The kiss didn't end immediately.
Helga's lips remained locked with Eleanor's, but every now and then, as if instinct and craving were blurring together, her fangs drifted from Eleanor's mouth back to her neck, piercing the same spot gently, only to return to her lips again.
The rhythm was slow, almost dreamlike, the line between bloodlust and pure desire becoming increasingly blurred with each moment that passed.
When they finally pulled away a second time, both of them were breathing heavily again, but now, Helga's eyes focused, noticing that Eleanor's complexion had turned noticeably paler than before, and her head lolled forward a little as she exhaled shakily.
Helga blinked rapidly, as though coming out of a daze, and her arms that had been holding Eleanor so closely suddenly tensed, pushing Eleanor's body backwards with more force than intended.
"I think that's enough," she muttered.
Eleanor swayed slightly from the movement, visibly dazed, and blinked slowly. Her body felt heavy, her limbs slack, and the dizziness creeping in was impossible to ignore.
Even Helga could tell she had drained too much of Eleanor's blood.
Her gaze lowered, and as she saw the blood staining Eleanor's lips, she fully processed what had just happened.
What began as simply drinking Eleanor's blood to restore her magic power had, somewhere along the line, transformed into something else.
The feel of Eleanor's lips, the way their bodies had pressed together… it had become a messy blend of kisses and blood-drinking without clear boundaries.
And then she remembered the fact that she hadn't been the one to initiate that kiss.
Helga looked at Eleanor again, her expression shifting slightly.
"…Why did you… Do you perhaps…?"
Eleanor blinked, her brows furrowing lightly, then realisation dawned. Her eyes widened slightly, and with a faint blush, she turned her gaze away.
"Let's just say… my tastes run feminine."
"I see," Helga replied, her tone calm.
There was no real surprise in her voice, which made sense. As Eleanor had mentioned earlier, more than once, Helga had mothers. Relationships like that weren't foreign to her.
As the heated atmosphere began to calm, Eleanor, seemingly only now realising what she had actually done, stiffened.
Her face grew even paler as she glanced at Helga, then quickly looked away, fumbling awkwardly over her words.
"Wait—um, about earlier… Sorry. I should've asked first. I just… got caught in the heat of the moment and…"
Helga blinked, watching her in silence for a moment. Then, noticing how embarrassed Eleanor looked, she quickly waved her hands and said,
"No, wait. It was fine."
Eleanor froze.
"…Fine?" she asked softly, leaning in just a bit, her eyes scanning Helga's face.
"So… I can do it again?"
At that, Helga's words caught in her throat, not because she meant to refuse, but because the first answer that came to mind was yes.
She blinked, startled at herself. 'What the hell is wrong with me?'
Before she could even begin to form a response, Eleanor smiled and said, "Don't worry. I don't plan to do that again."
With that, Eleanor finally shifted off Helga, not to stand, but just to move beside her, sliding off the vampire girl's body and sitting next to her. She leaned back against the tree trunk, then tilted her head against it with a sigh.
"…For now," she added under her breath.
But no matter how softly she spoke, Helga heard it. Her superhuman hearing ensured that every syllable reached her ears.
Helga's gaze snapped immediately toward Eleanor, her eyes narrowing.
But before she could speak, Eleanor stretched, cutting her off.
"Ah, I feel tired. Is this how one feels after they've had their blood sucked by a vampire?"
Still stretching, she went on.
"The feeling midway is nice, but afterwards, I feel like I just ran a marathon."
Helga could tell, without a doubt, that Eleanor had changed the subject on purpose.
She narrowed her eyes slightly but chose not to push it. Instead, she sighed and turned away, her gaze drifting back toward the clearing in front of them.
Eleanor turned her gaze forward as well, looking at the corpses of the Crafiel family hunters who had tried to kill her.
"Well, dealing with this is going to be quite the hassle," she said. "After all, subordinates of the Crafiel family did just attempt to assassinate the Laurent heir."
Her eyes shifted to Helga as she asked, "You're not going to let this go, are you?"
