“A bloodline that existed in the unimaginably distant past... and is gone now....”

The moment I heard that—

I stared at Ariella, eyes wide.

“Gone...?”

She looked like she’d taken a direct hit. She covered her face with one hand, cold sweat breaking out.

‘This one’s last memory before being summoned to this land...’

Watching her, I thought,

‘She said it was being sealed.’

It was something I’d heard a while ago.

Even so, I remembered the gist.

“If my memory’s right, I was sealed inside a coffin.”

“Sealed...?”

“A vile holy knights’ secret art. Being forced to spend eternity inside a coffin. Impossible to undo, a punishment no different from death. The kind of trick fanatics use—people who think even death is mercy.”

In her world, it wasn’t just vampires.

There were people hostile to vampires, too.

And Ariella, nothing more than a low-ranking noble, couldn’t withstand their attack.

Fanatics who believed even death was mercy placed an eternal seal on her.

Yeah.

An eternal seal.

...One that holds no matter how much time passes.

That kind of seal.

“I remember hearing the elders of the bloodline—those old ones who survived the longest—talk about it sometimes.”

“W-what... did they say...?”

“Long, long ago, back when even the oldest of them were young and childish, they said it was routine to wage war against a bloodline called Karshtein....”

Only then did I understand the source of a few things that had felt off.

‘Ariella and that man’s clothing was subtly different.’

Ariella’s outfit, if you had to categorize it, was closer to a medieval noble.

But Rashir’s clothes...

looked more like a modern noble.

Ariella spoke with a noble’s common sense.

And yet, some of her information had been strangely wrong.

Of course it had.

‘That information was unbelievably old...!’

And—

the person who felt that fact the hardest wasn’t me.

Wobble.

“Karshtein... was wiped out...?”

Ariella’s body swayed.

She murmured in a small voice.

“Grand Duke Isabella... Marquis Aravello... Margrave Ganatillo... the Questioner Twins, the Thornblade Perialo, Alphira of Banquets, the elders of the Thousand-Year Council, even Chairman Zeblo... all of them? All of them?”

Her face had gone deathly pale as she rattled off names.

“The ones who lived acting so superior... the ones who... played with me like that... all of them...”

...Most of those names were new to me.

But still.

“Gone.”

To her—

they sounded like names that carried weight.

“Ariella!”

I realized her condition wasn’t normal.

I rushed over, grabbed her shoulder, and said,

“Calm down.”

“...Master?”

“I can’t even begin to guess what you’re feeling, but... you have to calm down first.”

Whenever she said “Karshtein,” Ariella used “bloodline” and “house” interchangeably.

That probably meant they were the same thing to her.

“Ha, haha... calm down, you say....”

A bloodline is a house.

And a house is... family.

“That’s... too much... to ask....”

“......”

She opened her eyes and found that thousands of years had passed—

and then got hit with news that everyone she’d valued was gone.

“No matter what you order, Master... that’s not... easy.”

“......”

Even vampires have emotions.

That shock had to be beyond words.

“I’m sorry. I understand how you feel, but—”

“Understand? You’re saying you understand, right now?”

At my careless words—

Ariella let out a hollow, incredulous laugh.

“Master. I don’t want to say this to you, but... that’s your misunderstanding.”

“Ariella.”

“You don’t understand. No... nobody could understand.”

And then—

right then—

“Karshtein Bloodline wiped out....”

“...?”

From the one closest to us—

a strange taste and scent started to rise.

The moment I caught that “taste,” I couldn’t help but tense.

“To think they died this pointlessly.”

“...You?”

When I heard that a bloodline had been wiped out, I’d assumed he was feeling the pain of losing family.

I’d even felt stupid for saying something as careless as “I understand.”

But... no.

“If they were going to disappear someday anyway....”

It wasn’t that.

“Damn...”

The taste coming off him was—

a deep emptiness.

“...I wanted to erase them with my own hand.”

The taste of someone who’d lost their purpose—

that hollow flavor lingered in my mouth.

***

Looking at Ariella, I thought—

I’d thought this since the day we first met.

This one was, how do I put it...

‘...absurdly driven.’

Ariella had a fierce hunger to grow stronger.

Same thing after she got bound to me as my familiar.

Even though my attitude toward her wasn’t exactly good, she even seemed to enjoy that her growth sped up because of me.

“If they were going to die this pointlessly anyway.”

Back then, I’d just brushed it off as her personality.

A subordinate who pushes self-improvement on their own—

for a master like me, that was as convenient as it gets.

But thinking about it now—

“It would’ve been better if you’d just died by my hand back then....”

Maybe there’d been a reason behind how badly she wanted to get stronger.

‘...What happened to you?’

Come to think of it, even though nearly half the blood in my body is vampire blood, I’ve only recently learned anything about nobles as a species.

Even then, it was just because I needed to, after finding out there were other nobles in this land.

‘...Maybe I wasn’t in any position to get angry about how knights were treated.’

Even as her master—

I didn’t properly know anything about Ariella’s past.

“...I’m sorry.”

She wobbled for a moment like that—

then shook her head.

“This isn’t the kind of situation where I can afford to stand around like this.”

“...Ariella.”

“I’m your familiar, Master... I need to do my part.”

She said that, then walked over to Rashir.

“Then I will ask my second question.”

“Anything....”

Even now, that hollow taste coming off him hadn’t changed.

Part of me wanted to press him for the reason—

but—

‘...Right now, she’s right.’

Unfortunately, this wasn’t a situation where we had that kind of room.

I’d have to put those questions off for later.

“The ghouls in this land were stronger than I expected. Not only were there many worth taking in as knights... even among them, there were quite a few with the kind of potential that would stand out even among knights.”

