Chapter 3: Awakening

The Vampires noisily chattered while slowly but surely inching closer to the coffin at the end of the room.

Upon reaching it, they had to go through another set of runic unsealing, spending only a few minutes on it as it was strangely simpler than the other runes they had seen on the way.

*SHINNNNNNNN*

The sound of the coffin sliding open echoed across the hell, attracting the attention of everyone present, save the werewolves who had been knocked unconscious.

White cold smoke came out of the coffin as it opened, dispersing into the air a few moments later.

They all kept their guards up as the frosty air began to clear up slowly, their energies roused and ready to activate their skills in case anything went wrong.

But after nothing happened a minute after the air cleared up, they reduced their guards a bit and looked entity in the coffin.

It was a pale-skinned man, dressed in a complete three-piece suit. He had long silver-coloured hair, that stretched down to his waist, along with a bushy beard and moustache.

However, he did not seem to be in a normal state, evidenced by how his body looked dried out, and disturbingly similar to that of a mummified body.

"Look what we have here…"

"Pale fossilized-looking skin, a faint breath, but no heartbeat."

"Basic Desiccation symptoms."

"And from the way he looks, he's been like this for a ridiculously long time…"

"That much was obvious given how old this place is. Can't you use your brains?"

The four Vampire teenagers ignored Nelo's comment and looked the coffin over, trying to see if there was anything else they missed at first glance.

"Well…he's our target, that's for sure."

"I wouldn't easily conclude on that. What if he's just a random Ancient Vampire who was sealed here for a reason and not our target?"

The male twin countered his sister's statement, raising what could be seen as a reasonable concern.

"I appraised him the instant we opened the coffin. His race is NOT 'Vampire'."

"Then what is it?"

The four turned in the direction of Runemaster Wanette, internally hoping the answer she would give would be the one they wanted.

"Some parts were blurred out to me, but I could see one word that confirmed it: Hybrid."

Relief washed over the faces of three of them while Nelo only snorted and looked away.

But this served to reveal the reason why the five of them were currently inside these underground ruins.

They had been sent here to find the being whose rumours of his existence recently spread, along with his location.

This identity of the being that was the target: Vampire-Werewolf Hybrid.

A being who possessed the strengths of both races, but was very resistant, to the point of being effectively considered immune to their weaknesses—or at least, that's what they knew of.

"Now then, do we wake him up the same way we'd wake up a desiccated Vampire? Or do we need some special means?"

"Let's try the normal means first."

Wanette said as she walked up to the coffin, pulling out a blood bag from her spatial expansion waist pouch and opening it up, letting the blood slowly drip onto the man's lips.

"…"

"…no reaction, huh?"

Seeing that standard practice for waking up desiccated Vampires (feeding human blood) didn't work, the group decided to try out their second plan, feeding him the blood of a Vampire.

Flicking her fingers, Wanette's nails turned into claws which she then used to slit her wrist lightly and let the blood drip onto his lips, but there was still no response.

"In that case. Toss me one of 'em, sis."

Hearing her brother's words, Davina turned her gaze towards the tied-up wolves, a light smile coming to her face as he grabbed the nearest one to her and flung him over to her brother.

"Uzriak!!"

"How dare you?!"

"Don't kill him!!"

The werewolves started shouting but she just waved her hand and created a little containment field with wind energy, sealing all sound around them while looking at her brother who picked caught the wolf with one hand.

The Werewolf, Uzriak tried to break free from his hold but the David simply smacked the back of his head and knocked him out, before slicing his wrist and letting his blood pour towards the lips of the man in the coffin.

"…"

"…Damn, no reaction still?"

"Let's try looking around, maybe the way to wake him up might be in these runes on the walls."

Davina spoke as she glanced around, but just before her brother could agree with her; he, and everyone else in the hall, heard a voice ring out in their heads at the same time.

[Get that thing away from me.]

Warning signals rang out in all their brains as they all reflexively turned towards the coffin. David jumped back instinctively, still holding onto the Werewolf's arm that was still dripping with blood.

"Tsk!"

An audible tongue-clicking sound rang out across the room followed by the voice they heard ring out in their heads earlier.

"Miranda had these custom-made for me and you dirtied them."

A suit-clad arm stretched out of the coffin, grabbing onto the side tightly before the rest of the upper body it belonged to emerged from it.

Sitting up in the coffin, was not the pale skinned mummified looking man they saw a mere minute ago, but a young-looking man, probably around their age, with a handsome face that would make even Vampires; known for their supernatural beauty, feel jealous just by looking at him.

His face contorted a bit as his eyeballs moved behind his eyelids, and then suddenly, they opened wide; revealing a set of clear blue eyes with slit black pupils.

The intensity of their vivid blue hue drew the Vampires in, capturing their gazes and making them feel as if he could see through the depths of their being.

However, seeing him nearly stumble as he tried to come out of the coffin, they snapped out of their daze immediately.

As for this suit-wearing man, he felt disoriented, his senses going haywire, but they started recovering after a few seconds as he tried to support himself.

He then slowly straightened his back, revealing a fairly tall height of around 6 feet before looking around and speaking.

"Vampires? Wolves? And…where's the human?"

They were confused as to why he was asking for a human when there was clearly none present, but when his clear blue eyes settled on the blood bag in Wanette's hands, the female Vampire understood where that assumption came from.

"…did you perhaps accidentally succeed in waking me up by trying out all sorts of blood on me?"

Sure, he was still partially disoriented, but upon seeing the open blood bag, the wounded unconscious Werewolf, and the fact that she still had blood on her own sleeves, he instantly figured out what happened.

They had tried to wake him up using human blood, switching to Vampire blood after that failed and then finally using Werewolf blood.

They had accidentally ended up using creating the blood formula required to wake him up, a mixture of the three blood types.

The blue-eyed man sighed softly while holding his head as he thought about this, but the others in the hall had other thoughts running through their minds.

What they knew about the 'Legendary' Hybrid, was that he was an ancient being of unparalleled power, one who stood at the very peak of the food chain thousands of years ago—and was also hailed as one of the greatest myths in the world.

However, for years, his existence had been treated as nothing more than a myth, with no real proof to back it up as many Vampires and werewolves had tried and failed to create Hybrids.

As such, Vampire-Werewolf Hybrids were seen as an impossibility.

But recently, rumours about these Underground ruins suddenly spread like wildfire, and much to the surprise of the other races, the Vampires and Werewolves began making strange moves.

This allowed them to figure out that there had to be some truth amongst the rumours, hence the reason for the two races taking action.

It was no small secret that both the Vampire and Werewolf races, two of the most powerful races on the Estea, and their interstellar colonies, had long been searching for means to overcome their racial weaknesses.

And it had long been rumoured that a Hybrid could be the key to them achieving this.

So, when these two races started making strange movements at the same time rumours of a Hybrid's potential location spread out, it'd be stranger if the other races did not get suspicious!