After 10 days of traveling together, we saw structures that resembled the man-made structures where I first woke up in.

And these discoveries seem important as well, judging from the reactions of the two.

"Roosevelt, look! There's a [village]! And here I thought that we might have been lost. That map had been pretty handy." Sun said excitedly as she hoped off from the carriage.

"Maybe there we can rest for a bit. We'll ask the [chief] of the [village] if we can rest there for a while." Night said next and then she hopped off the carriage.

So those cluster of structures is called a 'village'? And the 'chief' would be some important person living in the village. Then that would mean that a lot of humans would be living in that village then!? That's pretty exciting.

Night says that we can rest there? Aren't we resting enough while we were traveling? Why would we need to stop there in the village and rest?

I stopped moving the carriage for a short while and I pulled on Sun's sleeve to ask about it.

"Why we need to rest? Well, even if we're physically fine, wouldn't it'd be mentally exhausting to keep traveling? I'm sure you would be the most tired of all of us since you're the one who keeps pulling the carriage."

Is what she said.

Honestly, I'm not tired. Both physically and mentally.

I already learned that vampires are physically more superior than humans so something like this feels nothing if I'm able to drink my daily dose of blood and get an afternoon rest. And I've also stared at the darkness for 1000 years with only my thoughts so the fact that something is actually happening in front of me, no matter how meager it is, would do the opposite of making me tired mentally.

I could stare at the trees sway from the wind for years and I wouldn't get bored or tired. But I would die so...

The point is, I don't really get tired from all of this. But if they wanted to rest then I won't stop them.

"I think we should rest for a week in the village before we resume traveling." Night said as she removed Sun off of me when she suddenly hugged while I was unaware of it.

"It's not like we need to rush, right? It's not like Ronoa's Court of Justice would suddenly move away or disappear." Sun commented.

From what I gathered, Ronoa is the name of where we are headed. They didn't tell me the specifics since I never asked to begin with.

"Oh, and wouldn't it be the perfect opportunity for Snow to meet other people!?" Sun suddenly thought.

"Isn't that great, Snow?"

I nodded enthusiastically.

I know that heading towards a place with lots of humans would be great but when I thought about it, I'm having doubts if I would be able to be on good terms with them.

I learned from Sun and Night that sucking the blood from a dead body isn't the best way to give the other person a good impression. Although it did end in us traveling together but I should assume that Night and Sun are a special case.

The problem would be the fact that I don't know anything about human culture apart from what I observed from Sun and Night. I know they eat burnt meat and strange tasting plant products but considering making first impressions towards humans, I don't know how to act.

Should I just talk to them? Ask them questions? Of course, asking them to let me drink their blood is out of the question.

There's also the possibility that they might be just like those human males before. Suddenly attacking us for some reason. Those kinds of humans aren't really the type that I can get along with and I don't really want to get my head pierced again.

So I asked Sun for her opinion on this.

"Am I strange?"

I believe that I should know if I'm strange to other humans or not. If I am then I might not be able to get along with them. There might be a chance that the reason that Sun and Night were afraid of me at first would also be because of another factor.

"Strange? You are but every human has certain aspects about them that are strange as well. The strange thing about me is the fact that I have larger breasts than Roosevelt even though I'm younger."

"Hey..."

"For Roosevelt, um..."

For some reason, she moved her mouth close to my ear and said her next words in a really quiet voice.

"She has a [mole] on her butt. Oh and don't tell her that I told you that."

I don't really know what a mole is but it seems to be something that Night would be angry about when discovered.

"What about me?"

I turned the conversation back on topic.

"The strange thing about you is... Your pale skin? That's right, your pale skin! You would look like someone who hasn't met the sun for a long time and that's certainly strange. But don't worry, eventually, people would accept that strangeness about you, just like me and Roosevelt, and you'll get along with them."

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

I guess it's my skin then.

Lacorte did say that I resemble human looks, excluding the skin color. So far, I've never seen any pale looking humans. Of course, I've never met many humans and there's also the possibility that there might be other pale looking humans that aren't vampires but I'm guessing they won't be abundant in amount, or none at all unless they're dead.

I hope that Sun would be right. That if humans saw my pale skin, they would accept it as a strange aspect about me and we all get along.

Well, it's all just speculations. I wouldn't know till I've experienced it. And of course, I wouldn't show any other human that I drink blood since that isn't really normal in the eyes of humans.

"It's getting dark. We should set up camp for the night and head for the village early tomorrow." Night announced.

It's not strange for us to camp for the night but it's definitely odd as to why we need to camp at all when we can rush towards the village before midnight. That way, we could rest in the village and do the meeting-with-people part tomorrow.

And so I asked.

"Not continuing...?"

"Hm? If we continue now, Snow, the villagers would be asleep by the time we arrive."

Oh, obviously. Humans sleep at night.

Night then turned to Sun.

"We should gather some firewood before it gets too dark."

"Then I'll—"

"I'll go." Before Sun could finish her sentence, I cut her off.

The two looked at me in surprise. I was never the one to gather the firewood and they never asked me to gather any to begin with.

"You don't have to do that, Snow. We'll gather the firewood. You just rest." Sun said and caressed my head. Although it feels nice, I won't be dissuaded.

