A sudden creak of wood woke Wisteria up. Her room was still dark, the sun obviously still beneath the horizon, and for a moment she blearily wondered what the hell Azalei was doing, getting up this early. Then her mind caught up and reminded her that her best friend was still missing.

That reminder immediately snapped her out of her drowsiness. She rolled out her bed, a hand snatching up the crude stone spear by her bedside as she bounced to her feet, eyes darting around to find what had disturbed her sleep.

Room, empty. Window, clear. Door, still closed. Where’s the intruder? Above?

Then she stopped, sighed, and lowered her spear. What intruder? She was in the middle of a forest shrouded in poisonous mist. It wasn’t impossible to traverse, no, but it would be a waste of effort to do so, especially when there was nothing of value nearby.

It had only been four and a half months since she woke up, only four and a half months of solitude, and she was already jumping at random noises in the night. Was the silence getting to her already?

Honestly, that noise was probably some animal being stupid enough to push her door open-

… That was the door closing. And the clank of metal on metal.

Wisteria raised her spear again, her other hand groping around for her homemade candlestick. Beasts didn’t close doors, nor did any beast Wisteria know of wear armor.

But then, who the hell was in her house, then?

… Well, whoever it was had better have a damn good reason to wake her up before dawn.

Finally managing to find the candle, she pinched the wick between two fingers and, with a tiny bit of mana, ignited a single spark. It was barely a spell, a beginner’s stripped down until even someone with her pitiful amount of mana could easily cast, but it got the job done.

The flame caught, and now armed with a source of light in one hand and her admittedly rather crude spear in the other, Wisteria pushed open her bedroom door and stepped into her living room to find-

A sword swinging towards her.

She paused, shock leading to hesitation. Her long rusted instincts roared to life too late for her to make a decision before the point of the blade came to a stop several inches away from her throat.

Wisteria froze, warily examining the sword. It was a simple blade, well forged and heavily used, and with no trace of enchantments she could sense. In other words, nothing that could be potentially dangerous to her, though it would be rather annoying if it cut her throat open. So instead, she looked down the blade to study its wielder.

The stranger was young, early twenties at most, if Wisteria had to guess. She had pale, shoulder length hair that almost seemed to glow in the firelight, with bright purple eyes that almost looked like they should glow in the dark. Her skin was a healthy brown, though Wisteria couldn’t tell if that she had naturally brown skin or if it was a result of spending countless hours under the sun.

She also looked to be in pretty bad shape. Her armor was almost falling off her, dented and scratched and missing her entire chestplate. Her sword, likewise, was chipped and worn, half its edge blunted from constant use. Her arms were trembling from just holding the weapon up.

Tali instantly labeled her to be of little threat, though to be caught off guard by someone in such terrible condition was just embarrassing.

Still, the silent staring had gone on long enough, and the stranger still hadn’t lowered her sword, so Wisteria decided to take things into her own hands.

“First off, rude.” Wisteria grumbled, giving the weapon pointed at her a disgruntled look. “Second, you had better tell me what the hell you’re doing in my house before I throw you out of it. Maybe sans a few limbs.”

… Maybe she was a little irritated that she was woken up this early. Just a little.

Still, if the stranger just stabbed her, then Wisteria could justify killing her in return and go back to bed. The slashed throat would be annoying, but it was nothing she couldn’t fix if she took the mana and materials needed to repair it from the stranger’s corpse.

But of course it couldn’t be that easy. The stranger hurriedly lowered her sword, then seemed to just fold into herself as she sagged against the wall, sliding back down into a seated position. She didn’t even sheathe her sword, instead letting it clatter onto the ground beside her. “I-I’m sorry, miss… I… I just… sorry…”

Wisteria sighed, all tension immediately drained away by the almost pitiful appearance of the exhausted girl. She crouched down, resting the shaft of her spear on her neck as she held the candle up to the stranger’s face. “Oi, don’t go falling asleep now, you still haven’t answered my question. What the hell are you doing here?”

The girl blinked, staring at Wisteria blankly before she shook her head roughly and sat up a little straighter. “Ah… I'm Taliene. My, my Expedition, we were attacked. By demons.”

Wisteria leveled her a flat look. “Demons.”

“They, I don’t know if they are. They looked like how I imagined demons would look like. I-” Taliene suddenly sat up, eyes wide. “Oh, oh no. They were chasing me. They might be coming here.” She scrambled to her feet, dragging her sword up with her. “We need to hide. And extinguish the candle! They might see!”

