When I looked out of the window, I saw the very same grey clouds looming over the sky. The sun's rays never hit this place so it's eternally dark.

It's quite depressing. Even though I'm the one who caused this in the first place.

Although, for an illusion, I'm surprised that it's able to hold up for a millennium.

"Mistress Lilian, happy 1345th birthday."

The one who said that was my butler, Olbedo. His white hair and blue eyes are the first things you would take notice when you looked at him and although he's an old man, you could sense a great deal of dignity from him despite his age.

Well, he's a vampire now so his physical features wouldn't grow older than they are now.

"Good morning Olbedo."

"Yes. Good morning mistress Lilian. Shall I report the plans for today?"

Even without him telling me, I already know what my plans are for today.

The first thing on the list isn't really that major if you think about it. But for me, it's major enough to be on the list and it's to eat breakfast. Or rather, drink breakfast.

A virgin maiden's blood tastes exquisite and I just couldn't get bored of it after all these years. And that maiden would be my attendant, Risa. She's a young human at the age of 19. Although our age gap is tremendously big, she's still taller than me which sort of irritates me. She's also big in another place.

But her puffy face, short brown hair, and brown eyes make her look like a dog.

She's been my attendant for a year now and her blood has served me well by being my breakfast, lunch, and dinner. A really obedient child, she is. Sort of like a dog.

The next one would be to travel around the villages on the island. I can already see how those humans would react.

The same old groveling-under-my-feet thing. It's getting boring having to see that each and every time I visit their village.

This visiting thing would take up most of the day and after that, everyone is invited to a party at my castle.

This is the most fun time for my birthday but, you know, it'd gotten really dull. I don't even want to attend the party. All the humans do is just cower in fear whenever I'm present, even though I'm giving them free food... Which they themselves have grown in the first place...

Hey, I was the one who invented a way to grow crops without sunlight so I have the rights to it.

Well, the first few parties a thousand years ago were pretty fun. I remembered playing a game where I try to spot the ones who looked at me and have them run around the place in a futile effort to save their life. In the end, all of them died. No one on this island could run faster than me anyway.

I especially like the ones who just gave up without even trying. They're boring since they didn't even try to run but the faces they make when they know they're about to die are pretty interesting.

I still do play that game from time to time but it isn't as fun as how it used to be.

Also, the humans might go extinct on this island if I kept doing that every year.

After that, came night. The last event would be for the villagers to fill in this huge chalice with their blood. It isn't like I'm going to drink it, at least all of it. It's just some kind of rite of sorts. It's like pledging their loyalty to me, something like that.

I don't really care about that but Olbedo said that it's necessary to keep the humans submissive.

Anyway, it's the same every year. Some years I even just skip it all and just slept throughout the day.

But it's also the least boring day in the whole year, believe it or not. There's nothing to do in this castle of mine and I can't really leave this island. If I did, things will become chaotic and the others would hate me for it.

I often just play around in the village. The kids there, in particular, are pretty fun to be around. But they're also the most afraid of me but that couldn't be helped.

"... Mistress Lilian?"

Oh right, Olbedo is still here.

"Nah. I'll just skip this time as well," I said and waved my hand at him to shoo him off.

"You've already skipped your birthday party for the last 25 years already. Your subjects need to see you or they might assume that your dead."

"Let them. And this birthday party thing doesn't mean much to an immortal like me anyway. I'll skip it if I wanted to skip it."

Olbedo sighed. I can understand why. We had this same conversation on the same day for the last 25 years after all.

"Then for the annual report on the events of the world."

Now, this is something that I look forward too. The only new thing around here is the news about the world.

Being isolated for more than one thousand years is making me go crazy after all. This sort of stuff is my saving grace.

I jumped towards my bed and made myself comfortable.

I also called for Risa as well. It's nice to hug someone warm while listening to this.

I rang the bell on top of the counter beside my bed.

A few seconds later, I heard footsteps on the other side of the door to my room.

Then the door slammed open and there came Risa, my do... I mean, my attendant.

"Master! You called for me!?" Risa said with rough breaths.

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For a human, she has very sharp ears. My attendants in the past needed a few chimes of the bell before they could hear it but in Risa's case, it's always just one chime and she's immediately here.

As for how could humans even hear the bell in the first place even when they're very far away, the bell is a magical tool designed so that whenever it chimes, the one whom I connected the bell to would be able to hear it, although faintly.

"I told you many times not to rush. You're making a ruckus."

"I-I'm sorry! Please punish me, master!"

From looking at her expression, it seems like punishment is the same as a reward for her...

"Later. Sit here."

I pointed to the spot besides me. Seeing this, Risa, went ahead and brisk-walked her way towards me and sat where I had pointed. She did this without excusing herself as to when sitting, to which I'll need to punish her later.

I hugged her from behind and let myself experience the warmth of a human.

"M-master... I'm ticklish there..."

"Don't get tickled then."

Since Risa is always blushing whenever I'm around, she's always really warm.

I gestured towards Olbedo to go on with the report.

"Very well then. Starting from the end of last year..."

To summarise, Olbedo told me about a bunch of politics regarding the human race that I don't really care about but listened to anyway.

Those bastards are always in a scramble every freaking year. They always make mountains out of molehills with their petty reasons.

There's this incident in one kingdom where the king there was revealed to have been selling his citizens to slave traders. This incident then caused a civil war apparently.

Welp, I already knew that things would lead to this.

