“Khk....”

“Krrk....”

With painful groans, they twitched and forced their bodies upright.

Watching them, I thought,

“...That was cutting it close.”

Even when I went down, they’d already been a while past the point where their hearts had burst.

By the time I came to, it had to have been more than five minutes since then.

And—

the moment I realized that, my mind started working fast.

“I’m pretty sure... the golden time after cardiac arrest is four minutes.”

After four minutes, tissue starts dying.

After seven, there’s a high chance it becomes irreversible.

Normally, you’d do CPR to prevent that, but—

“You can’t do CPR on guys whose hearts are gone.”

In that sense, it was a pretty hopeless situation.

But it wasn’t like there was nothing worth trying.

“Those guys aren’t ordinary humans either.”

They were monsters stronger than humans.

And on top of that, as vampires, they had the powerful vitality of blood.

Even if that blood couldn’t be circulating through their bodies right now, it would still be left behind in their vessels and throughout their bodies.

“And Luca flat-out said it was impossible with healing alone.”

So what I needed to do was add a little help on top of that.

That was why I chose a healthy meal.

“Boss....”

I copied the dishes with [Five Loaves and Two Fish], and then, since the original purpose was patient care, I forced the food into them through [Force-Feeding]—

and the result was...

“Boss...?”

“Yeah, you idiot.”

This.

Stagger....

...Of course.

It wasn’t something that easy.

“Commander!”

“Ah.”

Unit members caught me as I swayed and started to collapse.

This healthy meal consumed my vitality.

I was already on the verge of death, so normally it would’ve been impossible to use a skill like this.

And [Five Loaves and Two Fish] was the same.

This time I wasn’t copying Ariella’s mana, so the mana drain was lower—

but my mana itself was still in short supply.

“It was a gamble.”

The missing piece was the power that makes the impossible possible.

I’d just brute-forced it through with [divine power].

It wouldn’t have been strange if I’d died.

“To do something this reckless...!”

Luca spoke with a pale face, and I answered with a grin.

“Well, it worked, didn’t it?”

“...Boss. Your condition—”

And there were others watching that too.

“You... ended up like this for us?”

“Kh....”

I didn’t give them an answer.

Because—

it wasn’t exactly wrong.

“If it were just me, I wouldn’t have taken a gamble like that.”

A gamble for someone else’s survival instead of my own.

And there was a reason I could guess for why I’d suddenly done something like this.

“At some point, the way I think has been changing.”

The string of things I’d gone through, surviving in this goddamn world, was changing me.

Whether that change was positive, or negative—

I didn’t know.

“...A knight did this for us...!” 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

In this case...

Ding.

[Divine power increases by ‘3’!]

Well.

I decided to think it wasn’t a bad thing.

***

“Boss.”

While I was getting treatment from Luca, swaying on my feet, one of the ones being treated as well walked up and spoke to me.

Kangil.

“Why did you save us...!”

“What the hell. You’re complaining even after I saved you?”

“We’re not idiots.”

It looked down at its own body as it spoke.

“I can feel two kinds of blood inside us right now. And... those two owners probably don’t get along.”

“......Yeah. That’s true.”

“It’s lucky that right now, the only ones here are you and the count, but... if the other master shows up in front of us, we might end up obeying that master’s orders. And if that happens....”

With a deep frown, it spoke in a dark voice.

“We might end up attacking you and the count.”

“If that happens... I guess I’ll have to take it while cursing you out for being ungrateful.”

“What kind of—!”

“I’m kidding, you idiot.”

Maybe because they felt the debt of being saved, they seemed to be hoping they’d never end up opposing us.

“Either way, that’s my problem to deal with. Don’t worry too much.”

“.......”

“More important than that—”

I turned my head and asked Ariella.

“What do we do from here, exactly.”

I’d gotten a rough report on what happened after I went down.

And based on that report—

“So in the end, you lost too.”

“......Yes. Unfortunately.”

“Hey, there’s nothing to apologize for. The situation was a mess.”