Wisteria raised an eyebrow, but she still carefully set her candlestick down by the wall and pinched the wick, extinguishing the flames. “You certainly seemed willing to just sleep on my floor a minute ago.”

“That was before I knew there was anyone else in here!” Taliene started looking around frantically. “Is there a place we can hide? A cellar? A closet?”

“There isn’t a cellar, and I’m not going to hide in my closet or under my bed.” Wisteria rolled her eyes. “Go do that if you want. If those… demons… have a problem with me, they can say it to my face.”

“You, you don’t understand, they’d too many of them, and they’re all too strong for me to fight!”

“I can take care of myself.”

“By the Saints, why won’t anyone listen to me?!” Taliene shouted, and Wisteria was startled to see tears of frustration well up in her eyes. “I’m trying to help, but it’s always one thing or another! Taliene, you’re too inexperienced, or, Taliene, we know what we’re doing! I’m not that stupid, dammit, I know what I’m doing too!”

“Hey, everyone! I heard something from over there!”

Taliene’s mouth snapped shut, a hand slapping across her lips as though that would take back the sounds she just made. Wisteria would have laughed, but Taliene’s wide eyed panic stopped her. The girl looked like she was about to start hyperventilating.

So instead Wisteria bit down on her lip in an attempt to stop her snickering, though if the glare Taliene directed her way was any indication, she wasn’t very successful.

“Well, if they were that close, they weren’t going to miss a house in the middle of the forest, anyway.” Wisteria reasoned, averting her eyes from the frankly-not-very-scary glare. More shouts were starting to come from the general direction of her front door, and they were getting closer. “Besides, I ain’t running from the one place I consider my sanctuary.”

Wisteria placed a hand upon the worn stone wall, a smile making its way onto her face as she fondly recalled how much trouble it had been to build the damn thing. Though that might be because she and Azalei had been playing around a lot.

She still swore that Azalei had dropped that rock on her head on purpose.

“But… but you’ll die.” Tali’s shoulders drooped, her voice resigned.

Wisteria shrugged. “Won’t know if you'll succeed if you don’t try. Besides, you’ll find that I’m very, very hard to kill.” Bending down, Wisteria relit her candle with another spark of mana before picking it up. “Also, you might want to step away from the door.”

Taliene blinked. “Huh?”

Wisteria tossed the entire candlestick lightly onto the pile of pre-prepared firewood she had been meaning to save for later use, then took several steps away from her front door. The candle landed on top of dry wood coated with animal fat, lighting up the beginnings a fire just as her front door was kicked open.

Maybe she heard something herself, or maybe her instincts were well trained, but Taliene managed to dive away with a yelp of shock before the door could smack her in the face. She hit the floor with a roll before staggering to her feet, but Wisteria wasn’t looking at her anymore.

“The door’s fucking unlocked, jackass!” Wisteria snapped, what little amusement she gained from interacting with Taliene vanishing as anger took its place. “If you cracked it, I’m going to rip the mana I need to replace it out of your blood!”

People started streaming in, and as they stepped into the growing firelight Wisteria was surprised to note that they really did look like demons, with their red skin, horns, and pitch black eyeballs. All they were missing were the wings, really, and some depictions of demons didn’t have wings anyway.

Still, interesting as they looked, these demons were really testing her patience, and she hadn’t even talked to any of them yet.

They had kicked her unlocked door open, stormed into her home like they owned it, and now, after surrounding Taliene and herself in a rough semicircle, were openly leering and talking to each other, loudly. The way most of them had their weapons drawn wasn’t improving Wisteria’s impression of them, either.

Normally, Wisteria would give anyone a chance no matter what they looked like and in spite of her general misanthropy, but these demons were proving her dislike of people right faster than most.

They haven’t crossed over to “just kill them and be done with it” territory yet, though, so Wisteria resisted the urge to stab the closest one in the eye with her spear.

Taking a deep breath to cool her anger, Wisteria was about to demand some answers from the rude demons when one of them stepped closer.

This demon, Wisteria noted, was a tad shorter than the rest of her group, though she was still more than a head taller than Wisteria was. She was dressed in leathers, though Wisteria doubted that it was to protect her from anything since she wore little more than a skirt, a bra, and boots. She twirled a double headed ax lazily in one hand as she sauntered up to them.

