Charlotte
"Oh..."
I stood there in a daze, savoring the memories as they came flooding back.
Blood Carnival, the five-year gap while I was gone, the truce with the werewolves, the treatment of ordinary humans—
Countless fragments of memory swirled together and began seeping into my head.
The world had changed all of a sudden, without warning.
Sixteen out of every twenty-four hours were now hours without sunlight, and cracks had opened up all over the world.
It didn’t take long for people to realize that the world had turned into something like the game Blood Carnival.
Because the people who had played that game—its users—had crossed over into reality.
The past five years had been an age of upheaval.
During the first year, the users had tried to reshape the changed world.
They gathered together, werewolves, vampires, and humans alike, and fought side by side, beginning to push back the Fused Entities.
But could people who’d spent their time locked in their rooms playing games really fight well?
Ordinary Fused Entities were easy enough to hunt, but once special variants started appearing, the situation changed.
On top of that, the users had their own unique problem.
In the world of Blood Carnival, vampires and werewolves had to consume human blood and flesh on a regular basis.
If they didn’t, their stats would drop, and in severe cases, they would die.
The world had changed like a game, but it wasn’t a game.
In other words, if you died, you didn’t come back.
The fear of death was enough to change the users’ minds.
Once the users who had been resisting the Fused Entities disappeared, ordinary humans collapsed all the faster.
With the government disintegrated, the surviving refugees were scattered to the winds.
Common sense had fallen apart. In this world, strength was law.
Humans had no choice but to band together, and in turn they began to shun users who had crossed beyond humanity—vampires and werewolves.
It was only natural. Werewolves and vampires had been devouring humans, after all.
Just as humans formed their own factions, vampires and werewolves did the same.
To hunt the human prey they needed, they naturally clustered together, and before long those groups had taken on the form of vampire clans.
As the two major factions grew in size, their spheres of activity expanded with them, and clashes between them became more and more frequent.
A full-scale war between the two sides had been inevitable.
So many vampires and werewolves died that, naturally, both factions shrank.
That was when the truce between werewolves and vampires was born.
Before the damage could grow any worse, the two sides stopped fighting, divided their territories according to fixed boundaries, and began fattening up ordinary humans in moderation.
That brought us to the third year.
During those three years, most of the Level 20 users died.
And at the same time, I finally understood why so many memories had come rushing in all at once.
Bloodsucking between vampires of the same kind.
The sharing of blood that came with it.
A vampire’s blood held memories.
I also learned that the female vampire who had approached me and tried to suck my blood—Ravina—had only bared her fangs to use that ability, and hadn’t actually intended to harm me.
The moment I remembered the nickname Ravina, information about her came flooding back in a chain.
Ravina.
Level 15.
The clan she managed had five members.
Among the vampires in this area, that was considered a fairly high level.
I’d more or less figured out the situation.
The fact that my shadow had eaten Ravina was an unexpected accident, but the water had already been spilled.
I sat in the chair with a grave expression and propped my chin on my hand.
The reason I looked so serious was none other than Ravina.
More precisely, it was because I’d remembered the form he’d had before becoming Ravina.
Thirty-six years old.
Jung Woo-hyun.
A perfectly ordinary office worker, the kind of middle-aged man whose belly had just started to show.
Yes. Ravina had been a man.
Now that I’d absorbed his memories through bloodsucking, I knew everything about both Jung Woo-hyun and Ravina.
How he usually acted. What he thought about. Everything.
There was no denying that Jung Woo-hyun had become Ravina.
But I couldn’t think of the Jung Woo-hyun before the change and the Ravina now as the same person.
His values had shifted naturally.
It was almost as if the old Jung Woo-hyun had vanished and a new personality called Ravina had been created in his place.
He had changed without either Jung Woo-hyun or Ravina himself even realizing it.
Suddenly, a chill ran down my spine.
I looked down at my own small palm.
The soft, pale hand glowed faintly white, moving briskly and obediently at my command.
Could I really be any different?
Maybe the change had already begun this very instant.
No, it was certain. I had changed. I was changing.
Whether sooner or later, I would end up changing much like Ravina had.
Just like the other users had.
Knock, knock.
At that moment, a knock sounded at the door.
The confusion in my head settled down all at once, and the unease in my heart went quiet.
At the same time, another shard of memory surfaced.
Nickname: WizardOfAbaddon
Level 10.
Information about the male vampire who had guided me here came back to me.
"Come in."
My permission slipped out naturally, and the door opened, revealing Abaddon.
The moment he stepped into the room, panic flooded his eyes.
His gaze shook violently.
It flicked to me, then to the pool of blood on the floor.
"You’re Abaddon, right?"
I asked for confirmation, just in case.
Abaddon gave a faint nod.
"W-wait... Lady Ravina is..."
I frowned and nodded.
It had been an accident born of a misunderstanding, but that didn’t change the fact that I’d made a mistake.
Still, Ravin—no, Abaddon—wouldn’t dare challenge me over it.
