The vampires who had been standing dryly as if they had no interest in Rir's trial were also surprised by this statement. The trial everyone expected was a people's tribunal that drove the suspect with only circumstantial evidence, without any evidence or witnesses.
Vampires are a nation with an unbreakable hierarchical order. If the Progenitor and Elders believe someone is guilty, they can dispose of them without even a trial. Everyone believed this occasion was just for entertainment.
But the suspect suddenly confessed?
'Really? Mere Yailing killed an Elder?'
'The rumor that she broke the Blood Bond... is it true?'
'If the Progenitor who created the bond could break it, that's one thing. But from below, not above?'
The shock was even greater because the majority of vampires didn't think she was the culprit. Vampires who feel the Blood Bond more intensely than anyone else didn't think a mere Yailing could kill an Elder.
I glanced at where the Elders were sitting. Smiling Erzsebet, horrified Kabila, Rongken who came for fun but got stuck and looked bored. And Veldamir staring at Rir with an expressionless face.
Given that Veldamir was the most political among vampires who already rarely showed emotion, I couldn't expect any change of expression from him. However, his inner thoughts read through mind-reading were surprisingly colorful.
'...This is unexpected. I didn't tell her to do this separately, but I thought a vampire would naturally deny it.'
How surprising. Rir's sudden action wasn't agreed upon. She wasn't taking the fall for Veldamir either.
Then what on earth is it?
How fascinating?
"...Since you've declared your crime, you must also know the punishment you'll receive."
"I do. You'll take back the blood given to me. That cursed..."
Rir trailed off there and briefly lowered her head. A conflict arose within her for a moment. She didn't want to say it, but she had to. Rir chose one of the two.
"...The Progenitor's blood that my father implanted in me."
Rir confessed the hidden truth. Not to avoid punishment, but to tarnish the honor of her father, Elder Ruskinia, who was also the Lord.
Regardless of east or west, past or present, scandals have often been a fatal blow to those in power, but who would have thought it would happen in the Mist Duchy.
While Tir, surprised by the claim that a vampire had a child, was at a loss for words, a commotion arose from the other side.
"O Progenitor, we need hear no more!"
One of Ruskinia's Ain jumped up and shouted. With feathers she'd somehow attached standing stiffly upright, she attacked Rir.
"We are different from ordinary humans. Under the great Blood Bond, blood kin who have directly shared blood are deeper than relationships that merely received seed! Such lowly relationships are concepts that apply only to livestock! Now Rir is trying to apply the laws of livestock to vampires...!"
"Enough."
Slash.
A red line was drawn across her chest. The Ain stopped mid-sentence and exhaled a breath mixed with blood foam. Amidst the blood-soaked feathers scattering, Veldamir stood holding a slender dining knife behind her bisected body.
Holding the falling upper half of the vampire to keep it from dropping, Veldamir spoke softly.
"It is the Progenitor's safety. Lower your voice and show respect."
"Ugh... I apologize..."
"For the honor of the eternally destroyed Ruskinia. Don't make me act twice."
Thud. Veldamir, having finished his warning, placed her severed upper half back on. Blood foam rose again, and the cut skin twitched and merged back together. The Ruskinia's Ain who barely survived fell to her knees with a thud.
Veldamir, who demonstrated the feat of cutting a vampire in half and putting them back together, brushed his hands as if it was nothing and spoke.
"There was a brief disturbance. I apologize for not stopping it in time, O Progenitor."
Liar. If he set his mind to it, he could have cut her throat before she even opened her mouth. He deliberately waited until they said everything they wanted to say. He established Tir's authority while letting their opinions be exposed. Truly political, there's no other way to explain it.
"Very well. Let that point pass."
Whatever the process, Ruskinia's side's argument was reasonably accepted. Tir also composed himself and spoke.
"As she said. Rir Nightingale, whatever relationship you had with Ruskinia is meaningless. He is an Elder, and you are his Yailing of blood kin. The heaven-defying crime that a mere Yailing dared to kill an Elder still stands. A great sin that has never existed until now. You must pay for that crime."
Tir's judgment was the most appropriate. It means it was the judgment all vampires most expected and accepted. When Tir was about to pronounce the solemn sentence in the Progenitor's name, Rir suddenly raised her head and spoke.
"I have an objection."
"An objection?"
For a rebel who broke the Blood Bond to talk back to the Progenitor's judgment. Unacceptable. Tir had no intention of listening, and neither did the vampires.
But I was different, so I interjected and asked before Tir could say anything.
"If there's an objection to the Progenitor's judgment, there must be a significant reason, right? What is it?"
My official position was the Progenitor's concubine. I myself am nothing, but my words move the Progenitor, the most important person in the duchy. Tir, who was about to pronounce judgment, leaned back against the throne as if yielding. He stepped back to establish my authority.
Thanks to that, I, borrowing authority, allowed Rir's objection. Rir spoke with vampire-like indifference.
"Because my father deserved to die."
Family matters that were not at all vampire-like.
Vampires didn't pay much attention to family matters. Holding grudges against someone is a common occurrence when living for a long time. But I'm different. An Elder's family matters, how curious a story is this.
I read Rir's thoughts. I read Veldamir's thoughts. Rir is not the culprit, Veldamir is the culprit. Mind-reading conveyed clear facts.
However, mind-reading alone had its limits. Two books, even books written with only the truth, still had dark parts. What I read were only the experiences and memories humans possessed. The facts remaining after excluding humans were still in the dark.
Normally I would have just said whatever and moved on. But reading the intentions of those two through mind-reading made my curiosity rise.
Rir tried to kill the Elder.
And Veldamir tried to save the Elder.
The results turned out completely opposite, but.