I also have a good reason for this.

I took out the blood container and showed it to them.

"Empty."

For some reason, their face flushed and looked at me anxiously.

Their face getting red isn't really weird. Night would often do that when Sun is telling me some embarrassing stories of Night when they were a small human or the times when I would flip their skirts to see if they really have a vagina like me.

The weird part is the fact that their face is flushed without any embarrassing stories or apparent embarrassing situations and the scent that they give off is entirely different.

It's really delicious.

This wasn't the first time this happened and I noticed that it always happen when I mention anything close to blood. Their face would turn red and they would give off an alluring scent.

Of course, I controlled myself. Unless they tell me to, I won't try and drink their blood. I can satisfy myself with rabbit's blood just fine so I don't necessarily need human blood.

Then again I really want to have a taste...

In particular, Sun's blood. I never tried hers before. I knew I should have licked her neck before wiping away all the blood. But at the time, if I tasted heir blood, I might not be able to control myself.

And if I tried to feed myself before giving them my blood, they might die in the meantime so I couldn't really do that.

"Is that so? Then I'll leave it to you then."

The one who broke the awkward silence was Night.

"Okay."

After saying that, I left them and headed towards the forest.

There are multiple reasons as to why I volunteered to gather the firewood this time. The main reason is the scent of goblin blood. A lot of them.

I wouldn't care if I could only smell about 20 or so goblins but this time, I literally couldn't ignore it, even if I lose my nose.

This might also be the reason why there's a lot of goblins coming to us at night. Or rather, it's nothing but goblins recently. I've never seen a wolf in this past couple of days.

There's also the odd disappearance of the common animals like rabbits. It's also the reason as to why I have a low blood supply right now. If this continues, I might just resort to using bird blood, which is troublesome to get.

I've already known the fact that goblins are really hostile and creepy and now they seem to be gathering in one spot since their stench is concentrated in that spot.

The area isn't that close to where we are. I'd say the area is more close to where the village is.

I have a bad feeling about this...

Well, there's nothing I can do about it. I'd like to not overestimate my strength and just believe that fighting that many goblins is suicidal.

After catching a few birds and collecting enough dry wood that my arms can't carry anymore, I returned to Sun and Night.

Although on my way back, I saw Night picking blue berries in a bush.

Not only is she carrying the bunch of blue berries that she has picked in her basket, but there's also a bunch of potatoes and carrots in there.

Her basket is also made up of the large leaves of a tree that produces those long and yellow fruits.

Now regarding those 'vegetables' as they would call it, they taste horrible. They're really bitter.

"Oh, Snow. You brought back few too much firewood." Night said when she saw me and the armful of twigs and branches that I pulled off.

"Bigger fire. Better."

"Let me help carry some of those."

Night took about half of the twigs from me and then we ended back to where Sun is.

It seems she's rummaging through the box where she keeps those important papers. When she saw us, she took out a fire scroll and leaped off the carriage.

Now that I think about it...

"Why so many fire scrolls?"

I noticed that every time we start a campfire, they would always use a fire scroll. Last time I saw them, there was only 5 rolls of them left and that's 12 days ago so how come they still have more?

"We've been making them. Translating a simple fire magic into a written form is easy." Night answered.

She said easy but I don't see anything easy in the paper. All I see are just scribbles. They're even harder than the written language of humans.

And so, without minding the situation with the scroll any further, Sun then made the structure for making a campfire.

She then held the scroll towards the structure of twigs and branches and with a simple chant of 'fire', a small fire burst forth from the paper and hit the pile of wood, knocking down a few sticks in the process. With just that, fire is born.

It's always amazing every time I see it. I also tried to use the scroll before but nothing happened. I don't know what it requires for one to use a scroll but it seems that I don't have it.

After burning the birds that I had caught and ate them, Sun and Night slept early today so as to wake up early in the morning tomorrow.

Of course, I positioned myself in between the two heat producing humans.

I savored their warmth but I didn't sleep. I stayed awake to keep guard from those goblins.

And as expected, a few of them visited us late at night. I took care of them quickly and buried their bodies as to not attract meat-eating animals.

But these batch of goblins didn't seem to have been that afraid of me, oddly enough.

In all of my encounters with these monsters, whenever I halved their numbers, they would almost always run away in fear. But these guys didn't.

That isn't weird in it of itself but that should only apply when they're only about 3 or 4. These batch that came at us with 9 goblins. Not one of them ran away despite the fact that they were stricken in fear. This is also the largest group of goblins that I've ever fought. The largest group of goblins that I've fought before this one only consists of 6 goblins.

There's a bunch of guesses that I could think of which explains this behavior. For one, maybe a high number of goblins in one group restricts them to never running away, as part of their culture. For two, maybe they don't have a choice but to come here and attack us. Actually, I don't even know if their goal is to attack us at all. I just killed them because they're goblins. There might be something more menacing from where they came from.

And for three, the goblin gathering thing that's happening has something to do with this. As to how, I don't know. It's just possibility.

Well, again, I can't really do anything about it. Dying from those filthy things is something I can't accept.

After 6 hours, the two warm creatures woke up and then we continued to make our way towards the village.