
Looking next to her she spoke to the tallest of the group. "Hey Nao don't Vampire lords usually have that strong and silent thing going on? You think this one is defective?"
"Vampires usually do so, yes, unless they are at the end of their life, then they usually have a cutscene where they monologue for a bit. Its a common enough trope." He spoke, voice dispassionate and bored.
"Makes sense. He put up a good fight though, it's a shame you can't get data crystals in this world, can you imagine how powerful his would be? Divine tier at the very least if you ask me." She spoke, disappointed that I would drop no loot for her to use for herself.
Somewhere deep inside I felt a switch flip, and something within me was no longer restrained. When I spoke next my voice carried across the burning ruins that had once been my Kingdom and reached their ears. "I am no Npc, no boss created by the devs for you to defeat, or monster created for you to overcome."
They froze, surprise evident on their faces. They obviously hadn't expected me to understand what they were talking about. "You are no longer in Yggdrasil, this is the real world as far as you should be concerned. That means when I kill you, drink your blood and soul, and annihilate your existence from the records of the world there is no coming back. You wanted a monologue? That's the best you're getting."
As the final word exited my mouth power flooded my body as I unleashed my power in full.
The world turned from black to crimson as my aura enveloped the world. My blade's edges became nearly divine quality, the senses reached a new found height, my physical capabilities were suddenly unmatchable, and my magic flooded through the air. In my sight the six of them were less unmatchable Demi-gods, and more overly powerful children who had thought the world and its peoples were their toys.
Faster than they were capable of perceiving I was among them, my blades seeking their exposed limbs and organs. It was only their Min-maxed call skills that saved them, their bodies moving before their minds did to save their lives.
With a roaring clash as my weapons struck their own they moved as if in slow motion from my vastly enhanced perspective. Again and again I attacked as I weaved through their line, slicing and stabbing with all my might. Try as I might, even when I was enhanced far beyond my normal capabilities through the might of my Ascension I couldn't touch them.
If there was only one of them they would be dead already, a cooling corpse on the floor that I would feed upon with great pleasure. If there were two or three I would have them on death's door, my victory all but assured. Faced with all six however, all I could do was keep them on the backfoot as long as I could, hoping that a stab or slice would hit something important.
So I continued to move amongst them, parrying their attacks, striking at their now exposed bodies, and blocking their own counter attack when one of their bullshit skills allowed them to parry my own attack. On occasion one of them would speed up just enough to actually pose a threat, but never long enough to capitalize on it.
The minutes ticked by as we battled, each of the players trying desperately to use their skills, spells, and abilities to either tie me down or kill me. They never even got close, not when I would attack them faster than they could perceive, or disrupt said spells and abilities with my own.
It was a deadly back and forth, a stalemate that forced me to push myself beyond every limit I thought I had. Even a second's hesitation would mean death, to stop and ponder meant they could recover and regroup. It meant they could plan or use an ability or spell I couldn't fight against. It meant that I would no longer have the upper hand in any meaningful way.
For now at least they were scattered and disorganized, still reeling from my neverending assault even as their bodies instinctually fought against me while their brains tried to catch up.
It was a status quo that could only last so long, and when I finally landed a strike on her they seemed to have been broken from their spell. Nearly as one they began to move, striking and maneuvering around me. They were trying to herd me, to keep me at bay and get me in position for a mortal strike at the same time.
I raged against their attempts. Spells flowed from my lips and the world turned upside down. Gravity became a crushing all consuming force one moment before switching the next, sending them high into the sky as they tried to stand, before becoming a hammer once to crush their bodies into the stone.
As if they hadn't just been hit with gravity heavy enough to crush a tank into a ball they stood up and went back to attacking once more. Attacking and running right into my second spell, one that lit up their bodies in magical, crystallized fire that destroyed their armor and cooked them alive. For a second, just a singular second they nearly died.
However before they did the spell ended, and their resistances and regenerations kicked into high gear once more. Their equipment however was scrapped, and they had to waste precious time summoning new gear from their inventories. Time which I used to escape their encirclement and score my first kill since the battle had begun.
The smallest of the players, and the most magically inclined he had stayed a little farther back behind the pack. He had spent the entire fight controlling the flow of combat through his spells, and he had been the least affected by my own spells. He was also the slowest to react to my attacks, the one whose resistances, buffs, and inbuilt reactions had been the weakest. So when I appeared behind him and sank my teeth into his flesh he was unable to stop me.
Blood flowed, knowledge entered my brain, and within two seconds the man who had once been a player, a conqueror, and a Demi-god was no more. His blood reinvigorated my flagging body, and even increased my power further and my magic grew stronger and my body grew more powerful.
Like a bolt of lightning I was suddenly back in the fight, and suddenly the Kings were desperately trying to stop my renewed assault even as they grieved for their dead comrade. The smiles were gone. The dispassionate gazes had disappeared, and the once arrogant Greed kings were focused and desperate.
