There, in his deep, dark, depressing abyss of pain, he heard a voice… A voice that was not completely clear. Still, it was something that he grabbed onto and distracted him from his pain within…

*ARGH*

When he tried to turn around to face the direction of the voice, he was reminded of the state his body was in as another rush of agony was shot through his entire body, making him let out a distorted, audible grunt.

"Hmmm… It seems like you've got some vigour in you still… Quiet a feisty little vampire I got on my hand… Your kind disgusts me..."

That same voice emerged once again in his mind, which was followed by the sound of the metal, creaking door gradually opening and subtle footsteps slowly inching closer and closer in his direction. When suddenly—

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

A pain kicked him in the stomach with the impact of a bullet train, sending waves of pain ravaging his entire body. It felt like a deep, mushy pain; he was certain it would have been even more agonizing had all his bones been intact.

His crimson eyes turned white for a split second and his hands instinctively lept to hold the impact only for him to be once again reminded of the state his body was in, further adding to his torture. His head felt light, everything around them seemed to spin and a feeling of nauseousness crept up slowly in his mind.

"Hahaha! Damn that felt good!"

For the second time in his life, he thought he was once again going to actually die, only this time was even more than before. He was scared, even after all that he had gone through he did not want to die. He could not stop his screaming as tears of blood began welling up in his nauseous, and increasingly blurry eyes…

Abruptly, he felt something surging up inside him.

At first, he thought that it was his soul, but in reality, it was just another wave of vomit, spewing blood out of his mouth and onto the ground ahead of him.

"Is that apple bits? Didn't know your kind liked to eat anything other than flesh and blo*&%$#@#"

The world was slowly becoming darker and darker as that man's voice became even more distant than before until they were no longer recognizable.

But that was when he felt his first sense of relief in a long time.

Vigour suddenly began to resurge into his body, light began to re-enter his eyes making the world clear once more, and that odd static in his ears was now seemingly nowhere to be found.

From his angle on the ground, all he was able to see was his blood and vomit, that along with something new, the black boot of an unknown person.

When he slowly looked up, now finding the energy to do it, he saw the shadowy figure of a man with his hands out shooting a dark aura directly at his body, slowly healing all of his wounds which added confusion onto Ren's still hurting mind.

However, as soon as that bliss began, it ended soon after…

That black aura from the man suddenly disappeared, making all his misery resurface, only nowhere near as bad as before yet he still doubted he could probably move.

With the dark aura away from his sight, he was finally able to see the face of the previously shadowy man. It was a middle-aged, scruffy-looking man, his messy black hair fell down from the edges of the helmet right underneath his eyebrows.

The sight of the amused smile on his olive-toned visage gave off a cold-hearted feeling to his ugly face and demeanour and fastened something inside of him.

His NPC-rooted mindset was now gone and he snapped back to his true self. In that man's eyes, his smile, his entire demeanour radiated the ugliness he always knew humans as. It was a scene that he felt like he had seen before, it was his first actual conscious human interaction he had encountered, and he could not help but imagine his mother's face onto that man.

The guard instinctively took a step back looking into the vampire's eyes, the fear they once harboured was no more, instead replaced by unquantifiable hate.

"BEHAVE YOU SON OF A BITCH!"

Abruptly, the man kicked him over, making him face the ground, landing in a puddle of that disgusting liquid he saw from before.

*ARGH*

That was when he went over towards the struggling vampire on the ground and grabbed his hands to put him in handcuffs.

"DON'T TOUCH ME!!" Ren roared all of a sudden, a burst of bloody flames escaping from his body in all directions, turning around and looking up with the eyes of a demon, heavily breathing with bloody tears.

The wave was more than enough to send the guard tumbling back a few steps, yet not enough to hurt him or make him fall.

"I SAID BEHAVE!!" His rage intensified. He began to repeatedly kick Ren over, and over again until his face was nearly unrecognizable. His teeth were null and void, his eyes were the size of planets, his nose was bent nearly like a hook, but despite all that pain, he endured and hung on trying to resist until he no longer could, and the sound of handcuffs was clanked on his wrists.

