Vampire Reincarnation

Kai’s eyes snapped open, and he found himself staring at a familiar ceiling. A painful scream escaped his lips as he jumped up, his hands warped around his temples. Argh!! My head! it hurts! it hurts!

He clenched his teeth as a sudden, agonizing headache pierced through his mind, the pain intensifying as someone else’s memories flowed through his brain.

These memories… Are they Rodney’s? He thought, the pain fading away before he collapse on the floor. How come I have his memories? Those other people, what happened to them?

His chest heaved up and down, dozens of images flashing in his mind, memory fragments telling the tale of a genius, a man envied and loved by many who tragically died at such a frail age.

The image of an angry woman appeared in his head, her face covered in worry while berating the man. She wore a secretary’s uniform and her beautiful brown eyes complimented her luscious red hair.

Her sharp, harsh voice echoed in his ears as tears appeared in her eyes. "You're going to kill yourself if you keep going on like this...Rodney... please stop... if not for you, please! do it for me. How much do you plan on working?"

This woman was really concerned for Rodney… and in the end, she was right…

She faded away, her image replaced by a crowd of cheering people. He could see an old man from the corner of his eye, who seemed to present Rodney to the crowd.

"This is Rodney... he graduated top of his class at the Scientia Institute for Science and Technology and will now be our Team Leader on this project assigned to us from the military..." His old and raspy voice resounded in the crowd’s ears as they kept on celebrating.

Kai sighed as more and more information revealed itself to him, and his image of Rodney gradually changed. What a stupid genius…

He jumped upon hearing the sound of his bedroom door being slammed open, his parents rushing in, instantly arriving at his side. “Kai, are you alright? What happened?” His mother asked while hugging him tightly, his father looking at him with concern as he grabbed some dry clothes.

“I’m fine, I just had a nightmare.” An emptiness formed in his gut as the lie escaped his lips, and his hands clenched into a fist at the thought of lying to his parents.

…

Kai changed his clothes and followed his parents downstairs, into the living room. They sat on the couch, excitedly looking at their son, who stood in front of them, his heart racing as they recounted the events from the previous night.

“We used my family’s secret technique to form your mana core. It is best done when your senses and instincts are pushed to their limits, and that is when you drink blood for the first time. In doing so, your body is more active, alert, and more responsive.”

Kai was deep in thought as he took it all in, his mother’s explanation caught him off guard and various thoughts popped up in his mind. Then do all vampires use this method? Did Kana use it too? I wonder what color her core is, speaking of which…

“Congratulations on taking your first step towards becoming a Magician.” Kai snapped from his thoughts, awakened by his father’s deep voice. “You have yet to become one though, just on the cusp of it. You need to solidify it and make the star appear, only then will you be a bona fide magician.”

“Close your eyes and focus on the mana in your veins,” his mother added “Feel it as it flows through your body, feeding the mana core.

Kai nodded and shut his eyes, focusing on the places where he knew his mana veins were, and once again felt the mana flow through them, rushing violently toward his yet-to-be-completed, translucent mana core.

“Oh? Looks like you don’t need to explain what mana veins are?” Ray jokingly remarked before Elena lightly punched him. Kai lost his focus, and opened his surprised eyes as he asked “You knew?”

“Doesn’t take a genius to figure it out.” his dad replied nonchalantly as the dark ring on his finger glowed with a faint light, and a book materialized in his hand. It was the same book Kai read in the library last week.

“If you’re gonna sneak around, be careful not to damage what you’re snooping through,” he said with a slight, knowing smile.

Kai rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment as he chuckled “It seems like you’ve got experience?”

Ray’s smile froze on his face, and he felt a piercing glare stare at him from his right side. “Y-you brat, you even question your father now?” He scolded Kai before he coughed lightly “Just do as your mother said.”

He chuckled silently as he closed his eyes once again, focusing on the mana, and he saw the translucent core standing still next to his beating heart.

“Use the technique you learned and guide the mana from your veins inside your core, then compress it and do it again. Repeat the cycle a few times until the star and its color appear.” His mother instructed, and Kai was surprised to find that the technique popped into his mind the moment she mentioned it.

So this is what a technique looks like? It isn’t that complex but… could be improved, right?

Rodney’s scientific expertise appeared in his mind, and he slowly compared his knowledge with the meager amount of information he had about mana and came to the conclusion that the current technique was inefficient.

If I change the structure of the mana core, the results should be miles better… but how do I do it?

He tinkered with the idea for about an hour, a time in which his parents anxiously waited for him to open his eyes. “Umm, dear, is there something wrong with the technique?” Ray shakily asked as he played with his fingers, sweat dripping through his thick beard.

