Chapter 44 | The Vampire Princess Later Drew the Holy Sword

Hart Town didn't have a dedicated cemetery. The manager and two young men carried the coffin to the grassy slope east of the town.

Shoveling the dirt, leveling it, erecting a tombstone, and tying a shred of the teal cloak to the top.

Esper stood at the top of the slope, not approaching.

The Holy Sword floated behind her shoulder, its halo so dim it was almost invisible.

Weren't they just fighting together yesterday?

Hadn't they literally just said they would see each other tomorrow?

The manager propped the shovel's handle against the ground and turned to Esper.

“...The situation is a bit grim. I've sent out new requests for reinforcements to other guilds and churches. I expect some new adventurers will come to help after a while... probably.”

Rank Three was already a level that most mortals spent their entire lives trying to reach, and it was also the threshold for an ordinary soldier to become an apprentice knight of the empire.

The standard for a Holy Spirit apprentice knight was Rank Four, while the standard for an official knight in both factions was one rank higher than an apprentice knight.

Correspondingly, a Rank Four Flame Demon could easily destroy a village. A Rank Five Holy Spirit Knight could handle several Rank Four Flame Demons at once.

But the higher one went, the wider the gap in strength became.

Rank Six would be bestowed a title in the empire and gain the qualification to enter the Roundtable. In the church, they would be recognized as an elite, with a chance to compete for the position of Grand Commander of the Holy Spirit Knights.

Named Knights were already as rare as phoenix feathers, and free agents who hadn't joined the Roundtable were even scarcer. Out of those who could be summoned by this call, how many adventurers could actually replace Ade's combat power in the short term?

...

Esper didn't respond to the manager. She stared at the fresh mound of earth for a long time, until the manager sighed and turned to leave, and the two young men shrank their necks and ran down the slope.

Three feet away, Eladia stood by her side.

She didn't look at the new grave; instead, she watched Esper's clenched fist.

“Esper.”

“I know.”

The voice squeezed out from between her teeth, dry and hard.

“You want to tell me to calm down. I know.”

Eladia shook her head.

“No... I wanted to say, your hand is bleeding.”

Esper looked down at her palm.

Her nails had dug in, and several droplets of dark red blood were seeping from the wound.

Yesterday, this blood was still flowing at high speeds. She had wielded this blood, teaming up with a reliable knight, to take down the death marcher.

Now, the blood had cooled, no longer flowing, merely hanging on the wound.

She released her grip.

“...Let's go.”

The two of them walked down the slope toward the town. Esper's pace was faster than usual, her footsteps hitting the road in a hurried and chaotic rhythm.

When they reached the middle of the slope, she suddenly stopped. Standing in place, she took a deep breath and let it out.

“Something's not right.”

Eladia stopped, waiting quietly.

Esper turned around, thoughts churning rapidly in her eyes.

“Ade's body had a large number of combat wounds. He wasn't killed in a single strike by a sneak attack. He fought the enemy.”

Esper began to walk back, heading not toward the town, but toward the scene of last night's battle.

The road looked completely ordinary during the day. Esper crouched down, closed her eyes, and released her sense of smell, which had been deliberately suppressed in her disguised state.

Vampires were extremely sensitive to scents, and if the target they were tracking was fresh blood, this sensitivity would expand even further.

When operating at full capacity, every drop of blood within a hundred paces would become a glowing beacon to Esper.

Not many traces of yesterday's battle remained. The greasy scent of the black robe had already dissipated, leaving only an almost invisible black film on the stone slabs.

But in this state, Esper could still smell it.

That disgusting greasy smell, as well as Ade's scent.

And then there was the smell of blood, along with a mixture of wind-attribute magic and rust.

It was very faint, starting to appear intermittently from the east side of the alley.

She stood up and walked east along that intermittent scent trail.

That was the route Ade had taken after leaving the battlefield last night, heading toward the guild.

When she reached the middle of the path, Esper's footsteps stopped.

There was something extra in the air.

It was the scent of another kind of blood.

Extremely faint, mostly diluted by the night dew and the morning sun. But it was definitely there.

The corruption of the Black Tide was mixed in, but it was different from that of the black robe.

The black robe's corruption was evenly dispersed, like a fog. But the corruption in this scent seemed to be suppressing itself, as if forcibly sealed inside a container.

A living container.

“Here.”

Esper continued forward.

When she reached the end of the scent, everything looked perfectly normal. If that scent hadn't been genuine, Esper probably wouldn't have known anything had happened here.

She carefully sniffed the surrounding scents.

The scent of the Black Tide was only revealed through the blood, pointing to a single corner.

There, the scent of Ade's blood was mixed with the aura of the Black Tide.

It looked like there was nothing there.

“...Something was waiting for him here. An ambush, or tailing him.”

Esper stood up, her gaze extending along the path of the narrow alley.

“After Ade finished fighting the black robe, he headed back to the guild to turn in his quest, but he was intercepted by a second guy on the way. This one is the real enemy.”

Eladia walked over to the stone slab and looked down.

“...That thing bled?”

“Yes.”

She crouched down, a ring of crimson expanding in her eyes.

After enhancing her senses with Crimson Scale Surge, she pushed her perception to its absolute limit.

She quietly sensed her surroundings; not even the slightest rustle of wind or grass could escape her perception.

...She sensed many tiny things.

Was it all blood...?

It was all blood carrying the aura of the Black Tide.

It was distributed extremely evenly. Judging from the drop points, it looked like a trail left by someone walking while bleeding.

The trail went deep into the forest.

Further ahead, all traces abruptly vanished.

As if it had vanished into thin air.

...

If she didn't know Crimson Scale Surge, she absolutely wouldn't have been able to sense the scent of these evenly distributed drops of blood on the ground.

It was something that had already disappeared, something that had been erased.

That fellow would actively erase the traces he left behind, but he had failed to erase that sudden patch of blood in the same manner.

Which meant... under normal circumstances, that guy was constantly bleeding?

After every murder, he would actively erase his traces, to the point that he overlooked the most obvious thing—the blood splattered from the wound carved by Ade's counterattack. He had simply let it seep into the ground and disappear naturally, just like the black robe's tentacles.

Esper stood up.

“Ade's Cloud Slicer and Moon Shooter are gone. No surprises there; the killer must have taken the victim's weapons too.”

The wind blew from the direction of the maple forest, carrying the damp smell of decaying leaves.

“It doesn't come out during the day. It operates at night and hides in some dark corner during the day.

“The black robe's ability is related to shadows; the spiral it used for the sneak attack also pierced out from the shadows.”

Esper tapped her knuckles.

“There are at least two opponents. One is responsible for the killing, and the other is responsible for cover and scouting. The black robe was likely the coverer's summon, released to draw fire and shield the killer.

“Yesterday, we took down the summon and mistakenly thought that was the end of it. Then, taking advantage of the moment Ade and I parted ways, the coverer worked with the killer to take Ade down.”

Esper walked a dozen steps forward along the blood trail, stopping in front of the forest.

Right here, the blood trail vanished.

The ground transitioned into soil and turf, and any remaining traces had been completely washed away by the morning dew.

But what had happened could not be washed away so easily.

A cowardly knight had once faced his true self here.

A slaughterer who wantonly wielded power had killed him here.

Esper knew that on some night, that fellow would appear once more.

In the silent dark where no one would know, dripping blood, severing the heads of others with rusty weapons.

And she would find him.

“...Eladia, the power of the Black Tide can devour the Holy Light, so you must protect yourself. Understood?”

“...Esper.”

Esper stood in place, speaking softly to Eladia.