Wolf of the Blood Moon: A Blood Magic

Scarlet

“Stop giving me that look,” I tell Tar after nearly an hour has passed, and my wound has healed up almost all the way. “I am never going to let anyone touch my ears. Period.”

Tar just gives me an amused look from his place sitting in my lap. A look that only grows even more amused after I hear the next thing said by the people in the bunker.

“I heard from my friend who was able to touch the tail of Panther once that it was as soft as silk! Do you think that girl’s ears are the same?”

Why won’t they just drop it already? Is there nothing else to talk about but me in there?

If it’s not my ears they’re talking about, it’s who am I, why I was in this building, how old I am, and so on and so on.

But a lot of them just seem to want to touch my ears. Which, as it turns out, are incredibly sensitive to touch.

I tried it myself.

Which only makes me double down on the ‘no touching’ rule.

Anyways, I finally begin to get up from the floor, not bothering to warn the tanuki who falls onto the ground from my lap. I stretch a little bit with a faint smile on my face at the sight of the tanuki glaring at me from the floor before heading out towards the stairwell again.

It’s time to hunt those hounds above us.

So as it turns out, the hounds had already gone up three more floors judging by the faint scents and rather dirty pawprints they left behind on the stairs. And after going to the thirty-first floor to check things out? I simply find them both growling at me directly in the entry chamber.

I wonder why they didn’t…

My thoughts trail off as I hear some strange cracking sounds from further into the floor. Similar to that of an egg hatching.

“Get out of that floor. Now!” Tar’s voice shouts in my head, and I don’t question it, just turning around and rushing down the stairs. Meanwhile, I hear the two hounds following after me. So once I get back down to the thirtieth floor, I spin around in a circle before catching a leaping hound, to which I use its own leverage to throw it down the stairs where it falls with a loud yelp.

I turn my attention to the other hound to find it having stopped at the edge of the stairs midway between the thirtieth and thirty-first floor with clear hesitation.

We stare at each other for several seconds, only breaking away once I get the message about the other hounds death prompting me to jump up the stairs again with a very large amount of force that sends me straight to the top of this half of the staircase. The hound quickly scoots back in fright despite being a higher level than me, but I continue flying through the air towards it until I land directly on top of it, where I then dig the claws of both of my hands, blood claws having activated on my flight up, into its neck.

After hearing the death message for this hound, I let go of its body and begin walking down the stairs again while using my clean skill.

“Tar, what was that?” I ask, a small amount of fear entering my voice.

“That,” the tanuki says, a hint of fear in his own voice surprising me, “was a breeder. Why it was so high up in the building, I don’t know. But you need to avoid that floor at all costs.”

I shiver at the mention of a breeder.

I don’t remember what the creature was described as in the textbooks, but I do remember this. Not only do they constantly breed new spawn, but they’re defended by demon knights. Three of them.

Just a single demon knight could split me in half with ease. There is no way I am ever entering that floor again during this Fracture.

A few seconds of silence pass before Tar seems to calm down and asks me a surprising question, “You seem to know a lot about the demons despite only becoming a ‘Guardian’ a few hours ago.”

Or rather, implied a question.

I shrug in response.

You probably read my mind earlier about the ‘me graduating at the top of my class thing for a scholarship’, so…

The tanuki just stares at me.

Of course, it’d ignore the important part.

“Well,” I begin by speaking out loud as I walk down the stairs, since thinking my answers still feels weird – like I’m talking to myself in my head, but not, “I was an orphan in a Tier 3 city. Which basically meant that I had very few prospects in life. The most I could hope for was a job that might be able to pay my bills paycheck to paycheck with a home living below what most people would consider good.”

I jump down the last few steps of the stairs to the twenty-eighth floor.

“So I devoted myself to studying as hard as I could, even going to the trouble of asking Belle – my best friend and the daughter of the orphanage director – to lend me her own textbooks from her higher level school as an extra boost,” I continue while walking over to the staircase down to the twenty-seventh floor, where I hear nearly half a dozen voices from people who are obviously not in a bunker. “Thanks to that, I managed to become the top graduate in my year, earning me a scholarship which I then negotiated into the chance to come here. To a Tier 1 city.”

Tar just slowly follows me through the air as I talk, not saying a word in the process.

“And that’s about it. I learned all about a lot of the demons through the textbooks for history class and demonology class,” I finally get around to answering his implied question. Right as I reach the halfway point of the staircase.

After several seconds, the tanuki finally responds, “Okay.”

I blink in surprise at the rather lackluster answer.

Just okay?

I stare at the tanuki for a few seconds.

Huh.

Just okay.

Why am I spilling my life story to a tanuki, anyways?

I jump the rest of the way down the stairs to the twenty-seventh floor before focusing on the conversations I’m hearing on the floor itself.