Chapter 10: 10 – Resolve

"Fuck, Navi! I still can't fucking get over it. Who the fuck leaves someone in a state like this? What type of monster does those things!?"

This isn't the first, or even the tenth, time I've expressed something along these lines to Navi.

(I'm mad too, Lia. I can't wait until you are strong enough to kill whatever poop heads did this to my girl.)

I sit down next to our new cave partner. Emotionally drained and tired, I think over the last day. 

After I found her under the tent, I tossed the tent and my bag into storage as quickly as I could and tried to assess the woman as much as possible. Asking Navi about her wounds, she told me that no magic can regrow something that is lost and healed. The only exception being by changing into a vampire since it replaces some of the form with pure mana.

That would be simple enough to do, if she wasn't unconscious, since the change needs fucking consent. Moving to her other issues, then.

Being trapped under that tent for who knows how long, she obviously needs food and water. Water being the biggest need with how chapped her lips are, but again, unconscious.

That leaves her more recent wounds. With how infected those are, healing the cuts would just trap the infection. I really need to get it cleaned out first. Asking Navi, light magic even of my level, could take care of infection like this. It would just take a lot of mana, then I could use the water earth arcane compound magic to heal the wounds.

She said that with the time I needed to channel the light magic enough to work, my arm would burn to ash stopping somewhere between my elbow and shoulder. Unlike cauterizing my arm, the light magic would seal it, making me wait however long for it to regrow naturally and not be able to use magic to heal it.

From how high her fever is and what those wounds look like, I would honestly be surprised if she survives the night with infections like that. Resigning myself to do what I need to, I quickly go to the wagon with the other women first.

I don't know who they were. However, nobody deserved this. Well, maybe the people that put the women in this state deserve this. Without time to bury them or do much of anything, I channel a good size fireball and set the wagon on fire. I send a quiet prayer to Order and Chaos, wishing that these women get a better life when reincarnated. 

Now done with the dead, I head back to the woman that's still barely alive. Using magic to clean her body, I put my robe on her and take off my left vambrace and tie it on my belt. 

Gritting my teeth, turning away, I place my whole arm under the robe to block as much light as I can. Steeling myself, I channel fucking cursed light magic and focused on the image of all of her infections or any diseases being cleansed.

Hissing from the excruciating pain of my arm turning to ash over the course of seconds, the continuous pain finally ends and I'm left with what feels like the worst burn I can imagine on the end of my stump. 

Checking her wounds, they look like freshly made cuts. Using my good arm, I channel my healing magic and finish what I can do for her at the moment once the final cut closes and her face returns to normal.

With sunrise quickly approaching, I shoulder the girl and make it as far as I can, dodging goblins on the way until I find some evergreens.

Setting the girl by the base of a tree I quickly use my falchion to cut sapling around us. I then grabbed all the cut saplings and other branches around and made an enclosed tree branch cocoon to protect from the majority of the sun and animals. 

Using earth magic to remove her shackles, I've done all I can for now. I closed my eyes for an hour or two, not wanting to sleep for longer in case the girl wakes up. 

While the sun was up, I felt a bit more sluggish. I then realized that this is my first time to be outside while the sun was up. It seems my Nightstalker skill does give me some pep in my step. Even just the little bit of ambient light inside the cocoon is enough to neutralize the skill. Thankfully, I'm not taking any damage, or this weakness would be so fucking broken it wouldn't be funny.

Once night came, the girl woke up for the first time. I got the girl some water, got out of our cocoon, and went back to goblin dodging, finally arriving at my home.

Navi reminded me that humans can't see in this much darkness. A bit embarrassing needing to be reminded of that. I took her to the first floor of the dungeon where I know there's light that won't hurt me.

Talking with Navi about how best to convey, 'let me turn you into a vampire for some impossible heals,' we couldn't come up with anything besides my crappy version of charades. Watching her reaction, I saw her move slightly when she saw my fangs. Even so, eventually she gave a small nod with tears forming.

