◈ Mistaken for a Masked Monster
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Carmilla's Night (4)
"Please... spare me."
Her silver hair was a mess.
Tear tracks ran down her pale cheeks.
"I still have a wish I've yet to fulfill..."
"......"
Carmilla kept sobbing. No sign of stopping.
I stood there watching. Blank.So many thoughts flickering through my head at once.
'Why is she crying?'
The question lasted maybe a second before the answer came.
She must have mistaken me for one of the assassins after her. Thought I was no different from those killers who'd followed us in.
From her perspective, it made perfect sense.
'Fair enough, I suppose.'
Carmilla was one of the last pureblooded vampires on the continent.
Even setting her uncle aside, there was no shortage of factions who wanted to get their hands on her. The dynasty her ancestors had built was already rubble. Whatever walls had once protected her were gone.
She could be targeted anywhere. By anyone.
'She'd been running from assassins for weeks. She must have been at her mental limit.'
Of course.
Not that I wasn't a little thrown off myself.
'I'm a weakling.'
Every single stat locked at grade E. No room for growth. At least within this world, finding someone weaker than me wouldn't be easy.
One finger from Carmilla and my body would be torn apart without ceremony.
'If anyone should be scared here, it should be me!'
She was the lion. I was the mouse.
And here the lion was cowering in fear.
I swallowed my grievance.
'First things first, I need to calm Carmilla down.'
I'd dealt with the assassins who'd followed us in, but more could arrive at any moment. Getting out of here was the priority.
What I needed now was persuasion. I had to get her to drop her guard and come with me.
"Your Highness."
Not difficult.
Not if I could lean on what I knew from the source material and spin one small lie.
"Please, there is no need to be afraid."
Carmilla's shoulders drew inward.
I dropped to one knee in front of her and bowed my head to the floor.
Like a knight swearing fealty to their liege.
"Hic... wh, huh?"
The sudden gesture threw her off completely, a visible question mark appearing above her head.
I kept my face straight and opened my mouth.
"I was sent by the late king."
"The late king? My father...?"
"Yes."
Carmilla's pupils widened.
No hesitation. I pressed on, digging into memory and rolling the words off my tongue as close to right as I could get.
"Leila de Levialan. De Roni Gibliaje."
"......!"
Among all vampires, those of the royal bloodline were known as direct descendants of the Progenitor. A family motto passed down exclusively through the purebloods, generation after generation. The language of the ancient vampires. Words the Progenitor had left behind upon their disappearance a thousand years ago.
The shock on Carmilla's face did not fade.
"Kill, but never without dignity. Endure, but never without pride. That is the meaning, I believe."
"H-how...? You even know the meaning. That, that phrase is supposed to be known only to the royal family..."
"As I said, Your Highness. I was sent by the late king."
I'd only known it from reading the game's lore entries, but that didn't matter.
A lie that can't be disproved is no different from the truth.
"The late king, that is to say, Carmilla-nim's father, when he was still alive. He always sought to prepare for a tragedy like this. I am one of those preparations."
"Preparations...?"
"He entrusted you to me, Your Highness. In the event that something happened to him and the dynasty fell, he asked that I keep Carmilla-nim safe."
"Then the phrase just now..."
"He told it to me himself. He said that if I recited those words, you would believe me."
"......"
Carmilla went still, lost in thought.
Something was surfacing through the chaos.
"......I remember. Father told me. That even in human society, there were retainers loyal to him, hiding. To run, to run far away and find them, and I would be safe... on the day he died, he told me..."
Her voice had been dry. Then, slowly, it grew wet.
The look in her eyes was that of someone who had glimpsed the last light left in the world.
Disheveled silver hair framing her face, she asked quietly.
"Are you... the knight Father spoke of?"
"Yes."
No hesitation.
"From this point on, I will see to your safety, Your Highness."
"Ah..."
A soft exhale, barely audible.
Her red eyes shone through the tears.
She swayed.
"Thank goodness... thank goodness..."
"Oh."
She lurched forward and crumpled. I opened my arms and caught her.
Fwump.
A small frame folding into mine. Her skin was cool.
Even as I eased her down to the floor, she kept murmuring.
"Father, I... I survived... just as you asked..."
"You've done well. Rest a while now."
"Thank you... thank you, thank..."
Her eyes slid slowly shut.
All the tension coiled through her body released at once.
Carmilla lost consciousness.
'She'd reached her limit.'
She'd been running from assassins for weeks on end. There was no way she'd been sleeping properly.
'Her body's a mess, too.'
She'd been shot. She'd been beaten.
Left as-is, the wounds would fester.
Rustle, rustle.
I rummaged through my robe and pulled something out.
Blood drawn from livestock.
'Figured I'd need this. Glad I brought it.'
Click.
I cracked open a blood pack and pressed it to the girl's lips.
Drawn in by the sweet scent of blood, Carmilla drank without waking.
Gulp, gulp. The pack emptied cleanly.
Slowly, the wounds covering her body began to close.
'Good.'
