"Ah, I see. You wanted to give them the first move because they were two against eight. I am sorry to steal all the limelight." Frei laughed awkwardly and hoped that someone would bite the bait. His eyes stopped with hope on the trio of teenagers.
"I wanted to wait for a coordinated attack, but never mind. It works like this as well." Salim coughed lightly while Frei's black flaming sword disappeared and Crow in front of everyone turned back into a walking stick, clearly enjoying everyone's attention.
"That little showoff! I have to punish him later!" Frei fumed inside, but could not say anything aloud.
"Yeah, many seem to be hiding their secret moves." Another teenager elaborated and looked around with a thoughtful expression.
"I would say most of us wanted to just give them face and let them make the first move. Brother Frei is quite ruthless." The third teenager began to spin the idea in an unexpected direction and Frei had to hurry to salvage the situation before the conversation turned utterly ridiculous.
"What is done, is done. When should we make a camp? It is getting dark." Frei asked and one of the happy children of nature with blue hair joined his attempt to end the debate immediately.
"It is getting dark already, we should make a camp about now."
With a new goal in sight no one mentioned the incident anymore, looking for a place to stay overnight instead.
The evening was uneventful and there seemed to be no more adventure in the form of more thugs waiting for them.The next morning, they got up and stretched to circulate blood in their cold limbs. Naturally Frei only observed them, as his feet were cold by default all the time. He was glad that the night was over, pretending to sleep was such a bore!
"It should not take long to get to the Baroness" Salim had a wide smile plastered on his face, most likely imagining himself to be praised by the regional nobility for successfully completing the mission.
"Let's hope that we will arrive without another incident." The blue haired women glanced in Frei's direction.
Ranna nodded as well and all of them set out to continue in their journey through the forest that was supposed to end today. Conveniently, there was no breakfast and Frei did not need to pretend not to be hungry. Well, he actually was, he had not eaten any blood for a considerable while. He would have to catch some small animal on the way when no one was looking.
"You are so cold!" Salim's hand brushed against his skin by accident and he instantly noticed his extraordinarily low temperature, reflexively distancing himself from Frei as if he had touched a block of ice.
"Oh, that is nothing, just chronic hypothermia." Frei spewed some random nonsense, because he simply could not think of anything better right away.
"What?! Is that some nasty disease?" Salim began subconsciously brushing the part of his clothes where he had touched Frei with his forearm. as if a rat had crawled over him.
Frei just stared at him for a second, his brain starting to work at full capacity. Was he not a gamer?
"Eh, it is just my ability. It conserves energy by not heating up my body so much." He said as if it was a matter of course and dreaded Salim's reaction. The last thing he needed was to advertise himself as some kind of a monster. Who knew if this world had some sort of an inquisition that would burn him on a stake.
"Oh, that is so cool! Good for you man." Salim patted his shoulder, like what he had just said explained everything.
He could not help himself but like that guy! Ir would be so much easier to hide with more people like him around!
For the second day in a row, they walked through the forest and it was about time for it to give way to farmlands and pastures of the most daring peasants. Frei was looking forward to entering another city, despite him being enchanted by the fantasy-like world, it was not pleasant to fight dragons, aberrations and heaven knew what else on daily basis. He could use a breather for a change. He risked being recognized for what he was in human lands, but it seemed absolutely no one expected that a vampire could promenade himself under direct sunlight.
"This thicket is too dark, I will check it out." Ranna said out of the blue and ran off on her own.
"She is quite bold for a kid." One of the teenagers could not contained his disbelief, as he himself would surely never done anything similar.
"We were really lucky to meet her, she is our lucky charm." Salim grinned and all of them waited for their scout to return.
They waited only a few minutes, when out of the blue several figures dropped down from the trees around them and a hooded pair emerged from the nearby bushes.
"Here they are Baroness, as promised." the small figure was obviously their urchin scout.
"Good, another batch of the Gifted, you will be rewarded handsomely Ranna." The hooded person spoke and Frei's body jerked with surprise.
That voice!
"What is the meaning of this? Ranna, why do you call this woman a baroness? She is clearly someone else!" Salim stepped forth confused by the unexpected situation, but refrained from sudden movements as the men around them held weapons that without doubt were not of the quality that bandits would use.
"Have you expected to see that silly cow? You are just an idiot." Ranna spoke and Salim gasped for breath, unable to make a sound for a while, shocked by their little scout's radical change of behaviour.
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Was this the little girl that kept helping them on their journey all the time? That smiled at the Baroness with her cute face?
"Some of them should be useful, we can kill the rest." Ranna nailed it with her following cold statement and some of the group of seven made a step back subconsciously.
"How could you do this to us? To her? We trusted you!" Salim was getting worked up while everyone else was in a daze, it was not hard to guess that they had been deceived and their future would not hold anything pleasant.
"Bah! Trusted me?! You and your parasites?" The girl rolled back her hood and they could see her face distorted with a nasty grin, being cute no longer. "The group before have also trusted me, so good of them, they kept sending me scouting ahead. I was getting injured and nearly died many times, they did not mind, they simply bandaged my wounds and trusted me some more! They placed so much trust in me that one day, I was a living being no longer!"
