[V11C32] The Vampire Loves to Talk
Translated by Jodas 11: Envoy of the AbyssJill could concentrate his mana to create invisible hands, boards, and the like. Perhaps it was something akin to the defensive barriers in human magecraft. But Jill’s could do much, much more.
While Jill called them ‘hands’ for convenience, they could take any form, even invisible swords or spears. However, Jill was quite fond of the more hand-shaped form, especially considering the versatility it offered him.
He intended to use those invisible hands to grab that man they called Henrik by the neck, but it just wasn’t working out for him. Each time he got close, the man would just dodge it. Plus, whenever he left the tiniest opening, the man would be right there with his blade.
(Damn, the visible blood blades are just making things worse… They’re making it easier for him to work out where the invisible hands are.)
By combining visible and invisible attacks together, he could overwhelm his opponent, forcing him to divide his attention… Or, at least, that had been the plan. Instead, said opponent was using the gaps between the visible blood blades to calculate the positions of the invisible hands. And he was doing it almost unconsciously.
Each thought Jill had — ‘If I put a visible blade here, then how about I attack from this direction with an invisible hand!’ — was read like an open book.
Once again, Henrik closed the distance.
Jill drifted back and avoided the slash, making an invisible platform to keep himself up out of the sword’s reach.
Within seconds, rocks were flying at him. The other humans earlier threw rocks as well, but the speed of these were on a whole different level.
(I see… This human is a lot like ol’ Gramps.)
Gramps — the Primordial Beast — was strong in a very simple way. Blessed with physical prowess and battle instincts, he just had a knack for combat.
If one only compared their power as Monsters, there wasn’t much of a difference between Jill and the Primordial Beast. The difference was in their obsessions. That beast was solely obsessed with overpowering human talents and tactics. In doing so, he honed his battle senses.
Jill had an impeccable sense for beauty, but his battle senses were rather unrefined.
The Primordial Beast had flawless battle senses, but his sense of beauty was sorely lacking.
So that was that. At the moment, Jill was already growing tired of this battle. It just wasn’t any fun.
(But this little human here is like the personification of battle instincts. He could probably keep fighting like this for hours… or days…)
Imagining this battle going on forever, Jill looked to the sky and sighed.
“Humans sure love war, don’t they… What’s so fun about it?”
“No, I don’t particularly like it. It’s not fun at all.”
Henrik responded quizzically to his careless muttering.
Frankly, he had assumed he was the type who preferred to stay silent and focus on the battle, so Jill was secretly excited. “Oh?” Jill loved talking with humans.
“You’re quite good for a human. Could you perhaps be from a famous lineage? Introduce yourself, why don’t you?”
“I am Henrik Blanke, Margrave of Warmberg.”
“Oh, I know that one! My thralls told me all kinds of heroic tales! ‘A storm of blood rages on the Kalnard Plains. The hero, the War Wolf of Warmberg smashes through enemy lines to save the country!’”
“That would be my grandfather. Now we’re nothing more than backwater lords in the middle of nowhere…”
Henrik addressed Jill with tact and humility, but he lacked the kind of commanding presence Jill expected. Despite his youth, he gave the impression of a raggedy old dog.
And yet…
Even as they talked, the man continued to dodge every invisible hand.
Jill wanted to focus more on the conversation, so he dispelled the invisible hands, leaving only the platform he was standing on. Now, would this little human entertain his desire to chat?
Henrik surely noticed that the invisible hands had disappeared. Regardless, he kept his guard up and his sword at the ready as he asked:
“…I have a question I’d like to ask. Is your King that one with the white hair and black robes?”
“Our King? Why yes, that is indeed the King of Monsters.”
“And to what end is the King of Monsters doing all of this? If you are capable of conversation, surely we might consider putting our efforts towards diplomacy instead…”
Jill cackled, surprised and amused by Henrik’s words.
This was why he found humans so intriguing.
“Diplomacy! Diplomacy! What a wonderful, and oh so human, word that is!”
“Hah…”
“Unfortunately for you, I doubt you would accept our King’s wishes.”
“I had a feeling that would be the case. Well, that happens a lot even when both sides are humans, so…”
Henrik was disappointed, but not surprised.
He clearly wasn’t the type to put on airs. His feelings of ‘Well, it is what it is’ shone through clearly on his face.
“I’ve heard that different Monsters have different obsessions. Are your desires aligned with the King of Monsters?”
Jill felt that he needed to choose his words carefully.
Just as this human said, each Monster showed their obsession towards humans in completely different ways. That very fact is what made it so difficult for Monsters to rally together under a common cause the way humans could.
Even now, they weren’t truly aligned. Rather, the promise that they might be able to leave the Crystal territory and cross the Western Wall simply appealed to all those individual motivations at once.
