By day, the clinic was a sanctuary of sterile white linens and the sharp, clean scent of boiling herbs. Haruhiro Tsukishima moved between his patients with the practiced grace of a seasoned physician. He treated fevers, set broken bones, and monitored the lingering recovery of his cancer survivors with a gentle, steady hand. To the villagers, he was a miracle worker, a man who had brought modern precision to their remote mountain life. To himself, he was still a soldier, holding a delicate, crimson dam against a flood of nightmare logic.
But as the sun dipped below the jagged mountain peaks, the doctor's white coat was replaced by a reinforced travel cloak.
Haruhiro ventured into the deep woods for his nightly harvest, and the forest no longer hid its teeth. Over the past weeks, his encounters with the grey-skinned monsters had become a constant, grueling routine. They were drawn to the faint, metallic sweetness of his unique biology like predators to an open vein. These encounters had forced a dark evolution in his survival tactics.
He discovered that after putting a beast down with his blood-fed pistol or his razor-sharp surgical knife, he didn't have to wait for his marrow to slowly replenish his reserves. By placing his hand over the cooling remains of animals or the rapidly dissolving husks of the monsters, he could perform a visceral act of absorption. He felt the lingering life-force pull directly through his skin and into his own veins—a cold, rushing sensation that "reloaded" his internal magazine instantly.
Back in the flickering candlelight of his lab, Haruhiro looked at a row of shimmering, vibrant red vials. This was his latest medical breakthrough: the Blood Elixir.
Unlike his standard medicinal tonics, this was a potent concentrate of raw vitality. He had taken the red blood harvested from his nightly hunts and distilled it with the essence of the Blue Spider Lily and stabilizing mountain roots. The resulting crimson liquid was a volatile, high-pressure fuel.
For himself, it was an immediate surge of blood volume to power his transformed weapons or his own regeneration. For others, it was a hyper-regenerative agent capable of knitting shattered bones and sealing arterial sprays in mere seconds—though the process was unnaturally, terrifyingly fast.
"It's too much," Haruhiro whispered, turning one of the red vials in the light. "The regular elixir is a cure for the sick. This... this is an intervention for the dying."
As a former high-ranking officer, he understood the value of a secret weapon. He made a silent vow to himself: he would continue to use his regular, non-blood-based elixirs to treat the village's ailments. The Blood Elixir was a "break glass in case of emergency" measure. He would only unveil it if a situation demanded a miracle that traditional medicine couldn't provide—a choice between a patient's certain death and exposing his own monstrous nature to the world.
He tucked a single auto-injector of the red fluid into his belt, right next to his transformed blood-pistol. He was a doctor by trade, but as he stepped back into the shadows of the clinic, he looked every bit the soldier preparing for a siege.
******
The moon hung like a jagged bone over the mountain pass as Haruhiro Tsukishima moved through the underbrush. To the villagers of the valley, these woods were a place of ghosts and vanished travelers. To Haruhiro, they had become a firing range.
Nightly herb gathering was now a dual-purpose mission. While his woven basket filled with wild ginger and bitter roots, his hands remained locked onto the grips of his transformed arsenal. He had grown accustomed to the weight of the blood-pistol at his hip and the heavy, bone-like texture of the sawed-off shotgun slung across his back.
He didn't have to wait long for a target.
A pair of demons, their limbs elongated and skin the color of bruised plums, dropped from the canopy with a guttural hiss. Haruhiro didn't panic. He moved with the cold economy of motion that had once made him a high-ranking officer.
He drew the pistol. Bang.
A bolt of crimson energy took the first demon in the shoulder, the high-pressure blood ammunition punching through supernatural muscle like it was wet paper. As the second lunged, Haruhiro pivoted, unslung the shotgun, and pulled the trigger. The roar was deafening, a wide spray of blood-light that shredded the monster's torso into a mist of ash.
Before the remains could fully dissipate, Haruhiro stepped forward. He pressed his palms into the fading embers of their bodies, performing the Blood Absorption he had mastered. He felt the cold, stolen vitality rush into his veins, his internal reservoir clicking back to full capacity.
"Efficient," he muttered, his voice devoid of emotion.
But the real revelation of the night came when a third demon—larger and faster than the others—ambushed him from the shadows of a cedar tree. There was no time to level a firearm. Haruhiro drew his surgical knife.
He didn't land a killing blow; he merely managed a shallow, defensive parry that left a thin scratch across the demon's forearm. He braced himself for a counter-attack, but it never came.
The demon shrieked, clutching its arm. Where the blade had touched, the flesh wasn't just bleeding—it was dissolving. A black, bubbling corrosive effect spread from the tiny scratch like ink in clear water. Within seconds, the demon's arm had withered to the bone, the corruption spreading toward its heart until the entire creature collapsed into a puddle of foul-smelling sludge.
Haruhiro held the knife up to the moonlight, his doctor's mind analyzing the carnage with cold precision. There was no poison on the steel, and he hadn't coated it in his own blood this time.
"It's not a toxin," he realized, touching the flat of the blade. "The knife itself has changed."
The weapon, transformed by his initial awakening, had developed a permanent, inherent property. It wasn't just a sharp blade anymore; it possessed a corrosive ability that acted as a biological rejection against the monsters. It was an inherent power of the weapon, much like the specialized gear in the games he once played.
He cleaned the blade with a piece of silk, his expression hardening. He was no longer just a doctor defending his clinic; he was becoming a master of a power that mirrored the most lethal mechanics of his past life's obsession.
"I only wanted to defend my life," Haruhiro said to the silent forest. "But if this is the 'medicine' these things require, I will be the one to administer it."
He sheathed the corrosive blade and continued his walk, a doctor in a white coat carrying the tools of a professional executioner.