The Death Mage that doesn't want a fourth time

140 Survival of the fittest

Birkyne, the last surviving member of the three Pure-breed Vampires who worshipped Hihiryushukaka, the evil god of joyful life, was having trouble with rebuilding his organization.

"To think that I would gain sole control over the organization in this form," he muttered with a self-deprecating laugh.

He had once planned to turn Ternecia, one of the other Pure-breed Vampires, into a puppet to rule the organization together with Gubamon. And then he had thought that one day, he would do the same to Gubamon to take sole control over the organization.

That had been a long-term plan, spanning hundreds, thousands or perhaps even tens of thousands of years, but... less than three years had passed since then. Despite that, Ternecia and Gubamon had died... they had been destroyed.

If their souls had remained, it would have been possible to turn them into Undead with the power of the evil god of joyful life. Turning a Pure-breed Vampire into an Undead was impossible for Birkyne, but it should have been possible for Hihiryushukaka. Toying with life was the duty of that evil god, after all.

However, Birkyne knew that wouldn't happen. He had been told through a Divine Message from Hihiryushukaka that their souls had been destroyed.

"Less than three years have passed since then... A period of time that is like the blink of an eye to me. In that short time... DAMN IT!"

The sorrowful expression on his attractive face was erased for a moment by anger as Birkyne crushed the glass in his hand and smashed his fist down into the table that he was sitting at.

With a thunderous sound, the table that was made of Elder Treant wood, stronger than a steel shield, broke into pieces.

But this did little to stop Birkyne's anger.

"Gubamon, that crazy old fool! Disposing of not only his Noble-born Vampires but his Subordinate Vampires with his own hands as well! Does he not know how much I have suffered because of that?! HUH?!" he cursed his fallen comrade with foul words, saliva flying from his mouth.

Gubamon, who had gone mad with paranoia, had tried to use all of his own subordinates as materials for Undead. He had been destroyed by Vandalieu before carrying this task out to completion, but for Birkyne, who now had to rebuild the organization under his control, the damage that had already been done was too great.

The three Pure-breed Vampires had dispatched Vampires to every region to make backroom deals with royalty and nobles and to act as the masterminds pulling the strings behind the bosses of crime syndicates.

There were some, like Earl Thomas Palpapek of the Mirg shield-nation, who contacted the Vampires directly, but many others were unaware that they were making deals with Vampires; they didn't know that they belonged to the low-ranking parts of a Vampire organization unless they were close servants of a crime syndicate's boss.

This structure had allowed the organization to cut these people off like lizards' tails when things went bad, and even if an enemy with sharp intuition caught on, only a single Vampire would be lost.

When Ternecia was defeated, four of the Five Dogs, her close subordinates, had been killed, while the last one had betrayed her. However, the Noble-born and Subordinate Vampires scattered across the various nations had remained. That was why Birkyne and Gubamon had been able to continue by taking them all in except for the organization that had been destroyed by the adventurer party, the Five-colored Blades.

However, Gubamon had killed almost all of the useful Noble-born and Subordinate Vampires, turning them into Undead. The only ones who had escaped this were those who had tried to carry out Gubamon's reckless orders and been killed by adventurers and knights, or those who had immediately gone into hiding and fled the continent or into regions where Gubamon couldn't find them.