Gehrman was not exactly sure how long he had until Logarius came with his Executioners. As they would be traversing the sea to find Cainhurst (instead of entering through the Arcane passage that could be accessed through a certain carriage) it was likely it would take them at least two more months. After all, they had not found a safe route for the Executioners to come through.
In that time, he would explore the surrounding lands of Cainhurst. It was a very different land than Yharnam and its surrounding territories. Instead of hills, woodlands, and rocky deposits Cainhurst was built upon a mountainous region.
The castle pierced the highest point of the land. It was built so it was only slightly taller than the highest mountain. However, there were many other villages under the rule of the castle.
Each of these villages had a noble lord, and a Royal Gaurd would be taken from each noble family. This way, the Queen would always have insurance against the noble houses. None of them would dare raise an uprising so long as she had one of their kin under her thumb.
Of course, this was unnecessary precaution. The nobels of Cainhurst were treated like gods. The gap between them and the wealthiest of the common folk was so vast that it seemed as if they were different species.
And in way, they were. The Vilebloods were not just a title, they were the ones who had sworn the Corruption Rune and drank of the Queen's blood. A servant of the nobles could be considred for Knighthood, and thus partake in this oath to be raised to the highest possible station a resident of Cainhurst could acheive. But even then, their power compared to even the lowleist of nobels was feeble.
Still, no normal citizen of Cainhurst could ever hope to be in the presence of a Knight, let alone become one. The odds were astronomically low. That was why it had come as great news that an outsider had become a Knight.
The details of this new Vileblood were not yet known. But they knew that he served House Guzmán, the recent slayers of the traitor Maria. As such Gehrman, or rather Gabriel, enjoyed great esteem.
And after all ceremonies were concluded, he was ordered to go out and hunt. Normally this would involve going after Workshop Hunters or the new Executioners which had started to become more prevalent as of late. But he had gained the favor of Annalise, and was thus allowed to first clear the villages of nearby beasts. After all, Blood Dregs could still be accquired from beasts, they were simply considered to be of lesser quality.
This allowed Gehrman an opportunity to practice with his new Oath Rune. Though it was called "The Corruption Rune," it did not have the properties of actual Corruption. True Corruption was the concept that made Nightmare Creatures what they were. It was what made them "Fallen" instead of "Ascended". In other words, they were of the Profane while humans were of the Divine.
It was quite a confusing distinction, but a necessary one. The Corruption Rune did not make one truly Corrupted, it simply tainted their blood. At least, it was supposed too.
Johann had experienced the Corruption Rune before. It was the one he had inscribed on himself until he was able to get the Hunter Rune from Eileen. It had a very powerful buff that would continuously heal him when he was severely injured or weakened. Since it was a power that relied only oneself and not the Blood it was very useful in terms of carrying out efficient hunts.
But he was currently experiencing problem. One that Gehrman could not fathom.
Under an especially bright moon, in a under an alcove of rocks. He was no longer suffering from snow under his feet thanks to the slanted celing, but the uneven terrain and the surrounding boulders of dark stone did not give him an optimal battlefield.
And he needed that optimal battlefield at the moment.
And that was because Gehrman was in very bad situation.
The regeneration granted by his Oath Rune was not working.
At that moment Gehrman was face to face with a particularly unwieldy creature that had very hateful memories of. When he had first reached this land as Johann, they were the first beasts to greet him: the Bloodlickers. They acted like mosquitos, drinking up any blood they could find. But instead of wings they had long and powerful limbs.
Gehrman tried to dodge under one of the swings from its front legs, only to be met with a garish wound across his side.
He refrained from using Blood to heal, and he waited for the Corruption Rune's power to work…only for it to fail. The familiar writhing from his tainted blood did not come, and he was met with another blow. This time, his face was nearly peeled off.
The speed of the Bloodlickers was only made worse by their strange ability to shift momentum. They went from lumbering creatures to lightning fast at a moments notice. And they used this to the best of their ability.
