With eyes that carried a new trace of life, Ray tried to see the world around him. Really see it, not letting it pass him by while he lived in his mind.

He looked again at the grandiose building that first caught his eyes. As tall as it was, it was still below him, to his right. He had a feeling it was where that man lived, maybe that’s why he wanted to find the building ugly. As he thought that, he realized, “building” was too lacking of a word to describe it, more like a palace.

The palace was built on a giant… slope-y cube? Yeah, sure… while that made sense to Ray, he knew it made no sense. He couldn’t just call it a hill, because it had sharp edges and looked to be made of stone. So, a square-based pyramid with its top cut off? That sounded fine, but Ray wondered if it had an actual name. He felt like it must have, but he couldn’t remember. Maybe he never even knew.

There were many things to see and many more to think about, but Ray’s thoughts were stuck on this geometric shape he didn’t know the name of. It irritated him. Defeated, he wanted to know badly enough that he turned to Vorm.

You must know what this geometric shape is called, right?

“Of course.”

Ray waited, but Vorm didn’t continue. He had a sinking feeling, but he still asked, What is it then?

“Why would I tell you?”

Ray closed his eyes, trying to calm himself. Why did Vorm had to be so difficult even with the simplest things? He should’ve known better than to ask, why wa—

“Frustum.”

RIGHT, FRUSTUM! I love you, I knew there was a word for it. Now I can die in peace.

Frustum of a square pyramid, Ray thought to himself. Why it mattered he didn’t know, but happened sometimes that he—

Ray caught himself as he realized he pulled back into his mind, thinking of useless things instead of looking at the world around him. Lately, he had been realizing more and more that he had lived his whole life blind to everything else that outside of his head.

He focused on the building again before his thoughts could wander further away.

Actually, now that he looked at it more, his eyes opened wider as he realized it wasn’t that the palace was built on the pyramid frustum, but it was part of the palace. At least partly. There were tiny windows on the upper parts, but the wide stairs led all the way up to the top of the frustum.

Ray squinted as he contemplated. Then he spotted a person behind one of the tiny windows, and it dawned on him that those windows weren’t tiny at all. He felt as if everything shifted as his mind suddenly made sense of the dimensions. It was the same feeling as when you are sitting in the grass and spot a single ant. Then you notice more, and soon realize, you are sitting on an entire ant nest.

He was way higher up on the cliff than he had first thought, and that palace wasn’t the only unreasonably gigantic building. There were nine more just as sprawling, even if not as tall. Glancing at the rest of the city, he noted that the rest of the buildings were a reasonable size. Except the city walls. Yes, walls. There were one at the edge of the city like a proper city wall, and there was an even bigger one around the obviously nicer part of the city.

The whole city was built at the foot of the sheer cliff wall, the inner part was a half-circle and the outer part surrounded it like a ring. Well, half of one.

He could see the whole city from up above, it wasn’t big. He was close to the center of it, what he would call center anyway, as the city walls seemed to be roughly the same distance from him in two half-circles. He tried to judge the distances, but he wasn’t sure… he’d say the inner city wall was 1.5 km away while the outer wall was somewhere a bit over 2 km. Something like that, but he might be completely off.

These towering, hundreds of meters long, over-sized buildings threw off his sense of distance. They looked kind of cool though in a way. He absentmindedly started scratching his head as he tried to compare the one he assumed to be a palace to something he knew. It was kind of like a pagoda with a square base and three stories. Kind of, if you scaled it way up. Way, way up. The corners of the roofs curled up into wicked points, but there was this monstrosity on the very top of it.

Ray wondered if it had any function or was just decoration… it was way too big to be just decoration, but he didn’t see any windows on it either. It looked like three claws that joined in a base. One longest, one shortest and one in-between.

He glanced at the nine other humongous buildings—that he would have called palaces if it wasn’t for the one palace he was just looking at—and noticed on their tops were a structure with two points. But these were shorter and functional, they had tall pillars and windows, taller than what would have made sense.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

There were a few dozen normal-sized, 10-story buildings, they also had a structure on the top but with one point.

Maybe it meant something? Rank? Hierarchy? He felt like it meant something. He couldn’t put his finger on it, those dream-like lives still eluded him, only giving him vague impressions. Like that it meant something, but he couldn’t know what exactly.

Examining the enormous structures Ray started muttering to himself about how that was even possible, how they did not collapse under their own weight. “Right, magic…” he concluded, still muttering to himself.

“No, you are right. Those buildings shouldn’t exist in a world like this.” Vorm suddenly interjected.

What do you mean?

“The magic density should be too low to create strong enough materials.”