I don't know if she understood I was here to help her or thought I was going to kill her. Hopefully the former. Even so, I tried to reassure her with a smile and telling her it was going to be alright. Finally, I bit down.

Navi had already explained to me that the change sucked a large chunk of mana from me to jumpstart repairs of her body. 

With this done, now I'm sitting on the floor, next to a woman who I don't even have a name for, watching her become a vampire.

I didn't even think when turning her about being a normal vampire or a progenitor. I just wanted to turn her into a vampire like me so that all of those fucked up wounds healed. Thinking back, it was an odd feeling. I had no real idea how to turn someone, but when I bit into her, my want to turn her seemed to activate something. Then I just knew that a pending prompt was there. Same when I knew she accepted. 

I wonder if in the future I focus on that same feeling of wanting someone to be a normal vampire, if that would change the prompt? Fuck it. What's done is done.

I didn't even think about what to do once she woke up. What do I even say? 'hi, you're a vampire now. I'm going to kill the Emperor. Wanna team up?' What's my life even become now? Sighing in resignation for what may come, I move on. 

(Navi, how long do you think she will be out for?)

(Best guess? At least a couple days. The mana you gave did a lot for the major issues. Even so, her reserves of any type of energy were terribly low. She'll be in a constant state of mana regen and expenditure until her body is fixed, strengthened, and meat is added back on her bones. When she wakes up she'll be extremely hungry; We should think about that too.)

My dungeon crawl has really been put on pause until this girl at least wakes up then.

(For now, Navi, I'm hungry and need a meal. I'll take her over to the furs in the stair room and I'll run back in here before going to bed myself.)

(Rodger dodger, Lia!)

After a nap, I got to thinking about what to do with the girl. I brought her here and changed her. In consideration of that, until I think otherwise, she's my responsibility. Damn.

If she'll be hungry right when she wakes up, I'll need to get her something. Even with her body healed, if she hasn't walked for who-knows-how-long then it's not like she'll just start being able to move immediately.

Digging through the odds and ends I got from the broken wagon, I took out the two water skins I found and emptied them out. I also used cleaning magic on them for good measure. Taking a decently wide piece of leather I thought I could use as a crude funnel, I went around and filled them both up from a goblin. I put them in my storage, which stereotypically and conveniently stops time.

Now that I have some food ready for her, I got down to trying to fix her hair. I really didn't want to leave her alone longer than needed, and there isn't really much else I can do right now.

I took a small piece of iron from the rock worms and flattened it into two small, thin strips. Taking some of the needle teeth that I got from the big fucking bats, I laid the teeth on one strip, and wedged them between the other. Using some earth magic to fuse the metal together with teeth locked between, I had a nice little tooth comb.

I don't have much experience combing women's hair. Trying it on myself first, I'm pleasantly surprised with the results. For a simple item I cheated by making it with magic, it does a pretty good job.

Part of her transformation fixed and upgraded all parts of the girl, hair included. However, it was still tangled, but at the very least, it wasn't matted. 

Taking my time to gently comb through this young woman's hair, I can only smile sadly at her situation. She could be a complete bitch, nonetheless, nobody deserves this.

With bright and soft blond hair. Gentle facial features, and average body size. She is slightly shorter than me and looks to be a couple years younger.

I took this woman with me without thinking much about it. What else could I do when faced with someone in a state like that? I wouldn't call myself a good person, however, I'm not so heartless as to leave someone that's right in front of me like that if I have the ability to help them and nobody else can. It doesn't mean I'm going to rush out and save everyone I can. I'm not some stupid fucking hero. That being said, what'll we both do from now on?

I have my dungeon here, and once I'm done with the final floor, I'll probably head to the larger dungeon and spend at least a few years there getting stronger. I always saw that as a solo adventure. Using Appraisal on the girl shows that she is level 4. Not a massive distance in level from me, but what'll she do from now on? I know it's not my problem, but like picking up a stray animal, I can't seem to detach myself and just abandon her after I literally gave a fucking arm to heal her.

