Black Cross: The Blood System

“HERO OR VILLAIN?”

The words were boldly written on the whiteboard as the topic of the day.

He capped the blue marker and made his way back to the teacher’s table at the front of the room before sitting on it.

This was Mr. Adrian Azuma. A history teacher, a married man, and someone whose life was about to change in a few hours.

“That is the topic we have today. What do you all think?” he asked his class of forty students.

“Aren’t heroes the good guys and villains the bad guys?” a student asked as he stood up.

“In a general sense, yes and also no,” Adrian replied, pointing to another female student raising her hand.

This was Alice. She was the student president and class captain of the class. She was smart, beautiful, and had a good personality that made her friends with everyone, including teachers.

“I believe that villains are the people who do bad things of their own selfish accord, thinking of nobody else’s safety.”

“That is a strong point right there. Not quite right, but okay,” Adrian replied.

A few other students also stood up and gave their opinions about heroes and villains, and Adrian listened to all of them before asking his own question.

“Can someone who has killed a lot of people be considered a hero?” he asked, and hands flew high in the air, desperate to answer his question.

Most of the answers pointed in one direction. The students, at least most of them, believed that if you took a life, then you were a bad person.

Adrian couldn’t blame them for thinking this way, as they were still kids and had not experienced the harsher side of life.

“Zack, what do you think?” Mr. Adrian called out to a student sitting at the end of the class.

Zack was the class delinquent, the type to sleep during lectures and come late to class. Many called him lazy and unserious, but Adrian refused to look at him that way. All Adrian saw was a boy who was unmotivated toward his academics, and Adrian was ready to push him until he got back in line.

“Everyone calls a person that kills people a murderer, which is normal, but I feel like if the person has a good reason, then his actions should be justified. For example, if someone tried to come after my family, I’d do everything to protect them, even if it meant killing them,” Zack answered and sat down immediately.

Adrian started clapping with a smile on his face, and soon the whole class joined in. After a while, they stopped.

“Thank you for your contribution, Zack. You really made a solid point there.”

Adrian then walked back to the board and turned to face his students.

“History isn’t always written by the righteous. Sometimes it’s written by survivors, sometimes by those in power, and sometimes by people who weren’t even there.”

He turned and wrote three names before facing the students again.

“Galileo Galilei was condemned in his own time, even though he was right,” he said, tapping the first name.

“Joan of Arc was burned as a heretic before being honored as a saint,” he said, tapping the second name.

“Nelson Mandela spent years in prison before the world celebrated him,” he said, tapping the third name.

Then he wrote one more name in big letters and circled it.

“And for the Men of Culture who watch anime. Eren Yeager from Attack on Titan.”

A few students cheered at the mention of the anime character.

“These people mentioned here fought for what they believed in, even when the whole world turned against them. So let me ask you this…”

Adrian paused, looking around the room.

“If protecting the ones you love means becoming a bad guy in everyone’s story, will you still protect them?” Adrian asked the whole class, he didn't need a magician to know the answer.

“Life is a cruel bastard. It doesn’t give us what we want or acknowledge our desires because we say please. It throws challenges at us, and we're the ones to decide the next move from there forward.”

“That’s it for today. I hope you all learned something, and don’t forget to submit your assignments,” Adrian said, gathering his things and heading out of the classroom toward his office.

He pushed open the office door and found Kellan already slouched in his chair.

Kellan was the lazy colleague who looked for every opportunity to avoid his work. Of course, he was good at what he did, but he preferred lazing around rather than doing what he was paid to do.

Kellan and Adrian met at the school, where they quickly became friends, and things kicked off from there. Emily was the final friend of the trio, as she was the school nurse, and her office was opposite Adrian’s office.

“Our wife brought us a delivery man,” Kellan said, waving his food flask in the air, making Adrian turn toward his table to see a package on it.

He opened it, and his face lit up when he saw that his wife had packed him lunch.

Kellan was single, so Adrian’s wife always made sure to pack two lunches for Adrian and his friend.

As Adrian brought out the food flask, there was also a small handwritten romantic note tucked by the side, the kind she wrote with every delivery.

“That’s the smile of a man whose wife still brings him lunch every day. If I wasn’t getting some of that food, I would have been your enemy by now,” Kellan said, groaning dramatically.

Adrian chuckled as he sat down and opened the food flask. “It’s not my fault you’re still single, bro. Quit your playboy lifestyle and get yourself a wife.”

“Nah, bro. I’m already seeing the advantages of having a wife from your marriage, but I’m not ready yet. I’m in my prime, and I’m gonna live like a king before I settle down,” Kellan shot back.

