The Vampire Lord's Test
Kajan was dressed in the classic garb of a Langestin coachman—a straw hat perched on his head and a shabby brown vest hanging off his shoulders.
"Why is Kajan driving a carriage here?"
As he said it, Simon's gaze swung over to Serne.
"And why are you two together?"
No matter how he looked at it, the two of them made for a bizarre pairing. The only point of contact he could think of was that brief moment during the battle against the Saintess Flema.
"What, are we not allowed to be together?"
Serne said playfully, wrapping her arms around Kajan's back from behind. Kajan's expression didn't shift a hair as he delivered his notice, ice-cold.
"Let go in three seconds or I kill you."
Serne pouted, looking thoroughly bored, and released him. Kajan was one of the rare few whose minds her dominion simply couldn't touch.
"I'm on a mission."
Kajan said briefly, tugging his straw hat down tighter.
"And I'll be attending Kizen again this semester too. We'll talk details back at the dorms."
He said his piece and shut his mouth, but the word mission had already set Simon's eyes gleaming.
"What kind of mission? Did something happen in Langestin? I'll help!"
"...Simon."
Kajan said heavily.
"I know exactly how good you are. But this is a mission assigned to me as an operative, and my team will handle it. You're a student—keep your mind on getting ready for the semester, nothing else."
He hadn't expected Kajan to radiate quite this much frost. Simon stammered out a protest.
"B-but during the Flema incident, we—!"
"Yes. You captured the Saintess. But that was then and this is now. You're a student. Don't go dirtying your hands with things that aren't your business. A student's job is to stick to a student's work."
For some reason, Kajan seemed determined to keep his distance. Simon felt a flicker of hurt, but he couldn't exactly argue with the logic.
Beside him, Serne had been watching the whole exchange like a spectator at someone else's house fire, and now she giggled and cut in.
"My, coachman ajusshi, you're cold~"
Then she looped an arm around both Simon's and Kajan's necks at once.
"But we're the legendary Kizen 'Saint-Slaying Trio,' aren't we? You could let us help out a little, you know!"
...Terrible name.
Simon thought so, and judging by the sigh, so did Kajan.
"Let go in three seconds or I kill you."
"Okay, okay~"
"And I only contacted that woman as an information source and reference. She has nothing to do with my mission either."
While the three of them chatted back and forth, the carriage rolled up to Campbell Road before they knew it.
"Let me tell you just one thing."
Simon's dejected expression must have caught Kajan's eye, because he opened his mouth. Simon's head snapped up, ears pricked.
"Watch out for men painted with strange patterns on their bodies."
"Sorry?"
"For security reasons, that's all I can say."
Jolt.
The carriage slowed, then rolled to a complete stop. Serne laughed.
"I'm sure the coachman ajusshi will sort himself out. So, when are you meeting Meilin?"
"She said she'd arrive tomorrow. Did the Ivory Tower kids all come together?"
"As you well know, she and I aren't exactly close~"
Well, their relationship was a one-sided crush on Serne's part, after all.
Simon climbed down from the carriage and bade the two farewell.
"Thanks for the ride."
"Ho ho, think nothing of it!"
"...See you at school."
Kajan set the carriage in motion again. Simon watched it recede into the distance for a while, then started walking.
Thanks to the ride, he reached his destination, Campbell Road, without breaking a sweat.
Golden cobblestones came into view, and ringing them stood gloomy necromancer shops with monster corpses, entrails, and eyeballs laid out on display.
The first time he'd visited, those wares had done nothing but horrify him. On his second visit, plenty of the materials had actually piqued his interest.
The moment he spotted the Vanilla Brand Snowfield Knoll Skeleton, in particular, his eyes had glazed over entirely and he'd stopped dead in his tracks to gawk at it.
Aware of his own behavior, he'd laughed at himself—I really am becoming a proper necromancer now, aren't I?
Resisting that powerful urge to buy, he passed the mouth of Campbell Road and came upon a wide, open plaza.
Necromancers sat on benches gossiping, enjoying teatime, or hunched over contracts, spitting as they hashed out business. All around, burden-carrying skeletons and Skeleton Horses plied their way through the crowd.
Simon was just thinking he might as well take a breather here too—
Oh.
By the fountain stood a girl in a Kizen uniform. Just then, her skirt swishing, she turned to look back at him as well.
Light-violet hair spilling down past her chest, big round eyes. A faintly visible, endearing little fang, and the small bat wings growing from her back.
"Simon—!"
She waved, beaming like sunlight. Her wings shot straight up with delight as she bounced in place, doing her best to announce her presence—and a smile spread across Simon's face too.
"Cami!"
Two months apart made her several times more welcome than ever.
He was about to run straight to her when he noticed the enormous man in black standing beside her.
Who's that?
Before the question could even finish forming, the man's body scattered into a swarm of bats and vanished.
Simon froze mid-step—and the swarm immediately came flooding toward him, and within seconds the man reappeared right in front of him.
An overwhelming pressure came crashing down, and Simon's whole body went rigid.
A frame that seemed to defy human proportions—towering bulk, a neck thick as a tree trunk, shoulders broad as a plain. But the body tapered toward the waist, his lower half comparatively slender. He was draped in something like a black cloak.
White eyebrows, a white goatee, crimson eyes, and pointed ears. His fangs were huge and razor-sharp—not even remotely comparable to Camibarez's adorable little ones.
...This man. He's absurdly, terrifyingly strong.
He didn't even need to reach for the Jet-Black. Just his first impression carried a charisma that pressed a person flat into the ground.
Simon quickly bowed his head.
"It's an honor to meet you, sir."
There was really no need to ask who he was. He was with Camibarez, he was a vampire, and a man with power on this scale—there was only one.
The strongest of vampires. The current Vampire Lord.
