The question hung in the air for a while.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, he replied-
"Yes i am." he gently positioned the bag well on his shoulder, "Foolish to think i can survive on these slimes alone, i need to figure out a way to sell them,and then further expand my reach."
"So... you’re leaving the forest?" The girl asked again.
Lucious paused, taking a second to scan the expression on the girl’s face.
And from what he could see, if he didn;t know better, behind those eyes lay a lot of murderous intent.
Slowly, he backed away,
"Yeah. more or less."
Not even a few seconds after he responded, the girl launched forward, pinning him to the ground, with her hands around his neck.
Due to his currently high endurance, he barely felt the pain as his back slammed against the ground, but still, he could feel the girl choking the life out of him as she sat right on top of him.
He slowly shifted his crimson gaze down to her face. Her expression, usually twisted in feral aggression or playful mocking, was completely shattered. Hot tears cut clean tracks through the thick layers of smeared dirt and mud on her cheeks.
They fell from her chin in heavy drops, splashing warmly against his pale face.
’Why is she crying?’ he wondered in his head, keeping his body perfectly relaxed so as not to trigger her predatory instincts. ’She is the one currently attacking me.’
"You cannot leave," she choked out, her raspy voice breaking into a pathetic, desperate sob.
Her grip tightened, her dirty knuckles turning white, but her hands were trembling violently against his skin. She was not trying to snap his neck. She was desperately trying to hold him in place.
Lucius did not struggle. His predatory calmness completely overwrote any human panic he might have felt, allowing him to analyze the situation with cold clarity.
The murderous intent he thought he had seen in her eyes earlier was nothing but a fragile mask for profound, agonizing desperation.
"They kill everything," she wept, her voice cracking as she lowered her head. Her dirty red hair spilled forward, brushing against his neck and collarbone.
"All the beasts I used to play with. The big wolves, the shadow cats, the river spirits. The city humans come into my home with their shiny metal armor and their loud magic, and they slaughter them all. They take their cores and their pelts, and they leave their bodies to rot in the mud."
Lucius listened to her muffled sobs. His enhanced vampire senses picked up the erratic, frantic beating of her heart, echoing loudly in the quiet clearing.
"And what about you?" Lucius asked calmly, his voice slightly raspy from the physical pressure on his throat.
She lifted her head, sniffing loudly, her feral eyes red and swollen. "They hunt me too. Or they run away screaming. They look at my dirt, they smell my skin, and they treat me like a plague. They shoot arrows at me just for standing near the water. But you..."
She sniffled again, looking down at him with a terrifying, raw vulnerability.
"You are the very first human to ever sit down and just speak to me. You asked for my name. You did not run."
The heavy, suffocating weight of her loneliness washed over him. Lucius stared at the weeping feral girl, realizing they were not so different after all.
The Kingdom of Eldia had taken one look at his unknown class and immediately discarded him like trash, treating him as a monster to be locked in a dark dungeon to die.
The city humans she feared so deeply had done the exact same thing to her out here in the wild.
Slowly, deliberately showing he was not a threat, Lucius raised his hands from the wet mud. He did not reach for his wooden weapon, nor did he try to pry her fingers from his neck.
Instead, he placed his palms gently against her trembling arms.
"I am not a human," Lucius corrected her quietly, his crimson eyes glowing faintly in the dim light of the forest. "I told you earlier. I am a creature called a vampire."
The girl blinked, her tears pausing for a fraction of a second. The confusion caused her to loosen her grip on his throat just enough for him to take a full, unobstructed breath.
"I need to leave this forest," Lucius continued, his voice steady, carrying a quiet authority. "This place is a cage, and surviving on raw slimes is no way to live. But I understand what you are going through. The humans in that city discarded me too."
He reached up with one hand, his fingers brushing past her wild hair, and used his thumb to gently wipe a fresh tear from her muddy cheek.
She leaned into the touch instinctively, closing her eyes as if she was entirely starved for any form of gentle contact.
"I do not fully trust you yet," Lucius admitted, his tone turning serious as he calculated the risks in his head. "You tried to put a heavy blade through my neck the absolute moment we met. But I know that I need your strength, your instincts, and your knowledge of this land to survive what comes next."
He let the silence stretch for a long moment, letting the ambient sounds of the rushing river fill the void between them.
"If you follow me," Lucius offered, his glowing red eyes locking onto hers as she opened them again. "I will give you a chance to change your miserable life. You will not have to hide in the dirt anymore. Offer me your absolute loyalty, and I promise to show you the beauty of the world beyond this rotting forest. You will never be hunted like a beast again."
The feral girl stared at him, her breath hitching in her throat. The concept of leaving her established territory was terrifying, but the thought of returning to her hollowed-out tree entirely alone, waiting for the poachers to eventually find her, was infinitely worse.
"You promise?" she whispered, her voice incredibly fragile, devoid of any of her previous hostility. "You will not leave me behind once we reach the city?"
"I promise," Lucius stated firmly. "My faction protects its own."
A small, wobbly smile broke through the despair on her dirt-streaked face. She completely released his neck, sitting back on her heels, her hands resting on his chest.
"Then I will follow you. I will do anything for you, as long as you do not leave me."
The exact moment the words of willing submission left her lips, the air around them suddenly dropped to a freezing temperature.
Lucius felt a violent, intoxicating surge of raw power fill his soul, identical to the feeling he had experienced back in the dungeon cell right before he created his first servant.
Before he could question what was happening, an ethereal blue system notification flared to life directly in his line of sight, hovering over the girl’s shoulder.
[System Alert: Willing Conversion requirements met.]
[Target has offered absolute submission.]
[Proceed with God’s Bite conversion?]
’Proceed,’ Lucius commanded in his mind without a second of hesitation.
Instead of the dark, oozing mana that had violently consumed the dead witch’s corpse, a brilliant, warm crimson light erupted from Lucius’s chest.
The magical light shot forward, striking the wild girl directly in the center of her collarbone.
She gasped loudly, her back arching slightly as a dark, intricate necrotic insignia physically burned itself into her pale skin.
It was the mark of the vampire god.
The pain lasted only a fleeting second, quickly replaced by a profound, overwhelming warmth that flooded her veins.
The dirt and grime on her body seemed to flake away slightly as the ancient vampire blood integrated into her living system. Her feral, hardened features softened, and her erratic breathing leveled out into a calm, powerful rhythm.
She was no longer just a wild, lonely girl of the woods. She was the very first living, non-mindless vampire he had made in this new world.
[Congratulations on acquiring your first Willing Blood Kin.]
[Faction Grid Updated: Willing Blood Kin 1/1]
[Active Clan Milestone The Foundation has been completed.]
[Reward: Faction Telepathy and Base Stat Multiplier Unlocked.]
Lucius felt his own muscles hum with an entirely new level of dormant, violent energy. His base stats were rapidly rising, compounding and multiplying simply by having her bound to his soul and his faction grid.
He sat up slowly, the wet mud sliding off his clothes.
The girl slid gracefully off his waist to kneel respectfully beside him on the riverbank. She looked up at him, and he noticed that her feral eyes were now tinged with a faint, beautiful crimson glow, perfectly mirroring his own.
"Well then," Lucius said, a slow, highly calculated smile seizing the side of his pale lips. "Let us go wash up. You smell really terrible, i should have told you that from the start."