“Ugh… What on earth is happening?”
As soon as Yona disappeared from view, Ceres did her best to frown and let out a sigh.
Her forehead resting on her chin looked so unpleasant that Alex cautiously asked Ceres.
“Uh, Exarch, is something wrong?”
“Wrong? Of course.”
It was a straightforward answer.
The response came back without the slightest hesitation, and it somehow was filled with emotion, so Alex couldn’t bring himself to ask Ceres what was wrong due to her intensity.
In fact, there was no need to, as Ceres began muttering to herself, making sure that those around her, Alex and Kaiyak, could hear.
“In the middle of the city, demons pop up! I just wanted to be a little at ease, so I threw everything onto the bishop and headed out to find Inphula, only for the dead to be running around! They didn’t just cause trouble, they completely wiped out a whole village, Semek, to boot. That’s all quite a lot of work. All of it! Every single piece of it!”
As Ceres said, Semek was in ruins.
Even though the buildings stood intact, not a single person was in sight, and the sounds of dogs or cats that should have been operating in every home, or the sounds of livestock that ought to occupy the stables, could not be heard—this village was nothing more than a desolate wasteland with only buildings left behind.
A village stripped of all vitality, leaving only its lifeless structures behind.
What else could that village be if not ruins?
Ceres looked around with a gaze full of melancholy.
Even though it was shrouded in darkness, the full moon hanging high in the sky shed enough light to make it easy to survey the surroundings.
As Ceres surveyed Semek, a place where it was hard to find any trace that someone lived there, she sighed deeply and said.
“I have to write a full report on all of this. If this damned Semek had been just a little more tilted towards Inphula, I would have written my report from the Church Region! But since it’s close to Kapatia Port, I have to do it myself. Ugh, I’m really losing it.”
Alex thought to himself, “Ah, the sorrow of a civil servant,” and kept his mouth shut.
For him, it was like understanding a foreign language, so there was no need to say anything else.
“Ugh… Anyway, we need to take care of this quickly. That damned vampire…”
As Ceres quietly muttered her curses, Kaiyak, who had been walking silently, asked.
“How are you so sure it’s a vampire?”
His axe, with its chipped blades and rough edges, was a makeshift weapon.
Under the bright yellow moonlight, the axe blade shone even more sharply and unevenly, visibly glinting ominously.
Kaiyak questioned Ceres.
Kaiyak asked Ceres.
As Scarlet from the Holy Knight Brigade said, it’s highly unlikely that the culprit behind this mess is a crazed necromancer; it’s more likely a vampire or a lich.
But seeing how confidently Ceres claimed it’s a vampire, Kaiyak thought there must be something up with that, yet he still felt a bit odd about it.
“I can’t feel any magical traces.”
A response that was expected.
After thinking for a moment, Kaiyak asked Ceres again.
Still, this was an issue they absolutely had to clarify.
“We’ve barely been searching for a short while, and we’ve only just entered the village. But already you’re saying a vampire has done this without any magical traces? I don’t quite understand what you mean.”
Ceres didn’t say much and pondered for a moment over Kaiyak’s words.
Quietly waiting for her response, after a while, Ceres slowly continued.
“Just look! If there were any traces, wouldn’t the Holy Knight Brigade, oh, pardon my expression, that crazy brigade have already made a fuss? They’d be in a right uproar by now! Damn vampire, leaving no traces, and we’re just standing around! Plus, I can’t feel any magical presence or anything.”
“The vampire has left no traces at all?”
Alex genuinely asked, confused.
He had heard that vampires were high-level demons, so wouldn’t they leave some kind of magical trace behind?
Yet the idea of no traces didn’t sit well with him.
“Vampires don’t use magic. Hence, there are no magical traces or anything.”
“They don’t use magic?”
“Because they were humans who were originally neither mages nor demons.”
—
Once, there was a lord.
The ruler of a forgotten kingdom, now lost to legend.
This king had a fanatical fear of aging and death, constantly pressuring his ministers to fetch him the elixir of immortality.
His once mighty and vast kingdom fell deeper into corruption each day as he obsessively spent fortunes on this elixir due to his paranoid fears.
One day, a woman visited his kingdom.
Claiming she had lived for a thousand years, the king thought she was crazy and tried to cast her out.
However, the woman proposed a wager.
