The sub-zero wind howled violently against us as we cut through the dark cloud banks, my massive leathery wings beating a steady, rhythmic cadence against the shifting air currents. Far below, the jagged, unforgiving terrain of the northern border began to blur into the dark distance, replaced by the sprawling, distant outline of the southern route leading toward Caria.
Elicia clung to my back with white-knuckled desperation, her face buried deep within the stolen, thick vanguard cloaks to shield herself from the extreme G-force. But despite her physical paralysis and the biting frost, her sharp, academic mind was already putting the pieces together.
"Little Ren, what did you do for that past few months? How did you become this strong? The artifacts you gave me... the rings... they were impossibly high grade. And what happened to your body? I knew you were a human. Why... why did you become a demon?" her voice drifted past my shoulder, muffled by the wind but heavy with an intense, burning curiosity.
I stared out into the endless, bruised indigo sky, a flood of memories crashing over me. I couldn't share the full truth with her… I couldn't tell her about my past life on Earth as Roxanne, or the heroic death that had sent my soul into this world. Elicia was a pragmatist, an academic; she didn't believe in the heretical concept of reincarnation.
So, I took a deep breath, my newly restored tongue effortlessly shaping the human words as I began explaining my journey from the very start.
"Well... after you left for the higher districts, I was left all alone in Town Allure. I took control of our family meat shop by myself. The daily labor was exhausting, and the appraisal stall wasn't making enough to justify the taxes. Eventually, I just quit being an appraiser entirely and permanently closed the appraisal stall afterward."
As I adjusted my trajectory, flying slightly higher to catch a favorable wind current, Elicia shifted her weight against me. Because of my 5'5 petite frame, her voluptuous 5'8 stature was completely draped over my back, her heavy, G-cup breasts laying directly against the crown and back of my head as she leaned forward to catch my voice over the gale.
"Remember my original human skills, big sister? Inspect and Blood Curse."
Hearing those names, a soft, heavy sigh escaped Elicia's lips, her chest pressing tighter against my head.
"Yes, little Ren, you were born with two incredibly weak, low-tier skills. Inspect was only good to analyze basic stats, and Blood Curse... the guild and the church appraised it as a useless parlor trick just to drink blood. Unlike my god-tier healing magic, or Elias's elite dark magic, the household... our parents... they thought you were born useless. A complete disgrace to our family line. While Elias and I were training night and day to become high-ranking warriors, our parents forced you to sit behind that desk as a common appraiser, just to make some practical use of your Inspect skill. For the past eighteen years, your entire life revolved around dusty books and ledgers." Elicia whispered, her voice laced with a deep, historical sorrow.
Her grip tightened around my neck, her voice cracking with that familiar, agonizing guilt.
"As your eldest sister, the one who possesses god-tier magic... my only real job was to keep my weak, fragile little sister safe. But I failed you completely."
"It's not your fault, Elicia, don't look back. I will continue the story."
I took a sharp breath, staring into the dark horizon as I prepared to tell her the terrifying truth of how a useless, book-bound appraiser had fed a forbidden hunger to become the most feared, blood-sucking predator in the Andromeda territory.
I adjusted my grip on her thighs, my powerful wings cutting through the heavy cloud banks as the distant, twinkling lights of the lower districts began to peek through the dark horizon.
"Then, everything shifted, after I closed the stall, I returned home to our old house in Town Allure. I went back to the meat shop and tried to butcher some livestock to process the meat. But the moment the knife bit into the flesh... suddenly, I smelled the blood. My Blood Curse violently woke up inside my veins."
I felt Elicia's breath hitch against the back of my neck, her head resting heavily against mine as she listened intently.
"You, our parents, the church… everyone thought its sole purpose was just to drink blood and make me immune to hemochromatosis, they thought it was a useless, gross parlor trick. But since the day I was born, I had been carrying this suffocating, uncontrollable urge deep inside my chest. An insatiable craving to drink blood. I thought I was just going crazy. But that day, surrounded by the raw meat, the hunger won. I thoroughly drank the blood from the livestock, hoping… just praying… to finally see what the hell was wrong with me."