Indeed, the Monsters had not united at all when they moved to take over the Wedge Tower. They were not an army, and this was not an invasion. They simply moved to the same place at the same time. Nothing more.
“You see, all I want to do is suck human blood and admire their artwork. Honestly, the King’s obsessions don’t interest me one bit. However…”
A sense of longing naturally dripped into his next words.
“I still think that maybe… it might be nice if the King’s wish was granted.”
Jill wanted to see where the King of Monsters’ wishes led them.
Even if it ended in tragedy or misery.
“A human like you wouldn’t understand, would you? Could you possibly comprehend just what death means to us long-lived Monsters?”
“No. So what does it mean to you?”
Henrik echoed his question back at him with such naïve sincerity Jill couldn’t help but laugh. This man was nothing if not honest.
Jill casually shrugged.
“I don’t know either. Nobody knows.”
“……”
Henrik looked unsatisfied with his answer, but it really was the best answer Jill could come up with.
The longer he lived, the more the thought haunted him.
—When would he die? Would it be tomorrow? Or would he live for a hundred, a thousand years more? How would he change from now to the end of his long, long life? Is the death that awaits him at the end of that life a gentle rest, or is it despair?
With all that he’d lived, he still did not know. He could not know.
“That’s why our King has suffered so much. This has become its obsession.”
Little by little, the memories of lost kin fade away. Where had they gone? Where would they go?
But then, the King of Monsters learned something. It learned of a way to confront death that the humans had created.
“Humans build graves and pray to God, and in doing so attain peace beyond death. To do that, they need the persuasiveness to truly believe in that peace… Something persuasive enough to convince them to face death head on. Our King wishes to grant that same privilege to us.”
With Wren pulling him by the arm, Hütter shouted as he ran.
“Oh~ no~! Whatever shall I do~? Help me~~~ Lord~~ Jill!”
Wren, who he had instructed to drag him along, was rather unimpressed.
“Hey, do you really need to do all that?”
“Look, whenever you’re doing an act, always lay it on as thick as you can.”
The more he did to create the impression that he hadn’t betrayed Jill and that his students had forcibly dragged him away, the easier things would be if he ever happened to run across this Vampire again.
Once they’d moved far enough away, Tia and Sevil landed nearby.
Tia must have overheard his conversation with Wren, as she started by telling him:
“Did you know? Mr. Hütter was using chantless illusion magic to pretend to be that Vampire’s ally.”
“Really!? You can do that!?”
Wren asked in shock, to which Hütter replied by crossing his arms and averting his gaze.
“That’s right. Thanks to that I was able to make my way this far.”
Tia and Wren both gaped at him in honest amazement.
Sevil, on the other hand, raised her eyebrows.
“Hm? I thought you said your illusion magic didn’t work on Monsters, Mr. Hütter? That Vampire was a reasonably powerful Greater type too, was he not?”
“Well you see… Explaining that would mean getting real deep in the weeds about my secret research, and now’s not really the best time to talk about that… right?”
‘Was there such a thing as secret research in the world of mages? There had to be, right?’ Hütter convinced himself quickly.
As it happened, Hütter’s vague non-answer was enough to convince Wren that he had a way to deceive Greater Monsters.
“That’s awesome, Mr. Hütter! If illusions work on Greater Monsters, that opens up all kinds of strategies…”
“Hold your horses! There’s a limit to this, you know. I can’t just go using it all willy-nilly!”
“Piyo? Then why did you come here, Mr. Hütter?”
‘You’re telling me. Why did I come here?’ Hütter thought.
His plan had been just to hightail it out of here. His luck had finally run out when he got caught by that nosy Vampire… No, wait, he had a feeling that his luck had already run out back when he got caught by the Black Lion Emperor.
“Oh, I get it. You were that worried about us, were you?”
Hütter’s first instinct was to nod along with Sevil’s words and go “Yeah, that’s it. Yep. Totally. Something like that.” But then he stopped and thought about it.
That really was it. She was exactly right. Hütter actually was worried about them.
“Yeah, that’s right. Once I saw Tia, I had a feeling all three of you had to be here. It nearly gave me a heart attack, you know! What the hell are you guys doing here!? Weren’t the Apprentices supposed to all stay behind where it was safe!?”
Tia’s expression wilted. “He’s mad at us.”
Wren seemed to understand. “Well yeah, of course he’d be mad.”
Sevil, however, beamed with pride. Have some self awareness, Princess!
“Hah… I swear, you guys. I bet you were worried about Finn and wanted to do something to help him, weren’t you?”
“Indeed, that is precisely correct.”
When Sevil nodded to Hütter’s question, Tia felt the need to interject.
“Um, Mr. Hütter… Wren and Sevil, you need to hear this too. Finn is…”