Would she want to come with me? Is she the type of person I even want to come with me? Does she have family to return to or someplace to go? So many questions. But the one thing I know for sure is that she survived. Whatever Hell she went through, she lived. As long as she's still alive, she can take her time to choose her own path. To work through all of the mental problems I'm near certain she would have. She's immortal now; She has all the time she needs to slowly patch her internal wounds. 

After mulling it over with Navi, I eventually came to a decision. I'll try to ask her who did this to her, then decide how much to tell her about my future plans. I don't really want to bring something like that up to her. In spite of that, I need to in order to know what direction to go. If I decide to tell her everything, or keep some things hidden, I'll just decide on the fly and judge her reactions. In the end, I'll just trust my gut.

The absolute worst case, if she's a holier-than-thou devout worshiper of Sol and tries to kill me, I may have to kill her. However, as a vampire herself now, the church and the Empire would never accept her. She's pretty screwed with her future options.

Eventually, the day came where she started to stir, and then opened her eyes. When I noticed, she was just silently laying there, blood red eyes watching me.

"Hi there. My name is Dalia, but just call me Lia. I know you must have a lot of questions, but first, you must be thirsty. Please drink this."

I try to greet her in as gentle of a voice as I can. Helping her to sit up and holding the blood bag to her lips, she takes a long drink.

"Now then. Like I said, my name is Lia. I want to check if your injuries are healed. Are you able to hear me alright?"

She gives a small nod while staring at my face.

"That's great! Next, could I please see your hands?"

Slowly, the woman gives me her hands. I take her fingers and start moving them gently. 

"Does any of this hurt?"

She shakes her head.

"Could you try making a fist and seeing if there is pain?"

She gingerly balls up her fists a couple times, watching her fingers straighten out.

"Now, I'm going to look at your feet. Could you try flexing your feet up and down against my hands?"

Doing as I asked, she can flex her feet with some strength; Her tendons seems to be alright. 

"Lastly, could you please try moving your mouth or talking? Take all the time you need."

The girl opens her mouth slightly, and I can just barely see her tongue moving around inside her mouth, spending extra time poking at her new fangs. When done, she looks back at me and opens and closes her mouth a couple times, seeming stumped.

I give her a prompt to help. "First, could you please tell me your name?"

After a second, she nods slightly and opens her mouth again, seemingly trying to remember how to speak.

"... Ai … Ailine."

I smile brightly at Ailine. Her voice is soft and slightly higher in pitch than my own.

"It's very nice to meet you, Ailine. Now, let me try to explain a bit of what has happened after I found you. Then you can ask me any questions you want. Is that alright?"

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"Y-yes."

I nod and gather my thoughts. "I found you laying under a tent. After healing your cuts and bruises, I brought you back here to my current home. As I'm sure you've guessed, I'm a vampire. In order to heal your old wounds, you had to become a vampire as well. 

"Oh, there is one more thing. Connected to your [system] now is an artificial intelligence that can talk directly into your mind. She's good at answering questions and making terrible jokes."

(Rude! And here I've been behaving this whole time, Lia! Anywhoozle. Sup' Ailine! Bringing fun times and great company wherever I go, I'm the super awesome and amazing... Magical Girl, Navi!)

I can just place my head in my hands at the damn brain worm's ability to always be ridiculous. Meanwhile, Ailine just looks slightly confused.

"H-hi … Navi," she says, barely over a whisper.

(Aw, hi girl! You're just way too cute!)

I jump in before Navi can tell a bad joke or something. "Moving on, you should be able to talk to Navi and myself in your mind. Try focusing on wanting to talk to us and thinking something in your mind."

(Hello? Lia, Navi. Can you hear me?)

(Yes I can, Ailine,) I send back.

(Loud and clear, girl!) 

