Vampire Core: Reborn as the Hot Evil Vampire Lord, But I’m Socially Awkward

- [Vampire Lord Inkume] -

He’s starting to notice that the castle is connected to itself in a variety of ways.

Inkume stands in what was once an empty and destroyed washroom last time he peeked into the door. It was just a crumbled, dusty chamber full of rocks and spider webs.

Now, the door he just opened gave way gladly to his pull. A wash of mist welcomingly pushed it his way, the wicking moisture seeping out into the hallway. At first he thought it was hot steam, but it might have actually just been a few dozen ghosts who got stuck in the room together. A short, well-lit marble corridor with cloths, towels, and soaps leads to a large bath. The room is expansive, essentially being the size of a swimming pool with a variety of segmented basins that are full of water of many compositions. The outside wall of the room is missing — by design. A few columns hold the ceiling high; otherwise, the space is free to the night beyond.

The water comes in from a series of pipes that he’s sure come from the now freshly restored gardens. He had seen those refilled channels there, now that the area is cleaned up.

Does he need to bathe? Inkume lifts his arm, taking a precautionary smell.

It seems fine.

Then again, it’s been… five days now since he’s washed. Even if he was a loner in his old life, he at least made sure to be hygienic and well groomed.

[{Area Reactivated} Exotic Bath]

{Plant and Water Type Spawning Zone}

An extravagantly luxurious bathing chamber, filled with water of various mineral compositions that are said to be extremely good for one’s health and appearance. Compared to the rest of the castle, there is an unusually calm and peaceful aura within this place. It feels safe.

Currently, the water is not heated.

Room Effects:

• Bathing restores stamina and magic, heals minor wounds, and provides a comfortable moment of leisure within the horrific castle of the Vampire Lord.

The area is active! Monsters are too bashful to spawn here!

Curious.

He’s glad to have a bath. But…

Inkume kneels down, testing the water with his hand. It’s ice cold. Even as the lord of all things damned and screaming, he isn’t going to be one of those ice-bath guys. He’s just not that intense.

Better find a way to heat the water. Things are looking up for him. First the bath, maybe next the library. These little creature comforts will go a long way to making him be able to withstand living forever and ever for all eternity.

He eyes a pipe on the wall, following it down to where it descends.

Better try to figure this one out.

The Vampire Lord descends, walking down the flight of stairs from one floor to the next until he reaches what seems to be the basement.

A lone skeleton runs by, shrieking past him, and then vanishing into the darkness.

Unlike the rest of the castle, which is starting to shape up quite nicely, the basement is still pretty dank and shabby. It’s essentially still a ruin in every way that counts, other than having collapsed in on itself. A film of oddly glowing mold runs along many ways, some of it covering the face of an old mirror he walks past. He never did figure out what all the mirrors were about.

— His foot presses down on a pressure plate.

Inkume ducks just in time. A series of long, old iron spikes burst out of the wall in all manner of criss-crossing directions.

Right.

Azalea reactivated the castle’s traps, which is also interesting but does little to add to the coziness of his home. Wall-mounted horizontal guillotines aren’t in vogue at the moment.

Carefully making his way past all manner of doors and chambers, some full of a complex mixture of suspicious noises he actively chooses to ignore, the Vampire Lord reaches what he’s looking for after following the pipe to its end.

A massive furnace room.

The door has collapsed, having broken in on itself some few hundred years ago. Inside the center of the great room is a large metal boiler big enough for a giant to use as a soup bowl. Pipes run in all directions; many of them are broken in more obvious ways than others. The room is half of a disaster. It looks like something exploded in here back in the day. Blackened bones are scattered all around the floor. Some of them are stuck straight in the brickwork itself, as if the blast had launched them with enough force to lodge them in solid stone.

Inkume picks up an old glass tube that a spider has made its house.

But a lot of things here look familiar. He’s seen these sorts of implements before, somewhere else in the castle.

He drank well from the wolf. He’d better use that fresh energy to fix this place up. He can’t live in a castle with no heating, after all. He’s not an animal.

The Vampire Lord holds out his hand, power gathering in his palm as he releases some of his strength out into the room like he did back in the skeleton pit the other night.

[{Area Reactivated} The Boiler Room]

{Fire Elemental Spawning Zone}

Filled with fire, metal tanks, pipes, and pumps, the boiler room is the central node of the castle’s plumping infrastructure. Licking flames consuming super-magical fuel heat the pumped-in water from the gardens to extreme levels before sending it throughout the castle for a variety of purposes.

Room Effects:

• [Fire Elemental] spawning rate increased by 100% within the castle grounds!