They were also letting loose. Their abilities and skills were unleashed without restraint, and even as I inflicted minor cuts and wounds upon their bodies with my blades and magic, they drew blood from me as well. My arms were lost, my legs were shattered, my head was destroyed, my chest mangled, and even my heart was destroyed.
It all meant little and less, because as long as a drop of magic remained within my soul I would not die. My body would regenerate in what must have seemed like an instant to them, and I would fight on. I would fight on and they would accrue more wounds.
Soon a second King fell when my blade met his neck and separated it from the rest of his body, bypassing his defenses as his body broke down from exhaustion. I commanded his blood into my mouth and I was once again reinvigorated, my power growing even as theirs slowly depleted.
I was winning against all the odds. Too fast, strong, and tough for them to kill even as their bodies failed them in this battle for the fate of the world. Of course, being players they eventually ran out of patience, and as fear began to overwhelm them the singular queen among three kings pulled out their trump card.
From a space that was not space she pulled it from the darkness. A gaudy crystal blade crafted from only the finest of crystal. It radiated power, and I physically flinched when it had finally been fully removed from the place in which they had stored it until this moment.
Suddenly she was no longer the slow, meandering opponent that she had once been, she was faster, stronger, more lethal than ever before. The blade pulsed with her movements, guided her strikes, and when it cut into my flesh I felt as if I had lost a part of myself that I would never recover from.
I tried to fight, I tried to block or dodge or retreat against her assault, and it meant nothing to the blade in her hands. Boosted by a weapon that neared World-item status she put me to flight. I tried my best to attack, to throw her off balance, and of it I lost my leg.
Suddenly I was no longer on the attack, but instead the defense. Missing a leg I was forced into flight, not that she would let me escape. Immune to any damage I could inflict, and robbed of my ability to regenerate I fought a losing battle as every nick and cut refused to heal itself even as my soul desperately pumped magic into my wounds to heal them.
Weakened in a way I didn't think possible, and with my very soul wounded I was forced into a desperate fight for survival.
Together again, and having been given the chance to make a plan they attacked as one. With a barrage of spell and blade they battered me across the landscape, death would have been a mercy compared to the amount of pain I experienced in those brief minutes I was subjected to the full might and wrath of the four players in a body that refused to die.
It was only when my soul had been drained of nearly all that magic that kept me alive that my aura finally receded back into my body. Desperate, I attempted to flee. They destroyed my wings, and my regeneration, still drained by the power of the sword wasn't fast enough to fix them before I hit the ground and broke my leg, sending sharp pains throughout my body.
Grounded and in pain as my body desperately tried to heal from all the damage that had been done to it I knew I had run out of options. They approached me, wounded and exhausted, their eyes full of hate and grief. It felt good to know that I had killed three of the bastards at least, to know I had caused them to feel just a bit of the pain they had caused me.
"Do it then. Kill me and claim your thrones over a world of ash and know this. You will never be safe, not while my kin still live." I said, my eyes closed as I accepted my fate.
The blade never came though. Silence was all that welcomed me, and when I opened my eyes I found myself in the air, held aloft in Carmines arms as Ucelia flew next to him. Of course I asked what had happened.
It was Carmine that answered me, his voice full of exhaustion and despair. "We saved you my lord from their blade. Karyusu dove in front of the blade for you, and I enhanced myself to my limit to grab you before they could react."
Looking below I could see the remaining Greed kings as they desperately looked for me. I could also see Karyusu's still cooling body laying where I had once been.
We flew in silence for a time, absorbing all that had happened. Soon enough survivors from the battle joined us, using our connection to find us.
Three First born, that is how many survived. Carmine, Drafin, and Ilrimeir. They brought with them a hundred Kin of their bloodlines that they had been able to save, I knew more had survived through my connection with all Vampires, but not many more. Two hundred of my Kin survived, only two hundred out of what had once been a population close to twenty thousand.
I didn't know what to say about that, didn't know what to do about that. I didn't know if there was anything I could do about it. Not when so many were dead, not when four still lived, along with the vast majority of their Npcs.
In the end, after nearly two hours of flying I finally made my decision. We would hide, hide and wait. Their reign would not continue eternally, of that I was certain. When it came to an end so too would our seclusion, and a new kingdom would be built. Until that time though, we would hide, and we would grow.
It was the start of a new Era, one where my Kin were hunted by their lessers and we were no longer the respected and feared rulers we had once been. The Golden Age of the Vampire had come to an end, and so too does my tale of youth.
The view transitions from a group of wounded and tired Vampires flying through the night sky into a large stone castle hidden deep within the wilderness, far from any type of civilization.
I cease my reminiscing of that terrible day nearly forty years past and focus on the present, and on the future to come.
I am Imrilion, First Lord of all Vampires and this is my world, and I will reclaim it.
END OF PROLOGUE