"Now with that out of the way, what questions do you have Ailine? I'll do my best to answer. If it's easier to talk in your mind, feel free to do that. Talking out loud again will probably take some practice for you."

As Ailine looks at me and then scans around, I'm expecting questions like 'where are we,' 'what about the others I was with,' or 'why did you make me a vampire.' Maybe some anger, or being frightened. Even when I mentioned Navi and the whole communication thing, she just accepted it and went with it. 

That's why her question took me by surprise. I wasn't expecting her to focus back on me. Looking at my left arm with my hands in my lap.

"Your arm … is back?" she asks.

I take a second to change my train of thought before replying, "Yes. As a vampire I, and now you as well, can heal and regrow our limbs. That was how your body was able to heal, too."

Thinking about it for a minute, she just nods. Damn, she's adaptable.

"What other questions can I answer, Ailine?"

After a moment she just shakes her head. Not seeing that coming, I can just barely get my own thoughts going again.

"N-no more questions? Well then. What now …" I trail off trying to come up with something else. "Right! How about we try standing up and walking a bit? Even though all of your bones and muscles have healed, it would still be a good idea to get used to moving your body again."

Nodding her approval, I grab under her arms and help lift her to her feet. Like a newborn calf, she stumbles for a few moments before finally getting her balance. Holding her by the arms, I walk with her around the room as she gets used to being mobile again. Continuing this for quite a few minutes, she is steady enough to stand and walk on her own.

After that, we sit back down and she drinks some more from the blood bag. Before things moved along too much, I needed to find out how much I should tell her.

"Ailine. I need to ask you this. Who did all of that to you?"

She's quiet for a few seconds and then answers, "Church …"

Well then. No fucking love lost there.

"Ailine. Do you have someplace to return to? Family or friends?"

More silence before she answers with a very simple, "No"

It's still too early to really tell what her true character is; At the very least I don't think she's a bad person. Maybe too adaptable, if anything. She also said 'church' and not 'priest.' I may be buying too much into it, but I think if something happened that she only blamed a single or couple people for, she wouldn't have said 'church.'

You know what? Fuck it. It feels right, so, I'm going for it. Let's just lay it out there, watch her reaction, and see how it goes. If I don't tell her and she decides to stay, finds out later and tries to kill me, I'll only be more attached at that point. I'll just tell her now and rip the fucking Band-Aid off. Come what may, I don't want to waste fucking time and energy trying to dance around something.

"Before I ask you if there's anything you want to do, let me tell you about my long term goals. I was tasked with this by the God of Order and the Goddess of Chaos. Some years down the line, I'm going to kill the Emperor and many of the higher ranking church members."

I paused for a few seconds to gauge her response. She was just as expressionless as I had seen. In the face of that, I continued.

"As vampires, we're both immortal. Sunlight and light magic will still harm us greatly. In order to get stronger to reach that goal, I'm currently training here, in the small dungeon through this door. Once I out level this one, there's a larger one close by that I plan to go to.

"Because I changed you into a vampire, you're no longer able to go outside freely during the day and are no longer able to eat food. Only blood. For you losing these things, I'm sorry.

"I don't have much here. Even so, I want to support you if I can. You're more than welcome to stay here with me if you want. You can hunt monsters yourself if you don't want me around, or I can bring you back blood bags like today for a while. You're also free to just take as much time as you need and to rest up here if you want.

"Now then, let me give you a little bit of space. That way you can think over everything that's happened recently, as well as if you have anything you want to do in the future, or questions to ask. I'm going to sit at the entrance of the hole upstairs. Holler if you need anything, or ask any questions you might have via our mind connection."

Smiling at the beautiful young woman, I take out the second blood bag and hand it to her, taking the now empty one and the funnel. I'm sure she has a lot to think about right now. Some space would be good for her. Plus, this will be about the first time since coming here that I haven't been actively doing something.

After standing up, I head up the stairs. I'll plan on refilling this with a goblin and watching the stars and moon for a while. How long has it been since I just looked up and watched the sky? Even the first night here, I thought the moon was beautiful.

