Chapter 100: Light

Sara stared at the ceiling on her hammock. That was unexpected. She knew Litmus was bigger, stronger than them. But she never realized how big it was until Rebecca told her that any city could house the entire dovekin and batkin tribe anytime without any problem.

Litmus could even found an entire village just for them—a village where food was no longer an issue.

It would be the right thing to accept their offer. Litmus had done them an injustice and was willing to make amends. The batkin had the upper hand in diplomacy. Moreover, even if Litmus founded a new village just for the dovekin and batkins, it would hardly impact them as a nation. But if she accepted their offer, what was the point of these 500 years of hardship?

This empty, barren forest, where hardly anything grows, had become their home for half a millennium. Could they just leave everything behind? Their way of life?

Sara had noticed when they were staying inside the mining village next door. They lived so close to the ground. Houses on the ground, beds on the ground, not even hung. Should she mimic that kind of lifestyle if she were to be under Litmus’ rule?

In the end, the decision did not lie with her. What about Elizabeth and the batkins? Even if they accepted the deal, people had prejudice against the batkins.

Sara yawned. Yet sleep didn’t come. So she went out onto the porch. There, Nana, Rebecca, and Cecile also came. Nana was especially annoyed.

“I hate this village! Why does it have to be at night!” she bristled.

“Is something the matter?” Sara asked her guests. She was not a nocturnal person like batkins. Even with the moon hanging above, she could barely make out the three figures that stood on the corridor. If not for their voices, she might have missed them entirely.

“Hiro said something is wrong outside. He saw shadows.”

It was actually Nana who saw it. Yet she remained quiet. Alas, she couldn’t fool Hiro. Thanks to the sense-sharing ability, Hiro noticed the shadow that lurked near their home and roused his girls. Playing was fine, but if they were ambushed at night and weren’t ready for it because they played all night, it wouldn’t be a laughing matter.

“Well, the batkins might be out hunting. They often hunt at night,” Sara yawned and dismissed the three girls’ suspicion.

Sara wondered, though, why batkins would show up here. For the last decade, the batkins had often hunted deeper in the forest. Did they get lucky with their hunt and return early?

“Is that so?” Rebecca wondered. Batkins lived close by, sure, but that didn’t mean they would wander here without a good reason.

An explosion that rang through the silent night dispelled all their hesitation. Hiro’s girls rushed for their weapons and scrambled outside toward the source of the explosion. Rebecca lit up the surroundings with her fire magic. A girl with bat wings leaped away from the explosion.

It was Elizabeth. She hissed at three batkins she was engaged with, her dress torn due to the explosions.

“Traitor! What have you done? You have broken the taboo our village has kept for 500 years!” she roared. Dark bolts shot out toward the three shadows.

The three shadows deflected the bolts with their deformed arms. Their smiles were wicked.

“Why should we keep the law? It was all for nothing. We have had enough of this life! They were right. It was futile. We shouldn’t hold back anymore. Look, with this new power, I can already overpower our matriarch. You should be ashamed!”

Sara blanked out. Fights among batkins were rare, but they did happen. But when Rebecca shone her fireball toward the three batkins, she gasped.

Behind the three transformed batkins, there were corpses—human corpses. All pale, as if they were sucked dry of their blood. Rebecca widened her eyes. Her body trembled.

“Joseph, Blaire, Derek. What happened?” Sara muttered. She knew these batkins. She knew their faces. They were batkins—she was sure of it.

“They are traitors. People who sucked their victims dry,” Elizabeth spat.

“Tch! Get lost, outsider! You should know your place and become our livestock!” the three batkins roared. Nana and Cecile stepped in. Their swords and daggers pried at the transformed claws of the vampires. Hiro pumped adrenaline and amphetamine into his girls.

Cecile leaped past a batkin. Her swords danced. With every swing, a limb was torn off. With Hiro’s amphetamine and adrenaline skills, even a buffed-up vampire posed no threat. Even without a shield, she could still engage the remaining two vampires.

Nana then drew her bow from a distance. The arrow pierced right through one vampire’s right eye, killing it. his body soon disintegrated to ashes.

Sara gasped. She knew these guys. They couldn’t be vampires. They had stopped being vampires over a century ago. But the proof was right before their eyes. The body had turned to ashes.

“Rragh!” Elizabeth growled. Mana bolts and dark bolts assaulted the last vampire, killing it.

When the dust settled, all that remained was a vampire whose legs and hands had been cut off by Cecile. Before he bled out, Rebecca performed first aid by cauterizing his wounds.

“Argh! Forgive me! Spare me, Elizabeth. I was just acting on impulse! Their blood was simply too delicious.”