• All rooms requiring steam now have access to heat!

◦ Your [Skeleton Maid] now has access to hot water, helping her toil faster!

• All steam-powered and flame traps have been reactivated!

• Restores your personal access to [Mist]-related abilities!

The area is active! Monsters are currently spawning here!

The room bursts to life. The metal pipes all along the walls shake like the veins in a quivering body. Broken, bent metal forces itself back into shape with audible groans and screeches. The bent pots and boiler reconfigure themselves. Flames burst out immediately from below the massive boiler in tendrils large enough to swallow men whole. Sparks fly out wildly, licking the damp, stone walls of the slumbering castle basement, filling it with a constant hissing as they make contact.

Other sparks fly out by themselves, stretching and yawning before rising up into the air and never falling again. Inkume looks in surprise, staring at some of them. They look like the fairies he had seen in the garden, except they’re not made out of flesh and bone. Instead, they’re little, sharp creatures made out of living fire. Each of them is barely as big as his thumb. Woken from their slumber, they begin to swarm around the boiler room, sharp, hissing voices that don’t speak with any words filling the air as they laugh and play amongst themselves — almost indifferent to his presence, except for one of them who flies over, plants a tiny, burning kiss on his cheek, and then returns to the swarm as they start playing what looks like a massive game of tag.

“Ouch…” mutters the Vampire Lord, holding the singed mark on his face.

~ [Fire Kin] ~

A Fire Kin.

Born from only the most potent of magical infernos, Fire Kin are very small, naturally occurring fire elemental monsters that have a passive, cheerful demeanor. Always underway in swarms, they love to play near their fires, and they love anyone who will play their fun games together with them. Because of this, they are especially friendly to children, who are attracted by the bright singing, dancing, and merriment they all seem to have.

Unfortunately, they do not seem to be aware of how much it hurts to be touched by them and will play and play and play until their guest seems too tired from screaming to play anymore. Their body will lie there until the hungry fire — which is alive in and of itself — creeps out to consume them.

— And when it does, a new Fire Kin is made.

Fire Kin are generally passive and will only ever attack when someone tries to harm their fire. However, if done, they will swarm together and become extremely violent.

Type: Fire Rank: D+

Common Drop: Dead Ember Rare Drop: Everliving Spark

Inkume looks at the flames rising out from below the now bubbling cauldron that water is pouring through and cooking.

The raging flames almost look like a face, coming together for a moment.

“Thank you, Master,” says the fire.

Inkume opens his mouth, not really sure what he expected. After closing it for a second, he reopens it again. “I’ll leave you to it,” replies Inkume simply before stepping back out of the room. He picks up the old door himself, setting it back into the hinge. Some unseen force grabs it, yanks it back into the frame and out of his hands, and reseals the room.

“…Good…” says the Vampire Lord to himself, walking back out down through the basement, the pipes on the wall rattling.

He’s not going to question it. It’s not worth it.

One of them by the mirror has a leak still, the tuft of steam having blasted away the gunk off of the reflective glass. He fixes it up and then gets back upstairs.

The soap basket is empty.

Inkume stands there, looking at the basket by the towel boxes. There’s no soap.

He turns his head.

[Soap Basket]

{EMPTY}

Note: Soap is made in the [Alchemy Lab].

“Of course it is,” he sighs, setting the basket back down and heading back out of the door to the room he had been in once before.

Hissing, restored pipes run along the wall, full of cold and hot water. The empty pots he had found here during his initial exploration are now full of herbs and sprouts from the restored gardens.

The Vampire Lord looks around the old alchemy lab and then throws out more of his power just like before, fixing it up.

Broken glass and cauldrons rattle, rising up into the air and clinking together as they spin around and around. Fragments piecing themselves into wholes as the broken shelves reassamble themselves and the broken-legged tables grow proudly out restored extensions of themselves, parading around the room like strutting foals, until they settle down against corners and walls. Lines and lines of potion bottles assemble themselves as the floating objects find their designated spots, the glass clinking and tinkling as it rows together like soldiers of a militia.

[{Area Reactivated} The Alchemy Lab]

{Slime Spawning Zone}

The Alchemy Lab is the main research and creation area of your castle in regards to potions, brews, elixirs, and such things. Whether to heal a wound or turn a man into a frog, anything can be made here by the right hands with the right ingredients.

Room Effects:

• [Potions] of many varieties have been added to your castle’s [Treasure Pool] and can now be randomly found from slain monsters and pilfered chests!

• All rooms requiring alchemical wares restocked.

