122 Camilla

Since she’d been brazenly hurling insults, Ian personally drove a stake into Camilla’s other thigh as well. Once enough manners had been drilled into her, Camilla bowed her head and her lips trembled.

"W-We can reproduce, but we don't have sexual desire, so giving birth like humans is basically impossible.... Even if we did give birth, a vampire still wouldn't be born...."

"Then?"

"A ghoul. Only after being killed by a vampire and then slowly evolving can one become a vampire...."

"Hmm."

Ian mulled over her words, idly swinging his leg.

That ghouls could become vampires was already known. It was famous enough that there was no way he wouldn't know it. But he hadn't expected that to be the only method. He had thought there must be something else, but to think it was all just evolution. If Darwin had heard that, wouldn't he have been delighted?

"Then what's your origin? In modern terms, a progenitor? Does such an entity even exist?"

"...Báthory Erzsébet, Gilles de Rais, and Vlad III. Those three are basically the progenitors."

"Those are the famous vampires who actually existed. But I remember those three all lived in different eras."...