“This way.”
Following the succubus secretary’s directions, I continued down the corridor behind her.
Clink.
Behind me, the priestess followed silently, naked.
Her eyes were still filled with venom as she glared at me as though she wanted to kill me, but that venom would soon be directed toward someone else.
“This is the place.”
At the end of the corridor stood a door covered in a magic circle.
When the succubus secretary placed her hand against it, the magic circle soon began to sparkle, and the door shimmered in various colors.
“A transfer gate?”
“Yes.”
The succubus secretary stepped aside and gestured for me to go ahead. I took a large step forward.
Whirrr.
I felt slightly dizzy, as though something were spinning inside my head, but soon a new space unfolded before me.
“This place is….”
“The ritual altar.”
It was a fairly spacious hall.
Similar to the banquet hall the nobles used for their parties, but with a circular altar laid out in the center.
“This is the Altar of Corruption, painstakingly created by the Vampire Princess. If the transformation into a demon succeeds….”
“We’ll talk about that separately later.”
I understood that the succubus secretary was excited, but if she said something unnecessary and caused the priestess not to fall, that would create another problem.
“Proceed.”
“Yes, Trainer.”
The succubus secretary sent the priestess to the center of the altar.
The priestess slowly climbed onto it barefoot and quietly clasped her hands together.
“O Goddess.”
Despite being a demon’s altar.
“Your servant, Dalia, offers her prayer to you.”
Priestess Dalia clasped her hands and prayed to the goddess.
“Please strengthen me against this trial.”
Click.
When the succubus secretary pulled a lever-like device connected to the altar, the priestess’s altar began to glow red, and the magic circle started to flash crimson.
“So that I may punish those apostates who have forsaken you.”
Priestess Dalia closed her eyes.
Blood that stained the magic circle on the altar red began to coil around Priestess Dalia’s entire body.
“Even should this body spend a moment alongside the evil of this land….”
There was no divine power.
All that came forth was Priestess Dalia’s devout faith.
“Please help me bring divine punishment upon those who betrayed and insulted you amid that evil.”
That faith merely manifested as hatred and fury toward the apostates.
“I—”
Slosh.
Red liquid wrapped around Priestess Dalia.
Like a chrysalis enclosing a silkworm, Priestess Dalia was enveloped in a red cocoon in an instant, and I quietly approached the succubus secretary.
“How long will it take?”
“Not long. It will be over soon.”
The succubus secretary pointed toward her lower abdomen, in the direction where her vulva was inscribed.
“If this hadn’t been filled, it could have taken thirty days, but since it’s already full, all that remains is to wait for the result.”
“Choosing one’s species as a demon… No. That probably doesn’t mean much.”
It occurred to me.
The Vampire Princess wanted people to fall into demonhood, but at the same time, she wanted the number of her own ‘species’ to increase.
“Are you perhaps disappointed? That she’s falling into demonhood as another kind of demon.”
The succubus secretary smiled meaningfully.
“Or are you disappointed that she’s becoming a vampire? Heehee.”
“If the number of succubi increased, we’d have more options.”
“Options…?”
“Yeah. We could turn newly corrupted humans into succubi, send a succubus unit to a village, rape the men, and take them prisoner.”
“Oh….”
The succubus secretary licked her lips as though she found the idea amusing.
“That’s incredible.”
“But it won’t be possible. The Vampire Princess wouldn’t want that.”
“Using those who have become vampires in such a way would be one possible method.”
“Is it possible?”
“The Vampire Princess said that how the corrupted are to be utilized is… Ah, you can hear that directly from her later.”
The succubus secretary pointed ahead.
“Look. At the first miracle you have created.”
“A miracle, huh.”
Crack.
The long, vertical red cocoon resembling a chrysalis split open.
As though a maiden’s cunt were being spread apart from side to side, a woman slowly emerged through the long vertical tear.
“…….”
A naked woman with white hair and red eyes.
Unlike before she entered, her breasts had grown larger, her waist had become narrower, and her hips and buttocks had widened into a figure suited for easy childbirth.
“…….”
Yet in the vertically slit pupils that looked at me, along with indifference, lingered a faint trace of anger and irritation.
“Hoo.”
I stood before her and then—
“Congratulations on your birth——!!”
I welcomed her in a loud voice.
“Who are you?”
“…You called it corruption, but she’s merely become a vampire.”
The vampire woman sneered at me.
“Some congratulations.”
“What’s your name?”
“Dalia.”
The vampire woman had not lost her memories.
“Servant of the goddess and symbol of faith and devotion.”
She had merely become a vampire.
“I have become a demon, but I shall prove my faith at the heart of demonkind.”
“…….”
“What are you waiting for? Take me to those bastards right now.”
Dalia smiled ferociously and thrust out a hand.
“The bastards who dared deny the goddess so they could live. I’ll kill every last one of them.”
“…You really did become a demon, huh?”
“Ha. You were the one who turned me into a demon, you fucking bastard.”
Judging from the way she was addressing me, it seemed she had indeed become a demon.
“Here.”
Dalia lifted her upper lip with one hand, revealing her fangs.
“…Does this make me look more like a demon?”
She ran a hand over her lower abdomen—
Flap.
