Otome Game no Heroine de Saikyou Survival [WN] - Chapter 129.2

If all went according to plan, we would reach the Marquis of Kendras in three more days. At midnight, wrapped in my cloak by the fire, I suddenly opened my eyelids, Nero’s tentacles twitched, and Carla looked up to see the forest.

“I heard a scream.”

“As I recall… beyond this ravine was part of a Viscount’s estate, dependent on the Marquis of Dunce. There might be a village close to this place. Are we going there?”

“Just checking.”

Carla, who was still seated, looked up at me as I stood up to remove my cloak.

I wouldn’t mind if it was just a fight between villagers or adventurers, but if we were being attacked by bandits or demons, I couldn’t just leave it alone if I overheard anything.

I looked at her, remembering that Carla had told me before we left that the village had been disappearing, and Carla, with half of her face lit by the firelight, smiled softly.

“Do you like your meat with a taste of blood?”

“Not with you around.”

“Eh, you don’t like it?”

Carla stood up, removing her cloak as I did, and the smile she had been giving me deepened.

“I prefer blackened, well-done meat compared to raw and rare.”

“…I’ll go first.”

Carla seemed to be ready to go too, but Nero apparently decided to go straight to sleep, so I decided to go ahead by myself.

After deciding on a rough direction from where I heard the screams, I jumped into the pitch-black forest. I had level 2 night vision and could see magic elements by color, so even in the dark forest, it was not so different from daytime.

Deep forests absorb sound. But in the forest at night, people’s screams could echo surprisingly far.

Perhaps as far as one kilometer. That distance could be covered in the forest in a matter of minutes.

[——]

I heard it again. The direction was correct. As I ran through the forest at full speed, I saw through the trees a ravine that I remembered from the map and the shadow of a man who was chasing down a woman-like figure on the other side of the ravine.

The man raised the machete-like weapon in his hand, and the woman screamed as she held her head.

“–[Iron Rose]–“

My peach blonde hair, which was swept by the wind, turned a gray-iron color like burning iron as it flared up, and using three times the speed of a normal person, I jumped over the ten-meter ravine cliff in one step, pulling the scattered light residues like a broom star.

*Buzzin! 

“Die!”

“G-Gyaa!”

With the force of my leap, I thrust my black dagger into the neck of the man who had a “Sickening Presence” who was about to swing his bloody machete at the woman, and instead of slowing down, I followed up with a kick and blew him away.

“…Are you okay?”

I landed on the ground and called out to the woman who was holding her head while deactivating [Iron Rose], and she raised her pale, painted face that I could see in the faint moonlight as she quivered in fear.

“Help me…”

“What happened?”

“The village… it was attacked…”

*Gasa–

“Aaaaah!”

I heard a sound and a voice from behind me, and the man I had just killed, spurting blood from his neck, stood up as if he brushed past a bush and pointed his yellow, murky eyes and long, extended fangs at me.

A sickening smell and a disgusting atmosphere overflowed….

This was not a “human”… this was a vampire.

Vampires were well-known but seldom-seen demons.

It was commonly known that they would disappear when exposed to sunlight, sucking human blood to increase their ranks and increasing their number of victims, but that perception was not accurate.

Not everyone would become a Vampire if their blood was sucked. According to the lessons of my mentor, a person only becomes a Vampire when they lose the power of the soul contained in their blood, and they become a demon to regain their lost soul.

Most of the victims whose blood was sucked die as they were, and only a small percentage were transformed into Vampires.

They possessed high regeneration power and could not be killed by ordinary wounds. It was one of the worst undead species with high physical functions because it could act at maximum muscle strength even if its muscles were destroyed.

“Uuoooohhhh!”

The Vampire attacked, swinging its machete. But–

“Gah!”

The strength of a Vampire depended more on the years of its existence instead of the qualities of the person from whom it originated.

I jumped out of the way before the machete struck and dislodged the Vampire’s leg as I slid around, and just as it fell, I drove the dagger into its heart to its base.

It was said that to destroy a Vampire, one should drive a white wooden stake into its heart, but this was simply because the Magic Stone, the weak point of the Undead, would be crushed, and this was also the most effective against Vampires.

The stone was made up of the residue of souls and magical elements dissolved in blood, which gradually coagulates to form a stone. I learned from my master that the reason why bloodless skeletons and bloodless zombies occur is because the magic stone bearers become undead.

Some of those who become vampires were probably originally magic stone bearers. Therefore, most Vampires use sorcery, but this Vampire was simply a “villager”.

There were villagers who could use Sorcery, but as the situation suggested, this meant that there was another Vampire who had turned this villager into a Vampire.

“…A, adventurer?”

The villager woman approached me after I defeated the Vampire by shattering the magic stone in its heart. But–

*Hyun! 

“Hiii?”

“Can you use Sorcery?”

I pointed the knife in my right hand at the woman who was trying to approach me, and she shrieked with a frightened look on her face, her clattering teeth suddenly turned into long fangs.

“Aaadddddveentttuuurreeer-saaaan!!!”

I ducked behind the Vampire Girl’s arm, which extended its claws trying to  grab me, and I stabbed my black dagger from her side, shattering the bones of her neck, and slid the blade of my knife across the blade of the dagger.

The only way to ensure a Vampire’s destruction was to burn it to ashes in the sunlight, shatter the magic stone in its heart, or cut off its head. Both the man from earlier and this woman were easy to defeat since they had only been turned into Vampire for a short time, but…

“…”

Was this woman a Vampire from the beginning, or did she just now become a Vampire? 

If the latter, there might still be survivors in the village. Feeling the need to take immediate action, I looked closely to check the direction of the village by the broken branches, and ran off in that direction.