“Hopefully, you end up with someone who knows how to cook good food. Imagine ordering food because neither of y’all knows how to cook well,” Adrian said, laughing.

“Fuck you, man,” Kellan replied, both of them laughing it off.

A few hours later, school officially closed, and Adrian stood at the front of the school gate with Emily by his side as most of the students had already headed home.

“Are you catching a taxi today?” Emily asked.

“Nah, my wife’s picking me up,” Adrian replied.

“Wife this, wife that. You’re really out here making the rest of us single folks feel useless,” she teased, nudging his shoulder.

“Kellan’s single too. I could set you two up if you want,” he offered with a grin.

“Nah, he’s not my type,” Emily said, wrinkling her face.

“So who is your type?” Adrian asked curiously.

“Tall, fit, serious about his job, dark hair, caring, handsome, loyal… and wears glasses when he’s working,” she said, listing them off casually.

Adrian squinted at her, knowing she was talking about him.

“There are many guys out there. Hopefully, one grabs your attention.”

Emily gave him a playful, knowing smile as her taxi pulled up.

“I know you know what I’m talking about, Adrian.” She climbed in and waved to him.

“See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, see you tomorrow,” he called back, watching the taxi drive away.

A car honked behind him, and Adrian turned to see a familiar big black Hummer parked nearby.

He walked over, opened the door, and slid into the seat before closing the door and turning to face the woman sitting in the driver’s seat.

Sarah, his wife.

She greeted him with that beautiful smile that always made his day better.

“Hey, hot stuff.”

“Hey, baby. How are you?” Adrian replied as they shared a kiss before she started driving.

They chatted about the activities of their day before heading toward the restaurant Adrian had booked for dinner that evening.

It was near perfect; the restaurant had everything they needed to enjoy their evening meal.

The food was delicious, the music was soothing, and by the time they were done, Sarah was a bit tipsy, so Adrian took the wheel to drive them home.

Instead of the route they usually followed, he decided to take a shortcut he had recently discovered

The couple were sharing stories and laughing together when the car hit something or was hit by something. Adrian wasn’t sure, but the next thing he knew was that the car flipped violently and rolled down the road, resulting in a huge crash.

Adrian became disoriented as pain filled his skull, and he tried to make sense of what was happening.

Then he saw it happen.

The side door where his wife was sitting was suddenly ripped away, and a pale hand reached in, grabbed Sarah, and dragged her outside.

She screamed his name, shouting for help, and Adrian panicked, grabbing the gun he always kept for emergencies in his car. He yanked at his side of the door, but it didn’t budge one bit.

He had to kick the window hard multiple times before it shattered, and he crawled out, ignoring the blood from the broken glass shards tearing into his arms.

[Prose → “He had to kick the window multiple times before it finally shattered, and he crawled out, ignoring the blood from the broken glass cutting into his arms.”]

But by the time he got out, he was too late.

He watched in disbelief as Sarah’s body hit the ground, her neck slashed open and her blood flowing out, staining her clothes and gathering on the ground beneath her.

Adrian raised his head to see who had done this to her.

It was a vampire.

It had pale skin stretched over a lean frame. Its eyes glowed a deep red as long, sharp fangs protruded from its mouth, still dripping with Sarah’s blood.

The vampire licked Sarah’s blood slowly from its fingers, savoring it with a look of twisted pleasure.

Adrian gritted his teeth in fury as he raised his gun toward the creature and started shooting sporadically, screaming with every bullet that left the gun.

The bullets punched holes through the creature’s clothes but did no damage.

Adrian saw the bullets weren’t working, threw the gun aside, and charged in for hand-to-hand combat, which turned out to be a terrible mistake.

The vampire easily dodged every punch Adrian threw and countered with brutal attacks, beating him down mercilessly.

It lifted Adrian into the air before sinking its fangs into his neck.

Adrian felt his strength weaken fast as the vampire kept drinking his blood. His fading vision caught sight of a dragon tattoo on the vampire’s neck, and he could only watch helplessly as his life slipped through his fingers.

His body collapsed onto the cold ground, growing weaker by the second, and from the corner of his fading vision, he spotted a woman standing nearby, watching everything.

He couldn’t make out her face clearly, but he could feel the pity in her gaze. Yet she made no move to help.

“Sarah… Sarah…” Adrian whispered as he gathered all his remaining energy and began crawling toward his wife’s lifeless body.

Unfortunately, he didn’t go far before he lost all his strength, and his eyes closed as he embraced death.

Then a translucent red screen appeared in his fading consciousness:

[Host Accepted.]

Revival Sequence Initiated.

System Integration in Progress…