A small village on the outskirts of Gyeonggi Province.
In a place where there were more elderly than young, more rice paddies than asphalt roads, and more birdsong than car exhaust, Camilla sat in a pavilion, peeling and eating tangerines given to her by the elderly.
“It’s delicious!”
“Oh, is that so? Eat plenty, dear. There are still many left.”
“Okay!”
The little girl, with ghostly pale skin, black hair, and red eyes, smiled brightly and nodded.
Between her slightly parted lips, her pointed fangs were faintly visible. At the tips of the sharp fangs, there was a faint trace of blood.
“Dear, you have chili powder stuck on your teeth. Shall I take it off for you?”
An elderly person with graying hair saw it and reached out their hand. Camilla let out an “Ah” and wiped the blood off her teeth herself.
“It’s okay! I can do it myself!”
“Oh my, you’ve grown up so much. When you first came here, you couldn’t do anything by yourself... Now you speak Korean so well.”
“It’s all thanks to you, Grandmother, Grandfather!”
“You speak so sweetly.”
A warm-looking elderly person reached out with their wrinkled hand and stroked Camilla’s head.
Camilla felt an unbearable murderous impulse for a moment, but she exercised all her patience and suppressed it. It wasn’t yet time to openly bare her fangs.
In the first place, the blood of the elderly was hardly worth tasting. It was like blood watered down heavily, mixed with calcareous substances and alcohol, and then vinegar added. Anyway, it tasted terrible.
If she truly had nothing to drink, she’d have to resort to killing, but she still had plenty of leeway. She had killed a young woman at dawn and turned her into a blood bag, so she planned to endure with that for a while. Later, when all the blood was drained, it would become a ghoul and cause chaos, but that wasn’t Camilla’s concern. Let it figure it out on its own.
‘What are the others up to?’
She chewed on the tangerine and looked up at the darkening sky.
An evening with the moon revealing itself.
It was the best time for vampires to be active. Camilla swung her short legs back and forth as she looked up at the moon, which seemed unusually bright these days.
‘Well, they’re probably all hiding somewhere, sucking on blood anyway. I don’t really care.’
A total of three vampires had entered Korea with Camilla. But they only entered the country together; they were strangers with no prior acquaintance, so as soon as they set foot in Korea, they scattered in all directions. They all originally lived in different countries anyway. There was no need to be friendly.
‘In reality, they’re all competitors. This is my territory. I won’t share a single drop with other vampires.’
With that thought, Camilla finished off all the tangerines. Then, after chatting with the elderly, as soon as they parted ways, she went alone into the dark mountain and vomited her stomach contents.
“Urgh!”
She stimulated the back of her throat with her finger, and the tangerines she had eaten came pouring out along with stomach acid.
A vampire’s stomach cannot accept anything other than blood, so whenever she ate something, she had to go through this process of emptying her stomach. If she made a mistake and missed the timing, allowing it to digest, her intestines would melt entirely. They would regenerate later, but until then, she would have to writhe in pain continuously.
It was better to just taste and then spit it out. Camilla wiped the saliva and stomach acid from the corners of her mouth with her hand and slowly headed deeper into the mountain.
After a while, a cave appeared.
Inside the small cave, where even moonlight didn’t reach, ghouls were asleep. Camilla clicked her tongue and trampled the lying ghoul family with her foot.
Crunch!
With a gruesome sound, one of the ghoul’s arms flew through the air. The ghoul lying with its eyes open was startled by the sudden pain, sat up, and bared its teeth. But upon seeing Camilla standing there with a cold expression, it immediately lowered its eyes.
“Pitiful bastards.”
Fluent Spanish flowed from her mouth.
“Did I not tell you to hunt at night? Go down to those houses, or kidnap people from the city. You’d better show me some action if you want my forgiveness, don’t you think?”
[Grk, grrr...]
“Shut up. I don’t want to hear excuses. It seems you have no desire to evolve from ghouls into vampires.”
Camilla clicked her tongue and placed her foot on the back of the ghoul’s head, which was prostrated on the ground.
“I won’t warn you twice. This is an example.”
Crrrunch...!
As Camilla applied more pressure with her foot, the ghoul’s head slowly began to cave in. Its nose and teeth broke off and dropped to the floor, and its skin and skull shattered, splattering blood.
Crunch!
Soon, its head was completely crushed. Clear brain fluid mixed with blood and flowed across the cave floor.
Camilla roughly wiped the blood off her shoe and spoke to the other trembling ghouls.
“Eat it. And when morning comes, take out only the heart and throw it outside. Understand?”
The ghouls nodded. Camilla slapped each of their cheeks once and turned around.
“Let’s do well, kids. Do you think I’m doing this for my own amusement?”
[...]
“It’s all to help you evolve into vampires. Do you want to remain mindless monsters forever?”
Camilla said with a sigh. Naturally, no answer came.
“...Stupid morons.”
Leaving the ghouls behind, she exited the cave.
The mountain after sunset naturally exuded yin energy. Moreover, Korea had long been a country fond of burying corpses in the ground. Naturally, beneath Camilla’s feet lay a corpse, and the original owner of that body was now just a spirit roaming the mountain like a playground.
But Camilla didn’t pay the creature much mind.
To a vampire, ghosts were as familiar as blood. Along with them came bats, wolves, and dogs.
