Fish for the Cat (1)
There hadn't been a single warning sign.
I'd simply been enjoying my game as usual after coming home from work one day, when out of nowhere the monitor flashed—and the next thing I knew, I had possessed the character I'd been playing.
Setting aside the sheer bewilderment of it all, there I was, sprawled in the middle of some unknown forest, with dusk already deepening into a heavy darkness all around me.
Trees swaying in a sharp, biting wind. Vines tangled high overhead in wild, coarse knots. And this strange, uncanny atmosphere that had greeted me the moment I opened my eyes.
It felt far too vivid and real to be a dream, yet my mind was in far too much chaos to simply accept it as reality.
"What on earth is going on here..."
A translucent status window floated before my eyes. Inside it, the information of Levinia.
The fact that something straight out of a comic book had happened to me was admittedly rather interesting—but that one single detail, the fact that I had possessed a female character, was slowly driving my sanity over the edge.
"Haah... there's not a drop of warmth left in this body."
Ghost-white skin draped over a body as cold as a block of ice. The fact that I, who had been human until just moments ago, had suddenly become a vampire was a tremendous shock.
If I'd known this would happen, I would've been logged in on my main character. Hindsight came flooding in like a tide.
— rustle
After quite some time had passed like that, I struggled to lift myself from where I lay.
It was still a reality I wanted to reject, but with every passing minute it only felt more undeniable—and a strange hollowness kept washing over me on top of everything else. So I decided to get my body moving and clear my head as best I could.
— thud, thud
Amid the peculiar chill and gloomy air of the forest, I quietly steadied my breathing and slowly looked around.
The scenery was identical no matter where I went, and the occasional cries of beasts echoing in the distance sent a chill down my spine. Even so, I didn't stop walking, pressing onward to the very end.
What I really wanted was to head straight for the nearest village. But for a vampire like me to barge uninvited into a town would be extremely dangerous.
With my level listed as 87 in the status window, I was hardly likely to die easily—but I had no desire to complicate the situation unnecessarily. Most vampires in media, after all, show up as villains.
— rustle
Even after walking for ages, the forest stretched on before me, wrapped in nothing but an unsettling silence.
That ominous atmosphere was slowly getting to me. No matter how far I walked, the same trees and similar paths filled my eyes, over and over.
There wasn't a single place that looked safe, no matter how hard I searched. The cries of beasts kept ringing out from somewhere unseen. And my forward steps began to feel heavier with each one.
And then, right at that moment—
— creak
In the thick darkness, the faint outline of something became visible.
At first I couldn't tell exactly what it was. It looked suspicious at a glance, to be sure.
But after hours of wandering through the same unchanging forest, approaching it was the only option I had left.
"Hoo..."
It felt as though I'd stepped into an actual horror film. My heart had begun pounding at some point, and cold sweat was dripping down my face.
— clunk
As I drew closer to the faint outline, a small church building gradually revealed itself between the surrounding trees, barely holding on.
It looked abandoned for a very long time at a glance, most of its outer walls cracked and crumbled away.
"...A church?"
I couldn't help but wonder why a church building had been left to rot in a place like this—but for me, who desperately needed a safe place, it was nothing short of a godsend.
Hidden deep in the forest as it was, it would be hard for anyone to find, and though it was old and falling apart, it seemed like it could offer plenty of protection from the dangers outside.
— BANG—!!
"Anybody home—!!"
Even knowing the place showed no sign of human life, some inexplicable anxiety drove me to fling the door open and shout at the top of my lungs.
But as expected, no one was inside. Only a chaotic mess and a thick, musty dust greeted me.
"......"
The interior was in even worse shape than the exterior. Traces of a church remained visible here and there, but every one of them had taken the full brunt of the passing years and crumbled into pitiful ruin.
The only things that stood out in the entire place were a single old Bible set in the corner and one worn, tattered nun's habit.
"Still better than sleeping outside, I suppose...?"
The sorry state of the interior gave me a moment's hesitation—but then again, shivering and trembling my way through a night in the dangerous open air seemed far worse. Surely spending the night somewhere relatively safe, inside the church where it was at least a little warmer, was the better option.
"It's only for one night, anyway."
