The Want To Go Home - TheZenCorner - 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia (2024)

Chapter 1: Chapter One: Prologue

Chapter Text

Hello! It is I the author of the mha/hollow knight story Hollow Hero! Do not worry I haven’t given up on that one! I have only just started this as an outlet so I can focus on that one. So far ch6 has 4800 words and I plan on at least 12 thousand again, just gotta focus and hope schoolwork doesn’t kill me.

Thank You for reading this!

Have a nice day/night and I hope you will consider joining my discord! https://discord.gg/Uu8xBKUkJq

Not beta-read, if you find any confusing ways of wording or misused words (EX: tails and tales) please tell me! I'm also writing this as a love letter to bloodborne itself. So be ready for some graphic scenes!

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You all know the story, the story of Izuku Midoriya, do you not?

Whether it be the one where he proves his worth of great power, whether he finds it in himself, or even obtains it through… less than desirable means. He always finds something to do with himself. Villainy, heroism, vigilantism, being the owner of a coffee shop, a father, or even just surviving in the wilderness. These tales have been told. Countless stories of glory and misfortune and all with one central star. Izuku Midoriya, the son of Hisashi and Inko Midoriya, the son of All Might, Eraserhead, and even sometimes Midnight. Quirkless, jobless, passionless, quirked, hero, villain, vigilante.

Ever since the fateful day on top of the tower. Or was it before that? Or after? Was it his hero? His friend? His mother? Which one killed his dream? Did he not deserve happiness? Did he ever get it? Was it robbed by an old friend, blinded by pride and arrogance? Was it his parents that took it? or did he have it all along? Or did a little girl give him it?

I wish I could tell you, but those stories are their own to be told. Their own adventure, but I can tell you this story. A story that starts like most. A story that starts on top of a building, on top of what will be his fall to the bottom of woe.

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“A-All Might. I really need to know. Can- Can I be a hero? Without a quirk? C-can I be like you? I-” A strained gulp split his thoughts, “I have a-always wanted to be a hero! L-like you. Always saving people w-with a fearless smile!” the strain of speaking, of the emotions in his voice. The fear, worry, sadness, and many others were held back only by his want. He needs to know the answer. Even if he can already guess.

“I h-have been told all my life that I-I couldn’t be a hero, and I just need to know.” his tirade of emotions came to a screeching halt as the figure of his idol was obscured with a shower of smoke, nearly encompassing the entire roof. From within the fog, he heard a cough, a wet, vicious cough. And from the smoke where All Might once stood was a man, the height of All Might but. But without his muscle mass, the same clothes and height and even the hair, though much like the man his hair slumped over and fell tiredly onto his head.

“W-what! A-a imposter?” The scratch of terror caused the man’s hard gaze to turn to him.

“Imposter?” the man started, his voice like All Mights, but rough from the cough, “I assure you, young man, I am no imposter.” He said, bending down to sit tiredly unto the rough concrete of the building. “Though, recently I have begun to feel like one.” with a cough he continued, “you know how guys like to hold in their stomachs at the pool? It’s kinda like that.”

With the confusing information laid bare he lifted his shirt to show his side, and much to Izuku’s utter disgust and horror, a nasty scar, making a sort of crater in the deflated hero’s side, was laid bare to his eyes. “I got this five years ago, in a fight with a villain. A nasty one at that.”

Izuku racked his brain, five years ago? The only fight all Might had trouble with five years ago was Toxic Chainsaw. But the wound he had was on his arm? So how did he get the massive wound on his side? And better yet how would it be the cause for this… appearance change? Five years is a long time, but to go incredibly anorexic in five years would mean little to no nutrient input.

All Might sat silently watching the boy mutter and theorize for a few minutes before he stopped him. “While you are right about Toxic chainsaw giving me a wound, that crook would never be able to do this to me. More than half my stomach and a lung were removed, so out of fear of what the press would do with the information about the fight, we decided to not make it public. Imagine what the press would do with that information? Much less the villains.” All Might released a tired sigh.

“Look, kid. There is so much fear behind that smile. Do I think you could be a hero? Without a quirk?” All might released his shirt and stood up solemnly, “personally no, even with a quirk it’s a dangerous job, and while the quirkless employment rate might not be high. You might want to look for a different path to be a hero” he said, and while there was a hint of sympathy, the words themself were harsh, “Maybe become a police officer, or an EMT.” and with those final words Izuku was alone. With only the soft drips of his tears and the incoming storm as his company.

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The silence of his home used to be eerie, unnerving, and odd to him. But as his mom worked longer and later he soon got used to it.

When he was younger he remembers the warmth and the fun that flooded the home. The laughter and skills gracing the faces of the three residents. Until the doctor shattered that dream. His dad left in a hurry, packing up the moment the doctor’s visit was over and yelling on his way out. But, even if there were two left they at least had each other. But then, nearly four and a half years after his dad left, his mom got her degree in medicine and started working days. And with time, Izuku learned that she didn’t love him either. He expected it to hurt. He expected it to burn like a bruise in his heart and stab whenever he thought about it. But it never did.

The silence of the house meant that his mom hadn’t yet gotten home, or perhaps she had just left. He tried to not let that get to him. Shutting the door he headed to the bathroom. He reeked from the sludge villain and the cold from the rain didn’t help his mood. Stripping down his rancid clothing he headed into the shower and turned it onto the hottest their apartment would give. The ache of the heat helped ground him and distract him from what he was told by All Might.

After his shower, he headed into his room. The hurricane of emotions and the storm seemed to grow worse as his heart grew bitter and angry at the man lining the walls of his room. His smile taunting him and reminding him of the frail man who hid behind it. And suddenly, everything looked wrecked. His breathing was heavy, his hands hurt as his knuckles were bleeding. There were whole littering the walls and the posters shredded into scraps, his figurines, pop vinyl, and a small mountain of other merch were broken and shredded in his blind rage. Slowly calming himself with his breathing he laid down and went to sleep, head dealt with it in the morning.

The morning came slowly as Izuku got up and dressed in his last uniform, the only one without burn marks and rips. Grabbing his bag and an apple from the fridge he left out the front door, just as his mom came up the stairs.

Inko was surprised when she stopped walking and took in her son’s appearance as he walked past her. His hair was a mess, his curls going much longer than she would like, but hair cuts were expensive, his clothes were wrinkled and untidy, but what drew her attention was his eyes, the spark that he had fought for was gone, the burning been dulled into a shade not normal for him. But before she could say anything to him he walked off. She would talk to him when he got home.

For Izuku the walk from his home to school was the norm, random students were stationed on his walk to pester and abuse his timid nature. But to their surprise, he didn’t even flinch when they threatened him. And when a hero battle started in his path he just went on by, not even sparring it a single look.

When Izuku got on campus the sneering and hate only got more violent. Especially when he sat down. “What the f*ck?!” the words of both utter confusion and murderous hate silenced the room as Bakugou sat up from his desk. At first, Izuku was confused about what he was angry about until it dawned on him. He didn’t say hello to Kachaan.

With the might of a nuclear bomb and the anger of one Bakugou started his tirade of tired and overused insults at Izuku, and much to both their surprise, it didn’t affect Izuku all that much. The words were lacking there for a better word, bland, stale, old, overused, and overall less than what All Might had told him. And thankfully Bakugou had eventually stopped thanks to the teacher starting the class.

The day had gone slow, Izuku ate on the roof to hide from Bakugou and his followers. And by the end of the day, nothing too bad had happened. And to make that trend continue Izuku packed his bag up in the last minute of class and booked it out the moment the bell rang, sprinting past Bakugou, and heading down the stairs two at a time and right out the office door. But no matter what kind of lead he had on Kachaan he couldn’t run forever, so he headed down ally after ally hoping that he had lost him and made it to the more industrial side of the city.

Tired and out of breath Izuku sat down, taking gulps of air and desperately hoping that he knew where he was. But then the stench from the slime villain appeared. The violating smell of a sewer and trash made his heart stop. Before he could even get up he was grabbed and enveloped in the slime. The thick jelly-like fluid flooded his mouth, burning his throat and choking him.

All he wanted was to go home! His lungs hurt and he felt pain bursting in his insides as the villain laughed at his misery. His vision turned blurry and black around the edges. He just wanted to tell his mom he loved her.

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Consciousness washed over him as the sounds of things being moved and vials being moved around. A faint humming and the shuffling of paper appeared by the bed he was in. Suddenly a hot breath of air hit him, “ah yes, while we don't have a record for your condition, you've come to the right place. Yharnam is the home of the blood ministry. you only need to unravel its mystery. But, where's an outsider like you to begin? Easy. Why with a little Yharnam blood of your own!” confusion welled up in Izuku as the man spoke. It was soft and with compassion and sympathy. But he had never heard of a Yharnam, and either way, he should be dead! “You've suffered quite a long journey to get to this great city. At such a young age too. And you should be glad you did.”

The act of opening his eyes was hard but made easier by the prick of a needle entering into his veins, “The blood used in ministration, the blood entering your veins, is the trade of Yharnam.'' A sickly cackle filled the air, “it is a special thing indeed... The only thing that can cure your sickness, your ailment.” Izuku was afraid now, whatever this crazy man was talking about couldn't be safe. And as the man spoke he leaned forward, “Now, let's begin the transfusion. Oh, don't you worry. You'll be as good as new... Like it was all just a bad dream. ...Heh, heh, heheheh …” The man before him wore a large brimmed top hat and ragged ripped victorian style clothes. But what scared him about the man was his ailments, he was sitting upon a wheelchair with fabric covering his eyes and he looked incredibly old with a scruffy long beard and unkempt hair. The room he was in was oddly… rustic? Old wood covered everything and the only light was candles and lanterns. The ‘bed’ he was lying on was a table of sorts. A gurney maybe? And the man spoke of an ailment. But the only sickness he had ever had was the flu. Some considered quirklessness a disease and an ailment.

As Izuku was thinking about his situation the man stuck a vial of a weird yellowy red substance onto the IV rack and connected it to the tube in his arm. He watched the blood-looking liquid flow down the tube; Izuku wanted to fight, but everything was sore, the feeling of the sludge villain still lingered deep in his limbs and no matter how hard he tried to fight he couldn't move. Suddenly the burning of something entered his veins and hit his nerves with a flood of pain. Whatever this ‘blood’ that was going into him was, it wasn't liking him. It felt like his cells were being replaced one by one, melting his body down and rebuilding it over and over. Eventually, the pain spread to the point where he felt like he was going insane.

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Every few hours the elderly blood minister came back to his patient. Whatever disease ‘Quirkless’ responded by fighting the good blood. The boy had been coughing up blood for nearly three hours. And the only choice he had was to wash out the boy's old blood. He’d done it before, he’d saved many sick by more than tripling the blood dosage but there had always been a trend in his patience that needed Yharnam blood. The younger the patient, the less likely they were to live through the transfusion. Either way, he still had eight hours before the hunt. He might as well try to keep his patient from dying.

By the time the hunt had come about and the moon had begun to rise he had stabilized his green-haired patient. Eighteen blood vials of old blood dilution level three, a sewing needle, and a couple of buckets for bloodletting later and the boy had stopped coughing. Whether he lived past the night was a different story. So with a prayer to the church, the old man grabbed his gun, set up another vial, and left the clinic to Iosefka to man solo, and headed into the night. The hunt had begun. And hopefully, the boy won't have to join.

Iosefka, a kindly woman and the owner of the clinic, feared the worst when the green-haired boy had shown up on her doorstep. He was thin and frail, and his blood was low in everything needed to keep him alive, nutrients, hydration, and it appeared he had been asphyxiated for quite some time. Thankfully with the help of the old minister Henry, she had managed to get him inside and on one of the gurneys. She had left the green-haired lad to Henry while she went to the less critical patients that were still recovering from treatment.

Eventually, after many hours of tirelessly monitoring vitals and careful injections, most of the patients were stable. All except the boy, she had only ever given injections to the old and middle-aged, the youngest was thirty and this boy looked half that. She didn’t watch the bloodletting of the boy, nor when Henry went to go on the hunt with the rest of the men of the city.

To be honest, she should have checked on him more. But he was the only patient in that room, and the others were filled, so she had to either risk twenty patients that did not have the beast plague or lock the door to his room when he changed into one. But eventually, she caught the time to check on him. Nearly fifteen hours of nonstop work and she just wanted to rest, but he was gone. The only trace he was ever there was a letter addressed to an Izuku.

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

Drip.

Drip…

Drip……

Drip…

The cold unending stretch of unconsciousness, a veil that covered Izuku’s eyes from the corruption of the night. From the imbibement of the moon. But what is unconsciousness but a state to be awoken?

The hard surface under Izuku is what first caught his attention. He couldn’t smell the sweet scent of his laundry softener, nor could he feel the heavyweight of his blankets burying him into his bad and guiding him to a good dream. Instead of comfort, Izuku felt sticky and cold. His wrists hurt and his mouth was dry. The motion to squint took nearly all his energy. The lack of upper consciousness and the thick layer of exhaustion fogged his thoughts as he stared at the ceiling of the unknown room.

Slowly but surely his mind returned to him, though, his body still couldn’t move he could plan his next steps and organize what little information he had. Firstly, he was in some… clinic? The layering of nearly medieval and gothic surgery tools told him wherever he was far from home. The second thing he had was that whatever they pumped him full of seemed to hate him. The initial pain and the excruciating hours of the blindfolded man cutting him and draining him of blood seemed burned into his mind. And also seemed to lead to these people hating him. Were they part of the Quirkless Dehumanization Philosophy? And if so… why haven’t they killed him?

Izuku’s mind was a flurry of questions and theories of why he was here and the reason he lived through the sludge villain’s second attack, only to be halted by a crash and thick fluid spilling to the left of the cot. Fearfully and laboredly Izuku shifted his head to the left, only to instantly wish he hadn’t. There was a pool of what he could only gather as his blood spilled on the floor from one of the barrels it had been caught in. But instead of being stagnant, it spread towards him, and slowly from the crimson liquid, a large creature emerged. First, its large black fur matted head with its bright piercing yellow eyes. Eyes that seemed to stare past and into him as it climbed out of the pool, one clawed limb at a time. Each on scraping divots into the floor as it grew closer to the cowering Izuku. And with every scrape and growl of the monstrosity, did Izuku’s fear grow, he’d seen people with lycanthropy quirks before but… non had looked as monstrous as this creature. His mind was split between studying the creature’s physical appearance and the ever-present dread the monster brought with it. And as it lifted a clawed hand to either grasp or tear chunks of Izuku’s flesh, the beast was set ablaze. Its blood-curdling screeches and its rapid flailing caused it to crash into medical equipment. Making the already filthy and disheveled room fall further into chaos, he could only cry softly as the beast stumbled out of the room and down a set of stairs.

Sadly for Izuku, a wave of nausea and fear washed over him as he set his head to look at the ceiling, his stomach burned and it hurt to cry. Nausea blurred his vision as he saw little white creatures climb up his body and his eyes closed.

When consciousness returned again Izuku just wanted to go home. A mother that never really cared sounded better than the last few… hours? Days? Did his mom miss him? If she didn’t miss him then why go back? But… there was a chance she missed him. A chance for them to be happy again.

Izuku’s will and determination renewed for the moment he pushed himself up off the cot. His bones aching with fantom pain as he looked at the new scars that littered his body from the bloodletting. They were precise and used to draw as much of his blood with quick slices and the new flesh seemed to glow in the low light of the clinic. In comparison to the star-shaped ones from Kachaan. They were beautiful in a way. Shaking himself of that thought he stepped onto the wooden floor with a creak of the wood. His first goal was to get out of the building and find a way home.

With a goal in mind, he shuffled to the door and opened it, the door itself led down a long staircase. Which made Izuku question how the wheelchair bound man ever got up here in the first place.

The soft creaking of each stair accompanied him as he headed down, and once he got to the bottom he heard the crunching of bone and the ripping of flesh. The nausea returned and the fear but somewhat nullified. The lycanthropic creature was huddled over a corpse of a man in front of what could be guessed as the exit to the building. The lycanthro- the Lycan was surrounded by moved and knocked-over medical equipment as well as the blood and viscera of the man. Both not wanting to be the next meal and wanting to get home Izuku devised a plan to get around the Lycan.

Putting together his plan into action was harder than thought. Heading back up to the room he woke in he grabbed a knife that the blind man had used to drain his blood, some cloth, and a sturdy leg of a broken chair. He tied the knife to the chair leg for extra reach and headed down and towards the beast. Creeping as quietly as his untrained feet could accomplish he made it within striking distance of the beast. He just needed to hurt it enough to get past.

As Izuku pounced the beast he forgot to take into account the medical supplies and stepped on a shard of broken glass. His barefoot was sliced into and his weight shifted onto his other as he fell forward into the creature. The knife went in but the beast was undeterred by the wound as it swiped at Izuku with its massive claws. The claws of the beast gored his stomach and he felt a few bones snap from the force of the beast’s movement. Tears couldn’t even begin to spill as the beast took his head into its teeth and bit.

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Izuku was getting tired of being knocked out. And at this point death was becoming an inconvenience.

When he first awoke in the dream he was confused. He had his organs sliced out and his face bit off and yet... He lived. It was terrifying and no matter what he tried to theorize it as it didn’t make sense. It couldn’t be a quirk. No temporal quirks that exist could revive someone. The strongest on record was a boy that could write beasts into existence… but the boy had been killed by his frightened and delirious mother while he was asleep. Illusionary quirks took the constitution of the wilder and turned it into an illusion and getting hurt enough normally dispels the quirk’s effect on the subject.

After his mental dive into his quirk knowledge did he take into account the area around him. On all sides, the ground was covered in these beautiful white flowers and the pavement under him was made of uneven cobblestones. Izuku’s aw only grew when he turned around and saw what surrounded the beautiful garden he seemed to be in. On top of the tallest point of the garden stood a beautifully architected building surrounded with colossal trees and swathed in vines and flowers. The moon shone brightly on its perch and lit the area with beautiful light. The area around him was also fashioned with two staircases to the building. One to his left that took a long path into the building, curved around a birdbath with one of the small white creatures in it. And the staircase to his front that passed by a life-sized doll of women with white hair to the left and gravestones on the right making a fence. Also on the front path were the small white creatures that crawled on him and in the birdbath, only they seemed to be lifting an assortment of items out to him. A set of three held up what seemed to be a saw, an ax, and a cane. Another set held up a blunderbuss? And a pistol. And the final one held a book out to him.

Not wanting to offend the creatures he trepidatiously grabbed the book from one and flipped it open. Inside was an index with the pages for chapters, headers, and page numbers. The most important was underlined with red ink, specifically the Weapons umbrella header. Under it was close-range and long-range weaponry and even more split under the close-range header were names of weapons and the same with the long-range. They were also split into categories, like starter hunter gear. Opening to the eighteenth page he saw a sketch and an in-depth description of the three close-ranged weapons held out to him.

The first was the Saw Cleaver under it was a sketch of the weapon and a label (Assembly Page 517-519) next to it. As well as a simplified maintenance guide and the page number for thorough maintenance (pg 520). Under that was the description of the weapon.

" One of the trick weapons of the workshop, commonly used in the hunting business.

This saw, effective at drawing the blood of beasts, transforms into a long cleaver that makes use of centrifugal force.

The saw, with its set of blood-letting teeth, has become a symbol of the hunt, and only grows in effectiveness the more grotesquely transformed the beast ."

He was tempted to grab that one but he read on. “For hunters across Yharnam this weapon is a good choice to cleave through beasts (pg 2), but for a hunter of the dream (refer to page 1) you have an affinity for all weapons, where it would take a normal man at least a year to learn how to wield such a weapon it takes a moon touched hunter only to learn how to grip the weapon.”

Izuku’s mind was racing with thoughts, so the Lycan was a beast. And he was a moon touched hunter? Flipping quickly to page one he started reading.

“The dream or as most hunters will call it The Hunters Dream, is a place where the moon touched hunter resides. As well as the doll and German. The Hunter that resides within the dream is theoretically immortal, this notebook is created from the combined knowledge of all the hunters to have ever passed through the dream. The hunter cannot be killed by mortal men or beasts and can fight for all eternity if they prove their worth to the moon. The caretaker of the dream Ṃ̵̗̾́̊͘a̸̠͖͗́ͅͅs̴̢̫͂́t̷̝̥̋e̵͔͔͆r̸̛̩̋̕,̸͎͖̽͜ ̶͇̜̄̅͘l̵͈͚͈̐̈́̀͆ͅo̴͙̼͈̿͒̋̔͜r̵͚̮̓̽͝d̴̘̗̜̊,̷̝̬͎̭̈̔͋͝ ̴͓͙̅f̶̥́̍͑̕i̷̝͝͝r̸͔̫̤̪̈́s̵̖͙̯̃t̷̨̲̩̹̎̔ ̸̤̿h̷̨̲̆ů̸̢̩̭̂̃͘n̷͎͂̿t̴̙̗̑̈́͠͝ę̸͈͕͖̅r̴̩͌̈́̚ Gerhman. He is a friendly face and will guide you to your goals. He holds even more knowledge than this book. The second resident of the dream is the Doll, once the hunter has proven their service the doll will allow the hunter to gain strength beyond measure, and in some cases, knowledge of their innate abilities.”

“Another thing to take note of is the messengers, faithful to the hunter and will even sell the hunter important goods and do basic services for them. Treat them well for they are your greatest ally.”

The rest of the first page was filled with more information on how to use the gravestones to travel outside the dream and a simple sketch of the doll. Taking a moment to collect his thoughts Izuku looked at page two and started to read.

“The greatest threat to the lives of the young and innocent is the beast. Thanks to the church’s excessive use of old blood innocents started to turn into beasts. The first area affected by the scourge was Old Yharnam (pg1001), the citizens had been inflicted with the disease ashen blood and the first experimental trial of old blood was conducted on the citizens. Mere months later the first citizen was turned into a beast and in weeks the entirety of Old Yharnam had to be burned to the ground.”

“Hunters much like yourself have been trained to fight and kill to keep the peace in the city and they come in many shapes and sizes. The hardest to detect is shifter beasts(pg1200). A beast hiding in their old skin, they can speak but they thirst for the blood of the uninfected and will attack when a hunter is not around. Tip: they reek of a sweet stench. The beast list starts at pg 1101.”

Quickly finishing page two he realized why hunters existed in this place. Not only being on the receiving end of a Lycan the notes on them claimed them to be some of the strongest beasts that can sprout from one person. Izuku looked up towards the Messengers that held the weapons out to him. The only way to get back would be to get the moon's attention, some of the notes on page one spoke of being swept from a world, not like Yharnam, and getting a choice to go home after a certain point in their hunt.

Izuku turned to page nineteen to see the next weapon. The Hunter Axe there was the sketch, the basic maintenance, and the assembly and thorough maintenance page numbers (pg 521-524 and 525) as well as its description.

"One of the trick weapons of the workshop, commonly used on the hunt. Retains the qualities of an Axe, but offers a wider palette of attacks by transforming. Boasts a heavy blunt attack, leading to high rally potential. No matter their pasts, beasts are no more than beasts. Some choose this Axe to play the part of executioner."

“For the executioner in us all. The Hunter Axe, a massive blunt Axe head with the slowest attack speed of all starter weapons available. It allows a hunter to continue attacks even after being hit. No normal man can wield this within a year without pulling something. But your moon touched, so I guess you could grab the big Axe and kill some beasts. I'm not your mom.”

The description sounded cool and was written in a different handwriting than the other but… it was hefty. He was not built for a heavy weapon so he turned the page to twenty.

The Threaded Cane Maintenance page 531 and construction pages 525 to 530. One of the harder to maintain but the lightest and quickest of the three. Its description read-

"One of the trick weapons of the workshop, commonly used by hunters on their duties. Sufficiently deadly as a rigid bladed cane, but also serves as a whip when its blade is split into many. Concealing the weapon inside the cane and flogging the beasts with the whip is partly an act of ceremony, an attempt to demonstrate to oneself that the bloodlust of the hunt will never encroach upon the soul."

“One of the more… professional starters out there. At first, it will lag behind in damage but with practice and dedication, one can learn the ins and outs of both the blade and whip aspect of the cane. A normal man could use it as a mere sword but as the moon blessed hunter, you must stand out. You must put the fear of the people at ease and put the beasts out of their misery.”

A cane whip sword? Lighter and faster, as well as long-range and versatile in multiple situations. Needless to say, Izuku picked the cane. As for the gun he picked it was a hard choice.

Page twenty-one The Hunter blunderbuss seemed like a good pick. Its maintenance page was 543 and its construction pages were 532-542. Its description went as followed-

"A blunderbuss created at the workshop for the hunters' line of work. Hunter firearms are specially crafted to employ Quicksilver Bullets fused with the wielder's own blood, boosting damage against beasts. The impact of this highly-effective weapon counters beasts' swift movements, and its widespread is nigh-on guaranteed to hit the mark."

“The weapon itself is useful even if it has a slower reloading and shooting speed than the pistol. Its damage is also lower in theory but it makes up for that with its heavy hit and staggering any beast in your path. Anyone can pick up a gun and shoot it, but the extra strength of being moon touched allows you to not get thrown back when you shoot it also leaves the beast open to visceral attacks (pg 6) when you shoot them when they attack.”

Izuku wasn’t a fan of guns. It had been ingrained that even in a world where Kachaan can make his hands into grenades he shouldn’t trust guns. But it wasn’t like he had much of a choice. If the only way home was through the entirety of Yharnam then so be it.

Next was page twenty-two The Hunter Pistol Maintenance page 553 and construction pages 544-552 were informative on the innate differences between the blunderbuss and the pistol. The description read-

"Pistol made at the workshop, for hunters stalking beasts. Hunter firearms are specially crafted to employ Quicksilver Bullets fused with the wielder's own blood, boosting damage against beasts. The pistol is a quicker draw than the blunderbuss, allowing for speedier responses to attacks."

“Not as flamboyant as the blunderbuss but better for catching a beast in an attack. Its stun is less but is able to tear through flesh much easier than the blunderbuss. If this gun was shot by a normal man it would most likely break their hand but, your moon touched. Being stronger than any man is an easy feat to achieve.”

Izuku felt like choosing the pistol would be smarter. The blunderbuss was large and weighty and he needed something lighter. So his gun of choice was the pistol.

Izuku quickly got ready to head into the first gravestone back to Yharnam. Gripping his cane and gun tightly he knelt to the messengers and softly grabbed their hands and suddenly. He was back in the clinic. Only this time with a gun and a weapon.

Chapter 3: ch2 Blood Lust

Chapter Text

The foreign garb itched as Izuku snuck up on the lycanthrope; he needed to be cautious. His last death was from foolish ignorance of the Lycanthrope and what it was capable of; Reading page 1101 had given him insight on how the best hunts, openings in its attacks, and most importantly, its weaknesses. Serrated blades like his whips sharp, blades counter the thick hide of beasts and work wonderfully against the Lycans and other full beast creatures. The second thing of note was the passive boosts from the dream and the Yharnam blood flowing through his veins gave him. The dream in itself gave him immortality and a boost to all his strengths; ever since his first awakening in the dream, he started noticing small details of everything. Specifically, the Threaded cane could easily be made more deadly. However, he lacked the resources. He came from a much more technologically advanced time. The blades could be shifted in the cane and double their length. It could also be better if he split the whip blades in half. Not only would it allow his whip to go farther, but if the blade is cut in half could allow him to cut through the beast’s hide easier.

And there was the other thing the dream gave him, a blood lust. After seeing the Lycan the first time, he was unable to move from fear. But then the dream happened, and now… it's like seeing a pro in his world. More awe and excitement with a bit of fear of failure. The failure for different reasons, of course.

Shaking off his thoughts, Izuku clicked the switch on the cane, releasing the blades to unclick from its place and line up for an attack. Taking a step forward; towards the Lycanthrope that had killed him, he switched his handling of the cane and swiped from the side. The swing caused the blades and the whip itself to spread apart and slice deep into the rear of the beast. “Note one about lycanthropes, take out their mobility and then go in for the kill. Letting them get to you will most likely kill you.” jumping back, as the lycanthrope lunged at him, he took another swing. The whips blades wrapped around the monster’s front paw, and with a rage-filled yank, Izuku severed one of its legs; the poor beast never had a chance.

Wiping his cane off on the fur of the beast, Izuku walked to the door. Leaving a mangled body of a Lycanthrope, the first casualty of the new hunter.

Izuku did not want to kill them. They looked human; they talked, they yelled and accused and cried out in pain, but… The sweet blood smell. On page twelve of the notebook. An in-depth breakdown of blood smells and if you or another is becoming a beast. When you smell a sickly sweet coppery smell coming from another person, they are turning. Whether it’s a bit or a lot, they are turning into a beast. And if everything with blood smells sweet, like chocolate, then you are becoming a beast. And page thirteen spoke of a way to kill oneself without turning into a beast.

His first run-in with the infected… well… it didn’t go well. The bloodlust of the dream… protected his mind against the effects during and leading up to a fight but…

The same could not be said, for after the bloodlust…

He left the beast as nothing more than thin wiry flesh hanging onto shattered bones. And the moment he stepped out the door of the clinic the actions hit him like a brick. What little had been left in him went out. Blood and stomach acid burned his thought as he coughed it up outside. He had to hope killing beasts would get easier.

Pulling himself off the gravestone he had leaned against, he walked over to a gate and pushed it open. His vision still slightly disoriented, he saw a man with a torch walking past a cart. Overjoyed about finding someone that’s not a monster, he ran towards them.

“H-Hey! Wh-what the hell is wrong with this city?” Izuku said, as he got closer to the man, only to be almost decapitated by the man’s axe.

“HEY! C-calm down,” Izuku yelled out as another Axe swipe went past his head.

“Beast! Oh, Foul Beast! Your Not Wanted Here!” The man screamed as he chased Izuku back towards the clinic. And suddenly, the bloodlust flowed through Izuku, and he swung his sharp cane at the man’s leg slicing through the muscle and bone, making the man stumble and fall onto his axe and torch. Piercing himself and burning his flesh.

“F- foul beast,” and with his final wail, his body went limp. And much like with the beast the bloodlust faded.

Izuku had to hold in the vomit that was building in his throat; he’d never be able to leave this place if he vomited after every beast he had to kill. Leaning down to look at the now-deceased man, he noticed mutations of the body. A thick, coarse fur was growing from his skin and, the arms seemed to elongate at random intervals. Something important he noticed about the corpse is a blood-vial. On page thirty of the book, it gave as much information about the blood that filled the vial. The blood both invigorates and heals the user, but it also gives them a likelihood to be infected by the beast plague. But the book also spoke of how moon touched hunters were immune to the beastly effects of the blood. At least when they work for the moon.

Snatching the vial, if he needed a quick fix-up, he walked further up the road. He saw two more of the mob sitting by some boxes and a lever. Pulling the lever allowed the latter to fall to the ground, but it also notified the two of the mob.

“It's all your fault!” the first one screamed as he swung a cleaver at Izuku, “Where were you, Hunters?” Izuku, not understanding the question, could once again feel the rush of bloodlust flow through him, but he didn’t want the man to suffer the battle. So with a quick click, he changed the cane into the whip and swung at the man’s head.

A wet slap of something hitting the concrete and the spray of blood told him he got the head. His gag reflex came back full force as he was sprayed with the thick crimson of the man. He wanted to be a Hero! But how could it be when the civilians are beasts like the ones he has to hunt? Much more, what will he tell everyone when he gets home? " Oh! I’ve just been killing people in a city that should not exist due to them becoming beasts!" Oh ya, that will inspire them to not throw him into a mental ward.

Suddenly a sharp pain entered Izuku as a clever was dug halfway to the hilt in his side. The pain burned deep, but unlike when Bakugoa hurt him, it had not paralyzed him with pain. Before he could stop his arm, it swung through the jaw of the man, and with a painful crack and a rip of flesh, the jaw went flying.

This time the vomit could not be stopped. A sound of retching followed Izuku as he leaned on the side of one of the stone walls. A vibrant crimson flew from his mouth. It was red from both from not eating or drinking for who knows how long. And the blade in his side. The man's tongue hung down by his neck, a river of blood flowed from the disfigured face as the man screamed and cried, trying to stop the blood flow. Before suddenly the man went limp and fell to the floor.

Izuku soon followed suit and fell on his knees in tears.

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*Cough*

Izuku had climbed up the latter, that the lever pulled down, and found a lamp. The lamp was how described on page fourteen. The messengers, holding their hands out to take him back to the dream when necessary. But that did not draw his full attention. What did, however, was a barred and lit-up window. It had an incense burner hanging on it, as well as a cough that traveled out the window. Izuku, both not wanting to kill another thing and truly, terrified of what could sound so sick, cautiously walked up to the window.

“U-Umm H-Hello? Are- are you okay?” Izuku asked tentatively.

A surprised cough came from the window before the voice, "Oh, a kid? What are you doing out there? It’s a hunt night dor great ones sake! Unless…” The man stopped speaking with a cough, “You are not one from around here, are you?... I am Gilbert, a fellow outsider. And if from the look of that cane... You must be a Hunter. But you are much too young to be out hunting. *sigh* Yharnam has a special way of treating guests.”

The sounds of a wheelchair moving came from the window as he continued speaking, “I do not think I can stand and help you if I wanted to, but I am willing to help if there is anything that can be done *cough*. This town is cursed you should know. For whatever reasons you came here you should plan a swift exit. Whatever can be gained from this place, will do more harm than good. Especially to a child."

"M-Mr. Gilbert I-I didn’t come here by choice. To be honest I … I think I died to get here . B-but I can not be sure. D-do you know why the men are attacking? My book does not have anything about the normal civilians turning all at once. A-And if they do! Normally a hunter is tasked with taking them out before they can turn completely! S-so why are you not while they are?” Izuku spoke with his voice tinged with fear; he both wanted to milk the conversation for even a sliver of normalcy and get it over with soon.

“Ah… so your that new to Yharnam *cough* the beast scourge has ah. Spread faster than new hunters could be trained. Show me your left forearm.” Gilbert said softly He lifted the curtain in the window a fraction to look out as Izuku showed the man his arm.

“I see,” he started slowly, “You have the hunter’s mark on you already. Tell me, is there a crescent moon in the mark?”

Izuku looked down at his arm and scoured the mark he hadn't noticed before, it was a dark red and seemed to glow lightly in the shaded light of the window. In the middle of the mark where the line split into three, a small crescent moon sat. “ah, yes t-there is a moon on the mark.” Izuku answered the man’s question.

“Odd, from all the moon touched that have come and gone. None were younger than thirty and had been hunting for years. *Cough* Though. I haven’t been in the city as long as those in the hunting mob. But the ones I have met during the day say they only get free after they kill a certain beast. Or do something worthy of freedom.” Shuffling came from the window as an object was pushed out lightly. “I don’t have much, but take this. It’s old but *Cough*… a moon touched gave it to me, maybe it could help?” In the man's thin hands was a small booklet, much like the notebook given to Izuku by the messengers. “I can’t read it *cough* but they said with enough insight it could be read by a moon touched easily.”

Izuku took the book tentatively; he read about insight on page fifteen. With enough insight, you could see past the veil that covered the world and see the world for what it really was. But it held dangers knowing too much could cause you more suffering than good. But no one had ever made it past ninety-nine insight.

“He told me that it held notes on some of the oldest hunter practices and was going to be destroyed. If you can decipher that book kid, you’ll make it through the night.” Gilbert spoke as if reminiscing a past long gone, and really it probably was. With how desensitized he seemed to be to the hunting mob turning into beasts, he must have been in the town for a lot longer than he let on.

“T-Thanks M-mr. Guilbert! B-But before I um. Go do- do you know if there is a way to save the people turning into bests? I- I hate killing them.”

“A way to save them? Kid. they can not be saved. They have been turned into beasts on both the physical and mental level *cough*. Men turn into monsters and kill their wives and children in this town. And if you don’t kill the beast. Then the beast will kill the ones who can't kill it.” Guilbert replied solemnly. “But! Tell you what. *Cough* My friends say that I’m a pretty good listener. If you need to vent after killing a beast. Come to me. A long time ago I used to be a therapist. I wonder how Father Gascoigne is doing? ”

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The killing of beasts did not become easier to do after the conversation. After almost every kill, Izuku needed to take a minute to breathe. After every kill, the bloodlust lasted longer and even harder to reign in to stop. Controlling himself during bloodlust was easy, at least when he used it to kill beasts. But there were times when it would take over. Where it would drag his mind into a dark place controlled and ruled by hunger to see what the beast looked like when it was shredded. To see how far he could pound. And rip. And tear. And mutilate until all that was left was a disfigured corpse.