• Having a creepy garden and a functioning laboratory has attracted a [Witch] to your castle!

◦ Witches may start a coven.

• All {Poison} traps have been reactivated!

• Restores your personal access to [Poison]-related abilities!

The area is active! Monsters are currently spawning here!

Cauldrons bubble and boil, as vapors rise all around the restored room in many colors. Strange, goopy formations begin to look over the edge of bottles and cauldrons. Slimy, odd faces begin to melt out of the potions and run to the floor. Glowing, yellow eyes turn his way, attached to oozy, dripping faces.

Perfect!

~ [Slime Girl] ~

A Slime Girl.

Slimes are extremely simple monsters, consisting of nothing more than a living mass of homogeneous, acidic gelatinous slime. They hunt prey smaller than themselves by absorbing it into their bodies. Typically, these will be critters such as rats, field mice, and big spiders.

Slime Girls are an advanced form of the base slime monster. Whereas normal slimes are generally just vague blobs the size of a pumpkin, a slime girl is a slime that has learned to manipulate its size and shape, at least in part, to mimic a human — always a female, although the features of the body and face will vary. To date, nobody knows why they do this or what exactly triggers the transformation process. The leading theory is that this copycat adaptation makes their survival more likely, as adventurers have a notorious soft spot for the transformed monsters, often pampering, feeding, and even adopting them.

In turn, these slime girls will become docile and friendly. Although it is still not recommended to allow them near small children or pets, as their hunting instincts may be triggered by them.

Type: Nature Rank: C-

Common Drop: Slime Rare Drop: Slime in a Bottle

Inkume closes the door, heading back to the bath.

Happy that he’s finally done, the Vampire Lord, looking forward to his first ever real luxury after being reborn, looks through his collection of bars of soap that have suddenly just appeared here. The baskets are full of a large variety of many colors and scents.

“Oh, lavender,” he says, pleasantly surprised, smelling one that has a soft purple color and a pleasant texture.

He reaches over to grab a towel.

— His hands find nothing.

The towel basket is empty.

A window appears next to the man, who has fallen to his knees, defeated and about to cry.

[Towel Basket]

{EMPTY}

Note: There are currently no towels.

This can’t be happening to him.

Sitting there on all fours like a beaten creature in the wild, he lifts his head. “…Fi-Fi,” calls the Vampire Lord, remembering.

It takes a second, but he can hear her running down the hallway and then breaking open the door. The skeleton maid stands there, a dripping mop slung over her shoulder. “Yes, Master?” asks Fi-Fi, standing on one leg and saluting him.

“Where are the towels?” asks Inkume, looking at her.

Fi-Fi turns her head, looking at the towel rack. “The towels — they fell apart perhaps… nine hundred and a few years ago, Master,” explains the maid. She switches legs, holding the mop with both hands, and leans against it in some other exaggeration of her posture. “But if you wish, you may take my dress,” she offers, holding the back of her arm over her face as if having been admonished to need to do so.

“Where do I get towels, Fi-Fi?” asks Inkume dryly.

“They were made in the old attic,” explains Fi-Fi in her accent, not able to get another word out before he immediately walks past her, stepping over the mop to get out of the door that she’s blocking. “Ah, but wait, Master!” calls the maid after him, stretching out a hand. Her bracelet jangles against her bones. “The attic is full of…”

But he’s already gone.

The maid sighs.

What a troublesome man he is.

“…Spiders,” she finishes, shaking her head. “Baka.”

It turns out that the term ‘the attic’ is a little problematic in regards to a castle that is made up out of a continually growing configuration of towers, halls, and chambers.

— Which attic?

He’s sure there are a hundred by now.

Inkume walks up a creaking wooden staircase, looking around himself as he enters a large, empty void of a space.

It looks much bigger than it ought to. In fact, it looks impossibly big. He can see in the darkness, but even with his enhanced vision, the Vampire Lord only sees… nothing for as far as his eyes can go.

It’s like he’s entered out into the night again, but the sky was missing. Instead, there is only infinite blackness above his head.

Of course, the floor is full of old crates and such things. Crumpled frames of what look to have once been mannequin dolls lie scattered all around the area.

This will be it. Are the towels in these boxes or something? Maybe the old Vampire Lord just bought some ten-thousand of them and kept them for a rainy day?

Inkume snaps his fingers, feeling a drain in his body as he uses even more of his power. He’s used a lot tonight, and he’s starting to feel it.

[{Area Reactivated} The Attic]

{Spider Spawning Zone}

The attic is an uncertain space that makes little sense. It stretches on from the tops of many hundreds of rooms within the castle, no matter how far apart they actually are from one another.

