After that, I wandered aimlessly for nearly a year.
From city to city, village to village, I got by doing odd jobs, including begging.
Since I was fairly physically capable, survival wasn’t too difficult.
“Please, I need your help. One of my sheep has gone missing.”
One day, in a rural village, someone asked me to find a lost sheep.
The reward was enough to live comfortably for a week, so I reluctantly accepted.
I climbed the mountain behind the village to look for the sheep, but what I found there was its shredded corpse—and a lone wolf, seemingly separated from its pack.
“Grrrrrr!”
The wolf must’ve seen me as prey and lunged.
I let it take my arm while I pulled the dagger from my coat and stabbed its neck repeatedly.
The wolf bit into my arm ferociously, but the situation was too dire for me to even register the pain.
The struggle went on until the sun dipped below the mountain.
By nightfall, the wolf—about as big as I was—finally collapsed, lifeless.
I had narrowly escaped death.
That’s how I felt when I looked down at my arm, which the wolf had torn into.
“…Huh?”
Something felt strange.
The skin, flesh, and bones the wolf had torn apart with its massive fangs were completely restored.
Was I imagining it? No.
There wasn’t a single scratch on my arm.
A miracle? I didn’t know.
But what mattered was—I had survived.
Still filled with questions, I carried the wolf’s corpse back down to the village.
The villagers seemed more skeptical that I had killed the wolf than they were sad about the dead sheep.
But the moment I showed them the numerous stab wounds on the wolf’s neck, they changed their tune.
They handed me a hefty sum, thanking me for slaying the beast that had been terrorizing their village.
“Hey, kid. Did you really take that thing down yourself?”
It seemed someone had witnessed the scene.
“What’s your name?”
“Aiden.”
“Well, Aiden. I’m a mercenary.”
A mercenary stationed in the village had taken notice of me.
“Say, why don’t you try becoming a mercenary?”
And that’s how I became one.
Being a mercenary wasn’t glamorous or noble.
It was a job that involved taking on dangerous tasks while moving from one village to another.
That was the kind of work my mercenary group specialized in.
I was just a trainee, tasked with handling various menial chores.
I didn’t participate in combat, and when I did, all I had was a simple wooden club.
But during my time as a trainee, I came to realize that what happened with my arm that day wasn’t just a coincidence.
“Hey, why don’t you ever get hurt?”
“I’m… not really sure.”
“You’re a strange one. Lucky, maybe.”
Even the mercenary captain remarked on it—I just didn’t get hurt.
Or more accurately, I did, but I healed almost instantly.
No matter how serious the wound, it would heal in under an hour.
I could clearly see new flesh growing, bones mending, tendons reconnecting, and skin closing up.
Even my crooked nose, broken during a childhood fistfight, eventually returned to normal.
My rough skin had become smooth again, like a young boy’s.
When Lily asked me about it later, I called it a mutation—some strange phenomenon that had changed my body.
“…I’ll keep it a secret.”
After much thought, I decided to hide the truth.
I still vividly remembered Lily nearly being burned at the stake after being accused of witchcraft.
Just because I was a man didn’t mean I’d be spared from a witch hunt.
I had no intention of stepping onto the pyre before I found Lily.
“Here, this is your sword.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re a full-fledged mercenary now—go out there and fight hard.”
Another year had passed, and I had turned seventeen.
Perhaps impressed by how I had carried out my duties without complaint, the mercenary captain promoted me from trainee to full mercenary.
He gave me a cheap but solid iron sword and had a sturdy leather armor made for me.
But being a full mercenary simply meant being sent into more dangerous situations.
Even so, I remained uninjured.
“Damn, this guy didn’t even get scratched again? That’s insane.”
“Every other rookie who joined around the same time as him is either dead or crippled. It’s weird, I tell you.”
People cast suspicious glances at me, but most chalked it up to beginner’s luck.
Still, I knew their doubts would only grow with time.
I had already decided to leave the mercenary company when the time felt right.
I’d saved enough money, and I planned to head to a major city to look for information on Lily—or rather, the vampire kingdom.
But my plans were thrown off completely by the events that took place the year I turned eighteen.
“So you’re saying a witch appeared and kidnapped the villagers?”
“Yes, sir! Fifteen people already!”
“…Huh.”
“It’s true! I swear they were taken!”
One day, in a village our mercenary group arrived at, a frantic villager ran up to us and pleaded for help.
He told us a witch had appeared and taken villagers into a hut in the woods.
Though witch hunts were common in those days, few people truly believed witches existed.
That included the captain of our mercenary band.
“So, a witch, huh? What do you think, Aiden?”
“…I’m not sure.”
“Yeah, of course someone lucky like you wouldn’t know. Me? I don’t believe in witches or any of that nonsense.”
“Why not?”
“Because if witches were real, we’d be dead already. And if there was a god, he’d have punished us a long time ago.”
The captain chuckled and shrugged.
He clearly didn’t believe in witches and had no real intention of wasting time on such a foolish-sounding request.
But the gold coins offered by the villagers changed his mind.