How are they here then?

“How should I know? It’s not like I get the exposition of the worlds you end up in.”

I kind of thought you did. It seemed like you knew a lot.

“No. I can only safely analyze what enters your body because that’s the boundary of your soul.”

I thought I had a Soul Core?

“Yes.”

…I don’t get it.

“It’s not a literal core, it only takes a shape of one without a body. Generally. It varies. Anyway, normally your soul takes the shape of your body.”

So… what you are saying is that you can be my very own max level Identify skill, I just have to eat the stuffs first?

“I’m no fucking skill.”

Chuckling to himself, Ray turned his attention back to the city. There was one more prominent building not far from him. The Scarlet Temple those priestesses had mentioned, he assumed. Maybe he was wrong, but he felt like he was right. It wasn’t too tall, just a few stories, neither was it sprawling, but it was still eye-catching. It wasn’t robust, more like slender, yet it was still imposing. There was something about it Ray found intimidating. It looked like some evil lair bathed in blood.

At least they seemed to have lots of greenery, except it was more like redery. The plants were red. Speaking of red, these people seemed to really like the it, red was a dominant color throughout the city. He wasn’t sure what other colors were there, they were shades of gray in his eyes after all. Maybe red wasn’t even the dominant color, it just felt like it to him because that was the only color he saw?

In any case, even the illumination of the city was red. There was a soft redish glow throughout the inner city. Some parts were left in darkness, but it was really prominent around the most imposing buildings, and around an area in the middle of what he would call a residential area. Maybe it was for nightly entertainments…

Deciding he had seen enough, Ray shook his head. Nice buildings, if a bit “blocky” for his taste. One thing he knew for sure though. He wanted to have nothing to do with them.

As nice and spacious the inner city looked, the outer city was the opposite. It was blanketed in darkness, but he could clearly see everything. Rows and rows of depressing 11-story block housing. Yet these buildings were much shorter with a flat roof. He knew this kind well, there were many of these in his old world where he lived. But even there, at least there were enough space between rows of these kinds of buildings. Here, it all looked suffocating even from up above. He pitied the people living there.

It occurred to him that those priestesses had mentioned slaves, but why would they need that many slaves? Maybe the people living there weren’t slaves. He had no idea how many lived in a building, but he was about to guesstimate it when a realization hit.

A realization he did not welcome. He could have been blissfully ignorant, but he knew full well why his thoughts were wandering all over the place. He’d been procrastinating, trying to do everything to not think of his difficulties, to avoid it even if more shit hit the fan in consequence.

Sighing, he forcibly focused on his most pressing issue. The Night would eventually end, and he needed a place to stay the day safely. But he knew nothing about the city.

Well, he knew he knew nothing, yet it just felt all too familiar. It was strange.

He recalled what Vorm had said about his Blood and those half-forgotten dreams of lives he never lived. It was unsettling. And useless. He only found the city familiar, but he couldn’t grasp any concrete information. Useless.

As he absent-mindedly kept observing the city, hopelessly looking for a safe place to say, he felt the power stir within him as his eyes sharpened. Startled, and scared of losing control, he shut his eyes, trying to suppress his powers.

But to his surprise, the power this time felt different. Not slumbering anymore, but alert. Not wild and all-consuming, but contained. It felt entirely different from before, as if night and day. Wait… Night… and Day… Maybe that was it?

Say Vorm, is the Day-Night cycle here very short?

“No, it’s the same as your old world.”

Oh… so my power doesn’t feel different because it’s Night now.

“Idiot, you met the Patriarch during the Day, it wasn’t Night.”

No, that doesn’t make sense. It was dawn when I talked to the women.

“Yes.”

Then it had to be Night when I met that asshole.

“No.”

What? Night is followed by dawn, what do you mean no?!

“You were out of it for so long you hadn’t even realized a whole Night had passed. Also, you took your sweet time to wake up after that ritual, so it was already Day outside by the time you met that guy.”

So then, I was right, this vampire power grows unstable during the Day?

“Yup. You are a creature of the Night, not of Day.”

Delighted, Ray restlessly stood up in excitement, feeling for the power within him, carefully reaching towards it, wanting only a trace of it to try. But as soon as he touched this mysterious power, it came alive and leaped at him, latching onto him.

Ray thought of resisting at first, pulling back. The loss of control, the helplessness of being unable to command his own body, his mind overtaken, was still fresh in his mind. He started shaking as he remembered the unimaginable pain he was put through and forced to endure. The power felt different this time, yes, but he couldn’t know for sure what would happen. He hesitated. It was unknown.