Room Effects:

• [Giant Spider] spawning rate increased by 100% within the castle grounds!

• [Clothes] and [Trinkets] of many varieties have been added to your castle’s [Treasure Pool] and can now be randomly found from slain monsters and pilfered chests!

• Your personal storage space has been expanded!

◦ You may now store items within [The Attic] instead of just your [Treasury]

• All castle rooms requiring miscellaneous items restocked!

The area is active! Monsters are currently spawning here!

The castle rattles, the old crates all around him standing up tall by themselves, new ones sliding out of the infinite darkness in all directions smoothly across the floor. They press together, creating rows and lines of stacks of boxes — a complex labyrinth of old junk and trinkets emerges. The mannequins restring themselves, the fake people — still half constructed — start to walk with stiff posture toward corners and shadows, from where they look out ominously toward him.

The darkness above him shimmers as things move in the infinite recesses over his head.

The Vampire Lord watches as a mass, a shape, begins to lower itself from the darkness. It’s larger than he is, with a bulbous back end and many sharp legs that skitter and chitter as it drops from a thin thread that looks much too weak to hold its considerable size aloft.

“Master…” hisses a sharp, eager voice as the body unfurls itself, twitching and spasming.

A woman’s upper torso, covered in short hairs, sits connected to the large, round body of a shiny spider with sharp, thin, chitinous legs. Her black hair covers her face and armor-covered body in part as she leans forward and down toward him. Her hands fall short of touching him before she flinches back in recoil and instead clasps them together before her own face, below her long hair that prevents him from answering his personal question of if she has two eyes or eight.

Honestly, he’s just not even surprised anymore.

Inkume raises a finger and then points it at the giant spider woman, who is swaying from side to side on her eight legs in some sort of dance that reminds him of an overly generous idle animation in a game. It’s very… bouncy. “Hey. Nice to meet you. I need a towel,” says the Vampire Lord, getting right to the point. He turns, winks, and does the mouth-clicking finger gun thing as he heads back down the staircase. “Thanks!” he calls back up into the darkness as a flurry of shapes scurry in all directions where he just was.

But he doesn’t notice.

He’s too busy thinking about what he just did. Did he really just do the finger-gun thing?

Oh God.

The giant spider girl probably thinks he’s so lame.

Why did he do that? He doesn’t know why he did that. He just got nervous seeing her — not because she was a spider, but because of the girl thing — and wanted to get out of there as fast as possible, and then it just came to him, and he didn’t think about it, and then it happened.

Tormented by the horrors of his unlife, the Vampire Lord returns into the abyss, clutching his face in anguish.

This is it. Finally.

Inkume stands before the bath, pulling out a fresh towel from the shelf that has been magically restocked. The bar of soap is held in his other hand like it was his last lifeline to this world. His clothes are dropped in a graceless heap behind him as he steps down into the water.

The disrobed outfit moves and shuffles by itself, folding together all on its own into an orderly pile.

[Impeccable Details]

Passive Ability

• When unequipped, your clothes will always fold themselves.

It’s hot.

He lets out a soft hiss, feeling that weird tingly feeling in his leg that one gets when putting an extremely cold hand under warm water in wintertime. Working his way into the bubbling, foamy water, steam rising and filling the air generously, he wades in a way until it gets deeper and then sits on an embankment. Immersed until just below his shoulders, the Vampire Lord can’t believe his good fortune.

A deep, long, overly needed sigh releases from him as he slowly leans back into a groove and listens to the quiet bubbling around him.

Floral vapors and deep aromas rise into the air from the many other pools. The sounds of pouring water coming from pipes are all that he can hear, followed by the occasional droplet here or there. Heat rushes through his body from the outside in. He hadn’t realized how much he missed heat.

Sure, this new body is always ‘comfortable’ in regards to temperature, feeling just about fine no matter how cold it got at night wherever he was, but there is something special about this radiating warmth that is a treat.

This is his first real personal reward for all of his efforts. After a full week of non-stop madness and anarchy, this is a single individual moment of pure peace, bliss, and harmonious quiet.

Inkume takes in a deep breath full of hot steam, feeling the tension finally leave his shoulders and back as he exhales. A full parade of shocks and tingles runs through him from head to toe as he stretches out his legs and spreads his arms and embraces the total silence.

Bliss.

This is paradise. Finally. After all of the trouble with the castle, the village, the people, and everything else, he finally has what he was hoping for in this new life.

— Something easygoing.