Dietrich von Ursula.
Hearing Simon's words, the corners of Dietrich's mouth curled upward.
"Prove yourself, human."
"...I'm sorry?"
"Prove your worth!"
The moment Dietrich's eyes flashed, Simon felt a jolt of electricity race down his spine.
He couldn't explain it, but some primal sense of danger fired all at once, and every hair on his body stood on end.
Something enormous was coming—right beside him.
BOOOOOM!
Simon flung himself aside. A force of pure destruction blasted forward, splitting the fountain in two and tearing the marble wall to shreds.
"Daddy!"
Camibarez came rushing over to intervene, but a cage of blood dropped from the sky and locked her body inside.
"Good reaction!"
The Vampire Lord split his lips in a wild grin. Brutal, corded arms emerged from within the black cloak.
"Show me more of yourself!"
The instant his arm swept, a blow that seemed to warp space itself crushed its way across the plaza.
Simon evaded the onslaught as he shouted,
"If you'll forgive me! I can't very well injure someone's father on a first meeting!"
"Hahaha, what's a little wound? That's the maddest thing I've heard in years!"
Granted, his opponent was a monster known by the epithet of the Immortal.
If that was how he wanted to play it—
Gritting his teeth, Simon slammed his left foot down hard on the floor tiles.
Open Gate!
All six of Overlord's blades sprang out. Dietrich didn't even bother to block—he simply straightened his body. The blades struck his cloak and bent backward instead.
"An interesting summon... hmm?"
Simon's body flickered and reappeared at Dietrich's flank. His waist twisting, his leg came sweeping in from a diagonal.
So you've finally bared your fangs!
Not bad at all, for a student.
Dietrich smirked and raised his arm—but instead of the kick, Simon flipped clean over toward Camibarez.
Slicing the blood cage away with Overlord's blades, he pulled her body into his arms.
"S-Simon?"
Dietrich ran his tongue across his lips.
Decent judgment. He's realized the gap in our strength and means to use my daughter as a hostage.
For a powerhouse of Dietrich's caliber, dealing with Simon alone while leaving Camibarez untouched would have been trivial. The moment he moved his arm—
Grab grab.
The two zombies Simon had produced latched onto the cloak on Dietrich's back. Simon spread his palm, then clenched it into a tight fist.
Corpse Explosion!
KRA-KA-KA-KA-BOOOOM!
As the blast erupted behind Dietrich, Simon threw himself to the ground with Camibarez shielded beneath him. Shards of stone kicked up by the explosion pattered down against his back.
"Ah...?"
Camibarez couldn't process everything happening one after another so fast. Her face burned crimson, and her mind went pure white.
Shielding her, Simon glanced back over his shoulder.
And there, naturally, stood Dietrich, without a single scratch on his cloak, as hale as ever.
"Cornered, yet you manage a counterattack of your own."
His fangs gleamed.
"Shielding my daughter wasn't hostage-taking—it was to protect her from the blast, was it."
Dietrich's shoulders shook.
Perhaps only because his expectations had been so low, but this was quite satisfying indeed. He boomed out at full volume,
"Then I grant you the right to stand before me! Raise your head and give your proper name, human!"
Simon answered in a formal stance, as if he'd been waiting for exactly that.
"Simon Polentia, of Kizen."
"Yes! Simon Polentia! Then I shall specially grant you—"
WHAAAM!
Dietrich never got to finish. Camibarez, her hand curled into the shape of a pistol, her eyes brimming with tears, screamed.
"Stop it! Please, just stop! You're embarrassing me in front of Simon! Daddy, you idiot!!"
The remnants of Blood Bullets pattered down. Being immortal, he didn't have so much as a speck of damage—but the father's face looked genuinely wounded.
The tension that had gripped Simon only a moment ago finally dissolved, and he felt the blood rush to his own face.
What did I just do?
He'd temporarily lost his mind. Vampire Lord or not, what kind of lunatic fires Corpse Explosion at a friend's father?!
The instant his eyes met Dietrich's, it was as if some innate battle instinct had simply dragged him along.
"Ahem! My daughter, Camibarez."
At some point, the strongest vampire in the world was standing before a tiny girl, sweating buckets and utterly at a loss.
"I have need of ensuring your protection. I was merely testing whether that human could keep you safe, so think nothing of it."
"I can protect myself!"
Camibarez clenched both fists tight against her chest, eyes blazing.
"And more than anything—what makes you think you have the right to test my friends?!"
It was the first time Simon had ever learned Camibarez could get angry like this.
She'd flown off the handle once in a while, but with a face that was cute to its very core, none of those moments had stuck in his memory. Right now, though, Camibarez was denouncing Dietrich's behavior with everything she had.
While the father and daughter squared off, Simon stole a glance around. The floor tiles were cracked into a mess, and the fountain lay destroyed, water trickling out in streams.
The surrounding necromancers, on the other hand, showed no particular alarm. If anything, delighted at the fresh spectacle, they were crowding around with curious eyes.
"A vampire?"
"Looks seriously strong."
"Isn't that man Dietrich Ursula?"
"Oh, come on! Any strong vampire and people assume it's Dietrich."
Murmur, murmur, murmur.
Somehow, all the attention felt drawn toward him. Camibarez seemed to notice it too—she flushed, then promptly grabbed Simon's uniform sleeve and held on tight.
"I-I'll be going now! I didn't want it, but thank you for the escort! From here on, I'll be staying with my friends!"
She spun on her heel and marched off. Simon walked in the direction she tugged his sleeve, glancing back over his shoulder.
Dietrich was watching with an expression of murderous intensity, holding two fingers up to his own eyes in the universal I'm watching you gesture. Simon bowed his head politely.
"You don't need to bow, Simon! Come on, hurry!"
"Ah—yeah."