Talking with a stranger in rags wasn’t exactly on Lucas’s to-do list right now, but here he was anyway.

“Name yourself,” Salamanon said. His voice still shook Lucas right down to his very core. Every time he talked, it was like some invisible power pounded his entire being. It was an odd feeling, to be sure. Lucas didn’t physically feel worse, and his HP was still at 29, but the man’s words still hurt him, somehow. Maybe his soul was under attack or something. This was just what he needed to round out his isekai experience, a vampire who could directly assault his very spirit.

Yay.

“Xandrious,” Lucas lied since he wasn’t sure what this vampire’s whole deal was. Well it wasn’t really a lie, since technically his body was named after that disgusting noble, but it wasn’t like the vampire would even know that--

“Hmm. I can tell that you do not speak the truth, and yet, it is also the truth,” Salamanon said in a pondering and curious tone. Also, he was a wordy bastard, but from what Lucas understood, the vampire knew he was lying. Neat. Lie detecting magic. How terribly convenient.

“Does it matter what my name is?” Lucas asked. Don’t get him wrong, he was scared as all hell of this vampire, but he figured he was either dead or he wasn’t. Since this might be the last conversation he ever has, he may as well talk however he pleased.

“Indeed. I must make sure you are not related to one of my many enemies,” Salamanon said with a nod. “I will ask you one last time. What is your name?” The vampire’s words became even more violent with Lucas. He could feel them crawling across his skin now, with their tiny, prickly, insect-like legs. If he didn’t answer him now, he assumed that those innumerous legs would stab at him, causing him pain all over.

“Lucas Johnson,” he of course told the truth this time.

“I see. A last name, huh. You must be a noble then,” Salamanon nodded as he came to his own conclusion. Lie detecting didn’t help against dumb assumptions, apparently. Man, if only Lucas was a noble, then he wouldn’t have had to work a crappy job, or go to crappy university, or do anything, really. Life would’ve been only been that kind to him in dreams. Although, Xandrious was a noble… ah, but he was also exiled, so Lucas probably couldn’t get any of that sweet cash-money. Bummer.

Now was hardly the time to think about something like that, though. There was quite literally an interrogation going on, and he was on the receiving end. Why he kept getting distracted when he was in danger like this, he had no idea, but he’d definitely need to find out before it got him killed.

“Are you familiar with the name Petris Bloodwyrm?” Salamanon asked with more than a tint of anger in his voice. The creepy feeling Lucas felt throughout his entire being became more violent. His skin felt like it would tear just by listening to him, his insides felt like they were going to implode, and his brain felt like a mushy mess.

“No,” Lucas barely managed to answer. Even though he felt like year-old trash caked at the bottom of a dumpster, his HP was still 29. Was this vampire really doing something to him, or was it just an illusion? If it was just an illusion of some sort, it still hurt like hell. Or maybe his guess from earlier was right, and this man was assaulting his soul? And perhaps having his soul torn to shreds didn’t actually affect his HP for whatever asinine reason?

That or the system was just lying to him and/or didn’t register this vampire’s interrogation as a detriment to his health. He wouldn’t put it past this dog-crap system to be utterly useless.

“Have you felt like your mind hasn’t been your own?” Salamanon asked a very pointed question, and it made Lucas flinch.

“I mean… probably? I feel like I have, anyway,” Lucas said, not understanding why Salamanon would even care.

“Have you felt the urge to murder?” He asked pointedly. Coming from a blood-sucking, people-ranching, nobler-than-thou vampire, it was an odd question.

“What?” Lucas asked before he could think.

“Answer me,” Salamanon warned. Whatever he was doing to Lucas actually hurt him now, as he both saw and felt a scratch appear on his left palm. A yelp of pain escaped from his mouth. It felt like a cardboard cut and it both itched and hurt so bad.

“No, of course not!” Lucas screamed.

“I see,” Salamanon sighed, and all the pain that Lucas was going through abruptly stopped. Just like that, it was gone. Even the cut was healed, like it had never been there to begin with.

The creepy vampire then began to slowly walk around the coffin with his chin resting between his thumb and forefinger, like that obnoxious thinking emoji. While he did this he constantly muttered to himself, and Lucas couldn’t catch a single word of it. He thought he heard something about a vampire revolution, but he honestly could have misheard that.

