Fenrir
"Everyone stand at attention... except for Cheonhui."
At my command, the children sprang to their feet at once.
All the girls except Cheonhui looked thoroughly flustered, but they did their best to keep their backs straight and their chins up.
I stood there with my arms folded, watching them.
"Wh-what is this, exactly..."
They were probably all bewildered.
One moment they had been themselves, and the next they’d been transformed and dropped into a situation where they couldn’t even refuse my orders.
"Sit."
"Y-yes!"
"Eek!"
"Hwaat!"
"Hyat!"
At my command, the children dropped into a squat on the floor.
Their pale thighs pressed together and pushed out softly, like warm dough.
"Stand up again."
They moved in perfect unison the instant I gave the order.
After repeating a few more pointless commands, the children began to grasp the situation they were in, at least roughly.
So I warned them.
"Listen carefully. Before you became like that, you’re never, ever to tell anyone what you used to look like, or who you were. Got it?"
The children all nodded at me.
Of course, that applied to Cheonhui as well.
When I glanced her way, she caught on quickly and nodded too.
I watched that and smiled with satisfaction.
Then Aurell, who had been sneaking cautious looks at the others, stepped up and asked, "Charlotte-nim...! Who are these children?"
"The followers I made this time."
"Oh my... You can make this many followers?"
I nodded at Aurell’s question.
Even in the game, there had never really been a strict limit on how many followers you could have.
There had even been players who roamed around leading hundreds of cats, so I should be able to manage something similar myself.
Of course, in my case, it wouldn’t be cats but small, cute girls.
Aurell beamed and waved brightly at the children.
Her greeting done, it was Hwanggu’s turn.
Hwanggu started sniffing the children.
"Sniff, sniff."
From their feet all the way up to their hips.
After carefully taking in their scent, Hwanggu nodded.
Apparently she liked the children’s smell quite a bit.
As I looked on with pleasure, Vermut, who had been standing at the front, frowned and spoke up.
"What exactly is your goal here?"
"My goal?"
"What was the purpose of turning us into this...!"
"Well. You all..."
"Us?"
"You made me unhappy."
"J-just for something like that..."
I tilted my head with my arms still folded.
I’d gotten annoyed, so I’d taken them as followers.
Was that not enough reason?
Honestly, compared to that pitch-black man’s form, this was much better. A girl’s body was far more pleasant.
Vampires couldn’t see their own reflections in mirrors, so I couldn’t check my own appearance, but...
"You’re insane..."
"Me?"
I wasn’t the crazy one. This world was.
Wasn’t this a world where people would open fire or swing a sword at a complete stranger without so much as a word?
Just not killing Vermut and the others had already been generous of me.
"If you’re unhappy, say so. I’ll turn you back into shadows right now."
"B-back into shadows...?"
"I mean this new shape you’re in will disappear."
And probably their consciousness along with it.
I didn’t bother saying the rest out loud.
The children fell silent, lips sealed tight, at my answer.
Watching them, I nodded.
As expected, they all liked the girl form just fine.
I kept my arms folded and watched Aurell and Hwanggu carefully.
I knew that, as time passed, my values were undergoing a huge change, but I couldn’t tell where it was beginning.
If I was changing without even realizing it, how was I supposed to recognize the change myself?
That was why I checked the expressions of the people around me.
"Aurell."
"Yes?"
"I didn’t say anything weird, did I?"
"You didn’t!"
"Hwanggu."
"Yes!"
"I didn’t say anything weird, right?"
"Yes!"
Well, that was a relief.
I let out a breath of relief.
"Th-these crazy bitches..."
At Vermut’s words, I frowned.
Were they rude because they were still children?
I’d need to teach them a little more carefully.
"Eat them."
The moment my order ended, a shadow beast opened its mouth wide and revealed itself.
The huge shadow swallowed the four girls, excluding Cheonhui, in an instant.
And just like that, they vanished without even having the chance to scream.
They’d probably be spinning helplessly inside the shadows.
"Cheonhui."
"Y-yes..."
"I’m changing your name."
"M-my name...?"
I nodded.
Someone who knew Cheonhui might show up.
I couldn’t keep calling her Cheonhui forever.
"You’re Yeppi now."
"Yeppi..."
I nodded.
She was pretty in her changed form, so she was Yeppi.
And that was how Cheonhui became Yeppi.
As I smiled in satisfaction at the new name I’d given her, Aurell came up beside me and asked, "What do you plan to do now?"
"For now... we need to find a shop."
I pulled a map from inside my clothes.
It was the map our Cheonhui, no, Yeppi, had drawn for us.
When I glanced over, Yeppi was still clutching her crayons tightly in both hands.
"Yeppi."
"Mm..."
At my call, Yeppi shuffled over with a sulky expression.
Apparently she wasn’t fond of her new name.
Hwanggu looked at her with pity too, as if Yeppi’s name seemed sad and unfortunate.
"You drew this, so you should be able to find the way, right?"
"Mm..."
"Then lead us."
Yeppi nodded at my words.
Finding another vampire clan, or a group that was trying to restore this world to the way it had been, could wait.
What mattered most right now was buying equipment items that would boost our characters’ specs.
Given what I knew of humans, it was the obvious choice.