I let her skin knit together while I had the time. In the meantime, I wandered over to where the assassins had set up.
Before long, I found what I was looking for inside a large crate.
"Oh."
A crossbow. Enormous, nearly as big as I was.
The God-Slaying Bow.
A relic of the Kingdom of Blandir.
Used in the execution of pureblooded vampires, or so I'd heard. Not that it had to be a vampire on the receiving end. The raw power of the thing was absurd regardless.
"Nice."
What a find.
I tapped it lightly with a finger.
Ding!
[Evil God's Robe]
-Storing item 'God-Slaying Bow.'
-Items stored: 31/100
This crossbow was mine now.
Meaning I could do with it as I liked.
'They never imagined it would be taken from them.'
Understandable, really. Who would have expected elite assassins to fail against one exhausted princess? Especially when they'd been handed the most broken, overpowered weapon ever built for killing vampires.
'Well... that's all because I barged in, but still.'
Same as in the original story. If the player didn't intervene in this event, Carmilla got executed in these very sewers.
"Only one stake."
A stake.
The bolt fired from the God-Slaying Bow.
'One for the execution, one spare. That's how many they brought.'
Then again, you couldn't exactly carry these around casually. A single stake apparently took a veteran blacksmith two hundred years to forge.
My mouth watered.
'Impressive, though.'
I'd watched it firsthand not long ago. When dealing with the assassins, all I'd had was a small fragment, already shattered to pieces from the force of the discharge. A broken, useless shard.
Even so, to vampires it was the same as pure poison.
'The Sanctum would love to get their hands on this.'
At minimum, it had to be top-tier among purification and exorcism-class weapons.
A hum slipped out without my noticing.
I stored the stake in my inventory as well.
'Saved Carmilla, got the God-Slaying Bow and a stake...'
A good haul.
I'd cleaned the place out thoroughly. Time to head back to the inn.
Carefully, I lifted the soundly sleeping Carmilla into my arms.
"Ngh..."
Was it because my Strength was grade E?
Even light as she was, my arms ached. Somehow more serious-faced than when I'd deflected the God-Slaying Bow. More than when I'd fought off the assassins.
"Phew."
A quiet breath.
I walked out of the sewers.
***
A few days passed after returning to the inn.
Nothing eventful happened in that brief stretch.
Carmilla slept on, still recovering. Sitting beside her, I passed the time watching over her.
'No need to worry about being tracked for a while.'
I'd used bugs on the way back to leave no trail. Nothing to follow.
So I'd bought us time.
Fighting the vampire faction was going to require preparation.
'In the end, the key to all of it is Carmilla.'
She needed to grow stronger. Strong enough to awaken the power of a pureblood and rebuild a fallen dynasty.
'I'd rather skip the end of the world, if it's all the same.'
Five days passed like that.
Carmilla came to on the fifth day exactly.
"Mm, mmm..."
Red eyes fluttered open in a haze.
Probably the steady supply of blood packs I'd been feeding her while she slept.
She'd healed completely. Not a scratch left.
"You're awake."
"......huh?"
Her eyes met mine and she froze.
A visible loading wheel spinning somewhere behind her eyes.
After a moment the processing finished. She sat bolt upright.
"Ah...!"
Then she wiped a very conspicuous trail of drool on her sleeve.
Cheeks flushed red with embarrassment, she asked in a sleep-thick voice.
"W-where is this...?"
"The inn. I planned to stay until you'd made a full recovery."
"You moved me here yourself...?"
"That's right."
A warm answer.
She was in a vulnerable state, psychologically speaking.
"The wounds are all gone, too. I was shot with an arrow and beaten badly, it was a complete mess..."
"I kept supplying you with blood. I'd brought plenty of blood packs."
"I see."
Carmilla nodded.
"Thank you... for saving me. I don't know how I could ever repay this debt."
"Please, don't say that. I was only carrying out what the late king entrusted to me."
"Truly a devoted knight. Though your race is human... how did you come to serve him?"
"He helped me once, long ago."
"I see."
A few formal exchanges were enough to smooth over the awkward silence.
The haze cleared from her eyes at last.
"......?"
Something was off. She looked down at herself.
Arms, legs, the hem of her clothes. Her gaze moved here and there.
Then she flinched.
Her shoulders began to tremble. Not a word.
"......Carmilla-nim?"
What's wrong? Why is she suddenly like this.
Something with her body? Wounds that hadn't closed?
"What's the matter?"
"......"
"You don't look well."
"......Th, that is..."
She worked her lips soundlessly for a long moment before a voice finally came out.
Her face was flushed completely red. Steam threatening to vent from the top of her head at any moment.
"My clothes have been changed, and underneath, even my undergarments have been removed, and my body feels clean, like someone washed me..."
"......"
"Was that... you...?"
"......"
"Don't tell me...?"
"......"
Well.
Look.
It couldn't be helped.
The sewer smell had soaked through her clothes, the filthy water had gotten into everything, and leaving it like that would have been a risk for infection...
"......That is what happened."
"......"
Past red now, edging toward full combustion.
I quietly looked away.