Late dawn.
It was the hour when the morning cock crowed, and farmers who had no trouble waking in the morning slowly rose from their beds one by one to begin the day’s work.
For vampires—demons commonly known as bloodsuckers—it was, conversely, the hour when they brought their day’s work to an end.
Sunlight.
It was said that demons each had their own weaknesses, and as was widely known, sunlight was the vampire’s weakness.
Under the sun’s rays, a vampire’s body would burn away and turn to ash.
The higher-ranking the vampire, the longer they could endure by using mana, but venturing beneath the sunlight still weakened them considerably.
Demons were weakened even within the Goddess’s domain, and vampires were weakened during the day as well.
In dealing with humanity, they were weakened in two ways. In exchange, however, vampires became considerably stronger at night.
And night was simply a state in which there was no sunlight.
In other words.
Within a dungeon untouched by sunlight, a vampire could freely exercise one hundred percent of her true strength.
Inside the dungeon.
“.......”
The Vampire Princess stretched out a hand.
She removed her white glove, placed her hand against the blood-red magic-stone cylinder, and released her magical power into its interior.
Whirrrrr.
The cylinder began to slowly rotate clockwise.
No.
It only appeared that way.
Beyond the walls of the opaque red magic stone, it was merely the pale-pink liquid filling the interior that had begun to swirl clockwise.
“Uuuuuuuugh!!”
The elf woman trapped inside the aphrodisiac tank, Silvelit, screamed.
Her body had continued reacting even while she remained still, but now that the aphrodisiac had begun swirling around her, the flow of the liquid made her skin grow increasingly sensitive.
She shuddered violently.
Silvelit threw her head back.
Drool streamed from her gagged mouth, running down her neck.
It dripped steadily.
There was a slight gap between her neck and the cover created from mana to keep the aphrodisiac from overflowing. Saliva fell through that gap and mixed into the swirling liquid below.
Wet, sloshing sounds continued one after another.
All the Vampire Princess had done was use magic to restrain Silvelit’s body, throw her into the aphrodisiac tank, and lock her inside so she could not escape.
“Hah.”
“Uuuuuuuugh!!”
“As expected, she really is a trainer.”
Silvelit, an S-rank adventurer and high elf, suffered more than she would have under any torture.
“If I had it my way, I would make you suffer by pulling out every one of your fingernails and toenails. But seeing how much more humiliated and tormented you are like this pleases me quite a bit.”
“I—Iiiik...!”
Silvelit tried to say something, but—
“I never gave you permission to speak.”
“!!!”
The Vampire Princess extended her hand and moved it as if grasping Silvelit’s body. In an instant, Silvelit’s waist, which had been upright inside the tank, bent backward like a bow.
She shuddered violently.
Silvelit lowered her head.
Her chin caught lightly on the cover, and tears continued to flow from her half-lidded eyes.
“Your body must be sensitive because of the aphrodisiac. It is a special aphrodisiac newly developed by our legion.”
One might have thought she would suffer from dehydration at this rate, but—
“Yet I cannot afford to let my guard down. Even while enduring this, are you still using magic to protect your body?”
The Vampire Princess lowered her head.
“So the place you are using the last of your mana to protect is there. Even if you cannot stop the aphrodisiac from reaching your clitoris, are you trying to keep it from entering your womb? How amusing.”
“U, uh...!”
“No matter how hard you try to speak, I will leave you as you are. Training you right now is nothing more than taking out my anger over what happened in the past and what happened this time.”
The Vampire Princess shaped her fingers into the number seven.
“The Seventh Defense Corps is made up of the descendants of the orcs you killed three years ago. Unlike the orcs belonging to the other legions, the Blood Orcs were monsters unique to our legion. You killed every last one of them.”
“...Heh heh heh.”
Even with the gag in her mouth, Silvelit let out a laugh.
