"…"
Helga could only silently watch the scene with a dumbfounded expression. In all the detailed information she'd ever been taught about the great noble families of the empire, especially the Crafiels, who were direct rivals to her own, nowhere had it ever been mentioned that Eleanor Crafiel had a penchant for making her opponents suffer.
What made the entire situation even more jarring was that, as Eleanor plunged the blade into the woman's chest and blood splattered across her face, she was smiling.
The Crafiel hunter Helga, who had been about to kill, saw the scene unfold, his body trembling as he scrambled backwards and shouted at Eleanor, "Y-you mo-monnster! Devil!"
"Hmm?"
Eleanor turned at the sound of his voice, and at the same time, Helga moved as well, her sword cutting through the air and relieving him of his head.
As the severed head rolled across the floor, the horror still frozen on his face, Eleanor muttered,
"How rude. Of all things, you call me a devil?"
She shook her head, pulled her sword free from the corpse beneath her, then rose and walked toward the squad leader, finishing him off.
Amith, silently hovering nearby, shook her head.
'Sure, my existence does affect my hosts in various ways… but this…'
She recalled the smile that had played on Eleanor's face, the way Eleanor's body had shuddered again and again as the feedback from her blades carving through flesh hit her.
Then she shook her head once more.
'That's all her. Not me.'
Amith firmly rejected any connection to what she'd just witnessed.
◇ ◇ ◇
The moment the squad leader died, Eleanor was met with a cascade of Level-Up notifications, which she quickly waved away without sparing a second glance, instead opening her status board to check the newly updated number that now appeared after her total Level had been recalculated.
"Hmm. I kill an existence over 100 levels above mine, and what do I get? 27 levels?" she muttered to herself, tone dry.
"Well, that's at least enough to push my C+ stats into the B- range."
Just as the words left her mouth, a dull thud reached her ears, prompting her to turn around and see Helga breathing heavily, sweat visibly dripping down her face, her clothes completely soaked through as she dropped to her knees.
"Oh my, you don't look too good."
Eleanor walked over toward her, and in response, the vampire instinctively raised one trembling hand, attempting to conjure blood spears by forcing out magic power.
But the moment she did, she winced in pain, and Eleanor chuckled at the sight.
"You're not exactly in the best condition to be trying blood magic," she said, voice casual. "Especially considering how much of your blood you've already used earlier."
Eleanor calmly picked Helga up and carried her toward the edge of the clearing, setting her down gently with her back resting against a tree, before crouching in front of her.
"Hello there, Helga. I suppose this would be the first time we're actually speaking to one another."
She paused for a moment, then added, "And no, those stiff, formal greetings our parents forced us to exchange when they didn't want to deal with each other directly, but also couldn't afford to ignore one another because of the political inconvenience it would cause, don't count"
That sort of thing usually happened at every official event where both family heads were obligated to be present.
"Now then," Eleanor continued, eyes fixed on Helga, "I would've preferred it if we'd met under better circumstances, but as fate would have it, the situation is rather grim. More for you than for me, of course.
We've both gone through life-and-death situations today, but while I survived mine, you may not survive yours.
I don't have the Appraisal skill, but even without it, I can tell your Health must be dangerously low by now. And even if you're a vampire, if that value hits zero, you'll die all the same."
She paused, letting the words sink in before continuing.
"That said, I do know there's a way for you to survive and mitigate the effects of the technique you used earlier to boost your strength. A way that can only work because you're a vampire."
After saying that, Eleanor fell silent, and for several seconds, the only sound that could be heard was Helga's heavy breathing. Eventually, the wounded vampire spoke, her voice wary and strained.
"You… what are you playing at?"
Eleanor met her gaze and calmly replied, "What am I playing at? Nothing, actually.
The Crafiel hunters I was meant to raid this rift with just tried to kill me. And as you can see," she paused, bending slightly to point at the torn fabric of her clothes where a sword had pierced through earlier, "they were rather thorough about it."
Straightening again, she went on.
"It looks like they ran into you after thinking they'd already finished their job. And honestly, anyone in my position would have very little reason to believe you'd have come out of that fight alive if I hadn't interfered."
