—–

At that moment when I brought to her the lifeblood that she required to sustain herself, she barely opened her eyes, looking at me weakly. She seemed to stare at me in silence.

Her little hand had extended towards me as she slightly touched my own hand. She couldn’t say a word, none of us knew how to speak even. But we knew, deep down, that we had made some sort of connection. It was a very dim connection back then, but since then, it had been deepening more and more…

After a few days of resting and being fed blood occasionally, Eleanora woke up and began to walk. I had decided to leave her after that. As I moved to leave, she began to follow me like a puppy that wanted more food out of a stranger’s kindness.

I had tried to tell her to not follow me, that there was a limit to my kindness, but she wouldn’t budge, even when I hit her like the barbaric and beastly child I once used to be.

She let herself be hit and continued to follow me. At some point, I couldn’t bring myself to harm her anymore, so I let her stick with me and I shared my food with her a bit.

At some point, she brought me her own food, two rats she caught herself.

She shared them both with me, she even let me drink as much blood as I wanted before she could drink any… that moment was when I realized she was my partner.

We survived together back then, against the giant bugs, against the thugs, against the monstrous sewer creatures that sometimes would crawl out in the night, looking for vulnerable children to eat…

It was a living hell. But with someone at my side, it didn’t seem so hard anymore.

We learned how to speak later. We learned how to express our thoughts, and we became even closer, we knew what the other was doing, and we cooperated to bring down enemies.

Without realizing it, at some point, I had made a very good friend. One with a friendship that would last thousands of years…

I looked at her now. Although very different from back then, she still had that certain resemblance as when she was a child in our previous life.

After living a thousand years, dying, and then reincarnating here, I finally realized that I really wanted her to stay with me forever, but it was when I had already lost her.

But… I am glad she’s back.

“Remember the sewer rats we used to eat daily?” she wondered.

“Ugh… I do. You don’t have to remind me of such things.” I sighed.

“Heheh, those were some wild times…” she sighed.

“Yeah… I also remember that in such a planet is where we meet our teacher…” I sighed.

“Oh… that old man…” Eleanora recalled.

“He was a hell of an old man but… he taught us a lot of important lessons… and well, he even taught us how to use Qi.” I said.

…

It was back then, thousands of years back in my previous life when Eleanora and I were only six years old. We got into a gang fight by accident and we were targeted for being the infamous Vampire Twins, as they called us. We were rather murderous, so we had a bad reputation with the people… many of them would attack us on sight.

Because we were Vampires, a very rare and special race, they wanted to kidnap us and sell us off as special slaves to some perverted old rich man or something. We were like walking money bags for these people. Even other children would try to sell us off, the only ones we could rely on were each other.

However, we were beaten harshly. There was even someone using Light and Fire Magic… our ultimate weakness, our regeneration was not strong enough to resist the elemental weaknesses we had, and we got beaten to a pulp.

In our direst moments, we realized we were near a place named “Dojo”, an old man came out, bursting the door open in anger over the fuss going on outside of his place, and ended up beating everyone, actually, he just killed them…

“Hmph… Damn flies… And what do we got here? Kids? Bloodsuckers at that!”

The old man was not human, he resembled some sort of green-skinned old man, like a goblin, with a sharp nose and long ears, alongside long white hair… his eyes shone with bright yellow-gold light.

He seemed cunning and evil by nature, he inspected us as if we were goods.

“Hmm… Not bad, not bad… You’ll do.”

He carried us to his Dojo back then, and the next day, we were greeted with cold water dropped onto our faces.

“Wake up already, you shitty ass brats! I’ve decided to teach you my greatest techniques! You got talent! It will be interesting to teach bloodsuckers too! I am pumped!” he laughed.

“W-Who… who are you?!” I asked.

“Nngh… Asmodeus…” Eleanora seemed scared back then.

“Who am I? My name doesn’t matter, what matters is that you should show some reverence to your savior!” he said.

He suddenly rushed towards me at a speed I could not even discern with my vampire senses, as his hands moved around like a flowing river, hitting my entire body masterfully. It felt as if the entire strength of a river was falling over me, and each hit hurt more than the other.

“Flowing Fist Technique: Punishment Of the Ignorant!”

With that very technique was when I felt utter and true pain.

It felt as if I was going to die.

Everything around me began to spin.

It was the end…

But then I realized that nothing truly happened to me

My body was… fine.

Everything was okay.

He had somehow given me the pain of death, yet I was not even damaged.

This was the principle of the Flowing Fist Technique.

—–