Nozomanu Fushi no Boukensha (LN) - Volume 8 - Chapter 3

Chapter 3: The Vampire and the Silver-Haired Man 

I ran in the direction Wolf had pointed to until I encountered a group of adventurers searching for something. Wondering if they were looking for thralls, I eavesdropped on them. 

“Where’d the vampire run off to?! He was fighting some tough guy with silver hair, but they both up and vanished!” 

“How should I know? Maybe they teleported or something. Greater vampires can use some crazy magic, from what I hear.” 

It sounded like the vampire had come past here, but apparently these adventurers had lost sight of him. The idea that they could have used a spell like teleportation in this chaos was absurd, though. They were just yelling at each other in frustration because they couldn’t find the vampire. At any rate, I approached them to ask if they found any clues. 

“Hey!” I said. 

“Oh, you’re that weirdo who came to Maalt’s guild recently. I hear you’ve got skills.” 

I had my mask fully covering my face, so the adventurer saw me as Rentt Vivie. I didn’t know people were saying that about me. Well, the weirdo part I guess I understood, considering my appearance. But I put that aside for now. 

“I heard you talking about the vampire being around here,” I said. “Do you have any idea where he went?” 

“Yeah,” the middle-aged adventurer said and gravely nodded. “The vampire was actually on the roof of that building. He was fighting some tough silver-haired guy, but they both went off somewhere. I wonder where.” 

It was the same thing that another adventurer had told us earlier. I didn’t know who this silver-haired man could be, though. Nive’s hair was gray, and while Myullias’s hair was silver, she was also a woman. And Nive was also a woman, for that matter. But that wasn’t as important as the whereabouts of the vampire. 

I thought about places he could have gone to until I heard a loud boom from somewhere. As I looked around to see where it came from, Edel jumped off my shoulder and ran off. 

“Do you know the place?” I asked him. 

“Sqreak!” he answered, so after looking at Lorraine to see what she thought, we decided to go after him. 

The middle-aged adventurer gave us a curious look, so I thought about telling him that we knew where the vampire went. Considering my secret, though, it would be better if fewer people were around. And while most of these adventurers were veterans, they were also Bronze-class. Thralls were one thing, but a greater vampire would be too much for them. My skill level wasn’t that much different from them, but I was also physically difficult to kill. Lorraine was a Silver-class adventurer too, and I could serve as a human shield if necessary, so there was no problem there. I was still uneasy about our chances, but we had to try. With that settled, we ran off. 

Edel led us somewhere underground. It was probably an old sewer. 

“I never realized this place existed,” Lorraine said as she ran. 

Neither had I. We’d used an entrance hidden under the tiles in an old house, but that presumably wasn’t the only way in. Maalt had a long history, but this was still strange to see in a small city. A hidden passage like this would make more sense near the capital than here. There was no use wondering why it existed, though, so we just continued forward. 

The dim, narrow corridor suddenly ended at a large opening. The room was shaped like a dome and had a high ceiling. There were many statues lining the wall. The ones in the north, south, east, and west corners were statues of women. They had been placed so that they were gazing toward the center of the room. I had no idea who they were statues of, but in the middle of the room stood a robed man with a sword. He had his foot on a fallen man who was holding a rapier. 

“Oh? Do we have guests?” the robed man said. “I was just getting to the good part. Don’t ruin the fun.” 

The robed man held up his free hand. I sensed mana gathering in his hand and heard him mumbling an incantation. We immediately knew that he planned to launch magic at us, so we split up just as a fireball charred the space where we had been standing. The man scowled, surprised that we had dodged a spell with such a quick incantation. 

Lorraine countered with her own magic. Seven ice spears flew at the man. He frantically avoided them, moving away from the man on the ground. I remained cautious of the robed man as I approached the fallen man to help him up. This was probably the powerful fighter that the adventurers had mentioned. I looked at his face. 

“Isaac?!” I gasped, recognizing his silver hair and cold features. 

It was Isaac Hart, the servant of the Latuule family who I’d met at the Tarasque Swamp. I had no clue why he was here, but he was certainly powerful. Ordinary humans were daunted by the swamp, but he could traverse it with nothing but light armor, like he was simply taking a walk. 

“Rentt,” Isaac whispered when he saw my face. I didn’t see any wounds. Something about this whole situation seemed a little unnatural. 

“Rentt!” Lorraine shouted. I knew why she did. The robed man was approaching. Lorraine had been holding him back with magic, but that had reached its limit. 

