“When *they* killed my mother, it was never like that.”

    A blatant, undisguised hatred was visible on her face as she spoke.

    “A half-vampire… a dhampir, then.”

    The daughter of the enemy who killed her mother. It wasn’t hard to grasp the meaning of those words.

    “So you planned to use us for revenge.”

    “Yes.”

    The hunter Lucia said. I asked her back.

    “You know the price of that action, don’t you?”

    “…I was prepared for it from the start.”

    There was no way to use the Black Serpent and get away with it unharmed. She must have known that too.

    “Oh my, did you think being ‘prepared’ would be enough to let you off the hook?”

    Scarlett, who had approached her without her noticing, sneered coldly.

    “It seems you’ll need a more special form of punishment.”

    “Whatever you imagine, it will be beyond anything you can conceive.”

    Aria, guarding my side, was no different.

    Only Alice, as if such talk was none of her business, merely licked her lips in front of the fallen hunters.

    “Otherwise, there’s no meaning in inflicting pain.”

    The price for using a serpent is never cheap. Yet, Lucia’s expression remained unchanged.

    Seeing her unwavering demeanor, I felt a slight interest and asked.

    “How much do you know about pain?”

    “Well, it might be trivial compared to the pain you know.”

    Lucia spoke as if it concerned someone else.

    “What I’ve experienced is just the common pain found everywhere in the world.”

    A slight self-mockery tinged her voice as she spoke.

    “It’s just… a little bit more venomous.”

    Pain that was common everywhere, just a little more venomous. I could vaguely guess without asking again. Nevertheless, I wanted to ask again.

    “Tell me.”

    So I asked.

    “What did they do to you?”

    “Lucia, you damned bitch…!”

    “Oh my, who gave the pig permission to speak?”

    Scarlett smiled coldly at the hunter Billy, who was raising his voice. Immediately after, a scream echoed.

    Thud, thud-thud.

    Nothing visibly cut off. But along with the hunter’s scream, something lump-like fell from his mouth.

    It was a tongue.

    “Alice, can I eat the pig’s tongue?!”

    “Hehehe, a tongue should be fine.”

    “Captain, what about the Captain?!”

    “…Do as you please.”

    “Okay!”

    With that, the shadow beneath Alice’s feet grinned, then swallowed the fallen tongue. As if a fish had surged from the sea to snatch a bird.

    “Mmm, human tongue is indeed a delicacy! Oh! It was a pig, wasn’t it!”

    Alice laughed like an innocent child as she said that. Scarlett and Aria let out cold snorts, as if they’d heard a funny joke. I didn’t laugh.

    They were the same.

    Finally understanding the situation unfolding before them, the hunters’ expressions stiffened.

    They had picked the wrong opponents. It wasn’t just ‘wrong’.

    It wasn’t death they feared.

    Dying for revenge was the most desirable outcome. That’s why they hadn’t heeded the organization’s warning.

    But they had never wished for this kind of ending.

    “When I was born, I didn’t know what they had done to my mother.”

    She said that, pointing at the hunter Billy whose tongue had been cut out.

    “But I only know that until I was born, they deliberately kept my mother alive without killing her, tormenting her. Endlessly, endlessly, until I grew old enough to discern right from wrong—.”

    Lucia continued speaking calmly.

    “That man kept my mother a secret, and called himself my father. He was strict, but still treated me tenderly, like a true daughter.”

    I said nothing.

    “I, knowing nothing, liked that father.”

    I merely listened.

    “One day, that father showed me my wounded mother, whom he had imprisoned in the basement, and said this.”

    “What did he say?”

    “He said, ‘This vampire is the enemy who killed your mother. We finally found her.’”

    “…”

    “I got angry. Because I thought this monster had killed my beloved mother…”

    Lucia continued.

    “I also participated in tormenting her. Thinking that since she was a monster, whatever I did didn’t matter, that this was righteous revenge. But the funny thing is…”

    Her voice broke into sobs mid-sentence.

    “As I cursed her, hated her, and inflicted pain upon her, my mother, my mother…”

    So I waited. Until her sobs ceased and she regained her composure.

    “My mother could have told me the truth at any time, right in front of me.”

    Yet she didn’t speak.

    “Even until the very last moment, when I took her final breath—.”

    Because at the moment such a truth was revealed, there was no knowing what would happen to Lucia.

    “They were laughing, watching my mother being murdered by her own daughter’s hands.”

    The presence of maternal love in vampires wasn’t clearly known, but at least for her, it existed.

    “How did you find out the truth?”

    “My drunken ‘father’ said it himself. He boasted proudly that it was the greatest pain he could inflict upon her.”

    The greatest pain. I silently frowned.

    “He even passed out after that, remembering nothing. So I pretended not to know too.”

    “Even knowing that, you still followed him?”

    “…Yes.”

    She was raised by the organization and trained in the same way by the man who became a vampire hunter, just as they had taught him.

    Of course, the ‘special treatment’ they had given him was impossible, but for her, with vampire blood mixed in her veins, it posed no problem.

