Chapter 154
‘On the same side? What does that mean?’
Watching through the mosquito servant’s eyes, I was bewildered.
Soon, the man bound by the shadow hands spoke while looking at Carmilla.
“Those red eyes and that overwhelming shadow power…! You must be the True Ancestor, surely!”
Carmilla calmly shook her head and corrected him.
“This girl is merely a servant of the True Ancestor.”
“A servant…? Someone as strong and beautiful as you is a servant…?”
The man’s expression seemed to freeze for a moment, then brightened as if someone had flipped a switch.
“Wow……!”
The man’s wide-open eyes were filled with awe.
He looked like a fan who had run into their favorite idol on the street.
“I had my suspicions from the name ‘True Ancestor,’ but a truly great one has actually come!”
‘……What? Why is he so excited.’
Was he not right in the head?
I couldn’t understand why he was so happy when his life was in danger.
In any case, if we kept talking out here, there was a risk that nearby residents or other hunters would hear us.
I gave Carmilla instructions telepathically.
‘Carmilla. First, cover his mouth.’
- Understood!
When Carmilla crooked a finger, a shadow hand clamped over the man’s mouth.
“Mmph?!”
‘Let us go inside the house.’
Carmilla carried the man to the front door while keeping him bound in shadows.
She briefly freed one of his hands to enter the door-lock password, so he obediently entered the numbers himself and opened the door for us.
The inside of the mansion was exactly what one would expect from an upscale wealthy home.
Expensive furniture and decorations filled the spacious living room, but thick blackout curtains had been drawn tightly across every window.
Carmilla sat the man on the living-room sofa, then bound him in shadows again.
‘Now, release his mouth.’
The instant the shadow pulled away from his mouth, the man poured out an explanation as if he had been waiting for it.
“As I said, this is a misunderstanding. I am not human, but a vampire!”
No sooner had he finished speaking than his face began to contort.
With a series of cracking sounds, his entire body shrank as well.
‘Oh?’
The neat-looking man in his thirties vanished in an instant.
In his place appeared a young female vampire with slightly wavy, long orange hair cascading down her back.
“Hehe….”
‘Huh? She was a woman?’
Had she not merely been cross-dressing, but actually transformed her appearance entirely?
Even after revealing her true form, the woman grew more desperate when Carmilla did not release her bonds.
“Ah, I’m not a mongrel-blood vampire or a slave. I’m a remnant-blood vampire! You mustn’t eat me!”
‘……Remnant blood?’
“It’s true! You may check my blood if you like!”
Remnant blood, huh.
It was an unfamiliar term I was hearing for the first time.
But there was no way I could let on that I did not know the hierarchy of vampires.
‘I’ll have to lead her into revealing it.’
Without showing that I was unfamiliar with it, I telepathically relayed my words to Carmilla and had her pass them on.
“From this point on, I shall convey my master’s words. You would do well to behave respectfully.”
“Gasp…! Y-yes, understood!”
The woman looked extremely tense.
“I shall verify that you truly are remnant blood. Recite the hierarchy of blood.”
When Carmilla relayed my words exactly, she swallowed hard and answered.
“T-true blood. Pure blood. Remnant blood. Mongrel blood. And slaves.”
“Hmm…. Explain it in more detail.”
“True blood refers to the five most exalted beings, while pure blood refers to those who have received blood directly from them……!”
The woman continued in a trembling voice.
“Those with remnant blood like me are descended from diluted pure blood. Mongrel blood refers to lowly humans who became vampires, while slaves are monstrous slaves with almost no reason!”
‘True blood, pure blood, remnant blood, mongrel blood, slaves.’
As I was organizing the hierarchy in my head, a memory from long ago suddenly came to mind.
‘Oh, right!’
Back when Katarina rescued the Ice Emperor and captured a vampire at the Seollim-dong Gate.
The system window had clearly identified him as [Pure-Blood Vampire Rakesis].
‘That guy must have been a pretty high-ranking vampire after all…….’
No wonder he had been incredibly strong and seemed to know something from the way he spoke to Katarina.
It was because he was pure blood.
I continued pretending to test her as I asked another question.
“And what else do you know? Tell me what knowledge one ought to possess as remnant blood.”
“Ah……. Are you perhaps referring to ‘Lethe’?”
‘Lethe?’
Another unfamiliar term had appeared.
I naturally began leading her again.
“Yes. That is precisely what I mean. Tell me about it.”
