Read Online White Devil Mountain by Hideyuki Kikuchi - Free Book Online
Authors: Hideyuki Kikuchi
Tags: Fiction
Ads: Link
brain was cycling through thousands of questions and answers. What are you saying? What do you mean by new life? New in what sense? How is that considered life? The answer came from a pitch-black region of the mind yet unmapped by cerebral physiology.
“D, do you mean to say becoming one of the Nobility is a form of living?”
“Perhaps it’s a new life.”
“Don’t kid me.” Vera smacked her right fist down on the armrest. Though a sharp pain ran all the way up to her shoulder, she didn’t notice it. Her whole body was hot. She wasn’t even aware that this was due to her anger. “And just how did you reach that conclusion? Those who are bitten by Nobles and join their ranks—they share the same loathsome thirst for blood, and seek it out. If that’s not a demon, what is?”
“Your kind also dines, do they not? Nobles drink blood—where’s the difference?”
“There’s a huge difference. They drink human blood! The person they feed on dies once. Then they become one of them. They’ll never know rest for all eternity.”
“Dying and then rising again. You wouldn’t call that a new life?”
“It’s not life. Nobles and their former victims aren’t alive, but they’re not dead either. They’re known forever more as the living dead .”
“What of the Nobles, then?” D inquired in a tone that remained as still as a winter’s night.
“They’re—” Vera began, but she had nothing after that.
“Do you know whether or not they too have died and come back? Have you ever considered this: if they were dead from the very start, yet they moved, and thought, and even created a civilization, wouldn’t you consider them a new form of life?”
The doctor shook her head vehemently. Her thoughts wouldn’t gel. D expressed a view that she couldn’t deny had occurred to her before. However, now she would give anything to crush that heretical doctrine.
“Nobles can’t walk in the light of day.”
“There are exceptions.”
“Nobles sleep through the day in coffins.”
“And humans sleep through the night in beds.”
“They drink blood.”
“Humans eat meat. But when they take a life, it can’t rise again.”
“The life that rises again is cursed! Just like the Nobility!”
“Condemning the existence of the Nobility without understanding them isn’t the sort of thing anyone who professes to be a person of science should be doing.”
“I know the Nobility better than anyone.” Vera’s voice suddenly became low. “My mother was employed in a Noble’s mansion. They paid her salary, and they promised her that no one would suck her blood. The master of the house kept that promise. But the first time one of his guests laid eyes on my mother—well, she tried to run, but her throat was torn open, and she died. I’ll never forgive the Nobility.”
“My, my!” a hoarse voice remarked in amazement.
In the clever eyes of the doctor, hatred swirled in dark whirlpools.
Instances of Nobles hiring humans for a set period of time and then returning them to their homes were extremely rare outside the Capital. In the present era (when the meanings of the terms BC and AD had been lost), records existed of the contracts entered into from the year 5000 to 7500—with the stipulation that blood not be drunk—and the number of humans employed by the Nobility in that time frame totaled 7,628 for the entire Frontier. A large number of contracts were destroyed by Noble-hating humans, so precise numbers weren’t available, but roughly ninety-five percent of those contracts were satisfactorily completed—a fact that was in those days (and in the present as well) a major blow to scholars of the anti-Noble faction. At that time, the traditional view that the Nobility saw human beings only as food was badly shaken. However, for all the scholars of the pro-Noble faction who asserted that the Nobility’s cruelty and blood drinking were an inescapable destiny imprinted in their very DNA, some
“D, do you mean to say becoming one of the Nobility is a form of living?”
“Perhaps it’s a new life.”
“Don’t kid me.” Vera smacked her right fist down on the armrest. Though a sharp pain ran all the way up to her shoulder, she didn’t notice it. Her whole body was hot. She wasn’t even aware that this was due to her anger. “And just how did you reach that conclusion? Those who are bitten by Nobles and join their ranks—they share the same loathsome thirst for blood, and seek it out. If that’s not a demon, what is?”
“Your kind also dines, do they not? Nobles drink blood—where’s the difference?”
“There’s a huge difference. They drink human blood! The person they feed on dies once. Then they become one of them. They’ll never know rest for all eternity.”
“Dying and then rising again. You wouldn’t call that a new life?”
“It’s not life. Nobles and their former victims aren’t alive, but they’re not dead either. They’re known forever more as the living dead .”
“What of the Nobles, then?” D inquired in a tone that remained as still as a winter’s night.
“They’re—” Vera began, but she had nothing after that.
“Do you know whether or not they too have died and come back? Have you ever considered this: if they were dead from the very start, yet they moved, and thought, and even created a civilization, wouldn’t you consider them a new form of life?”
The doctor shook her head vehemently. Her thoughts wouldn’t gel. D expressed a view that she couldn’t deny had occurred to her before. However, now she would give anything to crush that heretical doctrine.
“Nobles can’t walk in the light of day.”
“There are exceptions.”
“Nobles sleep through the day in coffins.”
“And humans sleep through the night in beds.”
“They drink blood.”
“Humans eat meat. But when they take a life, it can’t rise again.”
“The life that rises again is cursed! Just like the Nobility!”
“Condemning the existence of the Nobility without understanding them isn’t the sort of thing anyone who professes to be a person of science should be doing.”
“I know the Nobility better than anyone.” Vera’s voice suddenly became low. “My mother was employed in a Noble’s mansion. They paid her salary, and they promised her that no one would suck her blood. The master of the house kept that promise. But the first time one of his guests laid eyes on my mother—well, she tried to run, but her throat was torn open, and she died. I’ll never forgive the Nobility.”
“My, my!” a hoarse voice remarked in amazement.
In the clever eyes of the doctor, hatred swirled in dark whirlpools.
Instances of Nobles hiring humans for a set period of time and then returning them to their homes were extremely rare outside the Capital. In the present era (when the meanings of the terms BC and AD had been lost), records existed of the contracts entered into from the year 5000 to 7500—with the stipulation that blood not be drunk—and the number of humans employed by the Nobility in that time frame totaled 7,628 for the entire Frontier. A large number of contracts were destroyed by Noble-hating humans, so precise numbers weren’t available, but roughly ninety-five percent of those contracts were satisfactorily completed—a fact that was in those days (and in the present as well) a major blow to scholars of the anti-Noble faction. At that time, the traditional view that the Nobility saw human beings only as food was badly shaken. However, for all the scholars of the pro-Noble faction who asserted that the Nobility’s cruelty and blood drinking were an inescapable destiny imprinted in their very DNA, some
Similar Books