The wind roared around us, but Elicia stayed perfectly still, hanging on every word.
"And then suddenly, I realized the truth, It wasn't a weak curse at all. It was an incredibly overpowered vampiric power-up system. The millisecond the blood hit my throat, my status screen went completely chaotic. Whenever I drink blood, my stats permanently increase. All of you thought it was just a useless thirst, right? Wrong. I discovered that by consuming literal liters of blood, my strength, defense, and mana pool scale up with escalating returns. The more I devoured, the stronger I became. I wasn't born useless, big sister... I was just born with a hunger that needed to be fed."
"I kept feeding it. Literally liters of it, Elicia. The returns were immediate and escalating. +100 Strength, +50 Defense, +100 Mana... I was unlocking abilities I didn't even know existed, like the Blood Sword. But while my parameters were exploding in secret, the real world came knocking. A tax collector from the upper sectors showed up at our doorstep, demanding an astronomical sum. He said they were your unpaid academy taxes, big sister." I said, my wings beating rhythmically against the open sky as the distant borders of Caria began to materialize on the horizon
Elicia's body went completely rigid against my back, a sharp, ragged breath escaping her lips.
"It was Harold… He and I... we are not close friends at all. He's a corrupt bureaucrat who has been trying to find leverage on my academy ledger for years. Oh, gods, Ren... I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for dragging you into my political messes back home."
"Don't worry about it, because of that pressure, everything changed, I couldn't pay it as a simple shopkeep. So, I decided to become an adventurer. I enlisted into the Bureau's local registry and joined a small, low-tier party guild… the Yellow Flower Guild. And Elicia... for the first time in my entire life, I actually had friends. Real comrades who didn't look at me like a disgrace."
I smiled softly at the memory of those early days, though the warmth was quickly swallowed by the shadows of what followed.
"We took on real missions. We raided the corrupt Bronze Coin Guild, we saved a high-ranking noble's son from an underground trafficking ring... and then, during a massive localized crisis, I met Elias. For the first time in over eight years, I saw our big brother."
Elicia gasped, her fingers tightening desperately around my shoulders.
"Elias? He saw you combat-active?"
"Yes, the crisis over Rebelbub broke out, a massive, catastrophic wave of monsters. Me and my brother fought side-by-side against the horde. He was completely paralyzed with shock to see his 'useless' little sister wielding high-tier Blood Manipulation on the frontlines. But there wasn't time to celebrate. Right after the wave, Town Allure was struck. The main reservoir was sabotaged with highly toxic, necrotic contaminated waters. To purify the source and save our hometown from total extinction... I had to plunge my hand directly into the magical rot. That's how I originally lost my left arm, Elicia."
The memory of the agonizing, black rot eating away my limb made my phantom nerves twitch, but looking down at my perfectly restored, unblemished left hand gripping her leg, I felt a profound surge of gratitude.
"But my power was booming, Every single time I killed a monster, I drained them to the last drop. My stats scaled into the thousands. But... it changed when the Bureau started sending us against human threats. I felt terrible the first few times I killed humans, Elicia. Tasting human blood, realizing what my curse truly wanted... it felt dirty. But the world didn't stop tearing at me. And after that…" I continued, my voice dropping into a darker, colder register.
"Then..."
I choked out, the air rushing fast and cold past my face as my wings beat heavily against the sky. The memory alone made my newly restored chest tighten so hard I could barely breathe.
"The Bronze Coin Guild retaliated. They launched a brutal, surprise assault on our home, the Yellow Flower Guild headquarters. Elicia... they slaughtered the maids. The kind girls who used to greet me every morning... they died, and I couldn't save them all."
I felt Elicia's arms tighten around my neck, her breath hitching as she felt the sudden, violent tremble in my petite frame.