“Well, lookie here!” The demon said, looking between Taliene and Wisteria with a wide, rather unpleasant grin on her face. “Seems like the great Hero led us right to another mark!” She then pointedly looked Wisteria up and down. “A little thin, but I can tell! You’ll be such a cute addition to my collection once I fatten you up a little!”

And Wisteria’s opinion of the demons hit rock bottom, especially when the other demons started laughing and chattering amongst themselves. Granted, her opinion of people generally starts pretty low anyway, but this was still the fastest anyone had ever soured it.

“I’m going to ignore that.” Wisteria kept her voice level, the only indication of her worsening mood being her sharpening glare. “And I’m going to ask you the same thing I asked Taliene here. What. The hell. Are you doing. In my house.”

“Well, dearie,” Wisteria twitched at the saccharine tone, once more tamping down her urge to stab something. “We were just looking for the little coward who ran away from all of her friends, and we’re here to take her back to them! They’ll be so happy to see her.”

Wisteria glanced over at Taliene as the young woman gasped softly, and she could practically hear Taliene’s teeth grinding together. Honestly, Wisteria thought Taliene seemed like a pretty nice person from their conversation earlier, and she probably had a reason for leaving her friends behind, but Wisteria had never thought highly about people that abandoned their friends and she wasn’t about to start now.

Still… “Not my problem.” Wisteria stated bluntly. “You want to beat her up or kidnap her or whatever, you do it outside, and away from my house. Now, if that’s all you rude little shits are here for, get out before I throw you out.”

Taliene’s head whipped over to look at Wisteria, fear coloring her expression, but Wisteria remained unmoved. She had washed her hands of humanity long ago. They can do whatever they wanted to each other, elsewhere.

“Aww, that’s no way to talk to guests!” The demon woman set her ax on the ground, leaning on it to bring her face closer to Wisteria’s own, and in the process letting the edge of the weapon scratch her damn floor. “Especially when you’re talking to your new master, pet.”

Wisteria raised an eyebrow. “What.”

“Oh, you sweet child.” The demon cooed, one hand coming up to pat Wisteria on her cheek. She let her, morbidly curious enough about what the demon wanted to say that she could hold back on removing the offending appendage. “We may be quite savage, but we still have our needs. Like farmers, miners, entertainment, the sort.”

“So, slaves.” Wisteria summarized.

“And pets.” By the way the demon licked her lips as she said that, Wisteria could guess what she meant. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure it feels really good.”

Then the demon leaned back, dodging a clumsy slash from Taliene. The young woman brandished her blade, glaring at the demon before her.

“I’m not… letting that happen.” Taliene seemed to have found a second wind, back straight and hands steady. “She’s got nothing to do with the Expedition! Leave her alone!”

“Oh that thing?” The demon rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Heroes are so stupid. No one cares about that.

“What?!”

“Silly human.” The demon snorted. “We just needed people to make food for us, and look! You humans keep sending free people to us! Of course we’ll take it.”

Taliene trembled for a moment, but then she seemed to steel herself. “That doesn’t matter. You’re not getting past me. I won’t let you!”

“Oh don’t worry,” The demon’s grin took on a sadistic edge as she hefted her ax. “I’m looking forward to it, and where you’re going? You don’t need your limbs, so I can get a little rough.”

Taliene braced herself, readying for combat. The demon did the same, muscles tensing. The other demons stayed back, a hushed silence falling over the dozen or so of them as they watched the coming fight.

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Then Wisteria got tired of being ignored and rapped the head of her spear against the side of Taliene’s head.

“Ow!” Taliene flinched, stumbling aside as a hand rose to cradle her temple.

“I said, do whatever you want, elsewhere.” Wisteria snarled, ignoring how the demons cracked up at her actions, laughing noisily among themselves. “And you, whoever you are. Did you just threaten to kidnap me and turn me into your sex slave?”

“My name is Syl, little human.” The demon brought her laughter under control, smiling wickedly instead. “You’d do well to remember the name of your new master. But I suppose I’ll be having you call me Mistress Syl soon enough.”

“I see.” Wisteria nodded, cracking a humorless smile of her own as she walked up to the demon. She casually rested her spear on her shoulder as the demon looked down at her curiously, seemingly surprised that Wisteria had approached her so boldly and unguardedly. “Well then, Syl, was it? Here’s a little tip. If you wanted to kidnap me, you shouldn’t have been so generous.”

