Woke up a little too fast there.
Could’ve sworn he just saw Vampire Fraulein lying on his bed…
In the deathly silent stone hall, the girl on the stone bed lay sleeping, her pose elegant, like Sleeping Beauty straight out of a fairy tale.
Except her pale skin and Gothic dress added an extra layer of eeriness to the whole picture.
Yushin felt a little nervous, and a little excited.
The excitement came from the fact that, ever since he’d been trapped in this temple, he’d long since had enough of the endless emptiness and loneliness.
This was the first time he’d laid eyes on another living thing besides himself.
The girl’s skin was pale, drained of any color, but beneath her Gothic dress, her chest rose and fell in shallow, slow, regular movements.
She really did seem to be alive.
She had to be what this Yu-Gi-Oh!
world called a “Duel Monster Spirit.” Cards in this world genuinely had a kind of spirituality to them.
But most Monster Cards were only a faint projection of that spirit’s power, and only a rare few actually had a spirit truly residing inside them.
But he’d only acquired this card under the identity of Fujishiro Sakuma, all the way over in the Satellite.
So why would Vampire Fraulein’s spirit be showing up here, of all places?
Thinking it over, Yushin could only come up with one possible explanation.
Maybe the bond between a spirit and its duelist existed on a soul-deep level, which meant the spirit’s bond had ended up tied to his own real body instead.
Kind of like how the Pharaoh’s soul possessed Yugi Muto’s body to wield the Egyptian God Cards.
As for why he felt a little nervous, that was only natural.
An empty, deathly silent ancient hall, a pale, sleeping vampire girl, and on top of that, her card apparently carried the name of a curse.
Put together, all those elements naturally coalesced into an atmosphere that felt like it belonged in a horror movie.
But as for actually being afraid, he wasn’t really, not much.
Yushin already knew by now that this real body of his, here in the temple, possessed some kind of supernatural authority, and he’d started to vaguely suspect that his own supernatural rank might not be low at all.
A single Monster Spirit shouldn’t pose much of a threat to him.
Besides, this was the world of the Duel King, after all.
Around here, even if Sadako crawled out of her well, she’d still have to strap on a Duel Disk and throw down first.
Right as Yushin’s thoughts were still churning, he suddenly noticed the girl’s long, slender eyelashes flutter, ever so slightly.
She was waking up.
The girl in the Gothic dress sat up in silence, her pale face utterly devoid of expression, cold without a trace of warmth.
She picked up the parasol at her bedside, popped it open over her head, and rose to her feet.
A skylight in the hall’s ceiling let in a patch of grayish daylight, a thin, lonely shaft of sunlight cutting through the surrounding gloom.
The girl walked slowly toward Yushin under her parasol, its dim canopy blocking out the daylight above.
Caught in that interplay of light and shadow, she looked ethereal and desolate, radiating an air of genuine horror.
But that sense of horror lasted for maybe three, four seconds at most.
Snap.
It was the sound of the parasol’s catch suddenly giving way, snapping shut all on its own without warning.
The girl was instantly exposed to the sunlight pouring down from the skylight.
Her whole body went rigid, her limbs locking up as if frozen in place, like a statue caught mid-motion.
Every trace of her earlier icy composure shattered instantly, her ghostly pale cheeks flooding with panic.
Her thin chest heaved wildly, and her soft red lips struggled to move, stammering out, “H-help…
help…
help me…” Yushin: “…” When she opened her mouth to speak, he could even make out two tiny fangs.
Yushin figured those were probably supposed to be the classic vampire’s signature fangs, except they’d come out so small and childish-looking that they read more like a pair of cute little canine teeth instead.
The horror-movie atmosphere collapsed in an instant, and the whole mood turned comedic.
Right then, Yushin suddenly had a gut feeling.
This legendary, curse-bearing Vampire Fraulein seemed…
not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed.
…
…
A few minutes later.
After helping the vampire girl out of the sunlight from the skylight, the two of them sat down facing each other.
The elegant Gothic girl sat with proper, composed posture, but her small, pale hands were unconsciously clutching tight at her own dress, betraying just how nervous she really was.
“So,” Yushin asked, “you’re saying you basically don’t remember anything?” Vampire Fraulein nodded.