Then Ariella frowned and said,

“That man. I still can’t figure out what he is.”

“Hm?”

“If it were just that he was strong, or that he had a lot of thralls, I could chalk it up to bad luck—running into a high-ranking noble I didn’t want to meet. But...”

With a confused expression, like it made no sense—

“He was probably the one who interfered in the blood duel.”

“Ah. He did talk like that.”

Rashir had tried to get help and been refused, so he’d said something about taking measures in secret.

“Rashir slipping and letting it leak that the duel was happening—sure. It’s infuriating, but I get it. What I can’t understand is—”

“How he interfered in the duel.”

“Yes.”

Only those whose blood was mixed with each noble could intervene in that blood duel.

It wasn’t something two nobles could just agree on and make happen.

“In other words, the Progenitor’s blood isolated everyone else from the battlefield.”

My unit members, of course—

and even the ghouls from before their blood was mixed with Ariella’s—were excluded from the duel like that.

“So how was he able to do that?”

Ariella looked like it was completely incomprehensible.

But for me...

“I think I might know.”

“...What?”

There was one possibility I could guess.

In the last moment right before my head blew apart—

based on what I saw then,

I could roughly guess what kind of trick he’d used.

“Anyway, we’ll think about that later.”

Process aside—

Ariella lost to that man.

And as a result—

“You promised you’d go find Duke Valarak in person.”

“Yes. I judged that escaping the situation was the best option.”

Ariella let out a sigh.

“I put mana into the words and spoke them.”

“Hm.”

Words spoken with mana by vampires can’t be broken by their own will.

After all, that was the same process that had turned Ariella into my thrall in the first place.

A restraint so powerful that the moment that arrogant woman became a thrall, she was forced to obey every unreasonable order I gave.

“From now on, I have to go to Duke # Nоvеlight # Valarak myself, reveal what I am, receive his judgment, and obey it. Whether I want to or not.”

The promise Ariella made this time—

carried power equal to the oath binding her as my thrall.

“So....”

“So?”

“The master should leave this land with the royal guard and gather mana somewhere else.”

“Huh?”

When I widened my eyes at her, Ariella spoke with a dark face, like she felt ashamed.

“You can guess what it means to go before the head of a hostile bloodline and receive judgment.”

“Sure. Yeah.”

“So there’s no need for you and everyone else to come with me to somewhere that dangerous.”

Honestly—

I didn’t want to crawl into a place like that either.

But the problem was—

“Fine. Let’s say we run.”

I looked at her and asked,

“Then what about you?”

“.......”

“You have some way to walk out of there alive?”

If it came to that—

what would happen to her?

“....”

At my question, she just kept her mouth shut, like she had no intention of answering.

“Yeah. Figures. There’s no miracle plan.”

Send her to the land where that grand duke was, and I take the unit members somewhere safe, gather mana, and try to get back to the Legion—

that was Ariella’s proposal.

...Well.

Obviously.

“I’m rejecting that plan.”

“...What?”

Telling me to just abandon someone who’s obviously going to die—

how does that make any sense?

To begin with—

if that was what I was going to do, I wouldn’t have gambled to save those knights in the first place.

“I’m not a unit member.”

“That’s... my standard shifted a bit. It’s complicated. Anyway, it’s like that, you idiot.”

“What kind of—!”

“And besides, even if we try to escape on our own.”

I looked behind us.

All that was left back there were the empty remnants of the procession.

“We used up the mana we’d collected turning those guys into knights.”

The revived ghouls muttered with guilty faces.

“...Was it because of us?”

“No. This isn’t your fault.”

At the time, after winning the fight, I figured we could use Rashir’s stuff.

And we did win the duel using those ghouls, so the plan itself had been right.

The problem was—

“If you want someone to blame, blame that bastard. Cheap piece of—stealing stuff people worked their asses off to get.”

That man who’d shown up at the end—

he was the reason Rashir’s assets got taken.