“Hm?” Syl leaned down a little, head cocking to the side. “Whatever do you-”

And then Wisteria jabbed two fingers straight into the demon’s right eye, and the eyeball behaved just like any other eyeball when struck with that much force; it popped like a grape with a disgusting squelch. A pulse of mana, and a thin blade of ice pierced through the demon’s skull, stabbing past Syl’s eye socket and ripping through her brain before she could even begin to react.

The surrounding demons brandished their weapons, backing away from Wisteria in shock as Syl’s corpse dropped onto its knees, ax falling from slackened fingers while the two fingers still in its eye socket stopped it from collapsing entirely. Wisteria heard Taliene’s gasp, and her mutter of “?”, but her attention was more focused on the blood she could feel coating her hand.

“Hmm… Quite thin.” Wisteria commented idly. “Would I even get anything from this? And it’s been a while since I’ve done this, too… Oh well. .”

The corpse in her grip started convulsing. The blood coating her hand dried and cracked with alarming speed, flaking away into reddish-black ash. That same ash trickled from Syl’s empty eye socket, and within half a minute the corpse’s red skin paled as its blood was ripped apart.

And as the blood turned to dust, the mana contained within was released, forcibly taken by Wisteria as her spell ran its course. The familiar surge of mana rushed into her veins, mana that was rapidly used by her automatically healing body before she managed to get a grip on it and preserve what she could for the coming fight.

Finally, there was no blood left to , and she clicked her tongue irritably. “As I thought, didn’t get much out of that. I’m out of practice.” She let go of the corpse, unceremoniously dropping the pale and dried out husk. “Now, then…” Wisteria panned her gaze across her stunned audience, scarlet eyes glinting dangerously in the firelight. “Who’s next?”

The silence held for a moment, before it was broken by raucous laughter.

“Hah! Bitch got owned!”

“Overconfident dumbass!”

“Damn, she got herself killed before I could shank her myself!”

Wisteria frowned as the demons around her simply laughed at the death of one of their own. This… This was new. And Wisteria didn’t like it. She had seen many reactions to a comrade’s death, but laughter and insults were a new low.

“Hey, kid.” Another demon stepped up, this one male with a sword held loosely in one hand. “Thanks for offing her, Syl was a right bitch to work with. But, well, you still killed her, so now I’m gonna have to chop your limbs off.” He grinned widely, clearly enjoying himself. “But don’t worry, I won’t kill you. Syl was many things, most of them bad, but she does have an eye for the cute ones.”

Wisteria just sighed as she idly twirled her spear. “So I’m guessing none of you are willing to just piss off?”

Her answer came in the form of a slash.

She dodged it, leaning away from the attack just enough for it to whistle past her face. “Thought so.” She muttered. The next attack was parried, the sword’s edge cutting slightly into the wood of her weapon’s shaft but ultimately sliding off at the exact angle Wisteria had been aiming for, and with a simple flourish the spear’s point sank into the demon’s throat.

She ripped her weapon out, letting the blood spray all over her as the demon raised a hand to his ruined throat, eyes wide in surprise. Wisteria snorted, then stuck her fingers into the gaping gash in the demon’s neck. Grabbing what she could — was that his gullet or his windpipe? Eh, whatever — she yanked him closer and rammed her spear through his eye and into his brain.

The moment he expired, his blood turned to ash as Wisteria ripped away what mana he had for herself.

“Dumbass.” Wisteria left her spear in the dead demon’s eye and instead bent over to scoop up his sword. Even if she wasn’t as skilled with a sword as with a spear, steel beat wood and stone any day. New weapon in hand, Wisteria straightened and glared at the remaining demons, all of their taunts and laughs having fallen silent. “Well? Step up or fuck off, I’ve got a nap to get back to.”

The demons finally seemed to take her seriously, as the next moment two demons charged at her together. They were just as unskilled as the other two demons she had killed, relying entirely on speed and brute strength in order to try and catch her.

And it would work. Wisteria knew better than anyone that she was still weak. She hadn’t recovered enough to keep up with them, and the telltale glow of coating both demons made them faster, stronger, and more durable than she could hope to match without magic of her own. Her unfortunate situation meant that that wasn’t a possibility, and who knew how magic had developed since her long slumber. They could have some special spell she had never heard about, for all she knew.

But then again, she had her own cards up her sleeve.

