EP.23 One Night -3
EP.23 One Night -3
"At this point I have to wonder, does this Ruthven even exist?"
"That's a bit sudden..."
"No, think about it. Even light-footed Alice has been completely silent for over an hour now, hasn't she?"
Not that I thought Alice had been taken down by someone.
To catch her when she could leap through time, one would have needed a Divine Beast capable of controlling spacetime—otherwise it was impossible.
Considering that Miho's side also encountered a Divine Beast called Akult, it wasn't entirely out of the question, but the sheer lack of any commotion felt off.
"Keeeek!!"
Well, except for the vampire bastards trailing behind us and shrieking, that is.
"If you're worried, shall I go look into it and come back...?"
"Mm, it's not a bad idea, but... let's not. If I send you and then you don't come back either..."
That would have meant playing tag with those monsters in the dead of night.
I wanted to politely decline that, at least.
What did I have to gain from frolicking around with those lunatics?
Especially since I was already getting worn out from running circles around the village for an hour.
'Should I just give up...?'
I was holding back on killing as much as possible, but as time passed, even that resolve began to waver.
Even if I took down Ruthven, there was still the possibility the villagers wouldn't return, and I had no obligation to save them anyway.
I didn't even know how I might die here; maybe thinking I could save them all was just a complacent choice.
"Ten minutes. Let's hold out just ten more minutes."
"Okay...!"
Since we were in winter with long nights anyway, the vampires' rampage was prolonged.
Telling us to just endure until dawn was irrational.
So I set a final grace period.
If after that time there was still no word of Ruthven, then, regrettable though it was, I resolved to wipe out every last vampire.
"Still nothing..."
"Indeed..."
"Isn't it a rule that when you set a final grace period, they normally show up?"
"That's a scene that mostly shows up in human fiction..."
"Then why isn't there any news?"
"Because this is reality..."
It was truly a world devoid of dreams and hope.
Then again, given that even I was being targeted by so many Divine Beasts in this fashion, hoping for something like that was laughable in itself.
Left with no choice, I decided to thin out the vampires' numbers and catch my breath, so I grabbed one of them by the scruff of its neck.
I poured strength into my arm and gradually crushed the creature's throat with a crunch.
If there was no hope, at least to let them go peacefully, I chose to snap their necks and finish them off quickly, but...
"Boss, sorry I'm late...!"
"Uh..."
"Ah..."
Exactly the moment I snapped the vampire's neck, the rabbit returned to me.
The timing was so perfect it gave me the chills.
It felt like the moment a trainer catches you ordering a late-night snack after you'd resisted your cravings so well, only to give in at the very last moment.
Of course, Alice wasn't the type to control me like a trainer would.
But she'd surely think that the reason I—who had declared I wouldn't kill any more vampires—changed my mind like this was because of her own incompetence.
In other words, it was my fault for not waiting until the very end for Alice, whom I trusted so much, and instead killing a vampire.
"Um... well... sorry, Alice."
"It's not your fault, Boss. It's mine for coming back late."
"Hrm..."
In a single instant, the mood turned awkward, and a subtle tension began to flow between me and Alice.
No matter how much I apologized, it was obvious Alice would just chalk it up as her own fault. What was I even supposed to say to comfort her...?
My head was already complicated from the Divine Beast attack, and now it got even more complicated.
"Kreeeek!!"
But even in this situation, there were uninvited guests who had no tact whatsoever and barged in to break the mood: the vampires, naturally.
I really didn't like any of those bastards, but honestly, I was grateful they shattered that awkward atmosphere.
Did Alice feel the same way?
She twisted the arm of a vampire lunging at her, then smashed its head in with a crowbar, killing it.
"Sorry, Boss. I killed it by accident too..."
"Huh...? W-well then! If it was an accident, it can't be helped!"
"Ack! I'm sorry, Seon-ju...! I accidentally burned one to death too...!!"
"It's fine! It's fine! If the fire spread, it couldn't be helped!"
"Yeah, an act of god."
A heartwarming situation where everyone knew it was deliberate, but we were all letting it slide to save face.
Now if we just escaped from here and kept running, we could all bury this incident as a collective mistake.
We all thought that.
"""Ah...!!"""
But as it happened, when Kor's fire accidentally spread and burned up other vampires nearby, the situation became troublesome again.
"I-I'm sorry...!"
"A little slip-up like that can happen! As you can see, I also accidentally killed one while trying to subdue it, right?"
-Crunch!
"Boss is right. I also lost my grip on the crowbar and ended up killing one more."
-Crunch!
Just when we had each killed one more vampire and were trying to smooth things over again.
This time, Kor's fire accidentally spread to a nearby gas cylinder, causing a massive explosion.
And because of that, dozens of vampires got caught in the blast this time and were reduced to a handful of ash...
A shadow fell over Kor's face, and in the end, she became utterly downcast.
"H-Hey, Alice? This one's clearly an accident too, right...?"
"Yeah, an accident. A common accident we make."
I aimed a fist at a vampire, and the rabbit aimed her crowbar, all for the sake of the dejected wolf.
I truly felt sorry toward the vampires, but I implored them to quietly become our accidents.
***
"I think we went too far..."
"We did..."
"Yeah, we should reflect..."