    “What are those scars on your face?”

    “Traces of training.”

    She said.

    “For them, it was like a game, packaged under that name.”

    In a voice more self-mocking than ever. Those were the traces of her life, the true nature of the scars carved on her face.

    “That’s why I waited for this day.”

    “I see.”

    “The day all of them would know true pain.”

    I nodded calmly. That was the whole story. A harsh story. But, as Lucia said, it was a common pain found everywhere.

    “So, do you expect us to obediently torture them as you wish?”

    “They insulted the Captain of the Black Serpent. Isn’t that reason enough?”

    Seeing that, I replied.

    “You, who speak like that, tried to use us.”

    “…Yes. I’m already prepared for any pain.”

    Lucia firmed her resolve and nodded. Watching her, I silently pulled out a cigarette from my pocket and put it in my mouth. The tip spontaneously ignited.

    Simultaneously—embers flared up on the bodies of the hunters there.

    .

    “!”

    The male hunters’ screams echoed amid the burning agony of their burns. Leaving them struggling in the pain of their flesh charring alive, Lucia shouted.

    “W-What are you doing?!”

    “Didn’t you say you were prepared for any pain?”

    I asked.

    “There is no such thing as the ideal revenge you wish for.”

    “!”

    “That is ‘your share of pain’ for trying to use the serpent.”

    “Then, what about them?! They insulted you! You said you’d give them a pain worse than death!”

    “Because I thought this much was enough.”

    Her face distorted, as if the pain of their bodies burning alive wasn’t enough to satisfy her. Not caring at all about their howling, frenzied voices.

    “Don’t make me laugh! This is barely, barely…!”

    “Insufficient?”

    “Yes!”

    “They probably thought the same.”

    I said, looking at the hunters who had already turned to ash. Losing loved ones at the hands of vampires, they must have thought no pain was enough. In that regard, there was no significant difference between her and those men.

    “Your revenge is over. At least their end was a miserable death by fire. Isn’t that enough?”

    “How could it be enough…! I still remember what those bastards did! I can never forget it!”

    “They are dead.”

    I said.

    “Yet, not forgetting them, remembering them, and endlessly reliving the pain is your choice.”

    In a voice that showed no further interest in her.

    “Whether you live trapped in the delusions of a non-existent past, or put revenge behind you and live out the rest of your life, either way, it’s none of my business.”

    This was merely a trivial, meaningless happening.

    “Go. I have no further business with you.”

    “Are you letting her go?”

    Aria, beside me, asked. I replied.

    “She has paid the price she needed to pay. It will be painful enough.”

    “Hehe, as expected of the Captain-nim.”

    “Truly like Rain.”

    At those words, Aria chuckled as if amused. Scarlett was also the same.

    “Because that is truly a pain worse than death.”

    “…”

    I didn’t reply. In a sense, it was pain. But I hadn’t made that choice merely for the sake of pain.

    “There’s a mountain of work to do in the Holy Kingdom.”

    It was my own form of mercy. Not caring if its true meaning wasn’t fully conveyed.

    “There’s no time to waste on trivial matters like this.”

    *

    The man from the organization, who had warned the hunters earlier, was watching the castle of the Bathory Earldom through a telescope from a nearby ridge.

    “To lay a hand on the Jinjo of the Black Serpent of all things, foolish bastards.”

    Mocking their foolishness.

    But as he found nothing clearly visible, he looked around for a long time, then resigned himself and was about to stand up when—

    “!”

    He suddenly realized the presence of a man standing behind him, startled, and fell on his backside.

    The man, whose arrival time was unknown, was smiling, impeccably dressed in a suit.

    He was the smiling man.

    *

    Some time after the Holy Maiden’s assassination of the King, and the revelation of the royal family’s truth about her.

    Amidst rising tensions at the border with the Grand Duchy of Germania, the populace, confronted with a shocking truth, resolved upon a single action.

    An overthrow that would fundamentally overturn the nation’s system: revolution.

    “Do you wish to protect this nation?”

    “Revolution or death!”

    “Revolution, or death!”

    In front of the populace, who had begun to overturn the capital, led by such a revolution, Charlotte, the new ruler of the Holy Kingdom, silently bit her lip.

    In this situation, where the nation had already lost its core military strength at the hands of the Black Serpent, and the Holy Maiden, now their subordinate, had completely overthrown the country and demanded a systemic change.

    Ironically, the last thing she believed in were the words of the man who had destroyed everything in this country.

    “If you wish to protect it, follow my words from now on.”

    “I have no interest in whatever fate befalls this nation. If you cooperate smoothly, I promise to maintain the current system and the form of the state.”

    She recalled the words that man had spoken to her that day.

    Recalling those words, Charlotte asked again.

    “I will… follow your words. No matter what they are.”

    Pleadingly, in a voice filled with humiliation and shame, unfitting for a new leader of a nation succeeding the king.

    “So please… keep your promise.”

    Towards the man who had appeared by her side at that moment.

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