Paaaak!!!

The figure before my eyes vanished.

And at the same time, a massive blood mist appeared and rushed at me.

Srrrk....

And then.

Just as part of that mist reached right in front of me, it gathered together and began taking shape.

Kaaang!

I barely managed to swing my sword and knock away the fangs aimed at my throat, but—

Puhk!!!

“...Ghk.”

I couldn’t stop the thing’s leg, formed in the blind spot of my vision, from driving its knee into my abdomen.

‘What the hell is this?’

Blasted backward by the impact, I forced myself upright as steadily as I could.

Sword raised, I watched the huge mist in front of me warily.

But then—

Saaaak....

“!”

A presence, not from the front, but from behind me.

When I whipped my head around in a hurry, I saw a small patch of mist flying at me.

‘When the hell did that get there!?’

I threw myself aside to evade it,

and—

Shhk—

part of my uniform was sliced away.

And when I saw the form that small mist had taken, I couldn’t help but frown.

‘That’s...’

The shape of a small hand.

I’d been wondering where that mist had popped out from, but....

‘The hand I cut off first.’

When I first entered this room, it had been the arm I’d severed right away.

Only after seeing that did I finally realize it.

‘This thing was definitely strong.’

But.

Looking back on it now, there had been something strange about the fight.

What had made fighting that bastard difficult for me was certainly its raw power, but—

‘...it was because of its combat technique.’

Like warriors trained in [Martial Arts], it had handled that immense strength skillfully, while packing all kinds of intentions into each movement to restrict my actions.

The kind of bearing only a veteran warrior who’d spent decades on the battlefield would show.

This was how a warrior fought....

Not how a monster fought.

-Even I.

I raised my head and looked at the thing before me.

-did not wish to show this form.

Blood mist had filled the room before I knew it.

And inside that mist, I could see the faint shape of a human figure.

The translucent form of a nobleman, looking down at me arrogantly.

Right.

‘That’s how a monster fights.’

Up until now, that bastard hadn’t shown its full strength.

‘...No, but wait.’

Still.

Separate from the fact that it hadn’t been fighting seriously until now, there was another reason I couldn’t help being shocked when I saw that form.

Kwaaang!!!

I barely dodged the mist solidifying and attacking where I stood, then rolled across the floor and thought,

‘Blood mist?’

According to Ariella, all the bloodlines were alike in that they manipulated blood, but their more specialized abilities differed.

The Karshtein Bloodline, the one Ariella belonged to, specialized in shadows—that was one example.

And.

She had said some bloodlines couldn’t use the abilities specialized to other bloodlines at all.

Ariella couldn’t use the immense strength specialized to the Melchiorn Bloodline, or the beastly power specialized to the Harcon Bloodline.

“How...!”

And.

As for the ones ruling this land—

those from that Grand Duke’s bloodline....

“Mist...!?”

they had seemed completely incapable of wielding the power of mist and shadow.

***

-Behold.

Not a trace remained of the polite speech from when we’d first spoken.

The bastard, now looking down at me with utterly arrogant eyes, shouted,

-Marvel, yearn, and stand in awe!

“...!”

-At this elegant and noble battle... something you Melchiorn fools could never hope to imitate!

Paaaak!!

The mist shot toward me.

I crossed both arms, trying to block it, but—

Srrrk.

To begin with.

Mist wasn’t something you could block just because you wanted to.

The blood mist passed lightly through my hands.

And then—

Kwaaaak!!!

“Khk...!”

It took shape while violently seizing my throat.

My breathing cut off.

I could feel the joints in my neck starting to give.

-You Melchiorn vermin!!!

I tried somehow to tear the attack off me.

But.

Every time my hand went to cut it, only that part turned into mist, letting my attack pass through.

Unlike Ariella and her retainers, who couldn’t use [Mistform] continuously, this one shifted between mist and solid flesh with terrifying freedom.

-I will make your blood my sustenance and drive it into the Grand Duke’s heart!!!

The moment my attack sliced through empty air, the bastard’s face, already re-formed, lunged at my throat.

My attacks didn’t work.

