CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1: Vampire

The sun was slowly setting behind the tree branches, tinting the sky with orange and pink hues.

Hidden beneath the dense canopy of the forest, a young man lay exhausted on the damp earth covered with leaves.

Hunger gripped him like a tight claw, gnawing at his stomach with relentless ferocity.

The lean figure, dressed in worn-out clothes and eyes reflecting despair, clutched a small knife with a faded blade in his hands.

Days without food had reduced him to skin and bones, but the flame of survival still burned in his eyes.

"Damn it, why do I keep letting the prey slip away?"

Reily, who had been trying to hunt for hours to feed himself, now lay on the cold forest floor, frustrated as he pondered how tragic his life had become.

He was a successful young man, excelling both in his academic and social life. After graduating, he was hired by a large company.

The work was simple, the pay was good, and he had enough free time to indulge in his favorite hobby, reading novels.

He read novels upon novels, ranging from good ones to mediocre ones, even corrupting his mind with those considered "trash".

A perfect life, you might say. So how did he end up in this state?

Well, as he was driving home after a long day of work, he was listening to an audiobook of the latest volume of a novel he had been following for some time.

It was the typical fantasy novel, centered around wizards and their struggle against the demonic race.

The plot wasn't anything special, a bit repetitive, often falling into the usual clichés of the "heaven-blessed protagonist".

If it weren't for his stubbornness, he would have dropped it long ago.

He was near its end, and at this point, he didn't want to drop it, so he decided to listen to it until the end.

While he was engrossed in driving, his mind still immersed in listening to the audiobook, he didn't notice that the traffic light at the intersection had turned red.

Thus, he drove through the intersection and was hit head-on by a truck, dying on the spot.

Or so he thought, but due to a twist of fate, he found himself as a nobody in the novel he was listening to before he died.

***

He made an effort to get up and started walking towards the town. As he walked, he cursed his misfortune.

"Was all my luck wasted in my previous life?" he wondered, still in a foul mood.

Since arriving in this world, he had never been lucky.

He was reborn into the body of a boy no older than 14, whom he presumed was an orphan living on the streets, judging by his unkempt appearance.

He had zero memories of this body, and he only knew that he was in a town on the border of the kingdom of Light, one of the three human kingdoms of this land.

Expecting to have some kind of "cheat", like what typical isekai characters have, he shot out a couple of terms at random until one of them worked.

"status"

He didn't expect it to work, but he was ecstatic when a screen, typical of video games, opened up before him.

However, his happiness was short-lived.

When the screen opened, all he found in front of him was a line of text:

[the system is not available]

"F*ck"

The system is not available? When will it be? Is there a special requirement to access it? What is this requirement? Why are there no more details about it?

After the first few days of his reincarnation, he calmed down. He had lost hope. He knew he couldn't go on like this.

The lack of memories, coupled with the fact that he had no clue how he ended up here, had driven him mad, but hunger, along with not knowing where he lived, forced him to set aside this issue and focus more on his survival.

So, he tried begging around in the hope that some kind soul would take pity on him, but he soon found out it would be futile.

Being on the outskirts of town, he also saw other vagrants like himself, either sleeping on the roadside or begging.

He quickly realized that this wouldn't get him anywhere, so he decided to opt for plan B, which was to hunt some game in the forest outside the town.

It was either that or steal from the stalls, but given his physical appearance, he doubted he would end up anything but beaten to death.

And so, two weeks passed.

He had built himself a shack with beast fur and tree branches he had collected. Every day he would get up and go hunting.

Sometimes he managed to catch some prey, and sometimes not. In the rare cases when he caught more than usual, he sold it at the market for a few coins.

He would have preferred to sell to the guild, where there was less risk of being cheated, but he needed an adventurer's license to do any business there, so he settled for the meager coins the stall vendors gave him, not that he could earn much anyway given the low quality of these materials.

He was saving up money for the day he would go to the capital, to join the adventurer's guild and hope to awaken his mana core. It was the only way he had to improve his living conditions.

Today was one of those days when he spent the whole day hunting without catching anything.

"Looks like I'll have to go to bed hungry today," he said as he prepared to head back.

He had been tempted several times to use his savings to buy food, but he always held back. He had little money, and he didn't want to use it unless he was desperate.

Lost in his thoughts, he heard a scream. It sounded like an animal's cry.

He decided to check it out. He headed towards the direction the scream came from at a slow pace. The closer he got, the louder the scream sounded, until it ceased.

Not hearing the sound anymore, he decided to become more cautious. The forest teemed with beasts of all kinds, and he was afraid of encountering a creature he couldn't handle.

He advanced a little more until he gradually saw a small clearing ahead of him.

At the center of it lay a large animal. It was a blue-horned deer. The blue-horned deer was a grade E magical beast.

To bring it down, at least a squad of three rank F adventurers, or a rank E+ adventurer, was needed.

He wondered who had killed it.

As he approached a little more to get a better view of the scene, he glimpsed a figure crouched near the deer's corpse.

He tried to see who it was better and startled when he managed to get a better view of the figure. It was a thin man, wearing old, blood-stained clothes with small cuts here and there.

He had black hair, and a pale, gaunt face, as if he hadn't seen the sunlight in a while.

What stood out most about him, however, were his long, sharp canines, stained with blood.

It was a vampire!