Of course, Helga would have eventually won. But while Eleanor knew that, Helga hadn't known that herself.
She'd believed her situation was critical. Despite having sent out an SOS to her guards the moment she had the chance, a significant amount of time had passed with no response, leading her to assume she might not survive.
That hadn't meant she had given up on fighting, however, and it was precisely because she hadn't given up that she would've eventually won.
Eleanor's interference had simply brought that outcome about much sooner than it would have otherwise arrived.
Helga, still watching Eleanor with suspicion, then said, "Whatever you're planning, I'll have you know that my guards are already on their way here."
The moment she said that, Eleanor chuckled lightly and replied, "No, they're not."
Then, with a slight shrug, she added, "Well, technically they are. But they're not going to be arriving here anytime soon."
Noticing the frown forming on Helga's face, Eleanor raised a hand and said, "Wait. I'm not the one behind any of that. Did you already forget about the people who just tried to kill you?"
She gestured at the corpses scattered across the clearing before continuing.
"They came for me first, like I said earlier, and to prevent me from escaping the rift, they sealed it with magic. Your guards are going to need time to break that seal. More than enough time, in fact, for me to do anything I want to you… If I had any nefarious intentions."
She reached toward Helga as she finished speaking, and just as the vampire tensed, Eleanor grabbed her cheeks and squished them, laughing at the dumbfounded look on her face before saying,
"But I don't have such intentions. I actually want to help you. And in return, I want your help as well."
"You want…to help me?" Helga asked, and Eleanor nodded.
"Yeah. I want to help you. There's not much time left, for you, that is, so I'll be concise.
Someone very high up in the Crafiel Family wants me dead. Returning there would be walking to my death, but I also can't just run. If they investigate this rift and don't find my corpse, they'll know I'm alive and hunt me down.
I need some protection, and what better place to get that than with the Laurents?"
Eleanor then shrugged and added, "Honestly, I only thought of this plan when I realised you were the one fighting the same people who tried to kill me. But yeah, that's about it.
Right now, you need blood. Not just to recover your magic or deal with the aftereffects of whatever strength-boosting technique you used, but to stay alive.
And I've got blood."
Helga immediately countered, "Your blood has divinity in it."
Eleanor smiled, the passive effect of her Lust brand, Allure of the Branded, making the expression all the more captivating despite the blood streaking her face.
"I was stabbed through the stomach with a cursed blade that drained about half of my power, slashed and pierced by poisoned weapons, and then fell off a cliff that was over a kilometre high.
You don't think I survived all that and showed up here without a single injury for free, do you?"
Helga's brow furrowed. "What?" But then her eyes widened as she realised what Eleanor was implying.
"You sacrificed your divinity to survive?"
Eleanor nodded. "Yeah. I did."
Getting up, she walked over to the nearest corpse, pulled out one of her daggers, and began cleaning the blood off it on her trousers as she returned.
Once back in front of Helga, she crouched down and sliced open her left index finger.
"!!"
Helga's eyes widened as Eleanor's blood trickled out, her pupils glowing red and her nose twitching at the scent. She also instinctively recognised the absence of divinity in Eleanor's blood.
Seeing her reaction, Eleanor laughed, and Helga flushed in mild embarrassment, having clearly betrayed how enticing she found the scent.
Her expression made Eleanor freeze, eyes going wide.
'Oh wow, she's so pretty that even though I'm the one with the charm ability, I'm the one getting charmed.'
[Focus, Eleanor,] Amith said.
"Ah, right. Sorry, your beauty knocked me out for a second there."
"What?" Helga blinked, thrown off, but Eleanor quickly snapped back to the moment.
"There's a lot more where this came from," she said, holding up her bleeding finger. "But in return for letting you have a sip of life, I'm going to need you to agree to certain terms.
And we'll seal it with a blood contract. I know how binding that is for you vampires."
Blood Contracts were the vampire equivalent of the legendary demon contracts.
They were magically binding, and although a vampire with enough strength could break one, doing so was considered an absolute taboo among their kind.
Honestly, as a vampire, you were better off committing a war crime than breaking a blood contract.