But sometimes he caught himself. Sometimes he sobbed and cried and pulled at his hair. Ripping at his scalp to keep himself grounded. He wasn’t meant for this.

The bloodbath around a pyre. A beast hung from the tall wooden pile as it burned. The men around it were of the mob. All mutated and willing to mutilate to satiate their selfish desire for murder. By this point into the depths into Central, Yharnam Izuku had killed nearly twelve of the mob. And in this one place, there were nearly twenty. No reprieve between slicing and ripping at the flesh. No silence to clear his head from their screams and cries as they were all slaughtered. Torn into pieces by his cane and whip. The war-drum of his heart never stopped until they all died and the blood thickened in his mind pulling at his heart’s remorse and shredding his cognition. If he wanted to go home he had to appease a homicidal god. Outside of battle, he'd be Izuku the boy from Mystistufu, the boy who wanted to be a hero, to save all those in need. But in these streets, on this town's blood ladened ground… He’d be a hunter.

Some stones of blood. Some bullets for his gun shredded through the heads of the mob. Some blood vials for his flesh to keep working. A prayer to a god to not judge him and he slaughtered all on the bridge. Two lycanthropes, a hunchback, and some birds. Two side paths went from the bridge. One held a much taller beast that held torches and swung saws. Weak to a gun and a visceral. All he got for that sewer was a new pair of clothes. Much more suited for a hunter. The other led to Guilbert’s window. The closed gait next to it to be exact. Thankfully Guilbert wasn't lying about willing to listen as he sobbed to the elderly sickly man.

“So you're continuing? Goin’ back out? Before you go, have some of this.” From the window, a cup filled with a sweet-smelling tea was lifted to him. “You might not be able to die due to the curse of the moon, but you still need food and water. Some of the open houses have rations.

“Thank you, Guilbert,” Izuk replied as he drank the warm tea. Cooling the burning from the vomit that lingered.

“It's no problem kid, I’m not the one clearing the streets.”

And with that hour of break to calm himself, Izuku set off.

The beast on the bridge, a Cleric Beast if the monster part of the book, told the truth. Was massive. It swung with such force that Izuku’s bones shook from every movement. And with every hit, he lost more flesh than the vials could fix. And then, he was back in the dream. His plan failed. The beast’s neck was too hard and thick for his whip to tear easily through.

After pushing himself to his knees, he saw The Doll was standing up. And the workshop had also opened up. He had gained insight. Thanks to the notebook, he was prepared for this. The first thing he needed was to check the workshop. So passing The Doll he climbed the stairs into a very well-kept workshop. The only problem was the missing tools. The Blood gem workshop tool, the rune tool, the haze extractor, all the more blood-related and rare tools were gone. All that was left was the basics for tool creation and the forge.

Suddenly a voice spoke from the middle of the room, “ Ah-hah, you must be the new hunter. A young one at that. Welcome to the Hunter's Dream. This will be your home, for now. I am…” the old man in the wheelchair stopped for a moment, seemingly confused for a second. “Gehrman, friend to you hunters. You're sure to be in a fine haze about now, but don't think too hard about all of this. Just go out and kill a few beasts. It's for your own good. You know, it's just what hunters do! You'll get used to it… no matter your age."

And with that, the old man took a second, waiting for a response only to find Izuku flipping through a notebook. "This was once a safe haven for hunters. As that book should tell you. A workshop where hunters used blood to enhance their weapons and flesh. We as you probably saw from your scouring of the tools. We don't have as many tools as we once did, but... You're welcome to use whatever you find.” The old man leaned slightly towards Izuku and whispered, “Even The Doll, should it please you..."

And with that rather creepy introduction, Izuku found the page he was looking for. Pages ten and eleven, one for German and one for The Doll. Most of the page on German was corrupted, the words bled into each other, and what could be read sounded like the scribblings of a mad man. While the one for The Doll had two legible paragraphs. It was the basics with the blood echoes one gets for killing beasts. They could make their body tougher, as well as what the body was possible of doing. It was possible to make one's blood so toxic that it melted through beast flesh. Or one could attune their mind to the cosmos and use its awfull power to eradicate beasts. The basics of the body could be increased to be able to wield weapons of great size.

Izuku checked his forearm to see his mark was sheer black; he had no blood echoes because he died to the Cleric Beast. But he did have some cold blood dew. Maybe he could kill that beast.

A few bloodstone shards and sometime later figuring out the workshop's tool and the cane was three inches taller and half an inch wider. The number of blades in its whip form nearly doubled. And the whip's length had been increased by close to afoot. It was harder to wield but thankfully he had The Doll to help him.

“Hello, good hunter. Much younger than most who have visited the dream. I am a doll, here in this dream to look after you.” The doll spoke softly, her tone caring, “Honorable hunter, pursue the echoes of blood, and I will channel them into your strength. You will hunt beasts... and I will be here for you, to embolden your sickly spirit." She said as she reached over, putting a hand on his hair with a soft smile. “By far the youngest hunter to ever visit this old doll.”

Y-Yes, I-I read about you in m-my book! S-sorry for not speaking to you first.” he stuttered out. He was talking to a girl! W-well a doll but she was alive!.

"Ah, I see, did the little ones give you the book? I would guess so. Have you spoken with Gehrman? He was a hunter long, long ago, but now serves only to advise them. He is obscure, unseen in the dreaming world. Still, he stays here, in this dream... ...such is his purpose..." She spoke of the old man with such admiration, it almost made Izuku respect the man's very existence.

After a long conversation about how the night and hunt had been going. As well as about his tinkering with his equipment and her remarking about how most hunters never change them. He upgraded his stats a bit. And with a bit of help from The Doll, he got to see the basics of his body. His Vitality, strength, and Endurance were his lowest stats from what he could tell. His base highest was his arcane, followed by skill and blood tinge.

With a quick goodbye to both The Doll and a very surprised German, Izuku headed back into Central Yharnam. He was going to kill that beast, even if he died in the process.

Chapter 4: Cleric Beast (and more!)

Chapter Text

I started this the moment ch3 was out. Kinda as a reward for my creative writing teacher liking my less fanfic writing. Who knew writing fanfic would make my writing skill improve?

Not beta-read, if you find any confusing ways of wording or misused words (EX: tails and tales) please tell me! I’m also writing this as a love letter to bloodborne itself. So be ready for some graphic scenes!

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Izuku was kinda surprised when all of the mob were back to life as he traveled to the Cleric Beast. But the extra length and serration of the whip allowed him to shred through the hordes of half-transformed beasts with ease. His higher skill made combat seem slow against the mob. It increased his reflexes and control over his body. Though the mind-splitting headache coming from each kill made it hard to focus at times.

Looking at the moon, Izuku noticed it was still at the same point it was when he first got out of the clinic. The god's power that brought him to this land being used to seemingly freeze time was both worrying and scary to see.

When he walked under the arch separating him from Cleric Beast, it noticed him instantly. Its size did not portray its speed. With a simple jump, it closed the distance between itself and Izuku in seconds. Izuku, with his perception, slotted higher than ever dived under the Cleric Beast as it hit the ground. His body rolled on the pool of blood that was left of him from the first fight and he felt a surge of bloodlust. Quickly clicking the cane into whip mode, he swung at the monster’s Achilles tendon, digging deep and causing a horrid roar of hate to bellow from the beast. With a quick rip, the whip came out of the leg and sprayed Izuku with blood. The frenzy he was going into went to eleven as he stabbed the cane into the beast’s kneecap as it turned to face him. And with a rough push, a shard of bone broke from the beast’s femur. As Izuku went for his cane's whip form again, he was raked across the chest as the beast's claws, as it jumped back in pain. The pain of the swipe pushed the boy over the edge as he went in again, this time while jabbing the blood vial into an artery on his leg and dumping more cursed blood into his veins. Closing his wounds in hardly a second, he whipped the beast’s face with the whip twice in quick succession. Unlike the neck, the eyes were still vulnerable on the beast’s boney head.

Izuku had to jump back as the beast barreled to where he was, cracking the pavement and letting out an ear-shattering roar as it wiped at him through bloodied vision. All he needed was a quick moment to attack, and he could hit its limbs to hopefully break them. Lifting his gun, he fired six rounds in succession into the beast’s maw, cracking its skull and making it fall to its knees cradling its head.

Izuku, not one to waste an opportunity to hurt this beast, ran to its head and stabbed his cane through its jaw, and wrenched it out at an odd angle. The area around Izuku and Izuku himself was painted in blood and small chunks of flesh from force and angle caused the beast’s jaw to crack in half and rip from the sinuous flesh of its head. Izuku’s triumph of the wound he had inflicted on the beast caused him to not notice the Cleric Beast’s claw swiping at him. The attack threw his small body across the bridge and into one of the walls. Shattering his vertebrae and most of his ribs.

Rule 1 of fighting Greater Beasts. ALWAYS focus on survival. Do not get greedy attack where you can without putting yourself in harm.

Izuku kept rushing the beast, anger at his failure the second time fueling him. Only the blind swinging of the whip and cane causes his third, fourth and, fifth death. So he went back to strategy. The book spoke of the much more breakable limbs of the Cleric Beast being its head and arms. Fighting the beast again and again taught him where to hit to cause the most damage.

In his twentieth attempt on the beast’s life, he opened the fight with a Molotov to the beast’s face. Instantly causing it to cradle its face, Izuku rushed in and jabbed his cane into one of its eye sockets and slammed his foot down on the handle, causing the beast’s eye and parts of its head to come cracking from its skull. The sight of the beast brought more anger and disgust as he sliced ligaments and arteries on the beast. His once green hair that peeked from his hat was sodden and red. His eyes burned as sweat and blood trickled into his eyes, but he kept them open. A single blink and The Cleric Beast would be on him ripping his lungs out of his chest and cleaning his bones of meat. He swung the whip around the beast’s larger arm and pulled the serrated blades dug as the whip pulled back to its master, only for the beast to grab the whip to try to keep him from pulling the meat off ITS bones. In response, Izuku drew his gun and fired all twenty shots into the beast’s head. The bloodsoaked bullets shredded through the soft meaty inner tissue his cane had shown him earlier. Silencing the beast’s final roar. It was… anticlimactic for Izuku. He wanted to have it live long enough to be just a skeleton held together by only small slivers of muscle and skin.

Then the bloodlust washed out faster than ever before, the sight, the smell of the organs of the beast being bear to the world, and chunks of both their flesh littering the once clean bridge brought nausea and, in some portion, regret. He had the mind to kill it fast and with mercy and yet… and yet he tortured the beast. Then the memories from the other tries flooded back to his head, drowning his regret. His skin being pulled off his muscles, being eaten alive or left drowning, in his own blood. The most painful one was where a vial had caused bleeding out impossible. He only had one arm and half a leg left… and one bullet.

The lack of regret did not stop the vile stomach acid from creeping up his throat and make his vision spin with nausea. What could he have done differently, though? Brutality was the only successful path through the fight. But what if he had died a few more times? Given it some more thought? Some more time studying the beast and, maybe, he could have killed it humanly, but… The pain of dying over and over again, a constant feeling of his heart slowing, or his blood draining.…...

Each death seemed to make something resonate further in his head. In this world, he could kill the beasts or be slaughtered over and over again. And truth be told… he did not want to die anymore.

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Through the fight with the Cleric Beast, Izuku had gained a new badge. Through it, a few of the more rambling texts seemed to align. Through this, Izuku could deduce that the badges made the text readable to whoever holds one. A failsafe to keep the schematics safe from those who should not have the trick weapons. With a quick look at the book's new entries, he headed off to the more unexplored region of Yharnam.

He had fought through an alley full of caged dogs; it was not necessarily hard… but slaughtering something that could not fight back felt sickening. He had heard the cries of an old woman as he got past the cages. Outside of a house, a dog was trying to break into it. It barked and scratched at the wooden door. It had made a sizable couple cleaves through the bottom of the wood and seemed to not notice Izuku as he got closer. With a precise swing of the whip, the head of the beast was gone.

As he walked towards the door, the woman spoke, “ Oh, you're a hunter, aren't ya? If you hunters got off your arses, we wouldn't be in this mess. You're obligated to help me, you hear? So what'll it be? Are you gonna tell me if there is a safe place, or not?" Izuku did not know how to respond to that. There were safe places in this town? Did people know of safe areas and not tell this old lady and left her here alone?

“Ah. N-No maim, I-I’m new to this town and if I find a safe place I will tell you! Alright?” He spoke softly, as to not startle the lady on the other side.

“I should have known. Ya good-for-nothing... No respect for the elderly is what that is; especially you youngins! Yeah, fat lot of good you outsiders do. Go on, admit it, you think we're all mad, don't ya? Well, go and stuff it! I know all yer tricks!" She shouted, outraged by his answer. The malice that laced her tone made Izuku hurry off. Once he found someplace safe, he’d tell her. At least he would be one person’s hero tonight.

As he ran off, he came down a staircase into a large room. It wasn’t massive or anything. But if he continued forward, he would go down another flight of stairs, but before he could head down, something caught his eye. Behind a large stack of boxes and barrels was a broken window, hidden almost perfectly. So taking the time to break the debris, Izuku found a nice wooden walking path situated above the warehouse-looking building’s ground floor.

Slipping lightly onto the rickety flooring Izuku, slowly walked the circumference to one of the middle bridges. He had scavenged from the crates and boxes along the path some blood vials and more bullets. The bridges themselves felt as safe as some wood being suspended in the air could, so he took it slow. On his right was a corps being hung upside down by its legs. He was going to cut it down and let it fall until he saw the bloodstone shards tucked in the body's pocket. So with a bit of careful maneuvering. He had managed to bring the body over to himself with his cane and snatched the stones. He quickly finished walking the rest of the bridge and headed to the other. With this corpse, he did the same thing. The difference was that this man had a saw weapon strapped to his back.

It was a bit harder, but he got that weapon and quickly tied it to his back. The last thing of interest on the dangerous scaffolding was another path that led off, thankfully instead of another broken window, it was a door. How anyone would get to it normally was a glaring issue in this building’s architecture. He had managed to get through the door and headed out into the night air again. Izuku's eyes were easily brought to a figure standing by the fence.

The figure stood tall… well tall in comparison to him. They wore a black feathered cloak and black flowing clothes. As he approached, he was met with the bleached white mask that took the shape of a bird. He had once read about how people a long time ago during the black plague would wear masks like this to keep out the bubonic plague.

“U- Hi?” His voice came out with a tinge of fear. If this was another crazed citizen, then he needed to be careful about what he does.

“Oh well, aren't you a bit young to be out durnin a hunt?” her voice came out stern but more concerned than anything. “By those clothes and weapons… you're a hunter, aren't ya? And most likely an outsider, am I wrong? What a mess you've been caught up in. And tonight, of all nights." She let out a heavy sigh and gestured for him to come over to her.

“Here, to welcome the new hunter." She said as she gave him four yellow slips of paper, “These are Bold Hunter's Marks. As long as your Moon Touched they should help you.”

“H-How did you know I was m-moon touched? I didn't think it was obvious?” He asked her, Izuku couldn't understand how people could tell.

“Hunters that are Moon Touched give off a soft moonlight glow. But prepare yourself for the worst youngin. There are no humans left. They're all flesh-hungry beasts, now. No matter how much they look like a human." She gave Izuku a pat on the back and turned away… But Izuku REALLY wanted to sit there a bit longer. To soak up the feeling of being human that being with another person gave him.

“Still lingering about? What's wrong? A hunter, unnerved by a few beasts? Heh heh... No matter. Without fear in our hearts, we're little different from the beasts themselves." She turned to him and grabbed his shoulders, and stared him dead in the eyes. The black voids of the mask boar into his soul as she spoke, “Shake off your cape and keep huntin kid. You’ll learn to stop trembling in your boots as time passes... A hunter must hunt." And with the final declaration, she pushed him back lightly. This lady… Her speech wasn't extravagant like a hero, but it was what he needed.

The last couple of hours had hurt Izuku the most.

He had lost his humanity for mere seconds against the Cleric Beast, but it was enough to unnerve him. He had let his anger and hate control the bloodlust he had been feeling. But what was the bloodlust but a tool to a hunter? They hunt beasts and, the more ferocious they are, the faster the beast goes down.

If he could control the rush he got through the battle, then he could do the hunting his way without losing himself to the blood in his veins.

The straightening of his posture and a tightening grip on his weapons pushed back his anxiety. A quick nod at the crow lady and he was off. What better way to control the bloodlust than through trial and error?

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He had found a mad man’s knowledge hidden in a sewer behind some giant f*cking rats. Okay, so maybe he hadn’t gotten that good of control of the bloodlust yet. But he was getting better as he waded through the sewer and through some… living corpses? He felt he was beginning to get desensitized to the odd looks of the beasts. But the killing still made his stomach recoil in disgust at what he was doing.

He had gone back to the dream on a couple occasions, whether planned or not. It took some finagling but, he managed to make the pistol slightly better. It was not a great upgrade, but the extended barrel he had added onto it made it easier to hit his shots with. He had also made his physicality slightly better with the help of the doll. With every breath, his lungs drew in more air than before and, his heart pumped the blood through him better than ever. He also felt less fatigue with every upgrade from the doll. Like whatever the first transfusion did to him was finally settling down.

He had also found a small girl… It pissed him off that people would leave their children alone in this city… but he agreed to find the girl's mother anyway. And considering what the little girl told him about the music box’s music and what it did for her dad. He needed to find them fast.

But at the moment, he was heading down the smallest part of the sewer. It was dark and smelled worse than any other part of the city so far. The only evidence something alive was down there was the shuffling in the water.

A sudden horrid screech bellowed from the darkest part of the sewer as something massive shoved itself down the long sewer. Izuku had only gotten a glimpse before he was thrown back by the beast's massive head. The pain barely registered as he got up from the murky water in the sewer to dodge the beast's massive head. It was a pig, about the size of a truck if not more, and the stench from its mouth made Izuku's vision swim.

A swift, practiced click rang through the sewer as a whip carved through the pig's face. The pig's deep, almost black blood fell fast as it charged at Izuku again. But the extra room from this part of the sewer let him dodge it easily. Another barrage of whip strikes allowed him to completely shred the beast's hind legs into minced meat. And with another click, the cane found purchase in the skull of the beast.

Its carcass was massive. Which meant that inside of it was either a treasure trove or nothing. So Izuku got to gutting the pig.

It was… kinda worth it getting covered in the pig's entrails. Izuku had found six blood vials which topped off his supply. But he also smelled worse than he had any right to.

Deciding to try and ignore the foul odor that covered him, Izuku headed down the sewer again. Where the pig had come from was a larger space, there were two corpses in the area. One had a few more blood vials, while the other had the saw badge. He had most of the saw badge's information unlocked but, It seemed there was more for it to tell.

He slipped the badge into one of his pockets as he headed out of the sewer. Specifically through a door near the sewers drop. And proceeded to climb a ladder up to a place he had yet to go. At the top were a hunchback and some of the mob. As well as a giant ball of tinder. A quick swipe of the whip and the wooden shield mob member was down. The shield man's fallen torch fell onto the tinder ball and, it lit up. And the hunchback, surprised by the sudden burst of flames, pushed the ball of tinder. The rest of the mob making rounds on the bridge did not even have time to dodge as the ball ran them over.

The hunchback was burned by the ball and in pain. It didn't take long to finish off. Izuku headed onto the bridge to collect vials and bullets of the mob and found an elevator. Which was… confusing. It reminded Izuku of the old elevators in some of the movies he and his mom would watch when they had time. He hasn't seen them in years.

The short trip in the elevator led him back to an area near where Gilbert's house was.

Hell YA! A Short Cut!

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"A small music box received from a young Yharnam girl. It plays a song shared by her mother and father. Inside the lid is a small scrap of paper, perhaps an old message. Two names can be made out, however faintly, Viola and Gascoigne."

Izuku was nauseous at the sight of the church-clothed man. The men's clothes were stained in both the blood of beasts… And some of the most human-looking people Izuku had seen yet. An unwavering sense of dread seemed to emanate from the graveyard that Izuku had found himself in. The heavy breaths from the man were the only sound… Other than his axe cleaving through the corpse of a man.

"...Beasts all over the shop... You'll be one of them, sooner or later..." The sheer bloodlust flowing from the man shook Izuku to his core. The slime villain? The Cleric Beast? None had any contention with the intense murderous intent flowing from the man's Large form.

Before Izuku could comprehend the situation, the other man was changing at him, a fierce swing and pain bloomed from Izuku’s left arm… or lack thereof. A gunshot rang out as Izuku tried to roll out of the way. The blunderbuss in the man's hand shot. Shearing through his legs caused him to fail and crash onto the gravelly floor of the cemetery. Consciousness faded fast.

With a gasp, Izuku shot up in the dream. His body ached painfully, especially where he had been hurt. Whoever that man was, he was merciless. A hunter in every respect, but he had lost himself to his bloodlust. But who else but the little girl's father was a hunter out tonight? The crow, himself, and that man.

“Good hunter? Why are you just sitting there? Is it some sort of game?” The Doll's voice brought him back to the dream. Away from his brain's constant flutter of information and back to reality.

“No. I uh. I was thinking… I need to speak with Gehrman. Do- Do you know where he is?”

“I believe he is in the workshop at the moment, Farewell, good hunter. May you find your worth in the waking world."

“T-Thank you doll.”

Gehrman was… irritated with his scouring of the books during conversations… It was understandable, but there was so much information hidden in the dream. Though the book How To Pick Up Fair Maidens seems useless at the moment. Izuku has found some old notes left by some of the old hunters. Some spoke of weaknesses of even greater creatures than the Cleric Beast. Some about the chalices and what they hold. One held stories of a hunter that used the beast hood to destroy beasts the sizes of mountains. And a few spoke of old arts hunters used to implore when the hunt had first begun.

One art stood out to Izuku, hidden between bloodletting on a weapon to increase its damage (Blood Sheathing) and ways to force elements to aid you (Arcane Elements). Was the art of Quickening, by awakening one's blood and in turn their body to the full brunt of the old blood, a hunter could phase in between a false reality and reality to dodge attacks. Some of the oldest hunters could increase a foot of movement into twenty feet. The art allowed hunters to take monsters down with efficiency.

All of the older arts took training from an old hunter to achieve. As well as all of one's blood to be replaced with the old blood. Izuku had one of those happen to him already. All he needed was a teacher.

“And that is why you do not try and ride a dark beast… got that boy? It never ends well.”

“I- why would you even try that?”

“It was my youth… when the hunts first started we saw them as games at first.”

“I- I guess that is understandable… to a point... But. Gehrman? Can I ask a favor?”

“What is it kid? You've read nearly everything in this bloody workshop… what could you possibly want to know?”

“Can you teach me quickening? I’ve found it in one of the old books… Y-you don't have to teach me b-but I would love instruction on how it works! I-its so interesting…” Izuku asked, unsure of the answer he would receive.

The question seemed to shock Gehrman as if he never expected to hear that question. “Ah. yes, the old art of quickening… I suppose I could give you the basics… Only if you promise to never ask for any more arts. Figure them out for yourself… just never ask for another.” Gehrman’s serious tone sent shivers down Izuku’s spine. He had only heard the old man speak in either a teasing or jovial tone in the days he had been researching in the dream. (if the clock on the wall was right)

“T-thank you! Gehrman!”

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The first time actually achieving quickening, it threw Izuku off the edge of the hunter's Dream. He fell for a solid half an hour before hitting something and dying. And by the time he got back to the hunter's workshop, Gehrman was STILL laughing… At least the old man has a sense of humor though, The Doll disliked seeing him fall off the edge and scolded him as his mother used to…

The road to learning quickening took… by clock time… eight days. Every time Izuku left the Dream, the Moon was still in the sky at the same point. The beasts fought the same. The loot he found, however, varied. Sometimes loads of bullets and vials dropped from the Mob, but other times nothing at all. Izuku, in his spare time, while not training to use the whip more precisely, or trying to do quickening, found himself clearing Yharnam over and over again. It got soothing after a while; the constant amount of beasts to kill kept him sane as he taught himself. It kept his mind away from how much time was passing in his world. It kept his mind from convincing himself that he was a murderer now.

At least he would be ready to fight that hunter soon.

Eventually, both Gehrman and the Doll noticed how drastically one upgrade affected him in any state. One upgrade to his strength was equal to two for a normal hunter. It was unnatural… well, everything in Yharnam was unnatural. But Izuku’s reception to the power old blood gave had never been seen before by the duo. Nor the speed at which he learned from the hunter books. It was like he was a sponge, soaking up all the knowledge and power the Dream could impart.

For The Doll, he reminded her of a younger, wiser Gehrman. Or maybe some of the Powder Kegs that had come to the Dream. Always inventing a new piece of equipment to help him on his quest to go home. Mumbling as he wrote complex blueprints for weapons and upgrades to some. It was captivating in a way to the Doll. Most hunters gave in. Most gave themselves to the chaos of the hunt, to the will of the Moon. But it seemed that the Moon was intrigued by its new catch. Gehrman's nightmares had lessened while the kid kept him busy. And even her own thoughts had lightened. The Moon seemed to believe this child their ace. If the increased strength of the child said anything.

For Gehrman, it was like when he had his first students. Years ago… They wished to know more about the adversaries they fought. The attentiveness to every little stupid story he told, just to grasp at straws for a meaning. He had only meant to teach the boy Quickening... only quickening. But how was he supposed to say no when the kid's smile lit up the Dream? No hunter had enthralled the Dream to its whim. But… Gehrman had found a few action figures of colorful men in spandex that had NOT been there before.

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Allergies have shut down my existence so writing took longer than I wanted.

Thank you to:

Randomsumofa*gum (AO3)

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Maxanime (AO3)

Sir_ShipsALot (AO3)

KronaMorrigan (AO3)

DiabhalMayCry0 (AO3) Hello from the Hollow hero fic!

MyOwn2Cents (AO3)

Randomsumofa*gum (AO3)

Lil_hal_9000 (AO3)

Joesgood (AO3)

Chuckleberry (AO3) Your in the discord!

nightowl (AO3)

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mallardj4th (FF)

And the quest! (FF)

Thanks for voting/ commenting on the last chapters! It means a lot to me. If you are in the discord tell me and ill be saying hello from the end of chapters! And thanks for the ideas from MyOwn2Cents about the Eldritch sorcerer spell ideas and just the energy in the comment was great. Those who hold conversations it’s like when an author releases a new chapter for me. It’s really fun to talk to you all!

And yes, I do like to use higher vocabulary words for the sh*ts and giggles. Ads flavor don’t you think?

Have a nice day/night and I hope you will consider joining my discord!

https://discord.gg/Uu8xBKUkJq

Also if you do see a part that makes no sense in the way it’s written please tell me. Sinuses are killing me and I think I might have messed up on something! - Author!

Ps. if you want more of the fights with Gascan than what I did with cleric tell me!

Chapter 5: CH5 father gascan

Chapter Text

Not beta-read, if you find any confusing ways of wording or misused words (EX: tails and tales) please tell me! I’m also writing this as a love letter to bloodborne itself. So be ready for some graphic scenes!

2596 words of Gascan fight. Your welcome.

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Fear the hunter that has turned.

For he is gone, too far mad to be returned.

In their hunt for blood, they got lost in a flood.

Of beats hood and fear. May the hunters hear.

This hunter, a priest. Has become a beast.

Bring us peace by slaying this, poor beast.

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If Izuku’s estimation on time is correct, it had been nearly a month since he had been dragged into this god-forsaken land. Three days ago, he had managed to do the quickening art once… once…

Gerhman had told him it would be a slow process to even be able to do it repeatedly without some sort of conduit to channel the art through. Though... a conduit able to do that would be nearly impossible to come by at this point. With enough dedication and practice, any hunter worth their salt could, in theory, use the quickening art at any time. And while Izuku himself wasn’t that impressed by his abilities, the confidence of Gerhman had begun to rub off on him. If Gerhman, one of the oldest hunters, could believe that he could do this, that he could push past the dream and back to his world… then he would have to believe him.

And even if he did not believe the confident words of Gerhman… then the Doll’s kind words of encouragement would probably do the trick. She treated him… like a little brother in a way. When he was horrible after hearing the mob speak to one another like normal people. When the blood in his veins felt wrong and his body burned with hate. She would be there with kind words and a soft hand on his shoulder. Maybe it was the fact it was how he WANTED his mother to be to him when he was younger. Or maybe, it was because when he searched deep in his memories, both Gerhman and The Doll reminded him of how his parents used to be. One a confident pillar and the other a soft blanket that would rather you be safe than in danger. If only his dad could have seen through his genetic mutation. Seen through the fact, his son was now useless. Then maybe Izuku wouldn’t have allowed so much bullying to happen to him. Then maybe he would have been okay with being quirkless and could have strived to be anything other than a hero. Then he wouldn’t have needed to run from Bakugou every day.

But… the past couldn’t be changed. Izuku couldn’t change the direction he ran nor the hate Baugou felt for him. And so Izuku headed back into the cursed streets of Yharnam. There was an old lady and a little girl who needed to get somewhere safe. And he would be damned if his fear of the crazed hunter would stop him.

The beating of Izuku’s heart reminded him that this wasn’t all just a fragile dream. As he walked up the stairs to the cemetery, stairs that he knew he would need to travel hundreds of times if this didn’t go his way. He had read up on all the important books in the workshop, A Hunter’s Guide to Guns, Identify Weakness, and a plethora more for this battle. He might be more than human at this point… but so was this hunter. He had scoured the city for a hunter registry. This hunter could only be a handful of men. Henryk, Gascoigne, Adim, Luka, and Charles. The five hunters of Central Yharnam… and he had seen three hunters corpses throughout the entirety of Yharnam. And from the note in the music box… Izuku could only hope it wasn’t Gascoigne because that would mean his wife would be hidden in one of the piles of corpses. Either dead or nearly dead.

The start of the battle between Izuku and the crazed hunter was quick. The moment Izuku stepped onto the cemetery ground he was rushed in an instant. The battle had begun. The release of adrenaline and the properties of the blood caused Izuku’s vision to tunnel. A massive cleave from the hunter’s ax missed him by near inches as he dodged back. A click and his whip lashed at the hunter, carving a deep gash into their side. But the hunter was not deterred as they rushed through the space between them and slammed Izuku into a gravestone. Sharp pain and the ax’s blade was buried deep in Izuku’s chest. But the bloodlust kept growing. Grabbing the hunter by the scarf, he shoved his cane into the man’s chest cavity.

The splash of blood seemed to mend most of Izuku’s more deadly wounds as the man jumped back, wrenching the ax from where it had been. The pain had begun clouding Izuku’s senses as he rushed at the man, a quick shot, and the man’s swing was deflected and he was left open. The bloodlust burned as his hand was thrust forward into the man’s chest, transforming into a clawed fist, and was wrenched from the man’s chest.

Everything seemed to stop as Izuku watched his hand turn back into his hand. For a moment, he had become a beast. For a mere moment, he wasn’t himself. And then an ax cleaved through his head.

“Young Hunter? Are you okay? Should I go and get Gerhman?” It… it was the Doll. Izuku shook from the strain his thoughts were put on his body. The Doll, having not gotten a response, leaned into her new hunter. Most would not even allow any form of contact with her. But this was a boy. And from what she had heard from the fathers that had come and gone through the dream. Sometimes a child just needed a hug.

The sobbing of Izuku had brought Gerhman from his nap. He had heard the boy cry from benign distraught before… but this was uncontrollable sobbing. The pain the boy must be feeling… He had watched the boy in his fight with that old Gascoigne. He had watched all the hunters that had passed through the dream. But none had had such a volatile reaction to a visceral as the boy. Some shrugged off the change easily enough. While others went slightly mad from the transformation. But none had broken down. Most likely because most had been hunting for years.

The creaking of a wheelchair brought the Doll’s attention to Gerhman. It was not often he came down from the workshop. In one hand, he held a cup… from where she could not place it, and in the other, a book. One she had not yet seen Izuku read. In one quick motion, he had put them both on the ground next to her and the young hunter. And in another, he was gone. She would have to ask him about the steaming drink later.

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Izuku felt horrible. He was meant to kill the beasts… but here he was becoming one; the texts on the visceral art. The simplest art to use for nearly any hunter. The texts Spoke on how the killing intent and blood lust could form a pseudo claw on the hunter’s hand… But the claw itself signified the hunter's corruption to the beast in the blood. Those of the dream could tease out the strength of beasthood. Hunters could even pseudo transform into a bestial form. Irreverent Izzy, the genesis to the beast weapons, wrote tomes on beasthood. But they had been lost across Yharnam. Letters and notes described areas where some of the books had been lost. If-if Izuku could find a tome about how to control the beasthood… maybe he could stop it? If… if the beasthood was a plague, then there was a vaccine… or perhaps a cure. Maybe Izze had developed a cure dedicated to beasthood. That's how he was able to use the powers of a beast without fear… or maybe, he was just mad?

“Kid… you've been looking at that page for hours...” Gerhman said, laying a hand on his shoulder, “Hunters have a duty… and it's not an easy one, that's why the dream exists. Without this dream, you could have already turned into a beast. You would have died and become a part of a beast in some way. That claw, the art of ripping out a beast's blood. It's the safest art there is.”

“B-but… Hunters are meanest to kill beasts… so why use their power?”

“If you were to have fought the cleric beast without the strength of a beast. It would have never been killed. But as long as you are connected with the dream, you will be safe from the beasthood.” He- he sounded so sincere, so sure of what he was saying, “Either way… you have an old lady and a young girl to save… and the only safe place left in Yharnam is right past that hunter.”

The little girl, alone and scared for her family and the old lady, while not kind, still deserved to be saved. If Izuku lost himself… if he gave up. They would be there, stuck, and most likely die from some beast without remorse.

Slowly closing his book, Izuku stood in the old workshop. He had materials from clearing Yharnam. Izuku had the paper for blueprints and a forge. He needed to win against the hunter. He was fast, but so was Izuku. And Unlike Izuku, the hunter had no forge to make tools.

-----

Stepping up the long flight of stairs Izuku, counted his armaments. His gun and cane, his hunter’s attire, with thin plates of bloodstone forged beneath the fabric. A belt was full of knives, six motives, and a music box.

The moment he passed the barrier the, music box played a tune. The tune seemed to shock the hunter. So he was Gascoigne. The song seemed to cause the hunter pain, and so taking advantage of the destruction, Izuku charged in, his whip struck at the man's legs. He was not going to win this, but he needed to learn about his fighting style. And how to weaken the man. A dagger to the shoulder and the man was sprinting at Izuku, his ax, massive and slow was perfect for shooting at. A depth strike of a cane and the man was back at him.

The man's next attack hit him full force, the armor under his attire dented under the force of the hit. Izuku could feel small parts of the armor crack and stab into his skin... better than the ax itself. Using the momentum to jump back, Izuku slashed out with his whip, the sharp edges carved through the other hunter's chest, and the blood spray rejuvenated Izuku as he was attacked again. This time Gascoigne did not allow Izuku any quarter slash after slash was delivered to the young hunter's body. And without stopping, Gascoigne transformed his ax and used it to trip Izuku. He couldn't even get to his knees before the ax came for his head.

Gascoigne battle notes: "Gascoigne, a hunter that uses the hunter's ax and a blunderbuss. Massive in stature, he can swing the ax with incredible speed and fires the blunderbuss whenever the enemy is trying to get away as a way to slow them down. Relentless in his pursuit to kill beasts, he must have allowed the bloodlust to control him... The music box can be used to cause his hind to take back control for mere moments. Due to his size and body type, he is hard to take down. Perhaps go for the Achilles tendon? Would it be smart to use the whip to wrap around his arm and sever one, allowing for a more successful takedown? If the beasthood were to present itself, use Molotovs and throwing knives at a distance. Even though he swings fast, he is open to being parried with a shot if fast enough. Prioritize parrys to get more hits in. He eventually switched to the transformed form of the hunter's ax, slower yet hits harder... could have more tricks."

The ability to cheat death worried Izuku. IF he gets to go home but does not get to keep the immortality... Then the likelihood of him accidentally throwing himself into a deadly situation seemed likely. But first, he needs to beat Gascoigne.

Izuku was back at the blood-encrusted grounds to the tomb in no time. He had needed to refill his makeshift daggers and repair his shoddy armor. But so far, the items were doing the trick. The throwing daggers hit their marks well enough, and the armor could take four solid hits before cracking completely in certain places. He needed better materials and more practice. Thankfully he had all the time in the world.

