[There is a rumor that Bellatrix, the great Progenitor of all vampires, was originally a lower demon.]

[Whether or not that rumor is true has never been confirmed, but the vampires descended from the Progenitor still retain traits in common with demons.]

[Oath.]

One of those vampires' special abilities.

Like many of their other useful special powers, it was said to be an ability that originated from their Progenitor.

[The words they speak with will carry a special power!]

And, of course.

If I used the skill effect of [Absolute Taste],

I could use this ability whenever I wanted.

[As a great deal of time passed, their ordinary words no longer carried power in every single phrase they spoke.]

[But that trait itself has not disappeared.]

[If they speak with clear intent, those words will be established as an oath.]

Even so,

most of those vampires had long since forgotten about this oath,

and I had never once thought of borrowing this ability until now.

The reason was simple.

[I don't know whether anyone would ever bother doing such a thing, though!]

Because there had been no reason to do something like that.

I'm the only one who can take another person's traits wholesale through [Absolute Taste].

And this oath is a power that forcibly binds a promise made with another person onto yourself.

To make a promise with someone,

then place a restriction on yourself so that you absolutely had to keep it.

There had been no reason to do something like that.

"I promise."

[Trait - Oath activates!]

That wasn't true anymore.

"If you choose to follow me, then someday you and your bloodline will walk beneath the sun of day."

[Warning!]

[This is a near-impossible condition that alters the fate of an entire race.]

[An oath must be upheld absolutely!]

[It is impossible to break an oath by your own will, and if you fail to uphold it, a severe penalty may be imposed, so choose your words carefully....]

"And."

Ignoring the messages floating before my eyes,

I put not my insufficient mana, but divine power into my words and spoke.

"As long as those I take in remain with me, I will never abandon them."

[The words you have spoken bind you!]

"You as well."

[The will you have spoken defines you!]

"I will never abandon you."

Beyond that thick dark-blue mana.

Staring at the bastard somewhere on the other side of it, I declared it plainly.

And then.

[The oath has been established!]

[Your words become shackles and bind Awakened - Shin Youngjun.]

[If this oath is broken, the oathbearer will suffer a penalty of an absolute level.]

Along with the messages that appeared before my eyes,

the mana I had spoken took form in front of me, turning into the shape of chains.

Those chains moved in to tighten around my body.

[......An oath has been declared through divine power!]

But then.

Something changed in the shape of those chains.

[Due to the effect of divine power, the effect of the oath is being altered.]

[Correction - not altered, but restored to its proper form.]

Divine power and mana mixed together.

And the shackle-chains that had been approaching to bind me

"...a person?"

took on a human shape

and came toward me.

[Through the oath declared by divine power, {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} you define yourself.]

And then.

When that human figure overlapped with my body as it was,

I felt my body begin to change little by little to match that shape.

I could understand the difference.

'The essence of an oath isn't a shackle.'

The force that compels a promise—

that was probably what this power had become after being twisted.

Its true nature was....

Something created by speaking with the will that you would absolutely carry out your own words.

[Awakened - Shin Youngjun never abandons those who follow him.]

A definition of yourself.

A declaration made with the certainty that those words will come true.

Something close to a prophecy.

[Awakened - Shin Youngjun will one day restore to the vampires who follow him the right to walk beneath the sun.]

[Awakened - Shin Youngjun never abandons Ariella Vimarna Karshtein, a noble of the Karshtein Bloodline.]

It didn't signify some vague possibility in the future.

It wasn't merely the will to give my all to achieve a goal.

It was a message certain that it would come to pass.

By declaring this oath,

I had defined myself as an existence that would fulfill those promises.

[The contents of the oath are transmitted to those who choose to follow Awakened - Shin Youngjun.]

[They will instinctively understand the contents of the oath.]

[The faith of an unspecified multitude has risen drastically!]

[Divine power increases greatly.]

[Current divine power - 40]

The effect of it

seemed to have a far greater impact than I'd expected, but....

That wasn't what mattered right now.

-You really do mean it....

