The Sealed Vampire
I opened the carriage door after crossing mountains and seas and stepped onto the dirt floor with my dress shoes. Elina followed silently behind me, clutching a bundle of cotton wool. Dozens of large cargo wagons had just come to a halt, their tarps being peeled back. I was heading toward the cargo area to inspect the merchandise myself when it happened.
“Well, now. The first distinguished guest arrives before the seawater from crossing the continent has even dried.”
The foreign merchant leader, wrapped in camel hide, approached with a hearty laugh. His back was ramrod straight, utterly free of servility. It was the relaxed poise of a man who had survived every kind of storm the business world could throw at him.
“A person of keen discernment deserves the proper courtesy. We were just about to begin the display, so allow me to present the deepest treasure of my caravan first.”
At his gesture the laborers yanked the massive cover off the wagon. Inside was a cacophony of heterogeneous beastmen and hulking giants growling like animals behind iron bars. Amid the noise, my gaze locked onto an old iron cage shoved into the corner.
The woman inside had her face buried against her knees, dozing fitfully. Between strands of translucent white hair that seemed to repel sunlight, I caught the sharp point of an ear and a jawline keen enough to cut. Her skin was bloodless and pale as a corpse, yet her tightly closed lips were the vivid red of freshly drawn blood. A beauty so lethal it raised gooseflesh.
I scanned the crude wooden nameplate dangling from the cage.
Age — Unknown
Gender — Female
Race — Vampire
Talent — No damage from exposure to sunlight
The instant I read it, my little sister’s excited voice from my previous life slammed into my ears.
“Oppa! Jackpot, total jackpot!”
It was the night I was stuffing a custom-tailored suit into my travel bag for an overseas business trip. She trailed after me, shoving her tablet screen in my face.
“I added a vampire character this time. Her looks are actually insane! White hair like melted moonlight, skin pale as a corpse, but those lips are blood-red. Peak decadent beauty!”
“Move. I need to close the bag.”
With my quick shutdown, she continued with a pout. “The readers are losing their minds asking when she’ll wake up! The comment section is about to explode—they’re demanding the scene where she bites the male lead’s neck, kisses him, and drinks his blood!”
The readers’ frenzy was deafening. Yet my sister soon clutched her head with a miserable expression.
“But there’s a problem. I took away all her weaknesses and piled on every advantage, and now I’ve created a monster that could destroy the world by herself. What do I do?”
“Balance-breaking characters get scrapped immediately.”
“Ah, right! Then let’s drive a silver stake through her heart. Her ability is so broken it won’t kill her outright. The setting will be that she falls into permanent sleep to suppress the stake’s energy and stays sealed that way!”
My sister’s irresponsible setting notes had been perfectly recreated on the wagon in front of me.
My gaze slid to the faint glimpse of cleavage between the woman’s ragged cloths and the blunt end of the silver stake buried deep in her heart. A body forcibly shut down for survival, every drop of its vast mana spent simply suppressing the poison of that stake.
“Her complexion is completely dead. It wouldn’t be strange if she stopped breathing at any moment.”
A precise jab. The merchant, far from flustered, answered with an affable smile.
“Please consider it not a corpse but the preservation of eternal beauty. She has always been this pale, so it isn’t a symptom to worry about—it’s simply the natural skin tone of that noble race.”
A veteran’s skill at covering defects with wordplay.
“How much?”
“One thousand gold coins. This is the first time I’ve seen this race in my life. A historically unique item, so there’s no room to offer a discount.”
A stubborn, confident price. It far exceeded the highest bids at the imperial auction house. If I bought her, the moment the silver stake was pulled free there was no guarantee the first prey of the rampaging monster wouldn’t be me. A mad gamble with my life on the line.
My mouth went dry. The nerves in my fingertips stood on edge. Perfect monopoly of information that no one else possessed. The distinctive tension that crawls up the spine when you step onto a razor’s edge. Before I knew it, I had grown used to this unpleasant yet electrifying tightrope walk.
If I could make that vampire kneel completely at my feet, she would become the firepower capable of reducing cities to ash and the thickest shield to guard my back. One thousand gold coins was laughably cheap compared to that value.
“I’ll buy her.”
“As expected, I recognized a true distinguished guest.”
“I’ll pay at my lodgings. Move her there immediately—”
The words had barely left my mouth when—
Skreeeech—!
A massive four-wheeled carriage scraped across the dirt and blocked the slave market entrance. The enormous eagle emblem carved into its ebony door was the symbol of the Carlos ducal house, which swept up any rare item without regard for price.
An old man in a rigidly starched tailcoat descended, leaning on a cane. The ducal family’s chief butler.
“Judging by your travel-worn appearance, you’ve crossed distant seas. I was looking for ornaments to decorate His Excellency’s banquet hall. I hope there are interesting pieces.”
With an arrogant lift of his chin, the merchant bowed deeply and made way. The butler scanned the wagons, then pointed his cane at three slaves—the muscular giant and the nimble beastmen.
“What is their state of health?”
“They could tear monsters apart even if you rolled them across the sand.”
“Good. I’ll take them.”
An instant transaction with no haggling. Then the butler’s gaze moved to the corner where the vampire slept. He looked back and forth between her and the nameplate.