Gascoigne initiated the fight this time. He sprinted the distance between them in moments and went for a swing. Only to be parried, the bullet sizzled the hunter's flesh as he fell to his knees. And with a quick flick of his cane, Izuku sliced into the man's armpit, cleaving into his flesh, and began the switch into his whip. The blades unhooked from each other and dug into Gascoigne's flesh. And with a hearty yank, a portion of his side was torn off.

As the elder hunter got to his feet, four daggers dug into his chest, jagged and dull in some places; but digging in nonetheless. As the blades hit their mark Izuku forced himself to stay back, the bloodlust pulled at his psyche. Urging him to run in and hack and slash until the beast was nothing less than a pulp of blood and bone. But Izuku held back planning, and effort would take out the poor man in front of him. A hefty click drew Izuku's attention back to Gascoigne. The ax was longer now drawing his blunderbuss would take longer, allowing Izuku more room to operate.

"What's that smell? ... The sweet blood, oh, it sings to me. It's enough to make a man sick!" As he spoke Gascoigne ran forward, his ax head dragging a divot into the soil after him in a movement far too quick for a human; the ax flashed at Izuku, its blade flying at his chest. A resounding clang filled the air as Izuku was thrown back into a gravestone... his armor had cracked. A dive to the side saved Izuku from a quick path back to the dream, a turn on his heels, and he raised his gun and fired. Just catching the other hunter off guard and causing an opening, a quick slash of his cane and the other man's stomach was split. Blood flowed from the wound and healed Izuku a small amount, and with a second strike, the sound of a kneecap being shattered filled the air.

Suddenly the sweet bloody smell of beasthood filled the tomb. Izuku ran up the stairs as the smell of beasthood grew, and screams of Gascoigne filled the air. As he made it to the top, he watched as a beast in the tattered robes of Gascoigne cracked the stones as it sprinted at him. A quick click and the music box went off. And much like Gascoigne before, the beast seemed to remember the song. Grabbing a handful of his Molotovs, he hurled them at the poor man, the one he lit caused a fireball to explode from the beast. The sizzling of flesh and the stench of blood filled the air... As well as the retching of Izuku as he threw up.

The mother had died. She must have been running from her mad husband as he was consumed by the beasthood... Izuku took the broach in hand and headed up to the cathedral. Through the door, Gascoigne had the key to and up a ladder. The ladder led into a room FILLED with books and all kinds of nicknacks.

Izuku took his time scouring the dusty tomes and tools, and much to Izuku's joy, the blood gem tool had been stowed into a drawer in this room. Suddenly a little hand grabbed at his pant leg. A messenger, or well... a LOT of messengers, started to fill the floor of the room, each one snagging a book or two before disappearing into the floor and then reappearing to grab more. The one pulling at his leg reached for the tool in his hand, so he gave it to the little guy. They would take care of it.

Continuing up the stairs, Izuku found himself in the cathedral proper. The cathedral was filled with the incense that repelled beasts. Suddenly a voice spoke from his right, " Ahh, a hunter are ya? Very sorry, the incense must've masked your scent." Started the sickly creature swaddled in red cloth, "Good, good. I've been waiting for one of your ilk. These hunts have everyone all locked up inside. Waiting for it to end... It always does, always has, y'know. Since forever. But it won't end very nicely, not this time. Even some folks hiding inside are goin' bad. The screams of wimminfolk, the stench of blood, the snarls of beasts... none of em's too uncommon now. Yharnam's done fer, I tell ya. But if you spot anyone with their wits about 'em... Tell 'em about this here Oedon Chapel. They'll be safe here. The incense wards off the beasts. Spread the word... tell 'em to come on over. If you wouldn't mind... Hee hee..."

“Wh-what are you?” Izuku really didn’t want to insult the other person… but there was so much wrong about them. Their skin was greying and sickly, and from the look of their eyes… they were blind. Their limbs were long and bony and just sick all around.

"O-Oh! s'bin a while since I've had guests! I apologize. People call me the Chapel Dweller! a-and from the sound of yer voice... you're pretty young fer a hunter." They sounded as scared as he had felt the entirety of his time in Yharnam...

"I-i'll tell people t-to come here... Okay? I-In fact I, already have two I want to send here already!" Gerhman has said after the hunter was the safest place in Yharnam. Which meant this Chapel.

"Oh! R-really, truly fer a younga hunta you shur are kind... I-I do hope they get here safe though..."

As Izuku heard the dweller say this, he lit the lantern... he needed to walk the lady and the girl here himself... for the girl, he would need to clear the streets before they could even head off. And so he went to the dream. So he could read his new books and craft some better gear.

———————————————————

Izuku headed a direct path from the tomb to the little girl's window. All the while making sure that anything from a crow to the pig was dead. He would not allow the little girl to die. However, a surprise awaited him when he made it to the widow. It was the little girl's older sister. She had just made it back a few minutes before Izuku... and when she saw the broach in his hand. Well... she needed to be strong for her little sister.

The conversation was quick between Izuku and the sister. He would guide them to Oedon Chapel, where they would be safe for the night. And in return, Izuku could have the blood gem encased in the broach. It was not a decision Izuku made. The older sister wanted him to use it to keep himself safe and, in turn, her sister safe.

The walk to the Chapel was quiet for the most part. Izuku carried the little sister to shield her eyes from the blood-soaked cobbles of the streets she lived on. Slowly but surely, they walked the distance, the little girl talking about all kinds of things she found interesting. And asking him questions about what it was like to be a hunter. It was soothing. Even though he had to kill their father, they would be safe tonight in the Chapel.

When they had made it into the Chapel itself, he handed the older sister a pistol he bought and modified. It was weaker than his but good enough that if the dweller tried anything... well, he would likely die. And after asking the messengers to get enough children and storybooks to last a few nights, Izuku headed into the dream. The old woman would have to wait a moment.

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The new books had taken up a large portion of the workshop... much to Gerhman's displeasure. Though his mood did lighten when Izuku had handed him a large stack of... smut books. Surprisingly most of the books were helpful in some way. There were books on sewing and smithing. Some were on philosophy and geography, a few were on math weirdly. But for the most part, the books were hunter books. Books on the anatomy of beasts, arts the Choir had learned from delving into the arcane. A few of the books were on how to increase the efficiency of blood vials and a large book of hunter tool modifications.

It was the modification book that stole Izuku's immediate attention. Pages on attachments for all kinds of tools and weapons employed by hunters throughout the years. One of the canes was a dark beast battery, which, if the Threaded Cane was transformed into whip form, allowed for passive electricity to run throughout the weapon. There were hundreds of addons for the hunter tools, some massive and others small.

Closing the book, he took out one on smithing or, well, the twelve on smithing. A few hours, or days in the dream, passed as Izuku read and practiced what he learned from the pages. Occasionally he needed to head to Yharnam to get some supplies. Taking the metal off the mob as he went and storing them into a make-shift backpack for later use.

Izuku had become... okay at smithing. The armor was still lumpy and uncomfortable, and the daggers were still misshapen. But now, they could at least do something. Gerhman was confused at first when he made the armor. To Gerhman, hunters needed to be faster than the enemies they fought... but then he realized his short student did not have the legs necessary to clear some attacks. So he advised his protege on how to hit the hammer correctly. Just because he had no need for the forge does not mean he did not know how to smith.

After another week or so, Izuku was in the dream. He had headed to lead the old lady to the safe place. The path was relatively the same in length... Much fewer ladders to the Chapel than with the little girl and her sister. By the time they made it, the old lady was really xenophobic... like to a stupid degree. So he headed back to the dream. He had more books to read through. And the girls were still on their first.

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Allergies have shut down my existence so writing took longer than I wanted.

Thank you to:

Randomsumofa*gum (AO3)

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Thanks for voting/ commenting on the last chapters! It means a lot to me. If you are in the discord tell me and ill be saying hello from the end of chapters! And thanks Arcanfy (AO3) for a song-poem I’m going to use eventually! Those who hold conversations it’s like when an author releases a new chapter for me. It’s really fun to talk to you all!

Have a nice day/night and I hope you will consider joining my discord!

https://discord.gg/Uu8xBKUkJq

Also if you do see a part that makes no sense in the way it’s written please tell me. Sinuses are killing me and I think I might have messed up on something! - Author!

P.s. I wrote this today! Hope you all like it!

P.p.s. To those on FF I’m sorry I can’t reply but I think all your input is amazing!

Chapter 6: CH6 Old Yharnam pt1

Chapter Text

The art of quickening... One of the more useful hunter arts Izuku could have, but also one of the hardest skills to learn. The deaths Izuku had suffered due to it had been some of the more painful ones. An arm, phasing into a wall. An inch too close to a hit, tripping halfway and fusing with the floor. It reminded Izuku of one of the second, becoming third years at UA. Mirio Togata had the quirk Permeation, one of the cooler quirks… Other than the fact it caused his clothes to fall off. One mess up with quickening and he would phase into some material. Unlike the Permeation quirk, quickening didn’t have the failsafe of throwing its user out of the material they phase into on accident.

Another difference between the quirk and the skill was that Izuku could still breathe while quickened. It had been during one of Mirio’s interviews after the second year’s sports festival. He had said that he couldn’t see, hear, or breathe while using his quirk, which meant that every time he attacked, it was more prediction than anything. This, however, caused Izuku to have an epiphany. The hunter arts were almost like stronger versions of quirks in a way. Some of the skills, like quickening, reminded Izuku of quirks he had read up on in the past. Basic elemental control, phasing, precognition, enhanced body, hyper regeneration, healing. The only differences were the drawbacks. For a hunter, they were minimal or took lots of training to get used to the skill. But for quirked people. It took years to master or even get close to becoming proficient with their quirk. But here, Izuku was nearly at the skill level of a second year at UA with their quirk, with one of the more basic skills.

It almost felt like he was cheating. He theoretically had all the time in the world to get stronger. He wasn’t aging, so if he escaped a hundred years from now, he could still be a hero… But, what is the time difference between this world and his own? Was it the same day; was it years into the future? If he escapes… will he ever see his mom again?

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If it was not for Gerhman… Izuku would be so lost. When he walked out of the chapel and saw the porcelain faced… people? Izuku had no idea where to go. He had upgraded the sharpness of his cane and whip, as well as the caliber of his gun. And yet… he was f*cking so confused. Cathedral Ward was a cluster f*ck of chaos. It had the porcelain-faced people, these GIANT f*ckers with axes eh would so be stipping down for metals, and the f*cking crows and hunchbacks. OH! And some asshole giant with a GIANT f*ckIN BALL.

But that is neither here nor there. Thanks to some tips, and a map, from Gerhman. Izuku was on his way to Old Yharnam. Down a set of stairs. Through a small crowd of the mob and their demon dogs. And Izuku was in the Church. The only path down to Old Yharnam… however, a man was praying at an altar. Just outside the chapel. So in typical Izuku fashion, he walked up to speak with them… cautiously.

The man near-instantly heard Izuku’s footsteps as he grew closer to him. Quickly he stood up and turned around to greet him. Whilst also taking a glance at Iuku's attire and weapons. “You're a hunter, aren't you?” He spoke with a voice much like that of a hero Izuku had researched once, quickly diverting his thoughts. Izuku responded with a quick, “O-Oh! Yes, I am a hunter.”

The blond-haired man grinned happily at the answer, “I knew it. That's precisely how I started out! Oh, beg pardon, you may call me Alfred. A protege of Master Logarius, hunter of Vilebloods. So, what say you? Our prey might differ, but we are hunters, both of us. Why not cooperate, and discuss the things we've learned?”

“I… I don’t see why not? I-I’m a bit new to Yharnam. Can you tell me anything important?”

The joyful grin only grew as they continued to speak, "Oh-hoh! Very good, very good indeed! Take this, to celebrate our acquaintance." In the man’s hand was a coarse paper. A closer inspection of the course paper reminded Izuku of the sanding paper his dad had left at their home… as well as the unfinished toy he was making Izuku… But this paper reeked of burning and, he remembered reading about it in the books. It was fire paper! It worked like magic by rubbing a weapon in it. It set the weapon ablaze for a certain amount of time.

“There must be oodles for us to share! You mention you were new to Yharnam? Well since you're new here there are lots of topics we could talk about! So I’ll start us off with some topics! There are the Healing Church, Byrgenwerth, and the wretched Vilebloods!”

The man was... enthusiastic to say the least, “W-what do you know about the Healing Church?”

"As you know, or don’t, the Healing Church is the fountainhead of blood healing! But... Well, I'm a simple hunter, quite unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the institution. But I have heard that the holy medium of blood healing is venerated in the main cathedral. And that councilors of the old church reside in the high stratum of the Cathedral Ward. If you seek blood healing, and the Church is willing, you should pay them a visit. Other than that though… I’m not quite well informed about them."

That was some useful information… Alfred seemed sane enough from what he could gather too! Maybe he would see more of him while on the hunt! “T-That is good to know… but you mentioned a place called Byrgenwerth? Is- is that how you say it?”

"Byrgenwerth is an old place of learning. And the tomb of the gods carved out below Yharnam, should be familiar to every hunter. But you did mention you were new so I’ll tell you some of what I know!” Alfred seemed to think for a moment before he spoke, “Well, once a group of young Byrgenwerth scholars discovered a holy medium deep within the tomb. This led to the founding of the Healing Church, and the establishment of blood healing. In this sense, everything sacred in Yharnam can be traced back to Byrgenwerth. But today, the college lies deep within a tangled wood, abandoned and decrepit. And furthermore, the Healing Church has declared Byrgenwerth forbidden ground. It's unclear how many of its scholars remain alive...but only they know the password that allows passage through the gate."

“Y-you also mentioned Vilebloods? What are those? Wh-why are they wretched?”

"Ah, there's something I want to tell you. A bit of wisdom from the eminent Master Logarius!” Alfred spoke excitedly as they got on this topic, “Once, a scholar betrayed his fellows at Byrgenwerth...and brought forbidden blood back with him to Cainhurst Castle. It was there that the first of the inhuman Vilebloods was born. The Vilebloods are fiendish creatures who threaten the purity of the Church's blood healing. The Ruler of the Vilebloods is still alive today. And so, to honor my master's wishes, I search for the path to Cainhurst Castle."

“You seem to know a lot about Vilebloods… do you know any more about them?” Izuku's interest peaked at these other blooded people.

Alfred seemed to think for a moment before he spoke, "In his time, Master Logarius led his executioners into Cainhurst Castle to cleanse it of the Vilebloods. But all did not go well and Master Logarius became a blessed anchor, guarding us against evil...Tragic, tragic times...that Master Logarius should be abandoned in the accursed domain of the Vilebloods. I must free him, so that he may be properly honored in martyrdom."

————

Information gathering was one of Izuku’s strong suits. He had seventeen books filled with quirk analysis, even though a few had gotten destroyed. He had always been good at it, whether it was essays that needed analysis that he aced or his spare time, filling his notebooks, the words needed to figure out a quirk were never far away from him, so finding the components to fire paper? Easier than expected… that and he had all the time in the world.

Fire paper was incredible. Its property to bind to any weapon without an element. Its ability to cauterize, and burn the recipient. Which both slow down the enemies due to the ripping of their now cauterized flesh. And the burns themselves. The only flaw was the strength varied on the creator of the paper. Most of the fire paper seemed to be made by amateurs of the craft. It was brittle, and the flames it created only heated up so much. After, a quick dive into the hunter’s notebook. And some other texts on hunter weapons Izuku had found the components of fire paper.

A coarse sheet of paper, much like sandpaper, or multiple sheets of normal paper. The creator’s blood and a hot furnace. Thankfully he had a large amount of paper in supply thanks to the messengers.

The first step was easy, bathe the paper in the blood and put it to a boil. The smell is horrendous but, once the blood had evaporated, the paper would take on the arcane and blood-tinged properties of the wielder’s blood. Next was heating the furnace to nearly one thousand degrees and placing the bloodied paper into a steel container. Then as the soon-to-be fire paper heats. Pepper the papers in bloodied gunpowder and coal (also thanks to the messengers).

The final step in the creation of fire paper was letting the paper cool in any form of flammable substance. Thankfully the lanterns of the townspeople held Kerosene.

The final product was a much sturdier form of fire paper, most likely due to his tie to arcane… or his blood tinge. Whatever it was, did not matter. The flames of the new fire paper burned nearly double in heat and twice as long.

————

Old Yharnam stunk. It smelled like charred earth and seared flesh and hair. It almost made Izuku gag as he saw the flaming corpses of the beasts. Then suddenly a voice rang throughout the city.

“You there, hunter. Didn't you see the warning? Turn back at once." The voice was angry, and he did see the warning. But beasts were beasts.

"Old Yharnam, burned and abandoned by men, is now home only to beasts. They are of no harm to those above. Turn back..." Was- was this hunter a lunatic? No harm to those above? As long as the beasts plagued Old Yharnam they were a threat.

"...or the hunter will face the hunt."

Izuku really did not like the sound of that. It had been… what? Two months since he was thrown into Yharnam? It felt like he was going crazy with all the stress and bloodlust that battered his brain. But he had persevered against thousands of the mob as he went throughout the city of Central Yharnam. And this… this hunter wanted to spare beasts? Did they deserve remorse for the people they had killed? The families they had destroyed? They were worse than villains from his world, and they deserved worse.

Izuku cleaved through waves of the beasts, their claws layered in poisons and blood. But that did not dissuade Izuku’s whip from slicing them to bits. "You are a skilled hunter. Adept, merciless, half-cut with blood. As the best hunters are… Which is why I must stop you!" And with that final cry of anger, constant gunfire filled the city.

Izuku quickly took cover from the fire and watched in astonishment as a constant rain of bullets cracked and shattered the statues he was hiding behind. But the gunfire didn't last forever. So heading down the only path available, he came face to face with a beast much bigger than the beasts before. It towered over him in size, but much like its smaller counterparts, they did not last long.

Izuku was a path of destruction in Old Yharnam. Through a destroyed room filled with explosives. And through a large throng of beasts whilst also hiding from the constant gunfire of the crazed hunter. Once he finally made it to a place of calm, he took a breath. The bloodlust was pounding in the back of his head, constantly there like an itch he could not scratch when a hunter jumped him. They carried on them a pistol and a saw weapon… and yet they walked among the beast without being attacked.

He should have been more conservative during the altercation with the hunter. He had rushed in like a blood-drunk fool. But using the gunfire from the other hunter to kill this one did the trick. But he was much too far in the plateau of burning corpses to dodge the gunfire. He had taken too many shots and he was being chased by the massive crows. He was next to an edge, the crows on one side, the gunfire carving through his defense and a few beasts were skulking to his other side. So he took the easy way out and dived off the edge and then everything went black.

——

When he woke, he was not back in the dream. He was still in Old Yharnam, specifically down the pit he jumped down. Grabbing a vial he jabbed it into his leg, watching the mangled limb stitch itself together and twist bones back into place. As well as a shot of pain filling his entire lower body… which had been numb before he injected himself. Had he snapped his spinal cord?

Slowly standing up, with the help of a wall. The young hunter entered the doorway he had landed near. The room was dark and massive. But in the darkness, he could hear the shuffling of beasts. As well as the nauseating smell of death. A quick flick of a match and the hand lantern on his side was blazing golden light through the room. From the light, he saw a large number of beasts. Shifting his weight off his cane and onto a wall he got ready for the small hoard to charge at him. And that they did. The largest of the group made it to him first, its arms benign sliced off and its head launched across the room. Another injection and the pain in his body ceased. Two more hands drew near and met their demise before they could even touch the young hunter. Three down… way too many to go.

His walking was more of a stumble as he made his way through the building. His clothes damp and sodden with blood. He had collected all things from the building by the time he was done. The most important was the spear he had gotten ahold of. He would look at it at a later date. He crossed through a broken window, his back screaming at him as he found himself back at the plateau of burning corpses. The blood was incredible for patching up wounds, but nerve damage was much less healable.

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The daylight burned into Izuku’s retinas as he stared at the slowly darkening sky. The burn wasn’t registering in the young boy's mind as he laid in the damp grass of the afternoon. Kaachan had been extra vicious that particular day. The roaring insults that carved deep to crack his bones and his resolve. The heat of explosions seared deep within his brain. It was a blessing he had lasted as long as he had going through this torture. He had no one. The teachers were no better than their students. The students took after Kaachan and copied his acts to the T whenever they could… it was a surprise he did not have nerve damage yet.

Perhaps he had been too optimistic as he stared up at the sky. Perhaps, if he had expected the scalding water and hate-filled eyes of the rest of his classmates, it wouldn't have ended like this. What did he do to deserve this? He had stopped writing in his notebooks, but that seemed to make Kaachan angrier. He stopped mumbling and speaking entirely at school. He sat there and took every beating and every insult in hopes that it would just end. Whether it be by them having mercy on him… or finally killing him. Izuku didn't care.

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The height of the clock tower was intimidating. Not because of the height itself. More of the fact that there was a crazed man with a minigun on the top. He had originally attempted to speak with the man, but any semblance of diplomacy the man had was used to insult and belittle him.

It was beginning to piss him off.

He had been stabbed, beheaded, shot, bisected, and thrown from the top of this damn clocktower many, many times. It was starting to become irritating. Was there no diplomacy in Yharnam?

On the final steps of the ladder, Izuku pulled out his gun. If he could be shot off, then why not the other way around? Pulling himself to the top he fired the moment he could see the other hunter. Once, twice, three times and, the other hunter had fallen off the roof. Mere moments later, he was met with a sickening crack of a body hitting a wooden bridge.

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Holy sh*t this took way too long for how much I wrote. The combination of school ramping up due to the year ending soon and some personal projects has kept me busy. I had most of this written the same week ch5 came out but wanted to fit all of old yharnam.... But that didn't go as expected.

I'm sorry it took so long. That one guy who wants Izuku to shoot some poor f*ck with a cannon… yes. And to the other who asked how I was doing, I'm well. Just exhausted recently and busy. The next chapter will be longer. Double the length to make up for this one and will likely have some new tinkered with tools!

Also! Thoughts on if I should put some future flashbacks? Like... IDK what they’re called… scenes of after he gets out? The main part of the story will be this for now but it would be fun to give a bit of the future. Idk I love all your guy’s feedback and predictions! Hope I finish ch7 within this month!

Chapter 7: CH7 Bloody Deeds

Chapter Text

The heavy stench of blood filled Central Yharnam’s cemetery. The residences would tell you that the Tomb of Oedon was one of the only places in Central Yharnam that had soft soil. The rest of Yharnam had been reinforced with stone and bricks when the hunts had first started. Mostly to keep clean up of the aftermath easier. But they had always taken pride in the cemetery for its soft soil.

Soil Izuku was taking advantage of. The idea had struck him as he was on a search for bloodstones. Since the stones could only be made of a substance in beast blood that congeals together and crystalizes, Izuku decided to act on a theory he had. It took nearly two hours of digging but, he eventually made a pit in the soft dirt of the tomb… Which he preceded to slaughter the beasts of Central Yharnam and drag their bleeding corpses into the hole. And thanks to a recent investment in the KirkHammer, An obtuse stone cube that hunters use to mash beasts into paste… Something Izuku would take advantage of.

The entire process to nearly five hours, from the digging, killing, and dragging of the bodies. To the crushing and pulverizing of the bodies. And to make the process faster, Izuku used a rake he took from one of the mob to scoop up the less liquid remains. And as Izuku sat, staring into the deep crimson pool… He couldn’t help but laugh. The slightly mad chuckles turned into crazed giggles and then into deranged sobbing as it donned of the poor hunter what he was doing.

And the worst part? He did not even feel bad. Not for desecrating the graves, of the bodies, not the murder and the bloodlust he had trouble dousing in a battle. He felt dirty… even when he went back to the serene Dream and sat with the Doll and or Gehrman. When he was in the forge, working on a project or reading to learn something he needed to know. He felt itchy, his hands felt heavy and, he could not help but scratch and scratch until blood was drawn from his hands and arms.

Eventually, he came back to his scenes the pool of cold crimson blood had shrunk. Peeking from the thick liquid were shards, some larger and doubled, and others normal-sized shards. And while scooping through the sludge, Izuku found quite a haul but, it was not enough… He’d need to do this again.

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The… ah… Gatling Gun? It wasn’t advanced enough to be a minigun, but it was still much too advanced to be the Gatling gun from his world… Anyway, it was advanced much more than his meager pistol, but also much too large for him to just… take and use. But that did not mean he couldn’t disassemble it and write down the steps and mark each piece with a number then, send each piece with the messengers.

And so he did exactly that; With a jar of paint and a handful of tools, Izuku set to deconstructing the nearly five-foot monster of steel and gunpowder. Hours had passed, and he had just managed to get the almost a thousand part gun into the hands of the messengers. And back to the Dream... The number of unnecessary bolts and segments was really causing Izuku to have a migraine.

———

Izuku had always been a diligent studier. For every test and every lesson, he poured over the material until he could recite it by memory… even though his teachers made sure to keep him at the bottom of the class. So learning gunsmithing and weaponsmithing turned out to be a breeze. With the help of Gerhman in the forge and The Doll, in the sewing of his new armored garb, Izuku donned his new gear.

His new hunter’s grab wasn’t the bland black fabric that generic hunters use. Instead, it was a rich deep brown with green accents. Under the garb was chainmail that covered nearly his entire body. It was forged from the steel and bloodstone and weighed quite a bit but thankfully didn’t hinder his maneuverability. In his right hand, he held a modified pistol. Using parts, Izuku had scavenged from the Gatling gun. And a few pieces from a repeater pistol, he had an oddly shaped hunk of metal. Which allowed him to fire bullets faster than with the original pistol. In his left hand, he wielded his cane. It had been reinforced as far as he could with the materials he had. It was longer than what he had used before. Tts blades in whip form had been refined and soaked in his blood while he worked on the rest of his gear. It had glowed an eerie red from the moment he pulled the still warm steel from his blood.

Izuku felt more than ready to fight the beast that dwelt in Old Yharnam.

———

"O Flora, of the moon, of the Dream. O little ones, O fleeting will of the ancients... Let the hunter be safe, let him find comfort. And let this Dream, his captor... foretell a pleasant awakening... be, one day, a fond, distant memory..."

She had heard this little prayer from her porcelain creation many times over the years. It was one of the only things that made her feel real at times.

When she first ascended into being a great one, she made a promise... a promise to stop the others from destroying the little colony of small people. But eventually, as time passed, she could not keep her eyes open forever and, she fell into a deep slumber. To say she wasn’t mad at the little people for defining the other’s old corpses for their blood would be a lie. But her body was much too far in the dungeons to ever be discovered by the little people, so she just watched in fascination as their queries called out to them. She gave them a smidgen of her power, a burst of moonlight, fused into a sword. She watched as the mortals fought against the taint they had been infected with. But even still, the little people were losing. The beasts the other’s blood had held were too powerful, and the small people were losing too many to ever fight back. So she accepted the call of that first hunter.

Since that day, she had been the shepherd in a way to the small hunters. She chose them on a whim. Their hopes and dreams, their hates and dislikes... they were what she looked into deeply; Jacob, Samuel, Djura, Eileen, the countless other hunters she had blessed. But not one had been so desperate, so scorned, so hated and full of sorrow as the little green. So she whisked him away and blessed him. She left him on the doorstep of one of her believers and his companion. And he gave the little green some of her own blood… It was hard watching her follower cut and suture her little hunter. It was even harder to watch her little hunter fight her help.

But her blood had changed him. He was the first hunter to be able to influence her Dream. The first hunter to protect her host from his nightmares and the porcelain being from her woes.

She had let each and every hunter go at some point. She had to... they would hunt the other great ones and inevitably hunt her. But if she had to die to the little green… then so be it. There were worse deaths than to someone she could not help but have her eyes open for.

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The sickly sweet stench burned into Izuku’s head as he walked up to the massive and beaten cathedral in front of him. His mind was buzzing with blood lust as he stepped foot in the large building. His hands twitched and grasped his weapons tighter. Down the corridor of pillars stood a beast, its bones protruding from its stretched flesh. The dried blood that caked the walls and floor seemed to shiver and crack as Izuku walked deeper into the corridor. The red glow of his whip called it to awaken.

When Izuku had soaked the blades of his whip in his blood, it seemed to bring something out of the bloodstone-infused blades. Blood stuck to his whip, creating a sickening red crescent with every slash; Blood resonance, the connection between the weapon and master forged from blood.

The beast in front of Izuku seemed to shiver. Its eyes locked on the wave of blood that cascaded across the whip as it trailed behind him.

The battle started with the beast looking to end the engagement early, a quick swipe to the head. But The strike hit open air as Izuku rolled under it, quickly slashing at the beast’s exposed bones through the thin skin and malnourished muscle. A horrendous shriek filled the once quiet Chapple as the beast went into a blind fury. It swiped and clawed, but Izuku was a few steps ahead of every swipe. A gunshot rang out, splitting the weakened bone of the beast’s leg. It staggered for mear moments, but that was enough, swinging the bloodied whip it wrapped around the beast’s forearm. Shrill screams filled the air as a muscle and bone got shredded and ripped until the wet thump of a dismembered arm filled the air. It was not deterred, however, by its lost limb like a wounded beast. It fought even more vigorously. Swiping at the young hunter, ripping through the front of his garb and sinking an inch into the chainmail that covered him. A flash of panic that would have caused his death got drowned out by anger and hatred. It took him days to learn to make chainmail, much less make it.

Pushing through the pain of his injuries. A click filled the air as Izuku speared his cane into the beasts gaping maw. Another click responded as he wrenched upward, splitting the head of the beast. The air was thick with rot and poison. The blood clotted at his feet as he popped an antidote to clear the pain in his head. But the deep gasping breaths he took did not get him the air he needed as he shook, and the rage did not go away with its death. Its miserable death did nothing to alleviate the burn that blossomed through his chest. His wound was not deep; It was not even the problem. It died too f*cking fast.

——————————————————

The ripping of an envelope filled the quiet apartment. Izuku quickly read over the letter from one of the high schools he had applied to. Sure it was early but, he had taken the tests to move up and pass a grade… He just wanted out of the hell he was stuck in. But the hope cracked in his chest as he read the letter… The first of many.

“We are sorry to inform you Mr. Midoriya, but our distinguished school does not accept people who are not up to our standards. While you did apply a whole ten months early to our school, with the grades to go ahead and move up. We do not accept quirkless. We as an establishment reserved the right to turn away anyone we please. Once again Mr. Midoriya we apologize but you cannot make it to our school.”

Izuku hurriedly ripped apart the letter of rejection. Whipping the beginning of tears from his eyes, he moved on.

“We apologize to inform you Mr. Midoriya, but we just can not accept a quirkless-”

“I am sorry to tell you that while your grades would normally guarantee you a spot, we receive seats for those with quirks-”

“Denied.”

“You are not accepted into our school.”

“We cannot accept you into our school, while academically you are the safe bet, we cannot support a student that will never find a job.”

"As much as we would love to have you as a student, the call we made to your father-"

Paper after paper… forty-one schools across japan that were relatively near him. Forty-one letters of rejection. Ten schools with heroics classes outright refused to read his letter. Twenty of the worst high schools in japan called themselves Prodigious and refused to tarnish their good name. And eleven schools that he had just sent a letter to out of desperation…

Izuku had never felt so disheartened before… but there was one final hope. The sounds of the last letter being opened filled the air. The red symbol of UA on a wax seal was broken and, the contents were laid bare to Izuku.

“Dear Izuku Midoriya, we at UA are all-inclusive, and while we would love to see you this year, we feel like most people your age will need to wait to join our school. This, however, is not a rejection letter, seeing as you have applied to forty-one other schools, and from the investigation, you have been denied admission. We will keep a chair open for you Mr. Midoriya. It is not every day we get someone who passes the out-of-level test with scores like yours. We as staff hope you can wait the next ten and a half months for your acceptance letter to our general education course. If you wish to move to either support, business, or heroics, you will need to pass their additive tests.

Sincerely yours, Nedzu. The principle of UA High School.”

That night the cold of the Midoriya household felt a little bit warmer.

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Izuku had been very confused when the door that had been locked in the Chapple mysteriously opened while he was gone… not that he was complaining about it opening. He had been stuck on where to go for a couple days. Scouring the tiniest cracks and crevices in all of Yharnam to find out where to go. So he ascended the elevator up to hopefully the place he needed to go.

Then swiftly got filled with quicksilver bullets… where the hell did they learn to put Gatling guns on wheelchairs?

After riding the elevator up again, Izuku sprinted around the wheelchair-bound gentleman hiding in the opposite corner of the doorway. The poor guy could not turn fast enough to intercept the sharp edge of Izuku’s cane.

Besides, the now-deceased man was a large chest, its contents? Some odd stone slab with a weird etching in it. Deciding to just keep it for later Izuku, handed it to one of the waiting messengers, who gladly took it with a small chirp.

Continuing down the only path, Izuku was once again almost killed upon entering the now open area. He stood on a bridge that led to a massive tower in front of him. The sides of the bridge were guarded with fragile rails that then dropped down to the melancholy streets yards below. Leaving the only cover from the volley of bullets to be the doorway behind him.

With a quick spurt of focus quickening activated, the handful of bullets phased through the young hunter as he launched himself across the bridge to the only ground floor defender he could see. Quickly dispatching the elderly mob member Izuku, gingerly stepped into the first floor of the tower… Only to be met with a scimitar to the left shoulder, the enraged yell of the mob member that struck him drew the attention of the small group, two with a butcher knife, two with an ax and torch, another with a gun, and one with their flimsy wooden shield. And the one with their sword in his shoulder.

Swiftly Izuku swung his cane now, transforming into its whip form he cleaved through a charging ax man and butcher. While placing a bullet into their rifleman's forehead, the burning pain of the scimitar in his shoulder being pulled out called for Izuku to roll to his right. The sword, narrowly missing Izuku. Another swift bullet ended the offending attacker. The final ax man narrowly missed with his torch and was met with a swipe of Izuku’s blood-red whip. The shield man Izuku had rolled past charged, knocking into Izuku as he shot the other butcher. A swift click and Izuku’s cane were buried inside the man's head.

With a deep breath and a quick injection of Yharnam blood, Izuku was scavenging the room for all its valuables. In a chest, there was a new bloodstone. A good amount of blood vials littered the floor, and the rifleman had a pouch of bullets. Izuku proceeded to give the weapons to the messengers. He could always use the material.

Continuing his ascent up the tower, Izuku peaked his head quietly over the stone railing of the stairs. In one corner, there was another wheelchair-bound, Gatling gun guy. And beside him was another mob member with a scimitar. Crouching close to the ground, Izuku sprinted around the railing, quickly transforming his cane into a whip he cleaved through the gunman's neck and the swordsman's chest, his whip pulling the streams of blood into itself. Quickly finishing off the swordsman a low grunt came from the doorway behind Izuku, and he was launched across the room with a massive cinder block. The thin chainmail cracked from the impact; small bits dug into Izuku as he rolled across the dusty floor. His side screamed at him as he moved to get up, bones protesting as he injected another vial.

The quick relief from the burning pain almost caused Izuku to miss his opportunity in the giant hunchback's charge. A swift bullet in the massive man's shoulder had him careening off course and slamming into the wall. Running behind the colossal man, Izuku jumped and stabbed down from above. His cane, digging into the man's back, and with a click, bones and flesh were severed and destroyed as Izuku pulled, ripping his whip and most of the man's shoulder out of his body.

Izuku only gave himself a few seconds to breathe before he continued on the doorway led to a walkway without fencing, and in front of Izuku stood the two who tried to shoot him when went to walk across the bridge. Running forward, a quick swipe of his cane to one of their throats ended the first one. However, the other had pulled the trigger. Pain blossomed in Izuku’s chest, but he carried on, ending the other with a couple strikes.

The pain continued to grow as Izuku leaned against the wall of the tower. The bullet had entered his right lung and, there was no exit wound, meaning it was nestled somewhere in his chest cavity. Sliding down to the hard stone floor blood, started filling his throat. A blood vial would heal the wound with the bullet in it. Acting as quickly as he could, he reached for the ground next to him, a messenger showing up in time with his medical supplies.

Grasping the longest pair of tweezers in the kit, Izuku pushed it into the bullet wound. The pain caused spasms in the muscles the tweezers were going past, and the shredded muscles caught the searching metal. Until he brushed against the offending object lodged in his chest.

With a mighty pull, the bullet came loose and out of his chest. One of the smaller messengers responded quickly with a vial, causing mass mitosis and blood creation. The cracked and snapped ribs knit themselves into place and mended as the organs and muscles healed rapidly.

