Doomed to Die in 3 Minutes

Unwilling Heroism

“Urgguugghhhuuuhoooooohhhhh!”

With a mighty groan that sounded like heavily ventilated air Corai rose from the back of an open cart wagon filled with corpses that he found himself in the midst of. His gargling voice caused a shock from the two figures at the front, a middle-aged brown bearded man, the driver of the horse-drawn carriage and a young white-robed man by his side with short cut blonde hair that had faded due to lack of sunlight.

The driver’s name was Marcus and the young priest was Ole.

They stared at the lone figure rising from the depths of the dead, coated from head to toe in dry and fresh blood that had a gaping hole in the middle of his neck with utter terror.

Ole reached into his robes and took out a flask and unscrewed it as quickly as he could with frantic trembling hands and then threw the contents from the bottle into the face of the risen,

“Pft, pftgurarggghhh…! Iiigggmmmmnnnnuutttttaaaazzaammmmmggiiiieeee!”

Corai frowned as his voice didn’t come out quite right. It sounded much like the metal scraping on metal, reminding him of a certain all-black character from a famous sci-fi franchise but even rougher and more gravelly. Taking a second to think he almost laughed since the root of why they sounded similar was almost same, damage to the throat and damage to the lungs.

“The holy water didn’t work! Marcus, release the horses! We’ll need to burn the undead to ash!”

Corai cursed inside and realised he didn’t have a second to spare.

“Show status!” He was able to force out the words coherently despite his impediment and both the young priest and startled driver paused from the information that was relayed to them.

Corai Sil

HP: 3750/16057023

MP: 1000000/27900000

Status: Bleed. Open Wound.

The enormous numbers boggled their minds that they just sort of froze recounting the number of digits in the mental image shared with them. Luckily Ole realised that the HP number was beginning to drop and in a panic started casting recovery spells.

Then a look came across his face of how could he possible restore all those lost hit points, was there anyone who could actually channel that much healing magic?

 Corai knew the look well. “Just… healllll… the woundddd… stop the bleeeeeeding!”

Ole’s head bounced up and down as he reconfigured his spell to simply close the wound and perform a magic surgery over the wound. The gaping hole in the middle of his throat began to lose itself and new layers of skin were being formed and weaved into his flesh to restore the injured location back to its previous state.

Ole breathed a long sigh of relief when he saw the dropping number by Corai’s name finally cease. He was no longer in critical danger and the blood-drenched man no longer had as much intensity as before. Everyone still alive on the wagon took a moment to relax.

“Wait. Where’s my f*****g money!? Did you… loot my corpse!?”

Unfortunately for Ole, Corai was the type to worry a lot about the exact details of a situation they were in and immediately grew restless again.

Ole opened his mouth to respond but stopped. How could he phrase this in an inoffensive fashion? Sure he could deny it but he had a feeling that the mystery man who survived a knife through the neck and just bled out for two hours would check him thoroughly and was not in the mood for forgiveness.

“Okay. So. Uhm. Hear me out. You were dead. I mean I thought you were dead. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s right to loot your corpse or go through your belongings but… look, I take the stuff from my body collections for the church and donate it to like communal institutions. It was for a good cause! I mean it! D-do you know how many church donations never actually make it to their intended targets? It’s criminal!”

Corai did not look convinced or at perhaps simply did not care for the truth or lies in his current state. He stretched out his right hand into a cupped shape and Ole blinked a few moments staring into it before he realised what he had to do.

“Oh! Of course! H-here you are!” He undid a small bag from the belt on his hip and threw it towards Corai who gripped it as if it was his own heart and he looked happy for a moment before his eyebrows furrowed and his face snarled.

“Oi! This is lighter than before!” He opened the bag and quickly seemed to count the various metallic coins and similarly coloured metal cards and nodded to himself.

“You already spent some of it! What the hell? So you were just chatting s**t weren’t ya!?”

While Corai described himself as a coward he was very stubborn and petty when it came to certain things. In a way, he simply hated to lose, at least not without one hell of a struggle.

 “I-I had to pay for…! Oh, you know what!” Ole grimaced and threw a silver metal card towards Corai who caught it easily. “Sorry. I don’t need you to believe me but that should make give you a little more than you lost. It’s compensation. Alright?”

Corai grumbled at the tense Ole and Marcus had long decided he was not getting into this and was focusing solely on the horses.

There was thankfully a pause now that all debts had been settled and the trio noticed they had reached a destination. The border city between Mega and Giga.

The city of Grade. It’s more of a merchant hotspot than anything else though they were big enough to have an adventurer's guild and a small standing army.

It normally was a fairly busy but not overwhelming city. However… today was different.

The trio of travellers was the newest addition to a line towards the gates… that stretched on for miles. They could barely see the open doors from where they were and the crowd moved at a snail's pace…

Then many of the crowd looked towards Corai when they noticed his presence.

Their eyes locked onto him. It was followed by a brief delay before their eyes exploded with terror.

“Vampire!” The herd of mortals of many races broke into a frenzy the moment the words fell out of their mouths and people began to stampede, shove and strike one another to get as far away from the blood-soaked man that had arrived on the scene.

In the blink of an eye, it had become pure chaos.

“What the hell…?” Corai knew he looked off at the moment but the instant conclusion of vampire and the amount of fear that began to strike the collection of people like tidal waves was not normal at all. Something was very wrong.

