Chương 18: Vampires, Kin of the Night
Hello everyone, welcome to another rant by yours truly, this time we tackling another Race rant, last one was about Devils, this time it's their long lost cousins, the vampires!
So without further ado, let's get started:
> Buchou, Vampires are weak against the sun, right? Is he fine?"
> Buchou nodded to my question.
> "He possess the blood of a special vampire known as a Daywalker which can move during the day, so there's no problem. However, he may dislike it."
> A Daywalker? Heh, there was a Vampire like that, huh?
> "I hate daylighttt! It's better if the sun disappeareeeeeed!"
> Also, doesn't he need blood? He's a Vampire, right?"
> Buchou responded to my question.
> "Since he's a half-Vampire, he doesn't thirst for blood as often. If you supply the blood for him once every ten days, then there's no problem. Though it seems he originally didn't like drinking blood."
> "I hate blooooood! I hate fish tooooooo! I hate liver as welllllll!"--Volume 4, Life 3, Part 1.
Ignoring the context as usual, the first Vampire to be introduced in the series is Gasper Vladi, a Dhampir from a noble bloodline and a human parent.
To start with, Vampires are creatures of the darkness like Devils, but even more weak to sunlight as it kills them when exposed for a certain amount of time.
They are a race that lives in the human world, specifically Romania as their central residence, and are generally even more arrogant than Devils.
Their race depends on blood to survive, with Noble Pure Blooded Vampires not being able to consume anything else other than blood. Besides that, they also have a bunch of weird laws governing their existence:
> Vampires were beings that couldn't enter a building which they hadn't been invited to come into. They didn't appear in mirrors, and they didn't have shadows. They couldn't cross running water, they hated garlic, and they were weak against the symbols of the Church, the cross and holy water. And they couldn't heal themselves unless they slept in their coffin. Gasper, who was a half Vampire, was a bit different from that description. He had a shadow, and he appeared in the mirror. He could walk across rivers, he was overcoming garlic, and it wasn't like he had to sleep in his coffin. Apparently, it was because the human blood inside Gasper was stronger. ...That's why he could sleep inside the box.--Volume 4, Life 2, Part 4.
Yeah, weird shit, but nothing serious much. Now that we have hone through a basic profile of their weaknesses, let's go over their origins:
> Apparently, an incident which split the world of Vampires occurred several hundred years ago. That gave birth to the Tepes Faction and the Carmilla Faction. The Tepes Faction follows the principle of men standing above women, while the Carmilla Faction follows the principal of women standing above men. I didn't understand it that well, but in order to produce Pure-Blood Vampires, the ones who had been arguing a very long time between choosing a female True Ancestor and a male True Ancestor had finally split into two groups several hundred years ago after their sides had been splitting away.--Volume 14, Life 2, Part 4
Now to be clear, we don't actually know the origins of Vampires, how they came into being, some fanon theories say they originate from Vald The Imapaler A.K.A. Dracula, some say they originate from Cain, the first killer that was cursed by God.
Whatever the case is, we only know that some hundreds years ago, the Vampire world was split into 2 factions of female supremacists, The Carmilla faction, and male supremacists, the Tepes faction. Here are the known noble houses under each faction:
--Carmilla Faction: House Carmilla, House Karstein, House Vordenburg
--Tepes Faction: House Tepes, House Vladi, House Manthar.
> Vampires were residents of darkness that had existed since ancient times. They had similar rankings and weaknesses like High-class Devils. However, Devils were residents of the Underworld. Vampires were beings that lived in the darkness of the human world. They might seem similar, but their views and culture differed a lot. Devils and Vampires have continued living by using humans while not stimulating each other's territory. The part where Heaven and the servants of God were our natural enemies was the same, but both sides had distanced themselves from each other while not fighting together. The Devils had settled down on the three-side battle this summer by agreeing to the alliance of the Three Great Powers, but the Vampires weren't even trying to sit down for negotiation. Because of that, they still had quarrels with Heaven and the warriors of the Church.--Volume 14, Life 2, Part 4.
