That comment finally got Vandal’s brain working again. Lucky? Why? Because he got to see what his hated enemy looks like and how strong he is? No, that wasn’t it . . . Hold on . . . Heinz is helping me out? No! No way!
He glanced at Heinz to see the adventurer giving him the most reassuring smile. Like he was saying, Leave everything to me.
The smile didn’t reassure Vandal, however. Instead, he felt something more like—insanity. Why is he helping me? Why does it have to be him?! No! This must be a trap! There must be something else here! There must! Something is strange! Something is wrong! I can’t accept this! It felt horrible, like his brain and spirit and even his soul were all being churned together.
He could barely think. Using Mental Multitasking and Rapid Cognition only confused him more.
“Oh boy. Who’s the one always going on about not being interested in politics? We complete an escort quest and return to town, just to walk right into this. We’ll have to show ourselves in front of the prince and the HQ Guild Master at this rate.”
“But Edgar, you know what Heinz always said. All of Alda’s faithful need to be more like the conciliators. Heinz chose to come to this nation, even at the cost of parting ways with Raily.”
“I thought our main goal was to complete the Wandering Dungeon called Zakkato’s Trial.”
“Don’t be like that, Jennifer. Or do you think Heinz is in the wrong?”
“. . . That’s not what I meant.”
From what Vandal could hear from the party chatting, it sounded like Heinz’s companions weren’t entirely surprised by this, nor did they particularly oppose it.
“Hey, Heinz is an Alda conciliator?” Vandal could hear other adventurers were whispering nearby.
“You bet. He witnessed the tragedy of a dhampir and his mother in the Milg Shield Kingdom. That’s what brought him to this country.”
“Wow. That’s why he’s helping out the dhampir. Grade A really is something else.”
Putting it all together—after handing over my mom and seeing her burnt at the stake, he became an Alda conciliator, and moved his base of operations to the Olbaum Electorate Kingdom. And now he’s helping dhampirs out? He’s . . . helping us out? Inside, he was in turmoil, but externally, Vandal looked like he was just standing there.
“It’s okay.” This from the girl who was with Heinz and his party. She even took his hand as she spoke. “Heinz is nice. He’ll help you out. He’ll protect you. Like he did for me!” The girl gave him a smile.
Then Vandal saw her eyes. One of them was crimson-colored, like blood.
“Ah . . .” His hands started to shake. “Ooh . . .” He felt like throwing up. His head ached. Unpleasant feelings surged through him to an extent he had almost never felt during his third life.
Unable to withstand it, Vandal knocked her hand away, and the girl yelped. He kept himself under control as best he could, keeping his claws in and restricting his strength, to make sure she didn’t get hurt. That was the best he could do.
“What’s wrong?!” Heinz reached out in surprise, but Vandal simply needed to get away. He kicked off the floor with both hands and feet, activating Flight so hard it squeezed his internal organs.
“Hey! Hold on!”
“What’s going on?!”
Vandal ignored the surprised shouts, smashing into the guild doors and flying away for all he was worth.
Vandal crouched down on the ground, staring at his hands as they shuddered and shook. He was already on the outskirts of Niakki, in some kind of woodland. He probably hadn’t traveled all that far. After leaving the guild, he had no idea how he got out of town. He might have punched holes through the town walls, for all he knew.
“Ah . . . nnghhh . . . oooh . . .” Vandal’s mind was in such turmoil that he couldn’t bring himself to care about the circumstances of his departure. What he could definitely feel was overwhelming anger, humiliation, and powerlessness that threatened to consume his entire being.
He had been powerless in the face of his enemy. Completely defeated before he could even make a move. He would have thought that would be the greatest humiliation he could expect to experience.
But greater humiliation had waited just beyond it.
That enemy had offered him sympathy. Had tried to help him. He had taken Vandal’s pride and trampled it. More than anything else, it was the reason why Heinz had tried to help him that hurt the most.
Because he was a dhampir.
Because, after accepting a job in the Milg Shield Kingdom and handing over Vandal’s mom, Dalshia, to a bunch of religious fanatics, Heinz had watched her get burnt at the stake—and changed his thinking, becoming an Alda conciliator as a result.
Vandal groaned. “You’ve got to be . . . joking me!”
Some rational part of him could see how it had happened. Heinz probably didn’t even know that Vandal was alive. He must have considered Vandal to have died along with his mom. The only people who knew about Vandal’s existence outside of Talosheim were a scattered handful in the Milg Shield Kingdom and Amidd Empire and a small number of vampires.
That’s why Heinz was trying to make up for things. A common story back on Earth, in both fiction and non-fiction: someone choosing to live in atonement for the lives of people they had killed. To save more lives than they took. To try and resolve the guilt they felt for, for example, killing enemy civilians during warfare. It wasn’t rare in the slightest.
In Vandal’s mind, he associated such a path with fiction. He could imagine the kind of story in which someone had died because of a mistake the main character made, but it wasn’t something that could be punished by the law. Still free, that individual wrestles with their actions, saying something like, “Then I’ll help other people until I can forgive myself.” Or maybe the hero says something like, “You can atone for the past by what you choose to do in the future,” to a former bad guy.
That’s what Heinz was doing, trying to atone for what he did to Dalshia and Vandal. He was following the beliefs of the conciliators and had saved that girl, another dhampir. Neither Dalshia nor Vandal had asked him to do this, but they were no longer a part of the equation. He was doing it all on his own.
“You’ve got to be joking!” Vandal shrieked. Was he meant to forgive him, then? Stop blaming him? Stop wanting to kill him? Out of the question! It made no sense to Vandal at all.
If that were acceptable, all hell would break loose. If a serial killer went on a rampage, were the families of their victims supposed to forgive them if they saved as many lives as they killed?! If Vandal saved as many people in Olbaum as he had killed from Milg, would the families of those soldiers simply have to let him off the hook?
That wasn’t how it worked. He understood that much. Even if some might feel that way, all of them certainly wouldn’t.