Though she had been captured, perhaps her pride had revived at the thought of having exterminated an entire orc species. She threw her head back and laughed with her eyes.
She could not speak, but she could convey all sorts of things with her eyes.
“How long do you think you can maintain that restraint? Heh heh. Even while protecting your womb, you intend to speak using mana?”
The Vampire Princess placed a hand before Silvelit’s face and waved it lightly up and down.
“Unfortunately, though, I can sense mana. The trainer who will be training you, however, will not notice at all even if you infuse your gaze with mana to convey your thoughts.”
“......!!”
“I can understand what those eyes mean even without mana. Confusion and surprise. Hmm, excellent. Thanks to the trainer, I get to see this side of you as well. Orc Slayer.”
The Vampire Princess grinned and extended a hand.
“Cute.”
Tap, tap.
“Uuuuuumph!!”
When the Vampire Princess lightly tapped Silvelit’s cheek, Silvelit began thrashing back and forth, resisting—or rather, throwing a fit.
Perhaps her pride had been scratched by being touched as one would touch a young child or a pet.
Or perhaps her self-esteem was still brimming because, despite being captured, something inside her had yet to collapse.
“Look forward to tomorrow at dawn—”
Knock-knock—knock—knock-knock.
Someone knocked on the door to the training room.
The Vampire Princess narrowed her eyes toward the door, then soon took a step back from Silvelit.
“Come in, Akamond.”
[Excuse me.]
When the door opened, Chief Aide Akamond entered the room in a formal suit.
“Looks like the officers’ meeting ended sooner than expected.”
“Yes. It was less a meeting than... a one-sided announcement.”
Chief Aide Akamond closed the door and locked it immediately.
“Shall I report it directly, or would you prefer to review the proceedings through a magic stone?”
“Summarize it briefly and report. Give me the magic stone later.”
“Understood.”
The chief aide, who had been about to take a round magic stone from his breast pocket, tossed it into the air instead.
Whirrrrr.
A red magic circle appeared and glimmered where the magic stone fell. Rather than hitting the ground, the stone slipped neatly into the magic circle and vanished.
“That...”
“Ah. I will deal with it immediately.”
The Vampire Princess reached toward Silvelit.
“Wouldn’t want you to drown in the aphrodisiac by mistake.”
Beginning at Silvelit’s neck, a red sphere began shining like a helmet around her head. The Vampire Princess then pressed Silvelit’s head—which looked like an overturned fishbowl—straight down with her hand.
Fwoosh—!
Her touch was so rough that for a moment it seemed the aphrodisiac might overflow.
Silvelit was trapped inside the tank once more, but fortunately the liquid did not force its way between her neck and flow into the fishbowl-like helmet.
“...I am curious how you managed to capture the Orc Slayer like that, but she does appear to be thoroughly subdued.”
Chief Aide Akamond paused for a brief breath.
“I bring a report. The Demon King has demanded that the entire Fourth Legion mobilize. It seems he intends to wage an all-out battle at ‘Liemengrad,’ where we are facing the Human Alliance.”
“Suddenly?”
An all-out battle.
At those words, the Vampire Princess’s face twisted into a deep frown.
“Yes. Central Command appears to have judged the information reliable. The saintess.”
“The rumor that the saintess was raped by the Holy Sword’s hero?”
“Yes. Whether it was truly rape, or whether it was consensual and she is merely calling it rape, is known only to the people involved, but—”
“If the world believes it was rape, then the hero becomes a rapist. How ridiculous.”
The Vampire Princess shook her head.
“So how many troops did they demand we send?”
“...They said either the legion commander herself should lead two units, or we should send two-thirds of the legion’s forces.”
“Is he insane?”
A vicious curse burst from the Vampire Princess’s mouth.
“Who spouted that kind of nonsense? The lich? The chimera? Or that goat’s head?”
“The Demon King, my lady.”
“So there is more than one madman after all.”
