A Bloodsucking Demon in a Snowy Town (5)

Although Reihon is a xianren, he isn't a proper one.

A xianren is someone who reaches for immortality despite not being born with an immortal soul.

They take the power of nature into their bodies, refine it, and make it their own in an attempt to become one with nature.

Simply put, they try to draw their bodies closer to spirits while still alive and embody immortality.

The techniques used to interfere with nature, known as xianjutsu, are merely a means to that end.

In other words, xianren aren't spirits themselves, but they are beings extremely close to them.

But simply interfering with nature and taking its power into one's body is one thing; refining it and making it one's own requires long, arduous training as well as extraordinary talent.

Even those who studied xianjutsu and endured harsh training ultimately failed to refine their power and become xianren, and most eventually died when their lifespans ran out.

However, among those who practiced xianjutsu, someone eventually devised a sinister method.

They thought that refinement was so difficult because they were taking in the power of a form of nature far removed from themselves.

If they instead continued taking in a power closer to themselves—the lives of human beings—wouldn't they be able to reach immortality more easily?

Of course, such a method could never bring them closer to spirits, but by taking in human lives, they freed themselves from the threat of death by old age.

Those who fell into such evil ways were called evil xianren. Among them, those who drained life through intercourse were called energy vampires, while those who sucked life from blood and flesh were called bloodsucking demons.

They were more skilled at handling life than proper xianren, and apparently they could sometimes share some of the life they had accumulated with others.

Of course, receiving life from someone else was not without risk. If someone continued accepting gifts from energy vampires or bloodsucking demons, they would become unable to live without being supplied with life by them.

Without that life being supplied, they would be overcome by hunger and thirst, lose their reason, attack anyone and everyone, and become monsters that stole lives.

However, they could not make the lives they stole their own, either. They feasted on the corpses of those they killed, and monsters that lamented their unfulfilled hunger were called ghouls.

In short, Reihon was most likely an evil xianren... a bloodsucking demon, at that, and the Emperor was receiving life from him.

Perhaps Reihon had killed the dwarves because the Emperor had initially balked at being given the lives of fellow humans.

I never imagined that the knowledge the elders had given me would prove useful after I left the deep forest.

If only I hadn't dismissed those old fossils as merely boasting about their moldy old knowledge and had listened a little more seriously.

When it came to ancient mysteries, the knowledge accumulated by the High Elves was unquestionably something that could not be found in the human world.

If Reihon could use xianjutsu to interfere with nature, he could probably clear a path through the mountains to the Rudoria Kingdom, and if he was a bloodsucking demon, his reason for starting a war was easy to understand.

He would create countless victims through war, then use the chaos to suck up and devour a vast number of lives.

There could be no other purpose behind a bloodsucking demon's actions.

And among the lives he would devour were those of Kaeha and her family, who lived in the royal capital of the Rudoria Kingdom.

That was an extremely unwelcome possibility for me.

It would be best if all of this was needless worry and I was simply overthinking things, but the circumstances fit together far too perfectly, and I had already become convinced of Reihon's true identity.

So, yes, I had been idly toying with the thought that I had to get rid of Reihon, hiding behind vague wording, but I would revise that now.

It wasn't that I had to kill Reihon. I would kill him.

With unmistakable murderous intent, I would eliminate the threat endangering what was precious to me.

...What a truly bleak line of thought.

The next day, I abandoned my hideout, left Coltoria, and headed toward the imperial capital, walking far behind the dwarves as they traveled along the highway.

In the end, the dwarves wouldn't stop, no matter what I said.

I told them what I had deduced about Reihon's identity and his relationship with the Emperor, and even warned them that going to the imperial capital now was like going there to be devoured.

"Listen here, Eisa-san the elf. We dwarves in the trading business don't merely haul goods. We connect our kin training in the human world with their homeland. That's one of our roles, too."

So as long as there was even the slightest chance that our kin were still alive, we couldn't flee back to our homeland.

Even if our kin were dead, we had to bring their belongings back home.

"Besides, if we make a commotion in the imperial capital and draw attention, Eisa-san, it'll make your work a little easier too, won't it?"

...When they put it that way, how could I possibly say no?

Twelve dwarves had come to Coltoria for trade. Three of them returned to the dwarven homeland to report, while the remaining nine headed for the imperial capital.

The journey to the imperial capital took roughly two weeks on foot.

When we camped and the like, I joined them only after making sure no one was watching. While traveling, I kept my distance, simply walking along the snow-covered highway without stopping at any villages or towns.

It was normally a season when the snow made travel difficult, but when I asked the spirits dwelling in the falling snow and the snow beneath my feet for help, my feet never got stuck.

Though it was a harsh winter in which travel should have been slow and dangerous, we reached Gudaria, the capital of the Fodor Empire, in exactly two weeks as planned.

The dwarves could go straight into town, but I would infiltrate it only after night had fallen and head straight for Reihon to kill him.

Even if the dwarves made a commotion, it wasn't as though they would immediately be granted an audience and used as bait, but we still didn't have much time to spare.