The Unwanted Undead Adventurer: Volume 8 Read online

  “Excuse me,” I said to the man.

  “What is it, pal? You ran to this town square too?” he responded, sounding like anyone would.

  That kind of made me mad. It wasn’t that this thrall was pretending to be human, but that he sounded so natural. When I was a thrall, it killed me every time I had to talk. There was no justice in the world. But I kept that to myself.

  “No, I’m an adventurer. I’m trying to find whoever started the fires,” I said.

  The man kind of twitched but otherwise didn’t react. “Huh, is that right? Then go find them already. Make them pay for what they did to this city. Please.”

  Nothing was strange about what he said. That was what made him scary. These monsters could lurk among humans undetected. That was what led to this commotion. I wanted to expose his true identity and exterminate him already. But before that, I thought maybe I could capture him alive and get some information out of him about the other thralls and the vampire.

  “Yeah, I’ll do that. By the way, the culprits seem to be thralls. Sorry, but would you mind taking off your clothes?”

  “Why? Look, you can see that I’m human.”

  “I hope you are, but maybe you’re not. Thralls have rotting bodies, so I’ll know for sure after you take your clothes off. Go on now.”

  The man stood up and started to back away. “Why should I have to? I’m human. Human, I tell you.”

  It didn’t sound like he was lying, but I knew this man was a thrall. I pressed him further, but he suddenly ran off and reached a hand toward someone else in the crowd.

  It didn’t look like there was much use in talking. I drew my sword and prepared to slash at the man, but then I heard what sounded like a cannon. A moment later, the man was on fire. The fire wasn’t red, but light blue. Wondering what happened, I turned to see where the flame came from and saw a woman.

  “Oh, what do we have here? If it isn’t Rentt! How long has it been?”

  The woman had dark gray hair and fiery red eyes. She was menacing yet beautiful. That beauty was undeniable, but I could never describe her as dainty. She was like a bird of prey or a carnivorous beast. Strangely, despite all that, she had a sort of purity about her. In my twenty-five years of life, I had never met another woman like her.

  “Hello, Miss Nive,” I said.

  “Just Nive is fine, thank you. We’re both adventurers, you know. You can treat me like one.”

  That was true, but I kind of wanted to put some distance between her and me. It was hard to object to her, though. “All right, Nive. Why are you here?”

  “A simple enough reason. This is my time to shine. The perfect opportunity to burn these creatures to ash,” she said as she kicked the blazing man away. I thought that would’ve been hot, but this probably wasn’t ordinary fire. I was nearby and couldn’t feel any heat either. It must have been produced with divine arts.

  The others in the town square were aghast at us. From their perspective, she was a magician who just set a middle-aged man on fire and I was a suspicious man in a mask and robe having a friendly conversation with her. That was about what I expected. Judging by the reactions, the light blue fire was visible to the average person as well. Maybe this wasn’t the Holy Fire, just fire ignited by divine arts, so it didn’t matter if it was visible. Plus, if the man just started writhing without any visible cause, he might have looked threatening to the crowd. Maybe Nive had that in mind. Not that she seemed like she’d care.

  But the visible flame presented another danger. If it looked like she set a random citizen on fire, knights might arrest us. I was going through the trouble of questioning him beforehand so I could avoid that. Now I had no idea how to get this situation under control.

  “Oh? Doesn’t look like that was enough to kill him. The servants of those blood-sucking insects can always take a beating,” Nive said as she turned her clear, round eyes toward the burning man. Even as the fire blazed, he kept glaring at us. I don’t know why he had to look at me like that; it’s not like I was the one who set him on fire. But to be fair, I was going to attack him once I was sure he was a thrall.

  I prepared for a fight as Nive looked around. “I’m sure that startled everyone!” she shouted. “But as it turns out, this man was a monster hiding among you! He’s a thrall! Look at how he burns alive yet still stands and glowers at us! There’s your proof! Get away from here, everyone! I’m Gold-class adventurer Nive Maris, and this is my assistant, Rentt Vivie! We’ll slay the monster!”