Isaac heard Lorraine as well. “We’ll talk later!” he said. He picked up his rapier and jumped away. I swiftly moved away too just before the robed man’s sword scraped the ground. 

It was three against one, and the robed man was surrounded. 

“I swear, today has been nothing but a series of interruptions,” the man grumbled. 

“That’s what happens when you torment this city, Shumini,” Isaac said. 

If the other vampires were to be trusted, Shumini was the name of their boss. 

“Are you the mastermind behind this whole mess?” I asked. 

“I would appreciate it if you stayed out of this conversation with my friend, human. But you seem to be a citizen of this town, so I suppose I can offer you an explanation. Yes, I am the one who plunged this city into the depths of Hell. I am Shumini Essel, a vampire and Knight of Rebellion who serves the Great Sovereign.” 

There was a lot I could have argued about with his whole statement. I wasn’t even human, but it didn’t seem worthwhile to bring that up. I could tell him I was a monster, but I didn’t think that would win him over. He wasn’t the friendliest character, so I saw no use in mentioning it. Also, whatever he was talking about with Sovereigns and Knights of Rebellion meant nothing to me. But it sounded like he’d get mad if I pointed that out, so I didn’t know what to say. Talking to this guy felt like walking through a minefield. 

Thankfully, Isaac spoke for me. “In which case, Shumini, destroying you will stop the thralls?” he asked. 

“Well, I suppose so, but I have other subordinates. They could take over for me,” Shumini replied to Isaac, sounding more awkward than he had with me. 

“The ones in the New Moon Dungeon? They’ve all been destroyed already,” I interjected. 

Shumini’s composure slipped and veins began popping out on his forehead. I guess I’d stepped on a landmine. I was also surprised to find that vampires had veins that could bulge like that at all. It was questionable whether their hearts worked in the first place, but blood flowed through them, to be sure. I bled when I was cut too, but those wounds instantly healed. Either way, it made sense that they could have bulging veins. 

“You killed them?” he asked. 

Whether it was technically possible to kill the undead rather than destroy them depended on who you asked and what their religious views and morals were. From a vampire’s perspective, it seemed they felt they were alive and could be killed. I would probably feel the same way if I were being destroyed, so I understood it. But humans felt differently. 

“When we destroy the undead, we don’t say we killed them,” I stated. “We purified them.” 

It felt hollow when I said it, but that was the normal human perspective. I was a monster too, so I would’ve been offended if someone had said the same to me, but I felt safe enough to talk like this to someone doing harm to humans. I was a good vampire, so surely I would be spared. Or maybe that was wishful thinking. 

Unaware of what I was thinking, Shumini ground his teeth and glared at me. “How dare you!” he exclaimed. “Do you know what your bigoted ideas have done to vampires?!” 

He quivered with rage. It was scary, but I’d seen it coming. 

“Shumini,” Isaac interjected. “Do you still dream of making a world just for vampires? Do you really think it’s possible?” 

Shumini’s subordinates had said they were making a nation, but this sounded bigger than that. To make a world just for vampires presumably meant wiping out the humans that dominated it. It was mostly humans who viewed vampires as opposition anyway. Elves and dwarves were classified as human too, but they were treated as a subspecies, and they seldom discriminated toward other creatures. I’d heard that elves and dwarves didn’t get along with each other very well, but that wasn’t so much discrimination as a difference of disposition. 

“It’s no mere dream, Isaac,” Shumini answered. “I told you that victory is within reach. Everything that was once but a dream is now possible. I just want to share some of this joy with you.” 

“It feels like I’m repeating myself, but I’m not interested. Leave this city. If you do, I won’t pursue you.” 

That last part was surprising to hear. It sounded like these two were friendly with each other, like they knew each other from way back. I wondered if Isaac might also be a vampire. I’d had my suspicions before, but Isaac never gave off the aura of a vampire. Shumini, on the other hand, very much did. I didn’t know if Isaac had some special way of hiding it, or if there was an entirely different reason that these two knew each other. 

But it seemed clear that Isaac stood in opposition to Shumini and intended to defend Maalt. That was good enough. I looked at people in terms of their stances, not their species. That’s how I hoped others would treat me. Though, even if Isaac and I didn’t chase Shumini out of Maalt, Nive would never give up. But I decided not to tell him. He probably knew anyway and had his own countermeasures. 

“After all this, I wouldn’t be let off the hook that easily, would I?” Shumini said, as expected. “At any rate, I see there’s no use talking to you. Very well, then I give up on you too, Isaac. If it were possible, I wish I could have entrusted the rest to you.” 

