Chapter 13
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 13
Chapter Title: I Love You
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I love you. I love you. I love you.
Looking back on it, at first, it was just an ordinary noble household.
A happy family.
A warm life.
A father who was sometimes strict but warm at heart, and a gentle mother who always enveloped her in kindness.
Food unique to vampires that always filled her belly, and the warmth of blankets.
It was a life where she grew up strong, receiving heaps of love every single day.
It was during those times that she learned vibrant emotions like happiness, joy, and hope.
But,
That life was lost when she reached the age to attend middle school.
Her father, whom she thought was the strongest in the world, had his head severed while trying to protect her.
Watching that sight, her mother gripped her shoulders and spoke in a voice filled with desperate emotion.
"You must never come out. Never, never. Promise Mommy."
"Ah, no. What happened to Father? His head just now..."
"Just stay hidden quietly here. It'll be over soon. Don't make a sound until Mommy comes for you. Never. You must never come out."
What happened after that, she didn't know.
When she awoke, she was already alone in the snowy wasteland.
After starving for three days and somehow making her way back to the mansion,
She saw a massive crater where the entire mansion had vanished.
The mansion, the grounds, the gardens—everything around it had evaporated without a trace, as if swallowed whole.
"..."
All a young vampire who had lost her parents could do was flee and survive like a beast, gnawing on tree roots.
Even so, the girl never gave up.
She forced down the bitter taste of tree bark for the first time, and tore apart wolves that lunged at her in the dark forest.
Clinging to the hope that maybe, just maybe, her mother was alive, she poked around the crater countless times.
She was spotted by human eyes, pierced by silver arrows, her flesh torn by malicious traps, yet she desperately kept searching.
In the end, she was captured by filthy slave traders and, as expected, passed from one merchant to another.
Unfortunately, her young body caught their eye.
'...Worse than beasts.'
She could only hug her own shoulders.
Memories lingered of them slitting her wrists as she called for her mother, or jabbing her with incomprehensible syringes until she could barely breathe.
To save cheap potions, they sprayed failed ones on her, and some tried to violate her.
Yes, she had fully devolved into a slave.
Just a young vampire treated worse than the slaves from her noble days.
On top of that, the slave trader hid the fact that she was a vampire simply because she was beautiful, shoving that burden onto her.
But was that the end of it now?
The young vampire was handed over to a noble slave trader
and brought in as a pretty sex slave, unable to escape due to tight security.
The only freedom allowed to her was the blue night sky visible through the thick iron bars.
Now, she had to hide her true nature from the boy who would become her master, the slave trader watching her, and even the other sex slaves in the same plight.
No one could know or understand her feelings.
Thus, the young vampire's heart began to fester.
There was nowhere to pour out her heart freely.
On top of that, her bloodlust grew worse every night, intensifying as her body matured day by day.
A thirst humans could never comprehend.
It felt like her tongue would tear if she didn't lick the dust off the walls,
and razor blades and nails scraped her throat raw.
She remembered rolling on the floor, clawing at her neck in agony.
Such pain for five years.
Would you believe she endured it for a full five years?
But even that was nearing its limit.
Seeing the boy next to her bleeding from scraping the bars, those memories overlapped with hers even now, a week later—it was a sign her time was running out.
If anyone discovered she was a vampire, the Imperial forces marked with crosses would send hunters after her immediately.
"..."
And she would end up like her parents: riddled with silver arrows, entrails spilling, body vertically impaled on a spear, dangling from the empire's gates for all citizens to see her naked corpse by morning. Oh, and the finale is burning at the stake.
Every night, she dreamed of dying that way, and she wanted to die.
Punished by having her back, waist, and limbs pierced and fixed to the bars, her head severed once then forcibly reattached with ropes and nailed to a cross.
Thus, all Yuria could choose was to endure the starvation.
She chewed and swallowed nauseating human food without letting it touch her tongue,
practicing the act every night without changing expression.
Sometimes, to evade those suspecting her, she had to put on the act even more.
In that way, the fully grown vampire suppressed herself even at an age when she could guzzle blood, rotting from the inside out.
Day by day, she clutched her stomach, muffled her drooling mouth, and the acting she'd maintained to avoid suspicion became increasingly impossible.
At times, she even considered secretly self-harming.
The endless battle with her bloodlust and unrelenting hunger was an unbearable burden for Yuria, already scarred from a young age.
However, just as those thoughts grew darker, the woman was sold as a sex slave to a count's family.
Rumors said the young master had an incurable illness, yet he wanted her so badly she couldn't comprehend it.
Even with her now gaunt, emaciated body on the verge of wasting away,
Yuria couldn't help but wary of the man who insisted on bringing her to his mansion.
"...?"
Yet astonishingly, the man's actions shattered her common sense.
Her life was saved.
She received blood.
He deceived her into his warm embrace.
He knew she was a vampire and hid her anyway, pretending ignorance to others.
A noble infamous even in other territories as a wastrel— it was normal for such a man to see her as a filthy sex toy.
