The Clan of Blood and Shadows
Charlotte
The scouting party didn’t head toward the city center.
Instead, they made for a residential district a little ways outside it.
This place, too, looked like it had once been the site of something catastrophic; most of the buildings had collapsed, leaving the neighborhood in ruins.
The scouts moved with extreme caution.
They didn’t rush forward the moment they arrived. Instead, the man who seemed to be leading them picked up a small stone and began tossing it deeper into the houses.
Thud—
Thud-thud—
Thud—
The faint, irritating sound spread wide through the silence.
If a Fusion had been hiding inside the residential complex, it would have surely come charging out at the noise.
How long had it been like that? At last, the scouts nodded as if confirming that nothing dangerous was there and began to move.
Watching them, I sank into thought.
How was I supposed to get close to them?
I wanted just one of them to break away from the group.
As I was thinking that, a faint scent drifted in on the wind.
It smelled like the rank, animal musk of a beast.
Mixed in with it was the reek of blood, making it especially unpleasant.
I wrinkled my nose and began tracking down the source.
For a long while, I moved slowly through the darkness.
At last, I reached it.
The source of the smell was a broad-shouldered man.
Bathed in moonlight, he stood there with an almost arrogant stillness, watching the scouting party.
I knew it instinctively.
That man wasn’t an ordinary human.
"What business do you have here?"
The voice that rolled out of him was low and growling, almost a snarl.
I jumped and looked around before crouching lower.
"I know you’re hiding. Come out."
Was he talking to me?
Just in case, I slowly poked my head out.
Then the man’s head snapped around, and his gaze locked onto me.
"So you’ve already eaten one, have you... I suppose you’ve forgotten the accord?"
"The accord...?"
I tilted my head and stepped fully into view.
There was no hostility in his eyes. Which meant he didn’t seem likely to attack me just for showing myself.
For some reason, he had an abundance of composure.
"I’d appreciate it if you didn’t act like some addled fool who’s never heard of the accord."
Did not knowing about this so-called accord make me an addled fool?
I frowned and nodded.
"What’s the accord?"
"How long have you been awake since coming out of the coffin?"
So he knew I’d awakened from a coffin, too?
Clearly, he knew a great deal.
I tilted my head and answered.
"An hour? Two?"
I didn’t have a watch, so I couldn’t be sure, but it was probably around that long.
The man, who had seemed uninterested until now, suddenly brightened at my answer.
"So you haven’t joined a clan."
"A clan? Hey, could you maybe explain this in a way that makes sense? I haven’t even been awake that long."
"I know. You seem to know nothing at all."
I nodded.
I had opened my eyes, only to find myself transformed into a vampire—and on top of that, the world had become just like the game I used to play.
If everything had changed all at once, maybe I would have adapted to it more easily.
But it seemed the world had gone on for quite some time while I slept in that coffin.
Even so, the man still didn’t satisfy my curiosity.
Instead, he asked his own questions.
"What level were you?"
"What do you mean, level?"
"Your level when you were playing Blood Carnival."
"Twenty...?"
"You were max level? Are you serious?"
The man repeated it in disbelief, but I could only nod.
"Your nickname?"
So now that he’d asked for my level, it was time for my nickname?
I frowned and answered.
"Charlotte."
"I hope you’re not an impostor."
"An impostor? What would I even gain by pretending to be someone else’s nickname?"
"Hm..."
Judging by his reaction, he seemed to know me—or more precisely, he seemed to know my nickname.
I folded my arms and thought it over.
Werewolves, vampires, humans.
A blurred map of power began to take shape in my head.
He hadn’t asked about anything but my level and nickname in Blood Carnival.
If I was right, then this body really had become a game character.
My game character, Charlotte, the vampire I had raised myself.
It made a strange kind of sense.
The short limbs, the childlike appearance.
The silver hair was the customization I had given Charlotte.
I couldn’t be the only one. Judging from the man’s reaction, a considerable number of the players who had played Blood Carnival—maybe all of them—must have been thrown into this world.
"I’ll take you to the clan."
With that, the man turned and started walking.
Watching his back, I fell into thought.
Was it really right to follow him?
The hesitation didn’t last long.
After all, I had only been following the scouting party for information.
If I could get what I needed elsewhere, there was no reason to cling to them.
So I followed him.
After that, the man didn’t ask me anything else.
As I trailed behind him, I kept throwing out questions, and his attitude gradually shifted into something strangely helpful.
"How long has it been since the world turned into this?"
"I believe about five years have passed."
"What exactly is this clan place?"
"A place where vampires like you gather."
"Are the others like me? I mean... are they weirdly calm?"
"Only the users who played Blood Carnival are like that."
"Are there many other users?"
"There were."
There were?
So that meant their numbers had dropped a lot now.
We’d been walking for quite some time when the man in front stopped and spoke.
"Do you know the nickname WaterlightBreeze?"
"Waterlight...?"
At that question, I folded my arms and thought back.
A hazy memory surfaced.