“What are you talking about?” Isaac asked and cocked his head. 

However, Shumini suddenly pulled a knife out of his robe and held it up. The knife was black from hilt to blade, and I sensed a strong presence from it. He pointed the blade not at us, but at himself. “I will make up for what I lack by using myself as a sacrifice! Farewell, Isaac!” he shouted and thrust the knife into his chest. Cracks began to spread throughout his body, dividing his pale skin up like tiles. Bright blue light shone through the cracks. 

“Shumini,” Isaac muttered, but this didn’t seem like the time to worry about him. 

“Rentt, this looks bad!” Lorraine cried. “We should run.” 

It did very much seem like something was about to explode. If it came to that, I couldn’t imagine the scale of the blast, but it seemed like Isaac knew something. 

“Isaac! What’s happening?!” I asked. 

“I don’t know,” he said. “I would just say that it might be best to get out of here. Let’s go.” 

We ran toward the exit. As we left the room, we heard a loud blast and felt a strong gust of wind blow us forward. It wasn’t hot. It didn’t seem like a bomb had gone off, but something about the wind felt deeply sickening. It was like lukewarm wind during the summer. But while it felt unpleasant, I didn’t feel negatively affected by it. 

“So did he self-destruct or what?” I whispered. 

“I’m going off of old memories, but Shumini was never one to do such a thing before,” Isaac answered. “He was willing to make sacrifices to achieve his goals, but self-destructing to defeat his enemies is far too short-sighted for him. He must have had some other objective.” 

“He did say something about using himself as a sacrifice.” 

“A sacrifice?” Lorraine said. “For a summoning ritual, maybe? Could a powerful monster have appeared in that room?” 

It sounded plausible. We looked at each other, wondering if we should go see. 

“It might be dangerous, but we ought to check,” Isaac said, and it was settled. 

Isaac probably also just wanted to know what happened to Shumini, but either way, we had to check before we left. Reporting to the guild first was also an option, but at the very least, we needed to see what happened to Shumini. 

We cautiously went back down the path we fled from. We peeked in the room from outside the entrance and saw something massive sitting in the middle. 

“What’s that?” Isaac asked. “It looks like a dragon.” 

“If so, it’s not a very interesting one. It’s like an alligator that’s standing upright,” Lorraine said, offering her appraisal of the creature. 

I felt like Lorraine’s assessment was more accurate. It was substantially larger than an alligator, though, at about ten meters in length. It was also built differently, with muscles and bumpy skin all over its body that made it look freakishly strong. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to fight it. 

“Is that a person’s face?” I said and pointed to the creature’s stomach. 

“No doubt about it. It’s Shumini,” Isaac replied sadly. 

The giant alligator’s stomach was mostly covered with green skin, but part of it jutted out unnaturally. Upon closer inspection, it looked like a person’s face. Not only that, but it was clearly Shumini. Either the monster had absorbed him, or he was the monster itself. 

At any rate, we had to decide what to do next. The most important decision was whether to fight the monster or return to town to report this incident. Lorraine and I agreed that it would be better to return to town for now. We weren’t confident that we were strong enough, and if we were killed here, the townspeople might not learn about this for a while. I was fairly confident in my strength as of late, but I wasn’t naive enough to think I was sure to win this fight. I was still just Bronze-class, when it came down to it. Lorraine was Silver-class, but she didn’t often take jobs, so her combat intuition wasn’t that great. She did know a lot of spells though, including powerful ones. 

Isaac, on the other hand, looked ready for action. He likely wanted to do something about Shumini. They’d stood opposed to each other until just moments ago, but they were still old acquaintances. As to whether Isaac wanted to help him or be the one to kill him, it was probably the latter, but it was easy to imagine that he felt some mixture of the two. But while Isaac felt that on the inside, he seemed to realize what was most important right now. 

Isaac glanced at the monster and shook his head. “I can’t let my selfishness expose Maalt to further danger. Let’s go back for now. I want to stop it, but it can wait until after this situation has been reported.” 

Lorraine and I nodded, and we slowly went back down the corridor, trying to escape the monster’s notice. 

Something strange happened a while after we started heading to the exit. I heard a familiar grunt. Isaac heard it too and looked at me. “Rentt, did you hear that?” he asked. 

“Yeah.” 

It came from a little ways away, so a normal human like Lorraine couldn’t hear it. “Was there a sound?” she asked. But she learned what it was soon after. 