The thought of sneaking out while the man was occupied to occur to him, but he didn’t think he’d make it too far in the cave before the man realized he was gone. The guy could use words and magic that Lucas couldn’t even comprehend- which wasn’t really a feat since he knew nothing about magic, but his lack of knowledge didn’t make this guy any less intimidating.

After waiting through about a half a minute of the man’s muttering, the vampire stopped his pacing and once again stared at Lucas. Something in those dark red eyes made it look like he was seeing past Lucas’ eyes and gazed right into his soul, which considering how the man intimidated him earlier might not even be an exaggeration.

“What are you?” The vampire asked with a straight face. Thankfully the guy didn’t start doing that painful interrogation magic again. This time, his words just sounded like they were coming from an ordinary human-- well, ordinary vampire. Could vampires even be ordinary? Hmm.

“A human,” Lucas answered. Again, the question was a bit more pointed than he would’ve liked, but that’s just how interrogations went. He knew he was human, but the system still had that irksome question mark on it, and apparently this vampire seemed to agree with the system. How annoying.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“I see,” Salamanon repeated himself and once again strode around the coffin. If the man was doing this pacing in some sort of grand library full of dark magic grimoires and a desk full of paper work, with a magic quill dancing across all the papers, his gait would certainly look regal. But here, it only looked practiced. It was hard to keep any sense of nobility and pride when the environment didn’t fit, and especially when his clothes looked like they belonged on a beggar.

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“Are you a noble?” The man asked. It looked like he wasn’t going to just go off his presumed knowledge, and asked another sharp question. Lucas already hated dealing with “smart” and “witty” people, and this was just another conversation to add to his list of reasons of why he hated them.

“Yes and no,” Lucas said.

“What do you mean?” He asked.

“I, Lucas, am not a noble. My body, Xandrious Barolt, is a noble,” Lucas said, not trying to obfuscate the truth at all. The man could somehow tell lies from truth, and he couldn’t think of a half-truth to tell him that would sound like a solid answer. Plus, with his crappy luck, the usual trick of using half-truths to deceive lie detectors probably wouldn’t work.

“Your body? Did you possess someone?” Anger once again rose from Salamanon’s voice, and Lucas could feel that strange magic pressing down on him again, hurting him.

“It wasn’t on purpose!” Lucas shouted as his throat burned. That was a new one for this magic. Why make the throat burn during an interrogation, though? Wasn’t he supposed to be able to talk during this?

“How does one steal a body without it being on purpose?” Salamanon roared. Why did this vampire have to be so difficult to work with? He just wanted to curl up in his nice bed back in his apartment and take a long nap. But he couldn’t even do that anymore, not since he was whisked away to this world.

The soul destruction magic, or whatever it was, was in full effect now. Tiny daggers danced across his skin, scratching him wherever they touched. Bile rose up from his guts and into his mouth, but his vomit-reflex wasn’t working, so instead the puke just stayed in his throat. His heart was beating erratically and it felt like he had just run a marathon, his lungs were on fire, and his feet gave out. He collapsed on the ground, and when he looked up, the vampire was standing over him like he had some sort of power-complex. Which he probably did. He was a vampire, after all.

“I’m not even from this world! I’m from Earth! Earth! You crazy bat!” Lucas screamed his secret. Well, not that he even knew if he needed to keep it a secret – there was of course always that small chance that perhaps this planet was just a neat little vacation spot for rich people, and that he’d been accidentally sent here instead of one of them in some sort of freak accident. Yeah, he could see those millionaires spending half a million or so on a once-in-a-life time trip to come to some whacky magical paradise like this. Then they’d get themselves killed by a vampire, like, say, Salamanon here, and then their family would sue whoever invented inter-planetary travel for all they were worth. Yeah, people from Earth definitely came to this planet all the time, and Salamanon would know that, and then he’d let him down and say “sorry I tortured you and everything, here, have a picnic basket and some wine,” and then let him go on his merry way. Because that’s how the world works, obviously.

Ha. Yeah. Thinking about capitalism in the middle of having his body and soul ripped apart. His mind was the best. This could be the last thing he thinks about before he died, and he wasted it on thinking about a stupid escape fantasy.

“Excuse me?” Salamanon asked.

“I’m from Earth!” Lucas screamed again, letting out a little bit of the puke in his mouth.

“I have no idea what that is,” he said as he once again stopped inflicting previously unknown pains on Lucas. He didn’t know why saying something like that would be a good enough reason to stop that incredible pain, but he was thankful for it all the same. At least, as thankful as he could be towards this maniac. When would he be allowed to leave? He wanted to get as far away from this insane vampire ASAP.