It was simple, really. She couldn’t keep up a constant like most people could, but she had known that for decades. And who needed to be active for the entire fight, anyway? No, all she needed was a single moment: the moment right before impact.

She swayed to one side, dodging a swing of an ax. Spinning in place allowed her to dodge the mace aiming for her side, and she ducked under the return swing of the ax, and there she saw her opening. Her sword flicked out, and a single blue line ran down her arm a split second before she rapped the ax wielding demon on the fingers with the flat of the blade.

The unexpectedly heavy strike broke the demon’s fingers, causing him to drop his weapon with a yelp, and Wisteria ran him through before he could recover. Doing so left her open to her other opponent, however, and he didn’t fail to capitalize.

Wisteria felt her knees crash into the floor as the head of the mace slammed into her shoulder. Her sword remained stuck in the ax demon’s corpse, caught between ribs and wrenched from her hand. She felt her collarbone shatter, the rib beneath it giving way as well. Her left arm spasmed briefly, the nerves in her shoulder crushed and torn under fragments of bone, and her mulched shoulder screamed in agony.

Then her right hand closed around the handle of an ax, and with a flash of blue light she whipped it up in an uppercut to split the jaw of the mace wielding demon in two. Yanking the ax back, Wisteria swung again, silencing the screaming demon by splitting his skull open.

A sword stabbed into her back, a burning line of pain sliding between her ribs and slicing through her left lung. Without missing a beat Wisteria spun around, her ribs trapping the blade in her body and subsequently ripping the weapon out of the demon’s grip. While the demon stared at her incredulously, Wisteria didn’t waste any time slamming her ax deep into his neck, the ax head unfortunately getting stuck in his spine.

Her next opponent charged with a spear, the demon’s face contorted into a snarl. Wisteria met her charge with one of her own, slipping past the almost laughably obvious thrust and punching her opponent in the face with her still sporadically twitching left hand, another burst of slipping down her arm the moment before impact.

With a deafening crack, she felt the demon’s cheekbone collapse under her fist. At the same time, her own index and middle fingers broke, fracturing into pieces as it met the demon’s face.

“I just regrew those two fingers!” Wisteria complained, but that didn’t stop her from punching the demon again, this time in the temple. Another crack, and the demon’s skull fractured, sending her spinning onto the floor in a daze.

That blow also broke every remaining bone in Wisteria’s hand, turning everything from her wrist down into a ball of hurt as sharp edges and fragments dug into her muscles from the inside. “Dammit,” She grumbled as she picked up the demon’s spear with her still intact right hand. “This is gonna be another pain in my ass!” Wisteria then stomped on the demon’s back, forcing her to wheeze as her ribs were compressed, before she stabbed her through the heart with her own spear.

“And that’s five.” Wisteria ripped her new spear free, glaring at the four demons that surrounded her. The blood that coated her body crumbled away into dust as she wordlessly casted another . “Next.”

One of them pounced on her, forgoing his weapon and instead trying to grapple her. Wisteria dodged, kicking him in the back as he passed her and sending the demon crashing into one of his allies. Another demon swung a massive battleax, aiming to bisect her. Wisteria just stepped back and flicked her spear, using its longer reach to gouge the demon’s eye out.

As he stumbled back, cursing as he clutched at his face, the next demon caught her in the stomach with a spear, piercing straight through her abdomen and out the other side. Wisteria simply pushed forward, ignoring how the spear’s shaft slid through her intestines and stabbing the offending demon in the throat.

Then the now one-eyed battleax wielder was back, swinging for her neck with a roar of rage… only to have his other eye cut out, followed by a stab into his mouth when he tried to shout. Wisteria still had the longer reach, and his wild flailing was somehow even worse than any of the other demons, making it simple for Wisteria to dispatch him.

Just as Wisteria yanked her spear back, though, thick arms wrapped around her neck and right arm as she was lifted off her feet. A demon had managed to put her in a chokehold and was now squeezing her neck, cutting off her airway. Another demon circled to her front, raising his sword to smash her skull open.

Unfortunately for them, Wisteria didn’t need to breathe.

She raised two fingers of her ruined off hand and pointed them at the demon in front of her. “,” she said, and the demon immediately threw himself to the side.

He wasn’t the target, though. The didn’t even form on her fingers, especially since they were so broken she couldn’t point straight in the first place.

Blood sprayed onto the top of her head as a spike of ice shot out of the back of her neck, stabbing into the throat of the demon holding her off the ground. The demon’s hold slackened, dropping her, and Wisteria immediately spun around and kicked him right in the groin.

