Chapter 71: Chapter 66 – Not Towards Aggressive Negotiations

I was worried that we wouldn't be able to suggest anything that the person would prefer over what those gods had offered, but at the same time, I wouldn't know without trying. Maybe if I showing her the sheer difference in combat ability would be enough?

Then again, it also begged the question whether if the promise of death would really be enough of a deterrent, or at least quench her desire enough to accept an alternative I could give her. Things would be even worse if the gods that sent her after me were willing to keep reincarnating her over and over until she finished her job.

Well, bringing her onto our side would fix that, if it was possible.

On the other hand, if they didn't, then it was possible that they'd at least send other assassins if this one failed.

(...that would make things endless.)

When I really thought about it, I didn't see how to resolve this overall situation. Everything was a temporary fix, with varying degrees of breathing room provided by them. The only way to permanently solve things was to convince the ones sending people like that armoured woman to stop.

But my opponent was a god, or at least the closest equivalent to one I knew of. It was difficult to think that any means to face off against such beings existed to mere mortals like myself.

As weird as it was to call a vampire mortal, I could die in the end. Even if in pretty much all stories they were unaging, death was still hanging somewhere at the end of it. I could only hope that it would be pushed reasonably far back.

The three of us discussed things for a while longer, but in the end we were only able to come to the conclusion that we wouldn't know what would work without trying.

Unable to break through the deadlock, once we got cleaned up, we tried returning to the fountain room to confront the woman. Even if things didn't go well, I doubted that she would be able to stop us from running away and trying later.

But contrary to my expectation, she wasn't there. No, rather, it was obvious she wouldn't have stayed at the fountain room. I just hadn't put much thought into what to expect.

We tried looking around the vicinity on the floor, but were unable to find any trace of the woman. I doubted she would've died already, as if my attack one her in, her body would've still been around in the fountain room. And if she was in such a bad condition that she would've died to the weak monsters on this floor, then unless if she was some massive moron, she wouldn't have even tried stepping foot outside of the fountain room.

Against my expectation, we had completely lost track of the armoured woman.

I glanced at her still open status screen, but there had been no change on it. Rather, most likely, it was a snapshot from when Alicia originally used [Scan], and thus didn't reflect the changes made since. At the very least, she should've taken some damage when I hit her, no matter how well her armour protected her, she did fly pretty far.

Not being able to go forward regarding that woman, we instead chose to enjoy a quick meal. For Alicia and I, the blood of a nearby obsidian bear. It was a little bit earthy and weak tasting, but otherwise delicious. For Claret was a mana treat, and like usual she happily ate holding it in both hands like a chipmunk.

Basking in the feeling of a filled belly, even if only a little bit, I floated slowly through the air in a position reminiscent to sleeping under a tree during a picnic. Below me, Claret was still eating and I enjoyed the smile devoid of any worries she wore from the corner of my eye.

Meanwhile I scrolled through that woman's stats half-heartedly.

It really was a pretty odd looking status page. No remarkable abilities, rank one skills one after another. It made me even wonder if she even tried using anything aside from [Sword Technique]. The way her attributes leaned towards [Strength], I was inclined to think that she probably just walked up to every monster and slashed at them with her sword to lazily level up.

(Huh?)

There were two skills I had never heard of before on that woman's skill list. While it wasn't much of a surprise that there were people with skills I had never heard of, or at least couldn't remember, these particular skills stood out to me.

[Track Artifact] and [Sense Vampire].

The former was described as a skill that allowed the user to track the location of a prespecified object. The latter allowed the user to identify any vampires within sight.

While I wasn't sure what [Track Artifact] was set to find, the two felt like they were tailor made to find me. The first would allow the user to find my location, and the latter to pinpoint any vampires, even from inside a crowd.

While a quick glance through the code didn't tell me anything new about [Track Artifact], the [Sense Vampire] seemed to specifically pinpoint any vampires in sight. They were oddly pinpoint when it came to finding me.

There was one more odd thing about this. [Track Artifact] had an additional mention that it was something called a [limited skill]. Most likely it was connected to the fact that there weren't any acquisition methods in the code, much like the custom skills I had made.

While I had presumed that my Administrator Rights was the reason why I could edit skills, this suggested that there were more ways to do so.

It was a very disconcerting thought, and I hoped that it wasn't true, but I couldn't find [Track Artifact] amongst the master skill list when I had a look to make sure. [Sense Vampire] was in the list, along with a massive ton of other related skills, but the acquisition methods for all of them were pretty severe, including having intimate knowledge on the chosen group.

It was difficult to imagine that woman having spent the effort to learn that much about vampires to gain the skill legitimately. Together with [Track Artifact], the evidence that she had simply received all those skills at rank one when she was reincarnated was piling up to the point that it was almost impossible to deny.

Especially when she had the skill [Local Language] like I did. Looking at Claret, she didn't have that skill, and I couldn't remember Alicia having it either. While I hadn't used [Scan] on that many people, that woman was the only person I had ever seen with the skill aside from myself.