“Even if it takes longer, you can gather mana with the royal guard unit members. The promise is only that I go in person before that grand duke. He didn’t say you had to bring other thralls, so you can leave them here. Use them—”

“That ‘manpower is important’ thing was before. And the amount we’d gathered was already everything we could scrape up in this area. We can’t gather more around here even if we try.”

“Then to another region—”

“From what I’ve heard, this whole area is vampire territory. Going somewhere else without your protection is still dangerous. And besides.”

I lifted a hand and scratched at my head and chest.

“My thinking changed a bit.”

“...What?”

“Even if we could go back right now, I don’t want to just go back anymore.”

Fresh flesh was still sprouting in places.

It itched like crazy, and it stung a little too.

“My head blew apart, my heart exploded... that hurt more than I expected.”

“......?”

“I’m petty.”

I bared my teeth in a grin.

“Leaving without paying that back... would kind of piss me off.”

Unfortunately, our return to the Legion was going to be delayed.

***

“Duke Valarak....”

Just like that, our next destination was set.

According to Ariella, the place Duke Valarak was staying was this country’s capital.

Beijing.

What would happen after we got there was a problem—

but honestly, the distance itself was a problem too.

It was going to be a long trip.

“...Sorry. You guys might’ve wanted to go back to the Legion.”

I said that to the unit members, feeling like I’d decided our destination on my own.

Jeong Sua shook her head.

“No. We follow your choices completely, Commander. And besides...”

“The choice you made this time is one we can accept.”

“Accept? How?”

“No matter what, that queen fought with us.”

“So... we can’t leave a comrade behind.”

I looked at her with my eyes slightly widened.

“Even if this choice could get us killed?”

“Then that can’t be helped, but... I doubt it’ll come to that.”

“Based on what?”

“Because our benefactor won’t let us die.”

At that,

I looked at her with a puzzled expression.

“You even took in people who were nothing but ghouls until recently, and you saved their lives. And this time, you decided not to abandon that queen and leave.”

“Why are you bringing that up—”

“You said you felt sorry for making this choice, but for us... that choice gave us a sense of security.”

Without slowing her steps under her pack, Jeong Sua kept walking forward as she spoke.

“That the Legion never abandons the people who are with it.”

“...Ah.”

“Even if one day we end up in a situation where we might be abandoned... you’ll never give up on us.”

When I stared at her blankly, Jeong Sua glanced back at me and said,

“And besides, this isn’t the same as last time.”

“What do you mean?”

“The fight with Luca happened a bit suddenly. But this time, you thought it through and decided to head there.”

“So... you wouldn’t shove us into a death trap without thinking.”

She wore a smile like she already knew everything.

“So you must’ve chosen this because you have some kind of method.”

“.......”

“Am I wrong?”

At that, all I could do was let out a dry laugh and look at her.

“This girl....”

Duke Valarak was probably monstrously strong.

According to Ariella, there was a good chance he was as strong as—or stronger than—that body Luca had created.

And that was only talking about individual strength.

Weren’t vampires a species specialized in the strength of armies, not individuals?

Melchiorn Bloodline—one of the four great bloodlines, the largest forces among vampires.

We were heading straight to where the head of that bloodline was.

Besides Duke Valarak, a lot of nobles would be lying in wait in that hellhole.

And on our way to a place like that, she was seriously thinking I had some kind of method....

How should I put it—

“She knows me too well.”

To a chilling degree.

Because it was an exact guess.

***

The capital, Beijing.

Once the center of one of the most powerful countries in the world—

a massive city that served as that nation’s heart.

Of course, that glittering past was nothing but an old story now.

Beijing’s sky was covered in black clouds of unknown origin, and the city lay sunk in deep darkness.

And then—

Flap!

Into the middle of that city, a bat flew in, clutching something.

Screee....

The bat headed for the tallest building in the city, opened a window on its own, and slipped inside.

Inside the building—

a single massive figure was settled there.

“...Ho. An unidentified noble.”

When the bat handed over what it had brought, the figure took it and murmured in an interested voice,

“I’m very much looking forward to what kind of face I’ll see....”