Chapter 30

About two years later, Winter Winslet would become the target of the Candela Knights.

It was because his illegal activities and other transgressions over the years were now seen as a threat to the kingdom.

However, Winter Winslet was too formidable an opponent to be handled by the strength of the Candela Knights alone, so they devised various countermeasures.

One such measure was heading to Karaf to seek the aid of a mage.

In addition, Dahlia had long been marked as a potential recruit by the Candela Knights.

From their perspective, it was only natural. Dahlia appeared to be Winter Winslet’s trusted confidante.

The Candela Knights revealed all the truths that Winter Winslet had tried to conceal, shaking Dahlia’s loyalty and inciting her to assassinate him.

Although the requirements were strict, such as having certain minimum stats, possessing a specific “Talent”, and clearing prerequisite events….if one succeeded in persuading her, Dahlia would poison the tea Winter Winslet was meant to drink on the day of the Candela Knights’ operation.

As a result, Winter Winslet would suffer serious internal injuries, and the player would get to fight a boss battle with the difficulty reduced by several levels.

I had done all of this myself—

As a player of Candela of Judgment.

But now that I had become Winter Winslet myself, the Candela Knights’ ruthless, “ends-justify-the-means” methods felt disturbingly grim.

Dahlia was an NPC who had been deceived and exploited by Winter Winslet all her life.

Giving her a chance at revenge had seemed both just and efficient.

But was that really something done for Dahlia’s sake?

After Winter Winslet’s boss battle ended, Dahlia would take her own life.

Right beside his corpse, still faintly warm.

It was a hollow ending.

I asked Dahlia,

“Is city life hard on you?”

“Huh? What do you mean by that?”

“You’ve been living in a place where you don’t know a single person. I meant, aren’t you lonely?”

Life in a distant land, in a country of a different people, could never have been easy.

Leaving aside the language barrier, humans were creatures easily susceptible to loneliness.

Dahlia who spent all day confined indoors likely had no opportunity to make friends.

Her answer came in a clear voice.

“Th-This might be presumptuous of me to say… but I think of you as my family, Master… so I’m okay.”

“I see.”

“Yes.”

Dahlia’s isolation and loneliness served to deepen her dependence on Winter Winslet, her only relationship.

It was like a weight placed to prevent her betrayal.

But the stronger the force pressing down on a spring, the more violently it would rebound.

Winter Winslet had already stacked far too many of those weights atop a spring named Karma.

Oblivious to the day that retribution might come for him.

That was why I had decided from now on to begin carefully removing those weights, one by one.

“Dahlia.”

“Yes?”

“I’m planning to invite a guest over to the house soon.”

“A guest? That’s rare.”

Winter Winslet might’ve been a famous womanizer, but it seemed even he had never invited others into a home where evidence of his crimes might be lying around.

And the one I was inviting this time wasn’t exactly a stranger either.

“Who should I receive, Master?”

“Josephine. She’s my fiancée.”

“She’s very important then! What should I prepare?”

“Nothing special. But if I come home late, just keep her company in my place.”

“M-Me? Would that really be okay? I wouldn’t dare…”

One step at a time.

Dahlia would be given a chance to open her heart to someone other than Winter Winslet.

That was my plan.

I didn’t know if this plan would go as smoothly as it had with Shannon, but at the very least, it wouldn’t be a bad thing for the two to grow closer.

“Do you think you can’t do it?”

“No. If it’s what you wish, Master.”

“There’s no need to overthink it. Josephine doesn’t have a difficult personality.”

The sun had begun to set.

Just before I stood up, setting aside the half-eaten sandwich, I handed Dahlia a small badge.

“Take it.”

“Master, this is…?”

“It’s a bank key.”

A sort of token that allowed one to withdraw money from a bank in the city of Lambart.

Though it was more akin to a private vault than a proper bank, and it actually cost money to store funds there, the biggest advantage was not having to keep piles of cash stacked up and managed inside the house.

Dahlia looked uneasy as she asked,

“Why would you give me something like this…?”

“From now on, go and withdraw a fixed amount from the vault on the first of every month. About 300… no, 400 blancs should do.”

“Yes, I will.”

“That money is yours.”

“Huh?”

“Call it wages or allowance…whatever you like. It’s your compensation for working in my household, so use it however you wish.”

“But I never served you because I wanted to be paid, Master…”

“If you work, you should be paid. That’s only natural.”

Besides, it wasn’t even that much money.

The badge I gave Dahlia was of a lower grade.

There was a limit on how much could be withdrawn at one time.

Dahlia could only take out a bit more than what the average housemaid earned per month.

Even so, since she still seemed overwhelmed by the gesture, I gave her a convenient excuse.

“How about using it to take care of the house? Or maybe pick out a gift for Josephine when she visits. You could even buy flowers to decorate the living room.”

“Oh! If it’s for something like that, I’d be happy to.”

It was basically like assigning her homework, but Dahlia seemed genuinely pleased.

“I-I’ll do my best!”

And the one to grade that homework would be Josephine.

***

After that, we stopped by several shops and bought various things like furniture for the house, decorations, porcelain dishware, and the like.

I bought plenty, partly to give Dahlia some practice in spending money.

By the time we returned to the official residence at the Academy, the streetlamps were beginning to flicker on.

Inside the slowly moving carriage, Dahlia’s face had gone stiff.

“M-Master…?”

“What’s the matter?”

“M-My heart’s beating too fast. T-To think I just spent so much money all at once… I-I’m definitely going to be punished for this later.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

If spending a bit of money was a punishable offense, then Winter Winslet would deserve the death penalty.

…Which, to be fair, the Winter Winslet of the original story did deserve, so I felt a little awkward myself.

But still…whatever.

We arrived in front of the house and unloaded the baggage.