"Lucky Heathen... If I were not given explicit orders not to kill you, you would have been nothing but ash right now!" He grunted, slowly healing the vampire once more so he could once again move behind him."You! Stand up and follow me! If you don't comply I'll just beat your ass harder! If you don't want me to touch you then so be it! I don't want to get your filthy germs anyways! Now come, there is much to discuss…"

"Understood…" He murmured in a low, hurting voice, somehow managing to use his hurting yet healed legs.

Ren took deep breaths and finally calmed his mind. The overwhelming feeling was gone yet his immense anger and hatred still remained. He might have been angry, hurting and in a vulnerable state, but he was not dumb enough to deny orders in his position, he would just be delaying the inevitable.

Yes… Following orders… Something he was all too familiar with... What he had always done in life until he broke free… But it seemed like he was once again back in shackles killing his hands.

Using all the energy in his body, he forced himself to stand up, looking down on the ground as to not meet that man's gaze. The last thing he wanted to do was intimidate him and get another beating.

"Follow me…"

Ren watched as the unidentified man in guard's armour walked outside of the dark cell he was in and into the light ahead that seemed to be the same brightness due to his dark vision.

But, that was when a rat suddenly jumped onto the guard's foot as it began biting him out of nowhere.

"Get off me!"

With a simple kick, the rat was sent crashing towards the walls of the cell, Ren watching it with open, half-dead eyes devoid of hope.

The guard thrust his hands open, a bright glow emerged from them before he spoke.

[ Holy Light! ]

The glow in his hands sprung forth into a beam of radiance attacking and completely frying the evil rat.

Ren slightly regained some vigour in his eyes. He recognized that spell from rebirth: Holy Light, a simple 2nd tier spell typically learned by clerics and used against enemies with negative karma. Did the people of this world share the same magic as Rebirth?

"Hey! Follow me! Move along or I'll make you!"

The guard's obnoxious, raspy voice woke him out of his thoughts and thrust him back into reality.

"Understood..." He whispered back in a stiff tone, a glint in his glowing eyes.

Forcing his body to move behind the guard was a task more excruciating than he ever expected. With every step, he felt his bones cracking. His body felt like it weighed tons, like gravity was pushing down at him with ten times its vigour and like 2 elephants were taking a piggyback ride on his naked back.

In all his years of beating and pain that he never thought could be topped, it might have now met its match— although he would argue his mental anguish had yet to peak past his father's death...

Still, he gritted his teeth and forced his body to move forward no matter what since he knew if he didn't it would only be worse for him.

Behind the guard, he slowly walked into the stone hallway of what seemed like a barracks, torches on each side of the cracked walls dyeing his vision a flickering tint of yellow.

The hallway itself was lined with prison cells that housed other people inside of them, locked up like wild animals. Some of them were actual animals, as in beast-men and demihumans such as lizardmen yet most of them still consisted of humans.

The looks on their faces were like that of zombies, some of them skinny as wires from malnourishment, dirt on their faces with nothing but rags infested with fecal matter for clothes.

He felt a pain in his empty stomach looking at their traumatizing state yet he did not at all feel pity or worry for anyone other than himself.

As soon as he went by their cells, they could not help but look up at him with dead-looking sad eyes like they knew something bad was going to happen.

That was when he noticed something that made him want to throw up what little stomach acid he had remaining.

Far-right, in one of the cells he saw children, they could have not been any older than ten or twelve years old. Their stomachs were contracted, their constitution was like twigs to the point that it looked inhuman. Their dirt-stained faces barely contained their droopy eyes. Some of them were crying, hugging comforting some of the younger children while others had the look of pure despair and hopelessness, like there was no point to ever expect escape.

