Chapter 20
With a soft rustle, Sophia quietly closed the door, careful not to make a sound, and stepped out of the room.
The last thing she had seen through the narrowing gap before the door shut was Evan, seated motionless inside.
The Vampire Lord, progenitor of vampires, awakened once more through the sacrifice of the elder.
According to Kabin, the Lord had said that in human society, he was to be called not by his title, but by the name Evan.
Evan.
Of all things, it was the same name as the commander of the Bernice Empire’s knights who had died not long ago.
And, strangely enough, he had also reached a terrifying height in swordsmanship.
Of course, that blood-red sun of a man had been ruthless and merciless to the core, so it was probably just a coincidence.
“Sis.”
“Yeah?”
“It’ll be okay, right?”
“...We have to follow Evan’s will.”
That was what she said, but Sophia herself wasn’t really sure whether she was doing the right thing.
Everything had happened too fast, too chaotically.
In fact, it felt as though she had experienced more in the last few days than she had in all the years she’d spent among humans.
On the night she had reached Hailon after receiving word from Arim, Sophia had prepared herself for anything and gone to find Kabin and the unknown group he had been with.
But by the time she arrived at the place Arim had described, no one was there anymore.
All that remained was the trace of a blood-based technique impossible to see in Hailon.
It was clumsy in some places, yet not lacking for all that.
Sophia had immediately realized it was Kabin’s handiwork.
He probably hadn’t left it on purpose.
So you’ve mastered mist-form while I wasn’t looking, she thought, and hurried after him.
Kabin’s trail led, dangerously enough, into the imperial palace.
The farther she followed it, the more Sophia felt that the direction he’d taken was deeply wrong.
Without a single deviation, Kabin was heading for the chambers of the Third Princess, Silvia Bernice, who possessed the First Blood.
Had Kabin somehow learned the same secret that only she and the elder knew within their clan?
If so, it was still too early.
She had rushed to stop whatever was about to happen, but in the end, she couldn’t prevent the disaster.
The princess lay collapsed in a pool of blood, and Kabin stood there carrying someone in his arms, trapped in a no-win situation.
If Sophia hadn’t happened to arrive when she did, neither of them would have made it safely out of the palace.
I overdid it for the first time in a while.
“That’s obvious! What if Evan tries to stab himself again like he did earlier?”
“That won’t happen.”
Sophia said it firmly in response to Kabin’s worried voice.
Sophia Meyer.
A vampire who had not only managed to blend into human society without issue, but had even risen to become the lord of a city.
Was it because the sorrow she had endured at a young age had tempered her into something harder?
Among the Meyer clan’s vampires, she was the smartest, and at the same time the strongest.
A talent blessed with both civil and military skill.
By human standards, she had awakened her unique ability before even reaching adulthood, and stepped out of the demon lands as soon as she came of age.
Not long after leaving the demon lands, she had founded a house under the name Medeir and even seized the position of lord.
Sophia was not only strong and wise, but also exceptionally good at reading situations and making judgments.
In particular, she was extraordinary at reading people’s emotions.
A special faculty, an innate force embedded in her very being—something beyond magic or any other uncanny power.
Thanks to that intuition, Sophia had always been able to navigate even the harshest situations with composure.
Just like what had happened a little while ago.
I’d say Silvia Princess must have some kind of connection to him.
Sophia thought that Evan’s attitude toward Princess Silvia was anything but ordinary.
It wasn’t merely that he considered her special because she was a human with the First Blood.
She couldn’t put it into exact words, but it felt like something far more intimate than that.
And Sophia’s intuition had been exactly right.
The moment she mentioned that Princess Silvia was alive, she could feel Evan’s fury ebbing away at once.
After hearing the full explanation as well, there was no way he would suddenly decide to take his own life now.
“Hehe. Still, I’m glad Evan woke up safely.”
Kabin had always been bright and cheerful, and that hadn’t changed here either.
Even in this tangled, dizzying mess, he was smiling with such open happiness, as if everything were fine.
Seeing her younger brother’s harmless expression after so long brought an involuntary smile to Sophia’s lips.
“And to think the First Blood really existed. And Evan knew about it from the start! That’s why he told us to go to the Bernice Empire, right? Is that the Vampire Lord’s intuition or something?!”
According to Kabin, Evan had insisted from beginning to end that they needed to go to the imperial palace of the Bernice Empire.
Before Evan woke, Sophia had thought the same thing as Kabin.
As expected of the Lord.
While the rest of their clan had wandered for decades and barely found it, he had sensed it the moment he opened his eyes.
But after speaking to Evan directly, Sophia began to suspect that perhaps she had been mistaken.
He didn’t seem to know anything at all when I brought it up earlier.
Evan hadn’t appeared to know beforehand that Princess Silvia was a human with the First Blood, as Kabin had claimed.
He certainly hadn’t reacted like someone hearing of the concept of the First Blood for the first time.
I should trust him, for now.
The Vampire Lord—an existence who defied prediction, and turned impossibility into reality.
That was the Lord Sophia had heard about until her ears were sore, from the elder himself.
“Kabin.”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t know where the other clans went, do you?”
“Ah—uh. I... don’t really know.”
At the mention of the other clans, Kabin visibly shrank back.
Sophia hadn’t personally experienced the wolf attack that day, but she knew.
She knew how terrible that day must have been for young Kabin.