Being the Vampire Lord is a full-time job. He doesn’t get vacation days. So it will be wise to rest up as much as he can. He wouldn’t want to keep making hasty, rash decisions like he has been doing. It will end up digging the hole deeper that he’s been shoveling, until eventually he’s forced into fulfilling that evil prophecy. But with a nice hot bath now and then, and hopefully soon a fixed library, he won’t need anything else. He’ll just stay quietly content in his castle for all eternity and coast out his days.

Sure, the villagers got a little upset this week. But perhaps he’ll just… ignore them forever. He’s sure that if he goes radio-silent, they’ll settle down eventually. They won’t come back here after the way he chased them off last time. As for himself, worst case, he’ll just drink wolf blood from now on. He supposes he has access to that. It’s not ideal. But it will have to do.

He’ll work it out with the wolfgirl when she wakes up later.

That’s that. He isn’t going to get caught up in any more of this giant mess he’s landed in than he already has. No more problems, no more awkward situations, no more nonsense.

He’s done.

He’s just about retired now.

Satisfied that things really are looking up for a change, the Vampire Lord smiles, gazing out into the night. There isn’t much left of it. But the few hours he has remaining, he’s going to spend right here. He won’t move an inch until the first rays of sunlight come over the horizon.

— Is what he dreams of.

Instead of all that, Inkume’s eyes lower down toward the water a few meters away from him, where he can see the top of a half-submerged head and two wide, froggy eyes staring out from just over the surface.

“…Snatch,” says the Vampire Lord, just now realizing that he hadn’t seen the chaotic ghost all night.

“Master,” replies the ghost, her voice bubbling below the water.

“Why are you in here?” he asks, not sure he wants to know the answer.

Snatch lifts her head out of the water, her hair sticking to the sides of her face. “Well… I… I was watching you fix the castle, Master,” she explains in her wheeze. “But then I started trying to drown myself instead.”

“…You’re a ghost, Snatch,” says Inkume, reminding her calmly, his words traveling toward her, and immediately he can see her face distort. “You can’t drown.”

Her eyes twitch. “I’M NEVER GOOD ENOUGH!” screams the entity, shooting up out of the water and clawing at her face, pulling on it.

“Stop!” he orders, seeing her about to lash at herself, cry, and vanish like always in a tormented bubble of agonized wails.

— Having to obey his commands, Snatch stops, freezing in place, the water running down her undressed body merged with the steam. He clears his throat, glancing to the side as he waves downward with his finger. A second later, she drops back down, covering herself and bubbling below the surface as before. Her goopy eyes begin to drift apart, floating around and away from her face like they were a part of the foamy soap around them.

So much for his peaceful night.

But maybe this takes priority over his early retirement. The ghost seems to have a lot going on and there’s just been work-work-work. Maybe it’s only fair after all of her efforts — misguided as they were — that he gives her a minute too. Although this hardly feels like the time and place. He’s not exactly decent. But getting out and getting dressed in front of her seems more awkward than just sinking down below the foam. He’s trapped.

“Sorry that I haven’t asked yet, since we spend so much time together,” starts the Vampire Lord, leaning back again as he plays the situation off coolly. “But tell me about you, Snatch,” he asks, looking at the ghost. Her face pulls back together, a hand popping out of the water as she points at herself, confused. He nods.

She sits upright again, beaming proudly as she begins to recite a well-rehearsed recital. “My name is Ugh-You-Again. I am worthless garbage. I deserve to die forever, but I’m too stupid to do even that. I am not even worth torturing because even my screams are disappointing. I-”

“- Snatch,” interrupts the Vampire Lord firmly. She stops, looking at him and snapping out of her well-memorized repetition. That time back then must have really done a number on her. She really is completely messed up.

Realizing she made a mistake again, the ghost starts to practically vibrate. He can see her getting ready to explode. The Vampire Lord reaches out, placing a hand on her shoulder, wanting to diffuse the situation. “That’s not you,” he corrects, looking into her melting eyes. He squeezes her shoulder. “Tell me who you are,” he repeats.

“I-” The ghost seems over-stimulated, her eyes drifting every way at once as the question seems just as vague to her as the mist flowing out of the bathing area. “I’m a ghost,” she explains.

“Yes?” he asks letting go of her.

“And… I… uh -” Her face pulls back together into one coherent shape, darting around the room as if the answer to the question were scribbled on the walls somewhere. “I like… you?”

Inkume raises an eyebrow. “That’s a good start,” he sighs. “How about you tell me what your real name is?”