"Yeah, damn right."

I looked into that fog of mana and spoke.

"This oath will never be broken."

Unlike the past oath that had been destroyed by the Grand Duke,

this oath was not some flimsy shackle made of mana, spoken by the weak Ariella of the past.

A form made of divine power spoken by me, now strong enough, had settled into my body.

'Divine power is a force that makes the impossible possible.'

No matter how close to impossible the contents of that oath might be,

someday, I would absolutely make them real.

And unless I destroyed myself, no one would be able to break this oath.

"So."

Looking past the fog, I said,

"What are you going to do now?"

And then.

At that moment.

{How dare you try to approach the Marquis....!}

{Arrogant beyond measure, inferior breed!}

With a blast,

I saw the monsters all around me leap forward.

We had been talking in the middle of a battle to begin with,

but this attack was a little different.

'...So even the ones who'd been sitting back finally stepped in personally.'

Now even the nobles who had only been directing the fight were charging at me.

Talents personally acknowledged by the Grand Duke, along with the Grand Duke's direct thralls.

From the start, I wasn't a match for them in terms of raw combat strength.

The only reason I'd been able to hold out this long

was thanks to the various buffs I'd recklessly poured onto my body.

But most of those buffs had already worn off much faster than expected from the intensity of the battle.

Even the last scraps of mana and divine power I had left,

I had wrung out to the last drop and spent to speak that oath.

My regenerative ability as a vampire had weakened,

and I didn't even have any health food left to tear apart and eat.

'...Well. Speaking the oath was all well and good, but.'

It was an oath that wouldn't break unless I myself was destroyed,

'...but it could get broken a lot more easily than I expected...?'

The worst possible situation, one where I really could be destroyed, had come far too quickly.

As I stood there with no way to resist and just watched it happen—

KWA-A-A-ANG!

{......!?}

From beyond that dense dark-blue mana,

something enormous burst out and streaked past the side of my face.

{Brother!}

{That just now was....!}

That attack

shredded the group of monsters leading the charge.

They stared at that something and muttered,

{A black... shadow?}

A massive pillar of shadow,

rippling black.

And yet, it looked as if it had a definite physical form.

That shadow cut in between the vampires and me.

-I understand that you are sincere.

And then.

The presence at the end of that shadow moved closer to me.

-But it is still a little lacking.

When I slowly raised my head,

I saw the giant pillar of shadow....

No, tentacles.

-It will not be easy to keep following you and fight this world from here on. And before that, there was also the time I already suffered as your thrall.

From atop those countless tentacles,

I could feel the bastard's presence speaking to me.

"You're counting everything from before too?"

-Of course. To follow you is to make an enemy of that Grand Duke. Even if you say you will not abandon me, I cannot accept a proposal that asks me to walk into suicide on the single condition that you will not cast me aside.

Heh. Seriously.

Hearing that, all I could do was let out a disbelieving laugh.

-The promise alone is not enough. So.

When it was my thrall, it had listened so well,

and now it was suddenly trying to negotiate for back pay too.

-You know what it is that I want....

But, well, what else could I do?

"I saw your memories."

I was the one trying to drag back a bastard that had already quit.

Back then, I had been the one with the upper hand.

Right now, it was completely the other way around.

"You drank the blood of the innocent and thought there couldn't be anything more delicious than that."

So I had no choice but to bend a little.

"And you must have found yourself utterly disgusting for it."

This bastard's former master had tried to rule it through pain.

Just like a Grand Duke of the vampires, I guess.

A pretty violent, blood-soaked method.

Having forcibly ruled every vampire through the mana of domination in their blood,

it probably had never known any normal way to grow close to others beyond methods like that.

But.

Unlike that bastard who had once been a mighty Grand Duke,

my job was just an ordinary cook.

And

what a cook can give

is only one thing, right?

"I'll serve you a supreme dish so good it'll make that kind of thing feel like garbage."

Food.

-A supreme dish...?

"Yeah."

-......Hmm.