Once we came back to our senses, the scene was truly a field of chaos and destruction.
Vampires strewn everywhere, explosion wreckage, and wooden structures on fire.
The biggest problem among all that was that we had completely slaughtered every single vampire that had been chasing us.
'I should be reflecting on my wrongs and doing deep penance...'
But for some reason, my heart felt gratified.
Maybe because we'd only ever been on the receiving end; the current situation of paying them back felt intensely electrifying.
Where was the past me who had preached non-killing, and how had I turned into this slaughterer?
Is this what corruption and euphoria feel like...?
"Still, what's done can't be helped, right?"
"I suppose so...?"
"Yeah."
"Hey! You pieces of trash!!"
Just when we were about to wrap things up with a 'These things happen' attitude, a bat burst out of a manhole hidden beneath the snow and started shouting at the top of its lungs at me.
That was probably the vampires' master and the cause of this incident: the Divine Beast, Vrykolakas.
"To wipe out my slaves...!! Fellow beings like yourself, no less! Are you still human after doing that?!"
"No, even if you say that... Don't you think it's a bit problematic to consider those monstrous-looking things the same as humans?"
"They were once humans like you!"
"But they aren't now, are they?"
"So even if you're a companion to Divine Beasts, your essence is still shit..."
I didn't deny it. For the most part, human nature had quite the reputation for being vicious.
I wasn't exactly a person of fine character either.
At that moment, to save myself, I had effectively killed people who could maybe have been saved.
But even so, I didn't want to hear that from the Divine Beast who was the source of this incident.
"Then let me ask one thing. If I deal with you, will those people return to normal?"
"No. Their blood and my blood have already mixed completely. They can never go back to how they were."
"Really? Thank goodness! So they were killable all along...!!"
"That's a huge relief...!"
"It was a rational motive to kill. Nice...!"
"You people are truly insane, aren't you?"
Through all the frequent disturbances lately, I had become aware that I was also quite broken inside.
Before, I would just be endlessly shocked and flustered, shouting that I was going to lose my mind, but now I generally just rolled with it.
So many outlandish things kept happening that I'd stopped being surprised by minor things.
Take this vampire incident—when vampires appeared, I wasn't particularly shocked by their existence.
I just marveled at the vampires' behavior that had angered my companion animals, Tia included.
So to survive among lunatics, I had no choice but to become a lunatic myself.
"Anyway, is it really okay to reveal yourself without any slaves? What kind of confidence is that?"
"Hah! It doesn't matter! I already figured human slaves couldn't stand up to Divine Beasts. So I've prepared plenty of trump cards."
"By trump card, do you mean Akult?"
"Akult is merely a collaborator, not a trump card. My true trump card is this!"
The vampire bat's eyes glowed red.
At that, the vampires Alice and I had killed began to move again, and at the same time, new vampires started emerging from all over.
From a visual estimate alone, their numbers easily exceeded a hundred. Every single one of them was grotesque.
"I never imagined you could even animate corpses."
"Human, no matter how much you borrow the power of Divine Beasts, you can't possibly kill this many slaves, can you?"
"Hrm... But the vampires Kor burned up didn't regenerate, so isn't it over if we just burn them all?"
"W-Well, maybe, but it'll be hard to burn every last one of the slaves here!..."
"Alice, can you bring me every gas cylinder in the village?"
"Okay."
The moment Alice answered, in less than five seconds, she piled up gas cylinders and all other explosives in front of us.
I figured we could expect considerable firepower from this.
"Isn't that a bit too fast...?"
"I already checked all the item locations while searching for the bat. Though I didn't expect it to be hiding in the sewers..."
Maybe she was bothered by not having managed to locate Ruthven even at the very end; Alice drooped her ears and her head forward too.
Even when we tried to brush off killing the vampires as an accident, the rabbit had been deeply concerned about her own failure.
I lifted the rabbit's head and gently stroked her under the chin to comfort her.
"It's fine, Alice. I wouldn't have checked the sewers either. And this time, you came through on my request beautifully, didn't you? You did well."
"Ah, okay...!"
When I offered both comforting words and a reassuring touch at the same time, a faint smile appeared on Alice's face.
I thought it might not have had much effect, but her previously drooping rabbit ears sprang back upright with a pop and even started fluttering.
Her expression didn't change much, but her ears were displaying her feelings instead.
While most animals express emotion through their tails, it seemed rabbits used their ears, which was incredibly refreshing and cute.
"So you intend to obliterate my slaves at once using an explosion like just now?"
"Yep, exactly!"
"But then you lot won't be safe either! Let's see you try it if you can?"
"Okay, I will! Kor, light it up."
"Yes!"
"Wha...?"
Ruthven was thrown into confusion by my immediate response.
I thought all Divine Beasts had already been informed about me, but apparently not.
Tia's air control ability.
Even if I couldn't produce as strong a wind as Tia, I could at least prevent the space we were standing in from getting caught in the blast.
Before, it was a method I would've never used out of anxiety, but now, having received Hraesvelgr's insane instruction, I was confident.
So in conclusion...
"You piece of shit...!!"
-KABOOOM!!
It meant we could comfortably watch a spectacle full of vividness right before our eyes, rivaling a 3D movie.
Ah, now I was craving popcorn.