Ren was a teacher, and always had a soft side for children. Most of these were humans, only part of them were demi-humans and beast-men. What kind of prison was this? And, how could the guards not even bat an eye? Was he even the real monster? What crimes have they committed? Why did they deserve such a fate?

As they looked at him walking past, he noticed the disgusted glances of the few but the depressed, lifeless and crying stares were more prominent and broke him most of all. He could not help but see his old self in their eyes.

"Monster... please save us?" He heard the small whispers of a little boy. Yet, all he could do was close his eyes and look away knowing there was nothing that could be done.

He took a slow gulp of saliva that fell down towards his cramped, non-existent stomach as he went to walk through a door to another side of the building.

On this end, the cells were replaced by different walls as far as the eye could see, banners hanging from both sides with text he did not at all recognize, and obscure bronze statues and symbols.

There were statues, of an armoured winged creature holding a scale. It truly looked majestic, yet, they were not the only ones.

There were also the statues and symbols of a nine-tailed cat which Ren found particularly odd yet could not let himself linger on for too long as he needed to focus all the power in his body to move forward.

Of course, he was very familiar with the legend of the nine-tailed fox but a cat was completely foreign to him and almost made no sense.

As they walked even further down the hallway, other guards wearing black and white were seen either guarding or conversing amongst each other, and without a single exception, they all stopped what they were doing and silently and coldly stared at his naked figure walking slowly behind the black-haired guard.

He did not seem embarrassed at their gaze, he only felt fear like the eyes of various preditors were on him ready to eat him alive.

Some of them bore a grin of hatred and contempt, some with disgust, some with amusement, and others bearing a mixture or combination of them all. However, for certain, none of them bore any pity for him— in their eyes, he was not human: he was beneath even a wild animal and deserved to be treated as such.

After what felt like an eternity of walking, the man he was following abruptly stopped. In front of him was a black door unlike any door previously seen before it.

"We're finally here. The captain has been waiting for your arrival. Please enter, he has much to discuss with you… If you cooperate you shouldn't be hurt too badly…"

The door in front of him slowly opened revealing a dim light from within the room, his unease and anticipation nearly reaching their limits.

"Captain! He's finally awake! I've brought him in!" The guard previously in front of him entered and spoke, of course not before bowing and saluting.

"Good job soldier! Bring the heathen in!"

A voice came from within, one deep and dark with no remorse.

"Yes sir!"

The guard stood from his position and looked back at him with that same disgusted look.

"Get in!"

Gulping down his dismay and worries, he steeled himself to enter, walking by the hate-filled guard.

*Slam*

The abrupt sound of the slamming door shutting closed behind him did not even startle him at all as the cold, sombre feeling of the room swept over him as he felt reluctant to even look up and inspect his surroundings.

"Please… Have a seat right over there… I just have a few questions to ask you."

That same voice of death once again rang in his ears, sending slight shivers down his spine as he slowly lifted his head to make the entire room clear.

It was a moderately sized room made out of stone. There was only 1 light source, no... two light sources if it was including the extremely small gap at the top of the wall leading to the outside world, showing barely any light, confirming that it was still night time and that he was indeed underground.

The other light was from above, a fire shedding light directly under it on a long, work-heavy table filled with various papers that spanned nearly half the room's surface area.

On the other side of the table sat a single man…

If menacing had a physical personification, it would undoubtedly be that man in front of him.

He had curly, jet black hair that fell down slightly past his bright green eyes that shot daggers into his soul. His face was well structured yet showed slight hints of age and experience in battle, a large scar visible from the side of his cheek, just missing his eyes.

Unlike the regular black and white worn by every other guard, this man who was most likely the captain wore black and red instead, odd symbolisms of cat tails on the rough-looking armour that looked far more durable and pristine than that of the other guards, including the two guards standing directly behind him looking calm as ever; yet, he could not help but shake away the hints of their disgusting glairs on his naked body.

"I said please have a seat! Do you want to see what happens if I repeat myself once more?"

Ren was snapped out of his daze and immediately complied in panic.

"... Understood ..."