A bit further down the corridor, an arrow flew at us from around the corner. Lorraine kept a magic shield up at almost all times, and I was ready to stop the arrow with my sword, but Isaac caught it in his hand. We heard another grunt, then saw what it was coming from. 

“A goblin? What’s it doing here?” Lorraine wondered. 

Goblins could show up anywhere, so some would say it was never a surprise to encounter one. That was generally correct, but only outside of cities. The only time you’d see them inside a city was if they were peaceful goblins who were trading with humans. Monsters were generally barred from human establishments. Tiny monsters like puchi suri could slip through the cracks, but a single goblin could harm an adult man by itself, so they were treated with caution. Specialized magicians set up barriers to inform them of invaders, at which time knights or adventurers would be sent out to search for them. Because of this, it was strange to encounter a goblin under Maalt. 

Of course, we couldn’t just leave it here, so we had to fight. There were another two goblins with it, but the three of us would never struggle against goblins. The fight went as easily as expected. Goblins excelled at working together, and it was said that picking them off one at a time was ideal, so that’s what we did. Of course, each of us could have handled one of the goblins on our own, but their presence here was unusual and they might have had strange powers. They turned out to be ordinary goblins, though. 

“What was that about? I know we’re underground, but this is still Maalt. What are goblins doing here?” Lorraine asked again, but nobody had an answer. 

“Maybe it has something to do with what Shumini did,” I speculated. “Anyway, we should go back above ground and see what’s happening in town.” 

Lorraine and Isaac agreed. We hurried to the exit. 

When we exited the house that contained the entrance to the underground, we saw adventurers fighting monsters all around town. There were many types of monsters, including goblins, slimes, and skeletons. However, I didn’t see any that were especially strong. Nobody seemed that threatened by them, so we didn’t need to join in. 

“What’s happening?” Lorraine said, distressed by the state of the town. 

“Let’s ask someone about it,” Isaac suggested. He walked up to a man fighting a goblin and slayed the monster in one blow. “What in the world is going on here?” 

The man was somewhat taken aback by Isaac’s abrupt appearance, but he answered him anyway. “Well, I dunno myself, but monsters just showed up out of nowhere! All the adventurers have been going around fighting them!” 

“They appeared entirely without warning?” 

“Yeah. You guys should help out. There are some thralls too, so be careful!” the man said and ran off to defeat another monster. 

“Did you hear that?” Isaac asked. 

“Yeah, but I don’t know why this happened,” I said. “Maybe we’ll learn something if we go to the guild.” 

“Who knows?” Lorraine replied. “But we have to report what happened underground. There’s a good chance that’s what caused this.” 

We rushed to the guild. 

Everyone in the guild was running about. All of the staff members were present and working. There were injured people lying about until they were tended to by healers, after which they immediately left the guild. It looked like a hellish routine. Not many seemed fatally wounded, at least. 

I saw Wolf, still heavily injured himself but persistently taking charge, and approached him. “Rentt! Did you do something again?!” he asked the moment he saw me. 

I took some offense to that, but I knew how he felt. This had happened some time after I began to pursue Shumini, so it was natural to assume it was my fault. I might have actually seen the cause of it, so that was all the more reason I couldn’t argue. 

We explained the situation to Wolf. We hid some things in case others might hear it, but Wolf got the general idea. 

“I still don’t know exactly what happened, but that’s probably what triggered this,” he said. “Someone will have to exterminate that thing.” He looked at us expectantly. 

Wolf didn’t explicitly tell us to go, maybe because he felt like he was working us too hard. Given the situation, though, every adventurer was overworked. That was plain to see after one look at this guild. Wolf himself was severely harmed and still working after just some cursory first aid. We were in no position to refuse, nor did we intend to. 

Even Isaac wanted to go. He wasn’t a member of the guild, but there was no rule saying that he couldn’t come. What we had told Wolf probably convinced him that Isaac was powerful enough. Besides, Isaac gave the guild a lot of work. Wolf had no place to object. 

“All right, we’ll go,” I said. “Isaac can come with, right?” 

“Sure, sounds like he’ll be able to help. I don’t mind if he goes. The only problem is payment.” 

“No payment is necessary,” Isaac said. That was likely both because he was personally invested in this and because he had more than enough money to begin with. 

But Wolf wasn’t aware of any of that. “No, we can’t have that,” he said. “If you’re risking your life, you have to be appropriately compensated. I’ll treat you as a temporary guild member and pay you later. Just let me calculate your pay after everything has settled down. Now go!” 