“…Snatch?” she guesses. He shakes his head. Seeing that she got something wrong, the ghost lifts a hand toward her face. Inkume reaches out, grabbing her wrist before she can scratch at herself again. “I don’t remember. It’s gone,” she replies, catching the idea after a moment more of it filling her head. She looks at him and then quickly turns her head away to the side, covering her face with her other hand as she steps away from him, despite him still holding her other arm. Her shoulder stretches out like a rubber band. “I remember that I came here to the castle to die,” she says.

The Vampire Lord lets go of her wrist. It snaps back in and realigns. “Why would you do that?”

— A wooden toy duck floats past between them, drifting in the gentle current of the bath.

“Because I was ugly,” explains the ghost plainly, as if it were obvious. She floats back a little, trying to escape now that she remembers again. She sinks down lower into the water. “I was so alone. Everyone hated me because I kept doing things wrong and I- and I…” she pants. “— I wanted to make it stop. So I came here, yes…” She crawls onto the sitting ledge behind her, pulling in her legs together. “I came here to the Master’s castle to die and- and…”

Inkume watches her, not really sure what to do. Neither his old life nor any of Marcus’ antics have given him any lessons on how to react in a moment like this — shared bath aside. He sinks down lower below the water.

“…And when I came here… the old Master…” she starts, dropping over sideways on a ledge like the one he’s sitting on across from him. One eye is under the water, her other half above it as she stares beyond him and into the past. “He said that I belonged here,” she explains. “He said that I didn’t even need to die to look like a monster,” says Snatch, the old haunting of her soul present in her broken gaze that reflects in the shimmering water of the bath. “I died. But I didn’t.”

She floats away, the water pouring around them as she finally closes her running eyes.

“I was too ugly to deserve to get into Heaven.”

To be alone, ostracized for one reason or another — he himself knows that feeling well. He had spent an entire past life carrying it with him, hadn’t he? But he had the good fortune of just being isolated and being able to grow in that isolation in his own way — a little like a seed that gets dropped in a quiet back alley. It was not ideal, but somehow he managed to live in a way that wasn’t intended but functional.

But what happens when a person with this same sort of fate finds themselves in an environment entirely opposite to this relative calm he had endured? When that person with troubles isn’t surrounded by endless silence like he was but is instead ringed around on all fronts by leers and jokes, by neglect, by harassment and abuse?

In these two scenarios, the same seed of the same make of flower will grow in two very different ways, both not perfect as they would have been in a better world, but one still clearly having an easier time than the other.

He grew up okay’ish. Good enough. But she, in contrast, became wilted and crooked by the battering of many years.

Honestly, all of a sudden Inkume feels more than a little bad about his ungrateful attitude toward his new life’s persistent troubles. It is, despite it’s difficulties, a new life. He got to move on to something different after his initial failure. But Snatch? She got stuck in it, trapped to be that wrong thing everyone told her she was forever and ever more.

— Maybe she deserved and needed to be reborn somewhere else and somewhere better more than he ever did?

Not really sure what he’s doing, his black heart beating its annual heartbeat perhaps, he’s gotten up and waded a step over toward the confused spirit, whom he has pulled out of the foam and against himself. Water runs between them.

“M-Master?” stutters the ghost as his arm wraps around her back, his other hand pressed against her wet hair consolingly as he hugs the wretched spirit.

He shakes his head, looking down at her. “Your story is wrong, Snatch,” explains Inkume, her face nearly shattering at that statement. “You deserve great things,” corrects the Vampire Lord, his fingers running through her hair. “And I’m sorry you didn’t get them,” he remarks in full honesty, looking down at her lost expression.

“H-huh?” she stutters, lost.

“You don’t belong here. You belong somewhere better,” he affirms, the ghost starting to shake as her facial features recede and melt into her head. “But I’m glad you are, because I would not have survived a week here in this hellhole without you.”

Snatch’s face rubber bands back together into normality, only to then break apart again in a new way as she latches on to him. It’s not dripping or running; it’s not being torn apart and stretched. It’s not shattered like crystal glass or flattened, twisted, or contorted. It’s just a face. A perfectly normal face of a perfectly normal person who begins to cry — perfectly normally — into his chest.

— As one does, undressed, in a private bath with a person they met around seven’ish days ago.

That’s just life.

The Vampire Lord strokes the back of her head as she howls out everything she has in a wordless jumble, serving this time not as a sign of her torment but as a release. Like the steam hissing through the fixed pipes, it’s a sign pressure coming out from somewhere else. She squeezes him, and he lets her, watching her for a second and then looking out toward the night beyond the open-walled bath high up in the castle.

