Chapter 43 - At Dawn

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The vampires retired to their castle once they ascertained that there was no way for them to escape or destroy my barrier. After the first night they never came out, except one time when one of them tried to escape during the day, which didn’t end well for him.

Two nights and two days had now passed, and the sun was setting for the third time since we arrived. Having the attacks ceased the toll on me to maintain the barrier was much easier than the first night, though the sole fact that I had to maintain it for days without sleep meant that I was feeling terrible.

I was still sitting cross-legged in front of the hole, with a high fever and constantly shivering and sweating. A pile of furs was keeping me warm while Holiés poured some water in my mouth or gave me some food every now and then.

After seeing what happened the first night the adventurers who were sent by the guild hadn’t even tried to start a conversation with me and I was also bored out of my mind.

When the sun had set by about half an hour Seila came out of the castle, alone. When she was at the limits of the light cast by the barrier I said, “hey beauty,” in a barely audible voice.

Despite the distance she seemed to have heard what I said because she said, “has this approach ever worked?”

I smiled. “Well, you are here.”

“Yeah… not interested, sorry.”

“What? Not even if I throw in this nice young man here as a bonus?” I said, referring to Holiés who was next to me.

“Hey!” he shouted.

Seila laughed and said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to refuse.”

“So? What are you here for?”

“Well,” she stared into my eyes, “I thought that maybe you could let me out.”

“Ehm… No?”

She blinked a few times before going back at staring me in the eyes. “Can you lower the barrier, please?” she said with a sweet voice.

“As I said, no.”

She was even more surprised than the first time but instead of trying again she looked at Holiés and said, “can you kill the hero for me, dear?”

Holiés just nodded next to me, took out a dagger and tried to stab me, only to fall to the ground convulsing.

“He’s your slave, isn’t he?” she asked, a tone of defeat in her voice.

“Yeah… Did you just use that vampiric seduction skill or what it is called?”

“Yeah…”

“It’s a lot more effective than I thought it would be,” I said, looking at Holiés laying on the ground in the corner of my eye.

She looked around me at the other adventurers who, after seeing what just happened and not being able to hear what I was saying despite being much more near to me than the vampire, were staring at her with their weapons drawn.

“Are the others,” the adventurers started falling to the ground one after the other, “...nevermind.”

“So… was that your plan?”

“Yes. How did you do that anyway?” she said, pointing at the passed out adventurers.

“Air magic,” I said as a matter of fact.

“That’s not how air magic works.”

“It is if you know air well enough.”

“I see…” she pondered for a few seconds then said, “won’t they die because of it?”

“No, they’ll wake up in a bit.”

Hope appeared again in her eyes before being crushed again when she saw that I was trapping every adventurer with earth magic.

“Anyway,” I continued, “you left without telling me what your hobbies are, and let me tell you, that was pretty rude.”

She stared at me wide-eyed. “You are keeping us captive!”

“And do you think that’s a good reason to be rude?”

“Yes!”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“I see… I hoped it would have helped us become closer,” I said in a sad voice.

“How could something like that happen?!” she shouted.

“Well, it works sometimes.”

“Sometimes? Have you…? Is it…? No wait, I don’t want to know.” She took a deep breath before continuing, “how did someone like you even become the hero?”

“Well, it’s a funny story, I was eating a pastry on a bench…”

“Stop! Stop! Please. I don’t think I have ever met anyone like you in more than six hundred years,” she said, before burying her face between her hands.

“Wow, let me tell you, you look a lot younger.”

With that, she broke. She let herself fall to the ground and, sitting there with her legs against her chest she started crying in exasperation.

It took her well over ten minutes to stop crying, when she finally did she lifted her head from her hands and, staring daggers at me, she said, “I hate you.”

“Please, you flatter me. By the way, what were you people doing here?”

“We were gathering forces to awake Letia and free her from the capital. Our leader, Moris, thought that doing it while the kingdom was busy with the war was a good idea. It also looked like we would have been able to before you arrived. He was one of her generals, you know?”

I could only stare at her in disbelief after hearing that.

“What?” she asked, seeing me like that.