“What have you done! You have brought war upon us all!” Elizabeth roared. Using her dark magic, she fashioned herself a black sword and thrust it into the last vampire. However, before she was about to kill him, Rebecca stopped her.

“Wait!” Rebecca stopped her.

“…What? You’ve got your proof. We are just bloodthirsty vampires. Will you summon the rest of your knights to kill us all? No… I think you three would be enough to kill us all…” Elizabeth sighed. Tears rolled from her eyes as she lowered her sword.

“There are ways to settle this peacefully! We can give this bat—this vampire to the village, with you in tow. If the sunlight kills him but not you, that would prove that you are batkin while these are vampires. That would also solve the unrest within Litmus’ civilians.”

“…” Elizabeth didn’t nod. She merely stood still. “Do as you wish.”

“Elizabeth! Batkins are doomed! You know it. Just a single sip and we all turned back into vampires! There is no redemption! You must realize this! Elizabeth! We are doomed!” Nana kicked him in the gut while Cecile timidly picked him up.

“Listen! Remember who we are! If we can have the matriarch on our side, we will become unstoppable. Hrngh!!” Rebecca shut his mouth with a cloth. Cecile then rummaged through the scene, bringing with her the ten corpses these three vampires had killed. Then, with Sara and Elizabeth in tow, they went to the mining village, straight to the knight’s headquarters.

“Cecile, Rebecca, who do you have—Oh my god!” The guards were horrified when they saw the three girls dragging ten corpses and a vampire. Elizabeth was silent, but she went with them.

“Please call the knight commander. We have caught the vampires that killed the civilians.”

The knight commander rushed to meet Cecile and was stunned when he saw a vampire girl, unrestrained, and another vampire whose limbs were cut off. If the commander had to choose, the girl looked more like a vampire than the bound man. But when he saw them closer, there clearly was a difference. The bound man was pale and purple; it was as if he had turned into a monster. The feeling of disgust welled up his spine when he laid his gaze on him. at that moment, he understood. This is the true vampire.

“I see. Is this the vampire? Only one of them could kill ten people?”

“There were three of them. But we were caught off guard and had to kill the others,” Rebecca answered.

“I see. Caught off guard, yet still won, huh? As expected of a symbiote user. I heard you are a producer-type symbiote user. But a symbiote user is still a symbiote user, huh,” the commander grinned.

“Alright. I will have them detained,” the knight commander said. “Would that be all, Miss Cecile?”

“No. Wait. We want him to be publicly executed. That way, you can clearly see the difference between vampires and batkin. Despite similar wings, Elizabeth here is the tribal chief of the batkin village.”

“The rumored batkin, huh.”

“She won’t die under the sunlight. That should be proof enough that batkins exist,” Rebecca said.

“…I see. That would certainly dispel all rumors about you. Will that be okay, though? What if Elizabeth also turns to ashes under sunlight?”

“She won’t! Elizabeth is a batkin. I have used an appraisal ball on her,” Rebecca said. Hiro patted her head.

“…Understood. I shall make it a public execution then.”

“Ah, this vampire might say some unnecessary things, like claiming that the dovekin or the batkins were our nemesis—breaking our trust. It would be best to seal his mouth shut when the execution begins,” Rebecca said.

“Mmff!” The vampire was horrified.

“What’s wrong? If you are a batkin, you won’t die from the sunlight, right? Aren’t you saying that batkins should become vampires?”

“What!?” The commander turned to him.

“It is easy to become a vampire. Anyone can become one if they have performed some forbidden ritual. But no one can become a beastkin. Please learn it well, vampire,” Rebecca said. She didn’t actually know how; she just mouthed off something she had read from a library when she was a student in Latvin.

And so, the commander summoned every townsman in the morning. As the morning light cast its glow on the vampire, it cried out in pain and despair. Its skin burned, molting away as smoke exuded from its body. Then, as the sun rose higher and higher, the vampire cried harder. Despite gagged mouth, its shriek reverberated among the village.

Rebecca was the one who suggested it. But even she grimaced, wondering whether this punishment was too cruel for him.

Elizabeth, being a batkin, turned her gaze to the rising sun. Its warm glow caressed her pink cheeks. Beside her, the vampire burned away to ashes. Now, no one should doubt that Elizabeth was a batkin.

Elizabeth never liked the sun. She thought of it as a curse. But for this moment alone, she felt something warm welling up in her chest. Her doubt was dispelled.

She always wondered why their ancestors chose to repent—chose to cast away their dark power to walk in the light. What’s so good about walking in the light? It’s hot and tiring. She always thought their ancestors chose this path because they were afraid of humans who had won against the vampires, afraid that they would become next.

But for this moment, that doubt faded. It was time for batkins to walk in the light for real. They should hide no longer.