But if I had to pick, [Track Artifact] was quite a troubling skill to see. While I didn't know exactly what it was that she used to track me, considering how she stated that some sort of detection she was using was horribly unreliable and only worked for a bit here and there, it was possible to extrapolate a few possibilities.

Or rather, there really was only one if it wasn't a problem with the skill itself, but the target it was tracking.

If it was capable of tracking me myself, then there was no reason why it would've suddenly stopped working when she got close to me. It wasn't like this was some sort of game where the long range sensor couldn't track something when the target got within a certain distance.

Being unreliable was one thing, it was another if it didn't work most of the time for no apparent reason. I doubted whoever sent that assassin would've half-assed the detection skill they gave her to the point that it rarely worked at all.

Most likely, it was something which was difficult to meet its detection requirement, and only by unforeseen circumstances. If it detected me directly, then while it did make sense to a certain degree if it simply didn't work while I was inside a dungeon, that didn't make much sense once the fact that she found out which floor I was on so easily. That could've been hand waved if she figured out I was inside the dungeon and had been checking all the fountain rooms she had access to, but the chances of me being at any one of them rather than exploring the floor itself was slim.

It would've been far better to have just waited outside for me to show up, than risk not finding me inside and loosing my location not knowing when I came out.

Wile I could've just sat in this dungeon for months on end screwing over that plan, until I learned that she even existed, I had no reason to, and she shouldn't have had reason to think otherwise either. There was no reason to stay inside the dungeon for more than a few days at a time unless if you were hiding inside of it.

(...my own home being an exception.)

Coming that far in my reasoning, it was obvious what it was that she was tracking if being inside or out of a special space was the reason why she had trouble tracking it, and that was the printout that I took, recording my reincarnation.

It was something that didn't come from this world, and hence would've been entirely unique. While there was a risk that I would've destroyed or discarded it, it might've been possible to track its remains, and if she found out where I was born in this world, it would've been a great place to start to track me.

If I presumed that it couldn't be tracked while inside of my magic bag, then that would solve all the questions I had regarding how she found me.

If my theory was right, then as long as I kept the sheet inside of my bag, she couldn't use the skill to track me, and if that was the case, then I could simply fly far away, and she would never be able to find me. In theory.

But this was my life I was gambling with, and there was no guarantee that even if I did that, the ones that sent her wouldn't send more assassins, and maybe with better ways to find me, like by searching for all vampire traces.

That was something I wanted to avoid altogether. If they started slaughtering vampires trying to find me, then my cowardice would've been responsible for those deaths, even if it was indirectly. I might've been able to happily ignore such things if I wasn't aware, but the moment I thought of that possibility, if something like it did end up happening my guilt would crush me.

I didn't have any choice but to deal with this in a way that didn't cause collateral damage.

The question was, if I did allow myself to be tracked, would that woman actually show up?

I could only hope that she didn't already realize that I was too strong to beat. I needed to make sure that she no longer would try to kill me first, even if she were to die and reincarnate once more.

When I looked up from thinking, Claret was looking at me from the side. It seemed like she had long since finished eating and was standing by for me.

"Are you done eating Claret?"

"Yes Master. It was very delicious as always."

"There there."

I pat the dark spirit on the head as she happily hugged my waist. Despite how she was like just an hour before, the change in mood was pretty surprising. It was as if she had the memory of a goldfish.

"Regarding that woman from earlier..."

Before I could say any more, Claret's arms tightened around me and she buried her face into my chest.

"...so, have either of you come up with any ideas as to what we can do to convince her to quit her mission?"

<I haven't.>

Instead of answering verbally, the dark spirit simply shook her head before burying her face in between my mounds even further.

"Haaa. I haven't either. I've only got short term solutions, and that'll only make things more difficult in the long run."

"We need to track her down and kill her then!"

Suddenly, Claret's face popped out from below. There was clear hate in those eyes of hers once again. It seemed rather than a goldfish memory, she simply went from one emotional extreme to the next. Not like I ever really thought her memory was bad. As biased as they were, the stories she told was proof alone that she had a pretty good memory.

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The way she was often at the extreme ends of her emotions made me worry about what was wrong with her hormones, until I remembered that blood probably didn't flow through her veins in the first place.

Considering the wounds she took before when I was fighting that hydra, there was a surprisingly little amount of bleeding compared to the wounds she had sustained. Even when she hugged me like this, I couldn't feel any sort of heartbeat from her chest.

Most likely, her internal organs didn't work in the first place for the most part, or at least didn't do the same things as for a vampire or even a more normal person. She probably didn't even need to breath unlike me.

It really made me wonder if spirits like herself could actually be considered alive, but that line of thought most likely was nothing but futility. She simply defied normal definitions of life and her body sustained that life in ways different from other forms of life. In the first place, spirits spontaneously came to life from gatherings of mana, and I wasn't any different on that front. From the Earth definition of life, neither of us were alive. But the same could have been said for a cold virus.

"There's not going to be any killing until we've had a chance to properly talk first, alright?"

"Yes Master."

I lightly hit the dark spirit before I went back to stroke her silky silver hair after she gave me the answer I wanted.

