#Episode 15
Joseph repeatedly tried to summon divine power, but he couldn’t maintain it because his mind was distracted.
Vasha stood in front of Joseph, casting a shadow over him. Looking down at him with a mocking smile, Vasha said,
“Didn’t I say that if you didn’t let us go, some villagers might get hurt? Didn’t you expect that you could be one of them?”
“Please, I don’t want to die…”
Before Joseph could finish his sentence, Vasha’s shadow surged up and swallowed him whole. Like a boa constrictor digesting its prey, the shadow rose and then dragged Joseph to the ground.
Joseph, now covered in blood, desperately clawed at the ground outside the shadow, trying to resist.
“Keukhh, heukk, akh! akh, ah!”
With the sound of something being chewed and swallowed, Joseph’s pained screams seeped through the shadow.
Above this, Daniel’s shouts and the screams of the people layered over each other.
“Where did you hide the vampire! You must be under its spell too!”
“He’s lost his mind! He’s completely crazy!”
The villagers were in a frenzy, running away from Daniel who was wildly swinging his sword.
An unreal and grotesque scene.
Joseph’s resistance didn’t last long. At some point, his screams ceased, and his fingers, which had been thrashing about, went limp.
Joseph was soon completely swallowed by the shadow without a trace, with only a lantern left on the ground to mark his presence.
It was a pitiful and lonely death for someone who had tried to use the villagers for his own gain.
Meanwhile, Daniel, with his large build, swung his sword recklessly, causing injuries among the villagers. Eventually, one person was killed.
“Damn, Robert!”
“Daniel killed Robert!”
Robert, who had an eleven-year-old son, was finally stabbed to death by Daniel’s sword.
Realizing they could no longer reason with Daniel, the villagers decided to attack him more aggressively.
“Stab him from a distance with spears!”
“Surround him!”
The alley was a good place to corner someone but also difficult to fight in when surrounded.
While people were focused on Daniel, they paid less attention to Todd, who was shoved into a corner of the alley.
Vasha approached Todd.
“I barely healed you, and now you’re hurt again.”
Reaching out to wipe the blood from Todd’s lips, Vasha’s hand was swatted away as Todd roughly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“This isn’t even a real injury.”
Turning his head in defiance, Todd showed his pride. Understanding Todd’s personality, Vasha didn’t press about the injury but instead picked him up. Todd, with weakened legs, didn’t resist.
Meanwhile, the people, unable to approach Daniel, were stabbing him from afar with spears.
“Gah!”
“Kill him! Kill him now!”
The villagers had no time to worry about Vasha and Todd. Their priority was to kill Daniel, who was trying to kill them.
The madness initially aimed at the vampire now shifted to the killer of their own. Once ignited, the flames of rage did not stop until everything was consumed.
“Bring the stakes!”
The stakes they had brought to kill the vampire were driven into Daniel’s chest. Even after killing him, the people repeatedly stabbed his corpse.
The alley was a scene straight out of hell.
Vasha, holding Todd, walked leisurely past the gates of Haidus.
Above the departing Vasha and Todd, the stars of Lamphas shone in the empty sky.
# Chapter 2: I Will Try Raising an Enemy
The two of them safely escaped from Haidus.
Vasha, exposed to the lights of Lamphas, lost quite a bit of the blood she had taken from Thomas and Daniel, but she barely managed to control her bloodthirst by consuming Joseph.
‘If this kid hadn’t stopped Joseph, it might have been really tough…’
Vasha glanced down at Todd’s round head in her arms.
It was astonishing that Todd had become her familiar, but even more unbelievable was that he had saved Vasha.
But on reflection, it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility.
The Van Drake family was notorious for their hatred and extermination of vampires, but Todd was an exception.
His desire for revenge against the royal family and the Lamphas church, who had brought ruin to his family, was much stronger.
He had spent a dark childhood, consumed the underworld, and built his power to seek revenge against the royal family and Lamphas.
He approached Hudel, who was connected to the royal family, pretending to provide information and acting friendly.
With no trustworthy adults around him, Hudel gradually began to open his heart to Todd, who treated him well.
‘At first, I had no doubt he was completely on Hudel’s side…’
But it was all a facade to deceive Hudel. After extracting what he needed from Hudel, Todd betrayed him.
What Todd sought to achieve through all this was to awaken the Vampire Lord and bring about the end of humanity.
The heir of a family that had hunted vampires for a thousand years was trying to revive the Vampire Lord. This showed how much Todd resented humanity, especially the royal family that ruined his family.
‘Given that his entire family was used and discarded, it’s understandable he’d go mad…’
From Hudel’s perspective, the vampires were enemies to be defeated, while Todd Van Drake was a traitor pretending to be an ally, only to betray them in the end.
‘Almost like a mid-boss… Considering the betrayal that stabbed Hudel in the heart, he’s more like the final boss…’
Todd, who would use even a child ten years younger than himself for his goals, and who didn’t shy away from any dirty work to achieve his aims.
A man who had honed his natural talents and viciousness to the limit, becoming an even sharper weapon.
Despite being pursued by the Lamphas church and the royal family since childhood, he had survived and built his power.
Vasha knew Todd Van Drake as such a man.
Not as a kid who couldn’t even move properly and had to be carried by her.
Before coming to this world, Vasha had known about this world and Todd through dreams viewed from Hudel’s perspective.
However, the time Vasha had seen in the dreams was far into the future compared to now.
‘When Todd first appeared in the dream, he was about thirty years old. Now, he looks no older than ten… Does that mean I fell into this world about twenty years earlier than the start of the dream…?’
The Hudel who Vasha watched over in her dreams hadn’t even been born yet, or rather, hadn’t even been ‘created’ yet.
‘To think I got involved with Todd instead of Hudel… If the letter hadn’t paired me with Todd as my familiar, we wouldn’t have crossed paths…’
The letter’s intentions were clear.
It wanted Vasha to find Todd, give her the unique contract like [Binding Contract] as compensation, and make Todd her familiar.
It was clear the letter wanted Todd to be Vasha’s familiar at all costs.
A vampire having a Van Drake as a familiar – could there be a more mismatched combination?
If it wasn’t for Todd’s greater hostility toward humans than vampires, he would never have accepted a request to becoming a familiar. In that sense, Vasha was fortunate.
Vasha sighed deeply. She had a strange feeling that her entanglement with Todd wasn’t for no reason.
‘Maybe Todd is related to recovering my memories… Wait. Now that I think about it, doesn’t Todd revive the Vampire Lord in the future? Could it be related to that?’
But Vasha soon shook her head.
The Vampire Lord was no ordinary high-ranking vampire.
An immortal king, the ruler of the night, a devourer of humans, a thief of life, the master of the unholy, the lord of entrapment, the sovereign of sin, the enemy of humanity…
With such grand titles befitting the Vampire Lord, what connection could there be to Vasha, who had lost her memories and power, becoming a low ranking vampire?
Even if Vasha was originally a high-ranking vampire, it still felt didn’t make sense to her.