It didn't help that they also resided in a poisonous area too.
In Johann's experience, their poison had been negligible. But those Bloodickers had been fully fed, gorged on the corpses of fallen Cainhurst people. The one he was currently facing did not have a bloated sack full of blood hanging from its stomach.
Somehow, that made it even more ferocious. And the poison it spat with ever cut burned. At least, it would have burned if it had not been for the [Red Messenger Ribbon]. That seemingly useless Memory had saved him yet again.
But he wasn't thankful at the moment.
Gehrman was pissed.
The pre-summoned vials of Fallen blood exploded from the side of his [Cainhurst Knights Attire].
Unfortunately, even now he could not switch to his superior attire as he the alcove was situated above a village alight with worried townfolk.
On the bright side, the resulting chains of blood that formed did mangae to trip of the Bloodlicker long enough for him imbibe more blood. In excruciating pain, the torn skin fell off and fresh flesh took its place.
Gehrman channled the resulting frenzied, pushing it outward with as much force as he could manage. This technique was growing more powerful with each use…but he wasn't sure this was because of experience. It might just be that he had more madness than before, and so the technique was more effective.
The "thresholds" or percentages of sanity that he set for himself had been slowly changing as of late. He could imbibe more blood without delving into the specific Truth (at the moment this was Bliss). So while before Fallen blood would knock him down a decent perecntage of sanity, one vial now only took 5%. However, he could feel his madness becoming…deeper. It wasn't as if he was in more pain, but there seemed to be a qualitative difference to it. Where before it thrashed his mind, now his entire body started to thrum with Frenzy.
Fortunately, this also meant that there was more excess to push into his blade. Though Gehrman could not yet see, his [Sixth Sense] and experience guided his movements. Before he had misjudged the Bloodlickers speed since it had been a long time since fighting them. But now he dodged backward and to the side, avoiding two more deadly blows.
The blood from the chains had long snapped apart, but they stirred at Gehrman's command. Already they were losing heat, but he could still coat his [Burial Blade (Sealed)].
He took the scythe in both hands, keeping his gun strapped to his back. Against Bloodlickers, distance was key. They dash forward very quickly, and their long arms keep their sides from being vulnerable. One might think that the only way to attack them was in the very small windows that appeared after a barrage of attacks.
But Gehrman knew better.
With a distance of five meters between him and the Devil, it could not reach him without lunging. But since it was a Devil, it had some intelligence. The Bloodlicker would not make a hasty jump, instead, it would wait until Gehrman made the first move and then catch him off guard. But Gehrman's move would not be stopped.
He flexed his back muscles as he brought the length of the scythe backward, and then lunged forward. All the momentum of the blade snapped forward, the extra length of it giving it more time to gain speed.
The Bloodlicker could cover its sides well, but it could not retreat to the sides without jumping.
And the path of Gehrman's scythe could not be dodged by a jump.
The blade tinged with blood cut deep into the Bloodlickers skull, piercing its brain. The creature spasmed for a moment before Gehrman plunged down with extra force. The scythes head pushed through the mess of tentacles on its face and dug into the floor.
The small sack filled with stolen blood on its stomach exploded.
[You have slain a Fallen Devil, Bloodlicker].
[You have received a Memory]
…
Cheers and merriment were pervasive throughout the village even during that dark knight.
Gehrman sat in a tavern, slowly drinking some ale. His alcohol tolerance was always high, so despite having a mug he would not be truly intoxicated. Gehrman did this because the man running the tavern offered him as much drink as he wanted for saving the city.
It had been a while, and he appreciated the warm hospitality after the cold nights he had spent in the Guzmán Manor.
And though he was slightly embarrassed to admit it, seeing the people's smiling faces made him happy as well.
They didn't interact with him socially due to his status as a Knight, but that suited Gehrman just fine. At that moment he was brooding over his most recent fight.
