Chapter 181: Chapter 177: The Fate Of Pigs Driven Mad By Purity

“Who is the mastermind…?”

A faint cough followed the question.

“Who is the one behind all this, and who is the root of all evil…?”

Virgil, pushing through the strain, responded to my question with a weary voice.

“…I wonder if it even matters to ask such things now.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“It means we’re far too insignificant to justify searching for a reason. If you really want to find a cause, you’ll see that ultimately, everyone is both a victim and a perpetrator.”

As he said those words, his body strained.

He leaned against the wall, breathing deeply, trying to bear the pain.

“Mr. Virgil, are you okay?”

“Haha, are you worried about this body?”

Virgil, sweating coldly, looked back at me.

Even though he seemed on the verge of transforming back into a grotesque creature, his gaze towards me showed kindness.

“I am a being who deserves to be called evil from a human’s perspective like yours… Yet your concern for me feels so precarious…”

As if he was worried I might get hurt by approaching him.

Yes, there was a risk of being caught in his rampage even now, but still, I chose to approach him and support his body.

“Surely, it’s hard to see you as a good person…”

I wasn’t just throwing myself recklessly.

After all, he reverted from being a grotesque creature as soon as he recognized me and even now was trying to suppress his rampage.

“Still, I have to hear your story. That’s why I came here.”

Supporting his body at this moment was an action I could take because I was sure he wasn’t an enemy.

As long as he still had his sanity, I believed he wouldn’t harm me of his own will.

“…That’s the right attitude.”

At my words, he gave a faint, bitter smile and, with my support, slowly began to move his feet.

“Instead of judging others, focusing on your own survival first… Isn’t that the ideal way to live in this harsh world?”

Seemingly comforted by my presence, Virgil calmed his convulsions and, with a more at-ease expression, allowed me to continue supporting him through the dark, damp sewer.

-Screeeech!!

We left behind the hideous screams echoing from every direction.

Seeking a place where I could learn the root of everything.

After wandering in the darkness for a long time, we arrived at a large underground room of a building.

Thankfully, we didn’t encounter any monstrous threats along the way, but even upon arrival, this place didn’t feel welcoming.

Everywhere, bloodstained remnants and vast pools of blood at the entrance hinted at some grim incident that had taken place.

“Here…”

“This is the sanctum where the church provides holy water.”

Virgil stepped forward, as if to guide me to the location, shaking off my support.

The patterns carved on the walls and floor, starting from the drained sewer, indicated that this place was once considered highly sacred within the sanctuary.

In the center of the room was a fountain that stood out the most.

“The followers living in this sanctuary gather periodically in the basement of the cathedral to receive holy water and be baptized… In reality, it’s just purified water processed through religious rituals…”

However, contrary to the name ‘holy water,’ the fountain exuded nothing but revulsion instead of sanctity.

Instead of sacredness, it was filled to the brim with blood… and crushed flesh, as though someone had ground people into it.

“I wouldn’t touch it if I were you. Just one sip, and you’d end up like me.”

At that warning, I froze, my body tensing reflexively.

When I looked to the side, I saw him seated by the fountain, trying to steady himself.

“Don’t tell me… Did you drink it?”

“Yes, a lady to my liking offered it, so I had no choice but to drink.”

“…Your liking?”

“Haha, she was a fiery woman indeed. It wasn’t enough that she always overwhelmed me—now she’s got a leash on me, treating me like her guard dog to watch over the sewers…”

The mention of a “fiery woman” made it sound personal, but given the circumstances, it seemed more figurative.

Likely, this “fiery woman” had restrained him, forced him to drink from the bloody fountain, and left him here as a guard.

“…Did the people of this sanctuary change after drinking this water?”

Whatever the case, it seemed this fountain, which once contained holy water, was the cause of the monstrosities.

With that certainty, I asked him another question.

“Was the one who made you drink the water the same person who turned you into this?”

“I already told you, didn’t I? If you want to blame someone, everyone is both a victim and a perpetrator.”