“There shouldn’t be…” Elena replied, her hands held tightly together as she bit her lower lip until blood dripped down her pale face. “I think he’s trying to do something but I can’t tell exactly what…”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

Elena shook her head, and she dismissed the statement after a deep sigh “Nothing, there’s no way…”

They waited patiently as the minutes passed. A crisp chime sound, like that of a bell being struck, resounded in the room as Kai’s chest emitted a faint, multi-colored light that filled the entire room before it slowly faded away.

He opened his eyes, inhaling lightly as he steadied his breathing. A wide smile appeared on his face, his glowing crimson pupils failing to hide his excitement.

His parents jumped up, relief washing over them as they waited for Kai to regain his focus. His head wobbled a bit before his pupils widened in surprise, and he munched on his nails as he murmured “Did I make a mistake somewhere?”

Ray and Elena, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to ask him an important question, something that was in their mind since last night. “What color is it? Your mana core?”

Kai raised his head and shakily said “It seems… it seems to be red…”

His parent’s mouths dropped open as they took a step back, glancing at each other as they tried to make sense of the situation. “Doesn’t that mean that his original color was… Elena, this doesn’t make sense.” Ray said as he sat down on the couch.

“Well, it doesn’t matter.” She said as he took a seat next to him. “What matters is how hard he is willing to study.”

Ray nodded, although his disappointment could not be hidden.

Kai scratched the back of his hand as he stood deep in thought, analyzing every inch of his mana core before sighing internally. I should have studied magic more, I wanted to modify it so that the talent factor would be thrown out the window but I failed, and now I’m stuck with a red core…

He exhaled softly and he turned to his parents, his piercing crimson eyes sending a small shiver down their spine. He coughed sharply and cleared his throat, a clear voice ringing in his parents’ ears.

“It doesn’t matter, I will work hard to become a son you can be proud of. Talent? Irrelevant. In order to become a great magician, talent is only part of the process, it doesn’t matter what color my core is, I will succeed no matter what.”

His parents were taken aback by their five-year-old son’s words, but they inspired confidence in them, and most importantly, he inspired confidence in himself. These words were a promise to himself more so than his parents, who had great expectations of him.

However, unbeknownst to him, a slight orange hue appeared on his mana core, before it quickly hid away in the center.

“We’re already proud of you, son.” His father said pulling him closer, tightly hugging him, and ruffling his long hair. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t a good father for a moment there, please forgive me…”

Kai rubbed his face in his father’s beard, smiling faintly while saying “No need to apologize, Dad, you’re a great father, better than I deserve…” His shaky voice echoed in the room as tears dripped down his cheeks, which quickly stopped as a sudden pain suddenly emerged in his head.

“You brat, how dare you say you don’t deserve us?” His mother slapped him on the back of the head before hugging him tightly, tears dripping down her cheeks as she ran her fingers through his hair. “Mommy loves you more than anything, don’t you ever forget that.”

“Umm!” he replied softly as a wave of warmth washed over him, the feeling of being loved inundating his senses with happiness.

…

The tight group hug broke after a while, salted tears and sweat mixing in their clothes, prompting them to separate. Before leaving, Kai turned to his father and said, pointing toward the book on the couch. “Can I have it? I want to read it upstairs.”

“Sure you can, just don’t cast any Onko spells, not like you could but I’m saying, just in case.”

Kai chuckled as he thanked his father, rushing upstairs, eager to theory craft and compare Rodney’s knowledge with the book.

“Say, dear, don’t you think our son is too smart?” Elena asked as she wiped her face with a handkerchief.

“Of course he is, he’s our son after all!” Ray laughed lightly, however, his eyes told a different story. Who cares anyway? He’s our son regardless. Elena nodded, and she wiped his beard with the handkerchief as well.

“You should shave sometimes.” she jokingly remarked as she made her way to the kitchen, Ray following close behind her. “You think?”

…

Kai sat at his desk, the scribbling sound of a quill echoing in the otherwise quiet room. Sometimes he’d stop and murmur something before he continued writing.

“Overachiever, workoholic, and anti-social. He graduated as a valedictorian in the most prestigious Science and Technology university and worked in several departments focusing on innovation, robotics, AI development, biological matter recreation, human cloning, teleportation devices, and other related topics.

His last two years were spent on The Black Hole Project, where he performed hundreds of experiments resulting in a triple-digit number of casualties, and he died in his sleep.”

Kai sighed as he tapped the pen on the table, thinking aloud as he tried to make sense of Rodney’s character.

