Equipment Items
In Blood Carnival, you could scavenge food from convenience stores and restaurants, basic materials for making armor from clothing shops, and weapons like gunpowder and firearms from gun stores.
The same rules still applied in this world.
Of course, materials for crafting equipment like weapons and armor didn’t actually appear, but still.
The first place we visited was a large supermarket.
It was half-collapsed, but since it had been built sturdily, a surprising amount of the interior was still intact.
"Huh...! Charlotte-nim...! They have frozen pizza here!"
I looked at the frozen pizza Aurell had brought back.
It looked like she’d dug it out of some freezer and dragged it over, but electricity had been out for years. There was no way the pizza was still edible.
The box was stained with black blotches here and there, and mold had even begun to grow over it.
"You were planning to eat that...?"
"No... I just thought it was interesting."
"Throw it away."
"Yesss..."
Aurell seemed to be trying to lighten the mood, but it wasn’t exactly a great choice.
I stayed alert and kept searching the area.
The only things that could still pass for food were gum and chocolate.
Even those were so far past their expiration dates that they probably had long since lost whatever taste they once had.
For this huge grocery section to yield nothing but gum and chocolate, it could only mean one thing.
Someone had already swept through here before us.
We left the supermarket and searched the next building, a massive hospital.
What had once been a white exterior was now covered in black mold and creeping vines.
The inside was just as miserable.
Dust-caked lab coats and rotting bandages.
A pure-white skeleton wedged between dented wheelchairs.
Medical tools scattered all over the hallways.
The whole place was so ruined it was hard to even imagine what had happened here, and a sigh slipped out of me before I knew it.
"Charlotte-nim! A red potion!"
Aurell, who had been roaming through the hospital, came back with a usable bandage and a single red potion.
The fact that there was nothing else here suggested someone else had already picked the place clean.
I shoved the items Aurell handed me into my backpack and left the hospital.
"Haa..."
Once I was back outside, I looked out over the vast city and let out another breath.
Just thinking that two tiny vampire girls had to search the entire city made me feel hopeless.
Then, as we moved on to the next building, a strange sound caught my sharply tuned hearing.
Thud—
The sound of feet kicking off the ground.
Aurell must have heard it too, because she raised her head and looked around.
I held my breath and strained my ears.
Tap-tap-tap—!
The sound came again, clearer this time.
It was so distinct I could even tell where it had come from.
Without a word, Aurell and I moved toward the direction of the noise.
We crossed through the city center, leaping over the rubble between collapsed buildings.
Carefully, carefully, we kept moving for a long while.
"Charlotte-nim...!"
"Shh."
At last, Aurell and I found another person.
His entire body was hidden beneath thick layers of clothing—an motorcycle helmet, a black leather jacket, and more—so there was no way to tell whether he was a man or a woman, but it was obvious at a glance that he wasn’t ordinary.
The gait was light and fluid.
His physical ability, clearing the remains of collapsed buildings with effortless leaps, was definitely not something an ordinary human could show.
I drew in a quiet breath, catching the scent on the air, and nodded.
A sweet, seductive smell of blood.
The person in front of me was definitely a human player.
"Should we attack?"
"No."
"Got it!"
I shook my head at Aurell’s question.
Why were we here?
To find a shop NPC, if one existed.
And maybe, just maybe, that human player knew where the shop NPC was.
I carefully followed behind him with Aurell at my side.
"Looks like he knows this place really well..."
At Aurell’s words, I nodded.
She was right. The human player seemed very familiar with the terrain.
He moved from building to building without hesitation, darting through the ruins, and there was no doubt about it.
"There aren’t any fusions around. He must be searching this place regularly."
"Huh..."
How long had it been?
The human player, who had been rushing around without a second thought, suddenly started glancing around with far more caution than before.
Suspicious movement.
Then he crouched down and lifted the manhole cover beneath him.
And just like that, he slipped down into it.
The whole thing happened so suddenly I was left speechless.
What was I supposed to do in a situation like this?
When I looked over at Aurell without thinking, she was staring back at me, head tilted in confusion too.
"Should we follow him?"
"...No."
After a moment of hesitation, I shook my head.
Chasing after him now would be a bad idea.
For all I knew, something could be waiting for us down there.
We might be walking right into a surprise attack.
"Let’s wait..."
"Couldn’t we just open another manhole and go in?"
"Are you serious? You don’t know how incredibly complicated and filthy sewer systems are, do you?"
"Um..."
Just because I was curious about something didn’t mean I could shove my head in recklessly.
You only got one life. You had to be careful. Then careful again.
So we sat there and waited.
After a long while, the human player who had gone down into the sewer finally came back up.
There was a noticeable change in his appearance.
