"Feed me." Valerie muttered with shaking breath. She was doing her best to control herself, to keep hold of the instincts that were screaming inside of her to go on a rampage, but it was getting so hard.

She was just so damned... hungry. Despite everything that she had eaten at the Monarch’s cult place, and the nutrition block that she had eaten once she got back that was supposed to last her a day, she felt like she hadn’t eaten in weeks.

Her stomach rumbled and her throat was like a desert, desperate for anything to satisfy her unyielding thirst, when finally an offering came along.

Perhaps Valerie didn’t know what she was doing and simply had a poor choice of words, or perhaps she knew exactly what she was doing and simply deluded herself into believing that she didn’t in an attempt to justify it.

Whatever the intent, the action stayed the same.

Never removing her eyes from Valerie’s gaze, Bai Yin removed a small dagger from her ankle, held out her hand and glided the dagger over her hand. The sweet, metallic scent filled the air and drifted into Valerie’s nostrils, filling her lungs in one deep, trembling breath. And just like that, she lost control.

Valerie immediately lunged forwards, grabbing Bai Yin’s hand and dragging it towards her. Her tongue lapped at the fresh cut, as she eagerly gulped down the blood oozing out of it.

The taste exploded across her tongue, flooding her body with ecstasy she had never felt before. All of the times she had drank blood in Dawd, all of the times she had devoured something or someone. None of them could compare to this.

It was heaven, it was the most delicious and delectable thing she had ever tasted in her life. But it wasn’t enough... It was just a few measly droplets squeezing through a cut. She needed more.

Bai Yin stirred slightly, blinking softly as she slowly regained her senses, when she felt a strange sensation on her hand. Something warm and wet was rubbing against her palm, which was flashing with pain and yet a strange pleasure at the same time.

She would have considered letting it continue, had she not seen what was responsible for it, and what happened next.

Valerie lifted her head, glaring at Bai Yin with wide, feral eyes and immediately lunged at her. Keeping a hold of her wrist so that she couldn’t move away.

From her crouched position, Bai Yin did try to stand and flee, but she was pulled off balance and collapsed to the floor, where Valerie quickly clambered on top of her.

Bai Yin could feel the dagger in her hand and, on instinct, stabbed it into Valerie’s side. Plunging it through her kidney and twisting it. But Valerie didn’t care.

She moved with feral bloodlust, clambering over Bai Yin and keeping her pinned down with supernatural strength, as she forced her head to the side, before lunging down.

Bai Yin let out a sharp gasp as Valerie’s newly grown teeth pierced her skin and plunged deep into her throat. She ripped the dagger out of Valerie’s kidney and stabbed it in again, over and over. She shanked her desperately, hoping each time that it would be the one that got this horrific woman off of her.

But each time, she had to repeat the process instead. Her stabs quickly growing weaker and slower, as the blood drained from her body and flowed into the stomach of the insatiable beast, until her hand slipped from the blade of her salvation and fell to the ground.

After a few minutes, Valerie pulled away and eagerly licked her lips, making sure not to waste a drop, as she let out a satisfied sigh. Panting heavily, she sat back against her chair with her eyes closed, reveling in the delightful sensation flowing through her body, before her eyes snapped open as reality hit her.

She slowly moved her eyes back down to her ’meal’ and let out a whimper as she saw nothing but a pale corpse, with a brutal bite mark on its throat where she had completely drained it of blood.

"Oh god... Oh fuck... What did I do? What the fuck did I just... I killed her. I actually killed her... I’m a fucking murderer." Valerie stammered with trembling, panicked breaths. Her hands clutched at her head and she pulled her knees up against her chest as her mind reeled, trying to come to terms with everything that happened.

How was she supposed to explain this? Was she just supposed to tell everyone that a game was real and that she could do magic, and that she had actually turned into a vampire? No one would believe her, and she would be in handcuffs before she had a chance to explain it.

I mean, There was a dead body in her bedroom, and blood all over the floor! How could she possibly make this just disappear. What the hell was she supposed to do?!

Her mind ran a million miles a minute as she desperately searched for an answer. It was one thing to kill something in a ’game’, it was another to kill someone in real life. She felt like her heart was going to explode as it palpitated in her chest and... Actually, no she didn’t.

With a trembling hand, Valerie placed her hand against her chest and waited for a few seconds, and then a minute, and then another minute. But no matter how long she waited, there was nothing.

I don’t mean that her heart wasn’t racing or thundering like crazy in her chest. She literally felt nothing.

Not a single heart beat. As if she was dead.

It was as she was dealing with this fatal discovery, that she noticed the other changes that had been made to her body. Firstly, she had brought her knees up to her chest. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

She hadn’t even been thinking about it, just curling up in a panic. But she had moved her legs, which had been useless for years, except for the sole exception of when she attempted to fuel them with magic.

However that ended in disaster, as it worsened her condition. Yet here and now, she felt no pain. Her condition was not being amplified, nor was she being made worse. Her legs had actually healed and improved, even if it was slightly.

They were still incredibly skinny and weak, not enough to support her own body weight or perform like she could in Dawd. But she could at least, for the first time in years, wiggle her toes without worrying about pain.

If it were not for how it came about, she might have wept in joy. But her joy was ruined by the corpse occupying the room with her.

When Valerie extended her legs again, she winced in pain and looked downwards, to find the hilt of a dagger sticking out of her side.

She wrapped her hand around it, wincing slightly as she slowly drew it from her side. As soon as it was removed, the gash in her side started to stitch itself back together before her eyes, as strings of pale skin stretched across the gash and slowly drew it closed.

"I’m... really not human anymore. Am I?" She muttered to herself, as her eyes drifted back to the exsanguinated corpse in front of her.