Chapter 208 (4/7): Turning the Key

Camilla waited anxiously by Kagriss’s side as the latter tried to unlock the seal keeping the hunters unconscious. She watched Kagriss’s ever expression, hoping for good news so that they could get out of the dungeon as fast as possible.

However, Kagriss frowned.

Icy fingers touched Camilla’s heart as she realized that things weren’t going to go as well as she hoped. They have the patient and the lock, and they have the key, so there was no reason that failure should occur.

Without her noticing, Cadaelia had come over and was staring at the feather stone that Kagriss had been pressing against Eva’s forehead. “Is that the key?” she asked.

Kagriss was so focused on her work that she didn’t reply, so Camilla answered in her place. “I think so, yes.”

“Where did you get it?”

That was something that Cadaelia didn’t need to know so Camilla didn’t say anything this time. Instead, she dropped down to her knees and leveled with Kagriss. “... is something the matter?” she asked, starting and stopping until she finally managed to get her question out. She didn’t really want to know the answer for fear that it might be something bad, but she asked anyway because her impatience got the better of her.

If she took too, the frontlines might collapse despite Ismelda’s best efforts. There were too many weak links and Ismelda couldn’t shore them all up.

“The key isn’t reacting,” Kagriss said. “I’m holding it to her head and from the looks of it, the formations on the stone and the seal match up, but I can’t get it to work.”

The key didn’t work. Camilla frowned. If the key and lock matched, then there needed to be a hand to push the key in and turn it. She had a guess, and if she was right, then she might be able to be that key. “Let me try…”

Kagriss handed the stone over without hesitation and moved aside. Camilla shifted over until she was hovering over Eva’s head.

The feather stone rested in her hands, scalding her palm and if she held it for much longer, it might burn through her skin altogether. Kagriss had endured all this pain without even showing it on her face, so she could too. Or she could be smart about it and cushion her hand with blood mana…

No, that wouldn’t work. There was a key that still needed to be turned. Camilla pressed the stone on Eva’s forehead and conjured up some of her mana before converting it to blood mana. When there was enough blood mana to cover the stone and part of Eva’s forehead, she turned it into holy mana—being careful to not let it touch any of her undead mana—and pushed it into the stone.

That was the turning of the key. Like the teeth on a key pushed back the pins on the lock, her mana flooded through the stone and was shaped. The shaped mana moved from the stone into Eva’s forehead and, like a turning key, unlocked the seal. A little wasn’t enough. She had to form even more holy mana, much more than was necessary for a basic healing spell. Just when Camilla suspected that she was going about it the wrong way and that her guess had been wrong, the seal shattered into energy that disappeared into the ambience.

“You did it!” Kagriss and Cadaelia said at the same time. Cadaelia’s eyes were wide open in shock while Kagriss had a smile on her face, full of pride, as if saying “that’s my Milla.” Camilla blushed and nodded.

But when she looked around and saw all of the people around her that were still unconscious, her happiness evaporated like dew in the sun. There were fifty left—fifty people for whom she had suffer the pain of holding that stupid feather stone, and for whom she had to go to the trouble of producing a huge amount of mana.

Just the thought of it made her feel faint.

If Kagriss noticed how she felt, she didn’t show it. Kagriss was sitting next to Eva and the shaking latter awake, but Eva was like someone in a deep sleep and she wasn’t easy to wake up. Finally, Kagriss narrowed her eyes and pinched Eva’s arm, hard.

The arm jerked away and Eva’s eyes flew open, full of fear, crying out from the pain. Her voice attracted the attention of everyone nearby and they gasped when they saw that one of the previously sealed hunters had woken up.

However, whatever followed was none of Camilla’s business. She still had more than fifty more people to go through. With a heavy heart, she took the feather stone and moved on to her next patient, another person from Lavitte’s party—Marion the vampire. As she gritted her teeth against the burning pain on her palm and turned her precious mana into holy mana, she idly wondered how she would go about curing a sealed undead. It seemed that the cure would be the very thing to kill that undead. Maybe that was the point, if the undead can survive the seal in the first place.

When she finished, Camilla spared a moment to see how Eva was doing. Her eyes twitched when she found Eva hugging Kagriss and Kagriss hugging her right back. When Eva planted a kiss on Kagriss’s cheeks, a twinge of jealousy flitted through her heart.

The moment that happened, Kagriss looked up without any warning, not even giving Camilla time to turn away and pretend that she saw nothing.

Since she was already caught, Camilla decided to meet Kagriss’s gaze, who smiled at her.

“Are you jealous, Milla? I’m so happy. I’ve never seen you jealous before,” she said through their bond. Then she gave Camilla an alluring smile that showed off her lips that were pink and filled with life since Kagriss evolved. Without meaning to, Camilla found herself being drawn to her lips.

She quickly shook her head. “Jealous? I’m not jealous. Hmph.” She turned away and continued to her next patient. It was Lavitte. By sheer coincidence, there were three members of Lavitte’s party close together, which probably meant they all passed out at around the same time.

When she pressed the stone to Lavitte’s head, Camilla heard an even bigger ruckus behind her. Without even turning, she knew that it was the sound of Eva jumping onto the newly unsealed Marion and was currently violently waking him up.