WaterlightBreeze.
"Ah... Waterlight? The guy who switched over to the werewolf side?"
That had been a while ago. He’d been one of the players I got along with pretty well, someone who had leveled a character in the vampire faction before jumping ship to the werewolves.
But why was he asking about that?
"You know Waterlight?"
There was no way this guy could be WaterlightBreeze. His character had been a female one, after all.
He wasn’t some huge, creepy-looking male character like this.
"So that’s a yes..."
"A yes to what? You still don’t trust me?"
I frowned at his answer.
Didn’t they have some kind of function to display character information?
If I could, I would have loved to show him my character data and wipe that suspicion off his face.
But it seemed there was no such feature.
Without answering me, the man started walking again.
After leading me far from the residential district, he stopped in front of a hotel.
Broken windows and a hanging sign dangling half-torn from its mount gave the place an eerie air, and because it had been built in the middle of a highway, it looked even darker.
"This is the place."
The moment his voice faded, black bats began pouring down from the sky.
Flap-flap-flap—
The massing bats gathered in front of the man and took on the shape of a human.
Black hair and red eyes.
His overall impression was sharp.
Even the clothes he wore were far neater than anything I’d seen on the others I’d met, and a faint radiance seemed to flow across his pale skin.
A thin line of disgust lingered in his sharply gleaming gaze.
And thankfully, that emotion wasn’t directed at me.
"What business do you have here?"
The man who had guided me here stepped slightly aside.
It was almost as though he were presenting me to the vampire before him.
Only then did the vampire’s gaze turn to me.
Interest and admiration, those two emotions mixed together in his eyes as they swept over my body.
I frowned at the faintly unpleasant sensation, and the vampire man smiled and looked away.
"So you brought a kindred."
"I want the reward you promised."
Watching their exchange, I took a step back.
The vampire man smiled with satisfaction and took a small pouch from inside his clothes, handing it to the man who had guided me here.
As though his work were done, the man turned and started to leave.
Watching him go, I muttered blankly, "What? You’re just leaving?"
"My business here is finished. The rest will be explained by those people."
Was it really all right to trust this?
With my arms crossed, I looked up at the vampire man staring down at me.
I didn’t like the situation one bit, but in the end, this was the place I had chosen to come to.
So I left the departing man behind and followed the vampire into the hotel.
The vampire man asked me a simple question.
"Your level and nickname?"
"Charlotte. Level twenty."
"Oh..."
He looked slightly surprised at my answer.
A faint lift to one eyebrow, the corner of his mouth twisting ever so slightly.
This guy didn’t seem to believe me either.
"Charlotte..."
"You don’t believe me?"
"I do. If we can’t trust our own kind, who can we trust?"
"Hm..."
He said that, but he still didn’t look convinced.
The vampire man led me up to the hotel’s top floor.
"What exactly am I doing here?"
"There’s someone you need to meet."
With that, the male vampire carefully knocked on the door.
Tap. Tap.
The sound echoed hollowly.
A moment later, a small voice came from inside the room.
"Come in."
Once permission was given, the vampire man opened the door.
He motioned for me to go in, so I followed the gesture and stepped inside.
The room was tidy overall.
On the table sat a glass.
Filled to the brim with red liquid.
And at the head of the table sat a woman.
She wore a provocative outfit that left her body plainly on display.
Her bright red hair was unmistakably unlike that of an ordinary human.
Even her skin carried a soft, luminous sheen.
She, too, was a vampire.
"Your level and nickname?"
The same question again.
I frowned and answered.
"Charlotte. Level twenty."
"Level twenty...?"
"You don’t believe me?"
It was the same reaction as before.
At that moment, the door behind me quietly shut.
Click.
I folded my arms and leaned against the wall.
What on earth was with these reactions?
If Blood Carnival had been a game where reaching max level was difficult, I could at least understand it.
But Blood Carnival was the kind of game where, if you played just two hours a day, you could hit max level in two weeks.
And so, in the middle of that strange silence, the woman seated before me moved.
She slowly stood and began walking toward me.
"I think I need to verify something for a moment... You need to stay still, all right?"
I looked up at her with a crooked gaze.
What was she planning to do, moving like that?
I stared blankly for what felt like a long time.
Once she drew close, the woman suddenly opened her mouth wide, baring her sharp fangs.
At that instant, I felt a hostility as sharp as those fangs themselves.
After awakening in this body, one thing had become clear to me right away.
My shadows were extremely sensitive to hostility directed at me.
This time was no different.
With a sickening crunch—
Just as they had with the man who’d driven a metal spike into my neck, the body of the female vampire who tried to sink her fangs into me was swallowed by a massive beast.
A beast made of shadow had bitten down as though the vampire had become nothing more than a lump of meat.
Chrrrk— crunch—
The sound of bones breaking and flesh being ground apart rang out in a horrifying clatter.
After a long moment, the thing that had been a vampire vanished, leaving behind only a spray of blood.
And then a flood of memories came crashing into me like waves.