At the moment he was very, very confused. Not only did his new Oath Rune not work, when he switched back to the Impurity Rune to test if something was wrong, he found a disturbing discovery.
Much like the Crawlers, the Bloodlicker also had a singular Vermin inside of it.
There was now three creatures that followed this strange pattern. A week prior, he had cleared out a nest of Awakened Monsters called Hateful Maggots. The name was very well earned. The slimy white worms were especially poisonous and leaped with dire speed and power. Since they were so small, it was quite a chore to hit them. And it was even more difficult to finsih them off while staying away from their two pincer-like teeth.
He had grown used to checking the Vermin value of each creature after encountering them for the first time. But he always went back to the Corruption Rune. He figured that it would be helpful if he ever got in a tight spot. And then when he finally did reach that point it was almost completely useless.
Fortunately, it did still have one useful feature, and that was the accumulation of Blood Dregs. Whenever a particular powerful creature was killed, their blood would coalesce into a slimy patch of writhing blood.
It was incredibly disgusting.
But it was useful.
Of course, these were supposed to be delivered to Annalise as offerings, but since they were created from the blood of beasts, they would also theoretically grant him a boon.
And indeed they did. The Blood Dregs that formed offered additonal Blood Fragments for him depending on the strength of the creature.
For example, the Blood Dreg that formed after his last kill had given him an extra four Blood Fragments on top of the eight he was able to extract from its corpse. That last kill him put him over one quarter of his Blood Fragment counter.
Blood Fragments: [1,003/4,000]
His progress was truly staggering thanks to his new Madness thresholds and the Blood Dregs. But that was not the only thing that made this possible: Sedatives. When Gehrman was back at the Healing Church he had stocked up on them, and he had been studying their properties as of late.
Unfortunately, they were not a simple drug to make.
Dorian's world had sedatives as well, but it was very different than the ones used in Yharnam. In fact, it was impossible to even compare the two.
The Madness reducing qualities of the Brygenwerth Sedatives were nothing short of miraculous. And that was because it was a miracle. It was one of the first creations made by the Scholars of Brygenwerth. So even though the recipe technically belonged to the college, every faction had access to it.
Instead of concentrated and refined chemicals, Yharnam's Sedatives were concentrated and refined Arcane blood.
Of course, this was found in the Labyrinth below Yharnam, just like everything else. They found many "strains" of blood that had different effects.
Ebriteas's blood went onto become The Blood with its addictive healing properties.
The blood extracted from certain Labyrinth beasts could be refined into Sedatives.
And the Vileblood was stolen from the college and taken to Cainhurst by an unknown scholar.
As such, he could not reliably produce Sedatives in the Dorian's Waking World. But that did not mean he could not abuse them now.
And abuse them he did. To anyone else, he might have looked like a drug addict…actually, he probably was a drug addict at this point. He used Sedatives daily so he could absorb almost 40 Blood Fragments every 24 hours.
Gehrman scratched his head and drank the rest of the Ale before standing and thanking the barkeep.
As he walked outside, he switched his Oath Rune to that of Impurity. Immediately he could sense the Vermin writhing all around. They just as plentiful as usual. Not nearly as exaggterated as they where in Vilebloods, but still much higher than usual.
Looking about the landscape, a thought occurred to Gehrman.
This land had been brimming with Vermin since before the Vileblood strand was taken to the Queen roughly two decades ago. Somehow, this land was still entrenched with Vermin before that special blood.
Something else was going on with Cainhurst. It was as if he was looking at the past civilizations of Loran and the Hinterlands. The Arcan had touched this place. It had marked it for death.
"This place…probably would have gotten eradicated even without the Executioners," Gehrman mumbled.
He let out a long breath that turned visible in the cold air.
In the outskirts of Cainhurst poison was becoming more frequent, and nests of Vermin were spreading.
Gehrman frowned.
"I think I need another perspective on this."