Fenril
"W-what the hell is this...!"
With a look of sheer horror, Chunhui kept pawing at her own face.
Her soft, squishy cheeks were mashed flat by her tiny palms, turning her face into something like a steamed bun.
I was just as stunned.
I’d had no idea Thrall Creation could do something like this.
When I’d used it on cats and dogs in the game, there had been no visible change in appearance, so the shock hit even harder now.
"Th-this can't be..."
Aurell, the one who’d suggested using Thrall Creation in the first place, was trembling so badly she could hardly hold still.
Her cheeks were faintly flushed, her eyebrows warped with disbelief, even the corners of her mouth quivered.
Just how startled did she have to be to make that face?
Then Chunhui sprang to her feet and shouted, "G-give me my body back!"
She was red-faced and barking furiously, but if I’d been looking at her old form, maybe it would have sounded menacing. In this shape, though, she only looked like a little girl throwing a tantrum.
I folded my arms and watched her.
Maybe because she’d become my thrall, I could feel something small and faint connecting me to the little girl.
"Sit."
"Hah—"
At my command, Chunhui immediately sat back down.
Like an obedient puppy.
Just to be sure, I held out my hand and said, "Hand."
"Ah...!"
Chunhui couldn’t disobey.
With a tearful expression, she held her hand out to me.
Her tiny palm rested on top of mine.
"Oh..."
So Aurell had been right. A thrall really couldn’t refuse its master’s orders.
I rested a hand on my hip and said, "Chunhui."
She didn’t answer.
She just stared back at me with mutinous eyes and kept her mouth shut.
Apparently, coercion didn’t kick in for commands that weren’t clear enough.
Just because Chunhui had unexpectedly turned into a girl didn’t mean my work changed.
Only the way I dealt with her had softened a little.
"Chunhui. How was the Human Liberation group formed?"
"T-that..."
Chunhui began explaining how the Human Liberation group had come together.
At the beginning, apparently, it hadn’t been founded on any lofty desire to liberate humanity at all.
It had simply started with humans banding together to survive, and only later taken on that shape.
The true turning point had been the sudden appearance of shops.
Places where werewolves and vampires didn’t roam.
It was only natural that human users were the first to start using the shops that appeared in the sewers.
Once they’d gotten their hands on enough weapons and silver bullets, they began taking down werewolves and vampires in earnest.
Since the activity had only just started, it seemed the vampire and werewolf sides hadn’t yet learned much about them.
"I see?"
"Mm..."
Chunhui nodded, looking dejected.
Apparently she hadn’t intended to explain everything in this much detail, because after spilling all that information, she clapped both hands over her mouth.
Of course, that didn’t mean she could ignore my orders.
I kept asking questions.
"What happened to the people who were fighting the fusions?"
"What do you mean, what happened...? They all scattered. How were they supposed to stop creatures that just kept spawning..."
"Are there still people active now?"
"There might be, if you look for them. The world changed like this, and people got more closed off. I don’t know much, either..."
"Hmm..."
I nodded at Chunhui’s answer.
I’d come all the way to Seoul in hopes of joining the people still fighting, but it seemed they had already broken apart.
Come to think of it, if there had been a way to deal with this, the world probably wouldn’t have ended up the way it was now.
There was plenty more I could get out of Chunhui, too.
After borrowing a large map from Hamjumeok, I handed Chunhui a piece of chalk and said, "Mark where the humans are hiding, and where the shops are."
"Ugh..."
She groaned and scowled fiercely.
But she couldn’t refuse.
Before long, Chunhui flopped facedown on the floor and started drawing all kinds of marks on the map with the chalk.
How long had it been?
Chunhui suddenly shot to her feet and handed me the map.
She was still clutching the chalk tightly, which meant she clearly had no intention of giving that up.
I had no intention of taking it either, so I silently let that pass.
"Hmm..."
I unfolded the map and checked the areas Chunhui had marked.
These were locations she’d pointed out under my command. There was no way the information could be wrong.
I folded the map neatly and handed it to Aurell.
"Aurell."
"Yes!"
"Take this to Hamjumeok."
"Understood!"
Right now, the one who wanted revenge on human users more than anyone was probably Hamjumeok.
So it was only right to give him this information.
Aurell answered brightly and scurried off toward where Hamjumeok was.
Chunhui sat dazedly on the floor, watching the scene unfold.
Judging by the hollow smile on her face, she seemed to have given up resisting.
"So what are you planning to do now?"
Chunhui asked me all of a sudden.
What was I planning to do now? What was she talking about?
I looked down at the tiny girl and tilted my head.
"Are you going to kill me?"
"Kill you? Me? You?"
I shook my head.
What a horrifying thing to say.
I had no hobby of killing little girls.
Besides, Chunhui was my thrall, wasn’t she?
Even if her level had dropped as the thralling progressed, I had no intention of killing someone who still had value.