Izuku sat there for thirty, maybe forty minutes coughing, up blood and chunks of dead flesh. The messengers, clinging to his hands and legs, looking on with their little eyes in worry. Some came and went as the blood did its work. Brining small tablets of minerals and vitamins his body needed to heal correctly. Some brought him chunks of grilled meats, and one of the biggest brought half a loaf of bread.

The healing took longer, essentially due to malnourishment. Izuku had forgotten to eat in the Dream many times. Leading to loss of body fat and nourishment. And reducing the recovery of vital body parts.

The effort to stand was great, but the supply of food and liquids thanks to the messengers got him back into fighting shape within two hours. Walking with a minute stagger from his small worried companions, Izuku started climbing the ladder that led to the next layer of the tower.

Once Izuku had made it to the top of the ladder, he began his search for the doorway, and once he found it headed inside. In front of Izuku was another man in a wheelchair. However, this time with a bird mask and a flame sprayer in his hand. To Izuku's left, hiding in the dark shadows of the large circular room, another scimitar wielder was hidden, and down the hallway in front of him, another flame sprayer man in a wheelchair. With a click, Izuku was off the blood that had clung to his whip sprang out when he swung. Increasing the already deadly range of his whip to cleave through the entirety of the room. Cutting the scimitar man in half and the head off the first fireman. Not wanting to be set ablaze, Izuku rushed forward towards the second, stopping halfway there and heaving his whip downward towards the man, embedding deep into his head.

Another breath and, he was searching the corpses and the room for more items of interest. One of them was the flame sprayers. And another was an item in a chest, a shining sword crest.

——————————————————

After the initial run through the tower, Izuku found more books! The walls were lined with old hunters' weapons and tools. Small stacks of books on their creation and implementation in battle were strewn about. Old tomes and notebooks that once laid abandoned were dusted off and whisked off to the Dream. There were even some... naughtier books for Gerhman...

But that did not deter the young hunter from sprawling out on the floor of the more open workshop. Ever since the first influx of books, the building had only gotten larger; More space for books and more benches for devices and items. The desolate nothing that surrounded the floating island of the Dream seemed farther away. The small patches of flowers looked healthier and better cared for as the Doll had more tools to attend to them with. The old graves surrounding the edge of the island's limits had been re-chiseled with names and dates. The once dim moon that hung above the Dream seemed to gleam.

The Dream was more alive than ever. Izuku learning different trades kept him busy when he needed to think. The once small cramped bedroom hidden behind the workshop Gerhman used had become spacious enough for his rickety old wheelchair to get through. The ledge the Doll sat on lost its sharp edges as Izuku spent hours sanding it.. even when the Doll explained it was not a problem for her.

Small items appeared as Izuku worked on tools, sometimes sleeping Gerhman would wake to find a quilt that was never in the Dream. And sometimes, the Doll would find small tokens and papers that rambled about heros. Even Izuku would find things he thought he would never see again. Pages of old notes burned by Katsuki and his old friends. Once, he had even found a small photo he did not even know existed. One that would fit inside a locket that showed the Midoriya family before Izuku turned four.

The items from Izuku's world worried the two who had lived in the Dream for decades. They could not tell if the objects or the larger area of the Dream was Izuku's doing... or the moon. Even the marking on Izuku's arm had become more intricate. The Hunters rune was layered in moon runes. Intermittently layered with runes for guidance and protection... They could only hope the moon had taken a liking for the boy... because the other options were worrying.

——————————————————

Gerhman had always liked gardening. Ever since Izuku came to the Dream... it was like the Dream was trying to appease them, small items from Izuku's past and now even his. A new plot had appeared with fertilizer and seeds. So he took advantage of it. It was like farming on a smaller scale. And Gerhman had not thought of farming in years. As a kid, he had hated his father's old rickety shack that was towered by the slow-growing stone metropolis that Yharnam was becoming. The large fields of wheat and other crops were his father and brother's lively hood. But Gerhman had always been caught thinking of what kind of jobs existed in Yharnam… And what kind of girls lived there... He really never got to find out.

____

The teasing drawl of his brother reached young Gerhman's ears as he stared at the growing city in the distance, "Ya will neva get strong with carrying those small stacks Gerhm! The swinging of'a scythe and tha cutting of grain, It'll do ya some good! Those scrawny arms wou'd neva get you a girl at this rate!"

Gerhman's face flushed in embarrassment, the high stack of itchy wheat nearly slipping from his arms.

"Peta'! stop tesin yer brother! We need to get this cut befor night! And German, hurry on that stack! You can daydream later!

"Okay, Pa!"

____

It had happened many times in his youth the teasing about being on the shorter side... and scrawny used to bother him, but being short, worked in his favor against beasts.

By the time he was in his upper teenage years, his father had gotten ill… and the medicine that had been in Yharnam had not been enough to get him better. So he worked the fields. He and his brothers modified their scythes to allow them greater efficiency in cutting the thick crops. The offers from Yharnam to buy their land looked more and more enticing every day as the medical costs piled.

Until the Healing Church came to his door with experimental treatment to cure his father. The next day their father was out of the bed for the first time in months. Their father had started hauling and cutting the wheat early… he had even let them sleep in for once.

Since the treatment was so effective, the church offered them a cask of medicine for a small part of their land. They were foolish to accept it.

At first, they only used it in dire emergencies. Gerhman's oldest brother had broken his arm in three places when he was fixing the wagon and, it collapsed on him. But soon, broken bones turned into deep cuts, which turned into minor injuries and sickness. Soon all his brothers had used the blood but him.

The harvests had been high the year the beasthood first appeared. Gerhman was in his early twenties when it first appeared on his father. First, the excessive growth of hair on his old man's once ballad head. The sickening cough would not go away, the nights where his father would stand in the field… and just stare blankly.

At one moment, he would look at them and not even remember them. And then during the midnight of a blood moon, while Gerhman and his brothers celebrated their largest haul in years. He watched what was once his father chew the throat out of his younger brother.

They pleaded at first. Gerhman's father was all they had left but each other. He stayed when their mother refused to. He taught them that those in the city would never second guess a dollar increase in wheat prices as long as it came from the farmer. He taught them… and now he was killing them. His younger brother had his throat torn out, his oldest brother tried to grapple their father, but the strength of a beast was unlike anything they had ever seen and, he was torn to shreds. Gerhman and his last two brothers ran after that. Gerhman ran to the shed where they kept the scythes while the other two screamed behind him.

The rest of the night was a blur after he grabbed his scythe. He woke to the Healing Church pushing a paper that employed him as the first hunter. A job that made killing his profession. A job where he eventually found out the truth of the medicine, where he made some apprentices and friends and taught them to fight. Where Sigmund dared him to ride a dark beast… And where he obtained a deal with the moon.

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Good, whatever time you read this chapter! It is once again my pleasure to give y'all a new chapter! Once again it took longer than I wanted due to school work and the like. But hey! It's done 4792 words all for y’all.

If you are wondering about Hollow Hero the rewrite is getting there. I'm adding onto what I already had and rewriting it all using the old one as a base. It follows the same beat as before but slower. Character reactions I feel work better and it is just written better. I can't wait to release it to you all hopefully soon. Oh! And I am splitting ch up for it. I had a 12000-word ch and just rewriting it in one go will give me an aneurysm so the longest planned ch will be 4000. But don't worry! The word count will increase a lot, I turned ch 2&3 into 4 2-3 thousand chaps! So it's an increase of about four thousand or so in all… and that is not counting when I get to ch4,5, & the unreleased 6th ch… BOI will there be a lot of stuff!

But don't worry! This fic should get chapters about the same speed as usual! If you want to join the discord the links are in older chapters and on ff it doesn't like to work so look for the AO3 version or Wattpad.

I hope you all have a lovely day! And I'm going to start ch8!

Chapter 8: Ch8

Chapter Text

An eerie creak sounded through the dark expanse Izuku had managed to find himself above. The darkness under the rickety floorboard he was standing on did not help with the rapid beating of his heart… At times like this, Izuku wondered why this city was so f*cked up. He had headed around the bottom of the tower and fell about ten feet onto a stone boulder, which cracked most of his ribs and broke three. But a blood vial and a snack fixed him up enough to explore the new area… And then he fell off the wood that made the bridge to the other side of the building the moment he entered the room. He did land on another semi-broken scaffolding, but he broke a leg and bruised his hip bone.

Then that wood gave out.

Really he was going to need to talk to the architects of Yharnham with all the stone buildings. Why use wood that broke so regularly for stairs and floors?

Thankfully it was his final fall, breaking his leg, again, on the more sturdy platform and leaning against the door… with no way to get to other than fall because of the sheer lack of floor in this tower. So when Izuku’s leg finally healed enough to stand and open the door, he did.

But what awaited him caused Izuku’s breath to hitch. It was The Hunter's Dream… except not. The expanses of flowers. The ones that the Doll and the little messengers took so much of. Were wilted and dying. Their silvery, soft petals dried and wilted. The tombstones were caked in dust, and the stones he walked on cracked under his weight. It was not right.

The place where he bought materials from the messengers held only a chest with a set of the Doll's clothes inside. And the tombstone the Doll took such care of had an old bone placed on it. He took both and gave them to the messengers. Whatever the items meant and why they were here. He would need to ask Gerhman.

The interior of the Hunters Workshop, the place he had spent the last months in. Was, cluttered with old dusty books, most destroyed beyond repair. But some he had seen in the Dream when he first got there… In the corner, sitting still, was the Doll, only it did not move. No matter how much he prompted it too. It sat still, its porcelain skin stiff and lifeless. It was like staring at a corpse. It looked exactly like her. While the dream Doll’s face could emote and her eyes held a little shine of mischief when she told him stories the other hunters once told her. The body's glass eyes only seemed to stare lifelessly at him.

It was not the Dream. It had to be the original workshop. The one Gerhman used to teach the first hunters how to kill their prey efficiently. Where the hunt officially began. But why was it hidden away? Lost under the new workshop, buried under the charred floorboards to the building its entrance was held in. He had fallen… what, sixty feet to get to the doorway? A height fatal without quick response.

In a cabinet, an ornate hair clip sat, dusty and forgotten… Written in smudged paint was a name; was it the Doll's name? Was it the person who she was made in the likeness of? He pocketed it. The Doll always seemed to be moving hair out of her face anyway she could use it.

On one of the workshop tables, a thick fleshy black piece of meat sat in an ornate bowl. It was slimy to the touch, much like cold blood dew, and hidden underneath the fatty tissue were clots of eyes that stared blankly out at Izuku. Something told him he would need it, and as much as he wanted nothing more than to throw it away from him. He took it.

—

After attempting to find a safe way down the vertical shaft of broken flooring and wood beams, Izuku had made it to the bottom, of course not without a couple deaths here and there but death meant progress… No matter how scary falling through darkness was. Now saying the bottom level was safe was a f*cking lie. There was a god damn fire beast! It stood like… two people tall and shot fire everywhere. It also guarded the only exit out of the pit Izuku had climbed himself into. The battle itself did not take all that long. After nearly getting his hair burned… and getting a couple second-degree burns, the beast fell with a great thud. Izuku did get another stone rune from its corpse.

The area outside of the tower Izuku had climbed down was… confusing. It was a small town. It was either where people that worked in the hunter's workshop used to live... Or it had some other purpose that Izuku could not comprehend.

In the town, there were a couple members of the hunting mob. A few of the infected dogs... they were really starting to get on Izuku’s nerves… A few carrion crows and some new enemies. One of them had a… large bag? They were somewhere near eight feet tall at a glance and held a giant bag over their shoulder, kinda like Santa. Izuku had the jump on the only one in the small village area. But as he sliced through the lanky monster's limbs, it seemed to go into a sort of battle frenzy; its swings with the massive sack became faster and harder to predict… one hit probably would have killed Izuku easily. On the body of the monster was one of the more rare bloodstones that Izuku had found. A stone fused with another during the crystallization process. Much more precious than normal bloodstones, and the pool of blood had only granted him a couple handfuls in all.

Now the second enemy was also pretty wacky, at the end of one of the small streets. Next to a well and looking at a corpse and twitching in place was a very pale creature. Its skin was so pale it seemed to glow a frosty blue it wore ragged robes filled with holes. Not wanting to be a victim to whatever debauchery the monster had, Izuku attacked it from behind. Using his cane as a spear, Izuku slammed the monster's body against the wall it stood near. It flailed violently, trying to push the young hunter away but was quickly silenced with a knife piercing its head.

Checking over the beast, Izuku found where a face should have been was a set of tentacles, where the suction cups should have been was sharp barbs, the rest of the head was flat, but on top of the head was a soft layer of skin, that when removed allowed a long tentacle to emerge. This specific one with a drill-like set of teeth and a mouth… It could easily dig through a skull to get to the brain.

After double-checking the small alcove of houses, Izuku headed to the only way out he had found so far. An elevator, now he had put off his thoughts long enough. How the hell do they have elevators that move so fast without them breaking? Like the one in Central Yharnam was acceptable because it went like twenty feet. But the one he had just boarded ascended at least one hundred feet in seconds! Another reason to yell at the architects of this god damn city.

Once the elevator finished its ascent, somehow Izuku was not launched upward due to the sheer momentum of the elevator… once again a mystery. Izuku’s entire mental conversation was derailed. He was on the other side of one of the gates in the Cathedral ward. One of the ones he couldn't for the life of himself figure out how to get around… WHAT THE HELL WAS YHARNAM’S LAYOUT?

——————————————————

Opening all three gates in Cathedral ward? A cakewalk. Convincing a whor* who was fearing for her life to go to the chapel for safety? Easy. Convincing some conniving asshole that thought he was lying about everything? It was like trying to work with an alternate work Katsuki. Like the asshole did not believe the work he said! “The chapel is safe!” Why else would he even tell the asshole to go there?

So ya, he did tell him to head to the clinic Izuku woke up in. If he died… it would weigh on Izuku but not NEARLY as much as the conversation itself was. The guy both poked at the fact that he was a child... And that he was an outsider…. Seriously why is all of Yharnam xenophobic? Only like, the disfigured dweller, Eileen, Alfred, Guilbert, the Doll and Gerhman, and now the whor* lady… Arianna, if he remembered correctly. He could not really remember after the sheer amount of flirting she had in her… NOT TO MENTION THE INNUENDOS! She was worse than when Izuku met Midnight…

God, now he had two ladies flirting with him burned into his memories… his face will be red forever. This was the end for him, Izuku Midoriya hunter extraordinaire killed by embarrassment. Hell, when he gets home, he could just put that down as his quirk. Embarrassment whenever the subject thinks about something even mildly sexual their head becomes a red space heater… Hell, it could even work.

Did Izuku sit in a dirty alleyway for nearly an hour to stop his face from blushing? Yes. Did he finish searching through all of the cathedral wards? After a while, yes.

He had fought another one of those brain-sucking pale things and ran into a large graveyard absolutely filled with cathedral giants. Specifical the nearly two-story-tall ones with the giant axes, sure there were only three but, when all three of them were chasing Izuku, it felt like there was a small army of them.

As much as Izuku wanted to explore the big cathedral sitting on top of the highest staircase Izuku had ever seen, he had learned enough about Yharnam to know it was likely death waiting inside. So he headed back to the Chapel he had sent all the survivors to. Izuku’s legs ached in pain. He had been flung with by one of the giants. But it seemed a bit too trivial to use a vial on.

However, a familiar… beak? Caught Izuku’s attention, standing just outside the side exit from the Chapel was Eileen! Izuku’s aching legs moved faster to speak with one of the only people alive who was kind to him in Yharnam.

“E-Eileen! H-Hi how have you been?”

“Oh! Didn't think I'd see you again so soon, young hunter.” Her voice sounded… tired? “I’ve been good. But I must warn you, do not go to the tomb below this chapel. An… old friend Henryk has gone mad.” She let out a sigh, shoulders sinking down lightly, “And he’s my mark.”

“A-Are you sure? I-If he’s gone mad… wouldn’t you need help? A-And you s-sound tired! Y-you should take a-a nap or something!”

“Oh shush you! I may be tired… but he would not be all that tough of a fight. Henryk's even older than me!” She spoke confidently, her voice kinda like Recovery Girls from the conference a week before he… But her entire body seemed weighed down, the hunch in her back and shoulders telling him that she was REALLY tired. If he took out the target first, then she could rest a little longer.

“Oh! O-Okay, I guess I’ll talk to you in a while? I, uhh, need to do some... hunting things.” With a quick hop from his position, Izuku headed into Oedon Chapel. And straight down the staircase into the tomb.

It did not take long to make it to the tomb's upper area. Looking down at the clusters of tombstones and random cobblestones scattered across the soil of the graveyard. Izuku spotted the ‘target’. In a set of really yellow hunters garbs was a… well, a hunter if Izuku had to guess. In Henryk's left hand was a pistol much like Izuku’s old one and a saw cleaver in the other.

Izuku took aim from on top of the stone walkway high above Henryk. It was an easily defensible position. The only way up was the staircase on Izuku’s left. And that was a distance from Henryk. Aiming the clunky pistol carefully, Izuku shot. A surprised grunt of pain filled the air as the older hunter spun on his heel to face his attacker, quickly raising his gun in response to being shot; Only for another bullet to pierce him before he could pull the trigger. Henryk, however, was an old hunter of every account, pushing through the pain and firing into Izuku's leg.

Just as a vial bit into Izuku’s leg to forcefully heal the bullet out, a third party entered the battle. Just as Henryk made the final distance up the stairs of the tomb, aiming to fire at Izuku again. A pair of twin daggers flashed into his side, as well as their wielder taking advantage of the momentary lapse in concentration to wrench the blades out and stabbing in for another quick hit.

Just as the second stab went into Henryk from the twin daggers wielded by Eileen, he responded in kind. Using his entire body to twist around Eileen, placing her between him and Izuku. He struck with his cleaver. A spatter of blood soaked into the dry stones as Eileen stumbled back, pulling a vial of her own to stop the bleeding. But she was not fast enough the cleaver came in for another deep cut, only to be shot off course. The bloodied cleaver dug into the stone wall next to Henryk as a second and third shot were placed in his arm.

Izuku saw the blood fall from Eileen and wanted nothing more than to rip the old hunter's limbs off. But cutting him apart would have to do. After he shot the third shot and a small prayer, Izuku ran at the old bastard, his cane glowing brightly in joy at its wielder's bloodlust. By the first strike with Izuku’s cane, Henryk had dug his cleaver from the old stone, but every attempted attack was stopped by the cane-sword finding its mark in the old man's joints. Only for an even sharper pair of blades to find their way into his back.

While Izuku was distracting Henryk, Eileen had made her way around the two and struck. A massive spray of blood coated Izuku as twin daggers pierced through Henryk’s heart and out his chest.

——————————————————

Izuku’s day had been hell. He probably said something in his mumbling or… or was it just the mumbling itself that made Kachaan mad? It was hard to tell. Izuku was up late the night before listening to old pre-quirk music, which made his situational awareness terrible when it came to his mumbling.

So here he was, stumbling down the dirty alleyway Kachaan had left him in, the song that he found and liked quite a bit playing in his head.

“I see the crystal raindrops fall

And the beauty of it all

Is when the sun comes shining through

To make those rainbows in my mind

When I think of you sometime

And I wanna spend some time with you.”

It was hard for Izuku to not get his hopes up when he listened to music. Some songs made him hope to meet someone who cared about him. Some songs reminded him that… that it was likely impossible.

“Just the two of us

We can make it if we try

Just the two of us

(Just the two of us)

Just the two of us

Building castles in the sky

Just the two of us

You and I.”

Izuku had never heard of soul music before. Perhaps it was lost in pre-quirk genre’s or perhaps it was only recently lost. It hardly mattered. Putting one foot in front of the other the massive burn screamed in agony, a small trickle of blood making itself known.

“We look for love, no time for tears

Wasted water's all that is

And it don't make no flowers grow

Good things might come to those who wait

Not for those who wait too late

We gotta go for all we know.”

Izuku was a little light-headed. He forgot how long he had sat still after Kachaan finished his daily beating, but it was long enough for his stomach to yell and scream in hunger and a large puddle of blood to be left where he originally sat. Hopefully, the rain would clear the blood.

Izuku remembered when Kachaan promised to be a hero with him. When they planned to take the world by storm, Kachaan’s explosions and Izuku’s quirk… a quirk that never came.

But when his dad left, when his mom just… stopped loving him. When Kachaan gave up on him and when his calls for help were forgotten, Izuku had music.

“Just the two of us

We can make it if we try

Just the two of us

(Just the two of us)

Just the two of us

Building them castles in the sky

Just the two of us

You and I

I hear the crystal raindrops fall

On the window down the hall

And it becomes the morning dew

And darling when the morning comes

And I see the morning sun

I wanna be the one with you

Just the two of us

We can make it if we try

Just the two of us

(Just the two of us)

Just the two of us

Building big castles way on high

Just the two of us

You and I

Just the two of us

(We can make it, just the two of us)

Let's get it together baby (yeah)

(Just the two of us)

Just the two of us

(We can make it, just the two of us)

(Just the two of us)

(We can make it, just the two of us)

(Just the two of us)

(We can make it, just the two of us)

(Just the two of us)

(We can make it, just the two of us)

(Just the two of us)

(We can make it, just the two of us)

(Just the two of us).”

The quiet humming echoed through the empty alleyways, those who looked turned away quickly from the scene. A nearly twelve-year-old Izuku stumbled along the maze of alleyways, stained in his own blood with a meager smile on his face. Perhaps he was broke way before Yharnam.

---

When he arrived home, plastered in semi-dry blood and caked in dirt, a flash of memory hit him. Coming home with a bruise on his knee with hot tears cascading down his cheek as Kachaan led him to his mom. Small pinprick tears in kachaan's eyes out of the concern and the small fond smile on his mom's face… Perhaps it was because in the kitchen with, a look of concern was his mom. But she did not stop him from trudging his way into the bathroom. She did not scoop him up in her arms and tell him that everything would be okay.

But that was fine. Izuku had survived for more than four years without his mom helping with his cuts and bruises… even though the size of the burn was daunting, it was not Izuku's worst burn. It was not the first time and, it would not be the last time she saw him like this.

The shower stung as Izuku rinsed out the burns and cuts, lathering lightly with soap to hopefully help his wounds. Taking a breath, Izuku poured the medical alcohol on the almost eleven-inch wide burn on his back.

Inko would not be able to sleep after the screams from the bathroom. And Izuku would not be able to sleep because of the pain. But he went to school the next day... he always did.

——————————————————

Nedzu was a creature of pettiness and revenge. When the board refused to give him funding to increase the school defenses twofold, he authorized a defense test in front of the media. When all his teachers broke into UA. With little to no problem and the media recorded the whole thing. Well, he got more funding than he asked for.

When they decided to make All Might the Heroic’s teacher for the next school year, well… Let's just say he managed to squeeze out a raise for all his teachers. Much to the delight of Midnight and Present Mic.

But when they refused to let in Young Midoriya a year early? Well, he was pissed. Most students that move up a grade into UA do not even have half of Midoriya’s scores. They usually flop halfway through the first two months and get moved back to a whole lower grade level. The only student he had the hopes of teaching and, poof! Now he needs to wait an entire year to teach a kid world domination. Not to mention that he had to fight for years to allow quirkless children to apply to the heroics and support courses, and now THIS!

But Nedzu was also a patient creature. So what if he already bugged the boards, homes, clothes, favorite restaurants, and vehicles. Who knew what kind of… quirk-est things would be said behind closed doors? Blackmail was Nedzu’s personal favorite weapon. And anyone worth their salt knew that.

And if he was filing a myriad of lawsuits against young Izuku’s school after hacking into their security systems... Well, who could blame him? Not like the poor kid's mom would do it.

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Eyyy! It's me! Hi! Sadly this is not as long as I would have hoped but I got what I wanted out of the chapter! Sorry, it took so long, I finished another couple of chapters of the hollow hero rewrite and hopefully will be uploading that soon as well as a few new chapters of stuff for it!

I kinda summarized Cathedral Ward as it is in my opinion the most boring area in the game, other than the Oedon Chapel because of NPC's. We will see where Izuku goes next with hopefully a few more glimpses into the past in the next chapter.

Once again if you see anything I missed in my editing of this chapter tell me! This one was kinda filler because the real sh*t is starting soon. You have been warned!

Hopefully, the next chap will be up in the middle of next month at the latest!

Oh! And the song is: Just the Two of Us, by Grover Washington Jr

Chapter 9: Communion

Chapter Text

Izuku’s mind was an ocean of questions since he got dragged into the world he now inhabits. How the hell did he end up in Yharnam? Why was he not dead? From either the slime villain or the countless other deaths he had lived through... Why did he miss his mom? Sure she was neglectful, and her glares hurt worse than anyone else he had run into... yet his heart yearned to see her again. The kindness of the doll reminded him that he could have that from her. Perhaps when he gets back, when time has passed, she would welcome him home. Or... or he might just live on the streets once he gets back... if she glares at him, looks at him like he was worse than trash, and ignores his very presence... then why live with her? He was doing just fine in Yharnam; he would do fine on the streets of Japan.

The Young Hunter's mind had been on this topic for a couple hours... hours after he gave the doll the hair ornament. When she shed a tear and spoke to him in a voice full of compassion... but he could not help but feel that there was something more troubling her. The slight crying had made him panic at first. He wanted to make her feel better, but she told him off, saying something about how nothing was wrong and that she was just so happy and thankful for the ornament. But then the amount of love she has shown him in his time in the dream and the fact he knew she would not tell him what was troubling her... hurt more than anything. She gave him one of her porcelain tears before he left. It was warm, constantly heating up his skin where it sat.

So he held himself up in the workshop, mind working overtime, both because of the excess emotion running through his system and the fact that he was layering another set of chainmail together. The time-consuming task of making chainmail gave him time to think.

Reasons he missed his mother. They were few and far between, but they were there. He could not help wanting her to hold him close, like when he was younger. He wanted her to love him again. It is why he tried so hard in school, why he applied and passed the out-of-grade level test. Why he always kept his pain to himself. He missed her katsudon, he tried to make it, but it always tasted off, seasoning either too much or too little and overcooking the pork. Even when she glared at him, he could not help but love her still. It was his nature to care for those close to him. He even cared about Bakugou to a degree... sadly. He cared about the deadbeat dad that left him, and he cared for the friends that forgot about him before he could show he was still the Izuku they once knew.

Then there were the reasons he hated his mother, a group of actions and comments that only seemed to grow and become more and more depreciating as time went by. She would watch him struggle to move after beatings and just... glare harder when he gave up. She would mock him behind his back when she was on the phone with coworkers. She could not help BUT comment about how useless and worthless he was... about how he was just a money sponge and all he was fit for was the tax cut. She never raised a hand to him... but she would deprive him of things he needed. She would stop getting groceries every week and eat out more she would 'forget' to refill the medicine cabinet with gauze and pain killers... and if she felt particularly hateful the burn cream. There was a month where she just left, not paying the water or the electricity for that month and leaving him there to suffer... while she was out with Aunt Mitsuki to America.

Izuku knew he should despise her more... but he does not. The only time she ever acted like her old self was when Aunt Mitsuki would visit once a year. When Aunt Mitsuki was not working. Then his mom was like how she used to be, all kind and full of love.

Aunt Mitsuki was the only person to not hate him... but she was always busy. Perhaps that was why Katsuki was always mad. Did he miss her like how Izuku missed her? Maybe he could see the Bakugou's when he got out of Yharnam. In front of his mom and dad, Katsuki would not dare to try anything... That idea sounds nice.

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Riflemen could just go and shoot themselves. When Izuku entered the small cave to the left of the Grand Cathedral, he did NOT expect to be shot at by like twelve guys! Or… dogs covered with knives? Did- Did they glue sharp objects to their spazz dogs? That is ingenuity, but holy, hell is it annoying! How they were not slowed by the sheer bulk of sharp objects was magic in itself.

When Izuku first stepped out of the relatively short cave, he took a moment to admire the forest he had ended up in. The trees were tall and leafless and were clustered heavily. The moon shone brightly through the branches as they swayed in the breeze. It was also a graveyard because, of course, it was because Yharnam needed more graves, it seemed. And then he was shot. The pain blared in his left shoulder, so he took shelter behind a rock. Now the rock shield would have worked if he had seen the other three riflemen… and the dog of sharp objects. What seemed to be the majority of Izuku's deaths in the forest was not seeing the things that wanted to kill him. But Izuku was smart because if he was not. He would have never gotten this far.

So Izuku ran back to the graveyard-filled forest after he bled out and had his jugular chewed out by a sharp dog. A numb pull, stretching at the back of his mind as he crossed into the forest. The moment his foot cracked a branch, the dog near him bolted to him, only to get caught in the head by a quicksilver bullet. A loud echoing bang alerted Izuku of the bullet traveling at him, and in a moment he forced himself into a quickening fueled dash. The strange cold of the shot phasing through him alerted him to it passing and, he was off back in the physical plane, jumping over an overzealous beast and slamming the heel of his boot into its skull. The sickening crack followed by Izuku vaulting over the tombstone between him and the gunman in front of him. The wet sound of his blade cleaving through the man's skull and the cacophony of gunshots from the rest of the gunman made the numbness grow into a sharp ache in the back of Izuku's mind. The bullets never hit as Izuku forced his body into the pocket between as he quickened himself again; the next moment, his body seemed to have traveled in its misty state into the small alcove with four of the gunmen. A swift click and heavy, full-bodied swing of his whip cleaved into his four opponents; the individual blades layered the whip tearing into the soft flesh and raking through bone.

A deep breath, the ache pulling at him almost like the bloodlust he constantly fought against only more, pressed deep into Izuku's mind, almost probing for something. The soft yet hurried pounding of four- eight pawed feet rushing towards Izuku made him turn on a swivel, quickly pulling his gun up and firing into one as his whip found purchase in the neck of the second beast. Izuku's feet hit the gravel path like pistons as he rushed at the final gunman in his way, two gunshots went off in tandem, and then everything seemed to shift in Izuku's vision as the pain flared unexpectedly. The dark sky seemed to shimmer a vibrant red as his vision went black.

And then there was nothing. Not a sound echoed around Izuku as he sat in the darkness. Not a single movement caught Izuku's vision in the dark; there was only nothing but the empty blackness of sleep. Except he was not sleeping. It was like when he closed his eyes in the darkness of his room. However, in this instance, he was able to see himself.

And then there was a voice, a soft, kind voice that held power in every word.

"It's time we spoke, little green hunter." The voice vibrated the air around him, seemingly coming from all directions at once. "I will not give you false hopes, but I won't let you fall into the blood frenzy you almost allowed yourself to be overcome by. That being said, whatever your body does while your consciousness is here is not under my control. I am Flora, but you know me as your patron, the Great One of The Moon."

The gears in Izuku's mind stuttered; this was the being that brought him to this world? A bodiless void is what brought him here?

"When I brought you here, and that blood minister filled you full of my kins blood, I expected little from what it would do to your body. But I watched enamored by the sheer amount of congestion in your genetic code, quirkless? Was that what it was called? I think it should be called potential! Well, you would not be considered quirkless in your world now, especially with the line of my personally crafted genetic code filling some of that ill used space." The voice was filled with amusem*nt and humor as it spoke, only to get a sharp tone when it continued to address him. "There are many ways our connection could continue, Small Hunter. You could leave after you finish off that wet mother of that... horrid creature Oedon fathered. You could take over Gehrman's job and teach future hunters. Perhaps you might even kill me? That would be humorous and unnecessary. So I will give you an ultimatum. A quirk of your own, as whenever you leave this world after killing off that cursed childs nurse, the effects will not help you achieve your goal as they will vanish when you wake. I can give you a connection to the Hunter's Dream in your old world. And you will bring me the head of the Orphan of Kos, the Pthumerian Queen's head, the crown of Illusion, and your word to never raise your hand to me."

The ultimatum, if you could call it that, would give him a quirk, a connection to the Hunter's Dream only for the heads of some beasts a crown and his word; Did flora think they smooth or something there was no way that his payment for the second life he was given did not exist. From what Izuku heard, he had five goals. Kill the wet mother of whatever it is, the orphan of Kos, the Pthumerian Queen, obtain a crown and give her his word. And he got another chance at life, power and, he got to keep the doll and Gerhman in his life?

Perhaps he should have thought through his options, or maybe Izuku made the right choice. But when he woke from the vision of nothing, his word was given to his patron.

—

The vision faded and, Izuku's hands were wet with a thick red substance. Where he was... He could not tell as he stood breathing heavily in the large room; the whip the young hunter usually wielded was replaced with the massive stone hammer he used to pulp the corpses in Central Yharnam. His heart was hammering in his chest, the curled and mutilated corpse of a... old hag? How long was he in the vision? Next to the hag's corpse was a lantern and a doorway that led down a long staircase. After lighting the lantern, Izuku headed down the stairs. What Izuku found down there was disturbing. It was a torture room, and sitting in the middle was a hunter's corpse. Who it was in their life, Izuku did not know, so he snooped and took all the important-looking tools hung around the room, including the one the hunter had on their body before they died.

Izuku backtracked from there, finding the corpses of the crazed witches that lived within the gnarled trees and cracked cobbles of what Gerhman told him was Hemwick Charnel Lane. Some were crushed flat with his massive stone hammer, others were sliced into parts with his whip, and a few were shot in multiple areas. No matter how far he looked and how thoroughly he searched, he could not find anything that was not explored. His boot prints and the etched cuts into wood and stone from his whip littered every inch of the area... meaning he was done here. Maybe.

—

Gerhman sat heavily in his wheelchair; he lost sight of Izuku for almost four hours... The kid should have been finished with Hemwick in less than an hour with how small that area is. And ever since the break-in his connection to Izuku, it seemed like the kid's connection to the dream had only gotten stronger. Nothing physical yet, but the energy, the kind that Gherman used to find the kid, had nearly doubled... it was almost as strong of a connection as Gerhman himself held to the dream. Which was concerning; he wanted to give the kid the easy out of the Hunter's Dream; he wanted the kid to forget everything that came from Yharnam. But if the kid made some kind of deal... most likely written solely by Flora herself, then his hands were tied.

In his own deal, he got everything he wanted, with a pretty high payment for it. He got his chance to help the future hunters; he got his workshop, not run down and blossoming with flowers and more hunter tricks than he could impart in a decade. And his price? He paid it willingly, his life, his future, and even his soul for his chance to stop the hunt forever. And in time, the possibility of the hunt ending has increased rapidly in the last couple of years... even if it is not the way he hoped. The number of people left to fight, much left, to live in Yharnam has dropped rapidly, causing the Moon's backup plan to be put into action... Taking people from other worlds and forcing them to fight for Yharnam's survival. Making deal after deal to get them to their homes, back to their friends and families. And now, his latest apprentice has made a deal with her, one that would likely help her more than it would him. And yet, it was the oddest thing. The air of the dream seemed to sweeten in approval with the deal, enveloping the floating landmass in a decedent aroma. Something that had never happened when a deal was struck, much less at the detriment of the hunters she conscripted.

There was a theory that those in the healing church believed in, "Great ones are not malevolent, they do not hate, they do not truly feel anger, but they are greedy, and when it comes to having children, their only way to find a suitable surrogate was the beast plague." That was the theory most believed, not that the great ones used the plague out of evil, not that they were angry that humans, a race so far below them, defiled their old corpses and used their blood in daily life.

What was correct? That was a question Gerhman asked the Moon when they first connected in the space between the real and the other. But the answer was knotted in... an inconstant answer. Oedon wanted a child and would bring the plague again and again, till a mortal bore him a child. But Ebrietas holds no ill will towards mortals, only wishing to impart her knowledge. But the list of great ones and their wants and beliefs stretched on and on, with diversity one only would think humans could have.

Gerhman wishes his apprentice luck in his journey throughout the depths of Yharnam, as even skill would not save even the strongest of hunters.

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Ever since the... communion with the moo- Flora, Izuku had felt different. Like someone took the anchor that kept his mind shackled to everything from his world and shattered the weight. The dying dream of heroism vanished under the quaking realization he WAS going to be a hero. The feeling- the constant itch of being wrong and different from his peers had been lessened. And as Izuku scaled the massive staircase to the gigantic chapel in the Cathedral Ward, the soft voice from his communion whispered in his ear.

"Beyond the doors to the Chapel of the Healing Church is a woman who is nearing her transformation into a prominent beast; You are prepared but do not become overconfident little green. Consider my counsel to be a gift to sweeten the deal in your favor, just ask, and I will answer in a way that will keep your sanity." The voices' reverb rattled Izuku's thoughts from their places, making his mind grow fuzzy as he tore the head off a cathedral giant.