“I’m not a vampire! I’m not a vampire, I’m not a vampire! Just look!

“This holy water isn’t doing s**t to me so can you lot just calm the f**k down!?”

It took a lot of amplified shouting, being doused in holy water, eating a clove of garlic, being hit by light magic and a lot more yelling to get the crowd to somewhat relax again… but the damage had already been done.

Everyone was restless and tense, one straw away from the camel’s back-breaking, one ounce of weight away from the rope snapping, one fright away from running for the hills and never looking back.

Corai and the two men with him found the reaction of the crowd of what seemed to be refugees to be incredibly peculiar. Vampires were a rather strong race and were always at least C Rank but could go up to the highest ranks of monsters. Still, they would rarely not be alone, most were solitary by nature. However, they weren’t unreasonable. Some monster races, vampires included were able to be part of the more common mortal society from time to time.

There was a rigorous test from the governments and fairly constant monitoring but it wasn’t too uncommon.

Even if an A-Rank vampire went on a rampage it wouldn’t be long before they were stopped. If it was an S Rank going mad then sure it could make a city and a few towns hairs stand on end but even that would be taken out by a swift emergency force from a larger city.

It would be a very short-lived reign of terror.

So cutting out these options only two reasonable scenarios brewed in Corai’s mind.

The first being that it was the stealthy attacks of a particularly adept individual, perhaps the rare daywalker type. That could cause a lot of unrest and prevent the usual hunting methods from being effective. The second was that it was a vampiric horde.

A horde of zombies was something to fear but they were also easy to deal with, their numbers being the only legitimate threat they held. A stampede of vampires though?

An army of constantly growing monsters with the powers of the night, to fly, to hide, to strike when you least expect it? Cities could fall in a single night.

Their forces would regenerate from their wounds, they like most undead could turn their foes into allies and with their shapeshifting abilities they could be anyone they wanted to be and it’d be impossible to know until it was too late.

It was a little silly to think it through this much when the answer was right in front of him though.

He got down and asked the members of the crowd what exactly had been going on.

The answer made his already pale face turn alabaster-white from the answer.

“Seriously? A floating castle full of day walking vampires? A-are you absolutely sure?”

The crowd began to bombard him with their woes, horror story after horror story of small towns being raided by flying white-skinned devils in human skin.

It all started simple enough.

One or two people would end up drained of blood every other night.

Adventurers would charge out in the darkness hunting for the vampiric culprit but find nothing and then head back exhausted. This would go on for days until the local militia, guards and sellswords were robbed of will and strength when the sun was out.

A white citadel fortress would eclipse the sun with its mighty body and then it would happen.

They would descend like a swarm of hornets and feed on the weak and paranoid city.

Their numbers would swell as they made their victims their kin and return to their hive.

This kept happening to small town after small town until their numbers had become so great they rivalled a small standing army. After they started going after larger cities, that’s when the news of the flying army of death had spread like wildfire among the people of Giga.

Everyone had been desperate to find shelter in larger, well-fortified cities or made a break for the border. Widespread news of the situation had only been relatively recent and this scene of refugees to every city had happened in a mere two days.

Corai cursed his bad luck. It was one thing to take down one ridiculously powerful foe.

It was another to take out a small group of enemies. It would be another to take on an army.

The thought of actually fighting such an avatar of death didn’t live past a second in his mind.

He looked at the city that was beginning to bloat and fatten from the crying crowds marching in with desperate eyes and weary bodies.

He ruffled and scratched at his scalp in frustration.

Would he have to go all the way back to Mega and head in the opposite direction and try to start his career in Kilo instead? No, that country was actually quite peaceful, at least relative to the others on this continent. He would get nowhere being a big fish in a small pond.

Maybe he could just slip past the crowds and head further into Giga and make his way into Tera instead? That country though… it was well known to have many ridiculous beasts like the Terror he had killed before. On top of that, the population were battle maniacs. He wasn’t ready to deal with that. He’d be prey for anything and everything there… but if he stayed here he’d die.

Maybe he could go back to Mega but even then he’d make very little progress.

He needed to get his name as an adventurer out there or else he’d be doomed to mediocrity.

Perhaps if he headed the direction of the vampire horde, he could dodge past them as they approached the populated cities? 

He’d dodge them entirely while they were dealt with by the rest of Giga.

If he held out maybe he’d find a border town intact next to the country of Drive and he could work his ass off there and once the population returned to normal he could advance up steadily. He had decided. It was a little risky but that seemed to be the best option.

However as he made his decision he saw in the corner of his eye a wisp of scarlet hair… walking past the gates of the city of Grade and enter within.

Olivia Evergreen had chosen to take refuge in a city that was bound for destruction.

Then the mob became completely silent of all sound and had stopped in their tracks.

All their eyes turned towards the skies. Their irises reflected a coming structure built of white.

“f**k me, so, so… so much!” Corai grumbled as a status screen flew up before his eyes.

“As per the contract, prevent the death of the woman known as Olivia Evergreen.”

Corai had never expected to see her again. Such contracts were usually easily ignored by never even seeing or knowing anything about the other party. If he didn’t know she was in danger he wouldn’t need to help her. Yet it seemed the fates conspired to make him a rather unwilling hero.