All My Murim Noonas Are Obsessed With Me!

Chapter 44: The Heavenly Demon’s Might

Sword Empress’s POVThey say when a person is pushed to their limits, their wicked nature emerges.

I’d always dismissed that as a feeble justification for the depraved—a crutch for those too spineless to leash their baser impulses. Even the most shadowed soul, I’d believed, could summon the will to restrain, to rise above the mire of their flaws.

But... but...

"Ahh..."

What right did I have to sit in judgment? What moral perch allowed me to condemn when I teetered on the brink of my own abyss, entertaining thoughts so foul they curdled my blood?

What had my existence amounted to, if not a hollow edifice of hypocrisy—preaching restraint while my desires gnawed from within like vermin?race to mar the earth.

Potence transcending reason. "Absolute master" fell short; she evoked the divine—or infernal—beyond humanity’s frail taxonomy. The boundless Central Plains strained to encompass her; she towered, singular, unchallenged.

"Aah!"

In a subterranean vault, hewn from the Central Plains’ fringes—crimson-veiled, reeking of iron and incantation—the Blood Cult’s purportedly eradicated dregs prostrated before a profane altar, fervor etching their obeisance.

"The time has finally come!"

A woman commanded the dais: progeny of the fallen sovereign, anointed priestess of the resurgent cult, her visage alight with zealous rapture.

"It has been 19 years since the former leader met a horrific end at the hands of that heretic! At last, the moment we’ve waited for has arrived!"

""""Oooooh!!!!""""

Crimson irises gleamed, countenances stripped of rationality—hallmarks of the faithful, the damned.

"Why do you think our cult was defeated?! Why, despite having the power to turn all those hypocritical righteous sect bastards into piles of blood, did we have to flee back then?!"

""""Because we were weak!!""""

"Yes!! We were weak!! The former leader couldn’t fully accept the power of the Blood Demon into his body!! And that’s why we lost!!"

Blasphemy against kin spilled from her lips unheeding; piety held no sway in their creed, only the sanguine gospel.

"And so, I realized! No matter how much humans strive, they remain mere humans! Foolish mortals scrambling to claim the arrangements left behind by the Blood Demon! To truly dye this world in blood, we must not simply take the Blood Demon’s power into our bodies—we must bring the Blood Demon himself back to this land!!!"

Boom!!!

Arms flung heavenward in exaltation, the priestess invoked the rite.

"Now!! O Blood Demon!! Please descend upon this land once more!!!"

The altar brimmed with their hoarded tribute: 9,999 vitae—harvested from man and beast alike, a calculus unearthed in forbidden tomes as the key to invocation.

Hummm!

Flawlessness graced their arcana; the edifice drank deep, hearts pulsing in unison, aura malign and burgeoning.

Hummmmmm!!!

Resonance swelled, saturating the chamber, a dirge presaging rupture. Then—

BOOOOM!!!!

Cataclysm rent the dais asunder, birthing a silhouette amid the pyre’s afterglow.

"Ugh... Where am I...?"

Jet tresses framed a pallid countenance, vermilion slits for eyes, sable cloak pooling like spilled night. He crumpled, cradling his skull.

"I was definitely struck by that divine harlot..."

"Aaaaah!!! O Blood Demon!!!!"

"Vampire...? Am I really a vampire...? Ugh..."

His pallor gleamed unnatural as he rasped lexicon alien to these climes.

Orientation paramount, he appraised the babbling supplicant before him.

"Come here and offer your neck."

"Aah!! Yes, gladly!!"

Compliance came with zealous zeal, her honor ecstatic—baffling, yet secondary to clarity.

Crunch.

Fangs lanced her jugular with predatory grace; agony eluded her, replaced by rapture’s glaze.

Gulp.

"Hmm... The taste is quite decent."

"Haa... Haa... Thank you..."

Through vitae imbibed, he siphoned her chronicle—tapestry of grudge and rite.

Varstein, Lord of Vampires, Third Commander of the Legion of the Undying.

He decreed.

"I need corpses."

This cadre sufficed not. To muster legions true, he required vessels—his brood, the eternal kin who’d warred at his flank.