Virgil repeated his earlier words with difficulty, gasping for breath.

Feeling frustrated and seeing no point in pressing further, I remained silent. He then chuckled and brought up a new topic.

“If you still want to pinpoint the cause… Yes, let’s start with that story.”

“That story?”

“Do you know how beings like me came to be?”

Beings like him.

The first thing that came to mind was his species.

“If you mean vampires… I know that to create offspring, you transfuse your own blood into another race.”

“I’m not talking about the reproduction of vampires but the origin.”

“The origin…?”

“Yes, the original, noble beings from whom we all descended.”

True Ancestors. Those ancient vampires known to live the longest and wield the greatest power.

The ancestors, the very origins, of all current vampires.

“Their beginning… started from a star that descended onto this land.”

He began by explaining how such True Ancestors came to exist in this world.

“Today’s sentient beings live in civilizations, but back then, nothing existed. No traditions, no religion, no transmission of knowledge—just a primitive era… What do you think sentient beings would do when they encountered a star that descended from the sky?”

What do primitive people do when they face a meteor before the creation of civilizations?

After a brief contemplation, the first thing that came to mind was spoken.

“…Break it?”

“Yes. And if they can, they’ll eat it.”

Not a wrong answer.

As he spoke, he mimed eating, opening his mouth wide.

“A mysterious flesh from the sky… No one knew what would happen to those who consumed it. Yet lacking knowledge of its dangers, they ingested it, and thus, they transformed…”

That was how the first vampires, the True Ancestors, came into existence.

“Not everyone changed, but those who did not were even more revered. Suddenly, among creatures that had long believed themselves supreme, there appeared beings with power so extraordinary, they had no choice but to view themselves as exceptional.”

Exposed to sunlight, their power would wane, but they could mesmerize other species, transform their bodies into mist, and possess incredible physical strength and near-immortality.

Even more, they could reproduce regardless of species by mere blood transfusion. Flang had said this about them.

If the vampires had intentionally increased their numbers, they might have posed an even greater threat than the Demon King’s army or the undead.

“But ironically, we were too intoxicated by our own uniqueness. The primal instincts we held before encountering the miracle from the stars… eroded quickly in the endless time we were granted.”

Other races were always considered beneath them, mere lowly beings; thus, reproducing was a highly selective process, and if it was deemed inappropriate, they would use such offspring briefly and discard them.

This trait was only accentuated by their near-immortality, making their arrogance all the more apparent.

“At some point, we stopped dirtying our own hands, preferring to stand above others. We parasitized others, taking only what we needed. If they were no longer useful, we discarded them and moved on to new prey. This became the survival method for the species that considered itself the most superior.”

And Flang said.

The vampires always parasitize the dominant species of every era, and in this moment of catastrophe, humans were the only ones maintaining a social structure.

Thus, even now, vampires were humanity’s enemies.

That was all Flang had said.

It seemed like there was more, but she always showed signs of hiding something when the conversation reached that point.

“Our kind once lived by hiding and leeching off others, always a nuisance… and then, one day, we became something to worship.”

Perhaps the content being discussed now was what she had been hiding.

A gut feeling made me furrow my brows as I stared at Virgil.

“Worship? You mean humans worshiping vampires?”

“Without a common enemy, sentient beings will inevitably turn on each other… Before the catastrophe, the dominant species of the era were always at odds. How could they trust each other and unite fully?”

I knew that story, too.

Before the great calamity of the dragons, humans had always killed each other.

How could they suddenly set aside all their hatred and unite against the threat just because a catastrophe had arrived?

“Eventually, the dominant species had to make a choice. Either they scattered and prepared for the end, or they bowed to the arrogant species they saw as a nuisance, uniting the scattered groups with their power…”

The soft cracking sound of bones marked Virgil’s grim transformation.

“…Even offering the purest blood of the most holy and beautiful beings in the process.”

His voice wavered for the first time, betraying a break in his usual composure.