"I- I was wondering- I mean I was-... Since you brought me here from another dimension... are you like the strongest Great One?"

"No. Strength is... fluid in a way. Constantly flowing between those with the most strength to those with the least in certain groups of power, but it mostly stayed to those with the most potential with the power. I am the only moon-great one, giving me unparalleled control of my domains. But there are those a level above each other in our ascension. The highest in the council of great ones is Oedon. We traded in our physical, mortal forms in our ascent into our new meta-physical forms. But Oedon ascended the farthest; he has no reliable mold. He is more of an idea. An invisible player that controls the pawns on the chessboard with even the smallest of whims. Next on the council in strength and control is the celestial bodies. My two sisters and I hold these roles. We were created by Oedon on a whim eons before our ascent. I am the Moon, the celestial body given masterful control of the flow of things, time, blood, even the wind. My sister Gaia is the planet I orbit, the largest of us, given control of life, death, and the ground you walk on. And my sister Kos is the Ocean, given command of the mind, insight, and arcane magics."

"I- wait, you want me to kill the orphan of your sister? Is your sister dead?!" He did not mean to interrupt Flora, but this was her sister's child!

"Death is a mortal concept little green. Her semi-physical form was slain with her child half-formed in her womb. And she cannot reform until that bastard of a child is killed. If her ascended figure died, that cane of yours would not have become enchanted in your blood, and the veil you visit in the quickening art would no longer exist."

There was a long silence for a moment as Izuku pushed the massive stone doors to the cathedral open. He had only one more question before the battle in front of him.

"What kind of quirk are you going to give me?" It had been gnawing on him since he was promised it, and he needed to know.

"I was wondering when your eager heart would question me in simple terms. You would keep everything from here and be bound to the dream in an innumerably more free connection than Gerhman, but I will need to... replace most of your genetics. Quirkless is less a lack of the ability to hold a quirk and more of... a wrong mutation of sorts. Like someone jumbled what was supposed to be your quirk into the rest of your genetic code. Leading commonly to the extra toe joint. The process of cleansing your genetics had started when you were given blood by the minister but, the rest will have to be done by a more... careful hand. In a way, I will remake you into my own, a child given new form by me. You will be my first child, and you will be perfect. And those beings that can have children whenever they feel like it and just... just throw them away will regret throwing you away."

Izuku tripped as he trespassed into the cathedral's main room, its massive walls and high ceiling catching his attention for a moment as a small woman knelt in front of an altar. And as he sat up after the initial crack and splatter of blood. Where the small woman once knelt was a behemoth of a beast, its hind legs bent and its front clutching a small object tightly and, its massive maw seemed to sneer in his direction, its eyes hidden under what used to be the woman's dress. Its snow-white fur shimmered with light golden energy as it roared in his area. The soft voice spoke one last time to him that day, in a language he could not comprehend, but in his mind, he felt the words take shape, and a central memory formed, one of him as a hero, one of him under the bright moon of his homeworld.

The moon oath rune had been formed into him, granting him something he never thought he needed since he lost it. He lifted his hand, and blood cut out of the palm of his hand, stretching up to his arm to his elbow, and small balls of blood floated out and fired at the beast as he released his first actual arcane spell, A Call Home.

The bullets of blood pierced the beast's hide, redding the white coat as the acid-like blood melted through it as Izuku grabbed his cane, and with a click, he was off. The words of Flora ringing in his ears as his mind decoded the infinite ways the words could be spoken.

"The Dream is your home now, and with this oath to me and its inhabitants. Only think these words to call our strength to your side.

By the blood moon and its power,

I call its strength to be mine,

By the Moon give me my desire,

Slay those foulest before me."

The whip he held bit deep into the hide of the beast, the fire of his heart billowing through him as he tore into it, dodging its irregular attacks and ripping chunks out of its weak points. He had a home. Whether for good or bad, the Hunters Dream was his home. Sadly more than the apartment with a room with his nameplate on it.

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I rewrote this chapter a lot of times, but I think it turned out well! I hope you liked it! It is currently really late, and I have work in the morning, so imma asleep after uploading this! Constructive criticism is appreciated!

Chapter 10: Ch10 The Plot- Blood Thickens

Chapter Text

The same day Izuku was attacked by the Slime Villain again was the day Nedzu struck.

It had been... Four or five weeks since the entrance exam, to be honest, Nedzu couldn't even remember what had happened over the last weeks due to him single-mindedly planning the simultaneous destruction of both one Inko Midoriya and the entire Aldera Schools system. He had gone through a significant amount of his tea in that time... he should get more after this meeting.

As the chimera principal stepped up to the shabby apartment complex, his eyes spotted small things that were out of place with the building. For one, it was an under-the-table complex; the peeling paint and strange stains on the concrete definitely pointed to a less than legal set of circ*mstances for someone to rent out an apartment. The second he noticed when he stepped up to the Midoriya's door. The handle was heavily chipped, the once elegant brass finish missing in some places indicating the rough treatment it must have gone through, and in between the metal and the finish was a substance looking a lot like dried blood. The edges of the doorway and the door itself were worn down and showed signs of violent slamming. Stress cracks had formed in the paint and, some of the wood and miniature warps in the substance showed a considerable amount of force was used.

Taking a deep breath, Nedzu knocked on the door and waited. It took a minute but eventually, the door cracked open, revealing a very dark interior of the room and the only occupant. It was apparent this was Inko Midoriya. Her long green hair was knotted and, her eyes hung with sleep and exhaustion still present. Her entire body was supported by the door frame... she must have only just woken up from her late shift.

Her entire body stature shifted when she spotted the famed Principal Nedzu of UA Highschool. The exhaustion faded into a worried and freaked-out facial expression in half a second. And in a moment, the lights were turned on. And, she hastily opened the door wider to let the Principal in before he could even mutter a word.

"AH! Principal Nedzu! Why- Wha-... What is your reason for coming here? Did- Has Iz- Has my son done anything wrong? Did you come here to reject him prematurely from your school? I promise you, you could have just sent a letter! He is a very understanding boy. A-and he is not here at the moment! You know teenagers, always doing something to get out of the house!"

She kept babbling like that for five minutes, and for those five minutes, Nedzu sat through her blabbing, his smile becoming strained as he walked over the couch that held very scrubbed blood stains and other assorted stains... In fact, the entire house seemed to contain the coppery scent of blood. Nedzu's nose twitched at the smell. How did the woman not notice the smell? Much less do nothing about it? The logical reasons for this were she was blind to the stench and did not notice it due to constant exposure to the smell, or she just didn't care about it. Or perhaps it was even his more well-suited nose for finding these kinds of things.

After another minute or two of looking around the home from the stiff couch and listening to the babbling abuser, Nedzu raised his hand to silence her, his smile leaking into a more predatory and savage grin. "I will be frank with you, Miss Midoriya! I have come to speak about your son!" The moment the word son left his lips, she seemed to stiffen, seemingly unaware of her own reflex, he continued to speak. "I actually came to give you some news! I'll start with the good news! Young Izuku has been accepted into our fine school of learning and heroics under the general studies course in the upcoming year!" He took a second to collect his thoughts and continued, feeling glee at the woman's shocked expression, "And not only that, he has earned a full scholarship to UA's College courses! Specifically, he will be learning under me in both high school and college! And, he also qualifies easily for the support courses Support Items Course and Strategy Course!"

He gave the woman a moment to let the information sink in, and he was giddy with the rush of endorphins her expression gave him. "Oh- We-"

Before she could speak, he cut her off, "Now sadly, it's time for the bad news." Her expression turned to one of confusion at his statement. "I feel bad, to tell you- Actually, I don't feel bad for telling you this. But you won't be here to see your son's achievements. In fact! You and the entire Aldera School System won't be here by the end of the week! It will soon be replaced with a new school, a new brand, new buildings, and new teachers! And your son? Well, I will be taking him in and giving him a much better life than what you have given him."

Nedzu couldn't help his sad*stic glee from peaking at the woman's fear. The look of pain and fear she gave him was of the kind he only saw once a moon, a face he would gladly see every abuser have.

"That being said," Nedzu started, lifting his left paw and snapping his pads, "I will be collecting his things now and will be waiting for his return to give him the good news!" As the word news left the Principal's lips, a fireteam of hero's barged in through all the entrances to the building, closely followed by police. A few knives from the kitchen flew towards Inko from behind her, all the blades coming straight towards her as she ducked her head as her quirk's effect dissipated, leaving four kitchen knives to be launched straight at Nedzu. Only to be intercepted by a very familiar cloth that Nedzu had taken shelter in on multiple occasions.

In moments the woman was bound and dragged out the door, leaving Nedzu, Eraserhead, and Detective Tsukauchi; Each of which came from a different area of the house, The detective in the living room and kitchen, Eraserhead in the master bedroom and bathrooms, and Nedzu in Izuku's room.

The boy's room... well, it was a mess. Posters, figurines, books, clothes, collectibles, and all kinds of other bobbles, all resembling All Might, were destroyed. A layer of dried blood marred the walls where fist-sized holes were littered, a small basket of dried and blood-saturated bandages was sitting in a corner, next to the mattress many sizes too small for a teenage boy. After a few minutes of scanning Izuku's bedroom, the only clean and well-kept area of the entire room was a stack of books. And on further inspection, Nedzu learned that they were quirk analysis books. All chock full of exceptional analysis that only got better with time as the books got newer... Only the final page of the latest and most heavily damaged book held an All Might signature, which with Nedzu's exceptional nose, still faintly smelled like the ink of the pen that wrote it. And the room, still only four hours after school started, smelled like still relatively fresh blood within the time of the day before and today. All Might saved a child from the sludge villain yesterday? And another child with green hair attempted to keep the other from drowning... Nedzu closed his eyes and inhaled through his nose, lightly catching the smell of sewage and gunk.

Nedzu pulled his phone out of his pocket and pulled up the CCTV feeds of a mile around the slime incident, running them all at double speed within... half an hour of the slime incident. Crossing out storerooms and main roads, Nedzu was left with rooftops and alleyways. And right as he got to the final recorded rooftop that he could get access to. Did he spot the familiar green hair and the familiar form of All Might.

Nedzu saved the clip for later reviewing and got to work collecting all the valuables that were still intact of the boys and headed to the living room... he had four hours to get more dirt on Aldera... and now All Might too.

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A thrumming headache split Izuku's brain in two, the violent clash of memory not his own, and the ones he knows are his fought like caged wolves.

"Master Willem. I've come to bid you farewell."

The memory is shown into Izuku's mind, tearing at it feverishly. Seeming to be trying to expose its knowledge to the young hunter. The first voice was young, an air of superiority floating through every word. Then a new voice spoke out from the shadowy grips of the memory, old, ancient, and full of... knowing.

"Oh, I know. I Know. You think now to betray me."

The words were spoken solemnly but unconcerned.

"No, But you will never listen. I tell you, I will not forget our adage."

The younger voice spoke, not a hint of regret as it turned to leave, only standing in front of the door long enough to listen to the older man's final words to them in their departure.

"We are born of the blood, made men by the blood, undone by the blood... Our eyes are yet to open."

And as the old man spoke the final line, his apprentice uttered it too.

"Fear the old blood."

The younger man opened and walked out the door, only saying that they must take their leave, leaving the old man to mutter to himself.

"By the gods, fear it Laurence."

And then, in a jolt, the pain subsided, leaving the young hunter to stare dazed at the bloody puddles that lay around where he fell.

It looked like he had a lot to do.

___

(!!!this is a flashback!!!)

Izuku's young lungs ached as he ran from the school. In the distance, he still could hear Bakugou and his cronies screaming up a storm in their wake as they chased him through alleyways and streets, but for once, it looked like Izuku was going to escape! But one explosion, then two then four, and suddenly Bakugou was next to him, his hands smoking from his quirk, and in seconds, Izuku was tackled to the ground. Bakugou's hands were still searing hot as he grabbed at Izuku's skin. The muffled sounds of sizzling skin were discernible as the rest of the bullies came to circle around Izuku, leaving him no point of escape.

Seconds passed as the alleyway Izuku was tackled in was bloated with bullies; those seconds turned into minutes. And thirty minutes later, the crowd slowly dispersed, leaving a very bused, burnt, and in pained Izuku to drag himself to his home... If only he could have gotten away scot-free once. Midnight would be signing autographs at a local comic shop the next day, and now Izuku was contemplating not going.

.

..

...

The next day he still went, the limp in his step and not treated injuries making the fourteen-mile trek nearly unbearable, but Izuku was not going to give up so easily. Izuku got into the line for the packed signing at noon. The heavy smell of the sweat from the crowd due to the heat and the sweet smells coming from the coffee shop they stood next to caused an odd combination of scents that wouldn't leave Izuku alone as the line lessened as people walked out with signed memorabilia. Izuku's cuts ached and, his burns itched as he walked into the air-conditioned comic shop spotting the near infamous get-up of the R-18 hero immediately. His grip on his dull yellow backpack tightened, he had brought a couple pop figures for her to sign and a poster he had delicately rolled, as to not damage. And as he walked up to the table, he watched her eyes sharpen for mere moments... before they lit up and a cheery smile graced her face.

"Oh, ho ho! Well, look what we got here~" Her smile only grew as his face lit up like a Christmas tree, "What did you bring me to sign? Let me guess... something naughty? No?" A small eep excited Izuku as she said that, her smile going from cherry to downright feral as her eyes lit up with joy.

"Don't worry kid. I won't tell anyone~" and the sharp pop of the lid of her marker coming off was the only thing that sent him to grab his memorabilia. Mumbling out sorry as he nearly dropped the figures, his voice seeming to not want to work as she kept her eyes firmly on him.

She commented about how cute he was as she signed the pop figures, her grin sharpening as he became even redder as she kept going. And as she wrote on his Midnight's Collectors Edition poster, she wrote a message on its back before re-rolling the thick paper and handing it back to him. But not before making one more display to see his face redden as his hand grabbed the offered item, she leaned down and kissed the back of his hand, her bright red lipstick imprinting onto his hand and gave him a wink and a wave as he left the store, his ears steaming and his week brightened.

And when he got home to the frigid apartment, building he lived in, back into the darkened rooms of his apartment, and in the claustrophobic walls of his room, he unrolled the poser and looked on its back. Written neatly was a message, "Don't let the bullies get to you, and if necessary, get a weapon. Personally, I think you would look nice with a whip! <3

___

Izuku's blood soaked into the wood he had been meticulously carving into, a theory of what would happen to organic material like wood when touched with his acidic blood... As the blood saturated the wooden bullet, the wood seemed to melt into the small pool of blood discoloring it. There went his idea for cheap ammo.

The Hunter's Dream had become a calming place for Izuku to go to. When his mind ached and, his heart burned. The light humming from Gerhman as he worked on his small garden and the frequent check-in's the Doll had begun to do when he spent long periods in the dream gave Izuku a feeling of home he had yet to be able to remember. Izuku's delving into the arcane arts had yet to yield much his control on his quickening state had surpassed Gerhman's expectations. And the light guide from the whispering voice of the moon had caused him to learn multiple different runes that the Rune Tool let him manipulate.

He had manipulated some of them to be conjoined, only they did nothing. But the Coven of The Moon Rune that the moon had seared into his mind seemed to change the runes he learned as time went by. The Clockwise Metamorphosis and Anti Clockwise Metamorphosis runes the moon shared with him seemed to glow red in their cores. And the basic Moon Rune Seemed to shift in place in his mind, stretching and shrinking in tandem with something he could not see.

His arsenal was growing as well... especially when it came to his whip. It took a forty-hour streak of smithing and a few weeks before his second whip could even begin to be called a whip. Its size was on par with his average whip, a near eight-foot length at a full swing; the differences came in the blades, while his old whip had massive knives that would cut through his enemies. This whip held more scalpel-like edges serrated for easy bloodletting, and the room for blood gems had been increased.

To say Izuku was happy would be an understatement, but it was not what he wanted. He wanted to get home to become the hero Izuku knew he could be, and he knew exactly how to do that.

The residents of the Forbidden Forest were not prepared for the reincarnation of the Reaper of Beasts.

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Sorry, this one took more than a month! I've been busy, but the next chapter will be out hopefully within a month of this one. Oh! And I hope you all have a good day/ night/ evening!

Chapter 11: Ch11, Forbidden Forest, Forbidden tools.

Chapter Text

Warning: Self-harm warning, also warning for usual violence. Not really necessary at this point, but this chap has the most self-harm shown and referenced so far. SO you know, just a warning. Also, how are y'all? I've been busy, but I wrote nearly half of this chapter in one sitting due to the fact I've been busy. And thank you all for your kind words!

Answers to questions that have been asked!

Izuku is, in fact, getting stronger faster than the average hunter. He has been gaining levels quicker than an average hunter, which at the moment does not make him insanely OP but definitely will lead to an incredible power curve by the end of the Yharnam Ark.

There was a person who disliked how I'm portraying Inko so far. And I do want to make this clear that this is an AU. People are a lot less kind to Izuku... obviously, their tolerance of what they deem impure is at 11, and their violence is also at 11. That, however, is not to say all people are totally worse; Inko was at a crossroads. Care for her son and be ridiculed by coworkers and friends or "act" like she didn't care about him. Sometimes, as some people know, an act can swiftly become a person fully when they forget who they actually are. I am not villainizing Inko; I am, however, showing a path that in a world just slightly worse, even kind people can be turned into villains.

After those sadder questions, here is one. I might... MIGHT let Izuku make a minigun cannon. BUT ONLY BECAUSE THAT THREAD IS WAY TOO BIG TO BE NORMAL!!

Where was I for so long? The combination of school starting up, work, and my school's marching band program took 6 out of my seven afternoons a week for a long time, but the band has ended! So I have cleared up most of my days!

Anyway, how have all your days/ nights been? I have been busy myself. ONTO THE STORY! Thank you for reading ^-^

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The tough grass of the forbidden forest crunched heartily under Izuku's boots. The new whip, shining brightly in the moonlight, paired only with the fluorescent green of his eyes that peered out at the cowering hunting mob. The sweet smell of moonflower and blood blooms wafted out from the young hunter as he strode towards his marks. The Mob readied their weapons of choice in opposition to the hunter that stepped with a fierce gate, one of their ranks rushed in, their pitchfork going wide, then being reduced to spare parts as in mere moments the reaper's whip eviscerated the man. While their minds were shrouded in the veil provided by the Beasthood and fear, some remembered the old stories. Stories that told of the hunters of old and regaled them in their exploits. Specifically, a hunter that strode out into the night and finished beasts without missing a step.

Step.

The two with shields, the ones that were supposed to hold the front, were shredded before the eyes of the rest, entrails and blood showering the battlefield, the fires burning on either side of the hunter shadowed their face leaving only the silhouette of death.

Step.

The oil bearers hesitated for a moment at the horrifying sight in front of them, only to have a silver streak slice their heads off. And in moments, the axemen, who were rushing to take the hunter down, were shredded into ribbons, gurgling screams of the pain, their last call.

Step.

The fencers, the most veteran of the hunting mob charged, were the last to stand in front of the frightening beast. Only to have their scimitars turned on them, their blades being hooked by the whip and flung into their bodies; They followed their compatriots. Their bodies fall into the damp soil saturated with oil, the creeping flames of their campfires spreading out and swallowing them.

The hunter continued, their footfalls never breaking their confident gait as they continued their hunt. And not once did they ever look back at the carnage they left, for the boy never would again.

--

Why do the inhabitants of the Forbidden Forest cage their dogs? Not that Izuku was complaining, his least favorite to fight were the dogs; They were fast, faster than he was, and attacked in a flurry that he could never comprehend. However, that did not mean that he couldn't kill them with little effort. A clean gunshot was all he needed for most of them. His eyes caught on a side path, a path for later exploration for sure, but he needed to reach the basin of the forest, where the muck and grime coalesced into a massive lake; The area where Byrgenwerth was situated.

He didn't have many written records of Byrgenwerth; most of his information was from Gerhman. But from what he could find, it was the precursor to the Healing Church, and supposedly they did not partake in the use of the blood of the great ones and instead attempted to gain insight to connect to the great ones.

When Izuku read that the first time he couldn't help but let out a slight giggle. He had gained what they were looking for by accident. Hell, Gerhman even managed to contact Flora! So that leaves Izuku to wonder, did they ever succeed? Oh, he hopes they did; perhaps then he could gain an ally? HA, unlikely, the most likely thing to happen is him having to fight some cosmic bitch boy because he killed the wrong monster.

Anywho, Izuku was currently hiding on top of a house after almost getting his legs eaten by like 12 dogs... NOT hyperbole! Okay, a little bit of an exaggeration...

"Craghhh?"

And then Izuku learned at least four carrion crows had taken their time to surround him before making a sound.

"sh*t."

--

Izuku did, in fact, go back to that roof to give the crows a stern talking to that did include a mild amount of cursing and a hefty fall when one flew directly into him and off the roof.

But at the moment, he was being chased by a giant man with a sack over their shoulder. They had a real grim reaper vibe, and Izuku had always wanted to steal a scythe and make it into a hunter weapon. However, as he went and stabbed the creature from behind, it just turned around unfazed and seemed to flex its entire body... and started glowing a light red. Now Izuku didn't have a major in... whatever he would need to deduce what something glowing red meant, but he could guess that it meant nothing good.

And what do you know, it meant the f*cking bag bitch was going to start going mock three and sprint at the very confused Izuku and slam the... whatever it is in the bag, into Izuku and launch him into and through a f*cking wall. Now Izuku didn't die, thankfully, but his leg was definitely f*cked up. He only had a few seconds to roll out of the way as the bag slammed into the area he had landed, and as he got out of the way, his hand gripped what felt like a severed lycanthrope foot... Gross.

Quickly jumping up, he unloaded a few shots into the bag bitch as it swung its bag rapidly, nearly hitting the young hunter. One bullet hit its mark in the beast's head as it overextended. A mental cheer rang through Izuku as he reached deep into the f*ckers chest and gripped. It was unnatural the feeling of claws forming and, gripping deeper into his prey, the hot coppery blood flowed through his enhanced arm as he pulled, and in a spray of crimson, the beast flew back and into the wall of the shoddy cabin with a resounding crack.

The euphoria ended disappointingly fast as Izuku pocketed the claw he found on the ground and any lost items around him. The spray of crimson leaving him shimmering in the bright moonlight. If his eyes were unfocused, no one noticed.

By the time he came out of the mental funk the shower of red had caused he, was ankle-deep in a shimmering lake of definitely not water. The smell, both sweet and sharp of oils and a slew of other flammable liquids, caught Izuku's keen nose.

A momentary swivel of his head Izuku took in where he was, ankle-deep in a muggy river of flammable liquids. Suddenly as if a jolt of fire went up Izuku's spine, he started sprinting, dodging the incoming molotovs and maggot-filled flesh of the corpse beasts that saturated the small pond. The pounding of his heart met the same tempo of his feet; in a tight swirl, he swapped his cane to whip form and lowered his body mass down into a crouch. The long line of blades lightly caressed the liquid's surface as the corpse beasts that encircled him were sliced into two.

Not missing a step, he kept running, dodging under the swipe of a man who had almost fully been encompassed by the beast hood and reaching for the buzz in his mind. Izuku's body quickened, just as a cannonball from the mounted cannon on top of the hill he was running towards descended. Crashing into the spot he once was in. Completely destroying the beast.

His body became corporeal just as a shard of shrapnel flew into where his leg formed; the flash of pain caused a stumble, but an injection of a blood vial doused the pain. The final stretch was near. His feet pounded into the soggy mud of the incline as the monster who operated it aimed at him.

15 feet. The buzz in Izuku's mind he had come to associate with quickening grew louder.

10 feet; the cannon's wick was almost gone, in mere moments, Izuku's body became overtaken by a sickly yellow mist, and then he was behind the beast, cane formed into its skull and hands aiming the cannon for the pond of oil.

.

.

.

The defining silence was haunting. The only thing left of the seven or eight houses that once stood on either side of the path Izuku had run up was nothing but rubble. The corpses of many beasts littered the wreckage.

Izuku took a second, a deep breath...

.

.

.

"Blimey! Don't scare me like that. On a night like this... I took you for a monster."

How... How did he get on top of a roof? A quick scan showed that he was still near the smoldering wreckage he had caused.

"Oh, thank the stars, you're fairly normal... Was it you put down that awful beast?"

Looking over the voice, rough and definitely older. Izuku couldn't even begin to comprehend what he saw. The man, crouched still over the still bleeding corpse of a family, blood lingering on its hands and mouth, looked into him. With eyes bandaged over.

"Oh, that thing had me trembling, frozen in me boots. And then you came along."

Why was it acting? It smelled sweet, inhuman. And yet it still thought it could hide from him?

"Well... if you're a hunter... then..."

Izuku gripped his cane tighter- his whip at that moment.

"Would you know of any safe havens?"

And that's when Izuku struck. One slice and, the beast took off its disguise as a man.

Where the beggar once sat, a beast of massive proportions, just under the cleric beast, took its place. Its large dark-furred body crackled lightly with lightning. Then it spoke .

"Oh, you are a sick puppy! You drink the blood of half the town, and now this! And you talk of beasts? You hunters are the real killers!"

Izuku dodged the beast's hands as they crashed into the shingled roof. Using the momentum from his dodge Izuku went into a spin, slinging the whip towards the beast's ankle... Only for it to be intercepted by the beast's hand. He quickly pulled out his gun and unloaded an uncountable amount of shots into the beast's elbow of the arm that held his whip.

The beast pulled the whip, taking Izuku with it. And as its other hand reached to grab the struggling hunter, Izuku quickened behind the beast. And in a moment of desperation shoved his hands into the holes made by his gun and began trying to rip the arm off.

"Have you got a screw loose? Or is it your... animal intuition?"

The beast's body began to try to shake the young hunter off, but Izuku had a grip on the beast's bone. Quickly pulling out his gun again, unloaded more bullets into the bone.

One solid tug and the arm came off with a sickening rip.

"You hunters have got more blood on your hands!"

Izuku's body quickened again, a sharp hit of fatigue hitting the small hunter as he dodged another claw attack while trying to pull his whip out of the decapitated hand that still clutched it. Only to be hit and launched into the only wall on the roof... That held the door that led there. Huh.

"Die! Die, die! Hunters are killers, nothing less! You call ME a beast? A Beast!? What would you know? I didn't ask for this!"

Izuku kinda wished he felt any sympathy for the beast, as he gripped his whip tightly and quickened above the beast, and in one quick movement wrapped the whip around its neck, he began to saw at its jugular. And then he decapitated it. As it uttered its final words.

"Rancid beasts, every last one of us..."

Izuku collapsed next to its body. It took two blood vials to make him feel any better.

.

.

.

Izuku's bones ached as the elevator ascended at high speed. He had just fought what appeared to be ordinary people. Only for them to have a cacophony of snakes to sprout out of their heads... and arms.

With a solid thunk, the elevator stopped. Making Izuku raise off of it slightly by how fast it was going.

His steps were shaky as he stepped into the small hut-like structure, and he went straight for the door opposite of his position. Utterly oblivious to the man standing patiently to his left.

As soon as the door was open, the man coughed lightly. And that's when Izuku noticed him. With a surprised jump, as to him, the man had just suddenly appeared.

The man was tall-ish, definitely above average height. And wearing a dark blue uniform, one Izuku had not seen before. They also stood with an air of authority. The main defining trait of the man was the metal helmet that covered their face, with one eyehole for the man to see out of.

He started speaking when he noticed Izuku was not coming any closer.

"Ahh, a new face, are you? A young but an accomplished hunter... it would appear. HAHAHAHA!" The man's voice was joyous and assertive as he spoke, "I am Valtr, Master of the League. Members of the League cleanse the streets of all the filth that's spread about during the hunt. Like any half-decent hunter ought to, you know? Haven't you seen enough of these wretched beasts, freakish slugs, and mad doctors? Sentence these fiends to death. With the help of your League confederates. What do you say? Why not join the League?"

"What... What would joining the League gain me? To- Not to sound greedy, but I just don't know what I would get out of it? N- Not to be disrespectful!"

"Ah! Such Gumption! HAHAHAHA! Well, as for what the League can offer you, Assistance in your quest. No hunter has ever come here without a goal they need to finish."

"I-... I guess I'll join? I don't see a reason not to."

"Yes! As a hunter, well should. Commit this to heart! Our own Caryll rune, the Symbol of the League!"

Suddenly, much like the rune Flora gave him, a rune rushed into Izuku's mind. However, it seemed to be latched onto by the Moon Oath Rune. Izuku watched in a sick fascination as the rune the Master of the League gave him was formed into the intricate lines that formed the Moon Rune.

"Now, there is one thing you must know. By the oath of the League, those who bear its rune will see Vermin." As he spoke, Izuku could feel the smile on the man's face, "Vermin writhe deep within all filth and are the root of man's impurity. All Vermin are to be crushed. The League exists to expunge all Vermin, ridding us of any trace of human corruption. And so, until we are rid of all Vermin, you must continue to hunt and kill. This bloody fate is ours alone. Do not expect the world to grasp our work... But remember, the confederates will always have my blessing... And each other. Always."

Izuku stared up at the man, whose confidence was palpable, and couldn't help but smile. It only took a while, but he finally found another sane human!

So sane might be a stretch... but come on!

As Izuku went to leave. And return to the dream, the older hunter spoke.

"When you find Verman, return them to me and crush them before me. In doing so, I will add them under your name, and when you get enough, you will be respected amongst your peers!"

And with that, Izuku left.

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~~~FLASHBACK~~~

When Izuku was nine years old, a year and some change exactly since his mom decided he was worth less than anyone else, Izuku couldn't stop his mind from wandering. Before, when Izuku let his mind roam the colossal halls of his imagination, it would conjure thoughts and wishes from nothing and connect dots that need not be correlated; There was a constantly positive, happy energy about them. But as the months passed by, the minutes ticked by with no positive outside force. His thoughts became pessimistic.

Was he ever really worth being a hero?

Was there even a possibility?

If others think it's okay to hurt him. Then why was he always told never to harm himself; what's the difference? At least maybe then they would stop when they see he was punishing the worthlessness in himself? At least if he did the damage himself, he would stop before it became too much!

It was not... the best thought process. But with the constant put-downs and negativity and injury, Izuku felt on a near-daily basis. Who could blame him for thinking a stupid thought? He was a KID, a kid without a support system. A KID without friends, positivity, and people, constantly putting his dreams down into the dirt and stomping onto them until they were no longer recognizable.

So that's how he ended in the bathroom, the cold, dry tile leaching the heat from his warm skin as he sat on the freshly mopped floor. A couple drops of crimson littered the ground as he stared wide-eyed with his emerald eyes at the cut he had just dug into his arm.

The razor he had found in his backpack. A razor that was not there before. But appeared after he managed to get his bag back from the bullies from the high school. Gleamed in the sunlight so, tantalizing with the slight red sheen; from Izuku's finger that had been cut when he went to grab a pencil from his backpack. The cut on his finger didn't even hurt at first, but the slight burn soon followed and blossomed into the almost comforting constant that was pain. Izuku should have put the razor in the trash. He should have, but he didn't.

So yes, him ending up on the frigid white tiles of the bathroom floor, with streaks of red crisscrossing his arm, could have been prevented. But that moment marked the beginning of a habit that lasted years, a practice so ingrained by his middle school years he could never do without.

But god, did he wish he could have done without it.

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Izuku's hands tightly gripped the whetstone, its once sharp edges smoothed from its use on the myriad of blades Izuku had acquired. While he might not use all the armaments. The proper care kept them sharp in case he ever was in genuine need of them. He had learned already that while his whip was efficient in its own right, the saw cleaver had its place in his arsenal when it came to... well cleaving into his enemy's blindsides.

The constant work with his hands also gave him time to think. He had been blacking out during battles a lot lately. Flora had assured him he was not being overtaken by bloodlust. So what was happening?

Izuku huffed as the record that was at one point playing a soft, sad tune was summarily replaced by a new one. This one held violins, softly beginning before a plethora of other stringed instruments entered. It held a slow crescendo up from the softness to a much more jaunty tune; Gerhman had joined him in the workshop.

The older man had, at one point or another, in their months of companionship. Decided to let Izuku know the secret of him being able to walk. This was a total shock to Izuku at first. Because for so long, he was led to believe this frail old man was, in fact, not able to walk. And then said old man just hobbled into the workshop asking where his goddamn soybean seeds were. It was a long day.

"Gah!" Gerhman's shout of exasperation was loud and intentionally annoying while clearing the distance between the door and Izuku in a few quick strides, "How can you be held up in this old 'n dusty hovel, huh? And for so long! Bah, While you're here at least, how would you feel about helpin' poor old Gerhman with a project?"

"If by help... you mean to do the entire project with only an avocado as payment. Nah."

"To be fair kiddo; I thought you'd like the avocado... An' this time, I'll only be guiden' you to making yourself a neat toy!"

"from what you read, I positively do not trust anything you would call a toy."

At that, the old man's face tinted red as he lifted a gnarled finger and poked Izuku in the forehead, his sharp finger poking into Izuku's skin, "Hey now! Yer' the brat that brought this old man those books! And if they're here, someone who can appreciate the material better read 'em!"

Swiftly retreating the finger used to poke his disciple, the old man fell back into his wheelchair, which appeared there... somehow. "Anywho kid, what I meant, you nasty-minded child, was a weapon you don't have in yer collection yet, for a couple of reasons like the materials being rare and such. But your old man here pulled some strings and got some through them, their messengers... But hey, if ya don't want a fancy new weapon, I can always resell-"

At the thought of losing the chance to get a NEW weapon, Izuku fell out of the stool he had been sitting in for... a set amount of time that was totally not unhealthy, and grabbed Gerhman by the shoulders, "NO! I- umm... I would really... uh... appreciate it if you helped me make this neat weapon... Please?"

"HAHAHA! Now that would get ya! Let's get to work Izuku! An' please stop shaking me!"

The first step of their process of making the weapon was melting down the copious amounts of metal. The process was slowed considerably by how it wasn't any old metal, and it had to be extracted from objects that held or were made of it. But eventually, it all melted down, and the process of removing the slag had begun. It was slow and tedious, but with the working hands of two smiths who had made a considerable amount of the armory that hung around them, not a piece of slag was left.

The next step was pouring the molten metal into a long rectangular mold with a metal rod coming out of one end through a slot. After the heated metal cooled into a moldable solid, the detachable mold split into two halves, leaving the long rectangle and the pole coming out of one side. With wrapped hands, the two smiths got to work. Gerhman, being the one who knew the shape they needed, had given the pole to Izuku to hold steady on the anvil. Which allowed him to hammer at the hunk of metal with near reckless abandon.

...

The first three hours were, forming the metal and reheating it to the desired temperatures. Which for Gerhman, as he was a hunter who had not made a weapon in a long time, near hellish. The sparks flew over his skin, some slightly burning him in the process. He had long shed all three of his regular chest layers, the old coat, shirt, and undershirt sitting in a pile somewhere in the front of the workshop. The heat was familiar, if not slightly foreign, as he had grown used to being sedentary in the dream. But the take to gardening had been the wake-up call his old muscles needed to gain their former strength. In fact, he had never felt better but at that moment, shaping a hunk of siderite with his apprentice.

He couldn't help but feel the wafting heat of the sparks fly angrily at him like they knew what he was making. But he couldn't help but smile as his apprentice was doing. Soon he would need to switch with Izuku, he could only hammer the basic shape out before he would get tired, but Gerhman knew Izuku wouldn't stop until the blade was done.

Gerhman took a deep breath and steeled his resolve, he said he wouldn't make another, but here he was.

The hammer hit the siderite with renewed vigor.

...

Izuku took the reins after the basic shape was formed; the long crescent-like form of the odd metal had become his to shape. Following Gerhman's instructions, he continued to shape the blade.

Izuku really wanted to know what the weapon was going to be, he had a few guesses, but it could be anything.

The next step came into play almost another hour and a half later; they had removed material to lighten the blade as they had made it too thick and the sharp crescent shape of the blade was perfectly defined. There were no bends or warps to be seen as they sunk the metal into the barrel of oils. And as soon as the steam let up, they quickly removed it to inspect the shape... There were no warps in sight!

They continued to reheat and treat the blade five times more to harden the siderite. After they had strengthened the blade to the desired level, Izuku was set upon the task of sharpening the inner edge and point of the crescent. While Gerhman was working on his project. He had started on it in advance, the hilt and mechanisms that went into it.

By the time they had both finished their respective duties, nearly twelve total hours had passed... they think.