Despite being told it had been the Demon King, the Vampire Princess did not retract the insult she had hurled.
“Is he deliberately trying to weaken our legion? What is he thinking?”
“From the pure perspective of the Demon King’s army, it may simply mean that a large force is necessary for the battle against the hero, and—”
“If that bastard Demon King sincerely intended to deal with the hero, he would have summoned every soldier without giving us a choice.”
The Holy Sword’s hero was an exceedingly unreasonable existence.
That being wielded the Holy Sword itself, a weapon imbued with the Goddess’s power.
“Damn it. He wants us to send two-thirds of the legion?”
“You do not intend to go yourself, do you?”
“Of course not. Do I look insane enough to go there? I only became an officer of the Demon King’s army and commander of the Vampire Legion because of our vampires’... Damn it.”
The Vampire Princess scratched her head irritably.
“I was planning to have a drink and go to bed, happy that we captured that woman. I tried to drink in celebration, and now I am thoroughly irritated instead.”
“.......”
“Two-thirds of the legion’s forces... Wait.”
As if she had just thought of something, the Vampire Princess turned toward Chief Aide Akamond.
“Akamond. Tell me honestly. Did you tell your subordinates to give the trainer a hard time?”
“As if I would do such a thing.”
Chief Aide Akamond vehemently waved his hands in denial.
“The trainer may become the demon who succeeds me.”
“He is human, though?”
“This.”
Chief Aide Akamond slightly lifted one of his fangs.
“If he inherits the holy blood remaining within me, he may become an existence capable of living even longer than a human. His conduct thus far supports that possibility as well. How could I tell them to give him a hard time, my lady?”
The chief aide’s speech began to quicken, and his face took on an expression of genuine grievance and hurt.
“...Yes. You would not. But it seems the heads of the various Defense Corps did.”
“If that is the case, then for now—”
“Forty-three minutes.”
The Vampire Princess raised her index finger.
“The amount of time it took for the S-rank adventurer who annihilated the Seventh Defense Corps to remain within the Training Corps’ territory before I drove her out. During that entire time, not a single person from the Second through Sixth Defense Corps came to the Training Corps.”
“......These bastards.”
“Steward.”
“...Yes, my lady.”
“Cull them.”
“......The gap in our forces will be larger than you expect.”
Chief Aide Akamond looked troubled.
“Even if we tried to replenish our forces immediately, it would not be easy.”
“What if we mobilized them for battle?”
“Them...?”
“The trainer’s fuck holes.”
“Ah. Ahem. If you mean the [Vampiels], would not their willingness be the issue?”
“It would be difficult to make them fight humans right away, but could they not be made to fight demons?”
“...I see. Understood.”
At the Vampire Princess’s command, Chief Aide Akamond bowed smoothly at the waist.
“If that is your will.”
“Yes. This time, I will wager on the future.”
The Vampire Princess turned her head toward the red cylinder.
“He was the one who created a weakness in an S-rank adventurer and made it possible to subdue her in a single stroke. How could I not make use of him?”
“...My lady. It is embarrassing for me to say this, but if I may be so bold, until he has definitively ‘cast off his humanity,’ we should trust humans—”
“Lilith wrote as much in her report about that child.”
The Vampire Princess chuckled as she tapped the cylinder with the back of her hand.
“She said that if I ordered him to, he could even lick my ass.”
“......You mean your buttocks?”
“No.”
“.......”
“Was it merely an expression, or was it not?”
“What in the world...”
“Hmm?”
“What in the world...!”
Akamond removed his glasses and wiped at the corners of his eyes with a white glove.
“As expected, the trainer is the treasure of our legion. A man who proudly declares that he is willing to offer such obedience that even a slave would not...!”
“.......”
“My lady. You should keep yourself clean from now on. Just in case—”
“......It was only an expression, I said.”
The Vampire Princess’s face reddened as she grumbled.
“If he were to lick anything, he would lick a pussy.”