“I told you, it’s another planet,” Lucas coughed and gagged. Some of the bile settled back in his stomach, some of it he had to throw up. The scratches on his skin didn’t heal this time, and some of them even cut through his clothes. Dang it, he’d only had these for like, a little less than two days, and they were already ruined. Or maybe it was one day. Time became a blurry, unrecognizable mess when he was constantly trying to save his neck all the time.

“How did arrive here, then?” Salamanon asked with a hint of confusion on his face. It was gone the moment Lucas noticed it, though, replaced by that cold, unfeeling look that people put on whenever they wanted their expression to be unreadable.

“If I tell you, do you promise to stop torturing me?” Lucas asked as he stood up on his shaky legs. They were still wobbly, but he’d be damned if he let this crappy little bloodsucker have any sort of height-dominance.

“Perhaps,” The guy answered. Of course he’d give a lazy answer like that, what was Lucas actually expecting from him?

So, after finding a wall to lean against, he told the insane vampire what he had gone through over the last… time period. Again, he couldn’t be too specific with time right now, because he had no idea how much time had passed. He hadn’t exactly been given a watch, and his phone battery was still dead, so an exact time table couldn’t be provided here. Still, he told him in as much detail as he could, how he had been transported from his world unwillingly and found himself in Xandrious body. Then he told him about the demonic stuff he found, and the rock that gave him access to his crappy system, and the magical wolf, and Frank, and the cave, and then that was it, really. It was a very dry retelling of what he went through, but he couldn’t be bothered to come up with some creative and dramatic retelling of what transpired. He was too tired for all that nonsense, and this vampire probably wouldn’t appreciate the nuances of story-telling anyway.

“I see, I see, I see,” the vampire muttered after listening quietly to his story. Once again, he began that atrocious walk he had. This guy had like, three moods: aggressive interrogator, confused jerk, and obnoxious walker. That was it. That was this guy’s entire personality, and he hated every single facet of it.

“You’ve certainly found yourself in a dire predicament, haven’t you,” The vampire said once he was done walking and muttering like a complete madman.

“Yes,” Lucas answered. Why was this guy taking so long to piss off? Surely a vampire sealed in a cave like this had some magical work to do, or at least, had something better to do with his time than randomly interrogate the first guy who appeared in his cave.

Also why hadn’t his blood been drank yet? Not that he was complaining, he liked keeping his blood in his body, but vampires were filthy bloodsuckers. Did this guy just not have an interest in his blood? Was he even a vampire? Lucas had kind of just assumed that, but perhaps this guy just looked like a vampire. Maybe he was just an eccentric wizard hanging out in a cavern.

“My apologies for the interrogation. I have certain enemies that would no doubt want to see me dead at all costs if they ever found out I was alive. I was afraid that you were one of their agents,” Salamanon explained away his extremely painful interrogation as if he were a fast food manager explaining away a bad batch of fries. Glossing over all the pain he inflicted like it had just been a simple mistake irked Lucas to no end. His fists clenched, his eyebrows twitched, and his throat wobbled up and down, ready to explode with a string of curses and vulgarities, but he refrained. Mostly because he was afraid that this guy would start torturing him again if he so much as looked at him wrong.

“It’s fine,” Lucas said through gritted teeth.

“No, it’s not fine. Both because I made a mistake, and I can see the way your soul moves. I know you’re lying about being fine,” Salamanon said. Whoops. For a second there he forgot that this man had one of the best cheat abilities, which was to detect lies. At least this time he didn’t make him puke up what was left of his guts because he lied.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have much to offer as compensation at the moment. If you give me a few days, I can properly pay you back.”

“Fine, fine,” Lucas said. He hated the guy, but free stuff was neat. Free stuff from a vampire that could look at his soul and seemingly had immense power was neater.

“Where can I find you?”

“I’ll, ah, be in the village that’s just outside the cave,” Lucas said. The village looked like trash from what he saw of it in the distance, but it was certainly better than what he experienced here. He’d rather endure Frank’s stupidity ten times over than go through this vampire’s pain train again.

“Very well. I will see you soon!” The guy turned into a bat and launched himself at high-speeds down the tunnel.

So that was it. That was confirmation he was a vampire. He turned into a bat right in front of him.

This world sucked.