On his back, where a small bag had been hanging before, now protruded two katana that hadn’t been there earlier, and at his waist a long military sword dangled loosely.
"Those are...!"
No mistake.
What that human player had brought out were two matte katana and a military long sword—shop weapons, all of them.
Proof, beyond any doubt, that there was a shop NPC down below.
The NPC was in the sewer.
And he was alone.
That meant there was nothing to hesitate about.
Gripping the katana tighter, I moved forward carefully.
"Ah...! Are you attacking?"
"You stay put."
I wouldn’t even need to borrow Aurell’s strength.
Looking at my target, I was certain of victory.
The distance between us was straight and clear.
If I ran at full speed, I could cover it in a second.
Fortunately, he still hadn’t noticed us.
I steadied my breathing and drew up the shadows.
Swoosh—
As time passed, as I kept using my abilities, the vampire known as Charlotte became more familiar to me.
The shadow rising from beneath my feet climbed up my legs, slid past my waist, and stretched toward the katana.
At that same moment, black bats began scattering behind my back.
Flap-flap-flap—!
Now.
Thump—!
The moment I kicked off the ground, my body began to glide forward with the shadows.
A silent charge.
The human player finally turned and registered me, but by then it was too late.
The tip of my outstretched katana blade reached the motorcycle helmet.
Crunch—!
With a hideous sound, red blood sprayed into the air.
One skill, one clean instant kill.
I stopped in place and leveled the katana at the staggering corpse.
It was a guard stance, just in case, but the human player had already lost his head and would never move again.
Pew—!
Thud.
Leaving behind the corpse collapsing in a spill of red, I kept watch over the surroundings.
The shadow, having absorbed blood and grown keenly sensitive, let out a feral growl.
I stayed on guard for a long while.
Only then did I finally let out a breath of relief and lower the katana.
I motioned to Aurell, who had been keeping her distance and watching carefully from afar.
It meant it was safe now. She could come out.
"Charlotte-nim...!"
Aurell came running over in a flurry.
With an intensely excited expression, she stared down at the corpse on the ground.
She looked like a child standing in front of a feast.
The way she stuck out her little tongue and licked her soft lips was almost cute.
Vampires needed human blood to survive.
Feeling hunger at the scent of blood was only natural.
After a brief hesitation, I turned away and said to her,
"You can drink it."
"Huh... really?"
I nodded silently and picked up the weapons scattered on the ground.
Then my blood-stained hand came into view.
I had killed someone without the slightest hesitation.
With a sigh, I shook my head.
The world had changed, and people had changed with it.
So I had to change too, didn’t I?
That first human player we’d met had aimed a gun at me without even a flicker of hesitation.
I’d only won because I was a level 20 vampire; if I’d been weak like Aurell, I would have ended up no different from a hunted werewolf.
So.
This was only natural.
With a calm expression, I rummaged through the human player’s backpack.
"Huff... huff... tasty..."
Aurell had already started gulping down the blood in a frenzy.
Her build was a close-combat one that raised blood control.
There was no need for her to suck blood through her mouth at all.
And yet she still stuck out her tongue and licked up the spilled blood on the floor.
She looked exactly like a puppy.
Frowning, I turned away.
"Drink faster. We need to go into the sewer."
"Huh... yes!"
I stared down at the four weapons we’d ended up with and fell into thought.
Even if Aurell and I each took one, that still left two.
Having extra weapons didn’t mean I could just wander around carrying twin blades.
Then suddenly, a shadow crossed my field of vision.
Just in case, I held out one of the katana, and the shadow swallowed it naturally, as if it had been waiting for it all along.
"Huh..."
Found it.
My inventory.
After stuffing two of the swords into the shadows, I handed the remaining katana to Aurell, who had finished her meal.
"Here."
"R-really? You’re giving this to me?"
"Yeah."
Aurell accepted the katana with both hands held out politely.
She looked as delighted as a child receiving the present she’d wanted on Christmas morning.
I stared blankly at her blooming smile for a while before clearing my throat and looking away.
This wasn’t the time to be standing around so leisurely.
With Aurell, I opened the manhole cover and entered the sewer.
"Hek..."
The moment we stepped inside, the awful stench of rot hit us, and my face twisted on its own.
Aurell even let out a groan and pinched her nose shut.
The inside of the sewer was quiet.
There were no dangerous fusions, and no other human players in sight.
Now all we had to do was search this sewer for the shop NPC.
But Aurell and I couldn’t move forward.
A primal refusal. Something etched into the back of my mind was rejecting the very idea of going on.
"Water..."
Both Aurell and I groaned as we looked at the polluted water flowing below our feet.
Vampires couldn’t cross water.