  Apparently she’d thought of a way to get the situation under control already. I thought she just hadn’t considered it, but I guess she also kept the flame somewhat weak for that reason. A thrall could take far more damage than a human, and a little burning wouldn’t kill it. But Nive hit it with divine fire that purified the body. The thrall’s regenerative capabilities conflicted with the divine purging, causing his body to decay, restore, and decay again repeatedly. Nobody could see this and think he was human.

  The crowd seemed to recognize that the man was a monster and scurried away from the center of the town square. They didn’t leave entirely because they wanted to see how this fight concluded. Most civilians never got the chance to see adventurers fight a monster, and a thrall no less. They may have heard news about vampires and thralls killing townspeople in great numbers in other towns, but few would have seen these monsters themselves. They probably wanted to see the thrall slain so they’d have a story to tell later. I thought it was kind of needlessly bold considering the emergency at hand, but it was typical of people in small cities. They could be brave, bordering on careless. Well, they could always run away if they had to, so there wasn’t too much to worry about.

  “Now, Rentt, let’s do it,” Nive said with a grin.

  “I never agreed to be your assistant, Nive,” I complained, but I still faced the thrall.

  “What’s the problem? I’ll even pay you!”

  Nive closed in on the burning thrall. She didn’t appear to have a weapon, but once she was close enough, she swung her arm. The man jumped out of the way, and I heard a clanging sound and saw sparks fly from the ground.

  “Claws?” I asked.

  “Yes. I use an ordinary sword too, but when it comes to killing vampires, I just love the feeling of tearing apart their flesh with my fingers,” she explained. It was pretty messed up, but not surprising coming from her. “But it’s tougher than I expected. This one seems to be of a relatively high rank. Rentt, let’s attack it together.”

  I nodded. A Gold-class could probably handle this solo, but she must have had some ideas. Maybe she wanted to observe this thrall’s physical abilities to gauge the strength of the vampire in charge.

  I readied my sword and drew near the thrall. He looked surprised, but he swung his arm at me. His nails were unnaturally long and probably his weapon. I avoided the attack and chopped his arm off with little trouble.

  Next up was Nive. She aimed her claw at the man’s neck and swiped faster than the eye could see. A moment later, a horizontal red line appeared on his neck. His head fell off and dark blood flowed from the gash. But the man’s head was still alive and glaring at Nive. His body was on its knees, but it had yet to fall. His life force was something to be feared. Or since he was dead, maybe I should have called it something else. I couldn’t think of anything, though. In any case, he could take more punishment than the average monster, as the undead could. I could probably take about as much, but the thought of it made me ill. But of course, there was a way to destroy even these creatures. If there weren’t, vampires would be unstoppable.

  Nive walked over and picked up the thrall’s head. She then recited some incantation. The head began to burn bright. These flames were more powerful than the last. The head fell to bits without regenerating, ultimately turning to ash. Around the same time the head disintegrated, the body turned to sand. No such phenomenon would have happened if the man were human.

  All that remained of the thrall was a magic crystal. Niv
e tossed it to me and said, “There’s your pay. It’ll sell for a pretty high price.”

  A thrall crystal certainly wasn’t bad as payment. Vampiric monsters could live among humans, so their magic crystals were hard to acquire and sold for a lot. This was even true of thralls, a lesser form of vampire. On top of that, the guild had put out an urgent request to slay thralls, so it would sell for even higher. At the current moment, this magic crystal was about as valuable as a decent jewel.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Yes, I don’t hunt vampires for money. Defeating them is enough for me,” she answered.

  That sounded a little sadistic. It would’ve been more of a relief if she’d said she did it for money. Then I could at least see her humanity. This just made it sound like she had an insane urge to hunt vampires, which I suppose she did.

  “You’re not thinking anything rude, are you?”

  “No, not really.”