“Yeah.” Yushin asked, “But I heard someone call you a cursed card, one that feeds on a duelist’s life force in exchange for granting them power.” “Huh?
That’s so cruel?” Vampire Fraulein looked lost.
“I had no idea.” She strained to remember.
“Most of the memories I even have are just…
sleeping, mostly.
Every once in a while, it feels like someone calls me out for some fresh air, but even then I’m always half-asleep the whole time.
I don’t remember much.
I just remember feeling so, so sleepy, wanting to go back to sleep…” As she said this, she smacked her own forehead, as if something had just occurred to her.
“Oh, now that you mention it, every time I got called out and came back, I did feel kind of…
full, actually.
Is that the whole ‘feeding on life force’ thing you’re talking about?” Yushin was starting to get the general picture.
In other words, Vampire Fraulein really might drain a duelist’s life force when summoned, but it wasn’t intentional on her part at all.
It worked more like some kind of passive ability.
If that passive was guaranteed to trigger, then he’d need to think carefully before actually using this card himself down the line.
“So what’s the deal with that parasol of yours?” Yushin glanced at her sunshade.
“Does it come with a self-retracting feature or something?” That parasol was exactly what had suddenly failed on her a moment ago, exposing her to the sunlight and shattering the whole atmosphere in an instant.
It looked like she wasn’t the kind of vampire who died in sunlight the traditional way, but exposure to daylight still left her frozen in place, tongue tied in knots, looking exactly like a player who’d just lagged out mid-game.
“No idea.” Vampire Fraulein shook her head and glanced down at the parasol in her hands.
“Probably just old age.
The catch is probably worn out.” Yushin: “…” You’re a mysterious, Gothic vampire spirit, and your parasol’s catch is just worn out from age?
Is that seriously a reasonable explanation?
But she herself didn’t seem all that bothered by it, oddly enough.
Yushin couldn’t help but needle her.
“So basically, this whole time, all you’ve been doing is eating, sleeping, eating, sleeping?” The vampire noblewoman nodded, completely unbothered.
“Yep, pretty much.” She didn’t seem to find that embarrassing in the slightest.
“Weird, this is actually the first time I’ve felt this awake.
I used to be so sleepy all the time, so I was basically always asleep…” She got to her feet again, looking around at her surroundings, seeming genuinely fascinated by it all.
“So you’re my master, then?” she asked, curious.
“Where even is this place?” Yushin sighed.
“I’d love to know that myself.
But since you’re awake now, you can help me out.
Our top priority is figuring out how to get out of here…” Even though it felt like he’d ended up with a not-particularly-bright spirit on his hands, overall, he was still relieved.
At least this rundown temple wasn’t down to just him anymore.
Over all those long, drawn-out months, he’d figured that even a single dog in this godforsaken place would have kept him from going stir-crazy with boredom.
But he never could have expected that the moment those words left his mouth, this once-elegant, now thoroughly goofy-seeming noblewoman would tilt her head in confusion and ask, “What do you mean, ‘how to get out’?
If you want to leave, can’t you just…
leave?” Yushin let out a laugh.
“Oh, really?
Then how about you show me?
Go on out, right now.” What a joke.
He’d already covered every last inch of this godforsaken temple.
If leaving were really that easy, would he have been so starved for company that even a bunch of cultists got him excited?
…What the hell?
The next instant, Yushin very nearly let a curse slip from his past life.
Because right in front of his own eyes, the words barely out of his mouth, Vampire Fraulein had gone whoosh and vanished into thin air, right there on the spot.
Yushin: “???” What the hell, where’d she go?
Did she seriously just up and leave?
Wait, hold on…
A sudden sense struck Yushin, and he immediately closed his eyes to focus, reconnecting with the body resting on the bed back in the Satellite.
The next moment, the “Fujishiro Sakuma” body under Yushin’s control sat bolt upright on the bed.
He opened his eyes, and there, floating right in front of him, was the very same Vampire Fraulein who’d just vanished, except now her body had gone half-transparent compared to how she’d looked in the temple, like a hovering ghost.
And right now, the vampire noblewoman had both hands clapped over her mouth, her face frozen in an expression of total system overload.
“Huh?!
Why are there two masters?!” Yushin: “…”