“He was amazing, a never before seen genius that wanted to improve the world, then why did he accept to work on the BH project? Unfortunately, his memories aren’t complete and any fragments of his personality are missing but…”

He tore a line through the thin page as the pen trembled in his hand “It can be said that he had no empathy, was he a sociopath? Were the ends more important than the means?”

He exhaled lightly as took out another piece of paper, writing furiously as his mind churned out theories.

“Rodney’s knowledge of both basic and advanced chemistry is outstanding, it took me three years of high school just to memorize the periodic table, but I know all of it thanks to him.

Not only that, hundreds of chemical reactions are now available to me, I wonder… Could magic and science be combined? What would be the limit? Could I use the BH project data to create one myself?”

He chuckled madly to himself as he wrote down countless theories, he only left his room to eat and piss, otherwise, he’d either be taking notes or reading the magical book, his mind spinning as countless ideas popped into his mind.

The moon was high in the sky when he finally fell asleep on the hard but comfortable surface of the wooden desk, his silver hair reflecting the small light stone his mother lit for him.

…

The sun hadn’t even risen when Kai got up, waltzing in his parents’ bedroom with the <> in hand. He carefully walked to his father’s side, nudging him awake.

“Hmm? Hah? What is it?” Ray was still half asleep as he did his best to become alert, unsure of why his son would make him up before there was light outside.

“Magic,” Kai replied with a single word, surprising his sleepy father, who rubbed his eyes as he leaned on his elbow “Ah? Now? Let me sleep for five more minutes…” but Kai quickly took his hand, and said in a bratty tone “No, now!”

Ray had a sudden, bad feeling, telling him that if he didn’t do what Kai wanted something bad would happen, and indeed it would, because Kai was ready to wake his mom up if his dad didn’t oblige.

What a scary fox this boy is, scarier than his mother… Ray let out a light groan as he got out of bed, not even bothering to change from his pajamas, and met with Kai in the backyard. “Now that you have drunk blood, you can stay in the sun for a few hours, but we can stay longer as the damn sun didn’t even rise yet.’

He quickly slapped his mouth as he realized what he said: “Crap, Elena will kill me, ah shit…” Ray shut his mouth and took the book from Kai, who was tearing up from holding back his laughter.

“Ahem.” Ray coughed lightly “I hope you acquainted yourself well with the book, so I won’t bother to explain much theory yet. I will do a small demonstration now, and listen closely as I explain.”

Saying that, a dark wooden wand appeared in his hand, it was decorated by a few crystals of red and black, which glowed lightly as he muttered a set of syllables.

“O mighty flame god

Grant me your powerful fire

Burn my foe, fireball!”

What is this? It’s so… ugh Kai physically cringed upon hearing the spell, unable to believe that this was a chant. What kind of Chunibyo wrote this? I’d rather bury myself than ever chant that, maybe there is a way to cast chantless magic?

His daydreaming got disrupted by the sound of an igniting flame, and sure enough, a small ball of fire floated in front of his father. His inner child exploded forth, as, despite the secondhand embarrassment, this was his first time seeing actual, traditional magic.

His father smirked, and he pridefully said “Watch closely.” The fireball then got bigger and bigger and Ray shot it toward the sky, and it flew upward with incredible speed. Before Kai could even react to what was happening, it exploded, creating a brilliant show of fireworks that rained down on the vast, barren land.

Wow… Kai stared at the sky, his mouth wide open as he admired the mesmerizing threads of fire as they danced in the twilight sky. He was so taken by the show that he forgot one thing, an explosion creates sound, and the sound…

His head snapped toward his father, and his pupils widened in shock as he looked at the door frame, where his mother sat with a ‘Why the fuck did you just wake me up’ expression.

“How was it? Pretty cool right?” his father said, none the wiser of the threat lurking behind him. “What is it?” he asked, and he rapidly turned around as realization hit him.

“D-d-dear, I can explain-” he shakily pleaded to Elena, who was looking at him like an emperor would at a dead man.

“Ok then,” she said imperatively, tapping the ground with her foot, waiting for a well-deserved explanation.

“I was just trying to teach Kai magic and things got out of control and-”

“Enough!” she interrupted Ray before he could finish his sentence, clearly annoyed by his blatant boasting. “You know better than I that we should lay low, don’t do it again.” she gave him a warning glare before she turned toward Kai, who was stupefied by his mother’s hard stance.

Kai found himself being picked up by his mother, who asked him “Did your father teach you what the elements are?” He shook his head, prompting Elena to shoot another glare at Ray. “All this ruckus and you didn’t even teach him the fundamentals?”

Ray lowered his head and scratched the back of his head, murmuring under his breath. “Why did he even read the book if he doesn’t know them?”