“Hmm. A truly rare race. How much for that one?”
The merchant was about to answer with booming confidence when I cut in.
“That one has already been claimed by me.”
The butler stopped and looked me up and down.
“Until the gold is in the chest, the deal is not final. When two buyers appear, it is only natural for merchants to give it to the one who offers greater value.”
His cane tapped the dirt. “What is her price?”
“That esteemed body is one thousand gold coins…”
“I will give eleven hundred.”
An overwhelming display of wealth that raised the price in a single breath. The corner of the merchant’s mouth twitched. For a merchant this was the best possible situation—the pot had grown larger.
“Twelve hundred,” I countered immediately.
The butler’s brows furrowed a fraction. There was no reason to bleed the treasury in an unnecessary bidding war. I spoke to him in a calm, measured tone.
“You asked about her health earlier. Do you know why only she is asleep?”
At my pointed revelation the butler’s frown deepened sharply.
“Look at her chest. There is a silver stake embedded. She is a corpse with only a thread of life remaining—one where it would not be strange if she stopped breathing at any moment.”
The butler glared at the merchant with a piercing gaze.
“Is what this man says true?”
Faced with the butler’s fierce questioning, the merchant pointed at the vampire’s chest with a genial smile.
“Isn’t it simply a difference in perspective? It is merely a very small control device to manage that ferocious energy. Once you reach His Excellency’s residence you can simply pull it out.”
A skilled tongue that dismissed a fatal flaw as a minor component. I kicked up a puff of dirt and interjected.
“Simply pull it out, you say.”
Both the butler and the merchant turned to me at once.
“A fantasy species that went extinct hundreds of years ago. No one in this era knows the ecology of vampires.”
I gestured with my chin toward the pale woman inside the cage.
“If the silver stake is left as it is, when will her body crumble and collapse? Conversely, if the stake is pulled out in the middle of the mansion, will she rot away as a corpse, or will she rampage while scattering an unidentified plague?”
“……”
“Is there anyone here who knows whether that stake is a lifeline or the seed of catastrophe?”
Under the logical barrage the merchant’s mouth fell open. He had been struck squarely in an unknown domain even he could not guarantee. I shifted my gaze to the pin on the butler’s necktie.
“The chief butler who only accepts the finest goods plans to push an unidentified object that could explode at any moment into His Excellency’s most secret collection vault.”
The butler’s brows drew together sharply. The worst-case scenario had clearly flashed through his mind: the banquet-hall carpet stained with blood from the rampage of a product he had purchased, or priceless treasures worth tens of thousands of gold contaminated by an unknown plague.
His grip on the cane tightened until the blood drained from his knuckles. The chief butler’s thorough risk-management instinct had activated, and he chose realistic avoidance.
“Credibility.”
His voice was heavy and sunken.
“In the future, when His Excellency the Duke of Carlos makes purchases, I hope there will be no more occasions where flaws are hidden behind a shallow tongue.”
The merchant bowed his head, acknowledging his mistake. The butler clicked his tongue and withdrew his cane.
“I nearly poured His Excellency’s precious gold into a corpse.”
He turned to me.
“On behalf of the ducal house, I thank you for the service of filtering out the defective product.”
The butler gathered the slaves he had already bought and boarded the carriage without a backward glance. Just as he was about to close the door, he fixed his eyes on me once more.
“If it is such a dangerous commodity, why do you wish to purchase it?”
A sharp interrogation. I kept my hand in my pocket and answered calmly.
“It is an area that noble lords guaranteed a tomorrow can never understand.”
“What?”
“In this business, it is a life where it would not be strange for your neck to fly off tomorrow. Unlike you who seek completely flawless jewels, we take things that might explode at any moment and suck out every drop of sweetness until the very brink of detonation.”
The extreme survival method of those who have no tomorrow. The butler’s previously furrowed brow relaxed naturally.
“An insatiable greed not fit for association.”
The massive four-wheeled carriage kicked up a cloud of dust and vanished completely from sight. The competitive risk had been perfectly eliminated.
The merchant wiped the dull beads of sweat from his forehead, cleared his throat, and once again put on his affable smile.
“Rather, I must express my gratitude. The transaction will be at the twelve hundred gold you first offered…”
“One thousand.”
The merchant’s hearty eyes narrowed instantly.
“The price you just uttered is still vividly lingering in the surrounding air.”
“Considering you played word games with a customer of high discernment, this is an exceedingly generous measure. If you have complaints, you may end up keeping something that could explode at any moment in your cargo hold for the rest of your life.”
A statement that completely blocked any retreat. The merchant’s eyes flicked back and forth between the silver stake in the vampire’s chest and my own gaze. He could not wander the continent carrying a detonator he himself could not control.
After a swift cost-benefit calculation, the merchant clapped his hands together and burst into laughter.
“Hahaha! Today I have met the sharpest hunter in the empire. Very well! For the overwhelming discernment that saw through the flaw at a glance, I will gladly deduct two hundred gold coins.”
A clean acceptance without the slightest trace of regret—the polished surrender of a seasoned great merchant.
“I will move at once so that we may conclude the transaction.”