Chapter 64: Old Acquaintances, and Bob is Pissed

We stared at each other for a moment. I honestly had no idea if he would try to fight me or not. Was he someone I could trust?

"I’m not your enemy," he said. "I had to steal this thing from the academy, and I know this might sound insane, but the principal was working with a vampire. A vampire traitor. He’s not a friend."

I didn’t look shocked to hear that, obviously, since I already knew Frederic was up to no good with that vampire going into his home in the academy. So Balthazar, being as smart as he was, quickly noticed my expression hadn’t changed.

"You knew," he said, eyes wide open. "How did you know? Did he tell you? Are you working with the vampires too?"

Balthazar raised his hands, his palms aimed in my direction. He was already in a fighting stance, and I didn’t want to fight him. The old fox was fucking strong.

"Ethan saw a vampire going into Frederic’s house," I said. "That’s how I know. What did he want with this artifact anyway? Does it have something to do with the attacks all over the country?"

He shook his head. "No, the attacks are a different thing. The vampires wanted this item I have for their personal use."

Balthazar lowered his palms, no longer in a fighting stance, which was good. I sighed in relief. Maybe he was someone trustworthy after all, with all the liars around me.

"And why is he working with this vampire traitor? What’s in it for him?"

"That, I’m afraid I don’t know. This vampire stole the item from the vampires and fled. Frederic helped him by giving him shelter, and they certainly had something devious in mind."

So a vampire betrayed his own kind, and Frederic did the same when he decided to help a monster. They were meant for each other. Two fucking traitors.

I still didn’t know what this item Balthazar was talking about was, and the curiosity was killing me.

"I can only trust you if you tell me what the item you stole is and what it does," I said, crossing my arms. "And if you do that, then I can show you something interesting in return."

Balthazar didn’t reply immediately. He was torn between sharing that secret or keeping it. I waited until he finally had an answer for me, one that was actually satisfactory.

He took something out of his pocket. A rusty metal key. Or perhaps it was made of another material, but it was rusty for sure, as if it had 1000 years or more.

"This is one of the 5 keys to release the ancient vampires who are trapped in the underworld," Balthazar explained, showing me the key. "They already have 3 keys, and this was the 4th. We can’t let them release these powerful creatures. They are sealed for a reason."

Five keys that released ancient creatures. Great. If it took five keys to seal these creatures, then they had to be fucking powerful, and I don’t want them around. No one does.

"If this is so important, they’ll chase us forever for it," I said.

"Maybe, but it’s not like the key is easy to track, and they don’t know I have it. They’ll probably look for the 5th key first, then come back to hunt us down."

I hated where that was going. Having that key basically meant we had a target on our backs. These vampires would never stop chasing us. The current monster invasion across the country was already bad enough for me to handle, but now this? Fucking hell. And there was also that demon roaming around...

In the end, I decided to trust him.

"I have a vampire locked in my pocket dimension," I said. "He says he doesn’t know much, but maybe you can use your own ways to extract information. Wanna see him?"

Balthazar frowned. "Inside your pocket dimension? I’ve heard you can only store some items inside. That’s what your file stated."

Oh boy, my academy file was not up to date. I walked over toward Balthazar.

"I’ll bring Zeph along as well," I said. "Bob can heal this bastard."

"Bob?"

I activated my power, and almost instantly, we were all inside my pocket dimension. Balthazar didn’t move. He just stood there, looking around.

He saw the trees, the birds flying around, the river flowing next to where we were standing, and my cabin in the distance. Everything felt so real. The wind moved his grey beard and hair.

Balthazar adjusted his round glasses to make sure he was seeing things right.

"This feels like a rift. Y-you created a small rift, kid. Your power is special! You might be the key for us to understand the rifts!"

The old man got really excited. He even forgot I had a vampire trapped in my basement and just walked around, touching the grass, the trees, and even drinking the water from the river.

I had never drunk the water, so I had no idea if it tasted like real water too, and judging by his face, it did.

"This is incredible," he said. "Amazing. Beyond anything I have ever seen. If you can improve your ability, then maybe one day you can create a whole rift!"

That did sound like a lot of fun. I pictured myself as a higher being creating worlds for others to explore or live in. Pretty dope, actually.

"Calm down, old man," I said. "I ain’t no S rank Hunter. Yet. In fact, I don’t even think S rank hunters can do what you said. Maybe I’ll have to grow past that."

"Maybe..."

Balthazar smiled and said, "What did you want to show me?"

"Follow me."

We walked together into the dungeon I had built underneath my cabin. Zeph was still lying unconscious on the ground in the spot where we had first landed.

When Balthazar saw the vampire attached to the wall without eyes and arms, he was quite shocked that I had done it.

The vampire realized someone else was inside with us and instantly started to tremble.

"Please, don’t torture me. I told you everything I know."

I pointed at the table with the torture instruments. Balthazar followed my finger.

"Use it if you need, but don’t kill him. I promised I would let him live if he gave me the answers I needed. Also, we can still use a vampire to lure others, right?"

Balthazar smirked. The clever old fox was already scheming, I was sure of it.

I went back upstairs to the lake in front of my cabin, sat on a chair, and enjoyed the view. There was a fishing rod already waiting for me, and I could easily produce bait for the fish in the lake.

"I’m basically creating living things with my power..."

The fact was finally hitting me. Just birds and fish, worms and other small animals, which was already pretty damn impressive. Could I create something different in the future, like a human being or a monster? The idea did pop into my mind, but I put it aside. It just sounded like the start of a horror movie. Maybe I should avoid trying such extreme things for the time being...

I put the worm on the hook, got up from the chair, swung the fishing rod, aiming at the lake’s center. Then, I sat down again and enjoyed some good fishing.

It was so nice. Fishing in the wilderness wasn’t that safe anymore with the rifts and monsters around. Villains too. You never knew when you would be attacked by something.

Inside my pocket dimension, though, that was a whole different story. I felt safe in there.

Time slowed down as I relaxed outside, catching a few fish that I put into a bucket with water. They would be my dinner for the night, for sure.

I even controlled the time inside the pocket dimension, turning it into nighttime to match the outside and avoid messing up my sleeping schedule.

The sound of wood creaking entered my ears. Balthazar walked over toward me, stepping onto the wooden pier.

"He doesn’t know much," I said. "Just a low-rank vampire. But he does know the name of the vampire traitor, which is Jeremy."

Jeremy. No... fucking... way...

The same vampire who spared my life in that rift, and said he wanted me to do something for him. The same vampire who had a weird egg that never hatched, which I hatched and got myself a Primordial Slime.

Who the fuck was that vampire?

But the most important question was: the vampire Ethan saw going into Frederic’s house wasn’t Jeremy. Could he change his appearance, or was it someone else?

There were other vampires with him, so the chances of him working alone were slim. There was more than one traitor, for sure.

I didn’t say I knew Jeremy. At least one secret I had to keep to myself.

"Where’s this Bob you talked about?" Balthazar asked me.

Bob had his own place. I made him a tiny shelter in the middle of the forest.

"Follow me," I said.

We walked over there to see him, but when Bob spotted Balthazar, for some reason, he got angry, turning red with his shark teeth out again. He hadn’t acted like that when he saw the vampire, so why was he doing it with Balthazar?

Bob jumped toward him, trying to bite his head off.