The wind whipped violently past us as my blood wings beat through the night air, carrying us high above the mountain pass toward the flickering lights of Lulu City. Balanced on my back were both Patricia and the still-unconscious Catherine.
Patricia clung to me tightly, her hand hovering near my shoulder, terrified to touch the freshly bandaged stump where my right elbow used to be. The clean cloth I'd wrapped around it was already soaking through with crimson.
"Are you sure about this, Eirene? Your arm is still bleeding!" Patricia called out over the roar of the wind, her voice trembling.
"Didn't I tell you? We're going to Lulu City to recover my injuries, protect Catherine, and stop the virus before it spreads."
"Hey... don't try to push yourself!" she pleaded.
Despite her panic, I remained completely calm… almost terrifyingly so. My voice hadn't even shaken.
Honestly, losing an arm wasn't anything new to me. In fact, this was the third time.
The first was back during my early days at Town Allure, when a Goblin King ripped my left arm off like a flimsy chicken bone, severing it completely from the shoulder down. Sister Elicia had to stitch and regrow that one.
The second time was during that cursed fight with my brother Elias back when I didn't even realize I was a demon; he shot me point-blank with his Death Chant revolver… a monster of a gun with the stopping power of a Desert Eagle back on Earth… that obliterated my left arm entirely. Elicia had healed that one, too.
Now, here I was, losing my right arm this time and being forced to adapt to my non-dominant left. It felt completely surreal, but to me? It was just another Tuesday.
I could already picture what would happen when we finally got back home. I'd walk up to big sister Elicia, wave my stump, and casually say, "Hey, my arm is gone again, heal me."
She'd spend two full hours lecturing and scolding me for my reckless habit of losing limbs, probably pinching my wings raw as a punishment before finally casting her high-tier healing magic to grow the arm back.
I kept those thoughts to myself, not wanting to shock Patricia any further with my twisted sense of normalcy.
Suddenly, a harsh, golden glint pierced the dark clouds ahead. The distant horizon was bleeding into a bright, fiery orange as the sun began to rise.
As a vampire, direct sunlight wasn't just uncomfortable… it was lethal. My skin instantly began to sizzle and burn, white smoke coiling off my cheeks and bare shoulders.
"Duck down!" I snapped, pulling my wings inward and diving low toward the shadow of the treeline.
A sudden streak of morning light sliced through the canopy, catching the tip of my left wing.
"Kh… !"
The flesh sizzled instantly, a sharp, burning pain blistering through the feathers and skin like a hot iron. I adjusted my trajectory at the last second, slamming hard onto the shadowed forest floor just inside the shadow of the valley rocks.
The moment my boots hit the dirt, I released my grip, letting Patricia and Catherine slide safely onto the mossy earth.
Without wasting a second, I folded my wings tightly against my back, tucking them beneath the dark fabric of my heavy cloak. I buttoned the front secure, pulled the deep hood over my head, and adjusted the heavy collar until not a single inch of my pale skin was exposed to the growing daylight. The searing pain faded into a dull itch as the shade of the cloak protected me from the sun's deadly rays.
"Patricia, Carry Catherine. We can't stay in the open." I said, my voice muffled slightly under the shadow of my hood as I gestured with my remaining left hand.
"On it," Patricia said instantly, shifting Catherine onto her back and securing her tightly.
She looked at my hooded form, checking to make sure no sunlight was peeking through my gear.
"Are you covered? Is the cloak holding?"
"It's fine. Just keep her in the shade."
Turning away from the rising sun, I stepped out from beneath the trees, keeping strictly to the dark shadows cast by the steep valley walls as we sprinted the final stretch toward the massive stone arches of the Lulu City gates.
The line of merchants stretched far down the dusty approach to Lulu City's main gate, a bloated line of grain carts, oxen, and impatient traders sweating under the morning sun. I didn't have the time nor the patience to wait behind a dozen overloaded wagons.
Stepping past a heavily laden merchant cart, I cut straight to the front of the line.
"Hey! Watch it, hooded lady! There's a line here!" the merchant shouted, pulling on his ox's reins.
Patricia, trudging closely behind me with Catherine slung securely across her back, winced at the scene.
"Eirene... are we really just cutting the line?" she whispered nervously.
"Don't mind them, My reputation as a top-tier bounty hunter didn't grow all these years just for me to stand around playing nice with grain merchants. We have a plague to stop."
We reached the heavy iron-studded archway of the main gates. Leaning lazily against a wooden guard post, casually picking at his fingernails, was the veteran gatekeeper himself Keith Pat.
After all these years, the man's attitude hadn't changed a single bit. He still wore the same slouched posture, the same worn leather armor, and the same blunt, unimpressed scowl that screamed he'd rather be anywhere else on earth.
As I approached, Keith didn't even look up at first.
"Toll's three silvers per head, state your business, show your status card… "
I tapped my spatial inventory ring. A faint blue shimmer flickered, and my official Guild status card materialized between my left fingers. I flicked it onto his small wooden desk.
Keith grunted, picking up the card to inspect it. He glanced at the rank, glanced at the name, and then his lazy eyes snapped wide open.
"Eirene?! Wait... the bounty hunter?"
"Long time no see, Keith," I replied, my voice dry from beneath the shadow of my hood.
He leaned forward over his desk, squinched his eyes, and began openly searching my appearance with blatant suspicion. The Eirene he remembered in his mental log was a deeply scarred, heavily tanned, masked killer with only one working left eye and her right arm intact, looking more like a notorious highway bandit than a savior of the realm.
Now, as I slightly tilted my hood back to let him verify my face in the shadows, he was looking at a completely different person.
Both of my eyes were fully present and unblemished. My skin was no longer dark and tanned, but a smooth, deathly pale white from my vampiric ascension. To top off his confusion, my original right arm was completely gone… replaced by a fresh, bloody bandage… while my left arm was the one casually handling my gear. The roles of my limbs had literally reversed since the last time he'd logged my status.
He stared at my face, then down at my bandaged stump, then back up at my calm, faintly amused smile.
"Damn, kid… Every time you walk through these gates, you look less like a hunter and more like a walking war crime. What happened to your tan? And where the hell did your other eye come from? Agh, whatever. Not my business if you like changing your body parts like clothes. Anyways... toll and status card." He shook his head, slumping back into his usual professional apathy.
I flicked three silver coins onto the table alongside Patricia's toll, my smile fading into absolute, deadpan seriousness.
"Keep the change, Keith, I have urgent news. The city was infected the region's grain supply with an ancient viral outbreak. Take me to your leader. Now."