“I- I- I love you, Master!” she sniffles, continuing her ugly crying as she stares up toward him. But then her face freezes, her thoughts once more catching up to her words.

Inkume just pets her head consolingly as she oggles him like a sad puppy. “I’ve been here for a week, Snatch,” he replies consolingly, patting her in what may be the first real touch she’s felt in a millennium. “This is the first time we had an actual conversation. You’re just confused, is all.”

Saying exactly that, he’s begun to come to his senses and looks down at the awkward bodily situation he himself has created and then quickly away from her before he looks too closely. He finally lets go of her and steps back toward his bench, sitting back down again where he started — not as free as he was hoping. The ghost’s arms have stretched back all the way with him, her hands still clinging exactly where they were a moment ago to his back, even if the rest of her is on the other side of the pool again.

Then, a second later, after realizing the same as he had everything that just happened, the ghost — finished processing everything after a long moment — unfreezes and lets out a scream before vanishing into the water. A violent splash crashes up toward the high ceilings, and then the bath starts to settle down again.

She vanishes, a surge of foam and soap floating away in all directions.

Slowly, Inkume leans back onto his seat and rubs the back of his head. He hopes that he managed this one right. He’s hardly a trained psychologist, which is clearly what she needs more than some make-believe guy with a trashy vampire book and a great haircut. But maybe she can use a friend? He’s not exactly qualified to run that department either, but he’s willing to fake it until he makes it, just like the rest of his existence.

Peace is not available to one such as him, however.

Not much later, the pale, wide-eyed face returns, bubbling and simmering beneath the water just within arm’s reach like a crocodile on the hunt. The two of them stare at each other as she floats there, her gray-tinge oddly flush. Then, after a moment of that, she mumbles some odd, guttural sound that he doesn’t understand.

“Pardon?” asks the Vampire Lord.

Her eyes narrow; the ghost clearly doesn’t want to repeat herself again. But she does. “Bite!” snaps Snatch, lifting her head out of the water, looking embarrassed at having to do so.

‘Bite’?

She wants him to bite her?

Inkume tilts his head. “But you don’t -” starts the Vampire Lord again, stopping himself while looking at the ghost, who has no blood whatsoever for him to drink. Physicality is one thing, given that she’s semi-corporeal, being made of ectoplasm. But he can’t do anything with that. Vampires drink blood. Besides, she’s made up of his own magic. In a sense, it would be — regarding his energy — if one will pardon the pun, a wash.

But maybe it’s not about pragmatism? Maybe if he were to look at the desperate ghost who is asking this from him for the second time now this week, he would see that it’s about something less sensical than that. She just wants nothing more or nothing less than what everyone and everything else here seems to have.

— And, as far as the normality of this place goes, that seems to be his attention.

“Okay,” replies the Vampire Lord, changing his tone. He looks around behind himself for his towel, wanting to grab it before he gets up so that she doesn’t see more than she needs to. He feels like the obscuring clouds of steam will be less forgiving of his brazenness a second time.

It looks like bath time is over, but it was nice. He’ll do this again tomorrow.

Snatch lights up. Before he can do anything about it, the ghost pulls her wet hair to the side and jumps out of the bubbling depths, over his legs, and onto him. Her hands land on his shoulders, her knees on either side of his legs.

“…This isn’t exactly what I meant,” says the Vampire Lord, doing his best to keep his calm. This is a precarious situation for a variety of reasons.

“B- Bite!” stutters the nervous spirit again, her fingers squeezing his shoulder as she closes her eyes, leaning in against him. In truth, he’s nervous too. This is a somewhat different situation than the others. But it’s not that he’s against it. It’s just maybe he’s as weird as awkward as she is, but he’s the Vampire Lord and can’t really let on to that.

And so he just pretends not to be.

— Weird and awkward, that is. It’s hard to beat the bloodsucker allegations at this point.

“Are you sure? It might hurt,” he explains. The ghost nods.

Well. Okay then. He’d better do it before it gets weirder.

Inkume’s grabs her. His left hand rests on her side, his thumb resting in the indent between her stomach and her thigh. His other hand rests below her head and holds it leaned to the side. The vampire’s breath dogs along her slim neck, the spirit making a series of nervous, vaguely sing-song growly noises he hasn’t heard from her before as she fights to sit still in anticipation. Her hands let go of his shoulders and then wrap back around him.

His teeth press down, his fangs sinking into her soft body that gives way readily. Snatch lets out a quick, sharp cry that stems from a gasp lost inside of her throat. Immediately, her frame shakes and quivers in response to the bite, trapped inside of the cage of his rigid arms. She instinctively writhes, pulsing from side to side, but remains stuck within the lock of his grasp. At best, some of her boneless chest squishes and compresses against him.