My defense didn’t work either.

It felt like being lost inside the mist itself.

...But.

‘Thank God.’

Looking at that blood mist, I thought, blood is just liquid with a slightly thicker concentration.

In the end, it still belongs to the category of liquid.

Mist is the same.

It’s only water vapor gathered in one place.

Its true nature still falls under liquid.

That mist made of blood was no different.

And.

If that was the case—

‘...[Elemental Cooking].’

I tightened my grip and muttered inwardly.

‘Water!’

As luck would have it, one of the areas of cooking I’m most confident in is liquid.

-...You!?

The bastard had been rushing to bite through my throat and chew through my blood vessels.

Its fangs stopped right in front of my skin.

It hadn’t stopped on its own.

-How...!

The mist connected to its neck.

That vast blood mist....

-Interfering with my body...!?

held fast in my hand, was being sucked in.

Kwaaaang!!!

I forcefully seized that [Blood Mist]

and then slammed it toward the floor with all my strength.

Puhwaaaak!!!

Unlike just moments ago, when it had been nothing more than ordinary mist, the blood mist now surged violently, like a massive volume of water being hurled down.

The mana from my [Elemental Cooking], extending out from my body, had already spread through the bastard’s entire form while it was still off guard.

Its whole body had already become no different from my cooking ingredient.

-You forcibly materialized my body...?

The flustered bastard was muttering that when—

Pak!

I charged straight at it.

Then, grabbing the translucent human figure that faintly existed inside the mist—

its throat—

I climbed on top of it.

Kwach!

-Kuhk....

I clamped down hard on its neck, and through the [Assistant Chef]s, drove both its arms and legs into the floor.

-Kgh....

Its whole body was pinned to the ground.

At some point, it had already taken on the original human shape I’d seen before.

-Khahahahahahaha!!!

With that beautiful face, the bastard burst into wild laughter.

-Indeed... perhaps it is no longer that foolish Grand Duke from before!

“Huff, huff...!”

-To think it would create and send a retainer with the power to hunt me.... Hahaha. So the Grand Duke already knew that the one hiding here was none other than me.

And then.

Its face twisted slightly.

-That wisdom.

Bloody tears filled with sorrow streamed down.

-That kind of wisdom suits that foolish, idiotic Grand Duke so poorly... that I hate it beyond words!

What was it so sad about, so aggrieved over?

As if struggling to hold back its tears, it kept tightening its eyes.

Then it shouted at me.

-You have won, descendant of Melchiorn. Kill me or chew me apart as you please.

“Haa... haa....”

-But return to your Grand Duke and make this clear. Though this body may become prey for the Grand Duke.... Foolish Valarak! Your will shall never be fulfilled!

“So, huff... goddammit.”

And then.

Looking at the bastard,

“What kind of...”

I forced my ragged breathing under control and said,

“bullshit... are you talking about?”

***

-...You mean to say you are not a descendant of Melchiorn?

“Yeah, dumbass.”

A little later.

I looked down at the bastard pinned to the floor and answered.

Maybe because that mist form had come undone, its speech had grown a little more restrained again.

-...Nonsense. You may have been able to deceive other humans, but you could never deceive me. Are you not an assassin created by the Grand Duke to eliminate me?

And then.

It looked at me with contempt.

-I had never heard of a noble like you either. But after exchanging a few blows, I realized it. That bizarrely excellent combat technique of yours... belongs not to a knight, but to an assassin.

“......”

-Not one who makes war a profession, but one who meticulously probes an opponent’s weaknesses and slips a blade into their back from the shadows. Under Valarak’s orders, how many must have quietly lost their lives to your blade...?

The technique of an assassin who strikes from behind.

Well, of course it would look that way.

‘There’s no way a cook could beat knights or warriors by fighting them head-on!’

My fighting style had developed around identifying my opponent’s weaknesses and driving into them with precision.

Since I wasn’t confident in a frontal fight, I relied on things like [Environmental Assimilation] and always went for the back of the head first.

Those martial instructors had said the same thing before—that my way of fighting resembled an assassin’s.

-More than that.

