Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?

Past Arc ⑮

The illegal research institute that had bought the slaves, was one that belonged to Potimas. And the fate that had awaited the purchased slaves, was to be used in human experiments. When the institute was exposed, the former slaves who were taken into care, were the victims of human experiments. Of vampire experiments.

Vampires. They were considered to be fictional creatures spoken of in fairy-tales, but they actually existed. What vampires were in practice, were rogue forms of normal creatures due to a special form of magecraft. Then, the creatures who became vampires, fed on the blood of other creatures, and the creatures who had their blood sucked became vampires themselves. They were strange creatures with an ecology not seen anywhere else, who altered their own species for food. The reason why such creatures were considered to be a fictional existence, is solely because the dragons hated vampires, and took action to exterminate them. Sariel as well considered vampires to be a non-native species, even if their original forms were that of native species, so she kept a close eye on the dragons’ actions to exterminate them. Then, with nothing except vague legends remaining, that led to vampires being thought of as fictional creatures.

They were then revived by Potimas who had studied their legends. Vampires have all sorts of characteristics, but what got Potimas’s attention was them having eternal youth. He considered the possibility of becoming a vampire himself, allowing him to gain the eternal youth part of immortality. However, he was not a daring enough person that he would suddenly apply such a procedure to himself. Using slaves, he made repeated experiments, attempting to verify the safety of the procedure. In the end, Potimas did not apply vampire transformation to himself. It was just too dangerous.

The slaves who went through the vampire transformation completely lost their own will, changing into monsters that simply existed to attack whatever creatures they saw and slurp their blood. And with the added bonus that the creatures that were attacked also become vampires themselves. That was a far cry from the immortality that Potimas was seeking. Then, at a time during which Potimas was continuing the experiments to try to find a way that would allow the will to remain, the institute was exposed. He noticed that he was about to be exposed just in time, and fled. Following that, the slaves who had been used for experiments and the experimental documents were recovered. While taking the victims into care, several people got bitten.

Then, the people who had been bitten by the vampire slaves transformed into vampires themselves after a period of time. Having lost their own will, they attacked whatever creatures they saw. The new victims had their blood sucked, become vampires themselves, creating yet another wave of attackers. The vampires increased in numbers exponentially. It was a major incident that could easily have plunged the world into chaos.

However, it was stopped at the verge of that. Which was due to Foddway’s collapse. To be more precise, it was due to the two people who realised the situation from Foddway’s collapse – Sariel and Gyurie.

Noticing that Foddway had collapsed, the two of them had already planned to visit him. There, they sensed that Foddway had been transformed into a vampire. From there they took rapid action. Starting from the vampire who had bitten Foddway, they traced back to the captain, and from him back to the ex-slaves who had bitten him, and with the cooperation of the police the vampires were swiftly quarantined. The damage was already great, but the quick initial response was successful, enough to say that the number of victims was kept to the lowest amount possible. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a means to save the people who had become vampires. Almost all of them resisted capture, and were either shot to death, or died from exposure to sunlight. The few surviving vampires, had also become like beasts after losing their own will, and were quarantined.

「So that’s why I’m still being quarantined huh.」

Consequently, due to the danger, as the only one to have successfully kept his own will, Foddway was still being quarantined. Who knew when he could lose himself. In addition, while he had kept his own will it was still the case that he was a vampire. His long canine teeth were so sharp they didn’t look like they belonged to a human. If he bit anyone with those teeth and slurped their blood, that person would become a vampire. Instead of considering Foddway’s rights as an individual, it was necessary to quarantine him as a dangerous creature.

「We shall endeavour to prevent you feeling inconvenienced. However, we cannot grant you permission to freely walk outside.」

「That’s basically the definition of inconvenience though.」

Foddway responded with sarcasm to the man who had come to explain things to him. However, his tone was somehow frail. Foddway himself had yet to come to grips with the misfortune that had struck his own body. Even though it was a miracle that he had kept his own will, there was nothing to be happy about. Due to his insatiable cravings no matter how much water he drank, the despair he felt on swallowing some blood from a blood transfusion pack was something he couldn’t describe. While it was at least better than being treated like a laboratory animal, to Foddway this incident was like a bolt from the blue, and it was a great shock that what had happened to him in the incident was, in a sense, worse than death. Since he was originally an old man, his life was simply one of dealing with the little time he had remaining. While death was something to be afraid of, it was something he had accepted. However, now he had suddenly become an unaging vampire, and was also having to live the rest of his life quarantined from others. Having fallen off the normal path of life, Foddway couldn’t help feeling uneasy about his situation.

Thus, Foddway vanished from his position of being a bigwig in the financial world. Furthermore, his activities with the Sariera Society became quite limited. However, that might have been better for him instead. The Sariera Society would afterwards become heavily involved in a certain activity. Namely, taking into care and treating the victims of Potimas’s human experiments. Potimas hadn’t only been experimenting with vampires. There were many other forms of human experiments being carried out, and the total number of victims was immense. Due to the vampire incident coming to light, the rest were confirmed one after another. Potimas became an internationally wanted criminal from this.