“Lethe… in other words, oblivion. Naturally, even you know this, True Ancestor, but when vampires cross through a gate, do they not lose their memories?”
According to the woman’s explanation, vampires lost most of their memories of the past when they crossed a gate and came to Earth.
They called this ‘Lethe’ in vampire terminology.
However, the higher the rank of their blood, the less memory they lost.
She said that, by the remnant-blood level, they retained enough essential information—such as basic knowledge of their species and important objectives they were required to fulfill—to cross over with it more or less intact.
Mongrel-blood vampires and slaves crossed over in a state nearly akin to instinct, but pure-blood vampires retained quite a lot of their memories of their original world.
‘Ah…. So that’s why most vampires were kind of stupid, like monsters?’
It felt as though one question after another was being answered.
“Above all, there is something we remnant-blood vampires must remember even after experiencing Lethe.”
‘Something they must remember?’
“That one day, a great being will descend upon this land!”
“……”
“So when I heard word of the True Ancestor, I thought the time had finally come!”
The woman spoke proudly, as if she had been waiting to say it.
‘……Did she think I was that great being?’
It was absurd, but at least I thought I understood why she had considered me an ally.
But at that moment.
The woman suddenly made an unexpected remark.
“Oh, right. True Ancestor, I’ve been following the climber community too!”
Huh?
The community?
"Of course, since I’m not human, I can’t access the climber community directly. So I’ve been using a human as a dedicated source of news about you, True Ancestor!"
The woman continued excitedly.
“I’ve kept up with every post and comment you’ve made, as well as all your known exploits, you know? I saw when you found the human trapped in the gate, when you made the Saint submit, and so on— you’re just so, so amazing!”
“Hmm. I see…?”
“I-I even had a human write a few praise posts for you…. Hehe, hehe….”
The female vampire raised her eyes and smiled obsequiously.
She had followed all my posts and comments, and even written praise posts.
‘……A True Ancestor faction?’
No, this was my first time hearing of a True Ancestor-faction vampire.
In any case, thanks to that, she already knew that my servants were going around hunting other vampires, and had even received the ‘mongrel vampire’ remark I posted to the community today in real time.
Yet the woman did not find any of that strange in the slightest.
“As expected, you truly are a great true-blood vampire, True Ancestor!”
The woman spoke with sparkling eyes.
“Of course the mongrel-blood vampires and slaves flooding Earth right now are mongrel vampires! I was a little surprised that you openly declared it even to humans, but I thought, ‘You must have your reasons.’”
‘Holy crap. I just made that up, but there really were mongrel-blood vampires?’
I had coined it as a derogatory term for knockoffs, but it had coincidentally overlapped perfectly with the actual vampire hierarchy.
So she seemed to take it as though I had simply stated an obvious truth.
Now that I had sorted out a certain amount of information, it was time to return to the main point.
“Then what was with that man’s appearance earlier?”
“Ah… that….”
She told me the whole story.
Apparently, this mansion’s original owner and guild leader had been someone else.
On the surface, he had gone around posing as an upstanding high-ranking hunter and guild representative, but he was a serial sex offender who drugged women at clubs and other places before assaulting them.
That guild leader had used money and status to cover up all manner of wrongdoing, but one night, he tried to do something similar to this female vampire.
The result? Naturally, he ended up being eaten instead.
The woman had devoured the guild leader who tried to lay hands on her, then taken over his appearance and identity and pretended to be the guild leader for several months.
“Hmm……. Have you eaten any more humans since then?”
The woman cheerfully replied.
“Yeees, of course! When I looked through his connections, I found several similar humans. So I picked out the ones I liked and ate them!”
“What sort of people did you eat?”
“Apparently, this guy had a lot of criminal connections? Drug-related sex offenders, murderers, violent criminals, con artists. I ate people like that!”
“Hmm. Did you eat only evildoers?”
“That’s right. I’m a little picky about my food. Bad humans have delicious blood, so I only eat people like that, hehe.”
Her attitude was so casual that she seemed to be talking about her personal food preferences.
I furrowed my brow as I listened.
‘Ugh. She’s not exactly normal, either.’
Everything this woman had said so far was true, according to [Emotion Eye].
Looking only at the result, she was indeed eating only bad people.
But that was not because she was a particularly moral vampire; it was simply her taste.
If her palate had found the blood of good people delicious instead, she would have eaten only those people.
‘Hmm…… what should I do with her?’