Sssup.

The bastard drew in a shallow breath.

-You seem to have tried to hide it, but... I can smell blood on you. Not human blood... the blood of a bloodline.

And.

Only after hearing that did I finally understand.

‘Goddammit, so that was it.’

When I came looking for this bastard, it had looked down at me and said things like our thoughts had been the same.

At the time, I’d been too busy knocking away its attack to think about what it meant.

‘It smelled the blood on me and mistook me for the Grand Duke’s assassin.’

From its perspective, it was itself trying to kill the assassin who had come to kill it.

It had said that because it thought our purposes were the same.

“I brought you those nobles’ heads to clear up exactly that misunderstanding.”

-That request came from the two Vice Chairmen, not from me. I was surprised that you truly brought back the heads of nobles, but even then, I judged that you still could not be fully trusted.

“So you’d already decided the answer from the start?”

-Of course, it is also true that the scent of blood on you was strangely faint and foreign. That is why, just in case, I asked.

The question that bastard had asked—

not the two Vice Chairmen—

I quickly understood what it had been.

-If what you said was really true, then why were they keeping you at their side?

I, too, had felt that question might be extremely important.

-You said it was because they intended to turn you into a new noble.

So.

Rather than brush it off with some vague lie, I answered with something that contained a fair amount of truth.

But then—

-Impossible nonsense!

“...Ah.”

Instead, that truth seemed to make it distrust me more.

-Such a thing is so rare that one would be hard-pressed to find precedent for it in the entire history of the bloodlines. If it had been someone from another bloodline, perhaps that would be one thing, but there is no chance that that greedy Valarak would ever permit such a thing to happen within its own bloodline.

Come to think of it, Ariella and that Grand Duke had talked about that too.

Ariella had said what it was trying to do to me was an extremely rare thing.

‘So it’s even rarer than I thought.’

I’d tried to mix in some truth, and because that truth was too rare, it had only made the bastard distrust me more.

...But.

How should I put it.

‘This situation... might not be entirely bad.’

That thought crossed my mind too.

Because—

“You said greedy Valarak, right?”

-Ha. Does insulting the name of the head of the house fill you with rage?

“No, not really.”

Unlike the misunderstanding I’d had at first,

[Ingredient Appraisal (Enhanced)]

[Karhin Nibela di Neferat]

this bastard did not belong to the bloodline of the Grand Duke ruling this land.

‘...Neferat.’

According to the Grand Duke, they were supposed to have been wiped out long ago, just like Ariella’s bloodline.

Whether the Grand Duke had lied, or whether there was a survivor even it hadn’t known about, I had no idea.

[Great Lord of the Vast Mist Marsh, Nibel]

[Third Seat of the Neferat Council]

[Marquis of the Neferat Bloodline]

Anyway.

The important point was something else.

[A prestigious great noble of the night who once served as captain of the guard to Grand Duke Kirchhoff, the head of the Neferat Bloodline.]

[This is Marquis Karhin.]

[As a direct retainer of the Grand Duke, he earned high merit and was raised to nobility. With his abilities, he reached the domain of the great nobles and came to be regarded as a living legend of the Neferat Bloodline.]

Having fought it myself, I could say with certainty:

this bastard was extremely strong.

And more than that—

[Freshness - Low]

[As a result of remaining near powerful sunlight for a long time, it has lost a great deal of its original power.]

[As a result of handling power unsuited to its body for a long time, it has lost a great deal of its original power.]

‘...Even the power I went through hell to subdue wasn’t its original power.’

This building sat directly beneath that giant sun.

Even if this was a space where the light was blocked off, it seemed that simply being near that sun greatly reduced a vampire’s power.

“You said I could kill you or chew you up however I wanted, right?”

-...?

“Then I really will do whatever I want.”

After walking up to the bastard, I slipped a hand inside my coat.

-Wait....

Even weakened this badly by all sorts of terrible conditions, it was still a monster that had displayed that level of ability.

So just killing it, or chewing it up and eating it...

well, how should I put it.

-That piece of meat in your hand... what is it...?

That’d be too much of a waste.