The fact that Ariella’s noble culture and information didn’t match—

we could chalk it up to the massive time gap between her and them.

“Why were people like that left as ghouls?”

But that didn’t mean the questions were gone.

We needed to deal with the causes behind that unease.

“That... you know as well as I do, don’t you?”

At Ariella’s question, Rashir answered readily, even with a hint of doubt.

“Because the Grand Duke wanted to conquer this land as fast as possible.”

“Grand Duke... Grand Duke Valarak?”

“Yes. As you know, making knights takes time. ...This time, I did see a bit of an exception, however....”

As he said that, he flicked a glance at me.

An exception.

He meant how I’d copied cooking and turned ghouls into knights.

Well, anyway.

“We had to complete the conquest at the fastest possible speed and move on to conquer other regions, so there was no time to sort the monsters in the conquered land and decide which ones to make into knights. But we couldn’t leave the land empty, so we turned every living thing there into ghouls first, then moved on....”

“And why did the Grand Duke do such a thing?”

“I did not hear the reason... Obeying the Grand Duke’s orders without question is a virtue of the bloodline....”

Rashir didn’t know, of course.

Ariella didn’t know either, tilting her head in confusion.

But—

“How do I put it... that’s....”

The people listening.

More precisely—

“That sounds kind of familiar...?”

Our unit’s awakened—

had a guess.

***

“...When did you all get here?”

“Once that duel ended, the bloodwater let us go.”

A blood duel is a match only those whose blood is mixed with each noble’s blood can enter.

Of course, the unit members couldn’t participate.

So they’d been bound by that bastard’s—“the Progenitor’s”—blood, floating up in the sky.

“...My master of my soul, what are those humans?”

“No idea. Cut off your interest, and act like you didn’t hear their conversation, either.”

“Yes!”

After the duel ended, they were already back on the ground, and had already approached us.

“So? Child. What were you about to say? Do you have a guess?”

“A guess... isn’t quite it. It’s more like... it literally feels familiar.”

“Feels familiar?”

After shutting Rashir up, Ariella looked at the unit members.

Jeong Sua shrugged and spoke.

“If they’d just fought a quick war and left, we could write it off as them being war-crazed. But they went out of their way to leave ghouls behind in this land, didn’t they?”

“And you find that strange?”

“Not strange, exactly... it’s more like.”

And then—

the one who picked up from there was me.

“It sounds like a conquest war.”

“Yes. That’s what I think too, and so do the others.”

Conquer a region as fast as possible.

Leave behind only the minimum measures needed to maintain control.

Then move on to conquer the next region.

That approach couldn’t help but feel familiar to us.

Because—

‘It’s what we do.’

Not just the conquest of Gangwon Province—

even the conquest of the Republic of Korea that’s happening right now follows this model.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have the time to fully stabilize every region under control.

We maintained only the minimum conditions needed to keep control—

and pushed on to the next.

“A conquest war...?”

Of course.

“He said they’re vampires. There’s a good chance they weren’t actually fighting a conquest war.”

Other species we’d fought—

even the [Green Mane] tribe had actively taken part in conquest wars.

But strictly speaking, their goal hadn’t been conquest itself.

The larger the land they controlled, the stronger the power of the earth spirits became—

it was an act meant to increase their own power.

‘It doesn’t seem likely that other species can receive conquest-war rewards.’

From what I’ve seen so far, this system only works for humans.

So it probably wasn’t that kind of reason for vampires either.

“The fact you didn’t even select knights means you didn’t even prioritize replenishing forces lost in battle. If that’s how you fought, even a bloodline would’ve taken heavy losses.”

“That is not the case.”

“Hm?”

When Ariella furrowed her brow in doubt, Rashir shook his head with his dying body.

“The losses were not great... From the start, the consumption of forces itself was low.”

“...The monsters in this city were quite strong. And you’re saying there weren’t heavy losses conquering a city like this?”

“Yes. Because the one responsible for conquering this city... was someone rather unusual.”

And only ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) then did I remember something I’d forgotten.

‘This one wasn’t the ghouls’ master of blood.’

The master of blood is what they call the owner of the knights who directly created the ghouls—

or the noble itself.

Ghouls swear loyalty to nobles, but their true loyalty is only to their master of blood.

If Rashir had been their master of blood, the city’s ghouls would’ve sided with him in that blood duel.

They didn’t.

Which meant—

‘There’s another noble who conquered this city and turned them into ghouls....’

And.

Even with how abnormal the strength and power of this city’s ghouls was, that noble conquered this land with little loss, then left for somewhere else.

‘...How strong are they?’

Maybe—

maybe it was one of those “great nobles” Ariella had mentioned in passing.

“...Fine. Then putting that aside. Why come back here now?”

“...Do you truly not know?”

“Do not answer a question with a question.”

“Yes!”

He’d been suspicious at first.

But he answered Ariella respectfully.

“I understand there has recently been a disruption in the conquest.”

“...A disruption?”

“Yes. And so, nobles like myself who have not yet been assigned a territory are given territory, and we select knights from the ghouls in that territory and make them into knights...”

And then—

right as he was answering our questions as earnestly as he could—

“Bring troops and join that front....”

CRUNCH!!!

I saw his jaw burst apart.

‘...Huh?’

From the sudden explosion, his flesh blew out and stuck to my body in thick clumps.

For a moment I couldn’t even see in front of me, splattered by the flying meat.

“Ha. Honestly...”

And when I looked forward again—

“I knew you’d be doing this, Viscount.”

What I saw was—

at some point, someone had appeared in front of Rashir, crouching there.

“Right. You should’ve taken help when I offered it.”

A man, eyes half-lidded, wearing a troubled expression.