Thinking he could just pretend to solve the issue and walk away richer, the captain was all smiles.
And so, we headed toward the hut in the woods.
The so-called “witch’s hut” was a humble place—almost too humble for its ominous title.
It was little more than a shabby shack.
In the front yard were some herb gardens and a rack for drying animal hides, like any ordinary hunter might have.
“Hah, this is what they were scared of?”
“…What should we do?”
“Aiden, you keep watch outside. We’ll go inside, have a little chat with whoever lives there, maybe slip them a few silver coins and tell them to clear out for a few weeks.”
“Got it.”
First rule of the mercenary group:
Do as you’re told.
So I stood outside, keeping guard.
The conversation inside dragged on longer than expected, and while I waited, I ran my hand over one of the animal hides hanging on the rack.
“…Huh?”
That’s when I noticed something strange.
The hide had been carefully tanned, all the fat and fur removed, and the surface was smooth—yet there were a few puncture holes.
I touched the back of my neck.
Two holes, just like the ones Lily’s fangs had left.
The resemblance was uncanny.
Clang! Alarm bells rang in my head.
This was dangerous.
Sensing that, I flung the hut’s door open.
“Ha ha ha! Another one of their comrades? Too bad—you’re already too late!”
A wrinkled old woman cackled.
Surrounding her were my fellow mercenaries—standing eerily still, their complexions pale, eyes unfocused.
They didn’t blink, didn’t move—except to slowly turn their heads like wooden puppets.
There was no life left in them.
And yet, they moved at the old woman’s command.
They were foot soldiers made of corpses.
“Boy, you shall join my kin. Become one of us—a vampire!”
She opened her mouth, and the glint of yellow fangs caught my eye.
Oddly enough, my mind went still—completely clear.
She had just declared herself a vampire.
Which meant—once again—I had come face-to-face with a creature of the night.
There wasn’t much fear.
Though it had been the Vampire Queen who took Lily from me, even this old vampire before me stirred only hatred in my heart.
That hatred turned into a will to kill.
Shwing.
“I’ll kill you!”
I shouted, swinging my sword.
I wasn’t formally trained in swordsmanship, but having fought since I was young, I had some skill.
There was guilt, of course—cutting down the mercenaries I had once shared meals with—but the desire to kill that revolting vampire outweighed any hesitation.
Sweat poured like rain.
My breath grew ragged, my heart threatened to burst.
I kept swinging, my blade tearing through the flesh of my former comrades.
The old woman, watching my struggle from a distance, burst into loud laughter.
“Hahaha! You fight well! I’ve decided—you shall become my greatest kin!”
She raised a hand, holding a blood-red orb, and gestured.
From behind me, more corpses began to close in—clearly the missing villagers.
This was bad.
Surrounded, I fought desperately.
But even as I cut off their limbs, they continued to move toward me.
Their long, jagged fingernails tore at my body, and their fangs left bites all over me.
“Urgh!”
Agony coursed through my entire body.
Even with my healing ability, the wounds came faster than my body could recover.
And the pain didn’t heal along with the flesh.
I couldn’t do it alone.
My escape blocked, I swung until my right arm’s tendon snapped.
That was it.
The vampire’s minions grabbed my limbs and pinned me down.
Just as they were about to tear into my throat, the old woman raised a hand and stopped them.
“Ehehehe. For a boy, you put up quite a fight. I bet your blood tastes exquisite.”
She approached with a satisfied grin.
Grabbing my neck as if to snap it, she opened her mouth and bit down.
Getting bitten by a vampire for the second time was far from pleasant.
Unlike with Lily, this time I felt a surge of revulsion.
The old woman sucked greedily, savoring my blood.
But then her eyes shot open in shock.
“Mmgh! Mmmmh!”
She suddenly released me and staggered back.
White steam began to rise from her body.
“What is this?! What in the world?!”
She coughed violently, blood—both hers and mine—pouring from her mouth.
“Aaaaaagh!”
She thrashed about in agony.
Her control broken, the undead holding me crumbled like puppets with their strings cut.
In that moment, my severed tendon regenerated.
My hand found my sword, and the old vampire writhed in pain before me.
Thrust.
It wasn’t difficult to plunge the blade into her aged heart and twist.
“Kghhhhk!”
She trembled, blood streaming from her eyes, nose, mouth—even her ears.
“You… what are you…?”
“I don’t know either.”
“Primordial… you’re a Primordial…!”
Those were her final words.
Her corpse turned to black ash and scattered.
In a hut full of corpses, only I remained standing.
Why did my blood cause her pain?
Why does my body keep healing itself?
What did she mean by “Primordial”?
These were monumental questions.
But I was far too exhausted to think about any of them.
The fact that I was even standing was a miracle.
And then, I collapsed—unconscious.
“Mmm.”
When I opened my eyes again, a middle-aged man with a deeply wrinkled face was sitting nearby.
“You’ve got an interesting constitution.”
“…Huh?”
“Boy, how about becoming a hunter?”
It was my second salvation.