Lv.4 Orc Yoeu [2]

The girl they had rescued was named Barani.

Hauled along by Gaon's hand and deposited without warning in a place she didn't know, Barani couldn't make sense of any of it. She merely cocked her head — but she seemed calm enough. Yoeu, at least, was someone she knew, and he was here.

"Yoeu, what's going on? Did Mom tell you to come get me?"

"Huh? Yeah."

"You must be busy — thanks!"

Yoeu bowed his head. He couldn't meet Barani's eyes.

Gaon felt the same. He hung his head as if glaring at the floor. As he understood it, this was a tragedy. He had come to save her, only to find the girl had already been bitten. The guilt of it sat heavy on him, and he spoke in a voice of the deepest gloom.

"I'm sorry. I'm truly sorry. If I hadn't wasted time on pointless crap and gotten here a little sooner..."

"If you'd gotten here sooner, then what?"

At Barani's question, Gaon's lips worked soundlessly. How was he supposed to put this? Should he explain the situation outright, or...?

He forced his reluctant mouth open and managed to speak.

"I would've gotten you out sooner, and you wouldn't have become a vampire after being kidnapped."

Barani shook her head.

"Rescued? I wasn't kidnapped, though? Mom took me there."

"Your mother?"

She'd sold her own child? Gaon was stunned that such a crime against nature could have taken place. But Barani's next words struck him even harder.

"Yeah. She said I could become a vampire. And it wasn't a lie. So it's actually really great?"

"It's great? What is that supposed to mean—"

"Whenever my teacher asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always said: I wanna be a vampire! Then the teacher would praise me, saying I was pretty enough that I just might."

Barani spoke the word vampire as if it belonged in the same category as president or celebrity. As she grinned away, Gaon thought through the shock. What had the image of vampires even been?

Back when I was a kid, vampires were treated worse than lepers. At least leprosy could be cured if you found a decent priest. Get bitten and turned into a vampire, and there was no treatment at all...

He barely managed to recall that things were different these days. In the modern age, vampires had succeeded in recasting their social image as something aristocratic. The fruit of that campaign was standing right in front of him.

"Mom didn't lie, so my dream came true! My eyes sparkle like rubies now! My skin got all white! And I'll never turn into a wrinkly old granny!"

Gaon asked with forced composure.

"So... you're happy you became a vampire, is that it?"

"Yep! But are you a vampire too?"

"No."

"You're super handsome, though? You're really not a vampire?"

In Barani's mind, a vampire seemed to be nothing more than something beautiful and noble. Gaon couldn't bring himself to shatter that illusion.

"Want me to give you a smartphone so you can watch YouTube?"

"Yes!"

Gaon sat Barani down, then approached Yoeu — who still wore a miserable expression — and asked carefully.

"She seems to like it herself. Maybe we don't need to take this quite so seriously?"

Yoeu's answer was not what Gaon had hoped for.

"No, yeh... I think it's a plenty serious situation, yeh..."

"Why? Worried there'll be blowback because we snatched her on our own? Nobody saw me take her, so we could just put her back where she was."

"No, yeh, that's not it... becoming a vampire itself is the problem, yeh."

Yoeu glanced at Barani. Then he leaned in and whispered to Gaon in a small voice.

"That girl... she's been made into a Pet Vampire, yeh."

"What's a Pet Vampire?"

"Among Earth's dictators... Ceaușescu? Yeah, Ceaușescu was the one who first created them, yeh."

What followed was Yoeu's explanation.

Ceaușescu had been a Romanian dictator — and a communist vampire besides. That vampire communist strongman, who claimed descent from Dracula, had wanted to raise his country's birth rate. Like any dictator, he rammed through a coercive natalist policy: women who had abortions or used contraception were put to death, and every woman was made to bear four or more children.

The results, unsurprisingly, were not good. The children born in that indiscriminate flood were not raised with any care. Mothers died and the infants were abandoned, or they were left to languish in neglect. Eventually they overflowed the orphanages, and the mafia seized them and exported them in every direction — to warlords who wanted child soldiers, to pedophiles, to child pornography traffickers.

That was when Ceaușescu took notice of the fact that the children were being "exported." From the standpoint of earning scarce foreign currency, exports were an unalloyed good. So it would be better if the state itself, rather than the mafia, handled the exporting — but even so, a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠government engaging in human trafficking directly wouldn't look right. So what to do?

Ceaușescu solved the problem in a distinctly vampiric fashion.

"He had his subordinate vampires pick out the pretty little ones, turn them into ageless vampires, and sell them, yeh. On the grounds they weren't human anymore — as expensive pets..."

The other vampires were not fond of this. Vampire lords feared that if just anyone could become a vampire, it would damage the aristocratic image of their kind. For that reason they had strictly forbidden the mass production of vampires — and in Ceaușescu's case, he had essentially reduced vampires to livestock.