That's about as simple as their political structure can get. The Royal houses of Carmilla and Tepes stand at the top, followed by the noble houses of pyre blood. Then you get the common low class pure blood Vampires, under them are the mixed blood, originating from either a union between a human and a vampire or a human transformed into one, they are treated as less than trash though. And at the bottom are ghouls, they are just pests and annoyance more than anything, not even actual citizens.
To understand where the last 2 categories come from, we have to understand the powers of Vampires, so let's get into that:
☆Shadow Manipulation: Ironically, despite not having shadows, Vampires are some of the best shadow users, I guess they are compensating for the lack of one:
> Gasper-kun has an expression that is not found on a living person... I realise that I can feel chills running down my back. He opens his mouth and speaks a single word. His voice is low, and it sounds like a curse.
> -DIE
> The moment after he says that, the surroundings are completely covered in darkness. The ground. The sky. The scenery. Everything is being enveloped by darkness. It's so dark and cold that even the light has disappeared. Darkness is coming out of Gasper-kun's body, and that is dyeing everything into black.
> "…..What is this...…!?"
> Georg becomes shocked by the sudden change and begins to look around. Darkness. Darkness. Darkness. Darkness.... The buildings that were there before vanished as if they were just a hallucination, and everything except us turns into darkness.--Volume 12, Life -1, Part 4.
> The cursing women pointed their hands at the bats and tried to fire magic bullets, but they were pulled down by something and greatly lost their balance. Countless black hands were extending out from the female Magicians' shadows! The hands from the shadows tried pulling the girls inside the shadows.
> "So this is the ability of a Vampire!"--Volume 4, Life 5, Part 1.
☆Shape-Shifting and Familiar summoning: This one is actually amazing, I never realised just how broken a vampire's shape-sftimg ability:
> A weird chirping was heard. Countless bats were flying near the ceiling of the room. The group of red-eyed bats swooped down on the female Magicians all at once.
> "Kuh! So he transformed, that damn Vampire!"--Volume 4, Life 5, Part 1.
Now, this isn't that impressive I know, he just turned into bats, nothing that amazing. Well now, let me show what an actual vampire's shape-shifting ability is used at full power:
> The Vampire made a creepy smile on his face. He then turned part of his body into a spider and attacked us! Xenovia and I tried to attack the spider with our swords, but as soon as we lifted our arms, the spider spewed out its web! We dashed backward and avoided the black spider web. But I tripped over something that was on the hallway. I lost my balance and had to kneel down on one knee. Spider web covered the building's entire corridor. As soon as it touched the floor, everything melted around it. It looked like the web would dissolve anything it touched. ...There was no way we could survive after getting hit by that.--Volume DX3, Extra Life 1, Part 4
> We then chased after the disappeared Vampire.
> "Stop right there!"
> We slashed the spiders that came at us in half and chased after the Vampire. From the corner of the hallway, not only spiders, but giant centipedes and bats also appeared. Vampires could either breed insects and bats, or they could change part of their bodies into them. Every animal or plant they handled had a grotesque form, and their natural instinct was fundamentally different from normal beings. So we could destroy them easily with our Holy Swords, but...countless number of monsters came out all over the place!--Volume DX3, Extra Life 1, Part 4
Look at this, this is seriously impressive shape-shifting, I didn't know a Vampire can just parts of himself into different kinds of creatures, while staying at the same time. He can also turn into giant spiders, centipedes, etc...
As far as Vampires are concerned, Shape-shifting may as well be one of their main abilities in combat if its this high level.
☆Fog manipulation: This is a classic Vampire ability, using a fog as a sensor and barrier, among other uses:
>
Thick, humid and dense fog dulled my senses. Most likely, the Vampire was the one who created this fog, since controlling fog was their specialty. For them, this was their version of a barrier and a sensing ability. Basically, as soon as we stepped into this land, our presence was known to the enemy. So there was no need to hide from them. This fog was also acting as a barrier against their weakness, sunlight. It was already evening, but it was still being used to block the sun.--Volume DX3, Extra Life 1, Part 4.
> Then, fog accumulated into one place and created the form of a man. A man in an attire that looked similar to ones worn by noble men from the Middle Ages appeared. He even wore a cape.--Volume DX3, Extra Life 1, Part 4.