“We’ll have to tell the others that the Lord has awakened, too.”
There weren’t many of the surviving Meyer clan left, but when they heard the news, they would no doubt leap for joy.
The centuries-old nonaggression pact among the powers within the demon lands had been broken, and the mansion of the Meyer family—living history itself—had been destroyed, but now the Lord, the living witness to that history, had returned in the flesh.
“I’ll go look for them!”
“For now, let’s wait for Evan’s decision.”
Sophia said it partly to calm Kabin’s excitement, partly to steady herself.
So many things had piled on top of one another all at once that even she was still reeling.
One thing was certain, at least.
The Lord had awakened, and she would follow the Lord’s will.
She had said as much directly to Evan earlier, and even if that will meant not taking the First Blood but protecting it instead.
It might mean facing down the other monsters in earnest, but with Evan at her side, there was no way they would lose.
“By the way, Kabin.”
“Yeah?”
“Evan... has he been traveling all the way to the empire in that condition?”
“That condition...? What do you mean?”
“...Haa.”
Looking at Kabin’s utterly blank expression, as though he had no idea what she was talking about, Sophia let out a small sigh.
He really was still a child.
To think he’d been standing beside Evan all this time and never noticed the wild, barely contained force he was leaking out.
If Evan were to bring every thread of energy he unconsciously radiated fully under control, then—
He’d be several times stronger than he is now.
“You need to start training again, too.”
“W-What? A-all of a sudden? Uh, sis, I’m a patient. I just got crushed by a bookshelf earlier...!”
“Be quiet and come with me.”
Ignoring Kabin’s frantic excuses, Sophia dragged him off to the private training grounds.
For the first time in a while, memories of her life in the demon lands rose vividly to the surface.
“W-Wait! Sis!”
For Kabin, it might not have been a memory at all, but a nightmare.
*
“Haaa...”
Perhaps because the room was empty, the sound of my sigh seemed even louder than usual.
It had already been quite some time since Sophia had taken Kabin away, telling him to rest so he could gather his thoughts.
The tea in front of me had gone cold, and somewhere along the way the sun had set, painting the sky in streaks of red-gold twilight.
My head was in a mess.
The so-called First Blood flowing through Silvia’s body.
The fact that it had made her a target for the other monsters.
The fact that I had stabbed Silvia because I couldn’t control my own body.
They were all far too sudden, far too shocking.
I never imagined there would be things more shocking than the fact that I’d been revived as the Vampire Lord.
Even with the newly unnervingly calm mind of the Vampire Lord, it wasn’t an easy situation to understand, and no answer came to me.
I would have preferred it if Sophia had been lying, but she hadn’t been.
Everything she had told me was true.
Her eyes had said as much without a hint of doubt.
Silvia.
After reviving in this body, whenever I thought of Silvia, the first thing that came to mind was always her bright, smiling face.
But not anymore.
The instant I repeated her name, the first image that surfaced was Silvia bleeding after being attacked by me.
A sight I didn’t even want to imagine—me being the reason she had ended up like that.
“Damn it.”
What was I supposed to do?
Just as Sophia had said, if I died, that didn’t somehow free Silvia from danger.
But if I stayed alive, would I really be able to help her?
Could I protect Silvia the way Sophia said I could?
What if, the moment I faced her, I was the one who lost control first and tried to hurt her again?
No—at the very least, hadn’t I already nearly killed her once? Did I even have the right to protect her in the first place?
Evan, don’t push yourself so hard. No matter what you look like, I don’t care, okay?
“...Huh?”
A voice had suddenly “reached” me.
It was as if Silvia were standing right beside me and speaking directly into my ear.
For one fleeting moment, her words passed through my mind as clearly as if they had just been spoken.
There was nothing remarkable in the line itself, but at the time, it had comforted me deeply.
She had told me I was enough as I was, that I didn’t need to try so hard.
Maybe that was why I had finally been able to let go of at least a little of my excessive fixation on the sword.
And because of that, I got stronger instead.
It was then that I truly felt the meaning of the old saying said to have come from the sages of the East: too much is as bad as too little.
Once I stopped clinging so desperately to the sword, advancement had come to me instead.
I had no idea why that particular memory of Silvia had surfaced now.
Snrk—
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
Even though this was by no means a funny situation.
“Haa... You really are...”
You’re always the one who gives me the answer.
Even now.
The crimson sunset that had been painting the sky so beautifully outside the window had vanished before I knew it.
The moment the sun went down, darkness rushed in and swallowed the world.
In a little while, the moon would probably rise.
Don’t try to do everything at once. Start with what you can do.
Thanks to Silvia’s one short sentence, the tangled weight in my chest seemed to straighten itself all at once.
It was strange.
It wasn’t even something Silvia had said to me now—just words she had spoken long ago.
The situation itself hadn’t been solved at all, and yet everything felt different in that moment.
With a firm grip, I stood from the chair and picked up the sword resting beside me.
What I could do right now.
I should go find Sophia.
The thought came to me at once.
Training.
The thing I did best, the thing I had done all my life.
Not training the sword as I used to, but honing something else entirely.
Clack.
I opened the door at a brisk pace and stepped out of the room.
The thing Sophia had mentioned in passing earlier.
That outburst could be stopped through the right kind of training.
I have to make it happen, no matter what.
That’s where I’d start.
For some reason, it felt as though a bright moon was going to rise tonight.