Helga frowned. "Of course not."
There was no way she was going to let an attempt on her life go, especially when she knew exactly who was responsible.
Did the hunters act of their own accord? Yes, they had. But did she care? No. What mattered was that they worked for the Crafiel family, and they had made an attempt on her life.
That alone was the core issue.
She tapped the beaded bracelet on her right hand, and with a small release of magical energy, her phone appeared in her palm.
It was a spatial artifact, similar to Eleanor's pouch, and as she opened the device, her gaze briefly caught on the lack of signal in the top-right corner of the screen.
Naturally so; they were in a rift, after all. A space detached from the normal world. The SOS signal she had sent earlier had managed to connect because the receivers for that signal were located just outside the rift.
However, that was not the case with the mobile network. No company would ever build transmitters near a rift, as if the barrier were ever breached and monsters flooded out, they'd lose both their infrastructure and their investment.
Leaving that aside, Helga used the phone to record the aftermath of the situation. Once she was done with the video, Eleanor spoke up, "You should tell your subordinates to request a mage capable of using memory magic from any of the magic towers.
If they come here and use it, they'll be able to extract irrefutable proof of what actually happened."
That was what Helga had done in the game.
But now, she turned to Eleanor and asked, "Are you sure that's what you want?"
Eleanor blinked, raising an eyebrow. "I don't follow."
"If we use memory magic on this location," Helga said, "it'll be revealed that you showed up to help me."
Eleanor's eyes widened slightly as she remembered that detail.
"Oh, right."
Indeed, if they viewed the memory of the land, Eleanor would inevitably appear in it. Unlike standard camera footage, memory recordings couldn't be edited, as even the slightest inconsistency could cast doubt on the entire thing.
Any detectable sign of manipulation would be enough to discredit the memory recording as valid evidence.
Just then, Amith's voice echoed in Eleanor's mind.
[If you lend me your body for a minute, I can do something about that.
It might seem unnatural, but there would be no traces of your face and any moments where your name was mentioned.]
However convenient that sounded, Eleanor's mind quickly focused on something else entirely.
Amith had asked to borrow her body.
Amith, in her current state, couldn't interact with the material world unless she did so through Eleanor's body, either by Eleanor willingly relinquishing control or by being overwhelmed due to an overload in soul power from another of her fragments.
And therein lay the problem.
Eleanor was still skeptical. Wary, even. What if Amith took control of her body… and didn't give it back?
Perhaps sensing those thoughts, Amith materialised her spiritual body, visible only to Eleanor, and crouched in front of her.
[You're scared I'll take your body, aren't you?]
Eleanor said nothing, but Amith already knew.
Raising one hand, Amith reached out and placed her palm on Eleanor's chest. [Deadly Sin Authority: Word of the Proud.]
Soul power coursed from her hand as she said, [I give you my word: I'll return your body exactly sixty seconds after I erase all records of your name and face from the land's memory.]
Eleanor frowned faintly as she felt some kind of link being established between them.
'What did you just do?'
[I gave you my word,] Amith replied, [bound by my Authority of Pride. In other words, no matter what happens, you WILL have your body back within sixty seconds.
That's the nature of my Authority. I must uphold my 'Pride', and breaking my word is not an option.]
Eleanor stared at her in silence for a moment, feeling as though she had just uncovered one of the reasons Amith ended up joining the other Devil Rulers in the invasion of Datov, despite not truly wanting to.
A moment later, she said.
'Okay.'
[Very well then.]
Amith's spiritual body dissolved into a stream of soul power that flowed forward and melted into Eleanor's physical body.
On the outside, the only visible change was her sclera turning black, something Helga, currently engrossed in something on her phone, failed to notice.
For the first time in her life, Eleanor wasn't in control of her own body, and the sensation was… strange, to say the least.
She felt weightless, which made sense, considering her spiritual form had no physical mass, but the longer it went on, the more uncomfortable she became. She wanted nothing more than to return to her physical body.