A Fish to the Cat (3)
As expected, the village hadn't just been turned into a ruin — it had been utterly devastated.
The stench of blood wafting from every corner pierced sharply at the tip of my nose.
"......"
And yet, strangely enough, the monsters that should have been prowling wildly all over the village were nowhere to be seen.
There wasn't a single cry, not even a shadow of a monster — only a peculiar silence hung gloomily in every direction.
Thud. Thud.
The scene was so pitiful that even a passing glance was enough to guess what must have happened here.
How horrifying and terrifying it must be to live in coexistence with monsters — beasts that were not beasts — was written plainly across this wretched sight.
"Hoo─."
Ordinarily, this should have thrown me into turmoil.
But for some reason, the me of right now didn't so much as blink at this horrific scene.
If anything, I was leisurely inhaling the bloody stench drifting from all around as if it were the scent of flowers — savoring it, even — while quietly reveling in the atmosphere with a far more buoyant mood than usual.
"Ah."
It was only long after I'd set foot in the village that I realized this fact.
A chill ran down my spine, belatedly, at the knowledge that I had been so deeply immersed I couldn't even recognize it myself.
I couldn't fathom how I had come to accept and enjoy this scene with such tranquility — the feeling had been so utterly natural that nothing about it had struck me as strange.
"Come to think of it... the reason I ended up here was probably pretty similar, wasn't it?"
My humanity seemed to be blurring, flowing away like water without my even noticing.
In this very moment, I was experiencing, viscerally and for certain, the fact that my race was vampire.
"No matter how much I pretend not to know and live as a human, I suppose a race's inherent traits can't be helped..."
As I wandered the silent village for a long while, a certain spot happened to catch my eye.
It was a narrow, secluded alleyway tucked between the buildings.
At its end, small, pathetic green creatures were huddled together, trembling like aspen leaves.
"Kyakyakyakyak─!!!"
"......"
The goblins took one look at me and started convulsing in sheer terror.
Scratching frantically at the dead-end wall behind them, they wailed out pitiful, miserable screams at the top of their lungs.
"Kyakyakyakyakyak─!!!!"
"Kyakyak─!!"
It was highly suspicious that these goblins were having fits even though I hadn't done a single thing to them.
Why would monsters that had successfully raided the village be hiding in a pack inside such a narrow, filthy alley?
And without a single piece of loot to show for it, at that.
Thud.
When I slowly stepped into the alley, the goblins' seizures only grew worse.
They began turning on each other entirely, shamelessly baring their savage madness.
Even with all this commotion unfolding, the other monsters still refusing to show themselves anywhere in the village allowed me to grasp an important truth — belatedly, at that.
Transfusion
"...They're afraid of me?"
After cleanly draining, down to the very last drop, the blood of the goblins gathered before my eyes.
I quietly murmured to myself, wearing an expression of sudden understanding.
The true nature of the monsters was something I had never managed to notice, since my hunts until now had mostly been ambushes in the forest.
Not that I needed to know, but the fact that monsters feared me was, without a doubt, quite valuable information.
The goblins' reaction might have been nothing more than instinctive terror.
But if their fear stemmed from an actual awareness of what I was, then it meant my standing in this world was, at the very least, considerably favorable.
"That aside... there really isn't a single soul here, is there."
In the early hours of dawn.
I returned to the church and spent a sleepless night calmly turning over everything that had happened in the village.
Clutching at whatever thread of hope remained, I had combed every corner of the village searching for any living soul.
But all I found were monsters cowering in fear.
No matter where I looked in that village, there was no trace of a single living person.
"......"
When I finally made it back to the church, my heart tangled in knots.
The first thing that caught my eye was the three children, curled up side by side and fast asleep on the bench.
The sight of them sleeping soundly, blissfully unaware of anything, wrung a complicated sigh out of me unbidden.
Somehow, it weighed down heavily on my entire body.
"...Amen."
I murmured those words softly and slowly rose from my seat.
Before long, I picked up the old nun's habit I had left carelessly draped over the front bench and, without a moment's hesitation, stripped off the game equipment I was wearing.
True, it was a dirty garment, frayed here and there and caked with dust.
But I felt certain that nothing could possibly suit me better than this.
Because this place was no longer a world inside a game.
"Mm... mmh... Sister...?"
The first to wake at the sound I made was Ellie.
She rubbed one eye, her face still caught halfway between sleep and waking.
"Where did you go...?"
"It seems I was moving around too noisily. You can sleep a little longer."
Ellie slowly shook her head.
