Epic of Caterpillar

"S-She's gone?"

The Vampire father groaned, looking around, his regeneration was much faster than his daughter, who had passed out after she was tortured so much. She was alive, barely. The rotten blood Ashatath feed the Vampires was terrible for them, and he had already noticed many of them had begun to mutate.

"By the Moon Goddess, why…?"

Vampires were powerful beings, but their existences by themselves were cursed. They required blood to maintain their power and even their sanity. If they were feed terrible, rotten blood, they would instead slowly deteriorate.

They would lose their sanity over time and mutate into Vampiric Beasts. Usually into Blood Thralls, Blood Ogres, Blood Onis, or the feared Blood Dragons. It wasn't an overstatement to say that most of the Vampiric Beast populating Abyss wilderness were once or are the descendants of Vampires that ended mutating into aberrations because they were unable to feed themselves properly.

The three greatest Families greedily took all resources, and so, most of the other Vampires that couldn't ally them ended becoming abandoned, resorting to drinking any blood, even if rotten. Still, villages and small countries thrived in the farther areas, away from the families, by farming blood from cattle they raise, they prospered.

They couldn't have much access to human blood, the families had taken away all the humans with themselves, so the people had to resort to cattle blood. It didn't mutate them or made them go insane, thankfully, but it did weaken them. This was another reason why the Vampires that didn't belonged to larger families were always weaker than those that did, even between the same Ranks.

It was a complicated world, one with bloodshed and survival, where you always had to take the life of another to survive. To prosper peacefully in such a world was an immense feat by itself…

Yet everything had already been taken away from Allan that day.

"Hahh…"

He looked at his burnt skin slowly peeling off, as newly grown skin appeared. Allan had barely managed to reach Rank 4 recently, after having lived for two hundred years protecting his village and hunting any beasts in the surrounding woods and swamps, making sure to kept everyone protected.

Below his care there were many other warriors and hunters he had been raising, living in the "countryside" area of Abyss had its benefits, such as not being caught in the middle of battles between the Vampire Families factions and becoming another victim.

However, it came with the drawbacks of being assaulted almost weekly by Vampiric Beasts of the wilderness. However, thanks to the magic they possessed, Vampires could, over time, create myriads of defensive spells.

But all of that was for nothing, the powerful Blood Spirit Barrier protecting the village for at least a hundred years, the collective efforts of the Blood Spirit Wizards that the village had nurtured was destroyed over a night.

Something stronger than any Vampiric Beast or Underdark Monstrosity attacked them, a gigantic spider made of demonic crystals, covered with red eyes.

"KEEHAHAHA! How lucky I am! I've found myself yet another group of playthings~!" The monstrosity laughed.

Back then, Allan didn't recognize that thing, a Vampiric Monster that could speak? What sort of horror had come from the Underdark now?

However, it wasn't any of that.

"Go, my children! Bring me my playthings!"

A swarm of spiders made of crystals, and covered on red eyes swarmed the entire spiritual barrier, shattering it into pieces within seconds.

The entire village of roughly five hundred people, mostly all of them Vampires with a few half-vampires and handful of werewolves, shook, falling into utter chaos.

Explosions of blinding light were fired from the spiders, setting ablaze the houses made of black brick and reinforced with bloodstone.

The screams of the children, the women, the elderly as they were being cut into pieces and then wrapped into spiderwebs, to be dragged elsewhere.

"No… Mia, MIAAA!"

Allan still remembered that moment, as he ran inside his house, finding it burning. As he saw his little treasure, his daughter screaming in agony as she was being picked apart and burned by the spiders.

"BASTARDS!"

He jumped into the holy flames head-first, clashing against the spiders, tearing them to shreds and using all his powers.

Until their mother showed up.

"You're interesting."

With a creepy smile, her giant claws caught Allan, and then he realized how truly weak he was.

To not even be able to save his daughter.

"I'll have fun with you~ Kehehehe!"

Allan couldn't remember what happened afterwards, as he woke up inside of the Recessed's dark palace after that, being tortured, and seeing everyone being eaten alive.

She blamed him for the sins of old, incredibly old ancestors, of a Blood God that died long ago, as if any of that was his fault. Allan hadn't even killed a single person that didn't deserve it, mostly hunting down bandits and assassins with his village's warriors and wizards.

He hadn't even dared finding humans to drink their blood from, the new Church of the Moon Goddess, which had resurged after eons, taught the Vampires of the countryside to do better, and resist the temptation of their accursed existences.

It was a church created to bring hope to the young vampires of Abyss, and to also teach them to not be animals that only desire power, like the rest of the Great Families acted, whose doctrines were much more conservative.

It was a slow, silent revolution where Vampires began to develop mortals, and became better, realizing the sins of their ancestors and trying to change the future for their own children.

But the Recessed wouldn't let that happen, they were ghosts of the past, coming to avenge a war that was fought millions of years ago, whose most participants were all gone already.

"My daughter has no fault in this…" He kept crying. "Someone… Please… Help-"

BOOOM!

His eyes widened when he heard an explosion in the distance.

"What's… happening? Is that spider doing something weird again- Ah!"

Before he could make any sense of what was happening, a swarm of smaller spider monsters rushed towards the nearest corridor.

And immediately clashed against someone, or something.

He barely managed to see what it was.

An army of hundreds of thousands of skeletons.

"Well, well, well, just as Kireina said, this spider really had quite a big secret over here." Redgaria appeared, smiling. "Do you need a hand?"