Starting from today, she would tell the king stories of her life every night, and after a hundred days, if he couldn’t believe she had lived for a thousand years, she would gladly give up her life.
The king accepted the wager, and after a hundred days, he fell in love with the woman.
After a hundred days, the king had fallen in love with the woman.
And on the last day, the woman told the king her story.
It was about how, while the elixir of immortality doesn’t exist in the world, there is a magical art that can achieve immortality.
Following the woman’s words, the king immediately ordered the beheading of one thousand of his subjects to gather their blood.
Using that blood, the woman drew a massive magic circle and activated it.
In the kingdom where millions of subjects lived, a red veil covered the land, greedily sucking up the blood of the people beneath it.
Not just humans, but all living beings in that land had their lives drained in unison, and that veil, having swallowed the lives of hundreds of millions, began to transform the king into something that was human, yet not human.
Thus, his kingdom perished.
A land where all life had vanished.
In later generations, people would refer to that land as the Great Desert.
“So in the end, it’s a human. An abnormally strong human, cursed nonetheless. Having the lives of millions, they can’t even die, nor can they grow old—this cursed human is called a vampire. Even if they share a few false lives with the deceased, it goes unnoticed, that kind of vampire.”
“Millions of lives, now that sounds a bit terrifying.”
Alex shivered and trembled.
A being classified as a high demon, yet not quite a demon. A vampire that remains in the category of humans and doesn’t scatter magic around.
They aren’t said to directly suck blood, but rather they are called vampires because their origin stems from the lives of millions—their blood.
The fact that they are a horrifying being doesn’t change.
*
“Huh?”
Yona, playing clapping games with Rubina, was startled when someone burst into the carriage.
Scarlet made eye contact with her but quickly pretended not to see and took a seat inside the carriage.
And of all places, right across from Yona.
With a stiff posture and a gaze fixed straight ahead.
In other words, the gaze was directly fixed on Yona.
Scarlet’s presence felt overwhelmingly burdensome for Yona.
“How was the scouting?”
James casually asked Scarlet.
James wasn’t too fond of how Scarlet had treated Yona without respect.
Still, since they were on the same ride now, it wouldn’t be too bad to be somewhat close until they reached Infula.
“There were no traces at all. It seems like it’s vampire business, but it’s going to be difficult to track here.”
At Scarlet’s words, James turned to look at Yona.
“I’ve arrived.”
Yona glanced at James for a moment and nodded.
In fact, this was better for them.
They couldn’t just waste time like this, could they?
Yona had her own goal to reach the Mage Community, and after arriving in Inpura, James also had to return home.
They had no pretentious morals or anything like that.
While it seemed they ended up moving alongside the heroes, it was simply for the money.
They weren’t interested in saving the world or stopping disasters.
“So, are we heading back to Inpura now?”
“That seems like the best option. A few days have passed already, so no matter what the culprit is, it won’t be easy to track them down from here. However, after reporting to the Pope, we should continue the pursuit.”
Phew.
Yona let out a sigh of relief.
What if they said something like, “You lot are suspected of heresy, so I’ll have to follow you!” Thankfully, that wasn’t the case.
Just then, the carriage door opened.
A silver-haired beauty entered the carriage and her eyes widened when she saw Scarlet.
“Lord Scarlet was here first?”
“Indeed. It wasn’t particularly difficult to find traces. We just need the hero’s party to arrive, right?”
Speaking of which… The hero and the saint have yet to arrive. Should I go look for them?
At those words, Yona shot her hand up and stood up.
Better to go out and find Rude and Vig than to sit here facing that tin can or whatever.
“Then I’ll go! There’s nothing outside, right?!”
“I didn’t sense any magical traces or monsters, but just be careful. You might trip on a rock.”
“That’s fine, I’ll take this bald guy with me!”
Yona grabbed Alex’s arm and hurriedly jumped off the carriage.
Ceres muttered something from behind, but Yona didn’t catch any of it.
“Phew…”
“Why me?”
At Alex’s grumbling voice, Yona turned around and glared at him.
“Hey, were you trying to send me off alone?”
With her fierce glare, Alex smirked.
“Would I do that to a comrade? A comrade.”
“Right? That’s exactly it! We’re comrades. You have to go with me, okay?”
Hehe, Yona let out a strangely uncharacteristic giggle.
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