> After blasting the Vampire's monsters away, she finally got near to the Vampire himself. But even before the sword hit his body, he turned into fog and disappeared. That fog surrounded Xenovia, and easily dodged her sword. And as soon as she created an opening, the fog materialised into the Vampire behind her. The Vampire grabbed her long hair, and then pinned her so she couldn't move an inch! This was bad! These Vampires were stronger than normal humans, so it was hard to get out of their grip!--Volume DX3, Extra Life 1, Part 4.
Do you reckon Haki would be useful against this motherfucker? But yeah, Vampires are basically Logia users with their mist, they can materialise and de-materialise using it, annoying shit to fight. And the mist can covering entire town if the Vampire is strong enough.
☆Sucking blood: Now of course, generally speaking, Vampires don't just suck blood for survival, they can also gain power from ingesting blood. And if the blood had special properties? Like say, blood of a Phenex or a Dragon? Well they temporarily gain said species' special powers:
> At the surface of a vast floating island which was situated slightly above the middle part of Yggdrasil—-.lashes of lighting and heavy rain kept pouring down as the weather on that floating island became stormy! Typhon, who was the origin of the word 'Typhoon', changed the weather just by unleashing an attack. When Bova-san tried to charge in, an extreme downpour of rain and wind was directed at him and killed his momentum. Even though Elmenhilde drank the blood that was prepared beforehand by Ise-kun and Ravel-san, which gave her the characteristics of both a Dragon and a Phoenix, she was unable to even endure the King of Monsters' attack--Volume 25, Life DxD VS Life God
Ignoring Typhoon trashing those poor bastards, we can see the effect of drinking blood of creatures that has a special power in them, although do keep in mind, that drinking too much blood of a stronger creature causes Vampires to get sick.
☆No Life-Force: See, this one is weird, vampires don't have life-force, or well, not much that is worth anything, this means that attacks targeting life forces like some techniques of Senjetsu are useless against them:
> Ah, I also realised one more thing. I couldn't feel even a glimpse of their aura. They didn't have any kind of lifeforce-like thing around them--Volume 14, Life 2, Part 4.
They are basically walking corpses, with supernatural abilities.
☆Transforming people by bite: This is a combination of the sucking blood ability and no Life-force problem. See, a Vampire can turn an individual into another Vampire, just like evil pieces. To do this, they bite the targets' neck and suck some of their blood under a full moon. However, this is generally frowned upon in vampire culture, and noble ones see it as an insult to their race and its superiority in bloodline and purity or something.
This does however, have a different function. See, if a Vampire doesn't give a shit about who they are transforming, they can just do it at any time without much care. This causes the victim to turn into a zombie like creature called Ghoul, mindless decaying fleshbags that walk around aimlessly. These ghouls can also turn other people by biting them.
Effectively speaking, Vampires can fucking start a zombie apocalypse, like Day Z and 48 Days later:
> Not only that, they said this incident involved Undead. When humans with low tolerance against Vampires got bitten, they became a living corpse...an Undead. The Undead then attacked living humans and would eat them alive, and then the bitten person became an Undead themselves and repeated the cycle. If this happened in a densely populated area, the number of Undead would multiply exponentially. ...They were turning people into Undead
> Low and ominous noises were heard, and then a groan was heard over the fog. And the thing that showed over the fog was...turned villagers. Blood was coming out from every part of their bodies, and flesh was also missing from several parts of their bodies. And while dragging their intestines that were spewing out from their torn torso, they headed toward the living people. These people had already met their end of life as human beings. All they were now was beings hungry for living beings' flesh, and in order to satiate such thirst and hunger, they would wonder around forever. Without hesitation, Xenovia slashed the nearest Undead into two pieces. The villager who had been slashed in half quickly turned into ash. The holy power of Excalibur had the ultimate effect on dark beings. Excalibur was like the worst enemy against these beings--Volume DX3, Extra Life 1, Part 4.
Now, despite how cool and powerful they sound as a race, Vampires have proven to be the single most dumbass race to ever exist in DxD, even more dumbasses than Fallen Angels, and that's something alright. They are so arrogant and delusional it's just sad. Ishibumi truly threw them out of the window for any potential development.
But anyways, that's about it for Vampires, hope you guys got something useful from this and see ya later.
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