“Humans…”

And in that instant, an uncontrollable feeling surged within me.

The truth I’d suspected for so long…

The strange, indescribable feeling I’d had that day when I first met the Crown Prince… I finally understood it.

“It was you… Your kind had been controlling humanity’s leaders all along?”

Park Byung-bin…

Was that why Orion Seis’s clone betrayed him the moment he broke free and formed a revolutionary group?

He had realized that humanity’s leaders, who willingly made themselves slaves, were the ones destroying the human race, slowly but surely.

“Are you disappointed?”

As I was processing this realization, Virgil regained his composure, calming the tremors in his body.

The emotion etched on his face was undoubtedly one of cynicism.

“I feel the same way. Seeing those who consider themselves noble but are obsessed with purity… It makes my blood boil.”

“…Virgil.”

“Purity shines its true light only after enduring hardship and adversity… Without understanding that process and fixating only on the result, all they see is the tarnished glow of its diminished value.”

As demons follow desire and the undead follow regrets, vampires follow their own aesthetics.

The vampire before me had awakened his hatred for purity through that aesthetic.

Among those who worship purity, he revered the process, not the result. Thus, he truly worshipped the ‘valuable purity.’

How did the sight of society’s leaders worshipping them, making his kind even more arrogant, appear to him?

“And now, seeing the downfall of those pigs mad with purity for myself, I realized… yes, this was inevitable…”

“Downfall? What do you mean by that…?”

“Oh, yes. It was only the leaders who chose to become their vassals. How could the ones who serve a god cooperate with them and allow another to stand above their god?”

His laughter was almost cheerful.

He let go of his own body, spreading his arms and showing his reverence towards the statue around the fountain.

“All along, they were sharpening their knives. Even as they bowed their heads and offered pure flesh and blood for their god… they were constantly scheming to deal with those arrogant pigs when their ‘new era’ would finally come.”

As I held my breath, feeling a hint of reverence in his ecstatic expression, he lowered his arms and turned his gaze back to me.

“Yes, the new era…! Those pure pigs sprouted new ambitions in a world facing catastrophe. They came to believe that the ones blessed by the bloodline of a being from beyond the stars were indeed the rightful gods meant to rule over the earth’s sentient beings.”

His eyes, hollowed and withstanding the madness awakened within, met mine.

But within them, there was a sense of exhilaration.

Seeing the truth of what had happened in this land, the emotion he felt was not despair but reverence.

“But the true devotees did not acknowledge them. In fact, the harsher the world became, the more they sought to resist and even contemplated ‘creating their god with their own hands.’”

“Creating… a god?”

“Anyone would call it absurd, insane even. But the rulers of this land were dead serious. As the world grew harsher, they genuinely longed for divine salvation. They craved it so deeply that they decided to create a vessel for their god by their own hands, believing they could bring down their god to this world.”

Slowly, Virgil clenched his fist and moved it forward.

“They combined the bloodline inherited from a foreign being—the one those arrogant fools worshipped.”

He brought the fist to his other open hand and clasped it.

“The church fused this preserved knowledge, the foreign being’s legacy, to create something—aiming to create a perfect vessel for their god…”

Simultaneously, a cracking sound emerged as his arms swelled.

Even as the time of his rampage approached, he maintained his composure, explaining the truth to me with a sense of joy.

The hybrids of beastmen and vampires that appeared in this land—monstrosities—were the result of combining the blood inherited from a foreign being and forbidden knowledge passed down from the same foreign origin…

They were the result of attempting to combine the by-products of vampire and witch research.

-Gulp.

Realizing the gravity of this truth, I swallowed and cast my gaze back at the fountain behind him.

“…So, vampires.”

“This is the fate of livestock that unconditionally accept what they are given.”

Yes, it all made sense now.

The ones who had controlled humanity for so long…

“Who could have imagined it? The blood of a revered figure they held as a delicacy… would conceal a poison they never expected.”

The very substance sought by those who craved a god to defy catastrophe.

As material to create a ‘vessel for god.’