"Eisen said yesterday that he's leaving early in the morning, so we shouldn't oversleep."
"Hmm. Did he say exactly where his destination was?"
"No... he just said it was somewhere across the river..."
"I see."
While I had been away, the children seemed to have spent the whole night talking things over quite thoroughly.
With ten-year-old Eisen at their lead — a boy barely more than a child — they were steering the situation along with a remarkable decisiveness that exceeded my expectations.
"By the way, so you really were a nun... That habit suits you far better than what you were wearing yesterday."
Ellie, belatedly coming to her senses, looked at me in my habit and her eyes began to slowly sparkle.
"Was what I wore yesterday that strange?"
"Oh, no... it wasn't strange, it was just... I'd never seen clothes like that before, so it felt a little unfamiliar..."
"Mm. I'll be wearing only this from now on, so you needn't find it strange anymore."
"...But we're leaving this church today..."
"Right. That was the plan, wasn't it."
CLAP───!!!
With those words, I brought my hands together in a resounding clap.
The sound reverberated deafeningly through the silent church, jolting Eisen and Iris forcibly out of their deep slumber.
"Wh-what?!"
"Mm... mmgh...?"
Eisen and Iris shot up in near panic, urgently glancing around with sleep-heavy faces.
Their eyelids were still half-shut.
They looked utterly bewildered and confused, as though a bomb had just fallen right beside them.
"Now, everyone. I heard the whole story. You're planning to leave this church today and head for the village across the river, yes?"
"Yes...?"
"It's a brave and admirable idea, truly — but I'm not at all sure it's the best choice."
"Wh-what do you mean, all of a sudden—"
"Setting the danger aside, even if by some miracle you managed to reach someone and ask for help, it would already be too late — or the situation might have gotten even worse by then."
I couldn't bring myself to tell them that the villagers had all been slaughtered.
Thinking of the shock it would deal the children, even speaking those words aloud seemed like something that could never be forgiven.
All I could do was breathe in quietly and choose my words with the children before me as carefully as I could.
"So — how would you feel about staying here until you've grown a little more?"
I couldn't simply ignore children trying to set out on their own down a perilous road whose end they couldn't see.
At the very least, until they were capable of thinking things through properly, I believed it was my duty to keep them safe.
I was a vampire, yes — but that was no reason to leave these children to fend for themselves.
"Sister... did you perhaps visit the village while we were asleep...?"
And yet, even after all of that, Eisen seemed to have grasped the meaning of my words at once.
A tremor of anxiety bled plainly into his voice, and despair began to settle into his widened eyes.
"...Yes."
"Then that means... our village is already..."
An awkward silence filled the quiet church to its walls.
As the uncomfortable stillness stretched on, Eisen sank heavily into his seat and slowly began to knit his brow.
"M-Mom... Dad..."
"Hnk..."
One after another came the mournful cries of Ellie and Iris.
Even someone like me couldn't help but feel my resolve waver — but even so, I forced myself to push past the feelings of the moment.
"Eisen. Lift your head."
"......"
At my firm words, Eisen hesitated for a moment before finally, with great effort, raising his head.
Despair and confusion still brimmed in his eyes, and that look pressed down on my heart all the more heavily.
"To all who call upon my name, I am forever with them."
I recited a verse from the Bible, low and quiet, into the heavy atmosphere.
It was the only thing that came to mind.
There had been grander words after it, but based on a fleeting glance yesterday, whatever came next simply refused to surface.
I would have to improvise the rest somehow.
"I believe I mentioned it. The fact that we met the way we did was surely thanks to the Goddess's guidance."
"S-Sister..."
"Goddess Pael... Paelia could never turn a blind eye to lambs she has led here."
My words may have sounded light, but within them was buried an enormous resolve of mine.
I wanted to give hope to children drowning in despair — and I hoped that the words "the Goddess's guidance" would let them feel at least a little safer.
"Levinia Fallen Grace. As the one and only nun of this church, carrying out the will of the Goddess, I will protect these children no matter what may come."
It had, in truth, begun with pity.
I had no intention of denying that.
I had never once experienced anything like this, and I knew nothing whatsoever of the grief of losing one's parents.
And yet — my body might be a vampire's, but my mind was that of an ordinary human, and so I could understand, at least in some measure, the sorrow these children had suffered.
Because my very being had not fallen.
"Hnggh...!"
"Waaah..."
"Hnk... hnk..."
"It's all right, all of you. Cry as much as you like in my—"
Just as I gathered the weeping children into my arms and tried to slowly calm the scene—
suddenly, three transparent windows floated up before my eyes, one after another.