The vampire lord who had turned Ceaușescu was, of course, furious. He couldn't kill Ceaușescu, who enjoyed the favor of General Secretary Kasyad. Instead, he ordered that the subordinate vampires Ceaușescu claimed had spearheaded the affair be disposed of. In the end, Ceaușescu's underlings were purged en masse. The child vampires they had created nearly all died at that time as well.

And so, once you became a Pet Vampire, even your life was in danger. Far from living forever as an undead, they all died before they even reached thirty. If it looked as though they might be discovered, a higher-ranking vampire would give the order and have them killed on the spot.

"If turning kids into vampires is taboo even among vampires, can't you just report it?"

"Well, these days, when vampire families are short on cash, they make them and sell them, yeh. Making them is the taboo, but circulating them isn't, so if they get caught they just claim it was something Ceaușescu made a long time ago..."

"But in the end, Pet Vampires get disposed of the moment they're found out?"

"Yes, yeh. Probably."

Yoeu added that Pet Vampires sold for vomit-inducingly high prices. It wasn't only pedophiles who created the demand. Wealthy people who wanted to become vampires and live forever would pay millions of dollars to purchase one.

Even in those cases, the Pet Vampire's fate was horrific. The wealthy expected the creature they'd paid a fortune for to turn them into vampires as well — but that wish would never be granted. Pet Vampires were the lowest-tier of their kind, having received only the tiniest share of blood. They had no ability to turn anyone else.

Upon learning the truth too late, and not wanting it known that they ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had bought a child with money, the wealthy showed no mercy. The Pet Vampire would be disposed of without a sound. The method was absurdly simple. Leave them on a sunlit balcony for a little while, and all that remained was a neat pile of ash. A quick pass with the vacuum cleaner after that, and it was done.

A cheap little life.

This girl had been reduced to that, Yoeu said.

"And since she's undead now, she probably can't even go to heaven... she's so pitiful, what do we do, yeh? I heard if you don't kill yourself after being bitten and turned, you're treated as a voluntary undead and can't enter heaven... but we can't just kill her right now either..."

Gaon was about to tell him that customary law had been abolished, then stopped himself. Even without any statutes regarding the undead, this girl would not go to heaven. Was she not from Hugin? A citizen of a nation the gods had abandoned.

As he often did when melancholy settled over him, Gaon closed his eyes and offered a prayer.

Gaon didn't even have the energy to offer thanks. He let out a long sigh, wrestled with the problem, and sighed again. After a long hesitation, he finally opened his mouth.

"For now, don't worry about this girl dying if she's discovered. I'll handle it."

"Really, yeh?"

"Yeah. I swear it — no separate pact with the Goddess."

Yoeu's eyes went wide.

"Thank you, yeh! Thank you so much, yeh!"

He gently but firmly shook off Yoeu, who was shouting through his tears. After sending the two of them elsewhere, Gaon walked the streets of Hugin for a time.

He picked up his smartphone and thought. Yoeu. How much did that orc actually know? Did he know those vampires were Gaon's patrons? Did he know Gaon had gone so far as to polymorph into human form to handle this in secret, because he was reluctant ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to lay a hand on his own sponsors?

Judging by how he expressed nothing but pure gratitude, he seemed ignorant... but then again, he had a decent grasp of history earlier, so who knows. Maybe he was pretending not to know because he didn't want to get on a Swordmaster's bad side...

Either way, he had work to do.

He looked at a skyscraper towering over downtown Hugin. That, too, belonged to the vampires. He dialed a number written somewhere in that building. A mere rank-and-file employee who wasn't even a vampire answered, but that didn't matter. It would be passed up the chain soon enough.

Gaon had contacted his patrons. He summoned the vampire conglomerates who ruled Hugin.

In the relationship between patron and beneficiary, the patron is meant to hold the upper hand.

In Gaon's case with the vampires, it was the other way around.

By assembling in a mere thirty minutes after the summons went out, the vampires proved as much. They had abandoned the parties they were enjoying and the deals they were closing, rushed here, and now pressed their foreheads to the floor.

The Prince of Ash showed no satisfaction at their submission.

A vampire who had slightly lifted his head, hoping to read that expression, found himself locking eyes with the Prince of Ash. As the vampire recoiled in horror, Gaon muttered, his face a blank.

"Forgive me, please forgive me!"

"My eyes feel soiled. Should I gouge them out? Or..."

With Gaon's eyes still closed, the vampire cried out.

"Mine! I'll gouge out mine!"

The vampire did as he had said. He drove his fingers into his own eyes and tore them out.

Instead of blood, ash scattered on the air.

As the vampire stifled his choked sobs, the others screamed without a sound. They had no other choice. Not when the Prince of Ash — that Swordmaster who had single-handedly shattered the Republic's army — appeared to be in a foul mood.