The weapon they had forged was what Gerhman had told Izuku was called a Burial Blade, something that meant a lot to Gerhman, even if it was not his original, as this one didn't hold the tainted memories of the old one. And with the blade, Izuku was given a badge, right off of Gerhman's own shirt.

Izuku couldn't help but break into tears.

——————————————————

Izuku was running.

Had he mentioned he hated snakes?

Undoubtedly he must have? The snake guy from earlier? Nearly caused Izuku to start crying as his head exploded into snakes.

So yes. Izuku was sprinting deeper into an area he had never been.

He had passed bundles of snakes that had joined into somehow moving piles, and at one point, he had seen a giant one with at least a thousand snakes coiled around each other!

But, at least he was at a giant pond, full of muck... and a GIANT PIG! Actually, it was the size of the one from the sewer...

The giant pig's flabby body cascaded through the water, pushing a wave around it as it sprinted at Izuku. But as it came close, Izuku rolled to the side, and with a click of a new mechanism, the beast's legs were sheared from under it; As a scythe cut through its limbs like butter. The momentum carried the torso of the pig multiple yards until it crashed into the muddy earth. Its squeals of rage evolved into squeals of agony as its body thrashed in the now bloody mud before a streak of silver sliced into the beast's skull, silencing it.

The new scythe was entirely different in handling than his whip, as he knew it would be, but the extra weight allowed him to deliver more powerful blows than he thought he would. Not to mention it seemed to have a much longer range than it should.

Izuku had not abandoned his whip. In fact, it was hanging at his side as he waded through the muck; Through the roots of a massive tree, and was swiftly pulled out as a moldy and rotten corpse hand gripped his ankle from the muddy water. Its more modest size allowed it to be used in the close quarters of the roots, as the scythe's blade hung from his waist, and its folded hilt hung on his back...

There was another pig.

After being tossed into the air, into a burning fire pit, Izuku shot the pig in the eyes and cut into it quickly with his whip.

Continuing his path, he came to a T section in his travel, up or down. Well, he headed up to see what was there as down was his path the entire time.

The path up led to more graves as the area he had sprinted through had mirrored, but only a single snake guy knelt in the little alcove, Izuku had arrived in. A swift strike from his scythe left the man in two, and the items around the small area to be his to appropriate; One of the things he found was another rune, he would look into it later, and a few bullets lying around here and there.

Izuku left swiftly as the top half of the man seemed to spring back to life as the snakes began to burst from its head and began dragging themselves towards him... At least Izuku now knew that Yharnam was never going to stop surprising him.

Izuku hurried down the path he had come from and continued to follow the path until he got to a suspicious-looking archway of stone that opened up into a large open area... Unquestionably something wrong lived here.

And as the young hunter stepped into the clearing, three shadowy figures emerged from the mist on the other side. They were tall, cloaked in complete black, and two held swords suspiciously looking like katanas. One also carried a candlestick with a lit candle, and the other had nothing extra. The third of the group held a mace, and the other hand was seemingly lit aflame.

Izuku let out a sigh, rolling his head and feeling a small pop, before swinging the massive curved blade of the scythe that rested in his hand into the slot on the folded pole that hung from his back. Before swinging the entire thing out and snapping the folded carved wood into place.

Izuku's foot left a pothole in the soft earth as he launched himself between the three, crouching down and spinning in a quick motion, extending the scythe out as he rotated; the three made a move to jump away. But the scythe had already sliced into one and soon bit deep in the others. Izuku's twirl ended as he dragged his foot across the hard stone of the rock that made up most of the floor. A quick breath out his nose, and he was off; he focused down on the one with the mace. As he was running, the tip of the blade dug into the ground. And as he closed onto his prey, Izuku sliced upward, cutting through the stone. And into the torso of the black-clothed man.

The man didn't have time to react as the blade sliced through his chest and out his back. The force of the attack had carried the man into the air, the scythe still stuck deep. And in a massive arc was slammed into the ground. It took Izuku a bit of force, but the blade came loose of the man, leaving the nearly cut-in two-man lying in a growing pool.

Turning around, Izuku couldn't help but shiver as the other two seemed to tense and writhe as snakes started bursting out of them. Gulping down his rising disgust, he shook the blade clean with a flourish. And charged again. He was against the two closer ranged fighters of the three, so they easily dodged his initial strikes and went on the assault. Their arms seemed to extend as snakes, appearing to replace the flesh and limbs in their whole. The range and speed of the two increased as one lit their blade on fire. Izuku swiftly dogged the flurry of attacks as they came, the sweat building on his forehead as he felt the resonant buzz in his head... and he quickened. The shift was cold as he jumped back across the massive room, and as he landed and re-coalesced, he lifted his arm and used the blade of the scythe to cut deep into his hand. The blood dripped and seemed to be magnetically pulled to the symbol imprinted, and the energy grew as the two rushed forward to him. In a surge of desperation, he wiped the blood that glowed onto the blade of the scythe and struck out as the two were nearly on top of him, their blades; going down to strike him. The now blood-red scythe sliced a deep red crescent into the air and expanded.

The pressure of the attack had launched both the two shadows and Izuku into opposite directions. But not before burning an acidic divot into the bodies of the two shadows. Izuku stood up shakily and lifted his gun with his cut hand. And aimed at the two shadows. Only one got up, however, and their legs shook violently. The burning blade seemed to spurt and go out as they stared dead at the young hunter. Their legs gave up before Izuku took the shot, and they sat on their knees. And right before Izuku finally put the shadow out of its misery, he noticed the droplets of dirtied clear liquid drip from the shadow of its hood. He shot before he let his mind wander too far.

He couldn't give up now.

...

He continued his trek through the small opening that he found out of the area he had killed the shadows. His body ached with exhaustion, but he kept forward. And as he made his way onward, as the path widened, he was suddenly attacked by... a bug? Its size was around six feet, its head was massive and bloated with the hundreds of bug-like eyes that glowed green like lanterns. Its body was bony and nearly see-through, and tattered wings hung uselessly from its back. It jumped forward towards Izuku, its clawed hands going to grab at Izuku's head. But just as it came close, Izuku ducked out of the way. Its bony but still, hefty body hit the ground next to Izuku; it stumbled forward from the weight of its head. And Izuku took advantage and jabbed the lone blade of the scythe into its head.

Undeterred... for now, Izuku continued his trek and quickly found a lantern, the little messengers waving at him as he lit it. In front of him was a massive building that creaked with age and gave off a haunting aura. It was the place he had been needing to go, Byrgenwerth, the place where all the study of the great ones began. Izuku cracked his neck before connecting the blade to the rest of the scythe. And began sprinting. The subsequent bug creature never stood a chance as the blur that was Izuku ran by and sliced a slab of its head clean off. And Izuku continued without a falter in his step as he came around a curve in the cobble path. There was a door to the building, but it did not budge. A bit farther, there was an overhang, and on top of the overhang that connected to the building were three more bugs. And across the way, on the other side of the trail, was a massive... something. Before he could analyze what it was, the three bugs jumped off. Two never met the ground before they were cut in two. And the final one was cut from head to toe in moments.

Turning his attention back to the... something, he watched as the flower that was at the top of its long... neck? Shot a flaming ball of something at him. Quickly quickening, Izuku dashed across the path. And came close to what was now a centipede creature with a massive sideways mouth and its long neck-like appendage that split off was his first target. He sliced through it, a splatter of greenish-blue blood coated the young hunter as he kept hacking into the hundreds of legs until eventually, it stopped moving.

With another deeper breath, he continued, ignoring the horror of the thing he had just killed. There was another bug, but it fell like the rest. And he opened a gate that opened a path to the lantern. And turned to the second door to the massive building.

The massive doors were dusty and ground as he pushed it open. And what Izuku saw was a dream come true. A large room, its walls lined with bookshelves and books. In fact, there were so many books that there were piles four feet tall stacked everywhere in the room. There were vials and glass jars filled with... things. And a staircase, and a man walking towards Izuku from the top of the stairs... with a cane whip... And definitely did not look friendly. The hunter was not a tough fight for Izuku, as the scythe had allowed him to catch the whip and wrench it from the hunter's hand. And tear into the defenseless hunter without remorse.

Izuku explored the entire building and found countless nicknacks. And even a shell of... Something in a chest at the top of the building being defended by a bug for some reason.

Eventually, Izuku opened the final door on the second floor and found himself on the overhang from earlier, and a man sat in a rocking chair to his left. He looked oddly familiar. But Izuku could not place where he would know them from. The man turned their head, their eyes covered by a massive mask from the nose up. And lifted the cane in their hand with a grunt of effort. And pointed to the ledge in front of them both. Izuku walked over to the edge and stared into the moon's reflection that seemed to glow in and ripple against the waves.

And Izuku jumped in.

At first, he expected the frigid rush of the water, but that was not what he got. As if the water was thin paper, Izuku fell through the water and went into a freefall, descending to a floor that resembled the shimmering water he was meant to hit. His body tucked and rolled instinctively, as he hit the ground, the... water? Leaving him lightly damp but not submerging him. He stood up and looked around the vast expanse of water that seemed to continue on forever. And he saw a giant potato-shaped... something. As he closed in and brought out his scythe, it became apparent this thing was not hostile and a spider. Its bulbous body was supported by hundreds of arachnid legs, and its body was covered in a combination of small and large black beady eyes and flowing white flowers that covered its back. Its face was like a slate of bone and held numerous amounts of the same eyes as its body.

As Izuku approached, he could guess it was about six or seven feet tall, and its body was around ten feet long. In all, it was massive. As Izuku surveyed the beast, it stared at him, all its eyes unblinkingly, and focused on him solely. So Izuku took a moment to prepare for the battle that was about to happen when he hit this thing. Stretching his arm out, Izuku focused on the rune that Flora had given him. And cut deep into the soft skin. The blood flowed to the rune and shimmered a vibrant sickly red as it formed a sphere in his palm. In a quick motion, he smeared the volatile liquid on the blade and watched as it seemed to shape to the edge of the weapon.

And then, after a quick moment, Izuku ran at the massive beast and struck. The red burst forth from the blade and deepened the crevice Izuku carved into the side of the beast. And then the monster's kin dropped from the void that was above them. Twelve smaller but longer-legged versions of the beast landed and quickly turned to the young hunter, surrounding him as Izuku dug into their kins side. Izuku ripped the scythe from the beast and went in for another attack. While narrowly avoiding the clawed leg of one of its kind. As his blade reached deep into the blubbery yet crunchy mass of the beast. He had to quicken out of the area he had been sitting in. Just as four of the smaller kin went for an attack. And just as he went for another strike, the massive beast began walking in a spiral, its form shifting into a pale white mist as it vanished from sight.

Izuku turned his vision to the smaller kin and began cleaving through their legs, leaving the spiders motionless torsos on the wet ground. Glancing quickly around the area, Izuku watched the massive figure form a distance away. As well as its kin dropping around it.

Izuku muttered a quick swear as he ran in a full sprint at the beast, and about halfway to it, he lifted his left arm and pulled at the arcane energy that he had begun getting used to using. He felt the palm of his hand tear away as hundreds of orbs of crimson floated out of the wound and shot at the beast. A handful of the unaimed attack missed, but most pelted into the surrounding kin. Clearing a wide berth for Izuku to go in swinging. But just as Izuku closed in, the massive beast lifted itself from the water. At first, nothing happened, but suddenly, blue meteor-like objects began falling from the void above the battle. Just barely missing the full sprint Izuku.

As the beast's body lowered back to the ground, Izuku slid into range and began his assault. His scythe dug into the beast's back, and Izuku pulled himself on top of the creature and planted the barrel of his gun into one of the soft eyes. Continuous gunshots were fired from the gun. Digging a crater into its soft flesh and cracking the hard chitin that covered most of its body. Its body began moving again, in the same pattern that allowed itself to teleport, but Izuku was not letting it leave without a fight. He brought up his scythe and slammed it into its back, and began pulling the blade towards himself. Just as it vanished from under Izuku, he was sprayed with crimson blood.

He landed on the ground with a thud. While just managing to avoid the attacks of many of the kin. He did the same tactics for clearing as last time, go for the legs.

As Izuku finished off the last of the beast's kin. He watched the beast again appear at a distance, and it began lifting itself from the ground. Izuku started sprinting full boar towards the beast, both to close distance and to attempt to escape the strikes falling from the sky. He was not so lucky this time. The final meteor in the cycle slammed into his back, The sheer energy knocking him onto the ground and causing a snap to originate from his chest. Izuku, as fast as he could, struggled to his feet and injected two vials into himself, feeling the bone knit together as it forced itself back into place.

It hurt to breathe as he kept his sprint, but he couldn't stop. He neared the beast and its kin and began taking the kins legs out one by one. He kept some distance between himself and the beast itself, as when he got near, it would flail its massive body around with impunity. But he managed to get hits in between each thrash and sent bullets into its sides when he could land a shot.

Its body was leaking blood in pools, and Izuku's arm hurt from the heavy usage of arcane spells. But with one final strike of the scythe, the beast's head came tumbling off.

Izuku's mind soon fell to unctuousness, unaware of the women in a wedding dress and a bloodied belly that stood near him, nor the moon, going from its crisp white to a blood red.

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Sorry, this all took so long! I wanted this to be a more significant chapter, and it to be good. I also got a stomach bug at the 2400 wordmark. I have only really have been able to write today, November 11, because all my prior arrangements are finished. So more active updates soon!

[I am not a trained smith, so there are likely wrong things in the smithing scene.]

I'm thinking of making a patrion of some kind, maybe not specifically patrion. But I'm not sure I know lots of people love this story, and having income not just from my job would help me find more time to write, but I wanted y'all's opinion on this before I just put a link for no reason. To me, it feels wrong? As much as I would love to make money from writing, there are always those who believe a person who writes in a free domain shouldn't be able to make money.

So I'm asking y'all, should I make it like a patrion type thing? I could make a thing about those who donate at the end of chaps. And even give early peeks at chapters and such.

Anyway, hope you all have a good day/ night, and I hope you get to eat some food you love!

Chapter 13: Ch12, Further in we Tread

Chapter Text

So! About the last chapter, if it felt rushed to you, it was because it was. I felt like trash and had put so much effort into the first half that the final 4000~ or so words lost their energy. But I also have a very good reason for it being a skip over what is one of the largest areas in the game.

The reason is that I personally dislike the entire forbidden forest. Now I don't hate it, but comparing it to other areas it's a long slog, if you kill all the enemies, to the end. The original plan was to write the forbidden forest into two parts, both around 6-7000 each with intermissions like usual. But after running through the area again in the game, and writing my usual area notes, I realized that it would make for an unnecessarily slow and drawn out area, at this point Izuku isn't taking in the scenery, unlike in the first chapters where he was learning about Yharnam.

So after writing a lot, and changing a lot, I decided to make it a skimmed version of what I originally wanted. Now if you dislike that, I don't know, just don't complain about it to me, I'm writing a story that's a homage to my favorite game and one of my favorite animes, and we haven't even got to much of the MHA stuff. Which I have a lot planned for.

Anyway, the rant is over, I'm working hard on this chap and hope yall like it!

If you wish to support me, I have a Twitter! It is @kuro945235232, it is a place where I will post updates and stuff! It also has a link to how to support me!

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Izuku’s once emerald green hair held loose strands of silvery white. Small streaks of a deep red danced around the hair ends. His curls which were once more wild and sharp had softened. Making loose curls that hung around his head like a mane.

He was sitting at the weapon workbench, twirling a strand of the seemingly glowing silver hair in one hand, while his other sketched out an intricate blueprint. It wasn’t anything he had made before, the gauntlet, a design inspired by the myriad of different tools he had acquired over his time in Yharnam.

Its base was the claw he had found while fighting the bagman, skinned and stretched over a thin metal frame, the bones being used as base supports, as they were tougher than the small amount of steel he had bought. The old hunter's bone, which seemed to heighten his senses and help him focus when using quickening, was fixed into the top part, acting as a shield if necessary, as its strength was incredible. Hitting it with a full-force attack from his scythe and cane did nothing to it, not even scratch it. And even though it was small, it covered the middle of his forearm.

There was a lot of empty space, and by how rare these tools are, the likelihood of him making the gauntlet fully was slim, it was usable, but it lacking, it gave him major defense, allowed him to release a roar, that ripped up his throat but pushed back nearly everything, and increased his reflexes majorly. But he knew there had to be something more offensive.

Izuku quickly stretched out his left hand and began buckling it into the gauntlet with his right. It was soft on the inside and kept the cool air of Yharnam away from his dominant hand, it shimmered as thin wires of steel added protection, but was mostly hidden by the thick fur of the beast claw, and the five fingers of the beast claw had to be shortened, and the claws were replaced by steel replicas that allowed him to rend his enemies more when he needed to shove it into them.

He breathed deeply as the energy in him bled into the weapon, it had been there since the beginning of his journey, perhaps the ‘gift’ his mother had given him had been a deeper connection to the arcane. It was only recently that he noticed it, when he was holding one of these items, the marking on his arm seemed to bleed more energy into him and funneled into the tool.

He had found a book on Caryll Runes. The runes he had found, that had been seared into his mind and devoured by the one his mother had bestowed unto him had meanings and were even said to be the echoing words of the great ones who were linked to the power.

There was a page in the book that had rough sketched, rough unnamed symbols and shapes. Izuku had become fascinated by them.

Three weeks had Izuku been held up in the dream, deciphering the symbols and unknown text, while working on his gauntlet.

Lake.

Blood rapture.

Moon.

Communion.

As he deciphered the ancient, seeming infinite possibility that the shapes held he figured out their meaning.

Like a lake, unyielding, unrelenting understanding it meant being those things, unchangeable, uncontrollable. It leaked from his mind, the mental show of the symbol being devoured and reused by the rune his mother gave him. He felt his body shift, it was slight, hardly noticeable, but bruises were lessened, cuts were shallower.

Blood rapture, one he had gotten already, but the symbols in the book were more interesting. Even written in charcoal the symbols seemed to be deep, digging into the page, shining. To be unconquerable, to take what you need to survive, to steal the blood of your enemies and be enraptured by their weakness. His hands that tore the guts of his foes out and splattered their blood on the environment, drew in a portion of the blood, repairing his wounds with the life of his enemies.

Moon, his mother's name, stared him in the face, flora, the moon, he didn’t even need to study this one, it flowed into him like ink, fusing into his mother's rune, the intricacies becoming more profound. There was no noticeable difference that he had noticed, but he felt stronger for just having the rune.

Communion, the first rune on the page, he knew this one too. Speaking, conversing, communicating with things beyond the beyond. Make contact with something benevolent or malevolent in hopes of bringing something to your favor.

He wrote them on the gauntlet, under the fur in stitching.

He had put off his job for too long.

He had a goal, make it back, become a hero, and make those who do wrong suffer like the beasts they are.

Izuku let out a light giggle. The mind-bending fear of waking up on a metal pedestal and staring up at a massive creature, its arms seemingly uncountable, its massive hands dwarfing him and the length and number of fingers making his brain fail to work.

It had clung to the top of the massive dome structure he had woken up in, hanging onto the sheer walls as if it was a spider. Its head, if it could be called that, stared down at him, its boney, mangled flesh-covered head riddled with holes, and peaking out of the holes, in between folds of flesh were eyes, beady eyes that never blinked and seemed to size him up. Wondering if he was worth eating.

He had felt his mind slip, as it shifted, reality seeming to accept that the being was there and aided the creature, one long arm began its descent to him, numerous fingers stretching to full length, beyond his height. That’s when Izuku started running, under the beast and through the massive doorway that once stood closed, and to a part of Yharnam, a part he had never been before. The huntsman and the mob were undying there. Their hair, once black glowed a sickly red as he slew them again and again. Their blood was a waterfall as he sliced and whipped and cut, but eventually, he needed to retreat. Their attacks were faster and harder, their rage making them attack through his, so he ran, finding a nearby lantern and returning to the safety of the dream.

And there he had been, under the watchful and protective eyes of his family, muttering and crafting in the closed doors of the workshop. And for the first time since he got back to the dream, he stood, the joints in his legs popping, and his vertebrae soon following as he stretched.

Gehrman watched him with old tired eyes as he walked to one of the messengers, and vanished in a plume of soft white smoke.

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Izuku’s eyes stared out to the secret sector of Yharnam, the massive buildings stood stoically, unaware of the mind-bending horrors that crawled along the outside of them.

Ching~

Izuku watched the mutilated corpse of the huntsman he had just killed begin to reform, the toll of the bell making them come back to life. The stringy flesh began pulling together like an unseen string, stitching it back, the sliced bones snapped together, and the once dull eyes began being filled with an unimaginable hatred.

With a quick slash, the seven reforming corpses fell back into the massive seceding staircase. Izuku’s only path to go was down those stairs, but one of the mind-shattering spider-like beings was perched above the colossal doorway, seemingly hundreds of descending stairs down.

Izuku wondered what the spider-like creatures were, perhaps they were great ones?

“Do not be foolish my child, those are much too weak to be great ones” The ever calm voice of Flora cascaded over Izuku as he stared up at the beast from the distance of the staircase.

“Then- what are they? They are much too outlandish to be beasts. Much to…”

“Your words fail you, little green hunter, I believe the word you are searching for is fathomless. Amygdala, well, they are lesser children of my sister Kos, related by chance and nothing more. Born of the same insight that scholars use to find deeper meaning in their fear. They are born of the fear of humanity, and of the knowledge, your poor kind harbors so dearly.”

“But, can I kill it then? Or is it too powerful to be affected by my weapons?” Izuku questioned, staring down at the bloodied head of his scythe.

“Can you kill fear my child? Can you overcome it? You have overcome many fears, the only thing you cannot kill with what you have will be decided by you.”

“I… Th-thank you.” Izuku stuttered out, a small blush hazing his cheeks as he cut down the reforming mob again.

“You are very welcome, my green one… be ready for the trials ahead.”

Izuku took a deep breath as the chiming of the bell sounded again, the invigorating feeling of Flora's presence leaving him with a buzz throughout his body. With a swipe of his scythe, he began to descend the large staircase. The stairs were not normal, they were much larger, allowing bis feet room on each step. Making the staircase more slanted than most stairs Izuku had ever seen… What was wrong with the design of this massive city? Towns seemed to be stacked up and up without any care whatsoever. What supported this massive blood-soaked city?

Izuku kept an eye on the giant Amygdala that dwarfed him and even the building it clung to. The crowd of the blood-tinted mob that guarded the door the beast was parched above turned to face him, their weapons prepared for a fight. Izuku sent a wave of vitality into his gauntlet, his left hand heating up as the once inanimate fur of the gauntlet seemed to spark to life, the leathery skin that hugged Izuku’s own skin seemed to flex, as if some kind of unseen muscle were copying his own. And then, the second wave of heat traveled down his veins as a soft smoke-like substance began wafting off of Izuku.

With a feral grin on his face, Izuku bounded off the top of the staircase, jumping into the fray.

Like a comet with a trail of ethereal power, Izuku slammed into the first of the mob, his foot caving in their head as he swung his scythe in a deadly arc, bisecting once human beasts in half.

The hand of the amygdala began to descend.

The chime of a bell, The once dead rose up, the ones at the top of the stairs began charging, the chime was louder at the bottom and close. But Izuku is surrounded. So he screamed.

A shockwave of malloc ripped from Izuku, the mob around him were flung feet away and slammed into the stone railing of the stairs, some unlucky ones were launched over.

The hand came close to Izuku as he headed into the doorway but instead grabbed one of the mob. But they seemed to cease to exist as they were lifted up, their body turning to sand and dust in the creature's palm.

Izuku ignored that.

Another chime began, the room he was in was some kind of prison-like structure with three cells on top of a razed walkway, and in front of them, woman with a bell.

Their chime was cut short as a bullet exited their head.

Izuku headed to the only exit of the room and followed it out. Out into the night air and came face to face with a locked door. However, thankfully not all was lost as there was a massive hole in the wall next to it.

Entering it quickly Izuku sprinted down the dusty hall, his footsteps cracking dried bloodstains as he went. He skidded to a stop at the end of the hall and turned right to a little room, with a gate-like door that separated the hall and room from the main room of the building.

Quickly Izuku kicked the door open.

Ching~

In moments the large bloodstain Izuku ran over in the hall became liquid again, and a massive figure of a red-stained hunchback crawled out.

A few well-placed rounds in its skull left it crumpled in the floor it once resided in.

Izuku headed farther into the large room, the corpses of the mob that littered the room scraped together their weapons and stood to oppose the young hunter.

The permanent mark on his arm flared with red arcane energy as another chime passed through the material around him, bloodstains that littered the room began sprouting limbs as skinless variations of the emaciated mob began rising.

The red energy from the mark and the pale mist from his gauntlet flared as Izuku jumped into the thick of the mob of undying adversaries.

The razor edge of Izuku's scythe gleamed a deep red as trisected the nearest handful of beasts, the flash of gunfire bringing to light the sheer amount of blood that marked the insides of the room.

Ching ching~ Ching ching~

The sounds of bells chiming made Izuku’s teeth grit as a clawed hand scratched deep, and a bullet lodged itself in the cavity near his left lung.

A choked scream scratched out his throat as the massive hand of the hunchback grabbed his head and fling him deeper into the lake of mob and beasts.

As his back slammed into the dark stained stone floor, Izuku’s hands grabbed three high concentration blood vials and injected them into his leg. The burst of energy flooded him allowing him to move out of the way of the numerous feet and limbs that hit the area he once was.

His scythe lay in the horde of bodies, his whip was back in the dream, being treated in blood.

A flare of arcane drew Izuku’s attention back to the symbol on his arm, quickly Izuku slipped off his arcane gauntlet and pushed as much vitality as he could into his arm, the flesh parted and blood flowed out, hundreds of bead sized droplets began shooting out in all directions, the nearest creatures were eviscerated in moments, allowing Izuku to run to his scythe as his body ached from the massive surge of energy.

A few walking corpses lumbered towards him but were taken out with a shaky gunshot. The shimmer of a silver bell between one of the metal grates caught Izuku’s eye, he fired three rounds between the metal into the silhouette of the bell ringing bitch.

Izuku let out a sigh as he stepped through the blood and flesh-covered floor, the eery glint on his scythes edge coming back in full force as he cracked a sad*stic smile. His gauntlet heated up with a feral warmth.

He walked into the night air into an open area, he followed the walkway to a gazebo-like construct, a bullet was placed into the bell ringer before he even gave her time to respond to his presence. Izuku scoured the area for usable loot, before looking out to the Amygdala perched on top of the building in the distance, another declining stairway to the beast that lingered over the open archway.

However, as Izuku neared the first steps the monster locked its hidden eyes on him.

In an almost painful display, the hundreds of eyes that covered the skull of the creature popped out of their sockets, blood and puss leaked from around the normally hidden organs as bluish-white arcane energy built upon them all, and focused into a central orb. In moments a scorching ray of energy slammed into the staircase, traveling up as the beast lifted its head to direct the energy. Izuku narrowly dodged the energy, only for the crevice the beam left to explode into a second wave of energy, knocking the young hunter through the metal railing and off the staining tower-like structure.

Izuku expected death to greet him, and end up at the start of the horrid creation that was this walkway of undying creatures. But he soon found himself on some sort of balcony, the skin on his face singed lightly from the heat of the strike.

Izuku continued into the hidden area.

Ching~

f*ck.

The blood puddle once hidden soon began glowing and Izuku headed deeper into the room, placing a few rounds into the trying to hide bell ringer, and turning just fast enough to shoot the large hunchback as he swung.

A spray of blood and the launching of the beast's body left Izuku alone on the raised platform that presided over a cage in a solitary room. Izuku jumped into the cage, snatching the key and materials off of the dead hunter's corpses, opening the closed door, and heading out. Only for a blood pool in the middle of the room to begin glowing, situated between the young hunter and the large chest. Izuku prepped his gun to fire at the beast's head. However, he was caught in the back by six bullets.

His senses flared as he quickened out of the way of more gunfire… Somehow in his battle rage, he had forgotten his most prized ability. Izuku ended up behind the Gatling gun-armed wheelchair-bound mob member. Who soon joined his group as a corpse.

A few more gunshots and the hunchback also joined them.

Snooping around the chest Izuku found a small hammer-like item, with a rounded silver head and a small static-like vibration. It was carved with arcane runes and the hilt was made of a bone-like substance. A new hunter tool!

Izuku pocketed it for later.

Izuku eventually found his way back to the main stairs with the laser-faced Amygdala, he watched it make its beam countless more times, writing in his newest notebook. He hadn't fully stopped writing in notebooks, he had accumulated nearly twenty over Yharnam and its beasts, compiling information over all kinds of things.

He had a theory.

After the beast finished its last laser, Izuku walked to the first step, and brought his arm up, he pushed vitality into his marking, causing neat cuts to begin forming across his arm, shoulder, and palm. The small beads of blood began floating around his arm, vibrating and shifting throughout the air.

Izuku held the beads back, focusing them into a large orb of blood in front of his hand, which was aimed towards the Amigdalas head, the orb of acidic red liquid began to shift into spires of crimson with barbs, only to go back to the smooth orb.

The Amygdala began its charge, its own orb forming.

Izuku fired off his copied attack, just as the beast's own finished. A spray of red showered the beast, its orb exploding on contact with the blood, blue beams of energy shot out in random directions, colliding into anything, including the beast itself.

Izuku watched in fascination as the beast's beam attack tore chunks out of its own flesh, allowing his blood to seep deeper in, large pillars of red barbs burst forth from the creature as it began moving in a frenzy. Its hands slammed into the building, cracking the stone as its body melted in places. And suddenly, a large barb sprouted from its head, piercing it onto the building.

Izuku smiled as its body flicked from reality.

He headed deeper into the hidden city.

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(Flashback)

Izuku’s schoolwork was fun.

Well, it wasn't actually.

But he did his assignments with a smile, as the teachers of the school handed his papers that were ‘miss prints’. Papers that they would give to students grades above him.

He never complained after the first time.

So here he sat, at a desk with so much writing and black marks that it seemed to not even be made of wood anymore. It was stained black, only a few words in neon colors made it through the dark ink.

Izuku’s mind wandered as he wrote a formula from a textbook he had to take from the physics lab, effortlessly reusing the formula to figure out the answer. It was Friday, which meant he could go home, get ignored as his mother went out to eat with some work friends, and starve. Or he could just… wander around the city.

Just as Izuku finished the final problem on the physics test, in a pre-algebra class, the bell rang, and Miss Mocha, a larger woman who kept her class smelling like the drink her name shares, took up the papers at once with her quirk Paper Manipulation.

Izuku let out a soft sigh, as he stood up, he was lucky that Bakugou had skipped that day, or was sick, or whatever he was doing at that moment. Without the catalyst for the harassment, most of his usual bullies did nothing.

The green-haired teen put on his now packed bag and slipped out of the classroom, the keen eye of Bakugou not there to catch him. Which was a wonderful thing for his still-healing ribs.

Izuku had come to a decision as he exited the main gate of his personal hell hole, he would rather be mugged than sit in an empty house. And so, with slightly bigger steps, the young teen walked to the nearest train station and began his journey somewhere.

The quiet creaking of the train was what Izuku focused on as he dug through his bag. His earbuds, which he confiscated from a bully, were a pain to find, but eventually, he found them. The beaten-up blue case glinted in the soft light of the subway train.

A small grin shifted over his face as he clicked open the case and slipped in the buds, his phone, a beaten-up thing that only held a small discography of music, around 100 songs. But thankfully it was full of only the songs he could stand listening to for long stretches of time.

His finger scrolled through the music, looking for the song of the day.

Just the Two of Us.

Deadly, Deadly.

HOLD ME TIGHT OR DONT - Sweater Beats Remix.

Disease.

He came to the four culprits he listened to the most. And clicked the last one.

And just as the song started, a finger poked him in the shoulder. Causing him to sit up straight from his usual hunched-over posture.

Izuku glanced over to his shoulder, only to spot a… pink finger? Tracing the finger back to the arm and up the arm to the overly exposed shoulder of a very pink girl. Her eyes were a bright vibrant gold that held a shimmer of excitement and the black sclera making them even more pronounced. The bush of pink hair and a set of pastel yellow horns peeked through the mess.

Izuku’s eyes blinked slowly. Once. Twice. Three times before he realized that they were nearly face to face, the distance being less than he would like.

He felt a heat reach his cheeks as he slowly scooted a few inches away, only for her to scoot just as much forward. She made a motion to take an earbud out, and really, he had no reason not to comply.

As soon as the earbud left his ear, the girl, who seemed to have been vibrating, started speaking. “I saw you were listening to music… and I know it's a bit odd buuuut my earbuds died and I forgot to plug them in…” a small bit of lilac spread to her cheeks as she continued, “And well… this train goes for another half an hour before my stop, so I was wonder’in if you could spare one for a bit? At least until you or I need to leave?” Her vibrant golden eyes dilated a bit, as she bounced up and down with one set of fingers crossed.

Once again, Izuku’s eyes blinked slowly. “I-... I guess? I- well I have no reason not to? Do- do you have any preferences for music? I really don't have much on my phone.” he stuttered out, a blush forming as he handed off the earbud.

“Nope! Anything is better than that old man snoring over there, it's like, the middle of the day! How is he even asleep? OH MY GOSH! I forgot to tell you my name!” She said as she grabbed the earbud from his offering hand and plopped it in. While also grabbing his right hand with hers and began shaking it, “My name's Mina Ashido! But you can call me Mina!”

“I-Izuku Midoriya? N- Nice to meet you.”

Izuku quickly averted his eyes from the, admittedly very cute girl and clicked play on the music, put shuffle play on, and grabbed the physics textbook from his bag. Determined to ignore his heartbeat as the pink girl smiled at him.

Wich got even harder as she leaned over his shoulder, looking at the massive book with him, only now he could hear her as she whistled lowly and almost silently whispered “What the f*ck does any of that mean?”

He couldn’t help a small grin forming as he read over what was likely his next couple of weeks of work, he felt a shift from next to him but decided to ignore it, only for another poke to be delivered to his shoulder.

Looking up from the very boring book, Izuku’s nose brushed against the offending girls, nearly setting off any and all social alarms he had, as his entire body erupted in a violent blush.

She was right in front of him, a small bit of lilac dancing across her ears as she smiled oh so innocently at him, “Yah know Midoriya, you should let me see your phone for a sec, I promise I won’t do anything bad~”

Izuku’s brain was flash fried, so his only response was him sliding his beaten phone from keeping down a page of the book, over to her, where she opened his contacts and began putting in…

Oh.

Oh no.

She handed back his phone and his blush got revived, there were three contacts on his phone now.

Mom. ‘a fake number’

Miss. Kayama.

Mina~

HE GOT HER PHONE NUMBER?!?!

Izuku stared at the glowing screen, his cheeks flaring to match the girl whose grin only widened. What had he done to get her phone number? Was she one of Bakugou's friends from another school? Here to put him in a false sense of security and then systematically destroy him? Probably… but to be honest, it was hard for Izuku to believe that a girl this peppy would ever socialize with someone like Bakugou.

She let out a giggle as his blush had yet to lessen, “What? Not used to getting pretty girls numbers~”

Izuku let out a small eep, the blush only getting darker.

“Ya know, I’m heading to the mall, you wanna tag along? It’s gonna be pretty lonely walking around a big mall all by myself~” she spoke with a big smile on her face.

Izuku turned his head to the side and coughed a few times into a fist, trying to reduce his blush, before stuttering out a soft sure.

Even if it was a trap, he had fallen for them before, he was used to getting disappointed.

———————————————————

The people Izuku had collected into the Church were all going nuts.

The old lady was doping on sedatives, and handing them out like candy… She called him dear. The same old lady that nearly whacked his head off for asking if she was okay.

The skeptic man was even worse than before, the whor*, Arianna was her actual name. Was having stomach cramps and problems, and the dweller was scared of everything. The young daughters were huddled in a corner, the oldest sitting in front of her sister protectively. And to top it all off Eileen had vanished. She didn't usually stay anywhere, But she could be found in some parts, so the fact that she was just gone made Izuku worry.

So. Now he was running around the Cathedral Ward with more than enough worry to go around. And as he ascended the massive stairway, he spotted her.

Lying against the railing to the main Cathedral, was Eileen, a puddle of blood that descended a few stairs and kept creeping farther.

Izuku was by her side in seconds.

She lifted her head as he bent down, applying pressure to her wound. "Oh, is that you again?" Her voice held a whimsical tilt, "I'm afraid I've made a bit of a blunder. I'm just going to have a short rest."

“N-No! I- I have vials, don't worry! J-Just hold still!” Izuku said, lifting a vial to her thigh.