"The late Lord Ruskinia. So could we hear the reason why your late father deserved to die?"
"He killed our mother..."
"Hold on, hold on. If you skip ahead like that, I can't empathize, can I? From the beginning, if possible."
Even to uncover the truth hidden in darkness. I wanted to hear Rir's story. Perhaps because she wasn't very old yet, or perhaps because she was special. Rir understood my meaning and began to explain calmly.
"My father was the Elder everyone knew. The powerful and cruel Blood Qi Engineer Lord Ruskinia. In contrast, my mother was merely a refugee who wandered outside the country and came to the duchy to survive. With no power, no property, no family or relatives. A drifter who came to sell even her blood to survive alone."
"I think I've heard of it. The rumor about buying blood in the duchy existed secretly."
"It's true. The newly incoming refugees have a different blood taste than the humans of this duchy. Therefore, vampires who enjoy gourmet food seek out the refugees and evaluate their blood."
No matter how you put it, blood taste is roughly the same, so it can't compare to the food humans eat, but it seemed that vampires who have lived for hundreds of years develop a fastidiousness that distinguishes even the subtle differences.
"That was the same for my father. My father's blood kin treated humans roughly, so there were always shortages of humans under his command, and my father was also thirsty for blood. For such a father, refugees who lacked background knowledge about blood kin were the easiest prey. My father met my mother there, and terrible things happened."
"Terrible things?"
"It was that my mother's blood suited my father's taste. Quite significantly. My father, who had never had a concubine his whole life, immediately made my mother his concubine."
"Hmm. Just hearing it, it doesn't seem that terrible. Wasn't it what your mother wanted?"
At first glance it might seem terrible, but in the duchy, suiting an Elder's taste is quite a blessed thing. You don't need any other explanation, just look at me. Just by being the Progenitor's concubine, I command Ain with a chin gesture and roam everywhere? In the duchy where hierarchy is absolute, a concubine is a symbol of power. Because it's the only way to be elevated from livestock to pet.
Rir also coldly acknowledged that fact.
"...Until then there was no problem. My mother sold blood, and my father tasted it. But the problem occurred after that. My father was a cruel Elder, and he could only be satisfied when whatever he wanted was done. My mother had no choice but to be swayed by him without power."
"Well, isn't that also unavoidable? A marriage with broken balance is naturally like that."
"I too am unavoidable. As a child born between them is naturally like that."
Tsk. When you put it that way, I have nothing to say.
"And it didn't end simply as a discord issue. My father didn't want my mother to die and no longer supply blood, or to age and have her blood change. So my father made various attempts. Experiments that would be difficult to proudly display even in the duchy."
"Experiments, you say?"
"There are countless ones that I can't even speak of. Diluting the amount by mixing others' blood like a cocktail. Transplanting my mother's blood into half-dead humans. Attempting body modification and so on. There were various attempts, but the most representative one is me."
"You?"
Rir answered her own origin with an expressionless face.
"If my mother's blood is delicious, then a child's blood would also be so. With that belief, he impregnated my mother. In the process, to test the hypothesis that the more similar blood to his own is delicious, he specifically used his own seed."
"Are you saying a vampire had a child?"
Tir reacted to the statement that he was a biological father, not a stepfather. Rir unfortunately didn't give the answer Tir wanted.
"Vampires cannot have children. However, if like my father, one had stored seed, it's possible. Because women are the ones who raise children in their wombs."
"So you're saying women cannot have children..."
"If they are female vampires, that is."
Rir, who emphasized once more, finished speaking.
"I was born to be my mother's replacement, but my blood didn't suit my father's taste. That was fortunate. If it had been delicious, I might have also borne my father's seed.
Anyway, my father's attempts to preserve my mother's blood mostly fell through. Because my mother was still human, he was worried she might accidentally die. Of course, it wasn't that he worried about my mother, but that he worried about no longer being able to receive blood from my mother."
Even her sneer was cold. The one who would be called a healer, in contrast to that kindness, recited her past in a cold tone.
"Believing that all these failures were due to my mother's frailty, my father ultimately... foolishly, made my mother his Ain."
"Since I'm human, I don't really know, but why is that foolish?"
"Because the moment blood is shared and domination occurs, the blood already changes. You could say it loses its taste. My mother also had to take others' blood to maintain her Blood Control Art, and my father could now never be satisfied with my mother's blood. Since he ruined the work he was devoted to himself, how heartbroken must he have been."
As if mocking her past father, Rir, who had a cold smile on her lips, looked around the room and spoke.
"Of course, such a story probably doesn't excite any of you. Because it's too human a subject for vampires to accept."
That wasn't necessarily true. Vampires live quite closely intertwined with humans. They understood with cold reason the reason Rir hated Ruskinia.
"However, my father also has a reason he deserves to die to all of you. Because the first to commit the great sin was none other than my father."
And from here on, it entered territory beyond understanding. Statements touching on the emotional realm that vampires taboo came out of Rir's mouth.
"To return my mother who had become a vampire, my father researched a way to break the Blood Bond. And he succeeded. I, who directly killed my father who was the Lord, am the result."
Several vampires jumped up. The heaven-defying crime of a subordinate going against their Lord, that wasn't a concern because it couldn't happen. Even when Rir was suspected as Ruskinia's murderer, it only remained suspicion and didn't cause much repercussion.
But it actually happened, and the subject is speaking right now. Vampires were engulfed in fear and worry. In the present where even the Progenitor had broken free from the bond, if a way to break the bond from below also appeared. Murder of lords by subordinates might also occur frequently.
Rir continued with statements that could overturn the duchy.
"The heaven-defying crime that you are all angry about, the first vampire to commit that crime is none other than Elder Ruskinia."