=====

POV - Ailine

Waking up and seeing the amazingly beautiful vampire woman, Lia, I realized slowly that I somehow didn't die or hallucinate being found and carried by her. It's dark, but I can still see everything clearly. This must be from my change to a vampire. That's right. I guess I'm a vampire now.

Huh. I'm honestly not upset about not being human anymore. I never knew vampires still existed outside of stories and being called vile, evil beings. However, anyone who can cry and care for someone like that can't be like how the church made them out to be in the stories. 

That's right. The church. Now that my body doesn't hurt everywhere anymore, I can start to think back again. 

I always tried to be a good girl. Ma and Da would take me and Brother to the city twice a year to visit the church. It was always large and inviting. It even had glass windows. There were so many shiny metal accents everywhere. When the priest would use their light magic, the entire building would light up. I always had to close my eyes from the brightness, though it always seemed impressive.

The priests would remind us each time that the God, Sol, was always watching over us during the day, and fighting the evil and savage other races and heretics. 

They would talk about how Sol blessed the Emperor with the power to push back and destroy the vampires all by himself. That we owe our lives to his descendants, including the current emperor, for keeping us safe from evil.

They taught us prayers, like the one to use to thank the lord's men when they come by the village for their half of the harvest. They reminded us that when any of their holy knights come by, that we need to do everything they say, because they know best how to protect us.

The church always just wanted to keep us safe and listen to the priests, like a child listens to their parents. Then why did they all do all of those horrible things? 

I had never heard about the priests or knights taking people. They told us we were all dirty and that they were helping us. Then why did so many of the others die? Did Sol want them to suffer through that to learn something? What could we have learned? What were Sol and his priests trying to teach us in the church cellar? 

Lia said that she is going to kill the Emperor and the priests. Would that make her evil like in the stories? The vampires fighting against Sol? Lia doesn't seem to be evil. No, my sweet Lia isn't evil. How could she be that gentle with me if she was?

That being said, what is evil?

If Lia is good, does that make the church evil? Was Ma, Da, Brother, and me evil when we went to church?

The image of various men with mean faces and smiles looking down at me comes to mind. Maybe it's the people with those smiles that are evil.

Like I used to kill goblins, would things be better if I killed the people with the smirks and leering eyes? Maybe if enough die, then they won't have anyone to take new women to the cellar. 

If we weren't taken to the cellar, I could still be with Ma. That's right. It's those people that took Ma away, further down the hallway. The church took her away. If I just kill enough of them … Though, I'm too weak to kill them. Even when I fought as hard as I could, all of them were stronger. If I could just become stronger.

Wasn't dear Lia working to get stronger too? Maybe she also wants to kill the men with the leering eyes like me? If I could stay with Lia, could I become stronger? Strong enough to kill them all?

I don't know what else I would want to do. Where else could I even go? If Lia is going to get strong enough to kill those people, then I should stay with her. If I can help her, then a lot of those people will die. So many that nobody will be taken to the cellar. 

I'll become strong enough that Lia never gets taken to a cellar. I'll get strong enough to never lose my Lia. I'll be evil enough that Lia will always stay good. My Lia will praise me for killing so many of those men. And I will keep her by me. 

If the church will see me as evil, then I'm choosing to be the most evil I can be.

I reach out via the mind connection, (Lia?)

(Yes, Ailine?)

After hours of thinking and sorting my thoughts, I tell the vampire Goddess, (I would like to stay with you. I would like to become stronger. Strong enough to kill the priests and Emperor with you. Would that be alright?)

I hesitantly ask. She said she was fine with me staying, but is it really alright? Someone who will become evil like me to stay with someone as perfect as her?

(Of course it is, Ailine. I'm looking forward to it.)

(Thank you. I'm looking forward to it, too.)

Looking forward to killing all of the men with those smiles. I'll kill them all for Lia. My precious Lia.

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