"Oh, don't worry kid, I've taken blood. Enough to save an old woman." She let out a shaky breath, "No more dreams for me. This is my last chance… What a fool I am. I'll have to tread carefully."

“D-Damn, right you will! I can’t have you dying here!” Izuku says, jamming the vial into her leg as she tries to push it away.

She lets out a stifled groan as the wound in her side stitches closed, “But that thing still lies in wait. Turn back. This is my score to settle.” He can hear the smile in her voice, “My prey lies in wait this way. Turn back. This is my score to settle.”

“O-Okay.” Izuku lied to her face.

As Eileen’s head dipped down into a nap, from the chemical concoction he put in the vial, Izuku stood up straight and headed into the Grand Cathedral, the newest tool on his gauntlet sparking up.

The ascent was quick, much too quick for Izuku to plan anything in advance for the fight ahead. He heard the hunter before he saw them. Soft footsteps that echoed throughout the cathedral, flowing cloth, the twirling of a gun.

And then he saw them. At the end of the large cathedra, a black feather garbed person walked in loose circles, spinning their gun on their finger and occasionally looking around. Their head was in some odd metal helmet.

Izuku’s anger flared as the person flung Eileen's dagger into the air and caught it.

He didn't think, he acted.

Quickening flared, blood pumped and the tiles under Izuku cracked as blood lust burned through him, the arcane mark on his arm flared, blood flew and wrapped around his scythe. The opposing hunter didn't have time to dodge as it was skewered halfway through, but then it did something Izuku did not expect.

It quickened.

It reappeared across the cathedral and shot.

The bullet pierced Izuku’s shoulder, the feeling of acid melting his muscles made Izuku’s heart beat faster.

Was this how his enemies felt? Like they were being liquidized?

Interesting…

Izuku’s own gun flared as an empty vial hit the floor. His smile rose as the hunter dodged and shot back with vicious accuracy.

Izuku quickened, the red aura from his mark tainting the mist red as he appeared next to the hunter, the blood-like mist blinding them for a moment, giving him the perfect opportunity.

A swift jab of the hand and his arm was lodged in their gut, but Izuku did not rip out instantly and instead crushed the vial in his hand. Leaving a concoction of chemicals and glass in their stomach, before ripping out a chunk of the organ.

He really had gotten into chemistry recently~

Izuku quickened twenty paces away and shot. The other hunter's movements were already beginning to be sluggish, allowing the bullet to pierce the tender flesh of their thigh, breaking the vial of blood they went to inject at the same time.

Izuku dodged the next bullet and fired again. And again.

And again.

Eventually, Izuku watched the form of the hunter slump to the floor. Their limbs twitched as the chemicals worked their magic.

A sole gunshot to the head and the gaggers of Eileen were collected, and the hunter's gear was stripped.

The hunter was a woman… and did not wear anything under their feathered cloak…

Izuku left quickly after taking the rest of the gear. His face was redder than when he was in a bloodbath.

He made his way back to Eileen, just as she woke up from her nap.

She let out a soft chuckle seeing him holding the gear, “Don't you ever listen to your elders? No matter, you did save my life." She sat up straighter, cracking her neck as she did. "I don't seem to be apt for this life anymore... My glory days were long ago now..." She said with a tired sigh.

After a second she looked up at him, "Hmmm, I know... Here, for you little hunter." As she took off a necklace, and handed it to him, with an old parchment.

The necklace looked like the two crows, their wings open making a circle with each other. And on the parchment, a rune, much like the base of the one on his arm.

"This too is hunters' work young one.” she said with seriousness in her voice, “But it bears no honor. It’s a burden you may choose to carry. The decision is yours alone..."

“I-... I’ll do it,” Izuku spoke softly, a layer of determination in his voice. “But- Where will you go?”

“I’m thinking of that little church you keep bringing people to.” She spoke thoughtfully, but definitely unsure.

“What… What if I brought you to the dream?”

A sudden laugh escaped the older hunter, “And how do you expect to do that?”

“... asking?”

“If ya can somehow speak to the great one of that dream, and they somehow let me in, I’ll teach ya everything I know.”

—

Izuku was in the dream, pacing the length of the workshop, wondering how to ask his new super powerful god moon mom if he can let some old hunter live in the dream.

Actually.

Why not ask to let all the people in the church live in the dream?

“Umm… Flora? Mom?”

The cool wight flooded his mind in seconds, “Yes little green?”

“Can I take all the non-crazy and monsters from Yharnam and keeptheminlikesomekindoflikecitythinginthedream? Likeasmallthingsothattheydon'thavetoworryaboutdeathuntilthingsgetbetterouttheir?”

It took Flora a moment to respond, “I'm sorry my child. What?”

“Can I keep the mentally stable-ish people in the church?”

Flora let out a soft chuckle, “why not? Could be interesting, old Gerhamn gets lonely when you're not here.”

“NO, I DON'T!” A yell came from the garden.

“Oh, also I want to keep the hunter of hunters too.”

“Consider it done dear, I’ll have an addition to the dream made up soon.” She said, sounding nearly ecstatic at the idea.

“Oh, and next time, ask the dying ladies if you can take their clothes okay?~”

Izuku’s face exploded in red, and went even farther when the doll looked up at him with disbelief…

“Dear hunter… You did what?”

Gerhman’s laughter followed Izuku as he ran from the doll, who kept trying to hit him with a book.

———————————————————

Whoever decided that the massive creature in front of him needed to exist, needed to be euthanized.

Though to be honest, this entire area had been a cluster f*ck of horrible ideas.

He had gotten that key from the hidden city area, on the corpse of a hunter and asked Gerhman to figure out where it went. Turns out Cathedral Ward had an Upper Cathedral Ward…

So after finding the door, after about six hours of trying, Izuku found his way into the upper cathedral ward.

It was crazy how nothing in Yharnam seemed to make sense, the tall pale men of Cathedral Ward are much tougher, and there were… baby monsters crawling along with the floors.

But they were easy enough to deal with, and when Izuku entered the massive structure with its very oversized metal gate. He finds lycanthropes on top of a way too big chandelier, which falls to the ground, breaking, and plunging the entire area into darkness.

He really hates beasts.

After he killed the first one he doused its corpse in alcohol and lit it on fire, and used it as a movable bonfire, clearing the main hall of the large lycanthrope beasts

He finds a new hunter badge, kills off a few of those creepy brain sucker things… carves their head open to investigate, and finds a corpse stuck in a funny pose.

Really, the area was going so well. Until he finds the horde of blue alien creatures in a garden. And what happens when he hits one specifically? It grows like 12 feet tall! Because nothing could ever be easy!

So he uses the lightning of the Tiny Tonitrus, a new favorite tool, to call bolts of lightning onto the stupid-looking alien and its friends.

And really, that was cathartic, but when he went to light the lantern and go home? Of course, he notices the alien inside the building he was next to the window of, so he shatters the glass, jumps inside, kills the f*cker, finds a snazzy-looking alien thing, and takes it.

But of course, an elevator, guarded by more alien things… that he takes.

And what does he see in a massive cavern under the building?

A great one.

Why not?

Sure.

He’ll deal with this bull sh*t later.

———————————————————

(Flashback)

A young Izuku stood out in the frigid weather, the shirt, a size too small, stretched across his boney frame. The lack of any jacket or scarf caused his teeth to chatter together, he had been wandering around looking for either a store to hide in or a train station to take him home, but both searches were coming up to nothing.

His fingers were numb, the rough falling snow stung his skin, and his throat burned from breathing the frigid air. Why did Bakugou take his All Might jacket again? Because he deserved it more or some egotistical sh*t like that?

Izuku had been lost for around 2 hours, he had been following a villain fight right before, but was shoved too close to the fight, and was taken hostage by the villain, who used it as a perfect distraction to escape, threatening to kill Izuku if they tried to stop him.

As soon as the villain got miles away with their quirk, Izuku in hand, they left him in an alleyway without a word and booked it in some arbitrary direction.

And that leads to Izuku now, wandering around in hopes of finding shelter

The falling snow got harder, and Izuku was getting slower, his legs hurt and he couldn’t even feel his feet, he began swaying and fell, body slumping on the door to his right. He sat there for a few moments, the black in his vision growing before the door opened unexpectedly.

Izuku turned his head, looking up at the person in the doorway. Standing there looking down on him with concern was Midnight, wearing only the basic parts of her main costume, a layer of insulated fur-like cloth covering parts of her body and accentuating her… womanly charms. She quickly crouched down and picked him up with little effort, bringing him into what the could gather was her agency, if the reception area was any correlation. She brought him into a back room with a large leather couch and laid him on it softly before hurrying out of the room, Izuku’s vision was overtaken by black before she came back.

Waking up hurt, Izuku’s hands and feet stung with heat, and his body was being pressed into the cushion of the couch by a large amount of weight. Fighting his eyes open he was met with a lightly lit room, the walls painted a clean white with… Many vulgar and phallic symbols are painted on the walls. On him was a massive pile of twelve or so blankets, each of which was either purple, black, or white.

Slowly he pushed off the blankets, the ache in his body making even the basic movements strenuous, suddenly the only door to the room opened, and standing there was a beautiful woman.

“Oh wow! I did not expect you to be awake little guy! Especially not after being out in that weather for so long. Don’t worry though! Miss Midnight is here to make you feel all better~”

Izuku let out an eep at that, not expecting one of his favorite heroes to be in front of him for the second time in his life… and also weirdly the smell of soup.

“So~ you look familiar, you weren't at my little signing were you a few months ago where you?” She spoke softly as she sat him up, pulling a pillow behind his back and fixing his covers. “Because I think you were~”

“I-... Well… I- i was there…” he managed to stutter out.

“Haha! Well, did you get everything you wanted to be signed, well signed? Because I can sign some more.”

“W- well… you signed everything I had! So- it- it's fine!.”

She patted him on the back lightly and grabbed something from out of his vision, bringing a bowl of soup into view, “Well! Since you're up and talking, how did you come to be in this part of town in the storm?”

“I… was in a villain attack. An- and I… The villain, he u-used me as a shield…” Izuku stopped for a moment, tears prickling in his eyes, “An- and then the weather got bad. He left me a few blocks away…” Izuku managed to force out after a while, tears cascading down his face.

Suddenly Izuku was enveloped in a hug… A hug so long overdue it caused cracks to spike through him. His sobs turned harsher and he gripped her, only for her to return the hug in full force.

Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, Izuku’s tears dried up, and Midnight pulled away, leaving the small boy to hiccup alone as she left the room for a moment.

She soon reentered the room with a glass of water and a small smile on her face. She handed him the water silently, and he, through his hiccuping, lightly sipped the water.

“So, what's your name kid? You know me as Midnight of course, but you can call me Miss. Kayama!” A grin grew on her face as she sat back down with him.

“I a- I’m Izuku Midoriya, Miss Kayama.”

“So, do you know your mom's number?”

Izuku shook his head no quickly. His mom never gave him a number, much less a phone… What if she asks about his home life? He could lie… but that would be lying to a hero! He can’t do that! Or maybe he could?

“Hey, kiddo? Can you breathe for me?”

Oh god! What if he gets his mom in trouble! Or worse!! Everyone! Everyone could get in trouble because of him! “Kid?”

Izuku’s breathing came quicker and quicker, as thoughts of what-ifs got too loud. Until his vision became blurry, and he was met with unconsciousness again.

———————————————————

Woohoo! That's a wrap for chapter 12! Thank you all for reading! And a special thanks to:

Patreon:

Dusty

My helpers~

Pink

Fluffy

And Rom

Without them, and those that comment, finding time to write would be much harder! The next chapter will hopefully be soon, but another chap of Void Hero is next on my list, then maybe a chapter of Geneticist!

Chapter 14: CH13, Blood drunk

Chapter Text

Hey! How have yall been? No big speel this time! Unto the story!

If you wish to support me, I have Twitter! It is @kuro945235232, it is a place where I will post updates and stuff! It also has a link to how to support me! To my Patreon and my discord server, I also try to update my progress there too!!

———————————————————

A humid breeze drenched the cavern Izuku had wandered in, the heat was unrelenting and caused the young hunter to unfasten a button or two on his overcoat; he needed to either fix the coat or replace it soon, however. The puddles of what Izuku hoped was water littered the floor of the cavern, and in a position much like praying to an altar with what appeared to be the corpse of Rom the vacuous spider, was a large shimmering being. Its pale scales reflected what little light lit up the large cavern, its tentacles, hard to count from the position, draped themselves on the floor around the creature.

Its size was betrayed by the shifting of the matter near the creature, a mere facade of its true size being held back by the confines it placed on itself.

As Izuku approached the praying great one, its body convulsed, the muscles, used to fragment reality, pulled the hulking creature's body up from its prostrated position. Izuku felt it before he heard it, the sharp pain of something invading his mind, winding its way in until it was lodged and staying. Its head turned to him, its face was split in half, large coral-like protrusions from the cleave-like shape, its eyes surrounded by tubes of flesh and coral-like bone. A sly smile spread out on Izuku’s face, as a drop of blood began leaking from his nose.

A sound, like a flute, soft, quiet, calm, but a voice in all ways but from a mouth, “Incredible, a Hunter so developed in the arts of the arcane, that I could sense thee.” the flesh flexed upwards, the tubes and coral shifting upward, in a fax smile, “Child of the moon, I am Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos, thee could consider me a distant relative of sorts.” The colossal form of the great one slithered its way towards him, the divots in the ground filling in its wake, smoothing out to allow it better mobility.

“I offer thee an occord, oh moon scented cousin o mine~ allow this lesser great one to teach thee all there is to know in the arcane, bereft me of this hidden knowledge of the cosmos, and allow me, in exchange, to bask in the presence of the dreams full moon.” As she spoke, she grew closer, until she towered over him, then began to prostrate herself like she had done to the altar, “Oh son of the Moon, thee who claims in its death the finest of secrets, allow this being to be thine helot.”

Izuku’s eyes strained, the streak of blood from his nose had yet to stop running, and the creaking sound and popping in his ears kept him aware, as the stabbing pain in his head grew worse.

His eyes, with multiple busted vessels, tinged red, glowed in the dim light of the room, green pierced the eyes of the great one. Izuku gave the great one a bloody smile, muttering “s-sure,” before his body gave in to the blood loss.

The eerie glow of the mark on the boy's left arm caught the great one's attention, and it felt euphoric as it soaked in the words that were there. The great moon would not yet let its child die, much less with it also being its hunter of choice, so it began flooding arcane into the already damaged neurological organ. The soon-to-be corpse of the child thrashed on the floor, blood drained rapidly from the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Soon the child's corpse will disappear, and time will shatter and reform, relinking the adolescent to their reformed and rehealed body, but the knowledge will stay, and Ebrietas will forget the encounter entirely.

Mayhaps the child’s mind will explode countless times before they are stable enough from the wisdom to continue their hunt, and they will return to gain more soon enough.

-

Izuku felt like he was floating. There was no sound, no taste, no touch, no smell, nothing to see, and no danger to spark that sixth sense. Just nothing.

And when his eyes, which felt stuck together began to crack open, the thick blood that stuck his eyelids together giving way, he was met with a beautiful sight.

The cosmos floated around him, stars and novas shimmering in the distance. Deep black pools of nothing dotted between the serenity of the moving constellations, like rain in the summer, or snow in the winter. It felt inevitable he would see this.

The sounds came next, a solemn drip.

Drip

Drip

Drip

Drip

Drip

Drip

Drip

Like water drip dripping in a puddle.

However, the puddle was nowhere to be seen.

The smells hit him.

Airomatic, citrus, lavender and vennela.

Chocolate.

Spice.

Cotton and wood.

His mom's detergent.

Blood.

Bile.

Guts and intestinal fluids.

The offending scent of brain matter on his face.

Then the tastes.

Sour flavor, like not eating for a while.

Blood.

Nitroglycerin sweat.

Ash.

Dirt.

Flesh.

Bone.

Bile.

Bile

Bile

Bile

Bile

Bile

Bile.

Chocolate.

Bubblegum.

Then in a spark of his nerves, he felt it. His countless scars, each bleeding and raw, all his wounds opened in a moment, his head disconnected from his body, but so did his torso from his limbs, his muscles split and his bones splintered, his nose broke and his fingers shattered.

And he could move, he had been staring at the hypnotic lights of infinity, of the ever-present beyond, that what was behind him was likely just as important.

His muscles strained, and his head moved.

Inch by inch

And he was looking back, his wounds fighting him the entire way.

A pool of red.

Drip

Drip

DRIP

Drip

Drip

Drip

He was the source of the sounds.

And in the pool of blood, the face of that spider. Its face was stony.

His bones sang hymns as his body shredded apart again. And the ocean raised.

But no matter how far the blood raised, the black speck the stone face held that could be likened to eyes never wavered, staring at Izuku with an unblinking gaze.

———————————————————

Izuku came to in an unfamiliar bed. There were no beds in the dream…

Or was there? In all his time in the dream, he never really asked.

A quick glance told him he was in some kind of offshoot of the workshop. If not from the colors of the wood, the sounds of metal being hammered in a nearby room, or the distinct smell of gunpowder and blood, it was the fact that the walls of the room were lined with hunter tools.

Many of which were failed prototypes of Izuku’s he had thrown out, though, shined and cleaned up with careful diligence.

The pillow of the bed was red, though, from the fact the edges were a soft yellowish-white, he had bled into the pillow and even the bed as he found out as he extended his legs off the bed and stood with a crack of his joints.

He was wearing a basic pair of undergarments, ones he did not remember having. Was this the first time he had been nearly fully undressed since he came to Yharnam? His left arm, which held the silvery-white scars like the rest of him, and the mark his mother had bestowed on him, had a slight change. The scars were there, but there was a light shimmering, as specks of bluish light dotted where his freckles once were. Which extended across his entire freckled body, the mark, which had been already intricate and covering the entire inside of his elbow and upper bicep, had grown exponentially, going from his left fingertips to his left pectoral, shimmering with strange yellow lights and blue glow in the deep red ink. And while it was surprising to see, there was an oddity he had only just begun to notice.

He actually understood it.

Each divot was a word, and each symbol was a paragraph, or perhaps a book within a word symbolized in a single stroke of ink. His hand traced the lines, a sharp spark emanating from the biggest and brightest of them.

It was at that moment, of course, that the hefty door to the room was thrust open with a thud, as it slammed into the wall.

Standing, in an antique dress, with spiraling colors and star patterns, was a ginger-haired woman, who had coral-like horns sticking out of the mess of blood-red curls, their eyes were pitch black, holding no human qualities, and their face was angular, with a light silvery scar running from their forehead to jaw. In one hand they held a cup of a shimmering liquid, in another Izuku’s hunter clothes, and oddly enough, in another, less human appendage, a feather duster that danced across the once dusty toms that lined the hall behind her.

Her eyes lit up with an ethereal sparkle of blues and whites that spiraled and bent through her sockets with reckless abandon.

“Thou are awake? Good, thy has slept much too long, though perhaps for a mere infant it is justified.” The voice that had made his brain into pasta came from the mouth of the woman, though the movement of her mouth and the words did not exactly line up. A shimmering appendage grabbed Izuku’s hand and pulled him out of the room, and in a quick turn, she had begun heading back down the hall, pulling Izuku with her.

“We have myriads of arcane study to go over, but perhaps that may be put off till you are more mature, I was not but an infant myself when I was thrust into arcane study by my sibling, but do not fret dear lord, it shall be an effortless task to get you up to speed at which your mother's blood should allow.” Suddenly they were in the main room of the workshop, which had expanded in size once again since the last time Izuku had been there.

And it was more lively and lovely than usual. Paper flowers and animals dotted bookshelves and hung from the rafters, the dreary statue that stood behind one of the tool benches had a flower crown, and standing on a tall ladder, hanging a strand of braided flowers, that was being braided still by the little girl, was the doll.

Walking in with a basket of flowers was the older sister. It was then that Izuku noticed the content smiles on all three of them, a heat blooming in his chest as he stared from what he had just noticed was a second-floor balcony.

Sitting at the leatherworking table was the old lady, her hands curing and working thick patches of leather, and next to her was the skeptic man, connecting bits of chain mail together with delicate patients.

Right outside, Gerhman and Arianna were tending to flowers and other plants. Sitting down on a soft cushion was the chapel dweller, their cloak clean and a frail smile on their face, as their sightless eyes stared up the balcony at Izuku. Additionally sitting at the weapon bench, was an older woman with silvery hair with black roots, a feathered grab downing their body, Eileen. In her hands, her blades, sharpened to a point he had never seen them at before, cleaned thoroughly, and scattered across the table the plethora of weapons Izuku had hoarded, had been cleaned and maintained beyond his own abilities, even his backup cane and his new scythe were maintained beautifully.

Izuku’s eyes were taking in the scenery of his little workshop, now expansive and full of people; a giddy feeling spread through him, and a smile, much like when he was watching All Might rescue people on the computer, spread across his face.

It was then that the older sister took notice of him. An eep of surprise came from her as her face went bright red, causing the attention of all the residents to look where her gaze fell.

That was when Izuku remembered he was still in his undergarments. Before he could rush back down the hall, the silvery appendage began pulling him downstairs. His entire body erupts in a blush. “I bring good news, fellows of the dream, our lord has woken, please don’t mind his state of dress, he is but passing through the room of work for a moment… but ogle if you like.”

The doll hopped off of the tall ladder, landing gracefully on the floor with a small flourish, with one hand she turned the youngest girl away from the nearly naked Izuku, grabbed the garbs from one of Ebrietas’s hands, and began dressing the shell shocked boy, to the amusem*nt of Eileen in the corner. Who began laughing at the display.

“Good hunter, she must have dragged you out of your room in a hurry.” And with a final pop, the last button had been locked in place, and straps had been fastened.

“But please Izuku, do come down dressed, you almost put the girls into shock,” a coy smile formed on the doll's face as she pinched his cheek, knocking the once catatonic boy out of his stupor.

“Ah- hehe, okay Doll, I’ll try next time?”

“Good! Now I do believe Miss Eileen had some training plans she wanted to discuss with you, now off you go!” The doll spun him and pushed him to the form of Eileen, who was still shaking with laughter, through her eyes trailed the form of Ebrietas warily as she trailed after Izuku.

“Good to see you again kiddo. I thought the worst when that woman,” she nodded her head towards Ebrietas, “Showed up with you shortly after we had been given the tour by the doll and the old man… You’wer bleedin pretty bad, though I guess we were worrying too much.” A tired smile stretched across her thin lips, as the wrinkles under her eyes became more pronounced. With a quick movement, she stood up from her seat, smacked him on the back, and began walking out the main door of the workshop.

“Come on youngin, we got trainin to do.”

“Yes mama!”

---

Izuku’s fists bled as his fist met with the brass-knuckled fists of the old woman in front of him. Why didn't he have some himself? Turns out his natural durability was incredibly high. He had already flattened three sets of brass knuckles, and the newest pair was made of steel.

A swift kick went to Izuku’s side and launched him across the field of flowers, however, in a blink of an eye he vanished in a puff of blood-red smoke.

A new revelation of an old technique. Quickening was efficient, fast, and by far more versatile than most if not all hunter techniques, and with a slight modification of how he accessed it, he could funnel the power through his marking. Supercharging the already powerful technique.

Though the revelation was not Izuku’s, it was Ebrietas who suggested it. In fact, he had been given the advice of using the marking as a catalyst for his arcane arts.

Which made a world of difference.

However, the difference was quickly diminished, as after becoming predictable with how he used his quickening, Eileen had begun kicking his ass in and outside of the sub-plane that was the arcane art…

It was depressing really.

Izuku’s body slammed into the rocky ground, bits of rocks digging into his skin, and then a cloud of red erupted from his position, and time dilated as he was launched into the sub-dimension, clipping through the ground and manifesting right behind Elieen.

He didn't even get a hit in.

The dream's power had revitalized the old hunter, making her physically in her prime. Making her speed, even with his new skill, faster than his.

A knee connected with his face, its steel covering cracking his nose.

Another poof and he was under Eileen, his leg kicking her off of the ground she stood on, as the smoke continued to emanate off of him, and then he was gone again, in the air above her kicking down. His kick was intercepted and he was launched towards the massive tree in the field.

“Ha.. ha. I do believe we can call it a day youngin, ya need to get back to the hunt, an I need to let these old joints rest.” Eileen said as she climbed back to her feet, the steel plates that covered her knees, elbows and knuckles dented in places, and cracked in others. “Ya got a hard head, which is good, just don rely too hard on hard hitten attacks on people, it works well on mindless beasts, but workin down a human can leave em open an easy to kill.”

Izuku coughed out a small plume of red mist, “Thanks miss Eileen… ow…” his coughing fit continued as he tried to stand up, only to be knocked down again by a chop to the head.

Eileen looked him in the eye from her position standing next to him, “What did I say about the miss? Drop it kiddo.”

“Gotcha! Gotcha! I get it!”

———————————————————

The grotesque corpse of the amygdala layed hole-riddled and oozing shimmering blood in front of the doorway back the way Izuku came, even after leaving and time resetting, the thing was still there… dead for good.

Incredible.

They seemed to have the same temporal anomaly as the greater beasts that can not seem to come back, which was great.

Izuku’s venture deeper into the grotesque area that was the hidden section of Yharnham was not fun. In fact, it was by far the grossest thing he had ever found. The carts were full of boxes of flesh… that came to life on the main road. There were man-eating pigs, some of the fastest hounds he had to deal with to date, and reviving mob’s men.

He had to sprint down a massive roadway, with tens of the flesh beasts rocketing globs of flesh and blood at him, bullets of mob men, and the eerie feeling he was being watched.

His sprint came to an end as he dashed under an archway, where suddenly, the continuous hale of projectiles stopped. As he looked back, the hoards of flesh and bone had gone still, looking to the sky… and so Izuku turned his attention to the moon.

The blood moon had vanished, and a super moon had taken its place in the sky, massive and blinding. However, its surface began… dripping. The stench of blood became overpowered with a stinging smell, as the liquid dripped and the surface of the moon began to be covered in a shimmering film, Izuku’s eyes had a hard time staying open.

It was like when you cut onions, and the mist irritates your eyes, only worse. The smell was indescribable, it made something in Izuku retch and heave, and made his reflexes scream run.

A hand poked through the film on the moon. Then two. Long spindly arms, elbows, a head… Another arm and the torso. And then suddenly, as if gravity had begun acting on the figure in the moon, the film burst. And a beast with thousands of limbs, fused together and pulling in all directions fell from the still dripping moon. It was gargantuan, the ringing of six bells from the rafters above came through the horrid sounds of a baby's wail, as the beast forced itself into what could only be described as its natural stunning position. Torsos and feet, hands and thighs poked out of its body, grasping, kicking, clawing at everything and nothing.

Izuku sprinted to the stairway, it wasn't as tall as the rafters above, and those bell-ringing bitches had begun throwing flames at him.

The phantom muscles of his glove flexed as he used his hand to help in launching himself up the staircase, and in moments he was on the rafters, and a line of three bell ringers was in front of him.

A shroud of red and all three were headless, their bells taken from their still clutching hands.

Coming around the bend in the rafters, the young hunter began shifting between planes, only for a fleshy wall of hands to swipe at him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw it, on its back most congregation of limbs, had made a leverage point to lift its upper body up, and had begun using its numerous limbs to try and kill the green-haired hunter.

Which was complete and utter bull sh*t.

Three more heads hit the ground and the young hunter launched himself off the rafter into the air, his scythe embedded in the arm of the beast, and in both hands, he clutched an item he had almost forgotten about, a small alien bug, an emissary of the cosmos. Its position on his glove of tools allowed for easy access, and as his height reached its peak, he funneled arcane from his mark to the creature and called to the beyond.

Hundreds of shimmering blood-red stars flared into existence, surrounding the boy, and with a fling of his arms, the hundreds became thousands as the stars shot off towards the reborn mess of limbs and corpses. Each star explodes into sharp spines of blood and craters in the flesh of the creature, burrowing deep in the copious layers of flesh and sinew.

His feet hit the ground and Izuku took off running, a flow of adrenaline pumping into his system as he ripped the scythe out of the dismembered limb of the creature.

With a crack of his neck, Izuku called to the near-endless flow of blood beckoning to it, commanding it to sheath his blade in a sharper coat, and he began dismembering his prey.

———————————————————

*Flashback*

It was four days before the slime villain had caught Izuku for the first time. And much like how the villain had smelled like the sewer, Izuku had the smell of trash and rubbish as he weighed through a small mountain of trash. He needed some pocket money, and the Hatsume auto shop always needed scrap for their crazy daughter. They had not actually met formally, and she called him part collector, but other than Mina, she was the closest thing Izuku could call a friend.

And her family fed him regularly.

And we’re upper-middle class. So they always had something for him when he needed it. Which was a bonus.

But he needed some more cash, a new All Might figure had been released and they were being sold in a little comic shop he frequented… and they were signed!

So he needed around double how much he had at the moment to buy one. But thankfully, Hatsume needed extra parts, and the better the parts the more of her allowance he could get!

So that’s why he was hip-deep in a garbage pile, moving old and rusted machines off to the side for deconstruction. It smelled like absolute butt, but it wasn’t the worst thing he had gone through.

Chirp*

Izuku’s phone vibrated in his pocket, the tell-tale sound of Mina’s contact sound making him almost fall on his ass. He quickly sat down the microwave he had dislodged from the pile and pulled out his phone, which had been decorated with a few more scratches than before, and was now adorned with a Midnight phone case.

***Mina***: Hey Zuku! How would you like to hang out on Saturday? I know you don’t got much pocket money so don’t worry about it! It’ll be in me~ you’ll just need to repay me some other time!

Zuku (#^~^#): oh ya, sure? But I can scrounge some money together for then. What do you want to do?

***Mina***: we’ll, you know how Midnight is holding a tour of her new building? Well… I GOT TWO PASSES!!! And I’m inviting you to go with me!

Zuku (#^~^#): oh sh*t! Really?! That sounds fun! I’m so down!

***Mina***: then it’s a date!

The sounds of a teen falling into a trash pile filled the air shortly after that message was revived.

———————————————————

Izuku clutched the thick parchment of a letter, sealed with wax. He had to make it to Cainhurst, where the crown of illusion was kept.

The crown of illusion had been used to keep the castle safe from the executioners, a cast of the hunters that hunted and slew those who wielded and held the royal blood of the queen. The crown's enhanced connection to the arcane was why Izuku needed it, both for Flora’s quest, and so that he may… reuse the arcane metal.

So here he was, in the room of the clinic he had woken up in, the dry bloodstains of his old blood still marred the floor and gurney. A fresh corpse of a celestial emissary lay next to the doorway, and seemingly, no one living inhabited the old clinic.

Izuku let out a sigh as he used a pocket knife to cut through the wax seal, and he began reading.

‘To the one chosen for this long night, Izuku Midoriya.

Head to Hemwick Crossing, the royal stagecoach will be ready to depart shortly, and it would be a shame to miss this opportunity no? The beasts are grotesque, and the materials grand.

I beseech you, kill off the festering corpse that is the martyr, and the castle will be in your debt.

Do not hesitate, the coach leaves soon.’

The slightly blood-stained paper seemed to have been written hastily before it was delivered, how Izuku didn’t want to know.

With a crack of his neck, Izuku headed out of the clinic and bent down to hold the hand of a messenger, and with a whisper, he was at Hemwick. His scythe blade clicked into place, a fan of blood-red smoke billowed from his arcane mark, and Izuku began his dead sprint to the meeting place, the dancing witches being bisected as the cold smoke soaked into the ground.

As Izuku arrived at the crossing, only a small amount of fatigue hitting him from keeping up the red mist quickening for the entire sprint, the sound of hooves cracking old stone roads caught his attention. And emerging from the fog a black stagecoach approached, as well as the reek of rot and decay.

The coach slowed as it approached the silvery red-haired hunter, and the door on the side creaked open, revealing the empty interior, with moldy and rotted furnishings. Covering his nose and mouth with his hand, Izuku entered, and the door slammed shut as the horse turned the coach around, heading for the broken bridge. Though, as the bridge edge began getting closer, the pressure on Izuku’s eyes took hold, and sleep crept over him.

…

As the young hunter woke from his slumber, the chill of the piled snow on top of him took hold, causing a shiver to run through him, It had been a long time since he had seen snow, as most snow days in his world he had to stay inside his already cold house to keep from freezing.

The crystal flakes pecked his cheeks as he pushed out of the small hill of snow that had taken root over him, the shivering in his own skin felt more foreign than the constant feeling of blood on his face. He wanted to see the snow over the city line of Musutafu, from the tallest building.

With a crack of his neck, he headed up the stairs, not sparing a glance at the rotten corpses of the horses or the destroyed coach. And the gates opened to him like they had missed him, with sorrowful creaks they let him through. In the courtyard of the grotesque forms of once, human beasts roamed the barren snowy area, their skin pale and white, hair long and dragging across the ground, walking on all fours, their limbs stretched and joints wrong. Their bellies were bloated with red glowing blood. Blood lickers, journal entry thirty-four of the executioner's scribe, fast and agile creatures, jaws that could shatter steel and limbs that could rip a human apart easier than paper. Tongues so long and sharp they could stab into you and rip you open while draining you of blood. Eyes that while crying, showed no remorse and hunger that never ended. They would drain hundreds of humans of blood, only to grow so bloated that they couldn't move. Ripping open their stomachs only pissed them off, and made them faster, cut the limbs, then the head, then back away, even while disconnected, the heads could kill for nearly an hour, and with enough blood, they could come back. Some even developed the ability to ferment blood into venom and poison, and shoot it out.

A smile graced Izuku’s face, a grin that looked more like a grimace in pain than an actual smile. How he had wanted to see what his weapons could do to such ferocious creatures, but he needed to hurry, he wanted to continue his quest, experimentation could wait for a while.

That does not mean he didn't slaughter every one of them before he headed into the castle proper. Spearing their heads on the weapons of statues that were placed haphazardly around, their tearful eyes watching his every move.

The castle’s insides were beautiful, the poor cleaners cowered in fear as he walked past them, dirtying their floor, and snatching items and such from chests, the only thing to stop his ascent of the castle was the ghosts. If they could be called that, they were dispelled easily with a slice over their open neck wounds.

The living gargoyles were a bit of a scare at first when he found them, but they were quickly clipped of their wings and shoved off the sides of the castle to their deaths.

Items were taken, ghosts killed, and the poor cleaners, when they decided to fight, were trisected and left to dirty their clean floors.

As Izuku kept his quick pace, he found a few items of intrigue. However, there was a set of gauntlets in a room full of the most sorrowful spirits, their cries louder and more angry, so strong they could shackle him to the floor but were dealt with swiftly. And the gauntlets were a sight indeed, a small amount of arcane energy, and the wraiths of hundreds of nobles were able to coalesce into seeking orbs of hate and malice, and how they cleaved through the living and dead alike, exploding into bursts of heat, before returning to the gauntlets.

A fine new tool!

He jumped from rafter to rafter and landed on a small, hidden bridge, and made his way to the largest roof, where sitting on a wooden throne, the martyr sat. His old decaying form, cleaned to life by the arcane in the crown, a mere puppet of the man he used to be, led only by the soul he locked in the crown. Izuku’s smile, one more of hunger and joy from his ascension of the castle, fell a bit…

He ascended the castle already?

Shaking his head, a frown took hold. A waste of an arcane item-

What was wrong with him today?

Actually.

His hunts, how many has he been on again?

Another shake of his head, and he stepped on the roof.

Izuku gripped his scythe tight, as the frozen form of the martyr began to move.

Shards of ice cracked and fell, as bone came to life under leathery skin.

The hunter grinned at the new challenge.

But the boy frowned, saddened by the state of the man.

The hunter won once again.

With a shout, the young hunter tore across the roof, red smoke searing the snow back into vapor. The executioner's gauntlets flared with anger. As orbs of hate coalesced around the shimmering-haired hunter. The scythe went low, as the hate went higher, the skulls, full of rage and mindless vengeance, chared the corpse's face, and the scythe cut through legs.

A sword speared through the young hunter.

But in a flare of red, he was gone, and a clink of a vial was all that sounded as Izuku reappeared in the air, whip out, ensnaring the poor corpse in razor-sharp vines, and with a mighty tug, tore through the man's skin.

And in another flash, as the sword struck the place Izuku landed, he was gone.

The hunter re-appeared, his scythe calling to the blood, sharpening the already razor edge. In a slash, a jaw, and a hand were dismembered from the foul cadaver.

Smoke billowed.

Izuku reemerged. His whip sliced through the poor man's arms, legs, and chest.

And once again, as the man attacked, the hunter emerged from the blood-red smoke, and in a final strike against the corpse, beheaded him.

