"Use your common sense," she had told me with a laugh. "Of course it's a freak accident. Unless you used magic – and since we didn't sense any mana from him despite being in the same s.p.a.ce – there is no way for a normal human to physically push a bookshelf over. The shelf weighs about a ton or two!"

She had me there. Again, I told her that Xu Wu Cheng was a vampire, and all I got was another laugh in return.

"You've been watching too many movies or reading too many vampire novels." The teacher shook her head. "Vampires went out of vogue years ago! Even since that novel series about sparkling vampires and badly written romances, vampires haven't been popular for years! Oh, I know. You must have been reading shoujo manga or manhua. But even these have gotten a bit stale over the years. People have simply stopped reading them."

That wasn't true. I hadn't read a vampire novel or manhua in a long while. Let's just say Vampire Sphere traumatized me, even if Twilight hadn't.

So I went home, bitter and disappointed that no one would believe me. Adrian did, but there was nothing he could do. He wasn't in the high school division, what was he supposed to do? He couldn't act as a witness because he wasn't actually there to see anything. Gritting my teeth, I resolved to speak to Headmistress Teresa Taylor the next day.

"…you came to my office just to tell me this?"

She raised an eyebrow. I gestured toward the recordings.

"If you would just watch these…"

"Oh, I have. I've surveyed the reports you made to the teachers. I trust their judgment. And if Xu Wu Cheng and Nan Gong Ji Yan have already come forward and clarified the matter, then it's done. Settled. There is no need for you to keep harping on it. It's almost as if you've an obsession or a grudge. It's unhealthy."

I honestly felt like screaming. Why wouldn't anyone believe me!? Well…if they did, then the story would end here, Xu Wu Cheng would be imprisoned and killed, his schemes would fall apart, the vampires would be driven off, and we wouldn't be able to continue this parody. Thus Xu Wu Cheng was protected by incredible plot armor. No matter what I did right now, I couldn't stop him. If I were to attack him in the corridor, the teachers would show up and stop me.

There was absolutely nothing I could do.

"What do I do now?" I scowled, and then I realized that I had no idea what he was scheming. He had made ambiguous declarations about destroying the school as well as made references to some Night Blood Tribe or whatever, but right now I had utterly no intelligence on any of those. I realized that I was going about this the wrong way.

If the authorities didn't believe me, then I had to find another way to disrupt his plans. And to do that, I needed to gather intelligence. Information was vital, and if I didn't know my enemy, I would never be able to win.

"How do I…?"

I tried following the dude, but he was a slippery fellow. Even though I had a flock of Corvus tracking, he would always disappear into the shadows after school, leaving not even a single trail. I had no idea how he shook off my Constellation spirits, but the guy was clearly skilled. There had to be something I could do. I just didn't know what.

Would the Hunter a.s.sociation know something about this?

"Please stop slandering my sister."

Zhao Yan folded her arms and glared at me when I pulled her aside one day to tell her.

"I know you've been following her for a bit, and reporting to the teachers about her apparent vampiric transformation. It's becoming a bit bothersome. Even though I owe you quite a bit, you are going too far and crossing the line. Please, just let my sister off."

"But…!"

Zhao Yan shook her head. "I'm sorry. That's enough. I trust my sister. She will never do anything as stupid as that. And I know Xu Wu Cheng is pretty handsome and popular with guys, but that's not a reason for you to be jealous of him and drag his name through the mud."

What the h.e.l.l?! Zhao Yan – like the others – thought I was slandering Xu Wu Cheng because I was jealous of him!? This was utter bulls.h.i.+t!

Then again, from an outsider's point of view…I guess it was only reasonable that people would see that. It was unfair, but people were ultimately biased. Reality was harsh. People would rather believe the people they wanted to believe and hear the things they wanted to hear than the truth. No matter what period it was, humans never changed.

I was on my own.

Resigned to solitude and alienation, I changed my tactics and continued to try and maintain my surveillance of Xu Wu Cheng. Even though I did several discreet background investigations, I found nothing. No past, no family, no background…nothing. It was almost as if he just ghosted into existence from nowhere.

As the days pa.s.sed, I was no closer to finding out what his scheme was. I was wondering if I should just forget about the whole thing and remain vigilant for whatever Xu Wu Cheng plotted, only for me to stumble upon a clandestine meeting between the members of the Guang Zhi Yi Sect. Of course Nan Gong Zhao Yan and Nan Gong Ji Yan were both present along with Yi Shen and Kai Lin. I just happened to pa.s.s by the room they were inhabiting as secretly as they could. The four of them had locked the door in what they thought was a secure location, but they never bothered to cast anti-eavesdropping wards or use soundproof spells. Amateurs.

I was about to pa.s.s them by when something that Yi Shen said caught my attention.

"This is an urgent issue!"

Uh…what was urgent, exactly? Who the h.e.l.l began their sentences like that? That sounded downright unnatural.

"There are many corpses in the area near Meng Ting Academy and Yi Wen Academy. From the autopsies, it's clear that someone has sucked their blood dry."

Meng Ting and Ti Wen Academies? I had never heard of those. They must be magic academies like Saint Teresa Academy. Well, as long as I didn't hear Saint Teresa or Hennepin Academies among the list of casualties, I needn't worry.

But the cause of deaths sounded suspiciously like vampires…

"According to our most trusted source, the demonic faction known as the Crimson Blood Demonic Night Tribe is the culprit."