"In an absolute act of pure, blind revenge, I tracked them down, I crawled my way into Town Tata to completely eradicate the Bronze Coin remnants and avenge the maids. The infiltration was going successfully... until the trap snapped shut. I was ambushed by their leadership… Dominik, Lara, and Bernard. I fought with everything I had left, but I was overwhelmed. I was captured." I continued, my voice dropping into a dark, ragged whisper.
The twinkling lights of Caria were visible in the distance, but my mind was trapped back in that pitch-black cellar prison.
"And then... the nightmare started. It was devastating, big sister. They stripped my prosthetic arm, bound me in magic-suppressing obsidian chains, and tortured me day and night. Dominik... he used rusty shears to cut off my toes, and then he cut out my tongue so I couldn't even scream. Bernard brought in a forged death certificate, mocking me, saying the Yellow Flower Guild had already mourned and abandoned me. They shattered my right leg with a heavy sledgehammer. They flayed the skin from my legs in long strips... and Lara... she poured coarse salt directly into the raw, exposed flesh."
A harsh, involuntary sob tore from my throat, the phantom pain of those six days making my dual-colored eyes sting.
"I was left there in the dark, infected, broken, and completely mentally shattered. That's when the sleep paralysis, the crippling paranoia, and the PTSD permanently kicked in. Even now, when the room goes dark, I can still hear the sound of the sledgehammer swinging. I can still taste the salt and blood in my mouth. If it wasn't for my blood curse hitting its fifth evolution on the sixth day... I would have died as a faceless corpse in that dirt cellar."
A heavy, suffocating silence fell between us, broken only by the rhythmic, powerful beat of my dark wings cutting through the night sky. Elicia's arms tightened around my neck so hard I could feel the desperate, protective tremble in her fingers. Her face was pressed completely against the back of my silver hair, her tears soaking through the stolen paladin cloaks.
"I was rotting in that cellar, They thought I was entirely broken. They brought me out for one final mockery session before my planned public execution. When they asked me what I wanted for my last meal... I couldn't speak, so I just mouthed the word 'Blood.' They laughed, Elicia. Dominik thought it would be a hilarious, humiliating show, so he ordered his guards to bring in a massive barrel of pig's blood and dump the entire thing right over my head."
A sharp, dark smile pulled at my fangs as I tilted my wings, navigating a heavy crosswind.
"Little did they know, they had just signed their own death warrants. Before that moment, my ledger was sitting at 198L / 200L. I was exactly two liters short of the threshold. When that blood drenched my mouth and soaked into my open, raw wounds... the Drain Activated notification flashed in the dark. The system hit 200L / 200L."
The air pressure dropped around us as I flew higher, the memory of the awakening making my heart hammer.
"The Blood Curse completely roared to life and triggered my Phase 5 Evolution. That is where I transformed into the 'monster' I am today. These massive, leathery wings... they were born directly from that trauma, forged from the blood and the salt of my own torture. The sudden, cataclysmic surge of power completely shattered the magic-suppressing obsidian chains. I stood up, stabilized my ruined, skinless legs with blood constructs, and the hunt immediately reversed."
I took a deep breath, the distant, shimmering borders of Caria finally coming into view beneath the cloud barrier.
"I slaughtered every single one of those bandits. I systematically tore through their ranks, consuming their blood to fuel my rage. I executed Dominik and the corrupt ruler right there in their own stronghold. Lara... I dragged her from the sky and locked her away in the lower levels of the citadel for months to rot. But when the dust settled... I was completely alone. The Yellow Flower Guild, my friends... the Bureau had already distributed my official death certificate. Everyone back home thought Eirene Rynd was dead."
I closed my dual-colored eyes for a brief second, the weight of the five-month isolation crashing over me once more.
"I couldn't go back, Elicia. I was trapped in a cycle of crippling panic attacks, sleep paralysis, and intense self-loathing. I looked in the mirror and didn't even recognize the fanged, winged creature staring back at me. I couldn't face my friends looking like this. So, while Town Allure was actively mourning my death and leaving flowers at a grave that didn't hold a body... I packed what was left of my life, slipped into the shadows, and fled to Caria to start over as a ghost."