She was cute, too.
"I’m not planning to kill you."
"T-then..."
At my answer, Chunhui suddenly went pale.
What exactly was she imagining to react like this?
Curious, I gave her another command.
"What are you thinking about?"
"I-I was thinking about the humans that made us... I thought I’d end up like that, too...? Not dying, just producing meat forever..."
"No."
I shook my head.
Apparently Chunhui still didn’t fully understand what state she was in.
If she’d remained human, maybe she really would have had to worry about that sort of thing.
But Chunhui was a vampire now, not a human.
Vampire blood and flesh weren’t resources that were necessary for werewolves and vampires to survive.
"R-really...? I’m okay?"
"Yeah. Really."
"Haa... haaah..."
Just then, Aurell returned at a trot, having successfully carried out my order.
"I’m back!"
"What did Hamjumeok say?"
"He said he was really grateful!"
"He doesn’t plan to move right this second?"
"No!"
I nodded at Aurell’s answer and looked around.
Well, the werewolves had suffered damage too. It would be a burden to launch an attack immediately.
I folded my arms and looked at Hwanggu.
I had come here to recover Hwanggu’s memories.
Of course, I hadn’t succeeded, but still.
"Hwanggu."
"Yes?"
Hwanggu tilted her head at my words.
Her tail was swaying back and forth at her hips, so it seemed she still hadn’t regained her memories.
Just in case, I asked her, "Are you staying here?"
"Nope!"
She answered without hesitation.
I scratched the back of my head and looked up at the sky.
"Hmm..."
How was I supposed to explain this to Hamjumeok?
He and the werewolves had been overjoyed when Hwanggu—Princess Woof Woof—came back.
And now I was supposed to tell them, Your leader likes me, so I’m taking her with me?
"Please don’t abandon me!"
While I was lost in thought, Hwanggu seemed to sense my hesitation and panic.
She came running up and clung to my body.
The soft, warm skin of Hwanggu pressed snugly against my leg.
I stroked her head and thought it over.
Hwanggu wasn’t the sort of child you could just shake off once she’d attached herself to you.
A level 20 werewolf’s stamina meant she’d probably chase me to the ends of the earth, no matter how fast I ran.
In the end, there was only one decision to make.
I’ll have to slip out secretly.
I looked around and nodded.
If I was going to leave without the werewolves noticing, now—while everything was still in chaos from the raid—was the best possible time.
The problem was Chunhui.
Her sense of balance had been thrown off when her body changed, and she could barely keep herself upright.
How was a kid who kept staggering and falling over supposed to run properly?
I called Chunhui over.
"Chunhui, come here."
At my words, Chunhui pouted.
But contrary to her expression, her body began moving toward me anyway.
And just as the distance between us closed—
The shadow beneath my feet twitched, and Chunhui’s tiny body sank smoothly into it.
"Charlotte-nim...?"
Hwanggu and Aurell both looked startled by the sudden sight.
But I wasn’t surprised.
I could feel Chunhui’s movements deep inside the shadow.
Just in case, I called her again.
"Chunhui."
Then the little vampire girl’s head poked out from the shadow.
And in that instant, I understood instinctively.
Chunhui had been reborn inside my shadow.
In other words, she was no different from the shadow itself.
She looked up at me with an unshaken gaze, as if this were the most natural thing in the world.
It seemed that as her thralling progressed, part of her common sense had been rewritten.
"Is it uncomfortable in there?"
Chunhui only gave a slight shake of her head in reply.
Then that was fine.
"Whoa..."
Aurell dropped flat to the floor so she could get a better look at Chunhui turned into a shadow.
She even reached her hands into the shadow over and over, as if she wanted to crawl inside herself.
Chunhui made a sulky face and then hid herself back in the shadow.
Before sunrise, I led the kids out of the werewolf camp as quickly as possible.
I felt sorry for the werewolves left behind, but with Hamjumeok there, I wanted to believe they’d manage just fine.
"Hehe..."
Hwanggu seemed delighted just to be going with me, and all she did was let out a silly, happy laugh.
The place we headed after leaving the werewolves’ camp was Seoul Station.
My original destination.
The place where the most vampires gathered.
And the starting point of the world’s transformation.
The sight of Seoul Station when we arrived was devastating.
There wasn’t a single intact building, and the ground had been cratered everywhere as if bombs had gone off all around it.
On top of that, there were so many fusions roaming about.
Of course, not all of them were ordinary fusions.
I narrowed my eyes and stared at a huge shape far off in the distance.
Twisted limbs and muscles bulging as if ready to burst.
Its overall form was similar to a werewolf’s beast-man transformation, but its proportions were grotesquely off, and the color of its fur and finer details were different.
Fenril.
The special entity Fenril.
It was the boss I would face in the first act of the main quest in Blood Carnival.