Come morning, I would leave this dreary, wrecked church behind and head somewhere better. I had no intention of lingering in a space that felt like a ghost might pop out at any moment.
"Haah... why am I suddenly camping out..."
The moment my body felt somewhat safe, complaints about my current situation came flooding in, belated as they were.
By this point, the question of why I had to go camping in a ruin like this weighed on me more heavily than the fact that I'd become a vampire.
How had things come to this? One thought chased another, each question spawning yet more questions.
"Ugh."
As the night deepened and the thoughts in my head grew only more tangled, I finally gave up and closed my eyes.
The cold of the floor and a strange, foul smell stung my senses—but I no longer had the energy to care about any of it.
"Time to sleep..."
The silent night wrapped around me, and within it I slowly steadied my breathing. The moment I felt a flicker of relief at the thought that I could at least survive one night in this ruined church, my consciousness rapidly slipped away.
Exactly one month had passed since then.
My resolution—sworn at sunrise, to move to somewhere better the instant daylight broke—had long since dissolved like foam on the water. Instead, I was still living my own peculiar version of daily life in the ruined church.
"Clear skies again today..."
Making the resolution had been the easy part. But I'd overlooked one crucial fact, and it sent all my plans to the bottom of the sea: my race was vampire.
In the game, I'd roamed around in broad daylight just fine even as a vampire—but reality wasn't quite so forgiving.
"Peaceful, truly..."
The moment that warm sunlight touched my skin, agony surged through me as if I had been set on fire. On top of that, moving on would have required crossing a river—and for some reason, my body flatly refused to set foot in it.
What an utterly absurd situation. One such thing after another piled up, and before I knew it, I had given up on ever leaving the church.
I didn't even know what exactly lay on the other side of the river—and besides, the church, once tidied up a little, had grown surprisingly cozy. I'd actually come to like the place.
There was simply no reason left to volunteer for hardship and press onward.
Sitting on the steps before the shadowed entrance of the church, I pulled up the translucent status window—out of habit, now.
After a month spent exploring every corner around the church, I had acquired a skill called Transfusion without even realizing it.
The skill slots had been utterly empty, which made that level of 87 feel almost laughable. At first this had flustered me terribly; by now, I could barely muster a shrug.
At some point, I had reached the stage of full acclimation to reality.
"......"
Since my race was vampire, it turned out I recovered strength and stamina not by eating food, but by drinking blood.
Thanks to the Transfusion skill, I didn't need to sink my teeth into anyone directly to feed—which was a genuine blessing. But the difference between draining blood through the skill and drinking it straight from the source was considerable, so it wasn't something I could simply brush aside.
.
.
.
That night.
Only after the sun had completely set did I begin preparing to move for the night's work.
My sleep schedule had flipped beyond recognition over the past month. It still felt strange to be active at midnight rather than midday—but to live as a vampire, one had to be industrious after dark.
— knock, knock
Just as I finished readying myself for the hunt and was about to step out of the church, the quiet sound of someone's presence drifted through the firmly shut door.
— knock, knock
At that second, mournful knock, my body froze like a stone statue. I thought I'd misheard. I hadn't.
"Hoo..."
By now I was fairly well settled into life here, so wariness reached me before fear or terror ever could.
An ordinary person finding their way to a church hidden deep in the forest? The very idea made no sense.
My eyes narrowed into suspicious slits, and I walked slowly toward the door where the presence waited. Then, without a moment's hesitation, I flung it open.
— creak
My level was a whopping 87. Whoever stood beyond that door, there was no reason to be afraid. Unless they were something truly extraordinary, they wouldn't stand a chance against me.
"Who—"
"Th-thank goodness...!"
But contrary to my expectations, what waited beyond the door was no threatening creature. Instead, three children stood there, clinging to one another and trembling like aspen leaves.
One boy and two girls. Small cuts and scrapes covered them from head to toe, and they looked filthy and wretched, as if they hadn't washed in days.
"Sister...! Please, show us mercy...!"
One look was enough to tell they weren't simply children lost in the woods. As if they had endured something terrible, their every appearance was desperate and heartbreaking.
But—
"...Sister?"
I wasn't even wearing a nun's habit, yet these children seemed to believe I was the nun of this church.