“What?” I asked.

“My grandfather is the king of Vivaldi,” he repeated.

I stared at him in silence for a moment. Without his hood on, I could now see his whole head, and he looked even less like a beast person than I imagined. There were no cat ears poking out of his messy black hair, and there was no fur anywhere on him. The only indications that he wasn’t human were his eyes, and… his ears? His ears had been hidden before, but now that I could see them, I noticed that they were pointed, like I imagined an elf’s would be.

“You said that your grandfather was the king, but you didn’t say that you were a prince. You’re a bastard, right? One of your parents was an elf, and the other was one of Vivaldi’s royal children?”

“Yeah,” he said, reaching up to feel his ears.

“So what’s a bastard princeling doing in the middle of Ravel? Did you run away or something?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“The king wanted me to get married to someone, but I don’t know who she is, and I don’t love her, and Mama always told me to make sure I married the one I was in love with.”

“Your mother… would she be the princess then?” He nodded. “I assume she helped you run away?”

“Yeah. She gave me some money and told me to run away and hide in the human lands.”

I looked around at the luxury suite that he had rented.

“And you call this hiding?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean, ‘what do I mean’? You’re someone who’s obviously part beast person staying at an expensive inn. If anyone’s after you, they’ll find you in no time. They could already be on their way right now.”

Valentino glanced around nervously. “But it’s not that expensive. It’s only 3 a night.”

“3 what? Gold?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s expensive, dumbass. The inn I got cost 4 copper for a night. I could stay there for 75 nights for the same amount you spend on a single night here.”

“That cheap? How can they afford to stay in business for that little?”

“They don’t have all this extra stuff like couches and expensive mattresses. It’s just one room with a bed and a closet.”

“But, then how do you bathe? How do you receive guests? Where do you eat your meals?”

“If you want to bathe, you go to one of the public bathrooms, and if you want to receive guests, you do it somewhere else. Like in the tavern on the first floor where you eat.”

“But-” he started to say.

“And most people who stay in those types of inns don’t care much about bathing. And they don’t have any guests to receive, and they wouldn’t be able to afford to have food delivered directly to them.”

Valentino looked as if his entire worldview shattered.

“They don’t bathe? But why? That’s so unclean!” he exclaimed. Then he looked like he had a realization. “Do you bathe?” he started sniffing the air in my direction.

“Of course I do!” I snapped. “I’m not a barbarian. Anyways, we’re getting off-track. Right now, you are being as conspicuous as you possibly could be. You’re not going to be a runaway for much longer if you keep moving like this.”

“Wh-what should I do then?”

“I don’t know. It’s not my problem. I, however, will be leaving. I don’t want to be around when you get found.”

I stood up to leave.

“Wait!” he said, standing up. “Let me go with you!”

“What? Why? No.” I was bewildered by the request. Why would he want to come with me?

“Because you’re smart! You can help me stay hidden properly and not get caught!”

“I am smart, but why should I help you? I prefer to move alone. You’ll just be a hindrance.”

He flinched at that. I felt a little bad for him but not enough to derail what few plans I had to try to help him escape from the probably extremely high level trackers that would be sent after him. I started walking away.

“I-I’ll pay you!” he said, desperately.

“You couldn’t pay me enough for it to be worth it.” I kept walking.

“Wait! At least tell me the secret about your heartbeat.”

I stopped and turned around. “And why would I do that?”

“Y-you promised!”

“I did not,” I scoffed.

“Yes you did! You said that if I told you my secrets, you would tell me yours!”

“No I didn’t I said I might tell you if you proved you could keep a secret. You have not done that. In fact, you’ve shown the opposite. You have absolutely no common sense, and you revealed your own secret without hesitation. Why would I share anything with you?”

“But-”

“No. I’m not telling you anything. I’m leaving. Goodbye, and good luck.”

I turned back around and walked towards the front door. However, as I was about to put my hand on the panel, I felt an intense wave of uneasiness, similar to the one I had felt when I saw Valentino in the temple of Change, but this time much stronger. Then, I heard a ding, and a blue window appeared in front of me

[Detection] lvl1 -> lvl 4

It took me half a second to remember what [Detection] did, and another half second to realize what a sudden 3-level increase meant. The moment I finished processing those two things, I immediately turned around and activated [Stealth] and [Sprint] and ran towards the window on the opposite side of the room. As I ran past Valentino, he was frozen in surprise, but rather than staring at me, he was staring somewhat in the direction of the door. As I reached the window, he turned to run after me.

The window was locked, but as we were on the inside, it didn’t take more than a few seconds for me to unlock it and get it open. Valentino had caught up to me by then. We were on the top floor, but the building had tiers, so we were able to jump straight out to the roof just outside the window and make a series of short jumps down to the ground level.

