"Damn it! Every last one of you from the damn Blood Hunter Corps is going to die!"

"Go to hell!"

Amidst the ruins and the chaos of battle, a member of the Blood Race roared, his face twisted in a ferocious snarl.

In the next instant, his entire body erupted in a dense cloud of blood mist, blanketing the area.

As the blood mist billowed out, a sharp whistling sound cut through the air.

"BOOM!"

A massive shockwave blasted the blood mist away, revealing a giant crater in its wake.

There, in the crater, Abi had struggled to block the blow with his Blood Bone Scythe.

Yet, even as he gritted his teeth against the pain, a faint smile touched his lips, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.

"Captain!"

"Captain! Are you okay?!"

"Damn it! Go to hell, you damn Vampires!"

"..."

The squad was mostly comprised of young men and women.

They wore silvery-white uniforms, with patterns that seemed to pulse with a flowing, mercury-like liquid.

Shimmering light and quicksilver blades of energy seemed to emanate from these designs.

"Everyone, calm down! I’m not dead yet!"

The squad members, driven into a frenzy, continued their assault on the two remaining members of the Blood Race and the Blood Beasts they had summoned. From the crater, the man—impaled through his right side by a crimson spear—coughed up blood. Despite his pained expression, he let out a hearty laugh.

"???"

The squad members snapped back to reality and turned to look at their captain. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

It was true that Captain Abi was half-kneeling, seemingly exhausted.

But he hadn’t sustained any fatal wounds.

Instead, it was the Blood Race member in the distance—the one who had just clashed with their captain—who suddenly collapsed.

A gaping, bloody hole had appeared in the chest of this member of the Blood Race.

And now, clutched in Captain Abi’s left hand, was a blackish-red heart.

SPLAT.

The blackish-red heart was crushed.

"No!!!"

As an indignant roar echoed, the other two members of the Blood Race watched in horror.

Their companion’s body dissolved into blood and flesh.

The resulting pool of crimson liquid quickly seeped into the ground and vanished without a trace.

Witnessing this scene,

the young men and women of the squad cried out in delight.

"That’s Captain Abi for you!"

"Haha, I knew it! No one from the Blood Race in this sector is a match for the captain!"

"..."

In stark contrast to the human squad’s delight, the two remaining Blood Race members stared in utter disbelief.

"It’s over!"

"Ellen Benitez was the last scion of the Earl’s Family’s Bloodline! Even if he was just an unimportant, fringe descendant, he was not someone you could afford to provoke! You have no idea what you’ve just done!"

The two members of the Blood Race had long since lost any desire to continue fighting this squad from the Blood Hunter Corps.

But unfortunately for them, while they wanted to disengage, the Blood Hunter Squad had no intention of letting them go.

Members of the Blood Race who hadn’t even reached the Equivalent Tier of a Baron couldn’t use Bat Transformation, so they had no way of making a quick escape from their pursuers.

And now, the only one among them with the power of a Baron...

...the descendant of the Count’s bloodline, had already returned to the earth. It was all over.

"Hah, a descendant of a Count?"

"Before the Empire Blood Hunter Corps, we don’t care if you’re a Count. We’ll even kill a Prince Level being just to show you!"

"Besides, do you really think you’ll get out of here alive to report back?"

"..."

The Blood Hunter Squad now had the last two members of the Blood Race surrounded.

Seeing this, the two members of the Blood Race knew there was no escape. With a final, desperate roar, they charged the Blood Hunter Squad.

Unfortunately for them, the battle’s outcome was already decided.

And so, in less than a few minutes, the dust had settled.

Gazing at the three newly acquired Blood Cores, the members of the Abi Squad, from the Southern Legion’s Hummingbird Team of the Blood Hunter Corps, were all ecstatic.

"Haha, we hit the jackpot this time!"

"This is only our second patrol mission, and we’ve already bagged three Blood Cores! Way better than our last run, where we came back empty-handed."

"Hehe, of course! You have to remember who Captain Abi is—he’s one of the Hummingbird Team’s elites."

"Right, Captain Abi?"

The members of the Abi Squad looked excitedly at Abi, who had already used a Blood Hunter’s power to seal his wound and was now sitting cross-legged, resting.

In response,

Abi just gave a resigned smile.

’It’s great to be young.’

’Of course, it’s also good to be ignorant.’

’There was a time when I was just like these kids, fresh out of the Empire Blood Hunter Academy, vowing to wipe out the entire Blood Race.’

’But after experiencing one war after another, I came to understand the truth long ago.’

’The war against the Blood Race could never be this simple.’

’Take today, for instance. We hunted three members of the Blood Race, including a Baron, which seems like a decent haul.’

’But there are just so, so many more like them in the world.’

’Take the untitled Blood Servants. In the Earth Realm they rule, if the Blood Race really wanted to, while they couldn’t create an infinite supply, they could certainly produce numbers that rival the amount of Blood Beasts in the Wilderness ruins.’

’As for the titled members, their numbers are smaller, and they can’t be mass-produced.’

’But doesn’t the Human Empire’s Blood Hunter Corps face a similar problem?’

’The number of children over the age of ten that the Empire finds each year who can actually adapt to Blood Core Power is also incredibly small.’

’That’s right.’

’In this world, the very power the Human Race uses to fight the Blood Race comes from their Blood Cores.’

’And obtaining such power inevitably comes at a cost.’

’That is a truth that every ’Blood Hunter’ knows.’