"Ugh... AHHH!" Gripped by pain, I clutched my chest, leaning against the bathroom wall of my dorm room. The blood I'd ingested from Mira was doing something to my body.
Damn it, I still don't understand why I did it.
"Fuck," I cried out.
The pain was so severe it felt like my organs were melting. I couldn't comprehend what was happening. "Stem, what the hell is wrong with me?" I asked through gritted, bloodied teeth, gasping for breath to dull the agony.
[Your body is adjusting to the changes it has undergone.]
"So this isn't... because... of the blood?" I managed to ask. An interface materialized in response.
[It is. The user has consumed blood of such potency that the user's body cannot process it.]
"Argh!" I vomited a mouthful of blood, collapsing to the floor, trembling in agony. Desperate and panicked, I'd made a stupid decision. I'd always known the system wanted me to consume blood—it was one of the DNA extraction options available from the start.
But I'd despised it, couldn't fathom reaching such a point. I'd done terrible things in the nether realm, unspeakable things, yet consuming blood felt like crossing a line entirely different.
Perhaps it was my fear of becoming a vampire. Back when I was Aaron, I'd watched countless vampire movies, and that terror had held me back, convinced I'd suffer their consequences—fear of the sun, eternal damnation, all of it.
Somehow, I'd forgotten all that and simply let myself go.
"FUCK!" Blood covered me entirely.
[USER IN CRITICAL CONDITION]
[FOREIGN ENERGY DETECTED IN USER'S BODY]
[DNA ACQUIRED. NOW UNDERGOING FULL INTEGRATION INTO USER'S BODY]
[BODY CANNOT SUSTAIN SUCH STRESS]
[USER IS BREAKING DOWN]
"AHHHH!"
The bathroom door slammed open.
"WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING TO YOU, NERO?!" Sarsem's scream pierced through my agony.
I tried to tell him to do something, anything—call the infirmary, get help, something. But I couldn't move. My body had shut down completely. All I could do was feel, and all I felt was pain. An all-consuming, impossible pain.
The same pain I'd experienced in the forsaken planes of the nether—that cursed place where I'd been tormented until I finally found escape.
[USER'S BODY UNDERGOING SEVERE RECONSTRUCTION]
[ATTEMPTING TO ELIMINATE FOREIGN ENERGY. USER DOES NOT POSSESS REQUIRED ORGANS FOR PROCESSING]
[FAILED]
[ENERGY IS BOUND TO ACQUIRED DNA. INTEGRATION HAS MADE EXTRACTION IMPOSSIBLE]
[HALTING INTEGRATION PROCESS. USER'S BODY CANNOT WITHSTAND THE STRAIN. USER'S VITALS ARE CRITICALLY LOW. USER MAY NOT SURVIVE]
[FAILED]
[INTEGRATION COMPLETE]
[USER HAS ACQUIRED A BLOODLINE]
[BLOODLINE ABILITY ACQUIRED: REPULSION [DORMANT]]
[BLOODLINE REMAINS DORMANT. USER LACKS ENERGY SOURCE FOR ACTIVATION]
[USER'S VITALS DROPPING RAPIDLY. BODY CANNOT SUSTAIN BLOODLINE]
[USER IS DYING]
[EMERGENCY RECONSTRUCTION INITIATED]
[WARNING: MULTIPLE ORGAN FAILURES DETECTED]
[WARNING: USER IS DYING]
[WARNING: USER IS DYING]
[WARNING: USER IS DYING]
[WARNING: USER IS DYING]
[WARNING: USER IS DYING]
"Hold on! Just stay with me! You're going to be okay, I promise!" His scream was the last thing I heard clearly before a sudden weightlessness overtook me—I was being lifted, carried away. Then came the convulsions.
"H-help..."
Blood poured from my body in waves. I'd lost all capacity to feel anything but the agony.
Was her blood incompatible with mine? The system said I'd acquired a bloodline, but then why—
Wait. Is that why it kept failing?
[DNA extraction unsuccessful]
[Unable to analyze target's DNA]
[User's potential remains critically low]
[Endevour to level up]
User's potential remains critically low...
In that instant, it all clicked into place.
The system wasn't a scam. Nero simply wasn't built to surpass a certain threshold of power—this was his limit, the one his creator had imposed. The same limit I now faced.
I'd grown stronger acquiring the bloodline, but I had no energy source to power it. How could I have been so desperate, so careless? I'd forgotten the most essential detail: what power source did I have to fuel this bloodline?
None. Absolutely none.
"What's happening to him?!"
"Get out of the way! GET OUT!"
"Isn't that Nero?!"
"What—what the hell?"
Random voices and screams flooded in around me. Could I make it there in time? Even if I did, what could the healers do? If the system itself couldn't fix this, what could they accomplish?
"HELP! MY FRIEND IS DYING!"
The voices were becoming distant, harder to distinguish. Everything blurred together.
I wondered if Mira was okay...
[USER'S BRAIN FUNCTION WILL NOW BE SHUT DOWN TO PREVENT PSYCHOLOGICAL DAMAGE]
Please, whoever or whatever you are... take my soul, crush it, destroy it—do whatever you wish. Just don't send me back to the nether.
Don't send me back.