Once I hit the ground, I started [Sprint]ing away with the bastard prince hot on my heels. I ran as quickly as I could down the empty, nighttime streets, makings as many random turns as I could, trying to lose both Valentino, and whoever had been approaching the room. Most likely it was whoever the king of Vivaldi had sent after Valentino, but it was also possible that there was a third party involved who was seeking a much less peaceful end for him.

Unfortunately, Valentino seemed to have no trouble keeping up with me, and stayed a few steps behind me the whole way.

“Stop following me!” I said.

“I’m not! We’re just going in the same direction!” he called back.

“Bullshit!”

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I needed to find a way to lose him in the next few minutes before I no longer had enough [MP] to keep up [Sprint], but I couldn’t think of anything. He clearly had higher [Agility] than I did, and [Sprint] was the only rapid movement speed ability I had. And even if I could somehow get out of his sight, he would still be able to hear my footsteps.

I considered summoning my knife and cutting my arm so that I could use my blood to try to make him slip, or blind him, but I rejected that idea. It might work, but I didn’t think I had enough practice or control of [Hemokinesis] to aim behind me while running accurately, and if the people who were after us were also beast people and were tracking us by scent, leaving behind a blood trail wouldn’t be a good idea. Plus, it would reveal another of my skills, and I wanted to keep him as ignorant of my abilities as possible.

After further contemplation, I realized that there was no way to shake him. I would just have to deal with his presence for a little while until I found a chance to get rid of him. I would probably have to wait until he was asleep, and slip out then. No matter how hard he tried to keep up with me, he would eventually have to sleep, and I would not.

I turned down a few more streets and back alleys before finally releasing [Sprint], and I slowed down to a jog.

“You’re going to lead them right to me. Go somewhere else,” I said.

“No.”

“Why not, idiot? Are you mad at me for not telling you my secret? If I don’t tell you, you’re gonna take us both down?”

“Yes.”

“Fucking hell.”

“So, where are we going?” he asked.

“How the hell am I supposed to know? We’ve got your granddad’s special trackers after us. They’re probably really high-level. How are we supposed to hide from them?”

“Those weren’t my grandfather’s trackers. They were human.”

“How could you tell?”

“Humans and beast people breathe differently. And my grandfather doesn’t employ any humans.”

“How do you know he didn’t just hire some mercenaries or bounty hunters to help speed the job up?”

That question seemed to stump him.

“I don’t know,” he said after a moment of silence. “But if they’re not beast people, they shouldn’t be able to track me.”

“How come? Wouldn’t a tracking skill work the same for a beast person and a human?”

“Yeah, but the beast trackers can also track by scent. Humans can’t. And I’m immune to tracking skills.”

“You’re immune to tracking skills?”

“Yeah, it came with the new class I just got. So if they’re still tracking us, they’re tracking you, which means that I’m just putting myself in danger.”

“Then why are we running?” I asked.

“I thought they were after you.”

“Fuck,” I said, stopping.

I was fairly certain that there was no way they could be tracking us anymore. There was no reason for those people to be after me, and definitely no way for them to track me if, like Valentino said, they were humans and unable to track my scent. However it was still possible that they could have used some kind of skill to lock onto me anyways.

“How do tracking skills work? Can they track someone they’ve never seen?” I asked.

“Usually only if they have something of yours,” he replied.

“Then we’re safe. For now.”

As if to confirm this, I heard a ding, and a window appeared.

You have successfully identified and escaped from assassins

[Sole Survivor] lvl 1 -> lvl 3

I pulled up my HUD.

[HP]:

460/460

[MP]:

125/1400

[Life Energy]:

86/100

[Pawn of the Gods] enemies remaining

6/6

“Dammit,” I said, seeing how low my [MP] was.

[Imitate Life] had reached level 6, so it only consumed 80 [MP]/hour now, but that still halved my regeneration, and it would be almost 20 hours until I was back to full. I would need a place to lay low, or I would need to spend some time focusing on tasks that didn’t require any [MP]. It would be difficult to get anything done with Valentino around though. Not only did I not want him to learn too much about me, but he was being actively hunted, so it would be hard to go anywhere public with him too.

No doubt, whoever had been chasing him would be prowling the city, searching for him, and with his eyes and ears, it wouldn’t be too hard to identify him if they saw him. As long as he was with me, it wouldn’t be safe in the city. However, I couldn’t really leave the city either. If I did, I wouldn’t have a reliable way back into the city, other than bribing the guards, and I didn’t have the capital to keep doing that. Especially if I wanted to purchase some more weapons to hide in [Inventory]. I would need some form of identification, and the easiest type to acquire would probably be one from the Adventurer’s Guild.