As the grappler folded like a house of cards, cupping his family jewels even as he bled out from his neck, Wisteria turned back around to her last opponent and smiled. “That’s eight.”

Her opponent looked pale in the firelight, his arms shaking as he leveled his sword at Wisteria. It was expected, really; Wisteria had a smashed shoulder, a broken hand, a sword stuck in her ribs and a spear lodged in her stomach, and she still hadn’t so much as flinched nor bled. Both weapons that had pierced her remained clean, her subconscious control over her blood not allowing even a single drop to leak out of her wounds, and another use of evaporated every other trace of blood splattered on her body.

“What the hell are you, you damned monster?!” The demon before her snarled.

“You barged into my home, threatened to enslave me, and bled all over my floor, which I just cleaned, by the way, and I’m the monster?” Wisteria shook her head as she took a step forward threateningly. “You’re one entitled little turd, aren’t you?”

The demon lunged with a warcry, sword raised. Wisteria parried it with her spear once, twice, and then she whipped the shaft of her weapon into his ribs, accompanied by the blue flash of . With a resounding crack, the demon fell, clutching at his side.

Wisteria didn’t give him a chance to recover, stabbing him in the throat and slashing it open. With the ninth demon dying on the ground, Wisteria looked back at the last three enemies, all three of whom had engaged Taliene.

She was rather surprised when she found the young woman still alive and holding her own. Sword in hand, Taliene had put her back against a wall, parrying and countering attacks with all she had. She had even managed to wound one of them, having scored a rather nasty looking cut on one demon’s shoulder.

Still, she was obviously getting overwhelmed. Chest heaving, face pale, and sword unsteady, Wisteria doubted that Taliene could have lasted another minute. For a moment, Wisteria contemplated just waiting that minute out. Once the human girl fell, she could mop up the last demons, then toss out all the bodies to be disposed of together. She wouldn’t have to deal with the girl at all.

Then she sighed and trudged towards the fight. Papa and Uncle El would be disappointed in her if she didn’t intervene, especially since this was happening in her own house.

She struck without warning, stabbing one of the demons in the back of her knee. When she fell with a scream, Wisteria smashed her ruined left hand into the demon’s temple with a resounding crack, crushing what was left of her hand to mush but also immediately knocking the demon out.

One of them whirled around and, seeing his team mate on the ground, lunged at Wisteria. She didn’t even try to dodge his extremely telegraphed attack, letting him sink his ax into her useless left shoulder and nearly sever her arm entirely.

Instead, she took the chance to strike back, her spear piercing through his stomach. Then she twisted her weapon to the side and ripped it out, letting the demon’s guts spill out over the floor. The demon let out a choked cry as he dropped his ax, futilely scrabbling to stop his intestines from slipping between his fingers.

“Oh shut up already.” Wisteria snapped, slashing the demon across the throat and silencing him permanently. “That’s eleven, and-” Turning back, Wisteria was pleasantly surprised when she found Taliene victorious, having managed to run her own opponent through despite suffering a nasty cut across her ribs. “And that’s twelve.” Wisteria nodded. “Finally.”

And then Taliene pointed her sword at Wisteria, her eyes wide with… panic?

Wisteria raised an eyebrow. Wasn’t Taliene all so gung ho about protecting her a moment ago? “What? You wanna fight too?”

“Y-you’re a Vampire.” Taliene managed to get out, even as her entire body was shaking with exhaustion.

Wisteria blinked. “I’m a what?”

“I won’t let you take me!” Taliene bared her teeth, but she didn’t attack, instead trying to sidle along the wall towards the exit.

“Back up a second, would you? What the hell’s a vampire in the first place?”

That stopped Taliene in her tracks as she stared at Wisteria disbelievingly. “Y-you don’t know what a vampire is?!”

Wisteria just shrugged. “I’d been sleeping for a while.”

“I- You- But- No! You’re lying! You’re…” Taliene swayed on her feet, blinking rapidly. She stumbled, then her knees buckled, and her sword fell from her suddenly unresponsive fingers. “Huh? I… what…” she slumped over, then jerked as she tried to keep herself awake. It was a losing battle, though. Taliene had already been on the verge of passing out when she stumbled across Wisteria’s home, and after pushing herself hard enough to find her second wind, there was nothing left.