I heard from last year that this King, who was recently enthroned at that time, has shady background. Apparently, he doesn't even have any royal blood in him so him claiming to be a distant relative of the previous royal family, who were killed a few weeks prior conveniently enough, is absolute horse crap. There's also the fact that he was enthroned so easily. They didn't even do any background checks.

They also fabricated a fake story of how heroic he was and stuff like that.

From that, I could already smell the scent of bribery.

Then this and that happened and how it came to be that he was actually involved in illegal slave trade.

Typical story. I already heard something like this happening a couple of times in the past. There were differences of course but all of them stemmed from human greed.

That kingdom is doomed, at least until they find a decent King.

Anyway, came next are just more political junk that I don't really care about.

There isn't a single news about that petty church this time as well. I really hope they had already gone extinct after a thousand years. That'll be a massive relief on my part.

But for now, I can't really do anything until I find evidence that they really are, 100%, extinct and that there are no longer idiots who follow that religion. For now, I'll just continue having that matter investigated as per usual.

The next news is about the other races. There's news about wars and such but I don't really care. I'd much rather hear about the middle continent exploding or something than hearing about the petty rivalries of cats and dogs.

For the elves, it looks like their xenophobia has increased many folds yet again since they have now developed a large scale mana shield that is able to sustain itself for a few weeks when it's activated.

The dwarves seem to have found a new leader for themselves that is capable of hitting metal better than anyone else.

The dragons are still in their deep sleep period. These lazy lizards had been sleeping for the last 10 years. I hope they'll wake up soon. It's been a while since dragons have visited this island.

"There's also the matter of regarding the fairies. It seems that they are—"

"Don't want to hear it. We lost yet another group of subordinate vampires from those pesky fairies for getting too close to their territories, right?"

"Not quite."

"Oh? Have they finally gotten tired of our meddling that they now allowed us to peek inside one of their forbidden places?"

"Close mistress. Among the 37 forbidden places that we know their guarding, they have abandoned one of them just recently."

"They just left on their own!? Nobody raided the place?"

Those fairies? Abandoned a place their guarding? In my years of living in this boring world, that's the first time I ever heard of fairies leaving a place they're guarding voluntarily.

"What place is it?"

"It's the abandoned church of salvation."

Oh, that.

I honestly don't even know why those fairies are even guarding that place. Due to the magic of those fairies, we couldn't really see much in that area except for the silhouette of the church with their trademark star symbol on top of a spire.

The church is also in the middle of the Great Forest.

The Church of Salvation doesn't really have many followers, to begin with so it isn't strange for them to have churches in strange areas but in the middle of the Great Forest, that's just going too far. That's about the only thing that's strange about it that could warrant those fairies on guarding the place.

They've been guarding that place for at least a thousand years now and the church of salvation is long gone. They might just be guarding it for the sake of preserving the place.

Who knows, right? Nobody knows what those darn fairies are thinking.

"Have you checked inside the church?"

"Yes, mistress. The ones who entered reported it to be just an abandoned church like any other. The only difference being is that it looks like it was only left alone for at most a hundred years rather than its actual age.

As I thought, those fairies were just preserving the place.

Still, I feel like we're missing something...

"Anything else?"

"Nothing more, mistress. The church's layout is just like the other churches that we found in the past. There's also no other traces of magic other than light magic that those fairies use."

Then it really might just be just a regular church then. But...

"Risa, what do you think?"

I asked the dog with a flustered face who is currently rubbing her cheeks against my neck while making moaning noises.

Hearing what I asked, she immediately straightened her back.

"Y-yes! Master, I believe that the fairies left because there's nothing to guard anymore...?"

"Hm? What do you mean by that?"

When she just looked at me with a giant question mark plastered on her face, I caressed the side of her neck and whispered to her that I won't be sucking her blood today if she didn't answer.

"I-I'm sorry! Mmm-maybe it wasn't the church they're guarding but rather, something inside it? I think they took the thing that they were guarding with them..."

"Oh? That might be plausible. Smart girl."

"Yes! Thank you for the compliment master!"

That might actually be it. This could also explain the lack of anything inside the church.

Whether they did bring the thing they're guarding with them or not is still up to debate. The thing might be capable of locomotion for all we know.

"Olbedo, have them survey the area around the church and report anything out of place. Whatever it is, bring them to the island so I could get a look at it."

"As you command, mistress Lilian."

After saying that, Olbedo left the room.

Things are getting interesting.

Forbidden places are always heavily guarded. Many different beings, be it humans, elves, dragons, and even vampires have tried to raid a forbidden place but all of them resulted in deaths.

There was one case that almost went successfully. Those giants managed to drive away the fairies even but they were killed shortly after when the reinforcements arrived.

No one knows if they actually saw anything worthwhile in there, or if they saw anything at all. They all died there so they couldn't really tell anything to anyone.

This time, those fairies have left a forbidden place for some reason. Like what Risa had said. The fairies might not be guarding a place, but rather an object or a life form. It's still a mystery if they actually brought it with them or not.

If they did, then there's nothing I can do about it.

But if they didn't and it just so happens that it's capable of locomotion...

I would be the first one to find it, one of the secrets of those places. I doubt anyone other than me is aware of this. After all, I was the only one that was able to find that forbidden place before I was forced to leave the major continents.

Although I did just found it by accident, still, that doesn't change the fact that I found it.

I'm sure that whatever it is would be interesting. I could even use it as a toy for years to come until I can return to the major continents.

"Um... Master...?"

Oh right. I forgot that Risa was still here.

"... I'm sorry that I said this so late but... Happy birthday."

Birthday, huh...?

This news might just be the best birthday gift that I've gotten in years.