  Nive looked at me dubiously. She had a pretty face, but something about that light in her eyes made me want to avoid her gaze. They were like the bloodshot eyes of a starving monster. Her stare felt like it could kill. It was extremely uncomfortable.

  Nive’s eyes relaxed. “Well never mind, then. Anyway, Rentt, considering all that’s going on and how we happened to run into each other, what if we worked together?” she suggested, but she was soon interrupted.

  “Nive!” someone called out from behind her. It was a woman dressed as a cleric with silver hair and amethyst eyes. She was Myullias Raiza, a Lobelian saint. Nive furrowed her brow when she heard the voice, but only for a moment before she smiled and looked over her shoulder.

  It felt like I saw something I shouldn’t have. I wondered if they were on bad terms, but I was utterly incapable of guessing how Nive felt. Maybe there was no deeper meaning to the expression I saw, or maybe she was deliberately trying to mislead me. It felt dangerous to think too hard about it.

  “Oh, if it isn’t Saint Myullias? Don’t run like that; it makes you look half as holy. You hardly look the part of a saint as it is,” Nive said scathingly. The Church of Lobelia was by far one of the biggest religious organizations on the continent, so she had some guts to say that.

  Myullias looked momentarily irked, but she quickly settled down. “I wouldn’t have had to if you didn’t abruptly run off,” she said before noticing the ashes on the ground. “What’s this?” It seemed like she already knew the answer to that. Given the state of the city, a Lobelian saint would be able to guess at what happened.

  “The remains of a lowly blood-sucking insect, of course,” Nive answered. “Rentt and I took care of it.”

  The way she treated them like insects was awful, but it was how people had been speaking derogatorily about vampires for a long time. The sorts of people who hated vampires talked like this.

  “I see, so that’s why you ran off.”

  “Yes, he was disguising himself as a human. He was extremely difficult to tell from the real thing, but Rentt forced him to give up the act by questioning him. And when he was about to attack someone, I tried purging him with divine arts. It turned out that he was a thrall after all. That was a close one, wasn’t it, Rentt?”

  Apparently she had been listening in on our conversation, but I couldn’t guess when she started. If she decided to use divine arts because he was about to attack someone, I suppose that was acceptable.

  “Nive, when did you figure out he was a thrall?” I asked.

  “I was only certain of it when he was close to attacking the crowd. I did pick up the scent of thralls from this town square, though. I have a good nose.”

  I didn’t know if she meant that figuratively or literally, but either would have made sense coming from her. I’d believe it if she could find thralls by instinct, but I would just as well believe she was a vampire connoisseur the way I was a blood sommelier. I imagined her sniffing a three-hundred-year-old vampire, commenting on how it was well-fermented and ripe for killing. The thought of it grossed me out.

  Myullias seemed to be similarly taken aback. “Is that right?” she said with a sigh.

  At any rate, Nive and Myullias appeared to be working together still. Nive didn’t sound too excited about that, but it wasn’t any of my business. The thrall was dead now anyway, so I just wanted to get away from Nive.

  “I’d like to go see if there are other thralls around, so I’ll get going now,” I said. “May there be light in your futures.” I hastily recited a Lobelian prayer and rushed away from the town square.

  “Wait, Rentt! Rentt!!!” Nive shouted, but I ignored her.

  Thankfully, I wasn’t just running away. I had my job as an excuse. I still had no idea what relationship Nive had with the Church of Lobelia, but I hoped she wouldn’t be able to ditch a saint and come after me. I ran for a while before looking over my shoulder, but Nive wasn’t there and didn’t seem to be giving chase. Glad that I was safe, I ran through town in search of the next thrall.

  ◆◇◆◇◆

  I chopped the head off a third thrall and purged it with divinity. It shrieked in agony as it died. It was just a monster I was killing, but to the onlookers, it looked like I murdered someone for no reason. The townspeople were somewhat unsettled, but unlike when Nive did this, I made it clear that this was a thrall before killing it. I didn’t have to fear arrest that way either.

