A Corner of the World Map

“No, no, I was just a little curious.”

You hadn’t expected Lorken to make such a move.
You were a bit surprised.
Could it be that he felt it was only fair to repay you once?

But he had only drunk a few drops of your blood.

Of course, you didn’t actually feel any desire to drink it either.

You were just amazed by the vampire’s way of life, surviving purely on blood, and thus curious about what was in his glass.

Lorken, however, showed a disappointed expression upon hearing your words.
He left his collar, which had failed to attract your attention, wide open, not bothering to tie it up again.

In your memory, the only taste of blood you had ever had was from your prey.

No, wait, there was also Adonis.

You remembered him presumptuously cleaning your fingers with an intimate gesture.
You had bitten through his tentacle.

The light blue blood had a very faint taste, far less rich and sweet than what was in the wine glass before you.

“So, is the blood of every species very different?”

Lorken patiently answered you.

“Generally speaking, yes.
Most animals differ due to their living habits.”

“Carnivores are used to eating raw food.
Their blood is very fishy and unpleasant to drink, and also greasy.”

That was a given.
Animals followed the law of the jungle, preferring to eat high-calorie organs and fatty parts.

“So are herbivores better?” you asked in return.

His fingers rested on the base of the wine glass, swirling the liquid inside.
He seemed to understand the line of your questioning, looking at you with a half-smile.

“Herbivores do have less of a taste of their own, but they also lack a certain rich flavor.”

It was a response entirely like a wine tasting.

“So which kind do you like best?”

Hearing this, Lorken raised his glass and took a sip, then squinted his eyes with slight pleasure.

“The most suitable diet for a vampire, of course, is human.”

Lorken explained in detail how vampires would keep their own blood slaves.

High-quality blood slaves were rare and would be well cared for.
It was rare for them to be killed in one feeding.

At the end, he even invited you with some excitement to visit his blood slaves.
He hadn’t considered the fact that you were once human at all.

Your thoughts were a mixture of your time as a human and a jiaoren.
Occasionally, you would empathize with certain ideas.

But these thoughts would then be diluted by the indifference and selfishness of a jiaoren.

The image in your mind at this moment was of you catching a delicious and rare fish, reluctant to eat it all at once.

So you would only eat a part of it, letting the fish live on, and then lead the fish around on migrations.

Uh…

“No, I don’t want to see.”

But why had you never seen any ships or humans in these waters, while Lorken could keep blood slaves?
Where did these people come from?

You voiced your question.

“This sea began to be called the Lost Sea thirty years ago.”

The island where Lorken’s castle was located was on the edge of the Lost Sea.
Across the sea was the land, with countless towns.

Thirty years ago, the Lost Sea was just an ordinary, resource-rich sea, with countless fishing boats and merchant ships sailing on it.

Until a ship encountered a pregnant mermaid.
The greedy merchant, in order to present the mermaid to the king of his country, violently captured her, causing her to lose her unborn child, and she herself also lost her life.

But even at this point, the merchant did not stop.
There were many countries in this world: peace-loving, warmongering, good, and evil.
And his king was a tyrant who committed all kinds of evil.

He eagerly informed the tyrant by letter that he would present the mermaid’s body, whether to make it a specimen or to satisfy his king’s desire to eat mermaid flesh.
He did not return the mermaid to the sea, but threw the stillborn fetus into the sea, and then set sail on his return voyage with the poor, lifeless mermaid.

However, his ship was soon met with retribution.

The surviving ships that had witnessed it told the world.

At first, they could see that it was a monster with black tentacles for its lower body.
Later, the strange fish turned into an extremely tall dark shadow.

Its huge body easily destroyed the ship, and no one on board survived.
The tall, mysterious dark creature carefully held out the body of a white-haired female mermaid with its giant tentacles.

Under the dark clouds of an impending storm, a mournful hum that no one could understand echoed across the sea for an entire night.

As dawn broke, it held its lover and slowly sank, returning to their love nest in the deep sea.

“So, people are afraid of the giant dark shadow, so they don’t come here anymore?”

It sounded so much like Adonis.
You shook your head at your own association.
Adonis seemed rather foolish.

“No, it’s not over yet.”

The news reached the merchant’s country.
The tyrant was furious.
He believed his authority had been challenged by a wild beast from the sea and sent out his army with the aim of killing this rumored monster.

It was an extremely ordinary day.
People were still out fishing on their boats.

When the fleet appeared, the monster also appeared, as silent as a shadow, appearing on the deck of the ships.
Either the bottom of the ships were holed, or it openly slid onto the ships, strangling soldiers and dragging them to their deaths, or it bound sailors and let them suffocate in the water, or it used the giant suckers on its tentacles to cover their faces.

Either through brutal killing or casual teasing.

The monster tore their general to shreds in front of everyone.
The leaderless soldiers were terrified.
Some fled back to their country, wetting their pants in fear, and told the tyrant everything.

The tyrant was thoroughly enraged.
Against everyone’s objections, he decided to go himself.
He vowed to catch all the mermaids in this sea in one fell swoop.

And then, the witnesses present saw a rare and miraculous scene.

Countless figures emerged from the sea.
Mermaids, of which seeing just one was said to be a story to be told for a long time, came out in full force.

Countless beautiful, colorful fishtails surrounded the ships.
The merfolk charged onto the decks, their strong, powerful fishtails supporting them as they slid freely on the ships.
They used their sharp teeth to bite through the soldiers’ necks.
They used their nails to tear apart the sailors’ bodies.

Those who tried to escape by jumping into the sea were surrounded by the merfolk in the water.
People heard terrified screams but couldn’t see the surrounded figures, only the sea being dyed an extreme red.

The vast sea was silent except for the sounds of slaughter.

The monster in people’s eyes, in order to commemorate its lover and child, lured the king to come for revenge.

The mermaids, angry and sad at the loss of their family members and kin, all participated in this slaughter, defending everything in sight.

And that tyrant, the last people saw of him was him being dragged into the endless deep sea by tentacles and countless mermaid hands.

The tyrant’s country was left without a leader.
People fought for the throne, starting a civil war, and was eventually swallowed up and destroyed by war.

Since then, this sea, ruled by mermaids and mutated creatures, no longer allowed humans to approach.

The intelligent creatures in the sea all considered humans their lifelong enemies.

And Lorken’s blood slaves were humans who had been kept in the castle for thirty years.
The merfolk wouldn’t go so far as to meddle in a vampire’s home.
Anyway, for humans, being a vampire’s food was not a good end.

“But it’s been thirty years.
People die.”
Human lifespans were said to be a hundred years, but how many could actually live to be a hundred?

Your words seemed to have a naive quality to them.
Lorken laughed, his eyes curving, his red pupils looking at you, like a pair of crescent blood moons.

You heard him answer with a teasing smile.

“People die.”

“But, people also reproduce.”

“Just let them reproduce.”

The cold voice grazed your eardrum.
You suddenly felt a chill run down your spine.

A cruel sense of reality shattered your confused perception of this world since you woke up.

Was this really the world you once knew?