Chapter 24: Ch. 23 – …and ed

Geofrey, Kay, Allen, Marca and Gabella hand their spoils from the trip to Chloe then head off to... do whatever it is they do after exhausting themselves. Ah crap, I forgot again to check their stats. I hope this won't become a running joke with the punchline that one of them is the final boss...

After they are gone Chloe comes over to me, "you coming?"
"Do you have a moment first? I've... something important to discuss. And I'd rather not do that in public."
"Alright, we can talk in my office."

Elly questions me, (what exactly are you planning?)
(I got my hands on a lot of food that is useless to me but the people here desperately need. If I play my cards right I might get a lot out of this.)
(You don't really have many cards to play, so to say. How often and far you can go in the dungeon is pretty much limited by your stack of blood packs.)
(I know what I'm doing, hopefully.)

We head over to the building with the vault where we left the spoils from the dungeon visit last time. Before entering it we take a turn right, "my office is a bit further in."

We go to a small room a bit further behind in the building. Once we're inside she locks the door and puts the key on the table. Despite her saying it is her office it looks more or less the same as my room; a bed, a desk, two chairs, some drawers, not much else.

After we sit down she gets down to business, "so what did you want to talk about?"
I prepare myself, "so you ordered me to preserve my MP while in the dungeon. I may have ignored that. My curiosity got the better of me so after all of you left I went back and killed a few monsters", I hand her a quarter of the food drops.
"A few? That's a lot of food! About as much as the rest of the group combined. How, how long did you spend in there?"
"I've about twice as much left if you want it. Took a couple of days though, why?"
Color leaves her face, "don't you understand what that means? You have to remember that you are a vampire now. You may feel fine right now but eventually the hunger WILL catch up to you. You'll fall into a frenzy! We-we can't afford to lose you... as a mage you are very much needed... *sigh* Even if all of our groups pull their dungeon loot together there are honestly not enough blood vials to properly feed one vampire per week, let alone two or three - and then you add even more strain with an extended dungeon visit."
"Hey, I'm not just a tool!"
"Sorry, force of habit. I... no, I've no excuse for that. But please keep in mind that I've many people I'm responsible for. I can't afford to hold back... if I screw up a lot of people will die to the monster flood."
"Doesn't mean you can't be a bit less blunt about it."

She needs a moment to collect herself, "please, tell me honestly, how are you holding up?"

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"Mostly fine, though I'm getting a bit hungry."
"Was afraid so. Please don't keep that up, I don't want a starving vampire breathing on my neck."
"I'm guessing that that's why you've tasked Jack with 'observing' me?"
"What do you mean?"
"I'm not dumb. He conveniently leaves whenever no one looks so that I can enter the slums 'unobserved'. Do I have to spell out what happens next?", I may have pulled a Hagrid there...
"No, I... I can guess. It is honestly pretty much expected", she is visibly pained from having to admit that, "if it was up to me we wouldn't sacrifice any of the slum dwellers. But I tell myself that their sacrifice is somehow for the greater good. Please don't take that from me."
"So it is pretty much an open secret."
"P-pretty much", she looks like she is about to cry.

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