We nodded and left the guild. 

We encountered and slayed many monsters as we ran through the town. 

“None of these monsters are that strong, but there are so many of them,” Lorraine muttered. “Where could they all be coming from? Is something perpetually summoning them? How could that be possible over such a large area?” 

But the answer was clear when we saw a group of people running around town. There was no small number of people trying to flee from Maalt, or at least to a place safer than their homes. We heard sudden screams from one such group. 

“What?!” Isaac shouted. Lorraine and I looked to see what had happened. 

“I see, so that’s how it is,” Lorraine murmured. 

“How horrifying,” I cried. 

We saw a denizen of Maalt transforming into a monster. 

In the end, I had no choice but to kill the monster, even though it had once been a citizen of Maalt. The others around me watched uneasily. They didn’t look critical of what I did, but I could see the fear in their eyes. They feared that if they turned into monsters, we wouldn’t hesitate to kill them. 

This was no laughing matter. I was also a human who had turned into a monster against his will. If possible, I didn’t want to kill them whether they became monsters or not, but this one was about to attack a nearby pregnant woman. Once it was apparent that they were no longer human in both mind and body, I had to kill them. 

We ditched the area and ran to the entrance to the underground. We said nothing as we left. Nobody knew how to feel. 

“Rentt, I’m sorry. I should have been the one to do it,” Lorraine whispered. 

But I disagreed. Lorraine wasn’t at fault for anything. I reacted first, and I was the closest to the monster. Lorraine had frozen up for a moment, which was a perfectly human way to react, but I didn’t freeze up at all. Regardless of how I felt about it, I guess I was ultimately a monster. I was kind of disappointed in myself. 

“Rentt, you’re a fine adventurer,” Isaac said. “You protected a woman and her future child, you know.” 

He was absolutely right. If I hadn’t done anything, they might have died. But I was more focused on my humanity or lack thereof. That wasn’t good. 

“Yes, you’re right,” I said and shook my head. “Sorry.” 

“Don’t mention it.” 

We all felt strange, and if this was the mood we were in when we got to Shumini, there could be some issues. We had to get it together. I tried to shift gears and focus on what was coming next as I hurried toward the entrance to the underground. 

“Who’s that?” Lorraine asked. 

When we exited the house that contained the entrance to the underground, we saw someone standing outside. She wasn’t a monster or a thrall, but a girl in a black dress. 

“Mistress Laura,” Isaac whispered. 

Yes, it was the head of the Latuule family, Laura Latuule. I wondered why she was here. Maalt was in an extremely dangerous state, and it was no time for a young girl from a famous family to be walking around. But at the same time, I didn’t think that was much of a problem for her. She was Isaac’s mistress, after all. I was mostly confident that I knew what Isaac was by now, and if he was serving Laura, it wasn’t hard to guess that she was the same as him. She was plenty mysterious herself. I didn’t need to ask her about it right now, though. 

“Laura, why are you here?” I asked instead. I was curt and maybe not as polite as I should have been with someone of her status, but I’d dropped trying to be polite a while ago. 

“I’m here to explain the situation,” she answered. “I want you to know what’s happening to Maalt right now.” 

Her explanation didn’t seem so important right now. Slaying that monster that used to be Shumini was a higher priority to me. 

“You’ll have to know precisely what’s going on if you want to fix this,” she continued. “You’ll see what I mean shortly. Lay your hands on mine, everyone.” 

Laura held out her hand. Isaac was quick to place his hand on hers, but Lorraine and I were hesitant. It wasn’t as if we could say no, however. We didn’t have much time and needed to hurry, so it wasn’t long before we placed our hands on hers as well. 

“I’m going to borrow your eyes. It might feel a bit odd, but no need to worry. Your bodies will still be here,” Laura said. 

Laura’s body exuded a strange aura. It wasn’t mana, spirit, or divinity, though. I tried to guess what it was, but before I could, I abruptly saw a vision of something else. I was now closer to the sky. I saw the ridges of mountains in the distance. There were forests and plains too. I looked down and saw the entire city of Maalt below me. 

“What the...” I said and clearly heard my own voice. It felt kind of unusual. 

“I’m sure you realize that you’re seeing through the eyes of a bird in the sky. Rentt, it’s the same as how you use your mouse’s eyes,” Laura explained. 

I heard her voice with my own ears. My body must have still been outside that house, like she said. But that wasn’t important right now. She’d said something I couldn’t ignore.