Vampires
One thing I had learned over the past four days of fighting vampires: their bodies possessed remarkable regenerative power, and their life force was stubbornly tenacious.
Regrowing a severed arm in real time was beyond them, but if you pressed a cut-off limb back against the stump and left it for a moment, it would reattach. Lacerations and puncture wounds mended well enough. Even bisected horizontally or vertically, ground down or crushed flat, they still refused to die.
Ah—if their head burst open, they died.
These were facts I had pieced together while thrashing the vampire in front of me, of course. I myself never so much as took a scratch.
Whether these particular bloodsuckers had simply been unusually weak, or whether I was simply that strong—I could keep even a single strand of hair from brushing against me.
Granted, if I had fought on pure reaction speed and physical ability alone, I would probably have picked up a scrape or two.
Being vampires, they fought with a ferocity different from the freaks.
They would spray blood in every direction, sharpen it with Hematokinesis, and hurl it like bullets—and honestly, enemy or not, it made for a rather magnificent spectacle.
Still, it was nowhere near enough to keep pace with my acceleration.
Whether I was getting faster or time itself was slowing down, I couldn't say. Either way.
…I really ought to give the thing a proper name. Calling it acceleration forever was starting to feel a little cheap. What would make a good skill name?
Ah, right—about the acceleration. I had more or less figured out the activation condition by now. I needed an enemy.
Whether that first muttered "we" had been nonsense or not, several other bloodsuckers had come looking, intending to rescue this one.
It was while subduing them that I finally pinned down the condition. To use acceleration, I needed a target I regarded as an "enemy."
Not something abstract like fate or hunger—a materially, physically existing enemy.
Aside from that, the only other thing I had learned was that after chaining accelerations back to back, I got insanely thirsty for blood.
This acceleration didn't seem like any kind of magic. It felt like a power I possessed as a vampire—which was why every use burned through my blood and left me ravenous.
What had I been talking about that led me here… right. Vampires.
Anyway, capturing so many of them had given me the chance to experiment with just about everything.
First, after directly comparing the vampires' own claims against what I already knew, their weaknesses were, fortunately, not all that different from the ones I was familiar with.
The clearly lethal hazards were sunlight, flame, silver, and destruction of the head.
Among those, the most fatal were head destruction and sunlight. A head bursting open… well, they died. Nothing more to say there.
Damage from sunlight, though, was a little more interesting.
Wounds inflicted by the sun could only be healed through the act of drinking blood—and even an elder-level vampire could last an hour under the sun at best, they claimed.
The lower ranks crumbled to dust from a mere brush of it.
On top of that, magical girls' magic—especially the kinds that manipulated light directly—was fatal to vampires. I had no idea why; it was simply how this world's setting worked.
If I forced myself to invent a reason, maybe it was because the power magical girls drew on was literally pulled from the stars of the constellations?
The sun is a star, after all. Well—only the author would know the real answer.
Garlic varied by individual, and religious symbols like crosses only worked if the wielder actually belonged to that faith.
There were none of those petty, grubby little weaknesses—obsessive counting, needing an invitation to enter a house, and so on.
The one thing worth noting was naturally flowing water.
Crossing it was fine. But the instant they saw their own reflection in running water, they lost consciousness on the spot.
Testimony was a little mixed on that point—some said they saw something terrifying, others their future selves, others something they should never have looked upon.
Well. That was about it.
A few peculiarities, sure, but nothing that diverged drastically from the classic vampire weaknesses.
Yeah. That was enough to call the experiments finished.
And the vampires looked like they couldn't hold on much longer anyway.
"Now, p-please… kill me. Crush my head… please…"
The vampires who, as of yesterday, could still regenerate their wounds could no longer heal so much as a scratch.
They simply had no blood left for it.
No matter how strong a vampire's life force, no matter how formidable their regeneration—in the end, without blood, they couldn't live.
Unlike the female vampire who still had enough strength left to speak, the male one I had caught first was literally just barely breathing.
Shape aside, he wasn't much different from thoroughly dried jerky.
Honestly, it was fascinating. The way he was still alive even though he looked ready to crumble if you squeezed him.
"You came charging at me determined to kill me—I can still see it clear as day—and now you're begging? How amusing."
As I mocked the captured vampires and made a show of sipping the blood in my wine glass, even the thoroughly desiccated male twisted his body and let out a howl as if hauled up straight from hell.