They had bought silver bullets and shop-bought weapons before ambushing the werewolves, hadn’t they?
If I hadn’t been there, the humans would have won that fight.
The place we reached by following Yeppi was in front of a huge manhole cover.
As if to show that people passed through there often, the rim of the manhole wasn’t dirty with soil.
That meant the cover had been opened and closed again and again.
"Should we grab a plank or something like that again?"
Aurell asked, looking at me.
I nodded and summoned Vermut.
"Vermut."
At my call, a small girl slipped out of the shadows.
From the way she sagged limply, it looked like she’d been spinning around with great enthusiasm inside.
"Hwaeek..."
Had she snapped out of it enough by now?
I shook Vermut awake.
"Get up."
"H-hahhek..."
But Vermut still couldn’t quite come to her senses.
There was no helping it.
I called Hwanggu, who was wagging her tail furiously behind me.
"Hwanggu."
"Yes!"
"Go find me a decent wooden plank."
"Yes!"
The moment my order was done, Hwanggu dashed off at top speed.
That girl... when was her memory going to come back?
Or maybe her memory had already returned, and she was just pretending it hadn’t.
***
"Huff, huff..."
Hwanggu, who had been running hard with her face practically to the ground, sprang upright the instant she could no longer feel Charlotte’s gaze.
Just as Charlotte had suspected, Hwanggu’s memory had already returned.
The exact turning point had been just before she slipped out of the werewolf clan in secret.
Triggered again and again by the vague fragments of memory, Hwanggu, the Dog Princess, had recovered everything she’d lost the moment the fight ended.
But she couldn’t tell Charlotte that her memory was back.
Because after losing her memory, the Dog Princess still remembered everything she’d done.
At first, the emotion Hwanggu felt was a hideous self-loathing.
But at the same time, she felt a strange, subtle thrill.
The shame of having done something she shouldn’t have.
Charlotte’s domineering attitude, like she was issuing orders to a dog.
Even the liberation that came from pretending to have lost her memory and acting like a naive, innocent little girl who knew nothing, behaving like a puppy.
All of it had come to her as pleasure.
That was why the Dog Princess was still staying by Charlotte’s side.
A shameful inclination she’d discovered without even realizing it.
And Charlotte, who satisfied every part of it.
To feel that pleasure again, the Dog Princess had chosen to become Hwanggu.
"Ha...!"
Hwanggu shook her head quickly.
She didn’t have time to waste here.
Wasn’t her small, cute master Charlotte waiting for her even now?
Hwanggu moved swiftly, yanking a broad wooden plank loose from inside a building.
With Charlotte’s help, the state of Hwanggu’s mind, worn down after so long living as a werewolf, had begun slowly to recover.
***
"Good job!"
I patted Hwanggu on the head.
Her tail spun like a propeller.
Then, on impulse, I scratched under her chin too.
It was the sort of chin-scratching you only did for dogs, but Hwanggu seemed to like it plenty.
She turned her head as if to glance away, then slyly pushed her chin forward for more.
"All right. Let’s go in."
Plank in hand, I looked at the entrance leading down to the sewer.
Then I gave a light jump inside.
My light body dropped fast into the darkness, landing safely on the floor.
Tap-
Tick-tick-tick-tick-
At that exact moment, a loud clattering sound rang out.
It was the noise of some kind of switch being thrown.
A familiar sound, and one that made my skin prickle with foreboding.
In the next instant, red flames shot up, and a thunderous explosion tore through the space.
Boom—! Kwa-gwa-gwang!
Just before the scarlet blaze could reach my body.
The shadows that had risen naturally around me shielded me, but I couldn’t escape the impact entirely.
My vision shook violently. My stomach lurched as if something had been jolted badly inside me, and a hot wave rose up through my throat.
"Hah..."
Once the aftershock of the blast had completely faded, I exhaled the breath I’d been holding.
My condition was a mess.
The clothes I’d been wearing were in tatters, and 30 percent of my health had been wiped out.
If I had sent Aurell or Hwanggu down first instead of myself, it would have been a truly terrible situation.
I’d been careless.
This had been a route used by humans. It was only natural they’d set traps to keep intruders out.
Frowning, I called Yeppi down from above the sewer.
Whoosh—
Yeppi appeared in an instant through the shadows.
She looked around in great alarm, eyes darting from side to side.
"Yeppi."
"H-huh..."
"You really didn’t know about this, did you?"
At my question, Yeppi nodded desperately.
I narrowed my eyes and glared at her, but she wasn’t lying.
She really did seem not to know there was a trap set at this entrance.
"As long as you didn’t know, that’s fine."
Yeppi let out a relieved sigh at my words.
I activated my Magic Eye and surveyed the surroundings.
I wanted to make sure there weren’t any more traps lurking nearby.
"Charlotte-nim!!!"
"Charlotte-nim!!!"
Pip-pip voices called down from above the sewer.
They were Aurell and Hwanggu.
They must have been startled pretty badly by the huge explosion.
I finished checking with my Magic Eye.
No more traps.
I shouted up toward the sewer entrance.
"Everyone come down!"
The moment my words ended, Aurell and Hwanggu dropped through that narrow opening.
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