And soon, the characteristic bat wings of a vampire spread from her back.
“Huh?”
“……You’re definitely a demon.”
The moment she revealed her identity as a demon and a vampire, the symbol inscribed on her lower abdomen began to shine.
That symbol.
The womb tattoo.
A mark and brand signifying that she had been corrupted from a human into a demon by the Trainer.
“Welcome, Dalia.”
And I meant it sincerely.
* * *
A short while later.
“Secretary. Is she really all right?”
“Yes. She has become a perfect demon.”
I had set aside a place with the succubus secretary and asked about Dalia’s condition, but the succubus secretary nodded proudly.
“Becoming a demon—in other words, a vampire—doesn’t necessarily cause one’s disposition to change drastically. It would be troublesome for you, Trainer, if her personality changed merely because she became a vampire after all that training, wouldn’t it?”
“…….”
“Personally, I couldn’t help feeling somewhat uneasy, but the priestess accepted becoming a demon of her own accord. There are still many things to be concerned about, and her abilities remain limited, but the fact that she has taken that first step is highly encouraging.”
“Things to be concerned about?”
“What do you think they are?”
The succubus secretary smiled broadly.
There seemed to be an intention in her gaze to test me.
“…That she won’t act entirely for the sake of demonkind?”
“Yes, exactly.”
The priestess had become a demon.
Through the Altar of Corruption created by the Vampire Princess, she had become a complete vampire.
But.
“She has become a demon, but if you ask, ‘Will she act for the Demon King’s Army?’ the answer is ambiguous.”
“Because the only way to make that woman act is to have her execute humanity’s traitors?”
“That’s right.”
Dalia, now a vampire, would only act with genuine conviction when killing traitors to humanity.
“If you ordered her to kill a pure human, she would resist. Her orders and her will would collide, causing her to run wild and become an uncontrollable monster.”
“…….”
“That is precisely why training is necessary. The Demon King’s Army can forcibly turn humans into demons. But what the Vampire Princess wants is….”
“A vampire with human intelligence, not a beast that tears apart and devours the corpses of its own family?”
“Exactly.”
We called such beasts ghouls and the like.
They were classified as monsters, not thinking individuals with personalities, moving only according to their survival instincts or destructive impulses.
“From a human perspective… rather than working for demonkind, it’s as if she signed a contract. She’ll only do the work specified by the contract, or resist and attempt to escape the moment she is ordered to do something contrary to it.”
“So there are two main conditions.”
“Yes.”
One: slaughter those who betrayed the goddess.
Two: though she had become a demon, bear witness that the goddess’s faith had not abandoned her.
“What happened to her divine power?”
“Well….”
The succubus secretary smiled awkwardly.
“We’ll have to find out now, won’t we?”
As she spoke, she soon created a screen of light in the air with her hand.
How she would be killed.
In a quiet room.
The first person to enter through the opening door was—
The knight who had killed me.
That rotten bastard who had spouted nonsense about my living save-onahole, the knight Eris, being his fiancée.
Before him stood Dalia.
* * *
“W-What is this?”
The knight Jake was flustered.
“Y-You said I could get out if I came here!”
No one had come to unlock the shackles around his hands, nor had anyone returned his equipment.
“You tricked me! You rotten—!”
“Jake.”
A voice calling his name came from the darkness.
“You—you’re Dalia?”
The one who appeared while calling his name was a woman wearing a neat priest’s robe.
“You begged the symbol of the Goddess Church so that you could live.”
“You—why is your hair… Wha, a vampire?!”
“That is irrelevant.”
Priestess Dalia emerged wearing a priest’s robe that looked as though it had been magically washed clean of the semen that should have covered it. She lowered her hood.
“Even if they turned me into a vampire, I remain one who follows the goddess.”
“H-Haha…! What kind of bullshit are you spouting?! You’re a demon now!!”
“You have no right to say that, having forsaken the goddess.”
Click.
“Die, apostate.”
Something mixed with red and white began to sparkle on the mace Priestess Dalia held in one hand.
“……What is that?”
The knight Jake was flustered.
It did not look like mana, and though it seemed to contain the demonic energy characteristic of demons—
“Divine… power?”
The distinctive whiteness of divine power remained, yet it was something difficult to describe.
“Divine power, is it?”
Dalia twisted the corner of her mouth into a smirk.
“The goddess is speaking to me. She commands me to kill the apostate.”
“W-Wait! Hold on!! I—I was only trying to survive—”
Crash——!
“Silence, heretic.”
Red blood splattered across Dalia’s white robe.
“There is none more unforgivable than an apostate who forsakes their faith merely to save their own miserable life.”
“G-Guh…!”
“As the agent of divine punishment, I shall bring down the hammer of judgment.”
Crash!
Dalia raised her mace high.
“In the name of the goddess.”
And she was smiling more brightly than ever.
* * *
“Divine power?”
“It is divine power, but….”
“But?”
“…Should I call it divine power mixed with blood?”
The succubus secretary’s eyes trembled.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before either….”
“…….”
“Tr-Trainer. I think we should….”
The succubus secretary swallowed hard.
“We should report this directly to the Vampire Princess at once.”