"AAAAAAARGH!!!! Kill me!!!!! I'll kill you!!!! I'll kill you!!!!"
The female vampire, who still had some fight left, was fun to watch as she screamed her throat raw—but even she soon went limp, and I lost interest.
Part of it was that the blood tasted terrible.
The original owners of this place had been storing it in oak barrels, and compared to fresh blood, this stuff was just fishy and flavorless.
"I had intended to play with you longer… but this once, I shall grant you mercy. Be grateful. How generous an act is this?"
The same vampires who had begged me to kill them flailed the moment I actually did. I crushed their skulls one by one in my grip.
Except for just one.
I wanted to see for myself how quickly the sun killed a vampire.
The survivor was trembling, not understanding why I had spared him. I hoped he kept trembling.
The people he had drained and killed must have died trembling just as miserably.
Leaving him to shake, I used a phone I had taken off one of the vampires and called Na-rae.
"It's me. Has your body mostly recovered? Mm, seems so. Then come out to the place where I dropped you off. Ah—don't be frightened. Understood? I'll be there shortly."
I was done with vampires. Time to look into everything else.
Na-rae's condition… well, "adequate" seemed about right. She didn't look especially well, but she seemed sound enough to put her head to use.
Emotionally she was clearly terrified, but there was nothing I could do about that. Even if I had a suppression device, why would I put one on now without knowing what would happen to me?
Who knew—maybe when I briefly took human form to accommodate her, a 9mm pistol would come out of Na-rae's pocket.
Then I would die on the spot.
The suppression device didn't merely change your appearance. It extremely suppressed the Starlight entering the body, forcibly dragging you down to human.
It was also something made for the lunatics who needed to operate as humans even while wearing a thing like that.
If a magical girl's transformation was closer to an awakening or an evolution, then a freak's "transformation" was more like degeneration.
Downgrading from freak to human. Which meant, as far as I knew, you became no different from an ordinary person…
I would have to experiment to find out what it was really like.
Anyway, until my own safety was secured, I had no intention of wearing a suppression device.
Sorry, but you'll have to live a little scared for a while, Na-rae.
"Y-you called for me…?"
Thoroughly terrified, Na-rae was dripping cold sweat even as she did her best to stay on my good side.
Adorable, really. I should keep this one around for a long time. People who can recognize the strong and show them proper respect are rare.
Hmm. Another strange thought had just floated up. The problem with casually ignoring them was that they kept saying rather frightening things.
Was that my thought?
When I stayed silent without saying anything, Na-rae's trembling increased noticeably, so I told her why I had called.
"Yes. Shouldn't we be leaving this place soon? Though my memories are hazy, I've heard there is a great deal of preparation needed to leave the country."
"Th-that's true…?"
"For me to handle such trivial matters would be absurd. Therefore, as my subordinate, you will have to put in some work."
"S-subordinate? Me?"
Subordinate what?
"Yes, subordinate. Surely you didn't think I would simply let you go free?"
"Y-you clearly said you'd spare me…"
She kept stammering and pestering about why she was a subordinate, and it irritated me enough that I cut her off mid-sentence.
"Am I not sparing you right now? And do you think I would send something as weak as you onto a battlefield? All you need do is handle the thinking—and the tedious work."
"Th-that's…"
Even as generous as I am, this was starting to get on my nerves. I spared her. I sent her to the hospital. And now I was even giving her work.
What exactly was the problem?
"Well then—let us return to the base for now. If you are mostly recovered, convalescing there should be sufficient, yes?"
"What?"
"Surely you weren't planning to stay cooped up in a hospital forever? One of the things I expected from you was knowledge. If you are simply lying in a sickbed, you can hardly play the role of teacher, can you?"
Na-rae opened and closed her mouth as if she had a great deal to say, muttered something about how her life had gone so wrong, and then spread her arms, telling me to take her along.
"You're not asking me to carry you, I hope."
"Eek."
A superior carrying a subordinate? Ridiculous. The other way around, maybe.
The earlier fondness vanished in an instant, leaving only annoyance. Indeed— Weak people don't know how to be grateful if you treat them even a little kindly.
Fluttering as I flew toward the base, I found myself, for once, agreeing with the voice inside. Whoever had said it, they seemed right.
When we arrived at the underground warehouse where I had been tying up vampires and running experiments, a woman I had never seen before was sitting in a chair, waiting.
"…So it's you. The one who's been causing a stir in this area."
And who are you?