“Well then,” I said to Stevin, placing my hand forward, “May you live a long and happy life, you fanatic bastard.”

  “Your Grace,” he grinned, taking my hand into his own. “If all goes well, I will visit you once things settle and become proper allies. I know where to find you, after all.”

  I shook my head in disbelief, “Perhaps you will be a father by that time. Make sure you don’t teach anyone else stupid stuff about me.”

  “I teach only the truth,” he bowed sarcastically.

  So I moved aside, nodding to the Princess before I moved to Stevin’s parents and sister. It wasn’t much of a greeting that followed, but still, I wished them all a happy life, free of any… incidents.

  “How sweet of you, Vampire Lord,” Silius whispered just enough for the rest of his nearby family to hear, “Let us hope we will not see each other again.”

  I could only nod at that, placing my hand forward, “For all our sakes.”

  A thing on which we agreed wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, we will see each other again… sooner rather than later.

  And once the other said their goodbyes, we walked down the steps toward the gate, and were out of the estate the moment the guards let us out.

  “Well then,” said Airina with a sigh as we started walking away. “Best head to the city now to see what the Guild wants before we decide what to do next.”

  “No,” I shook my head casually. “We are busy.”

  Enna turned, frowning at me, “Busy? With what?”

  “Arther, take Melsa and little Arthur to the city, get yourself a room at an inn, go to the Guild tomorrow morning and wait for us there,” I ignored her, turning toward the beastfolk and placing a few crowns into his hand.

  “Your Grace?” Melsa asked, confused as Arther’s cheeks went crimson. “What is happening?”

  I only smiled, doubling the number of crowns in their hand. “Grab some food and something nice for yourselves. Okay?”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” Arther nodded, pushing the two ahead despite the apparent confusion, “Thank you.”

  “Godspeed, my friend,” I grinned, waving them off and stopping, looking to my left and spotting the cottage that I was told about.

  “What is this about?” Enna started interrogating me.

  But I couldn’t be fucked to explain everything to them, so with a “Trust and follow me,” I turned toward the cottage and started heading toward it casually, making them have no choice but to see what the vampire madman had to show them.

  Three slow knocks on the doors of the cottage later, I found myself face-to-face with a bunch of scary-looking soldiers dressed head to toe in silvery armor, looking like goddamn Cataphracts.

  “Your Grace?” Airina asked, drawing magic toward her fingertips, before I stopped her with a glance.

  With the threat of magic gone, the soldiers moved aside, allowing us to enter the cottage, walking toward the middle of the building where a middle-aged man stood at an empty table, drinking wine out of something that looked straight as a ceramic vase. The brother didn’t even care for cups, seeing how at least a quarter of the red wine found his graying beard instead of his mouth.

  “Gods,” he gasped, cheeks already crimson as he stared at the vase. “That was a fucker right there. Barta’s wine is the best in the Kingdom for a reason.”

  “Clearly,” I pointed out, heading toward him.

  “Ah,” he muttered, barely realizing the company, “You must be Elio. Creepy shitter you are, Gods! Are you a bloodsucker?”

  Already hate the old bastard for some unknown reason.

  “How long does Craiena want us to sit here?” I ignored him, sitting down near the drunkard and telling the others to do the same.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “Until they blow shit up,” the man chuckled, turning toward one of the less-equipped soldiers, “Henry, do we have some more wine for our… esteemed ladies and their Vampire master?”

  “I am no master old man,” I sighed. “They are my companions.”

  “Sure they are,” he clicked his tongue, annoyed, “HENRY! I will fuck your mother if you do not answer me.”

  “W-We have, sir. I was just bringing it to you,” a boy dressed as a squire rushed with another vase filled with wine toward the man.

  “Good lad,” he slapped the boy’s back before sending him back, “I will catch your mother next time.”

  And for some reason, he found his own words absolutely hilarious as he started chuckling to himself for a while before he remembered he had wine.

  “Want some?” he asked, looking at each of us.

  “I’m a priestess, sir,” Enna countered with an annoyed click of the tongue, “I could cut off your hand for that.”