The hunter snatched the crown and watched as the smoke around the castle dissipated, revealing a stairway up, to the queen.

The young hunter headed up and made his way to the queen, he wished to have an audience.

“Visitor… I claim no subjects, but here lieth Our throne. Kneel afore us… or get thee gone.”

The hunter- or was it Izuku at that moment? Bowed deeply at the base of the throne, a sharp glare from the metal masked queen spoke volumes, so he bowed deeper.

“Visitor… Moon-scented hunter… I am Annalise, Queen of Castle Cainhurst. Ruler of the Vilebloods, and sworn enemy of the church. Yet, Our people are murdered, and We are prisoner to this wretched mask. What is it thou’rt in search of?”

The young hunter answered, “I am on a quest from the moon, your excellency, and came to claim the crown of illusion. But the Vial-Bloods hold great power over blood. I wish to join you, to learn more about it.” The voice that spoke was too calm, too composed to be Izuku.

A small surprised noise escaped the queen, “Very well. Drink deep of Our blood.” With little hesitancy, the queen offered her pale arm, blood running from a fresh wound, and soon the drops of blood fell into Izuku’s mouth. A fiery heat spread across his body but vanished in seconds.

“Feel the spreading corruption burn. Now, thou’rt too a Vileblood. We two, the very last on this earth. We await thy return. For the honor of Cainhurst”

The hunter was pleased, the burning in his veins a sign of a job well done and as he stepped back on the roof the red took over his vision.

———————————————————

*Flashback*

A day before the slime villain attacked. Izuku had met up with Mina. It was two days before the “date” but Izuku needed to show Mina the figure he had bought.

So here he was, nearly skipping down the street in what he could only imagine being actual happiness. It always came to be when he and Mina hung out, though, it was never at his house, for many reasons. He was a few blocks from her house, and there were people watching as he made his way. A red-eyed kid with black hair, a tall guy who didn't seem to notice where they were walking, Bakugou, and a very sickly blond man who had an incredibly hunched-over posture. It was truly the baker's dozen of random people out today.

… Bakugou? Odd, Katsuki had no friends out this far in the city, and the last time he had been there he had been chewed out by Aunt Mitsuki for being so far from home.

Izuku was a block from Mina’s house, taking a shortcut between buildings when he realized he should have been way more careful when he spotted Bakugou. Because if Kachaan was anything, he was a bully.

Izuku never made it to Mina’s house that day. His phone had died long before he could get back home and get even thirty minutes of sleep before school the next day. And his All Might figure, the newest and rarest one yet, had been trashed.

He layed in his bed, a bruise the size of his entire chest grew purple and yellow as he watched the dingy light flicker off, as power had been cut to the house…

Maybe the next day would be better… He could only hope.

It was not. Meant to be, but that was already known.

He woke up to thirty messages from Mina, his sh*tty phone at only twenty percent charge from his little amount of time home, a migraine had begun from his lack of sleep, and a sour smell had begun to accumulate on his breath. He should eat soon. He hadn't in a while.

And like all days, he headed to school, hoping things would be better.

They never were.

———————————————————

Izuku’s eyes focused on the room around him, a pounding headache clouded his senses for what felt like a moment, and when he came to consciousness lying on cold stone. The area looked familiar, like the church he had sent the survivors to. But the lingering smell of incense was gone, and the overpowering stench of copper layered the dimly lit interior.

Izuku’s eyes glanced to the only exit that was open, and he continued to the doorway, looking out to the massive root-like growths that had grown out of the ground.

A cool presence entered his mind. “My young hunter, I welcome thee to the hunter's nightmare-”

“The what?” Izuku cut off Flora, intrigue plaguing his mind.

“Shush child, I was attempting to convey what it was. The Hunters Nightmare is a land created by the hatred of my sister and her orphan. As well as their followers. Here you will meet, and slay some of the grandest of foes, and find secrets about Yharnam you could not fathom, things not written in your books.” She silenced for a moment as Izuku cut into the flesh of an ancient hunter who wielded old tools.

“How did I get here mother? I remember… well I remember spaces in my memories in my last few hunts. The spaces became closer and closer until I killed off that poor martyr, and then I was here.” An unfamiliar weight fell into Izuku’s hand as he lifted the Beast Cutter from the now-dead hunter's hands, its weight mighty and its many weighted whip blades reminding him of his favorite weapon.

“I removed your protective barriers from the blood lust, most of which were erected when you killed for the first time and fought off the call of the blood. I apologize for not telling you.” She spoke almost quietly as she told him this, sincerity in her voice. “But you are here now, and the orphan and its head are yours to claim.”

Izuku landed hard as the bodies of two old hunters fell hard to the stained cobbled roads. His hunt led him to a cemetery full of beasts, and the commotion of his slaughter of both beast and hunter made many of them rush from their positions higher up the staircase.

“I… do not blame you mother, but… can I get a warning next time you mess with my mind?” His footsteps squelched in a pool of blood as he headed up the narrow staircase, and at the top, a ball of flame began rolling down towards him. But missed him as he quickened through it. A slash of silver flashed through the air as the six beasts who crowded him became headless.

“I can do that my child, do not fret. I shall leave you to the hunt.”

“I… I love you mother.” A quiver shook through his voice while saying that. The large stone door in front of him flew off its hinges as a large hunchback with glowing purple eyes and hundreds of fleshy tentacle-like protrusions grasped from its face. Its large ax called a toll of a cathedral bell with every swing it attacked him with.

“You, I hold dear to me too my son.” The cool presence left his mind, as he ripped the colon out of the bulbous stomach of the hunchback. Its body fell limp as the last spurt of blood-drenched the floor.

Izuku walked further into the near-replica of the grand cathedral, the burning body of a cleric beast held a pendant on the far end of the room. Could be important.

…

Izuku’s clothes were drenched in deep crimson as he walked past a tall man and opened the side door to the cathedral he woke in. It wasn't a long way from the flaming beast to that hallway, only past turrets that shot bursts of bullets, and a handful of old hunters. And for some ungodly reason blood lickers.

The worst blood lickers at that, they shot streams of acidic blood at him anytime he tried to get near.

But all the things in the path were dead, and he had made it back to the shimmering blue lamp, and found another human with no want to murder him… In the murder dream… he won't complain.

Izuku headed over to the man in question, and the man spoke, their heavily clothed face hidden, and angled away from him.

“Hmm. You're a hunter with your sanity, aren't you? Must've taken a wrong turn then, eh?” Their voice was tired and old, and incredibly skeptical. “Well, we're more alike than you think. This is the Hunter's Nightmare, where hunters end up when drunk with blood…” A sharp laugh slipped past their lips.

“You've seen them before. Aimless, wandering hunters, slavering like beasts. This-“ He waves his hand to the outside, the stream of blood guarded by hunter and blood licker alike, “Is what the poor fools have to look forward to. So, don't be brash, turn back before it's too late… Well… Unless you've something of an interest in nightmares?”

“I… Well to be honest. “ Izuku glances back at the way he came, “I'm honestly finding them interesting! This area is outside of time, holding areas that don't match nor make sense! And being the home of endless hunting… it's quite interesting.”

“Ahhahaha! Yes, I see… Such a young mind being so inquisitive. You sense a secret within the Nightmare, and cannot bear to leave it be.” Another sharp, almost bitter laugh exited him,

“As if the spirit of Byrgenwerth lives on within you! Such inquisitive hunters will relish the Nightmare.” A solemn seriousness entered his tone, “But beware, secrets are secrets for a reason. And some do not wish to see them uncovered… Especially when the secrets are particularly unseemly…” The man quieted after that, a forlorn look taking over his eyes.

…

Izuku was not one for running, but the constant fighting in the area was getting annoying, so yes, he sprinted past a few… ten to twenty people to get to the next lamp in the area, the little messengers waving and reaching toward him. He ruffled their heads as he lit the lamp, a delighted murmur spread through them as his hand swept by each one. At first, he thought there was just an unnecessarily large amount of messengers in the area, until he noticed them popping up around him to get their heads ruffled. It was cathartic. Eventually, he needed to leave the comfort of the lamp and its messengers and head deeper into the nightmare. He had collected all kinds of interesting gear, some of which he wanted to take apart as soon as he found a greater beast.

Izuku’s footsteps went from thuds to his boots sinking into a slimy wet blood-filled mud. A constant flow of blood leaking from a large doorway-like tunnel, and as he headed deeper, a massive room filled with piles of corpses.

A raspy voice called through the air, seeming to gurgle on blood and other viscera that dripped from their mouth, from their skinless body. "Ahh, ahh, please... help us... Ah… An… An unsightly beast… A great terror looms!” a breathy wheeze escaped its mouth, “Ahh... Ludwig the Accursed is coming. Have… have mercy... Have mercy upon us…!" Suddenly, the skinless man was crushed under the weight hooves of what was once an icon of holy justice.

Izuku had read about this man more times than he ever realized. Ludwig is one of the best church hunters, a bringer of justice, and a slayer of some of the grandest and most grotesque beasts. Or at least. He was.

In the place of a man once considered incredibly handsome and fearsome, stood a man horse amalgamation. Like someone tried to splice the man and his fersom steed together and had no idea what would go where. Two heads, one more human, longer and angled like a horse, but with the facial features of a man. And another head, if you could call it that. More like a tube of flesh full of eyes that shimmered in the depths of the bloody crevasse of what could have been the horse's head. Four hooves stuck out at odd angles, two from the back, one to the side, and one on the ground, humanish legs kept the beast stable, with clawed hands that held up the heap of the flesh on its chest. A few strands of church hunter garb clung to its body, as well as a large cool colored sword that was stuck to its bag.

With a horrendous scream, it charged. Its speed was incredible for its lack of coordinated biology. It slammed into the wall where Izuku had been mere milliseconds before, matching his own speed, and maybe even Eileen’s. Izuku’s whip cracked, leaving a shimmering silver streak that slashed into the exposed broad side of the once-great hunter. A fearsome grin spread across Izuku’s face.

The beast lunged again, crashing into Izuku, but giving Izuku an opening to swap his cane for his scythe. He pressed the barrel of his gun into the beast's head, slicing down with his scythe he shot into the hundreds of eyes, causing the white and clear liquid to splash out, and soon flooding the socket with blood.

In a puff of red smoke, Izuku was behind the beast, cutting at its ankles and thin legs, leaving deep gashes, while shooting into its broader areas. It let out a human scream as it spun on a dime and swiped at the young hunter, but a bullet to the eye sent the beast staggering back, and Izuku poofed again. Izuku appeared behind the poor man, his whip wrapping around the second neck, and sawing into it as Izuku wrenched the tight sharp whip to cut the entire chunk of flesh off.

Izuku watched the beast fall, his confusion taking hold. This was the best it had?

Suddenly a wash of sharp frigid air swept over the room, and the blade ignited, lying next to the beast's head. Its eyes opened, aware, unlike how it had been when it was feral. It stood, its limbs working in unison to assume a somewhat human-like standing position. It held the blade in front of its face, eyes full of recognition, “Aah, you were at my side, all along. My true mentor… My guiding moonlight..” Its voice, unnatural, seeming to come from multiple voice boxes.

Its eyes locked onto Izuku, the blade, giving off energies like his mom, flared angrily in response to its master's will.

Its massive body swung the sword with practiced finesse, causing a wave of energy to launch at Izuku, who dodge under it, running towards the beast. Izuku grabbed a belt out of one of his bags, covered in oil pots he flung the belt of ten oil bombs at the beast and a Molotov. It caught on fire in a massive shockwave but was still standing, launching countless waves of arcane energy. With a clench, twenty fiery red balls of arcane launched at the beast, combining three arcane tools for a more efficient attack, they tore into the beast, causing spires of blood to shoot out, tearing flesh and stone in its wake. The two hunters, one chosen by the moon, and one by the people fought with arcane and blade, the pool of blood on the floor grew inch by inch, flooding out of the room and draining into the bloodstream that flowed through the nightmare.

A quick and final strike of Izuku’s whip took the beast's head off, ending the long battle. The messengers pulled a lamp out of the ground, allowing Izuku to light it, begging for head pats.

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WOOHOO! Holy hell that took a while, but I hope I didn't leave yall waiting too long, every time I find time to write something seems to come up, but hey i got a gift!

If you are looking to join my discord or support me, search my Twitter @kuro945235232 , where you will find links to everything! Sorry for the wait!

Chapter 15: If I Could Fear

Chapter Text

I apologize for the hiatus: I got busy this year, but in trying to bring back my stories, one writing session at a time

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The still air of the colossal room was warm and humid from the constant blood flow from the mounds of corpses that lined the room. The coppery smell, faint due to how often the young hunter had to deal with the stench, gave Izuku an indistinct moment of nausea, something he hadn't felt in a while. As he gazed down at the severed head of the once-great hunter Ludwig, he felt a twinge of pity. This man had given up much for the sake of the hunt, and yet here he lied, a head in a festering lake of blood.

The bodiless head held his gaze, its voice quiet compared to the loudness it had displayed during their battle "Good hunter, have you seen the thread of light?” the low rumbling of the man's voice echoed from the open mouth, hardly moving. “Just a hair, a fleeting thing it was. Yet I clung to it, steeped as I was in the stench of blood and beasts.” Its eyes looked into Izuku, seeing past him as its gaze seemed to miss him and see something more.

“I never wanted to know, what it was. I didn't." Its voice was sorrowful, yet as it gazed a wicked smile slowly grew in its misshapen mouth. “But now I see, what guided me in times of sorrow and fear, was the same that resides in you… It's yours to take young hunter, take it, my guiding moonlight, and make sure my stalwart hunters continue the hunt of righteousness and faith.”

The head breathed out, the skull's flesh falling still and its eyes closing in an unattractive way, like watching an ever-watchful gargoyle close its eyes. The hero of Yharnam, a man tasked with protecting everyone and everything as the church's rigorous hand of justice, was reduced to another casualty.

Izuku walked towards the sword that had fallen from the hands of the beast, its cold steal wrapped in white cloth that seemed to keep the blood on the ground away from its shining metal. And grasped its firmly wrapped hilt, and the bright cyan light enveloped the cool steel in a flash of moonlight. Its blade shimmered in the darkness of the room. Izuku felt a shiver as something inside him writhed with a benign hunger: the edge seemed to waver for a moment. Before it stabilized and glowed brighter, the razor edge of the blade gained jagged, saw-like continence while the flowing white lines along the flat of the blade burned with an ethereal light that added an unnatural warmth to the air around it.

The air around Izuku lost its luster as the tang of copper; the stench stripped from the very existence of the air around him. A cool feeling entered his mind as warmth enveloped him, heating him down to his bones. “My child, has thou found my gift?” Flora’s voice was soft, a hint of emotion present. “I remember placing that in the path of a human of great worth, a human that could fight off the scourge my kin have sought upon the city… A shame is true that it ended up in the prison of the bloodthirsty.”

“What even is this weapon mother? It… It is incredible… the craftsmanship of the blade and the fact that it can be enhanced by arcane manipulation… the possibilities!” Izuku’s voice peaked as he ran the current of energy between him and the blade through his mark, and the bright cyan shifted to a deep royal blue, the white lines that ran on the flat changing to a flaring crimson.

A soft, admiring chuckle rumbled through Izuku’s head, “Thou art adorable my little green youngling: mayhaps the lesser one Ebrietas was worth letting into the dream after all. Your skills in the arcane have amassed quite well.” Warmth flared on Izuku’s cheeks and ears as Flora kept talking, “At the very top of this building, an astral clock tower is guarded by a fearsome hunter, the top apprentice of your own master Gerhman. Do not be surprised if you die many times to their blades. But the tower holds writing in the language of the great ones. Learn them all.”

“A-a okay! I will Mom! Love you!” His ears were seared as he rushed up the staircase, only to remember his mom was in his head and chuckling softly to herself.

“Be careful my little pupae, and I also find love for you too.” A sweet tone coated her words. And like a summer's breeze, the warmth was gone, along with the stench of blood and viscera returning as Izuku entered a prison-like area.

After a quick fight with some patrolling cathedral mob, Izuku was left with the eight cells and the staircase on the other end of the hall. One kick to the wooden doors, and most fell; their inhabitance, if hostile as all of them were, were killed quickly and looted. However, one door headed down a stair to another doorway. A kick didn't even damage the door, but a voice echoed from the room behind, “Are you a hunter? Well, that's very odd. Do you hear the toll of the bell little one?”

A few moments passed before Izuku responded, “I… No? Am I-i supposed to or… or is this like some kind of crazy person game?

“Crazy?... *sigh* Very well. The beasts you seek will not be found here, young hunter. Go back to your hunt, and if you have the chance, put this night behind you. Places like these are better left untouched, secrets better left alone… Only a fool would so brazenly roam…” A heavy implication floated in the air between the two on either side of the door.

Izuku spoke calmly through the door between them, “I can't do that. My mother asked me to take the head of the Orphan at the end of this nightmare. Sorry.” He let out a shaky breath. “If- if you're threatening me like I think you a-are. Th-then come out of that room and f-fight me!”

The voice behind the door turned sour, spiteful to a point of bitterness, “I gave you an out little hunter, turn back, or risk hearing my bell…”

The change in tone startled the young hunter, but it was to be expected, “I-I’ll take my chances.” Izuku hurried up the staircase back to the prison section, then headed up further.

--

Izuku’s scythe dripped with the blood of the church's clerics charged with defending the large stone altar. They put up a better effort than most, but Izuku was on crunch time. He had no idea how long he had been in this world. What if it was past the UA entrance exam, and he had to become a vigilante?... That actually wouldn’t be that bad. Shaking his head, he walked to the altar: The depiction of a surgery carved in stone. The chest cavity and cranium open of the one operated on gave Izuku pause.

“Line our skulls with eyes.” Izuku chuckled and checked the skull of the stone cadaver, a perfect slot for the eye pendant. With little to no zeal, Izuku slotted the eye into the cranium: and the large stone altar shook. Thick lines of dust began dancing in the air as gears long forgotten began to wine and lurch into a lethargic motion. Izuku would have ridden the altar up if he didn’t know better; Yharnam holds all its greatest secrets in places no one would look.

He stepped off the alter as it rose into the air, dust and old worn shards of stone raining down from the sky like a pissed off snow storm, but as Izuku had guessed, up came another altar, with a cloth-bound skull sitting pristinely in the middle point. Something important, so Izuku snagged it… kleptomania… he’d have to kick the habit someday.

Izuku also rode the secondary altar down and found a chest with another type of cannon, which was nice. But finally, after collecting all the things he thought he could find, Izuku rode the main altar up into what he could only describe later as a hellish recreation of a hospital and insane asylum.

He stepped out, echoing voices speaking in fathomable sentences and yet soft and sad, about water; alas about the lack of understanding… Then he heard it.

Drip

Drip

Drip

Izuku’s mind forced itself to stay composed, but he didn’t pay attention as he ran up the large spiral staircase in the middle of the unbelievably tall tower-esque structure. People, but also not, ran at him, their heads bandaged and engorged. A constant foul stench of puss and blood got stronger as he ran past: he couldn’t bear to kill them.

One strapped to a chair spoke to him, but his hurried steps drowned out their please for… brain fluid? He ran, up the elevators he went, past countless sad and rage-filled patience Izuku’s heart beat faster as he pulled a lever;?wooden and stone gears yelled out in a cacophony of agony as the entire spiral staircase rose dozens of feet into the air, lining up a stair with the large golden doors, an exciting from the hellish existence that was the sanitarium…

Izuku’s heart dropped as he stepped out of that golden gate, from the stale air and blood-soaked walls of a lost and broken congregation of people. People subjected to who knows what, what torture that his mind could comprehend couldn’t scratch the surface of the implements he found in that dusty hall of antiquity. But here, right outside, sat a lonely, disgusting, and discarded garden of sunflowers. Sunflowers grow abnormally, just like the tall, mutilated, and misshapen human-Esque creatures that surrounded them. Their chests were too wide and concave in places that I shouldn’t have, large bulbous growths lined every surface of the many tall creatures that stood around, their torsos angled, as if looking at the flowers, yet the action itself was an imitation. Like a residue on the mind of the creature, from when it needed to look at pretty things.

It had been a while since Izuku had felt his stomach flip around and get queasy, but the sheer amount of agony, the patients, and these creatures resonated was suffocating. He let out a resigned sigh, his shoulders slumped and his hands loosely held onto his scythes hilt. He knew these creatures wouldn’t take long to slaughter, but it would be tiring to do so. Not due to their size, their speed as they slowly lumbered their way through the misshapen flowers showed they were not going to challenge him when it came to movement. But it would tire out his heart, having to kill such… such useless creatures.

He regrouped his scythe, the deadly edge brought back into confident hands, and Izuku sprinted toward the first three failed creatures. He opened with a large horizontal swipe, the blade cutting through the weak knees of the lanky but bulbous creatures. Sprays of vibrant silver blood flew as shards of bone and tendon were ripped from their once-permanent homes. Izuku felt his mood drop as he bisected the creatures. There was no excitement in this fight. He brought up his hand and called upon the blood in his body, wounds opened up along his arm, and red ichor began to flow out, collecting at his fingertip. In mere moments the next few fell as volleys of arcane blood pierced through them.

The failed monstrosities began to raise their arms, beckoning to something, high amounts of arcane began to filter through the air, but stopped as Izuku dived the final one. He let out a sad sigh and lit the lantern near him. He hated killing those things.

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(Flashback)

Izuku was starving, a constant, knawing thing that threatened to eat him away till nothing remained but a husk. He sat in the ally between his school and one of the apartments that someone he would never know lived in. He couldn’t bring himself to move his limbs felt weaker than they ever had before. The lunch staff stopped giving him the scraps after lunch a few weeks ago, even though it tasted bad and likely was far older than they said it was. It was food.

The young boy let out a weary cry as a cat stalked towards him, feral as they were when they were born. Its hair was matted and muddy, cuts marred its body, and a large festering burn mark licked its face. It came close to him and sniffed; its ears pulled back, and its fangs bared, glinting in the dull light of the alleyway.

The cat leaped at Izuku why he didn't know, nor would he find out. Because after being bit and scratched, Izuku’s body managed to gain the strength to barely fight back. And even as he was weak and weary and hurting, he managed to hurt the cat enough for it to run away. Leaving him once again alone in the ally.

This turn of events turned into a regular as time went on, till Izuku found that the cat no longer came near him as he hid down the loathsome streets. In fact it seemed to hide from him. That didn’t bring him pride or joy at being safe from at least something. If anything he felt greater pity for the cat.

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I apologize for the hiatus, I have had a lot of stuff happen recently. And I am also sorry for how short the chapter is, the next one is going to be big.

Chapter 16: One more Kill, and a Nightmare ends

Chapter Text

If you wish to support me, I have Twitter! It is @Little_Lamb31532. It is a place where I will post updates and stuff! I also try to update my progress there too!!

Thanks to the commenter who lovingly called this story, torture p*rn, I appreciate it hahaha!

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It is said, in times of struggle the human brain seems to always find a way to make do. Whether at the loss or gain of something important, the human mind has one driving goal, survival. Mating and making progeny are a close second, but the survival of the host of the mind must always survive, no matter the cost to the body as a whole.

In this case, as Izuku breathed deeply in the alleyway near the school, where the cat would come and rip and nip at him, where he finally made the cat back off, Izuku found himself starving. It wasn’t the first time, and gods only knew how many more times it would happen in the future, but this time felt different. To Izuku, it felt like he was going to die—like his stomach was on fire, and he had no way to put it out. His brain knew it was close to out of resources for the small boy.

The cat was near.

Izuku was so hungry…

It cowered as the small boy came closer to it.

Izuku woke up near his house with the taste of copper in his mouth. He refused to think about it further. He didn’t want to know.

The cat never reappeared.

Izuku would often see missing posters of the cat.

He would get sick at the very thought.

Even as the taste of copper lingered on his tongue, a new, unsettling feeling crept into his mind. He shook his head, trying to dismiss it, but the sensation of being watched never left him. It was as if something had awakened within him, something that pulled him inexorably toward the towering structure he now stood before—the Astral Clocktower.

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The red and silver-haired hunter stood before the large double doors to the Astral Clocktower. He didn’t know how he knew it was called that, only that it was, in fact, called that—almost like the symbols of his mother fed him the information. The zap of cognitive energy zipped between his fingers, a materialization, or perhaps a physical reaction of his high arcane energy getting agitated as something behind the doorway WATCHED him. Almost as if it could tell he came for what is protected. Izuku hated when things knew his next move.

The boy brought his hands to the large brass double doors and pushed, the lingering static causing the metal to creak as it buckled and bent in the way he pushed, allowing the boy to blow the doors back and nearly off the very hinges they hung from.

Izuku looked at his surroundings—a large and well-lit hall-like area with a massive clock face at the other end of the room. However, what sat in a lonely chair in the middle of the room shook him slightly. It was… the doll? Or maybe what the doll was made after. The woman had pure white skin and hair, a fair complexion, and was wearing an intricate set of hunter garb. The name Lady Maria filled his head. The low thrum of arcane energy filled his ears, the clocktower seeming to harness the energy of the cosmos in an intricate and unnerving fashion. Izuku let out a sigh as he began walking toward the corpse of a venerable hunter in the chair. Leaving someone to decay in the open was rude, even if it was a hunter he had never met before.

The metallic scent of her blood reached him even from a distance. It was far more toxic than his own; where his blood merely ate through fabric, hers had charred the very edges of the wound, a testament to the terrifying power it contained.

The young boy reached into one of the many pockets of his garb and pulled out fresh gauze, treated and prepared to staunch the flow of toxic bloods. It was a gift from the Queen of Vile Bloods after his last visit to acquire… information of sorts. Izuku let out a chuckle as he laid his scythe blade on the ground near the corpse. He had only considered preparing bodies for burial, so this was the first time he would ever have done it. The young hunter got down on a knee and pulled the gauze into a long strip, but just as his hand went behind the back of the corpse, leaning heavily against the chair, the cold leather of a glove gripped his wrist. Its grip was vice-like and cut off the circulation to his hand within seconds. His eyes darted up to the woman, who was once a still corpse with no sign of bleeding, pulling him up from his position and close to her face.

Her voice held an accent very close to the doll’s as she spoke with a voice nearly identical, “Good Hunter, don't you know a corpse should be left well alone? You who is lost in the nightmare. What do you think of that beastly legend and those ailing wards of the church?” She stopped speaking for a moment, her breath on his face causing him to lock up, her gaze predatory, full of some unknown emotion. “I know what you did to them... It's not your fault. The nightmare held them, and now they are free. But, what about you? Have you profited at all?”

As Lady Maria’s cold, predatory gaze bore into him, Izuku felt an odd mixture of fear and familiarity. The words she spoke were foreign, yet they resonated within him, like an old memory struggling to resurface. He couldn’t decide if she was a threat or a warning—or perhaps both.

She finally pushed his arm back and Izuku landed roughly on his ass. As she stood, her joints audibly popped and cracked. “Forgive me, good hunter, but leave this place and return to the hunt. You will not find allies here.” Her gaze kept to his as he sat there motionless for a few moments.

Why did he feel like this? A cold dread settled in his chest, unlike anything he’d felt before. It wasn’t just the words she spoke—it was the way she seemed to see right through him, as if she knew every dark secret he tried to bury. He wanted to run, but something held him in place, a twisted curiosity mingled with fear.

The hunger he’d felt in that alleyway gnawed at him again, but this time it wasn’t just physical. It was as if Lady Maria’s presence brought forth every dark urge he’d tried to suppress, reminding him of the beast within that he barely kept at bay.

Her grip had been iron. Pain shot up his arm, and his breath caught in his throat. He was trapped—helpless under her gaze.

His free hand gripped onto the long handle of his scythe, the only responsive muscles in his body screaming to attack and run, hide from those piercing gray eyes.

Gray eyes? Familiar gray eyes, ones that shimmered with emotion barely held behind a gate of… of what?

Her iron grip finally let go of his wrist, the majority of the pain subsiding as her hand went to grip the handle of a sleek weapon at her waist. “It was not a suggestion, good hunter. Leave.”

His voice came out reedy and a vocal higher than normal, “N-No can do. I have to retrieve something from the end of this Nightmare. My mother demands it of me.”

Her sharp eyebrows quirked for a second, and her nose twitched as if finally noticing a stench that lingered upon the air. “Old blood runs rank in thine veins.” A sharp thrill shivered through Izuku as she began to draw her blade. “You shall be my final hunt, young hunter. Nothing good comes from blood as tainted as thee.”

The sound of the wind screaming caught his ears as she disappeared in a plume of smoking mist—a familiar trick he too was taught. However, it was… rusty. Her form began to reshape beside him as he kicked his body back into movement, flinging his body into a spin to dodge her blade as it struck and splintered the wood where he once was.

Using his own momentum, he whipped himself to his feet. “Nice trick, ‘corpse,’ but I've been taught that too. And I bet my master was more talented than yours!” In a foul blood mist, he vanished.

Eyes

Sight

He hit the wood on the other side of the large room and sputtered. He had quickened hundreds of times by now and was used to the momentary lack of senses involved in the art. However, it seemed the skills he had been learning had only added to the useful movement skill. Unlike before, he could see the world around his misty form and feel each part of his body scatter and collide.

Or was that what it was like every time?

Had he only become aware recently? His insight into the bizarre had only grown more depth since attaining a second eldritch being to aid him.

A quick swipe, nearly chopping off his head, brought him back to the combat at hand. Slipping his gun from under his coat, he fired into her thigh and watched blood splatter the ancient clocktower's floor, sizzling and blackening the browns.

They both quickened at once and reappeared in front of each other. Blade met blade as the watcher of the clocktower swiped their smaller blade across the right side of Izuku’s face, the metal sizzling as it cut into his flesh and through the soft tissue of his ear.

A second gunshot rang out.

Izuku quickened away and plunged a vial into his shoulder, squeezing the glass roughly in his offhand, shattering the bottle into fractals that bit deep into his palm. A mutter of the eldritch tongue cut his tongue as the symbol for fire seared into the soft palate of his mouth, and his blood caught flame as darts of the raging blood launched at the Doll's completion.

A swipe of her blade, and the blood was cut from the air, splattering onto the walls.

“Foul blood arts, Hunter. Born from communion with an Old One and the Vileblood,” she remarked, bringing her swords to her chest and sinking them deep. She pulled them free, soaked in her blood that clung to the shimmering metal like slime, dripping onto the floor with loud pops and sizzles as her corrupted blood awoke. “Meet my mercy, young hunter.”

Izuku smiled, shaking his offhand as the glass dropped piece by piece to the floor while his healing took hold, pushing the foreign objects out. He needed a few more moments before his mouth healed enough for eldritch arts.

He quickened.

Appearing behind her, her eyes already locked onto him and beginning her swing, he raised his gun and fired into her elbow. She staggered back from the pain, and he closed in, tossing his gun into the air and pressing his palm into her chest. “Ebrietas!” he called out, summoning forth a torrent of writhing tentacles that slammed into the older hunter's chest, launching them across the room before they, too, quickened to appear next to Izuku.

He ducked under her swing and watched as the torrent of blood that screamed across the room from her blade ate into the wall behind him.

He caught his gun as it fell beside him and fired a fourth and fifth time into the woman before him, both shots aimed at her sword arm. As she staggered, he swung the large scythe blade and caught her in the shoulder, ripping through the cloth and skin like it was nothing more than silly string.

She vanished as he fired a sixth time, the shot missing completely and breaking a chair farther in the room. His eyes scanned the area until he spotted her standing before the large clock tower, the symbols of many eldritch words carved into the beautiful construct. He watched as her bloodied blades caught flame—not like his own, where the blood-red fire danced softly. Her flaming blood was like wildfire, fierce and untamed, as she raised her blades, her gray eyes reflecting the orange heat even from the distance between them.

He let out another deep breath and plunged another vial into his flesh, feeling the sharp needle brush against bone and scrape, the pain burning in the back of his throat. Fire. Inferno. Consume.

Three words, his mouth filled with blood as it was torn to shreds in the inhumane act of eldritch speech. He raised his arms and flexed the muscles in his hands, feeling them strain as his sharp nails bit deep into his palms. He called to the beyond, sacrificing the blood that seeped out and the blood within his extremities to conjure orbs of blazing red.

The eldest hunter vanished, reappearing next to Izuku, and plunged her flaming blade into his gut. But the incantation had finished, and the array of orbs, similar to a starry night, slammed into her and combusted.

Both hunters reappeared at opposite ends of the room, breathing deeply. Izuku slammed two vials into his leg, feeling his drained body scream for blood as his skin wrinkled on his hands and arms like raisins, before slowly returning to its normal state. His breath came out raspy as he peered across the room, watching as the woman stood up once more and began walking slowly toward him. He grabbed his scythe and pushed his body to stand. He wasn't back to 100%. The cost of three words had left his jaw hanging painfully, and as the sinew and ligaments stitched his cheeks back into place, he had to reach up and force the hanging mandible bone back into its socket.

His knee buckled as he stood, forcing him to catch himself, but his opponent had no such problems. She appeared beside him, her clothes scorched, revealing patches of red, burned flesh. Grabbing him by the hair, she peered into his eyes as she shoved her blade into his stomach. “Just give up. Thine hunt is elsewhere.”

He reached up, grabbing the back of her head, and slammed his forehead into her nose, hearing a sickening snap. With his other hand still gripping his gun, he pressed it into her wrist and fired. Bullet after bullet, he shot up her radius, leaving her sword arm looking more like swiss cheese than an arm. He coughed up a clot of blood and stumbled back as they both released each other, her blade still buried in him and her arm hanging limp.

“My hunt is wherever I need to go to escape this world,” he started, his words slurred as the muscle in his tongue felt foreign, damaged from the eldritch speech. “You guard the proprietor of this nightmare, bringing sorrow and cursing all hunters with endless bloodlust. It and all the Old Ones who want to see this hunt continue are on my list.” He let out a deep breath and pulled the sword out.

“But you're not on that list. I don't know who you are, but you look like someone I know—a companion, someone who resides in the Hunter's Dream. She and my master, Gehrman. This can be over,” he said as blood from his guts spilled onto the wood, and he injected himself again.

She disappeared once more, reclaiming her sword from him with her off hand, her shorter blade lodged into his shoulder. “Quite. How do you know of Gehrman?” She peered into his eyes again, and he couldn't help but feel his face heat up. “Gehrman went missing, and yet you claim to know him? A new hunter? Lies.”

“It’s not a lie! He taught me the art of quickening,” Izuku spoke quickly, dodging the slashes of her blade, his eyes scanning for his scythe. “He told me stories about his first apprentice, his prized apprentice. He said he wished he could have been with her longer, but he couldn't even say goodbye before the dream took him!”

Her slashes faltered, and in that moment, he misted away, reappearing beside his scythe. With a swift motion, he stood ready, his weapon poised for more.

“You speak the truth?” Her words were sharp, wary, as if she teetered on the edge of belief and disbelief.

“Yes,” he replied, his voice steady despite the pounding of his heart. “I can take you to him. You can rest in the Dream, alongside the others I've brought there.” She appeared beside him before he could finish, her blade pressed against his throat, cold and unyielding.

“If you lie,” she whispered, her breath warm against his ear, “I will finish this.”

The sharp edge of her blade grazed his artery, a silent promise of death. He swallowed hard, feeling the blood pulse beneath his skin. “I understand,” he said, his voice calm but firm. “Just… follow me. I'll have the way opened and send you through. I still have to kill the Orphan at the deepest part of the Nightmare. And while you're in the Dream, you can rest, bathe, and claim a room. There are plenty of books, too—” He caught himself rambling, stopping short as he noticed her eyes narrow in irritation.

“This way,” he corrected quickly, leading her to the lantern. He handed the messengers a small handful of items he had gathered, and they began to form a wide circle on the ground. “Just step into the ring,” he instructed, “and you’ll likely be deposited in front of Gehrman. I… I bribed the messengers.” His voice softened as he watched her hesitate, her gaze flickering between him and the strange ritual.

She stepped into the ring of messengers with a mix of trepidation and resolve. “And I’ll be in the Dream soon,” he added, more to himself than to her. “One final kill.”

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So i think im back permanently until i finish this one, ive been not letting myself enjoy writing, or anything really for a while. And honestly all the class work form collage has just been burning me out, so if i do this to wind down i think ill be able to write a lot more.

Originally this chapter was written almost a year ago around february. However it didn't go anywhere i liked, and i hated so many things going on that i shelved it for months. But I came back a month ago and began re-thinking this chapter and the next ones, and I think I'm back.