Under the force of Eva’s powerful sisterly love, Marion was up in an instant, just in time for Camilla to finish with Lavitte. Unable to help herself, she turned and saw Eva embracing Marion as passionately as she hugged Kagriss. There were tears in her eyes.

The little bit of jealousy faded away, leaving Camilla feeling a bit guilty about it… or she would be if Kagriss didn’t tease her or laugh about it like she was doing now. Camilla glared at Kagriss who held her glance without any shame.

“Hmph.”

She moved on. This time the hunter wasn’t someone she recognized. As Camilla placed the stone over the hunter’s head, she hesitated. She had no idea if she had the willpower to wake everyone up, or if she had enough time before they had to retreat. Part of her wanted to just skip everyone else and just wake Lavitte’s party up first, followed by the other hunters from Dianene and Celrantis.

There was nothing wrong with favoring those she was familiar with. The only problem was the complaints that might come from the other people that she ignored.

As she mulled over her decision, someone ran into her from behind and gave her a big hug. She smelled the sweet, blood breath that could only come from a vampire’s mouth.

“Kagriss told me that you were the one that saved us. Thank you, Camilla. Is it just me or did you get taller?” Eva asked.

“... You’re very touchy, aren’t you?” Camilla asked, freezing as something soft and squishy pushed onto her back. She tried not to think about it, or compare Eva with Kagriss. She also ignored the laugh coming over from Kagriss’s side of the bond.

“You’re the strange one for not being touchy. As a whole, we vampires are very big on personal contact. The exceptions are the vampire lords and their holdover habits from their old race. Were you not very touchy?”

“I was not. And can you get off? I’m busy.” Camille began to struggle, lightly at first and steadily becoming more insistent.

Eva squeezed tighter from a single moment before letting go and backing away, raising her hand. “Okay, okay. Thank you again for saving us, by the way.” She went back to stand by her brother’s side. A predatory glint flashed through her eyes, like Camilla was prey and Eva was the predator.

As much as it didn’t make sense, Camilla didn’t mind it. It was natural for a vampire to desire the blood of a higher ranking vampire. What she did mind was Kagriss’s mirth.

“Did you tell her to do this?”

“Maaaybe. I thought it’d be funny. By the way, did you know that vampires tend to take on more than one partner at a time?” Kagriss asked.

“...what?” Camilla asked, caught off guard by the sudden jump in topic as well as the fact that she did not ask for. With a blush, she repeated her query for good measure, just in case Kagriss didn’t hear her the first time. “I mean… what?”

“Oh, Milla, you heard me. Normal vampires tend to enter multiple relations at the same time. When I woke Eva up, she thought I saved her, so she hugged me and kissed me,” Kagriss whispered. “To put it simply, she wanted to repay me with her body.”

Camilla’s face was scorching hot, as if the part of her body in contact with the feather stone was not her hand but her cheeks—two feather stones, one glued to each cheek. Kagriss giggled again.

“What happened to that jealousy, Milla? Don’t worry, I didn’t agree. I told her that it was you and that if she wanted to repay someone, it’d have to be you. It’s awfully adorable.”

With Kagriss’s explanation, Camilla would have to be an idiot to not understand. It all became clear now. There had been nothing platonic about Eva hugging Kagriss! It was one hundred percent romantic and her instincts had been right.

And Kagriss found that funny!

“No, I found you adorable.”

“Hmph. You could’ve just told her no, but you sent her my way instead. I was worried that you might get upset, you know?” Camilla muttered. She finished up another patient and when she looked to see her handiwork, she found that she had pressed down a bit too hard on the stone and now there was a feather-shaped indent on the hunter’s forehead. It must have been her stress. “Aren’t you afraid at all that she might steal me away from you?”

She turned and looked at Kagriss when she asked that question. Kagriss blinked and then a savage smile crossed her face for an instant, but Camilla clearly saw it. A heavy murderous intent accompanied that smile, strong enough to make Camilla shiver.

That was enough of an answer and Camilla nodded in satisfaction that she and Kagriss were in agreement. “You’re more than enough for me, Kagriss. Am I enough for you?”

“Of course I am.”

After being together for so long, they’ve exchanged many words of love. However, this was the first time that any of their feelings toward one another have been tested by a third party, and it was the first time that Kagriss told her that she will have no one except her.

To be told that left Camilla giddy and blazed through the rest of the unconscious hunters on that emotional high. She barely felt tired after it all, and the experience was made all the sweeter when Kagriss came to help her halfway through, fearing that she might not have enough mana.

With each hunter that woke up, the frontlines grew stronger, easily replacing the hunters that had been killed. Even Beitra who had been in a rush to retreat stood down and Ismelda took command of the battlefield with Cadaelia at her side.

When Camilla woke up the last hunters, she was utterly spent, but she didn’t mind, since Kagriss was carrying her on her back.

The healers did their best to treat the injured in one go and Ismelda swept her eyes over the whole cave. Except for the hunters that were busy holding back the tide of golems, everyone who was awake was watching her.

Seeing that all the hunters were ready, Ismelda lifted her sword.

“Retreat!”