  “I’ve had a Priestess once that did something… much, much worse than drink a mouthful of wine,” he grinned. “Have you ever seen a woman dance on it? No? Well, that woman could… Gods, she was good. And you know what she did at the end? The crazy lass did a backflip in the air, remained airborne for two whole fucking seconds, then… boom, straight on it. I saw the Gods right then and there. I became a patron of the High Temples minutes later.”

  Airina started laughing at the man’s wild story while Enna and Silvien looked disgusted toward me as if I was the one saying that fucking bullshit.

  However, such stories were not the reason why we were there, so after clearing my throat, I hoped I could change the subject. “Say, sir…”

  “William of the Titan Road, you pale fucker,” he replied, throwing me a compliment in between. “Should I tell you my mother’s name, occupation, the year I was born, or if your mother was in my bed?”

  “That would be useless, sir,” I grinned, finally having an upper hand over the man. “Never knew the bitch.”

  He blinked at me for a few tense seconds before he burst out laughing, tears in his eyes as if it were the best joke he’d ever heard.

  “Your Grace,” Silvien tugged at my sleeve as the man was still laughing. She was clearly stressed and did not like the place. “Could we please know now why we are here?”

  This woman had the weirdest moments to act cute. But at least, she was more or less speaking now. And it was high time I told them what was happening.

  It had taken me a while to fully grasp what Craiena had been trying to explain earlier that day, partly because of the constant magic radiating from her like a halo, but also because I simply couldn’t piece together what was happening.

  Once she laid everything out, though, I finally understood the strange unease that had settled over me the moment the Princess arrived. Still, sick and exhausted as I was, there was little I could do beyond handling the simpler parts of their plan.

  So it would be perhaps a good time to tell the ladies about it, see what they have to say.

  “This is what is about to happen,” I said once William calmed his bloody laughter, beginning a two-hour-long discussion.

  It was evening already, and the topics ran out quicker than the industrial quantity of wine Henry was pulling out straight out of his asshole to the point I was staring into the man’s soul by the end of the evening.

  William, as you might have expected, drank all the wine and was now absolutely shitfaced, preoccupied with telling us how a specific woman’s Road and menstrual cycle were somehow able to control the weather of an entire continent he had been in once in his youth.

  So it was to be expected that my exhaustion, which was already depleted, was now well into the negatives, deteriorating my mental state even more, to the point that I could hear a woman singing in the back of my head.

  However… it finally happened.

  A loud crash echoed through the night, finally moving the soldiers who had stood unmoving throughout the day.

  “It is time,” William said, looking at the walls of the cottage as if he could see through them, before he got to his feet with such casualness that he appeared sober, “Let’s solve the issue with these fuckers once and for all.”

  And with a nod from Enna, Airina, and Silvien, we got to our feet, following closely behind William as he pushed the doors of the cottage open.

  A cloud of dust and a tall spike of earth reached toward the shattered veil of reality that only I could see, destroying what appeared to be half the mansion of Stevin’s estate.

  “The idiots don’t even try to hide what they are doing,” William clicked his tongue before he spat on the ground. “Second Legion, go clear the trash out and open the gates.”

  And at his casually sober command, the unmoving soldiers dashed forward, swords brandished, magic gathering at their fingertips, armor clanking as they ran, doing everything at once.

  “Stevin…” Enna muttered, worried for the boy.

  But I shook my head, “Don’t worry, the Princess and Craiena knew it would happen, and most likely took him and his family to safety. After all, they wanted to taunt the rest of his family into acting up.”

  “And act they did,” William scoffed. “Now we send the executioner for them.”

  “...Who?” I asked, confused, not hearing about that part of the plan.

  The old man only chuckled, casting me a sideways glance. Then his skin turned gray, hardening as his body expanded, growing and growing until he stood nearly twenty feet tall, formed of what looked like pure fucking marble. A sword just as massive emerged with him, as though it had grown from the same stone, shaped to match his monstrous size.

  “Who else, Sir Elio?” he asked, voice booming like that of a titan, “Me.”

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