Miledi and the others set up camp for the night in the mountainous region in the north of the demon empire.
The land of vampires, the Dastia Kingdom, was in an almost perfectly diagonal straight line from the Dragon Kingdom. The Dragon Kingdom was roughly on the northeastern edge of the continent, while Dastia was on the southwestern tip.
It was a massive distance to cover, and honestly, Miledi would have preferred to travel in a straight line to make the trip shorter. However, they’d taken a detour due south to meet with some people.
As the party was sitting around the campfire, listening to the sounds of nature and drinking their after-dinner tea, Laus suddenly looked up. The people they’d been waiting for were almost there.
Five minutes later, two black-clad figures emerged from behind a mossy boulder.
“Are we late?”
Both figures looked to be in their early twenties, and they each had black hair. One had frizzy hair, while the other’s was slicked back. They both moved stealthily in the dark, but their porcelain white skin and crimson eyes made them stand out more than they otherwise would have.
“No, we just got here ourselves,” Oscar replied, transmuting two chairs out of a nearby boulder for the newcomers.
“I thought we’d manage to beat you guys here.”
“I can’t believe you covered the distance from the northern mountain range to here so quickly...”
As the two of them sat down, Naiz offered them the leftovers of the group’s dinner, but they shook their heads and politely refused.
They looked a little nervous, so Miledi gently asked, “Are you two doing okay?”
“I know it’s not my place to say, but don’t push yourselves too hard. Laus may have healed your souls, but the experiments you endured in the Demon Lord’s castle were far beyond what mere healing can fix,” Vandre added in an apologetic tone.
The two of them were the very same vampire chimeras that had been experimented on to serve as the mind-controlled Rasul’s anti-ancient magic shock troops. The man with swept-back hair was the blademaster, Morgan Curtis, while his frizzy-haired fellow was the close-ranged martial artist, Nevrai Fist.
When Miledi had told everyone that they’d be going to Dastia through the Skynets, the two of them had volunteered to leave the safety of Sainttown, where they’d been recuperating, and tag along. Dastia was their homeland, so it made sense for them to return, and Miledi was grateful to have natives coming along. However, due to the horrifying experiments they’d been subjected to, and the fact that their wills had been bound for so many years, they were still recuperating mentally.
“We appreciate the concern, but we’re fine. Besides, we must repay our debt to the Liberators,” Morgan said.
“Though being up and about is taking more of a toll than I thought,” Nevrai added with a slight smile.
“Still, it’s because of my metamorphosis magic that you two are...you know...”
Vandre was, of course, referring to their current forms, which he thought might make it difficult for them to return home.
“What Vandre wants to ask is if you’ll be welcome back home now that your bodies have been fused with demons and monsters to absorb their unique traits,” Laus said, cutting to the chase.
“We have heard that Dastia is an insular country that places a great deal of importance on lineage,” Lyutillis added, somewhat more diplomatically.
Indeed, back when all of the test subjects had been freed, Miledi had offered to take the two of them back home to Dastia, and they’d told her exactly what Laus and Lyutillis were saying now.
Vandre narrowed his eyes worriedly, but to his surprise, Morgan and Nevrai awkwardly looked away.
“I’m sorry, but when we told you that, it was partially a lie.”
Miledi blinked in surprise and asked, “A lie? But why?”
“It’s not true that we can’t return home. Also...”
“We lied about being too traumatized to fight anymore.”
In truth, Miledi and the others had been a bit wary of the vampire duo. After all, they could obstruct and neutralize gravity, spatial, restoration, and spirit magic. And on top of that, they had the physical strength of beastmen and the mana aptitude of demons, as well as the ability to quasi-limit break by taking advantage of their natural vampire super healing. Had they been vampire supremacists that saw other races as nothing more than food, it was entirely possible that they would have attacked the villagers once they’d been healed, which was why Miledi and the others had checked in on them every time they’d gone near the village they were resting in.
Of course, the vampires had realized the Liberators were wary of them, so one day when Miledi had come, they’d told her, “We’re not so shameless as to turn our fangs against our saviors. If you want us to leave, we will. But we have no home to return to, and we’re too traumatized to fight again. So, if possible, we’d like to remain here.”
They had indeed looked as mentally exhausted as they’d sounded, and their fear of sudden noises had seemed truly genuine. However, with time and Corrin’s exceptional nursing abilities, they’d eventually started opening up to the villagers. In fact, by the time the war in the Pale Forest had begun, Miledi and the others had trusted them enough to leave them for months at a time unsupervised.
Then, after Laus had joined the group, he’d helped speed up their recovery with his spirit magic. But they still hadn’t seemed terribly interested in returning to their homeland and wanted to remain in this peaceful village away from all the fighting. More than anything, though—
“W-Wait, don’t tell me you were lying when you called Corrin a saint too?!” Oscar exclaimed.
“Absolutely not. That girl truly is a saint, there’s no doubt about that.”
“In fact, leaving her was the hardest decision we’ve ever made. Oh no. Now that I’m remembering her, I’m getting saint withdrawal symptoms.”
They revered Corrin as much as anyone else in Sainttown.
“That girl truly is terrifying. She even managed to bewitch my son,” Laus said with a shiver.
“Don’t call her terrifying, she’s a saint!” the two vampires and Vandre said in unison. The girls gave the three of them sad looks.
Blushing a little, Morgan cleared his throat and said, “Anyway, we are actually in good enough shape to fight again, and we also know people back home who would take us in.”
“I assume you have a reason you didn’t want to return, then?” Miledi asked.
Nevrai nodded and explained, “We were tasked with a certain mission when we left our nation three years ago. There was someone we needed to find, and we knew it might take ages before we could return home. Though unfortunately, we were attacked by the demon army almost immediately after leaving our borders.”
“Hmm? Who were you looking for?”
Nevrai turned to Meiru. His crimson eyes looked strikingly similar to Meiru’s own, so when they saw the resemblance, Oscar and the others gasped.
“Hm? You mean me?” Meiru asked.
“Yes. Or so we assume, anyway.”
“You’re not sure?”
“The only information we were provided was that she was around twenty years old and possessed the traits of both a dagon and a vampire.”
“Also, that she should be able to use magic. Most likely recovery magic, considering her lineage. Those were the characteristics we were told to look for.”