When the little girl started to become emotional, a white hand of the person next to her patted her head, comforting her.
"It is alright, you belong with us now." The familiar voice spoke again and Frei could not believe his ears as she continued. "The only true baroness around here is of course me, Nitarja Waldorf Rosenberg, an adoptive daughter and a vassal of Count Waldhaiss." The hooded person revealed her snow-white hair and ears.
"Nitarja, impossible!" Frei gasped, not believing his eye.
How was this possible?
She turned her head slightly and their eyes met, a faint smile appeared on her face.
"Oh, isn't this the failure of an acquaintance of mine? Are you still eating mice blood?" She said coldly and lifted her hand, giving her lackeys a signal.
In a flash her subordinates jumped forward and bit the necks of the group Frei had been traveling with. The disparity in experience, power and equipment was glaring to the point their resistance looked like a joke. Frei could only watch in a daze as all of them collapsed to the ground with bite marks on their necks and only some of them stood up a while later, confusion in their eyes and. .. something else.
"Take the new batch away, I will deal with this one personally." Nitarja announced to her subordinates and in a minute, there were only the two of them facing against each other.
"Nitarja, I am glad. .. " What was he saying? She was the whore that left him for Victor! But before Frei could finish his sentence or control his conflicting emotions, Nitarja's hand flashed and a massive black blade collided with his chest, ending swiftly his conundrum. Thrown back by the impact of the spell, blood splattered all around and he could only stare in disbelief as she turned away. He felt a hit from behind a second later, when his body collided with a tree. Slowly loosing his vision, his eyes were following her white tail that kept swinging left and right, while blood flowed down his chest.
Wounded, confused and forever enchanted by that white tail, his body slid along the tree to the ground and the last vestiges of his consciousness had all but vanished.
* * * *
"Take the new batch away, I will deal with this one personally." Nitarja said hastily, there was no time as she could feel tears to form in her eyes.
Frei was supposed to stay away from her and the vampires in the west, it was imperative that she crushed here and now all the remaining feelings he had for her. She knew that the act would be all but gone the moment she spoke just a few sentences. Therefore, she interrupted his attempted dialogue with an attack, trying to make it look like she really wanted to kill him.
After her decisive strike, she saw his body slam into a tree. He should be fine after some time, she was not sure what he was, but she had seen him spar and knew what his body could recover from.
This was enough to fool Count Waldhaiss, she was glad that her new master was not as punctual as Victor, giving her some degree of freedom.
Her mind wandered again to the events that followed after the night of Ratel's death and all the chaos that happened during that time, ending with the most unexpected of outcomes and as the result, she currently bore the names of Waldorf Rosenberg alongside her first name. She became a controversial noble, no longer chained by that overly ambitious monster, Victor. Still, something was telling her that she only fell deeper into the nasty game of power and should not let her guard down.
"My Lady, this one is still alive, should I finish him?" A little girl's voice interrupted Nitarja's thoughts, she turned her head to look over her shoulder and when her eyes focused, she saw Ranna standing over Frei as she was about to deliver a finishing blow to his battered body.
"No, stop!" Nitarja said with haste and the tiny hand of the girl stopped mid-air.
"My Lady?" She looked at her with her big eyes, confused. "Are we taking him with us?"
"No, but you should learn that a true lady has no need to concern herself with rubble. Just leave the trash where he is and come, we should not tarry around for long before dusk, we have gone too far to the east." Nitarja said with commanding tone and jogged off into the woods.
"As you wish, My Lady." Ranna gave the body a last look and followed her liege.
"By the way, it was ingenious with the two human scouts. Divide the enemy and let them kill each other is the oldest trick in the book." Nitarja tried to distract the girl with praise and from the look in her eyes, she succeeded.
"Thank you Lady Nitarja, I will learn fast and become an exemplary vampire just like you!" Ranna replied with enthusiasm.
Nitarja hoped that she had not set another monster on the path of deceitful slaughter, this world seemed to have enough of them as it was.
* * * *
Frei spat out dirt that had gotten into his mouth during the attack and lifted the upper half of his body.
"Damn that bitch!" He groaned when he glanced at the throbbing wound on his chest. He was too low on blood and the wound was healing at a glacial pace. Fortunately, the attackers did not seem to care about the corpses of those they had deemed unworthy of turning into vampires and Frei was able to crawl closer to a body with black hair. It was she, who had wanted to borrow his walking stick.
"Huh, on average my luck is still better than yours." Frei sunk his teeth into the dead girl's hand, close to the artery and sucked the leftover blood that her body still contained.
"That is better!" He turned his body away from the corpse of the unfortunate girl and stayed sprawled on the ground, breathing heavily.
"Nitarja, you bitch!" He tried to puzzle together the situation, but there was too many unknown factors and he was left only with wild speculations. "That treacherous little brat sure found a fitting mistress for herself, birds of a feather flock together as they say."
"But what the hell is with the timing. Is she a baroness? And how has she arrived here in a span of days? Has she become a baroness in a few days and teleported here just like that or what?!" Frei mumbled in confusion.
"I think that she had plenty of time Frei." He heard Crow's voice from behind and an ominous feeling washed over him.
"Do you perhaps know how to explain her sudden appearance here?"