Wisteria could only sigh in exasperation as the young woman crumpled to the ground, completely dead to the world. “Damn. Now even I would feel bad if I just threw her out.” Wisteria clicked her tongue in frustration. “How annoying.”

Dropping her appropriated spear, Wisteria examined her left shoulder. The ax that had struck it was still there, stuck under her collarbone, though thankfully it didn’t slant enough to cut into her lungs.

Getting a good grip on the weapon, Wisteria ripped it out, paying no mind to the searing pain as she tossed the weapon aside. She repeated that with the sword in her ribs and the spear in her stomach, her gel-like blood sliding off the weapons in order to stay in her veins, then she did her best to examine her left arm.

“Yep, it’s gone.” Wisteria sighed as she poked the limply dangling arm with a finger, her attempts to so much as twitch a finger resulting in nothing. “Dammit, this is going to take forever to heal… and this-” she stuck two fingers into the hole in her chest, feeling a faint rush of air as she took a deep breath, “-this is gonna take a while, too. At least my guts are mostly fine… my small intestine’s fucked, but that isn’t too important. Hmm…”

Wisteria contemplated the corpses around her, as well as the blood that covered her entire floor, and she sighed. She would have to clean everything up again… Her bursts of and the two she used in the fight had also taken a rather large chunk of the mana she had saved up, too.

At least there were a lot of bodies around her now. She could possibly get a good portion of her mana back by their blood, and corpses are a good source of raw material. It’d been a while, but she should still be able to stitch herself up…

First, though, she would have to put Taliene into a bed, like a proper host.

Bending over, she hauled Taliene’s arm over her shoulders and proceeded to half-carry, half-drag the unconscious woman over to Azalei’s bedroom. A single use of cleaned up the blood staining Taliene’s body, though Wisteria barely received enough mana to justify its use. Dumping her on the bed, Wisteria frowned when she realized that Taliene was still bleeding from two exceptionally large wounds, one on her shoulder and the other on the side of her rbs.

Those would require stitches, and bandages as well. With a sigh, Wisteria trudged back to her own bedroom to retrieve her sewing kit and a lumpy mess of cloth that was her first attempt at sewing a shirt. She had been meaning to burn it anyway, so she quickly ripped it into thick strips to be used as makeshift bandages.

She fished out another candle from her wardrobe as well, sticking it on top of another poorly made candlestick and lighting the wick with her impromptu campfire before heading back to Taliene. Placing the candlestick nearby, Wisteria used it to sterilize her needle and got to work, squinting in the faint light and carefully stitching Taliene’s wounds shut. Shoulder first, then ribs, then bandages around the wounds, and done.

With her one semi-welcome guest taken care of, Wisteria got to work. Repeated use of turned blood to ash wherever she stepped, and bodies quickly dried up when she stuck her one working hand into their wounds. Black ash scattered everywhere, but at least sweeping that away was more convenient than scrubbing everything down again.

Wisteria actually found a demon still alive, too. It was one of the demons that had been fighting Taliene, the one Wisteria had stabbed in the knee and punched in the head. Shrugging, she stomped on the demon’s throat, a burst of allowing her to crush it in a single blow, and with that taken care of Wisteria continued cleaning up. The mana she ended up gathering from all the demons wasn’t much, not enough to cover the amount she had used in the fight, but at least it was something.

Soon, she had a pile of dried corpses sitting in a pile by the firepit she had dug outside. Unfortunately, all the firewood for said pit was still merrily burning in her living room, so she would have to gather more later. For now, she examined the bodies, finally picking out the corpse of Syl, the demon that had confronted her at the beginning.

It wasn’t the right size, of course. Syl was taller than her by more than a head, but that demon was still the smallest corpse available. Oh well, Wisteria wasn’t very picky, anyway. Her sewing kit sat on the ground nearby, ready to be used, and a quick search of the corpses had managed to turn up a rather sharp and heavy dagger that was perfect for her current needs.

Just as she was sitting down, Wisteria noticed that she could see better now. She looked to the east, seeing the dull orange glow of the sun piercing through the permanent red fog around her home. Looks like morning has finally come.

For a moment, Wisteria didn’t do anything, just staring up at the blotch of orange that was all she could see of the sun. Another morning, another day to cross off her self-imposed deadline… Though with what had happened she was considering forgetting that and just setting off early.

She could think about that later, though. For now, Wisteria carefully lined up the edge of her dagger against the gaping wound in her shoulder and started to saw.