In this world, strength was law.
"I ate her."
It was a slightly odd choice of words, but not wrong.
Ravina, devoured by me, had vanished, leaving only his memories behind.
Since waking up, I’d committed two murders.
And yet I didn’t feel much of anything about it.
Probably because it had been self-defense.
Just an accident.
That was why I could remain so calm.
I rubbed my dry face and let out a small laugh.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Ravina’s clan naturally ended up being handed over to me.
The vampires under Ravina didn’t seem to have much complaint, even though their leader had changed.
Or maybe they simply didn’t dare show any.
The fact that Ravina had been devoured without resistance meant I was far stronger than Ravina.
I had no desire to run a clan, but since I didn’t plan to leave right away, I accepted the position of clan leader without saying much.
Two days had passed since I arrived here.
In that time, I devoted myself to figuring out the power I possessed.
In the game Blood Carnival, there were broadly three ways to build a vampire.
A melee-damage build that raised blood control to maximize bloodsucking and health regeneration.
A tank build that raised shadow control to maximize defensive abilities.
A ranged-damage build that maximized psychic powers such as telekinesis and pyrokinesis.
If you dug deeper, each of those could be split into even more specialized builds, but in broad strokes, there were three categories.
And the Charlotte I had been raising belonged to the tank type, focused on shadow control.
I moved the shadows and frowned.
I could move them according to my will.
But that was all I could do. It didn’t mean I could use powerful skills like I would have in the game.
Whoosh—
When I concentrated, the shadows at my feet surged upward and spread out like a wave centered on me.
Thwip-thwip-thwip!
Sharp black spikes shot up from the broad sheet of shadow, overturning everything around me.
The range covered by the black spikes was only about five meters.
If this had been the game, the thorns would have surged up more than ten meters.
Which meant my control over shadow was far from perfect.
If I, at Level 20, was like this, then the other vampires couldn’t have been much different.
Remembering Ravina’s memories, I pictured the way other vampires fought.
Low-level vampires relied more on their physical abilities than their powers, engaging in close combat.
Only users above Level 10 had techniques that could really be called skills.
The werewolves weren’t much different.
Those who could use moonlight-based enhancement skills were few and far between, and most of them only managed partial transformation.
"Um..."
Then I heard an unfamiliar voice.
Wondering what was up, I turned my head and saw a small girl peeking in cautiously, watching me.
Silky blonde hair drifted softly on the wind.
Her white, sparkling skin and the vampire’s signature red eyes gave her a strange sort of allure.
And what about the clothes she was wearing? She had on a gothic lolita-style dress in a tasteful blend of black and white, yet somehow it didn’t look out of place at all.
She was a child called Aurell in this place, a vampire at Level 12.
Aurell was about 150 centimeters tall.
She was just a little taller than me now, which I found irritating.
"Charlotte-nim..."
"What?"
"W-well... today’s the day for our regular exchange with the werewolves..."
At Aurell’s words, I frowned.
A regular exchange with the werewolves.
Since I had absorbed Ravina’s memories, I knew exactly what that meant.
The weekly regular exchange was a meeting where they counted the remaining humans and discussed how to divide and consume them.
I shook my head and answered, "I’m not going."
I wasn’t going. Sure, I’d been forced into the clan leader’s seat, but I was planning to leave in a few days anyway.
More than that, I had no intention of accepting the vampires’ way of life.
"W-wha...? But you’re the clan leader..."
Aurell made a tearful face at my answer.
Watching her, I put on a serious expression.
She was a user of Blood Carnival, too.
Which meant she had once been an ordinary human.
That was why her behavior felt so unpleasant to me.
"Then you do it."
"H-how could you say something like that..."
After that, I turned away and began working the shadows.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Aurell came again the next day.
"U-um... Charlotte-nim..."
And this time she hadn’t come alone—she had brought a werewolf with her.
The rancid, gamey stink of beast hung in the air, disgustingly sharp.
I frowned and got to my feet.
"So the rumor that the leader changed was true."
A rough mane of gray hair.
A scar slashing under one eye.
A body that was large for a woman.
A very wild-looking beauty stood blocking the doorway, watching me.
Looking past her, I saw the other vampires staring this way with worried eyes.
I tilted my head slightly and looked up at the woman.
[Lena]
I didn’t know her exact level, but it was probably higher than Ravina’s.
That was why Ravina always got tense whenever he stood before this woman.
Lena was the werewolf leader who managed this district together with Ravina.
"If the leader’s changed, then I think we need to make a new agreement for the old one."
I nodded at Lena’s words.
I was planning to leave here anyway, so I had no intention of arguing.
"Aurell."
"Y-yes?"
"Come here."
So I called Aurell over and made her sit in the seat I’d been using.
After all, once I left, she would be the highest-level vampire in the clan.
I didn’t care about some clan that had banded together to eat humans.
Looking at the two of them, both wearing dazed expressions, I nodded.
"You two handle it."