It would be risky to go there with people searching for Valentino, but perhaps less than one might think. After all, after we had fled the way we did, if the pursuers lost our trail, they would probably be waiting around the gates to try to catch us when we tried to escape. As long as we didn’t go there, we probably wouldn’t be caught.

It was still nighttime, but the eastern side of the sky was starting to turn light gray, indicating that the sunrise was on its way. If we started moving right then, by the time we made it to the guild, it would probably be late enough that they would be open.

I looked at my surroundings to try to get a general idea of our location. We were in a narrow alleyway with tall buildings on both sides, so I couldn’t really see much. I walked past Valentino, tracing our steps back to a street not much wider than the alley. However, from the street, I could see the wall at the edge of the city on our right. Judging by which side of the sky was light, that part of the wall was the southeastern part, not too far from the gate where we had arrived. If we headed in that direction, we would eventually end up back on that street and in a more familiar area. And since that street was one of the main ones, there was a good chance that a place as important as the Adventurer’s guild would be either on it, or on one of the major streets intersecting it.

I started walking, taking whatever turns I thought would get us closer to the place where we had entered. A couple times, we encountered dead ends, but by the time the sunrise began, I had managed to get us back to the road leading to the gate

All around us, I could hear the sounds of the city coming to life. There were birds chirping on the roofs, and I heard doors opening and closing as the early risers went about their business. A few wagons and carts began to appear on the streets, heading towards the main gate. I was preparing to walk up to one of the shopkeepers setting up their stores to ask for directions when Valentino, who had been strangely silent until then, spoke up.

“You’re not a living creature are you?”

“What?” my head snapped back to look at him. “What makes you think that?”

“Your heartbeat. It was constant for the whole time we were running. And you never breathed heavily. You didn’t even look tired at the end. You just looked annoyed. Are you a puppet or something?”

“I am not a puppet.”

“Then what are you? Are you some kind of [Undead]?”

I activated my mental skills.

“No, I’m not.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well that’s too bad.”

With that, I turned away from him and began marching towards a flower shop whose door had just been propped open for business. Valentino thankfully didn’t reply.

The flower shop owner I asked happily gave us directions when I asked. Apparently, the guild branch was located on the road leading in from the western gate, the one I had seen so many people entering as we approached Bizet. The Dungeon was in the forest on that side of the city, so the guild wanted to be near it. They couldn’t afford a shop right on the gate, which was fortunate for us, as that could have brought us dangerously close to Valentino’s pursuers, but they were close enough to be a convenient distance for adventurers returning from dungeon plunges.

Valentino continued to follow me in silence as I walked down streets that were growing steadily busier as the day went on. His last question had definitely bothered me, but I was trying not to show it. Clearly, he wasn’t as dumb as he first appeared. If I stayed around him for too long, he would eventually figure out more of my secret. Even if I managed to ditch him, he already suspected that I was [Undead], and that was a loose end that I couldn’t afford to let hang.

I needed a solution. If I told him the whole truth, there was a good chance that he would report me. I hadn’t exactly made the best impression on him so far, so he had no reason to keep my secret. And my secret was much bigger than his, so I couldn’t trust him not to tell mine as long as I didn’t tell his. I would have to tell him a partial truth in order to satisfy him.

I was the only Vampire alive, and from what Jacques had said, until I arrived in Astraeus, it had been many years since any existed. Therefore, I was the only person in the world who could give an account of what they were like. If I told him the part about me being a vampire, and left out the part with Pride, it might satisfy him. It also might terrify him and make him report me even faster.

“Why are you still following me?” I asked him. “Aren’t you afraid I’m gonna eat you, since I’m an [Undead].”

“If you were going to eat me, you would have done it when we were alone in my room.”

That’s good. He may lack common sense, but he can at least be rational, I thought.

“Maybe I’m just trying to stay under the radar until the paladins are gone. They’re probably only just now leaving, which means it’s now much less risky for me to try anything.”

That gave him pause. He was deep in thought for a few seconds before he responded.

“No, I still don’t think you’re going to eat me.”

“Why not?”

“It just doesn’t seem like something you would do.”

“Maybe I’m just a very good actor.”

He hesitated a moment. “No, I don’t think so.”

I shrugged. His answers had satisfied me somewhat. The middle of the street wasn’t the time or place to tell him anything, but at that point, I made up my mind to tell him part of the truth. My cover was already blown with him, and if I kept withholding any kind of trust, then our relationship would only worsen, and he wouldn’t hesitate to sell me out. I kept those thoughts to myself though, and we walked the rest of the way to the guild in silence.

As the guard had said, the guild branch was impossible to miss, mostly because of the sign. The building wasn’t much different from the buildings nearby, but there was a massive wooden sign covering almost half the front side of the building with “Adventurer’s Guild” in huge, bold letters. I stopped and stared for a moment, awed by the garishness, before walking inside, with the runaway prince right behind me.