At that,

not just it, but

{......Cooking?}

{What did that bastard just say to the Marquis?}

the surrounding monsters all looked at me like I was insane.

Looking up at Ariella, they shouted,

{Marquis, please remove this shadow at once!}

{If you devour this one, your promise with the Grand Duke will also be fulfilled!}

{If you would only remove this shadow, then as promised, you will surely rise to the role of great head of the bloodline!}

Those bastards shouted up at Ariella with total confidence.

{Ignore the words of that inferior breed!}

And then.

Without even sparing them a glance,

-A supreme dish.

Ariella stared blankly down at my face.

And a moment later.

With a soft motion.

Ariella lightly flicked a hand.

{...Huh?}

{Marquis...?}

And then.

KWAGWAGWAGWAGWAGWAGWAGWAK!!!

Overwhelming mass, speed too fast to even see, and countless pillars of shadow

{Gurk...!?}

spun through the area and [ground] everything in the vicinity to pieces.

***

With an enormous number of troops annihilated in a single blow, after that,

{The Marquis has turned!}

{Why....!}

those who realized Ariella had defected turned their weapons away from me and,

{I don't know the reason, but....}

{We were told there might be a case like this.}

{Subdue the traitor!}

started attacking the more dangerous enemy instead.

{How dare you raise a hand against the Marquis!}

{For the master of our souls!}

As she grew stronger with the Grand Duke's help,

Ariella too had taken many monsters in as additional thralls.

Those who had stood behind Ariella without taking part in the battle against me—

they moved to answer the attack on their master.

KWA-A-A-ANG!

Ariella and her thralls.

The nobles selected by the Grand Duke and the Grand Duke's direct thralls.

A war broke out between the two vampire factions.

'The Grand Duke's thralls are strong.'

Thralls personally chosen by the Grand Duke.

Their number and quality were beyond imagination.

I had managed to fight back somehow,

but that battle had only ever been about buying time without dying.

No matter how many enemies there were, the number I actually had to deal with at any one moment had never been that high, so it had been possible.

The number of troops I had truly managed to reduce wasn't all that great.

On the other hand,

Ariella's forces were not inferior in quality to the Grand Duke's thralls either,

but their numbers were far too small.

{Grr... rk.}

And yet, even so.

"......"

Those countless monsters.

The sounds made by the ones who had been none other than that Grand Duke's direct thralls.

Crackle, tap....

It didn't take very long for those sounds to stop being heard at all.

-As you said....

A huge black-rippling shadow burst out from over there and picked up one of the monsters lying on the ground.

The massive monster was lifted as lightly as if it were a toy,

and then—

Crunch.

It shattered into tiny pieces and melted into that shadow.

-The taste of my own kind does indeed feel somewhat finer.

"......"

-Compared to the quality monsters I have eaten until now, it is beyond comparison.

And then.

When those black tentacles lowered themselves,

the presence atop them drew even closer to me.

And at last.

At the very top of those countless tentacles,

I could see a woman sitting there in an arrogant posture, looking down at me.

"If even this blood tastes this good."

Looking up at the bastard, I thought,

this one had originally been armed with incredible vengeance.

A vengeance and drive for improvement strong enough to endure any pain.

And yet, even so, in the end it had still submitted to me and become my thrall.

There was only one reason why.

"Then making food good enough to make you forget that horrible disgust won't be easy."

A bastard that had been ruled by pain might be resistant to pain,

but it couldn't resist the pleasure I gave it.

"Are you confident?"

Of course,

right now this one had developed extremely expensive tastes because of all that cannibalizing its own kind and eating my cooking.

Feeding a bastard like that something worthy of being called supreme would not be easy.

"Of course."

But

I was pretty confident.

And for good reason.

My cooking had continued to improve,

and I already possessed skill on a level I'd never had before.

And besides....

'If these bastards find the blood of their own kind even tastier.'

A skilled cook, after all,

should know how to prepare food suited to the diner's palate.

And for that bastard, the finest custom ingredient was already prepared.

"Let's go eat the Grand Duke."

"...What?"

Because I already had it ready.