  But while Wolf did tell me there could be a lot of thralls, I was shocked by just how many there were. I was surprised they could all talk like normal humans too, a big difference from when I was a thrall. I had to wonder what made them different. Maybe they got used to talking that way. Maybe my vocal cords just happened to be rotten. Different thralls could be rotten in different areas, so I was probably just unlucky. Well, these thralls were probably living humans in the past, so I guess we were all unlucky.

  These thralls could talk pretty well, but that didn’t mean they still possessed the same mind they did in life. They might have acted like it, but only to trick humans, or so it was said. I didn’t know how true that was. They started to contradict themselves after being questioned for long enough, so it was presumably correct, but the fact that they acted so human made them painful to kill. Regardless, if left alone, they would attack humans and eat their flesh, eventually turning into vampires and becoming a threat to humanity.

  Wondering if it had been long enough yet, I looked at the thralls as if checking to see if dinner was finished cooking. They had mostly turned to ash and likely couldn’t revive.

  As for the other adventurers helping out, they were splashing the thralls with holy water to deal with them. It was a fairly expensive item, but the guild was providing it for this occasion. Even if they didn’t do that, some adventurers could just shout for Nive when they found one. She’d definitely come running over. But there was only one Nive, as far as I was aware. She couldn’t respond to calls from all around the city.

  I also saw other saints searching for thralls around town. Their divine arts were especially effective against them. But few saints had proper combat abilities, so they mostly just served to finish them off. Saints whose main job was purification could purify entire towns at once. If a saint like that were here right now, they’d probably have a lot to do. Unfortunately, there weren’t exactly a lot of them. There was maybe one per country, and hiring them could cost a fortune. You’d think that they’d give discounts during disasters like these, but then they’d never get to work at full price, I guess. When you have that much power, it’s hard to find the right time to use it.

  Anyway, I wondered what the vampire could stand to gain from setting the town ablaze and causing chaos. If he made this many thralls already, I felt like just slowly corrupting all of Maalt would have been the smarter plan. But maybe that would have been tough in itself. Thralls didn’t need that much blood, but if they became lesser vampires, they would need tons. If people started discovering signs of vampire attacks, vampire hunters could come after them in great numbers. Maybe he wa
nted to start something before that happened. It kind of made sense, but it kind of didn’t.

  There wasn’t much use thinking about this, though. I got back to hunting for thralls. If I hunted them all down, the boss would have to show himself. Or leave Maalt, but that would be fine too. I didn’t know how many were left, but thanks to Edel, I could always find more.

  “Let’s move on,” I told the mouse on my shoulder, then ran off.

  ◆◇◆◇◆

  “After all this, I still haven’t drawn my target out?” somebody said somewhere in the New Moon Dungeon.

  The low, hateful voice was directed at the many other people present. Young boys and girls were sweating and meditating. They were breathing hard and looked extraordinarily exhausted.

  The children sat in a circle around a man who stared at them apathetically. He looked frustrated, as if a tool wasn’t working right, but expressed no more concern than that.

  “Ugh!” one of the boys groaned. Then he coughed up blood and collapsed.

  The man looked at the boy and held his head like he had a headache. “Where was it this time?” he asked.

  “A thrall in the second commerce district was slain,” the boy answered.

  “Hm, not that it matters if they’re killed, but they’re being found a little too quickly. At this rate, I might run out of thralls before my target shows up.”

  “Are you sure this person is in this city?”

  “Yes, certainly. Narrowing it down to this city took ages, but there’s no question. However, I don’t know exactly where to look, and I suppose I can’t expect them to come out of hiding, unfortunately.”

  “But if we could get their help...”

  “Yes, we’ll get much closer to our goal. That’s what we’re here to do. I’m putting a great burden on you, but it’s all for the sake of our futures. You understand that, don’t you?” the man asked and looked at all the children. They were still focusing, but they nodded.