Unable to go anywhere else then, Snatch’s body instead starts to quite literally melt and slide down limply over Inkume, her torso falling slack against his chest as he drinks from her still mostly solid neck for as long as he still has it. To compensate for her literally slimming down thinner and thinner by the second, his arms pull in tighter and closer in on themselves. The feverish ghost’s weakening voice cries out something incomprehensible softly — her usual tone of a guttural, horrified scream having lowered into a dazed, heavily panting mumble.

He could feel her fingers digging into his back this whole time, but now they start to claw at him in a frenzy as if she were slipping off of a drop and trying to hold on to life. Snatch’s lower body arcs back in a jolt into a curve. She screams. Almost violently, her core shakes and twitches against him, spasming as if electrified, before being followed by the rest of her trembling body as she explodes into ooze and sloshes against him like an indistinct splatter of runny paint.

The ectoplasm runs off of him and back into the water.

Inkume looks at his empty hands and then down to a messy, bubbling puddle that floats on the surface of the bath. A pair of delirious, googly eyes and a toothy mouth that is laughing a quiet, raspy jackal’s wheeze adorn it.

What’s left of the ghost drifts away, wheezing, panting, mumbling, and laughing its breathless, raspy heart out, until it washes down a drain on the side of the bath.

Inkume sits there, watching her circle the drain and then sink down into the pipe.

[No Experience Points Gained]

You have drank ectoplasm!

It’s magical properties are significant, but they were already yours to begin with. Some of the ghost’s strength temporarily returns to you for the duration of the night.

The wooden toy duck from before floats back across the bath in the other direction. It seems to have taken a wrong turn earlier.

He looks at it. The duck looks at him.

It knows.

The Vampire Lord points a finger at it. “You saw nothing,” he says, narrowing his eyes.

Not responding, the duck keeps floating on its way. It saw everything. But it knows better than to think to betray the secrets of its dark master.

- [Azalea] -

The priestess clenches her hands together, sitting before an altar inside of Lord Inkume’s castle.

She shouldn’t be out here; it’s dangerous. But she can’t help but want to explore, even if it is dangerous. The priestess couldn’t really explain why in a manner that makes sense. The man saved her life. She saved his. They’re even on a mercantile level.

But… there’s something about him that she doesn’t understand — something she needs to find out before she goes back home to her stupid brother and the villagers.

He’s a monster, but he’s a monster with a heart. How can that be?

During her outing, she found this place inside of the castle. It’s a chapel — empty, but a chapel nonetheless. Although, honestly, calling it a cathedral might be more accurate. The ceilings are vaulted and high, the pillars adorned with gargoyles and sacraments of the faith. There are rows and rows of pews, filled with nothing but the hopes that they might one day be used. Candles sit all around the cathedral’s many altars and nooks, melted — but not lit in a long time until she got here and gave them life once more.

[The Cathedral]

Nested deep within the heart of the castle is a cathedral, dedicated to the glory of Heaven above. Or at least it was, back in its time of former glory. Now it is simply a hollow casket, having been abandoned to the ruins.

Why would a vampire of all things have its own church, inside of its own home, even?

The only thing the elven priestess Azalea can think of is that, even in its wretched misery, trapped in an eternal undeath, Inkume still reaches out and prays to God and Heaven for mercy and aid. Perhaps he’s done so for a long time now?

No cruel beast would ever do such a thing; only a man trapped within the body of one would. The candles — everything — it all paints a picture in her mind’s eye of a person who awoke tormented from his grave and yet yearned to return to its comforting rest. Then, when all else failed, he came to God and prayed here at this dutifully rebuilt church, until eventually even his immortal breath ran out of strength and the candles burned out. They then stayed just as unlit as his deadened hope.

Maybe he had a love back then in that old life of his before he changed into a monster? Azalea recalls him saying a name once back when they met — Sarah. He seemed so lost when he spoke it. In her story, she’s gone and he’s still here, all by himself, rich, handsome, and mysteriously dangerous, trapped in the darkness of this cold castle all by himself together with the rest of the hungry, cruel dead who are nothing like him. His heart is broken but still beats on within its scarred and wounded harness.

But she herself is alive, and she’s here now, here, with him — perhaps even by the machinations of fate itself. She can’t see it any other way.

“I can fix him,” says Azalea to Heaven, her hands unfolding as she looks at the icon above the altar that she’s kneeling at. Her fingers run over the marks on her neck, feeling a tingle on her skin.