It was late at night, the sun had long since disappeared. The moon hung in the sky, projecting it's neverending glory down onto the dark world. A world where beasts, monsters, and inhuman creatures lived.

On this night, a certain woman was screaming in a cave. A man stood next to her, however, his expression was not fearful or excited. It was just... neutral, almost as if he didn't care.

After a while, the couple came out of the cave. The woman held a little baby in her arms, but her look wasn't tender, nor loving. Instead, it was harsh and cold, just like the man's gaze.

Both of them had elongated canines that protruded out of their mouths even when closed, showing just how long they were. They also had slightly pointy and longer ears, not as long as that of elves but not as short as that of mankind.

However, their most defining feature was definitely the bat-like wings on their backs. The woman's wings were currently wrapped around her shoulders, as if protecting her and the baby, whilst the man's wings simply rested on his back.

"Laura... We got lucky with this kid, however, you know the tradition. Should she not pass the Blood Trial or if she has trash talents, I'm going to eat her." The man said, not even looking at the woman.

The woman did not even have the slightest change in her expression as she nodded wordlessly. Unlike humans, vampires did not have families. Whilst vampires could convert humans, the turned vampire would not be a full-fledged vampire.

In the vampiric society, only pure-bloods could be considered real vampires. All converted vampires were just treated as either servants or slaves depending on how much the one who turned them, their master, favored them.

However, purebloods do not have it easy either. Vampires already had extremely, extremely low birth rates among fellow vampires, and due to their harsh and uncaring nature, 9 out of 10 children would be killed off due to being considered 'trash'.

For this very reason, every adult pureblood was considered a powerhouse. Furthermore, killing a pureblood is extremely hard, and they would not die of old age.

There would usually be fewer than 1000 purebloods alive at once at one time, of course, the number varies, but the number usually hovered around that rate.

Naturally, due to their nature, all vampires faced persecution from virtually every race, even demons. However, this persecution was increased hundredfold after the death of the Blood Monarch 3000 years ago.

The Blood Monarch. His true name known only by a very select few, and those that knew had already been killed off, refusing to tell the secret even in death. Legends claimed that he could crush mountains with one finger and split the skies with a breath, however, those were all somewhat exaggerated.

Only the old monsters that had lived for thousands of years knew the true terror that was the Blood Monarch. Back in his times, although he couldn't crush mountains, he could easily decimate entire armies by himself. Furthermore, he was meticulous, intelligent, ruthless and, more importantly, possessed magic powerful enough to destroy cities in one attack.

As for what happened to the Blood Monarch? Humans claim that their hero defeated this evil a long time ago, whilst vampires claim that he is still there, waiting for his chance to come back from the dead and bring their race back to their previous glory.

However, none of this was important for the two vampires right now. They had been a couple for over two hundred years, and they had considerable influence in this region. A number of the officials had already been converted by them, becoming their slaves and helping their organizations expand.

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Therefore, whilst the choice of a cave as a place to give birth to seemed somewhat weird, it was, in fact, the best place. Vampires thrived in the darkness, and the sun was a death sentence for them. Even the invincible Blood Monarch turned to dust under the sun, after all. However, as a side note, turned vampires would not turn to dust under the sun. For them, it was just a hindrance, not a death sentence. This was due to the fact that they were only half-vampires, so whilst their strength was much lower, their weaknesses were also lower.

Snapping his fingers, the male vampire gathered a ball of mana in his hand. Putting it in front of their child, he slowly shoved the invisible ball inside of the newborn's chest.

The woman did not stop him, rather, she held the child firmly in place. Once the mana ball was completely inside the child, the man backed up a couple steps and the woman laid the child on the ground as if expecting it would explode.

However, nothing of the sort happened. Whilst the child's closed eyebrows did slightly twitch, it had no major reactions. Whistling lightly, the man nodded in approval. The woman too revealed a happy smile, but soon dropped it. "Mmm. She seems to have a really good magical talent." The woman said, making the man smile as well.

"Yeah, she handled it better than even me when I took my trial. Her Core seems stable, and her body didn't seem to reject the spell." The man commented. Vampires were considered monsters by humans exactly by this: They had mana cores.

Whilst humans had to meditate for a long time in order to form their 'Mana pool', vampires were directly born with the ability to manipulate magic. Of course, how well they could do so varied depending on their individual talent, but it was generally much better than humans and even elves to a degree.

"So, does she pass the trial?" The woman asked. Unlike the man, she didn't remember exactly what the trial entailed, as that was a thing the men would usually learn. Women were generally taught by their mothers how to care for the baby and knew very little about the trial itself. Of course, this did not make them any less important in the vampiric culture, as it was based on strength, not sex.

Shaking his head, the man sighed, "Not yet, this was the easy part. The hard part comes now. The spell will take effect in a dozen seconds, and when it does, it will start straining all her core and muscles to an extreme degree. If she can survive for a minute, I will make it so that she won't die from the spell, and she will have passed. This way, we'll have a general idea of where her talents lay depending on how damaged her muscles and core are."

Nodding, the woman remained silent. After around 30 seconds, there was still no reaction, causing the woman to ask "Are you sure the spell activated?"

Blinking, the man nodded "Yes dear, it should have."

Snorting, the woman retorted, "Did you get soft and lower the intensity?", however, the man glared at her and slowly said, "I'd never allow my daughter to be a waste. I'd rather kill her than allow a trash to live."

Finally, after 5 minutes, the child began showing signs of overexertion. Seeing this, the man stopped the spell and went up to the child and checked her core.

As he did, his eyes went sausage-wide and he shouted "In the Monarch's name! Her core was barely affected! She has at least a grade 8 talent! No, perhaps 9!"

Before the woman could express her joy, he shouted again "And her muscles! they didn't even show any strain! That's a grade 10 talent for you!"

Laughing merrily, the woman and the man hugged each other and the baby. They even kissed, which was somewhat creepy seeing their black wings, long teeth, and forked tongues.

Unknown to them, the child smirked, thinking "Grade 10 talent? Hmph, it's just that my apparent father is just too weak. My last life's trial was way harder than this, and I was only considered a grade 8 talent, which was still good. Just how low have vampires fallen?" She wondered for a bit before the woman took her and put her head next to her exposed breasts.

"... I guess it's feeding time, huh? If I remember correctly, we vampires spend around 10 years breastfeeding... Damn... I want to suck on some real blood, not on this blood/milk hybrid shit!"

The child was, of course, the Blood Monarch reincarnated. Although she had been a human in her first life, her identity as a vampire had already taken root. She felt no shame nor disgust from wanting to drink blood, rather, she was eager to.

However, as of now, she had to be content with feeding on vampire milk, which although very nutritious, did not taste as good as real blood to vampires.

She soon fell asleep as her new parents flew her over to a small, hidden castle inside of a mountain. In there, after navigating through various death traps that would easily kill humans, they finally arrived in a small room filled with old-style decorations, tables, and even a large bed. There was also a crib, which they put the baby in.

Despite the peaceful atmosphere, if one was to strain their hearing enough, they could hear the 'cattle' screaming and crying... cattle full of delicious blood for a certain newborn...