Chapter 4: Silence of the Night

While we were having our tonight's supper in the dining hall, I stopped for a moment from eating and turned my head to look at Damon, who's eating by my side, and said, "Damon, can you buy me 100 BN worth of insects? I need it."

The others looked at me in confusion, and Damon replied to me with, "Sure, when I have the time tomorrow. But what are you going to do with that many insects, if I may ask?"

"It's for, uh, experiment! Yes, experiment! I read something in a book and I want to try it." I nervously said, trying to hide the fact that I'm just going to kill all of them.

"Hmm, if you say so. It's a weird request but okay." Damon agreed to my request, now I'm sure I'm going to get enough Kill Points tomorrow to buy 5 clones and a healing item that costs 50 KP (Kill Points). 

This is one of the main reasons why I'm only doing this now because Flare got sick. Damon might look calm on the outside, but he's a wreck currently because he's trying to find a cure for Flare's current condition. If I can get 100 KP tomorrow, I'll be able to cure Flare of her condition, but the current medicine that I can afford has a side-effect; anyone who drinks it will be cured of any ailment they may have but they will stay in a coma for 3 months before waking up, completely healthy.

It will make Flare sleep for 93 days, but hey, at least she's going to be cured of her poison. That's what's important, right?

While I don't specifically like insects, the orphans here seem more disgusted than I am. When they heard that Damon was gonna buy a bunch of insects tomorrow, they immediately erupted in a line of "Ew", "Gross", or "Yuck!".

Anyway, I didn't care much about their reactions and just went on with my life… well, my two-year-old life.

Once I've bought those clones, I can finally let them grind in [Training] until I'm old enough to dispel them and receive all the fruits of their labor. For now, until I'm ready, I'll just kill insects to get my KPs and buy more clones… I feel like I'm cheating. Am I cheating? I just have to ask myself that. Is this really OKAY? Meh, whatever works for me, I guess.

Suddenly, I heard tutorial bot's voice, [Remember, Auguste, in the path of becoming the strongest there are no "right" or "evil" paths, only strength will prevail. No matter what the people say about your methods of growing stronger, never listen to them, they are of no importance. If you have you kill 10 virgin women to grow stronger, then that's no sin in my eyes, that only shows your determination!]

…

I'm only 2 f*cking years old!

[This is still a piece of advice worth taking in]

No, it's f*cking not! Why are you suddenly talking about killing 10 virgin women? Are you even right in the head there, bud? You don't talk to a 2-year-old like that!

[Hey, I'm giving you the best life advices here, don't you disrespect me]

I'm just going to ignore you. You're clearly bad influence.

Sometimes, tutorial bot is kind of an asshole when it comes to his, uh, "life advices". Most of the time, these "life advice" of his just becomes downright horrifying to depict. A year ago, he once said to me that to become stronger easily, I'll have to sacrifice 10 orphans to the Blood God… he even said it in a voice full of seriousness, there were no rooms for jokes there.

The best way to deal with him is just to ignore him. It works… most of the time.

Anyhow, I can't fall asleep right now because some kid is, uh, "relieving" himself. Oh god, I can hear the flopping sound.

*Pa* *Pa* *Pa*

This is the worst.

It's currently night. The moon shined upon the orphanage, revealing three men dressed in all blacks standing in front of the gates. They disappeared and reappeared inside the backyard of the orphanage, their steps as quiet as the twilight huntsmen. They had swords behind their backs, knives on their waists, and small packets that contained strange pills.

"Gah!"

All of them were just about to go inside the building of the orphanage when one of their teammates grunted a little. They immediately backed away and turned around to see a blonde man wearing a black suit with a simple kitchen knife in his right hand. He was twirling his mustache as he looked at them when he opened his slit eyes, revealing deep crimson eyes that glinted ominously under the moonlight.

He slowly circled the intruders, like a predator looking at its prey.

"Hmm, why did you have to intrude into my children's house? I had to quickly change into this suit, do you know why?" His voice, and the way he circled them, made their skin crawl.

"W-Why?" One of them managed to ask.

"AAAAHH!"

"Shh, don't make a noise. You'll wake my children."

The intruder, this time, heard the man's voice behind him along with the scream of his companion. He's pretty sure that he's dead, but the intruder turned his head behind him to see if his companion was dead. He then saw his companion broken, every part of his body was mangled in the most deformed way possible.

"…Because it's easier to remove the stain of your blood."

Then, everything went black as the man ripped his head away from his body as he stood on the intruder's shoulders. Blood spurted out of his, now, headless neck, staining the man's black outfit. The man jumped off the corpse, then stepped on them as he landed. If anyone saw him now, they would only think of one thing; absolute madness.

Standing straighter than before, while opening his arms wide and open, he showed a bright smile under the moonlight.

"Ah, how long has it been… since I've tasted blood!" He licked the blood off his fingers, and his ears started to become sharper and sharper. His hair turned completely white, his fangs quickly became evident as they grew more menacing and ominous. His skin became pale white, his crimson eyes looked like it's been dipped inside the blood of millions, and finally, his strength grew to its peak.

Then, he disappeared in an intense burst of speed. The corpses also disappeared, the man took them with him. For what, you ask? Maybe you will never know.

The wind blew silently as the moonlight sky became this incident's only witness. Only nature knows what that man's true self is, and nature knows that a monster has no true self, only pure, insatiable hunger for blood.

Was he a man, perhaps? Maybe. But was he a monster? Well, no, because a monster doesn't have a heart.

(Scene Change)

I woke up in the middle of the night, dry as sand. I woke up Flame from his comfortable looking slumber for him to get me something to drink.

The bright red-haired boy rubbed his eyes, looking around here and there, then turned to look at me and say, "What time is it, Auguste? Why did you wake me up?"

"I need a drink, and I can't reach the table where our plates and cups are, so can you please get me something to drink?" I asked him.

"Fine, I'm going to get myself a drink also. C'mon." He gestured as he walked out of the door.

I then followed suit.

Soon, we reached the kitchen and Flame handed me a cup of water. I greedily drank it dry, I was thirsty.

 "You good now, right? Then let's go back to sleep, it's just 4 AM. We still have another 4 hours until breakfast."

I nodded and walked back to our room. We took our respective sides of the bed and he quickly fell asleep while hugging one of our fellow orphans. Again, I couldn't sleep for some reason. I felt something ominous in the air, something scary. It feels like someone is watching us sleep, but when I look around the room, there is no one here but me and these other children.

As I was just about to sleep, I saw a shadow of a person from right outside the window, being covered by the light blue curtains.

'Impossible!' I thought, 'There's no way someone's outside of that window! This is the third floor!'

I slowly heard my heart thumping loudly, it almost sounded like a stick hitting drums. My mind was going haywire, my eyes widening so much that I thought my eyes would fall out of their sockets, and then, the shadow disappeared, as if it was never there.

Was that… my imagination?

Or was it something more?