All were beings familiar to vampires, and if one were of noble blood, it wasn’t difficult to dominate them. Camilla had already taken control of the dogs in the village long ago.
‘The cartel, the Administration Bureau, the Vatican. And the damn wizards. One of them might suddenly show up. I should be prepared.’
Of course, dominating dogs as a means of preparation was a bit of an odd image. But what could she do? Camilla didn’t possess abilities optimized for combat; she preferred surprise attacks and assassination over fighting.
She also detested getting involved with the strong. Weak humans she could toy with and then kill, but that was impossible with the strong.
She was a hedonist and sadist. She loved tormenting others, but hated being tormented. And among them, she hated wizards the most.
‘Those bastards are more monstrous than monsters. If a wizard comes here, I’ll really run away without looking back.’
The hatred of the mysterious for wizards was as natural as breathing. Unlike the Vatican, which blindly exterminates, or the Administration Bureau, which at least tries to capture alive, those bastards saw the mysterious as magical ingredients and conducted biological experiments.
Tearing off an arm while alive to observe the reaction was mild. The worse ones ate the mysterious or turned them into tools. None of them were sane.
‘At least if I unleash the mutts, they’ll buy me some time. In that gap, I’ll turn into a bat and escape.’
Camilla made that resolve as she took out the small canteen she had put in her pocket.
She opened the cap of the canteen, filled with bright red blood, and slowly drank it down while looking up at the sky.
The moon was exceptionally bright and huge tonight. Staring at the pale satellite, which somehow made her feel lightheaded, she gulped down the blood past her throat.
That’s when it happened.
...Whoooosh!!!
With a tremendous roar, Camilla’s vision was momentarily dyed black.
“...!”
A sudden situation. Thinking it was a surprise attack by a wizard or psychic, Camilla immediately threw the blood she was drinking to the ground and transformed into a bat. But before she could flee, her vision returned to normal.
‘What is this? No attack?’
Camilla felt instinctive bewilderment and carefully looked up at the sky again. And then, she spotted a massive black disc passing by the edge of her vision.
“...Ah!”
A flying craft of a shape she had never seen before. But she immediately recognized what it was.
She couldn’t not know.
Camilla was 246 years old. Having lived through the era when the world was abuzz with UFOs, flying saucers were very familiar to her. But this was the first time she was actually seeing one.
“Wow!”
She immediately flew after the UFO while still in bat form.
If she could capture an alien, turn it into a ghoul, and then evolve it into a vampire, she might gain an incredibly powerful asset. It was worth a try.
Whirrrrr!
Thus, Camilla flew following the massive spaceship for quite a while.
The UFO flew a full 27 kilometers further before crashing to the ground.
On the mid-slope of an uninhabited mountain. The spaceship, lodged in the ground after smashing through trees and boulders, emitted smoke and red light in all directions. Camilla felt a thrill and slowly approached the landed spaceship.
At that moment.
Boom!
With a violent roar, the spaceship’s door opened. And from within, men in uniform walked out.
“Fuck, it’s Earth!”
“How many years has it been since I’ve set foot on Earth? Damn!”
They spat out the words in rough but fluent German.
By then, Camilla sensed something strange. Her seventh vertebra gave a tingling warning, sending an instinctive alarm.
But before she could turn around, the men crawling out of the spaceship spotted her.
“A woman!”
“A witness. Well, it doesn’t really matter. She looks just like one of our glorious Germanic people. How about we get some guidance?”
“She could be a Jew!”
“Then we’ll just turn her into soap.”
The Nazi symbol on their chests shone, reflecting the light from the spaceship. Only then did Camilla notice the insignia, realize their identity, and let out a groan.
‘The secret Nazi base on the dark side of the moon...?’
As she thought that, more than ten Nazi officers came strolling out of the spaceship one after another.
“Hey, Reano! The location is wrong! This isn’t Germany! It’s Japan!”
“What? This is the land of the Japs?”
“To be precise, it was originally Joseon, but the Japs made it a colony—”
“You shut up! Hey, pilot! You idiot, what the hell did you do with the route settings?! Why did we crash in Asia?!”
“Because I detected the most powerful energy here. The strongest being on Earth is of course our Führer alone.”
“But this is Asia!”
“I find that questionable as well.”
A cold-looking Nazi officer turned his head toward Camilla.
“Wench. Guide us to the Führer. It seems our Nazi Germany won World War II and made this the capital.”
“...”
“Why no answer? Are you so stupid you haven’t learned the official language, German? Or are you ignoring me?”
“...”
“Ah, now I see. You’re a Jew, aren’t you?”
At the officer’s declaration, the others immediately reacted.
“A Jew?!”
“A Jew! A Jew! Our soap!”
“Tear her apart and swallow her! Gas chamber! Send her to the gas chamber!”
Watching this, Camilla grimaced.
“Fucking hell.”
Nazis had fallen on Korea.
*
At the same time.
A small PC bang.
“Ian, don’t go jungle. Even so, 2 kills 12 deaths is too much.”
“The top laner was bad.”
“Quiet. The top lane went down together because of you. Come botlane with me.”
“...I don’t take orders from someone with a lower tier than me—”
“Me, Emerald. You, Bronze.”
“...”
“Follow me.”
Ian shut his mouth tight and changed his main role to support.