"Haaa. Well, since we can't find her, there's not a whole lot we can do, but wait for her to come to us."

Even though she hid her face again, I could feel that Claret had clenched her teeth to my words.

(This girl really hates the idea of me being in danger huh?)

I could only hope that it wouldn't cause trouble when we returned home and I started working on my solo dungeon run again.

(Would I even be able to fight solo ever again?)

It was a troubling thought, but there wasn't much I could do about it until the time came.

"Well then, so here's the conclusion I've been thinking. Looking though her stats, I noticed that woman has two unusual skills."

<Do you mean [Track Artifact] and [Sense Vampire]?>

"Right. So you noticed them too?"

<I did, but while [Sense Vampire] is pretty much as it sounds, I couldn't really figure out the [Track Artifact] one.>

"It's actually simpler than it looks. It just had a built in target that it lets the user track. To be exact, it's probably tracking this."

I reached over and took out the printout sheet I had show the two before.

"Master! If you think she can track that, we have to destroy it!"

Even before I could respond, Claret reached up and tried to grab the sheet, but I moved my hand before she could and stopped her.

"Don't worry. I think she can't track it while it's inside my magic bag."

"Are, are you sure about that? We can't take any chances regarding something so important! Maybe we should be safe and destroy it!"

"I'm pretty certain. First of all, my reason why it's probably this is that it's the only thing that came with me when I reincarnated. I had no other possessions, and the ones after me had no way to differentiate me from an other vampire in this world. That means that this is the only likely target they used to track me."

"I understand that, but if that's the case, then..."

"Then nothing. Do you remember what that woman said? She said that her tracking ability didn't work well and usually didn't tell her anything. Yet somehow she found us in the middle of a dungeon on the rare case that the tracker did work. Remember?"

The dark spirit tilted her head. It seemed like she didn't.

<I see. We were organizing your things right before she showed up, and that included that sheet as well. So maybe she can't track it while it's inside of your bag?>

"That's my guess."

"In that case, we should at least put it back inside your bag Master!"

Once again the dark spirit at my waist reached to grab the sheet from my hand.

"Wait a sec Claret! In this situation, it's better that she does track us!"

"How is that a good thing?!"

"Right now, we have no way to find her. She could be anywhere inside of the dungeon, or even out in the city by now. If we block her only way to track us, that'll go both ways and it'll be almost impossible for us to meet. On the other hand, if we give her a way to track us, then there's at least the possibility of meeting other than through sheer luck."

"But if we do that, then she'll have everything she needs to ambush us! If something were to happen to you..."

"Nothing like what you're thinking will happen to me. Not only are we way stronger than she is, but we also have superb detection skills. On top of that, if I maintain [Spirit Form], there's a really good chance that she won't be able to even see me. It seems like her [Spirit Perception] is only rank one. It's not enough to see a spirit easily. As proof, it seemed like she didn't even notice you were around when we mat."

"But..."

"Aside from initiative, we're the ones holding all the cards when it comes to having a match. It's pretty much impossible for her to surprise us, and it's definitely impossible for her to win against us in a head-on fight. Even in the one in a million chance, it's still incredibly unlikely for her to do much real harm when ambushing us. Alright?"

"...If you say so Master."

It was good that she tried to find flaws in my arguments, but at the same time, Claret wasn't that good at it and her own arguments were entirely fuelled by emotion. Alicia was much better at such tactics despite the age difference.

Or rather, she was strangely competent when it came to thinking. That had been true ever since we had met.

"You fine with it as well Alicia?"

<I am. The longer we let her go free, the greater the danger she becomes. But right now, I can't think of a way to find her without going everywhere through the dungeon and city looking for her.>

"And that's obviously impossible."

<I think so too.>

"There we have it. Our answer."

Taking out some spare leather, I cut it up and shaped it into a small pouch in which I put the sheet inside of, then tied to my belt. This way it was out of the way, while minimizing the chances of losing it.

I definitely didn't want to lose it. Not only could it give away some extremely private information, it was also embarrassing if they figured out what it meant.

My preparations were done as much as they were possible. Even then, there really wasn't much we could do but wait for her to show up, if she even chose to that was.

But just sitting around waiting was boring, and also would've made it too obvious that we were waiting for her to show up, we chose to instead continue conquering the dungeon. With [Spirit Form] up and [Materialize] disengaged, we quickly made progress through the floor avoiding the monsters as we went.

This twenty second floor was still filled with monsters too weak to be considered good XP for us, so instead of wasting time with them, we just looked for the boss room instead.

It took a while, but the boss was a large black bear with silver and red spines covering its back, with large claws extending from all four limbs.

In the time it took Alicia to tell me that it was called a razor bear, I had drilled an ice spear through its skull, killing it. The boss dropped its back spines, which I gladly took, though I wondered as to what they would've been used for.

The treasure chest had a pair of leather boots inside of it.

This I gleefully accepted and immediately put them on after ripping off my sorry excuse for footwear.

Quietly enjoying the feeling of my new article of clothing as they reformed to match my feet, my thoughts went to how despite the bad things that we had discovered, there were still good things we had gotten in this dungeon.

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