Holding the spear in both hands, Valerie cast her eyes over it and inspected it thoroughly. She turned it over, ran her fingers over the shaft and even dragged a finger across the edge of the blade. She winced slightly, dragging her hand away with her finger dripping blood as she inevitably cut herself doing that, but she couldn’t help but look at that cut with a goofy smile across her face.

"It’s real..." She whispered to herself, before starting to laugh. It was a laugh that started nervous, then picked up steam quickly, until she was cackling like a wicked witch at the top of her lungs.

"IT’S REAL! IT’S FUCKING REAL!" She screamed, thrusting her hands into the air and hoisting the spear above her head, like she was some caveman that had finally discovered fire.

She eventually calmed down, after a few minutes of laughing and clutching the spear to her chest like a giddy school girl, before she finally placed it against the ground. She placed the broken side down, since she didn’t want the blade to ruin her floors - and more importantly lose her security deposit on the apartment - before pushing herself off of her chair.

Valerie wobbled slightly, supporting herself entirely on the spear, as her legs trembled underneath her. But before she had been forced into the chair, she had a span with crutches, so she knew how this went.

Little step after little step, she slowly shuffled towards the door. It was a distance of a metre, maybe less, but it still took her over a minute to cross the gap that most would do in seconds. However when she slumped against that door, she could not remove the smile from her face.

It took another ten entire minutes to get the door open and hobble into the living room, before she finally dropped onto the couch with a laugh.

"Ugh, this is fantastic. It might not be as fast as I first wanted... but I will take it. Turtle beats the hare, after all.

I can only imagine how my stalkers would feel if they could see this." She muttered to herself.

If they could see it, was also the correct choice of words. As although they had cameras all over her apartment, like the little creeps they were... whoever they were, it was unlikely that they would be seeing her right now.

After all, her lovely new thrall Bai Yin had hacked the AI controlling the cameras and deciding what to focus on. Instead of directing their attention towards the unusual or supernatural, such as her draining Bai Yin blood on her bedroom floor, it now directed their attention away from that stuff.

However they could still manually review it, or simply notice the oddity in their AI’s behaviour, if it went on long enough or they weren’t as trusting of it. It was an oddity they would discover sooner rather than later, as what was more odd than a wheelchair-bound woman suddenly walking with a spear that she had pulled out of nowhere?

They would definitely notice that the cameras were constantly pointing away from their main surveillance target and try to fix it. But Valerie had come to terms with that, and she was okay with it.

If she could help it, she would not go back in that chair, just to keep up some ruse that would eventually be blown. Was it stupid and selfish? Most likely. Would it lead her to possibly being caught sooner rather than later? Most definitely.

But there was only so much hiding and ’smart’ actions that you could take while they eat away at what you feel is right. It was not generally ’smart’ to run into a burning building and save someone you loved, yet that never stopped countless people from doing it anyways.

It was the same reason she killed the Stranger for hurting Beans, even if it meant the ’Matriarch’ would find her sooner. Sometimes you just have to say ’fuck it’ and stop playing it safe, do something stupid and live life on your own terms.

Letting out a heavy sigh, Valerie cast the thoughts of wordly philosphy and being discovered out of her mind, and turned again to her shadow. Although she could definitely not recall everything she had dumped into the inventory of her [Eternal Companion], like she did with any NPC companion in games, she could remember a few key items that could definitely help her here.

Shifting so that she was casting a shadow on the couch, she pushed her hand into the shadow again and pulled out the items in question. They were not large or glamorous, as soon she had two refined source remnants and a vial of a deep, crimson liquid sitting on the couch next to her.

First she grabbed the vial. It’s contents were naturally blood, specifically blood from one of her many beast kills rather than the Dragon Blood she kept in reserve. The Dragon blood was good for stats, and could not be wasted, but this she could get anywhere and kept as a sort of health potion.

At least that was the case in the game, but here it could also satiate the hunger she had developed.

Why Belladonna did not get the hunger, but Valerie did, she could not yet comment on. There were far too many unknowns, and one of them was if this was the only difference in how her race affected her.

More experimentation would be needed, but that could wait. For now, it was feasting time.

With a grin on her face, Valerie uncorked the vial and immediately pressed it to her lips, downing the entire vial like she was doing shots in a bar. However the smile quickly faded from her face, and she slowly spat the blood back into the vial with a disgusted expression plastered across her face.

She quickly corked the vial and placed it to the side, before dipping her hand into her shadow to grab another one of her spares. She repeated the process, this time only taking a small sip instead of a full drink, before spitting it out again with the same look of disappointment and disgust.

Twice more she repeated, making sure to grab vials that she had collected and prepared at different times, with one being freshly stored today. Yet all four of them were exactly the same.

Utterly stale, devoid of any flavour, and having all the nutrition that they were supposed to give Valerie’s body ripped out of them. She would have been better eating fast food.