“Can you bring me your leader?” I asked, still organizing my thoughts.

“Why?”

“Do that and I might let you go,” I said before winking at her.

It was clear from her expression that she didn’t believe me but she got up nonetheless and went back to the castle.

She came back a few minutes later with the man who threw his spear the first night. When they were finally at the limit of the light of the barrier I asked him, “can a mithril sword cut through an orichalcum chain?”

“What?” he asked me.

“Answer.”

“No, of course it can’t.”

“Wrong answer,” I looked at Seila, “he lied to you. He doesn’t actually know your queen.”

She looked at Moris. “What?!”

“Don’t listen to this crazy woman, Selia.”

I smiled. “I don’t care if she believes me or not. I just wanted to make sure.”

“I’m done with all of this,” he said, anger in his voice.

He cupped his hands together and a sphere of condensed shadows manifested between them before flying at high speed against the barrier, only to transform in a white string of text that said, “try again, you’ll be more lucky.”

He screamed in rage before sending another, only for the same thing to happen. He tried again, and again, and again, every time with the same result, until the tenth time when, the moment the globe of shadows hit the barrier, the string read, “Congratulations! You won a free trip!” before recondensing in a sphere of light and flying against him with roughly the power of ten of his spells, sending him flying all the way back to the castle.

“I think you should go see how he is,” I said to Seila.

She just nodded, her face blank, before running back to the castle.

The rest of the night passed by quitely, except for a short moment when I had to explain the adventurers in the camp why they were half buried in dirt as they started to wake up.

It was almost dawn when I started hearing a low humming from south-west. As minutes passed the the sound kept growing and growing in intensity. Suddenly the humming stopped and dozens of horns resounded in the forest from the same direction it came from. After a few, long seconds the horns stopped and the humming resumed, this time accompanied by a slow and protracted chant.

The adventurers in the camp all rose to their feet, readying their weapons.

“What’s coming now?” one of them asked, worry in his tone. In answer, another one hushed him and we went back to listen.

When, after many seconds passed, the first two words, “Our Mother,” were finally sung I heard the girl who asked me about the barrier three days before say, “could it be…?”

She was hushed too as the adventurers listened to the chant growing closer.

When what seemed to be the first line of the chant, “Our Mother who resides in the heavens,” finally finished more than a minute after it started Joel said, “I think it’s them.”

“Have you ever seen them fight?” another asked.

“No, but I saw them sing once during a parade,” Joel answered

“Who are they talking about?” I asked Holiés who was next to me, my voice barely a whisper now.

“I think they are the Valkyrie Corps,” he answered as the second line, “you who are holy,” finished.

I saw some of the adventurers who were in my field of view touch their foreheads, lips and chest before kneeling in the direction the chant was coming from.

“Who?”

“Women who devoted their life to the service of the church as soldiers,” he explained.

“They’re all women? Nice.”

“I wouldn’t joke about it,” he said as the third line of the chant, “give us your light,” finished.

I tried to laugh, and failed, before asking, “why?”

“Fortuna, they’re at the head of the inquisition. Do not try one of your antics with them,” he said, completely serious.

“Oh… That’s a bummer.”

“I’m serious.”

“Yes, I got it,” I said, as all around us resounded the end of the fourth line, “to defeat our enemies.”

The sun started to rise above the treetops almost as if the chant was calling on it and, about a minute later, singing “and victory will be ours,” what seemed to be a hundred people in full plate armor came out of the forest, even from almost a hundred meters away it was possible to feel the holy magic radiating from them. In front of the formation that was quickly taking shape stood a woman in plate armor without a helmet, from where I was I could barely distinguish her long red hair and the golden sun on her shoulders.

She stabbed her longsword in the ground and everyone behind her stopped. Her two hands still on the hilt of her sword she looked at me and nodded.

Understanding what she meant I sealed back my powers, making the barrier around us disappear and, having no more use for them, I covered back the letters around the circle with earth magic.

The woman in the front of the formation raised her sword in front of her before bringing it down with a sharp motion. The moment her sword was lowered everyone started running towards the castle, the formation moving as a sole body.

I saw the formation split in two halfway to the castle before passing out.