Kitaguchi Station.
The area with the largest pedestrian traffic flow in Misaki Town in recent years, centered around the newly built underground station and the surface road intersection, encompassing a super-large commercial area consisting of four surrounding building blocks. While fulfilling its duty as a transportation hub, it also became the brightest pedestrian street in Misaki Town at night.
It could even be said to be a symbol of Misaki Town that was ahead of its time. Even though it was already past eight in the evening, this area was still crowded with people. Pedestrians surrounded by neon lights seemed completely unaware of the arrival of night, fully immersed in the dazzling modern world.
—This was the situation about three minutes ago.
And now, Kitaguchi Station had turned into hell.
Hell in the literal sense.
Flames that appeared out of nowhere suddenly swept across the entire commercial street. Rivers of fire flowed through the city, and every place they passed was without exception forced to accept a fiery red curse. A sea of curses like a sudden tsunami came crashing down, engulfing people's heads as they were still reveling in modern entertainment.
First one person was burned, then two, then four... one might think it was just a simple doubling of numbers, but what actually happened was that a spark ignited an entire grassland in an instant!
The fire spread and expanded like a wave, the peaceful world was forced to burn, death and despair formed a barrier, replacing the peace that had already been shattered.
"Don't eat me! Don't eat me! Someone help me!"
"Hiii—! What is this! Monster! Monster!"
"Don't leave me alone!"
"Let go! Don't drag me to die with you!"
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Like the doomsday depictions painted by writers, humans whose hearts were eroded by fear, for the sake of survival, vented meaningless screams and wails, allowing instinct to control their bodies to flee wherever they could, and in the process of fleeing, they pushed aside and kicked away everything except themselves one by one.
Ordinary fires certainly wouldn't make people panic so much, but there were also monsters spreading along with this cursed river of fire.
Were they corpses?
It seemed so. Their bodies were completely charred, as if they had been thrown into a crematorium and burned to ashes, then taken out before they completely disintegrated—there were dozens, no, hundreds of such corpses, wandering the streets like a parade of a hundred night demons.
However, saying wandering...
Every time they saw a human, they charged with a speed exceeding human limits and devoured them—this behavior couldn't be described with a gentle word like wandering; sweeping was more appropriate.
This was a parade of the dead coming from an endless hell.
And at the end of this parade of the dead, someone completely different from the burning ghouls advanced slowly, lagging behind at the end of the line, as if laboriously following the procession, walking forward step by step slowly.
It was a young man who gave an impression of sickly beauty, his hair silver, his skin like a corpse that had been dead in a morgue for a long time, not showing the slightest hint of blood, remaining deathly pale even under the surrounding firelight, the black clothes he wore further highlighting that sickly pallor.
And what was extraordinary was that being in the midst of this raging inferno, one should feel extremely hot, but just by looking at him, for some reason, there was a piercingly cold impression instead.
"So cold..."
The man's lips trembled, uttering Japanese that wasn't very fluent.
"So cold... this world... is so cold..."
Cold?
Perhaps no one standing in this environment would have such a thought.
Then why did he feel cold?
No one knew, and he wouldn't answer either.
His consciousness was almost frozen, and because it was too frozen, his behavior began to be out of control. After sensing the dark day, he dazedly came to the surface and began to crave blood to dispel the cold.
Blood, yes, only blood could, only blood could dispel the cold he felt, warm his body.
Casually grabbing a pedestrian who had already lost consciousness, the man bit his neck.
*SNAP!*
Roughly tearing his blood vessels, fresh blood gushed out in large quantities. The man greedily sucked the blood dry, until not a single drop remained in the blood bag in his hands.
It couldn't.
It couldn't be like this.
"This blood... this blood... is not enough at all..."
He had been a Dead Apostle for thousands of years, and he had sucked countless amounts of ordinary human blood, to the point where it was useless to him today, not even able to provide mental tranquility. To dispel the cold, it turned out that only she could!
The True Ancestor Princess · Arcueid!
Vlov Arkhangel had already sensed that Arcueid was in this country, in this city, otherwise he wouldn't have left his lover and crossed the ocean to come to this small country at the eastern end.
As long as he could eat Arcueid's heart, as long as he could seize her existence, this curse that had befallen him could be eliminated!
'Where! Where are you! Princess!'
This simple thought and obsession shattered Vlov's sanity, bringing him to the brink of madness.
*BANG!*
As if answering Vlov's cry, or to stop his delusional ramblings, above the moon surrounded by fire, a moon star suddenly fell!
Upon touching the ground, an incredible hurricane suddenly raged across the entire area. The curse of fire was instantly scattered for the most part, and the parade of the dead was also like a paper wall, collapsing along with the collapsing ground in a rumbling sound, turning into dust blown away by the wind.
Something was coming.
Vlov could feel it. In the midst of the wind and dust that hadn't completely dissipated, there was an overwhelmingly large scale of existence.
The strong wind carried away the dust, and three figures entered Vlov's sight.
One was a young woman with fiery red hair.
One was a blond-haired boy who exuded an aura similar to his own.
The last one—
There was no way he could misrecognize her. That hair bathed in moonlight, that figure known by every Ancestor, that aura that as a vampire he would definitely not misidentify!
"Arc... ueid!"
Squeezing out the last of his sanity, Vlov roared with a heart-wrenching, deafening cry!
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At the top of a tall building one kilometer in a straight line from Kitaguchi Station.
Observing everything happening in the midst of the sea of fire through Farseeing Magecraft, Ciel, already wearing her church uniform, unconsciously sighed in relief.
"Thank goodness, they arrived just in time. The police also quickly established a cordon. This way, we shouldn't have to worry about the disaster area expanding further."
Seeing the situation develop to this point, to be honest, Ciel's stomach had already started to ache. This was clearly no longer something that could be covered up with a gas explosion. After all, there were too many eyewitnesses. In the end, they might only be able to use Magecraft to influence thoughts and manipulate public opinion, limiting the outside world's understanding to the level of a major fire incident.
Who would have thought this Dead Apostle wouldn't follow the rules! Suddenly starting to kill indiscriminately in the city center!
'After giving me so much trouble, don't expect to get out of here alive tonight, vampire!'
Just as she thought that, Ciel's eyes suddenly caught a shadow below.
In a situation where all non-essential personnel had been isolated outside, there were still people besides their few who could move in the midst of the sea of fire?
'Go take a look!'