Yet she didn't drop her suspicions. The girl's wounds ran too deep to trust a human's words outright.
Especially since the humans who hated vampires most were nobles and imperial dogs. She kept tabs on Ian through her thralls,
but he truly said nothing about Yuria in his surveillance.
Why? How?
She was a vampire with no place to go, bearing a slave's status.
If he exposed her as a vampire,
Reporting a special breed to the Holy Kingdom would earn him enough wealth to live lavishly forever.
The Ian from the rumors would choose the latter without hesitation.
There was no reason for him to choose her at all.
For 70 gold, he could buy at least two B-rank beastkin.
Learning the local prices and various things here only made his actions more incomprehensible.
But at some point, Yuria's distrust melted away like snow.
He taught her common sense, knowledge of humans.
Knowledge utterly unnecessary for a sex slave.
One by one, accounting skills she didn't need, warehouse management,
household chores, and survival skills for the outside world.
Looking back, Ian had intended to save her from the start.
Using stratagems to dismantle the slave trade from the beginning, giving her blood, and a double ploy through his mother, the Lord of the North Sea Ice Palace.
A man versed in the underworld's illicit dealings—his actions proved right.
And it didn't end there.
He protected her life with his small frame and proved his bravery.
After arriving at the mansion, he taught her basics like the Mana Breathing Method, mana control, and magic formulas.
Of course, as a former noble, Yuria recognized this as proper education.
The Mana Breathing Method could be for using her as a sex slave, but repeating low-level magic formulas held no meaning for him.
Ian. That man stroked her head and warmly smiled, pulling her close, even when she couldn't solve simple problems.
His embrace was warm.
She had known this since he first saved her life.
Afterward, in ways unfit for a sex slave,
he called in an academy professor through his connections to teach her—proof beyond doubt of his favoritism.
Despite such efforts, she barely solved problems half as hard as those Ian tackled.
Then, when she finally activated a magic formula and formed her magic circuits, he gave her a standing ovation and hugged her tight.
For some reason, being in his arms made her bloodlust vanish like a lie.
The next day,
Deceptively, she had to endure a bloodlust so intense it felt like her heart would burst.
Like shoving thumbtacks into her mouth and chewing them.
A thirst like thorns piercing her throat, stabbing her skin relentlessly. It hurt.
But she could bear it.
Thinking of Ian's face, just as she nearly reached his room.
That was when his temporary exclusive maid spilled blood.
Of course, what followed was irreversible.
The girl lost her reason in an instant and pounced on the maid.
That opponent was no mere slave, but a maid with backing—and a vampire attacking her, no less.
With that backing being the Knight Captain, her future was plain to see.
Vampires were symbols of terror and headaches to humans; their strength varied wildly, monsters capable of tearing dozens of commoners apart barehanded.
In a word, from the Knight Captain's view, subjugating a vampire that attacked his daughter was a given. Hell, a simple beheading would be merciful.
"Ah, no."
Of course, the vampire knew her fate would be gruesome torture unto death.
The delayed terror—the fear of her fingers and body being shredded by blades—swept over her in an instant.
In panic, she wanted to collapse like a child, sobbing apologies and pleas for mercy. Her pocket blade kept flashing in her mind; she was that desperate.
She would die. Like them.
"Stop."
But the one who shielded her then was none other than the unexpected man: the noble Ian.
She wanted to make excuses.
She wanted to live.
"I..."
Words wouldn't come.
The gazes of other servants peeking through felt like blades digging into her body.
As if sensing it, Ian calmed her feverish hand with his cool one.
Then he gripped her shoulder and pulled her inside the door.
"S...!"
She couldn't continue.
Her parched throat swallowed dryly as transparent tears dripped from her reddened eyes.
That was the moment he extended his saving hand.
"It's okay."
Even seeing eyes dyed red with bloodlust like that day, he unhesitatingly took her hand and hid the girl in his room.
He comforted her trembling, frightened heart.
In that first taste of warmth, she nearly instinctively sought his embrace, tears flowing.
'...Ian, Ian. Ian.'
She learned his name from him, etching its echo into her mind.
Instinctively, her body began to crave this man.
But she held back. Now was the time to suppress instinct. She couldn't pounce on him while he was recovering.
Tears fell, drop by drop.
The conflict between reason and instinct tore at the girl's heart toward him.
She had disappointed Ian. She had disappointed him. Would she end up hated by another precious person because of herself? Fear chilled her spine.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Forgive me...
Everyone who treated her kindly, like her mother and father, had died.
Ian was the last.
Please, please don't leave me.
That instant.
"Breathe, Yuria, breathe. Slowly. That's it."
The one who caught Yuria as she crumbled like a sandcastle in crashing waves was none other than Ian's warm embrace.
He comforted her.
Sweet whispers, kisses—he gave them without hesitation.
From that moment, she vowed to give him everything.
There was a noble custom: the first blood-sharing with one's true love.
As befitting her high noble status, it had been emphasized repeatedly.
But Yuria's heart had grown beyond that; she busily sank her fangs into the nape of his neck.