The least of Damianus’ power was the fact that he could teleport as simply as he could blink. He knew that would have been the easiest thing to do to get himself from where he was to where he wanted to be, the world of humans. 

Yet he decided to apply caution since he have no idea if they would frown upon suddenly seeing him in their midst. Since he had no idea of a particular location to put his mind on when he teleported, he knew he could appear at any random place.

What if he appeared amidst a crowd?

“That would be inconvenient to explain” he smiled to himself on his way down the mountain.

For a vampire who was used to simply getting himself to wherever he wanted to be by conjuring it in his mind, having to deal with the rocky path down the eerie-looking mountain was a bit inconvenient.

Still, he made do. After all, he had the super speed to help smooth his journey.

Damianus had not been marvelled by the changes he saw as he came down the mountain as it was just a little bit different from how things were in the world of Origins.

No sarcastic trees to talk back at him on his journey here, no one was flying here. He had not seen any traffic in the air apart from a speck he had seen when he first set out accompanied by a droning sound that his supersensitive ear had picked up instantly. 

Damianus was beginning to think that the world of humans that he had been looking forward to being acquainted with might be nothing but a boring slice of the earth afterwards.

Then he set his eyes on the first sign of civilisation.

Spiffy clean, little cars that were not so little as they contained the young men that were driving in them. They zoomed past Damianus with such a fast pace that he was sure The Book would say was not the normal pace for the humans. Their hooting and hollering were enough to make Damianus dismiss the notion he formed earlier about their world being a boring one. 

There were four of them. Each of them is in his little coloured car. Though he was tempted to show them that the race of their cars was nothing compared to what he could do as he could run ten thousand metres in a minute but just like before he doubted if they would appreciate it so he turned towards the opposite direction. 

The direction the hollering, fast boys were coming from.

The scents hit him first, long before he took his first look at what the new world was about. The smells of food, human sweat, a lot of conflicted noises and the pulsing he could distinguish from different sensations.

The closer he got to them, the more vivid that thumping was. From different angles until it all rolled into one big thumping mass. Blood might not be the priority for him but Damianus could ferret out the scent of blood no matter how far away it could be. Whether pumping through the vital organs beneath succulent flesh or out in the open.

Damianus‘ nose twitched even as his eyes widened when buildings came into his view, he had never seen anything of its like. Tall, gargantuan buildings with glasses made him wonder if the people living inside liked to peek at each other.

“Why else would they have that transparent thing as walls for their building,” he thought then he turned his head when he felt what had made his nose twitch earlier.

A pack of people in an organised line came to his line of view as he saw the look of humans for the first. Of course, The book had a drawing. Something that had been done by the author of The book, Velvo, the first vampire that had been sent into the world of humans from the Word of Origins.

He detailed everything he knew, experienced and saw so that all who came behind him would not find it difficult to navigate the complicated world as he had at first. 

Damianus had learnt a lot from The book and he was appreciative of the legendary Volvo yet he couldn’t but think that Volvo's compilations were a bit lacking.

Nothing he had read in The book told him about the gorgeous creatures that were amid the not-so-gorgeous other creatures in the group. 

A scraggly-looking man with a bag that was a bit different from the burlap bags that Damianus was used to took the lead as he seemed to be explaining some things to the people in the pack. Some were listening to him with rapt attention while some didn’t give him the time of the day. They looked as if they wanted to be somewhere else.

Damianus swung his head back to the two gorgeous creatures that had caught his attention the most and he could see that they were a combination of the two groups of people in the pack. One of them, a beautiful girl, yes, girls was what the book called them. 

The beautiful girl with clear skin and the colour of hair like that of his favourite mouse was listening to the man with rapt attention while the one with hair the colour of well-aged wine was looking distractedly around while she twirled the strap of her little bag.

Damianus stopped in his tracks as he gaped at them.

“Yes, the book had been sorely lacking,” he thought “The book had said nothing about the fact that they showed this much skin” he mused as he stared at them openly, unaware of how offensive his open gaze was.

It was mid-summer in Santa Eyre and the girls were dressed in frilly short skits and tight-fitting tank tops. They knew just how beautiful they were and they were proud of the fact that the men in the group couldn’t seem to take their eyes off them. The men would always look away discreetly when the girls almost caught their eyes of course, so the girls were dumbfounded when they saw a man standing apart from the group in coarse clothing.

The man was blatantly ogling them! “Did he have no shame?” the flame-haired lady whispered viciously to the brunette as anger tinted her perfectly made-up face.

“Just ignore him” the brunette whispered back as she tried to give her attention to the tour guide who was telling them about how the monument they were standing around had been there since Santa Eyre was founded.

She tried to focus on the odd-shaped embattled monument as she knew that it would help her a lot in her history class but the girl beside her hissed again “I swear, Laura. I am going to call him out on his bullshit if he did not stop that. He is giving me the creeps. I mean, can you see that archaic outfit he had on? Is he playing cosplay or has he just transmigrated from the tenth century?” she rolled her eyes.

The brunette, Laura smiled as she shook her head “Sybil, I came on this tour more for you than myself. You have to focus and stop paying attention to random people, you know”

“I have you, don’t I?” Sybil said with a coy look and her friend only shook her head.

She knew that Sybil only took the effort of coming on the tour because her father had threatened to cut her off if she failed. Cutting her off meant no more designer shoes, clothes and funding for all the expensive habits that Sybil loved to indulge in. 

Cutting off her fund was like giving a death sentence to Sybil Maxmillan.

Laura smiled as she looked back at the man after turning Sybil’s face towards the guide with her two hands, she felt uncomfortable with the direct look of the oddly dressed man of course but she was determined to ignore it.

She had better things to do.

Damianus, who was oblivious to the girl’s conversation as he had deliberately switched off his mind-reading power for the moment, continued gawking at them.

He was more enthralled by the apparent differences in his body and theirs. He touched his flat chest as he tilted his head aside in his perusal of the girls.

Where his chest was just flat and unremarkable, theirs looked…big. Their hips were also more…bulkier than his. He marvelled at the differences.

“Who knew that girls in this world were more muscular than men,” he thought as he touched his chest again then in wonder he cupped his hands in the picture of how the girl’s chest looked.

“Does that mean they are stronger than the men?” he thought with a smile. Interesting. He never knew that females here could be stronger than men.

“That is it!” Sybil, who had seen the smile on Damianus' face and thought that he was being lascivious flung her aside as she jerked her face from between her friend’s hands.

“Wha…?” Laura, who had been focused on the tour guide with the thought that her friend was doing the same was shocked when she saw her stomp toward the coarsely dressed man.

Her eyes widened as she saw Sybil raise her hand to slap the man.

“Sybil!” she shouted in shock.