When we stacked the large and small boxes from the carriage onto the ground, the pile was taller than Dahlia herself.

Just bringing it all inside and organizing it would take ages.

“Dahlia.”

“Yes!”

“Move it. I’m going out for a walk.”

True to her role as a loyal servant, Dahlia didn’t ask, “A walk? At this hour?” or anything of the sort. Instead, she just groaned and started hauling the boxes.

Watching her, I walked in the opposite direction of the house, putting some distance between us.

It wasn’t because I didn’t want to work and dumped the task on her.

Really.

I didn’t go far on my walk.

Following the same route I usually took to work, I reached a tree-lined street and slipped off to the side into a park.

Then, I deployed a mana field.

“You thought I wouldn’t notice if you watched from a distance?”

Flutter!

With a frantic flapping of wings, a black figure shot out of a tree and into the air.

I quickly completed my spell.

[Casting Bendigate’s Arcane Spell—Shadow Chain.]

From the shadows of the trees, stretched long under the glow of the streetlamps, mysterious tendrils emerged.

Shadow-colored, semi-transparent tendrils shot up into the sky like arrows. They wrapped tightly around the flying black figure, pulling it to the ground.

Crash!

The black figure slammed into the ground and exploded in a spray of blood.

It wasn’t that I lost control of the force.

The creature’s durability was just that poor.

I stepped closer to where the blood had splattered to confirm what kind of prey I had just taken down.

It had the shape of a bird but wasn’t a bird. A magical creature made of blood and flesh.

What I’d caught was a familiar belonging to a vampire.

While riding in the carriage with Dahlia on the way home, I sensed its presence just barely on the edge of my mana field.

If luck hadn’t been on my side, I wouldn’t have noticed it at all.

“A vampire, in the Academy…”

I had a few guesses as to who might be behind this.

***

Late at night.

A few hours after the blood-clot creature had exploded at the Academy, a bird identical to it was silently flying over the skies of Lambart.

Because it had just been created, the bird was redder, glossier, and slightly larger than the one that had died at the Academy.

Perhaps because of that, its flight was a bit unstable, and it struggled slightly before reaching its destination.

The bird’s destination was Mallow Hill, the wealthy district of Lambart.

More specifically, a luxurious mansion where a nighttime banquet was in full swing.

The bird circled the mansion a few times before spotting a darkened room on the third floor and flew toward it.

Landing on the window ledge, it peered inside the room where a man and woman were tangled together in the darkness, engaged in an intimate act.

The crimson bird tapped lightly on the window with its beak.

Tap, tap, tap.

A voice responded from inside.

“Wait. It’s bad manners to speak to someone else when a lady is in front of you.”

At the man’s words, the bird lowered its head and backed away a little.

The couple inside resumed their act, and since the command to wait had been given, the crimson bird could only watch them with a growing sense of dismay.

Their movements were slow and hushed.

But the woman’s arousal steadily rose, and her excitement peaked the moment the man sank his long fangs into her neck.

“Aaagh!”

Like a beast severing its prey’s throat, the man bit down, and the woman let out a sharp scream before her body went limp.

To the crimson bird, it was unmistakably the moment of death.

However, when the man withdrew his fangs from her nape a moment later, the woman returned from death.

The two puncture wounds on her neck quickly began to fill in. The flesh healed without spilling a single drop of blood. As she finally came to her senses, the woman trembled.

“Ah, ah… Lord of the Night.”

“I have made you mine. As of today, you are one of my kin, Rebecca. So long as you do not lose my favor, your youth shall remain eternal.”

Rebecca who had once been a countess checked her skin in the mirror. A look of joy spread across her face.

“Thank you. Thank you, Lord of the Night!”

“As you wished, I have granted you the power of enchantment and mind control from among my abilities. From now on, your husband and children shall be under your sway. Your husband’s lineage now belongs to you, and what is yours belongs to me.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Then, my servant, it is time to pay the price we agreed upon.”

At the word “price”, the countess’s expression changed.

She hesitated, then asked,

“Um… must I really do it? My family of birth… and my closest friends… Must it truly be them? Would it not suffice to offer the servants of this manor instead? Or perhaps you could bestow your grace upon them as you did with me…?”

“Foolish, pitiful girl.”

The man seized the countess’s face in his grasp.

He lifted her chin and forced her to meet his gaze. A harsh gesture, unlike someone who had just shared such intimacy.

He spoke.

“The ritual you performed tonight is like a castaway gaining water and a ship upon the sea. You are no longer the master of your fate. You cannot possess what I do not permit, nor can you abandon what I forbid. And the same applies to those you once held dear.”

“Ah… ah… What have I done…?”

The countess began to tremble like an aspen tree, and the man gave her a command.

“You will now receive the messenger. Do not open your mouth.”

The countess prostrated herself in obedience, and only then did the man open the window to let the bird inside.

“You’ve waited long enough. Come in.”

He extended a finger, and the crimson bird landed upon it.

But the bird soon melted away, and the blood that dripped down transformed into the shape of a wine glass.

The man calmly drank the contents of the glass—

A small amount of blood, along with the information contained within.

“So. You say Baron Winslet has become aware of our surveillance? I told you to be more careful, did I not?”

“It doesn’t matter. Don’t blame yourself too harshly. A mage of his caliber would have discovered it eventually, sooner or later.”

“In fact, this may be a fine opportunity to send him an invitation and arrange a meeting. On the chessboard known as Lambart, he is one of the most powerful pieces. If I can make him mine, it would be a great gain.”

“Humans truly are pitiful creatures. There isn’t one who does not fear death. All too often they bow their heads at my feet, begging to be granted immortality. I wonder how that man, Winter Winslet, will respond.”

The noble of the night, Kys d’Alembert, smiled. His lips were stained deep red with blood.