Who the h.e.l.l was your "most trusted source"? What the h.e.l.l were you trying to do, sound like a sports journalist or something? n.o.body spoke like that in a conversation in real life, not unless they were writing a news article. You know, like "sources close to the club said that…" Dude, you really sounded like some flat, two-dimensional character who was just showing up to move the horrible plot along.

Yi Shen continued, unaware that his unnatural and cheesy dialogue was grating on my nerves. "All hunters from guilds belonging to the Hunter a.s.sociation in those two schools have been annihilated. It's very clear that there is a spy in the Hunter a.s.sociation."

No, it was NOT clear at all. Could you, like, explain the link? How the h.e.l.l did "hunters being killed in these two schools" equate to "there must be a spy in the Hunter a.s.sociation"?! I didn't see any link or correlation? I mean, maybe they got killed because they encountered strong vampires? Where was your proof that there was a traitor?

I personally knew that Ji Yan was the spy feeding Yi Tai information, but that was because I stumbled upon her telling him stuff. If I didn't eavesdrop on them, I would never have made the link between deaths and spies. Yeah, I knew it was supposed to be a plot-induced revelation, but this just made no sense whatsoever!

Best of all, I had told them that Ji Yan was the traitor, and they refused to believe me. Zhao Yan had insisted that her sister could be trusted, and they ended up suspecting me for trying to drive a wedge into their relations.h.i.+p. Okay, so they didn't believe me that there was a traitor, but when people started dying, suddenly that was because it was done by a spy? And even though I had clearly told them that Ji Yan was the spy, they refused to make the link?

"I'm guessing the next target will be us."

Why? Because Zhao Yan and Ji Yan were the main characters?

"We can't delay this any longer. Tonight, we are going to set up a barrier of silver crosses around our school."

What the f.u.c.k?!

No, seriously. WHAT THE f.u.c.k?!

Why wait until tonight to set a barrier of silver crosses around your school? Shouldn't that be done right from the very beginning, like, you know, when you first started enrolling in this school? What was with this sudden realization that you need a barrier only now? Were you guys freaking amateurs?! Who the h.e.l.l waited until there was an actual threat staring down your face before finally being compelled to set up barriers around your freaking home base?!

Was there no sense of security or logic in these so-called HUNTERS?!

And in the next panel, I saw that the once-bright afternoon sky had been replaced by night. What the h.e.l.l was with this transition? Before I knew what was happening, I saw the four of them jumping around and landing stylishly (Deadpool would have called their poses the cla.s.sic superhero landing)…just to put the silver crosses on the ground.

That was right. A mundane task of setting up a barrier and fixing silver crosses into position, and they had to jump around so flamboyantly and make stylish landings, as if they were being watched by an audience.

I decided that I was never going to read Vampire Sphere again. The sheer amount of annoyance I suffered when reading this nonsense of a webcomic was becoming too much for me to bear.

Suspecting there was something because Ji Yan received a full panel to herself, I decided to randomly check on her rendezvous with Yi Tai in the abandoned cla.s.sroom Room 5. As Yi Tai bit into her neck sensually and sucked her blood, she fed him info in addition to her red bodily fluids.

"They've already set up the barrier so that zombies will not be able to enter…"

Wait, what? Uh…did she just say zombies? Seriously? There were zombies in this world? Why hadn't I heard of them before? I thought they only appeared in Biohazard/Resident Evil games – which had just received two remakes recently, by the way. Oh, right. I had heard of rumors regarding necromancy and monsters such as Lich Lords or Skeletal Kings or whatever, but I had no idea how true they were. Given that Ji Yan just dropped that huge bomb on me as if it was nothing more than a common occurrence, I guess zombies were real.

Not that I wanted to meet them…

"But I swapped the real silver crosses with fake ones in some of the a.s.signed locations…"

"Very good." Xu Wu Cheng raised his head and smiled, wiping the blood from his lips as he complimented his blood servant. "Any news on…?"

The word was deliberately censored out to keep me (and the readers) in suspense. I cursed under my breath and wondered why I wasn't able to hear that word. Ji Yan, on the other hand, looked conflicted. Annoyed, Xu Wu Cheng glared at her.

"Why are you s.p.a.cing out for?"

"Nothing…" Ji Yan lowered her head shamefully, still unable to say anything. Yi Tai decided to let it go.

"Okay, the Crimson Blood Demonic Night Tribe is going to deal with this school quickly." Yi Tai stood up and produced three paper sachets from his pocket before handing them to Ji Yan. "These are three sachets that contain a kind of powder that will weaken the user's combat ability. Find an opportunity to slip these into your sect's beverages and have them drink them. Of course, I'm including your sister, Zhao Yan, as well…"

My blood ran cold when I listened from outside the cla.s.sroom. This couldn't be happening! Would Ji Yan really betray her sister and the Guang Zhi Yi Sect? If she really intended to do so, I had to warn them! h.e.l.l, I was going to give this whole recording to the headmistress!

…as it turned out, I got scolded once again, and this time Taylor threatened to expel me and send me back to Jing Tian City if I continued "hara.s.sing" Xu Wu Cheng and Ji Yan. As for Zhao Yan and the Guang Zhi Yi Sect, they almost resolved never to talk to me again.

f.u.c.k THIS! WHY WOULDN'T ANYBODY BELIEVE ME?! I WAS TELLING THE TRUTH!

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