Michael sat down on the chair opposite to her and looked at her suspiciously, even if she wasn’t exactly evil, she just mind controlled someone in front of him.
How could he not be cautious about that? What if she does this to everyone she comes across, what if the only reason she became the matron was because of her inherent vampiric abilities?
You are thinking too much about this, as she said, talk it out.
‘Right..’
As Michael was about to start asking questions, the matron spoke first.
“My name is Lily, and you are?”
“Michael, that’s Astraea, and lastly, Orin” Michael introduced himself and the others in order.
Lily finally took a breath of relief, she appreciated not having to fight over a misunderstanding.
“I am the matron because I was selected to be as such, the higher ups already knew I was a vampire” She explained to ease Michael’s doubt.
However, he was not convinced ‘That sounds like bullshit.’
“So out of all the people in this entire city, they chose a vampire?”
“Exactly” She nodded absentmindedly, perhaps avoiding or completely not understanding his question.
However, he knew better than anyone that there was some deeper secret behind it, he could see it in her eyes.
But it seemed like she could not talk about it.
‘Anyway to check if someone is under an oath?’ He asked for the system’s advice, it would help confirm his suspicions
Not really, oaths are made on the soul, you can’t see or feel that far yet.
‘I see…’ Michael turned his gaze back to Lily.
“Are there more like you? Vampires I mean.”
“Yes, though not a lot, we are seen as a threat by most” Lily replied with a solemn look and proceeded to explain in further detail.
“You see… vampires have been portrayed by humans as some sort of bloodsuckers when in reality, we are just yet another race” She paused for a moment and continued.
“That being said, some hold malice against us because we are part demon, part undead, we hold demonic powers as well as very long life spans, we pretty much can’t die from normal means.”
Michael could see the proud expression on Lily’s face, although they were hated, she seemed to be satisfied of what she was.
However, the next words that came out of her mind shocked him as he didn’t expect this kind of development.
“We, the vampires, wrote stories about ourselves at the start, trying to paint ourselves as just another race, yet the humans from the distant past were more evil than now, they stole our texts and published them.”
‘Oh.. I can see what she means by portrayed as bloodsuckers, they most likely changed to content of the stories.’
That’s right, I have some knowledge regarding the past and some of the stories she is talking about, only a very small amount reached the light, yet it wasn’t able to make their situation any better.
Michael listened as she explained more about the vampires and how most of them don’t mean harm.
The ones who do, suffered great prejudice under the humans and came to hate everyone, which coupled with their inherent bloodlust, proved to further damage their image.
“Now then.. the vampire you killed, did it actually attack you first?” Lily asked with a tinge of doubt, even if most vampires weren’t exactly friendly with one another, a member of their race dying still made them cautious.
Especially if the person in front of them was the one who did it.
Michael thought for a moment before replying “I tried waking it-him up and he attacked me, I wasn’t confident in holding on until it calmed down so I had no choice but to kill i-him.”
She listened along with a neutral look, before nodding in understanding.
“I see.. I can understand how someone as weak as you could not defend against a frenzied vampire..”
Although she said that matter of factly, Michael felt as though she tried deliberately insulting him.
And Astraea, thought so too apparently as she began standing up and stretching out her fingertips, however, Michael’s gaze calmed her down.
“I apologize, if there was anything I could have done besides that, I would have, however, the undead made me pretty alert.” He explained without thinking too much about it.
However, her eyes widened in fury and the pressure in the room suddenly increased.
“The undead? What do you mean?” She said in a threatening tone, making Michael unable to move.
It felt as though his own blood was being controlled to freeze him in place, it was unpleasant.
However, he was not going to be intimidated, as he summoned a small shield behind her head and smacked her with it, causing her fierce expression to crumble.
She did try sending a small amount of blood to intercept it, but due to the system’s parrying and her weak attack, he was able to pass by and connect his little attack.
He didn’t mean any harm by it and she seemed to notice it too, as her eyes softened and she sighed.
“Sorry about that, I lost my composure” Lily said and created tiny lines of blood to deflect Astraea’s thread attacks.
“Astraea…” Michael facepalmed and turned his gaze back to Lily.
“I found undead above the buried vampire, not sure what they were trying to do though.” He explained and noticed the expression on her face turn sour.
‘Does she know something about this..?’
“They have been appearing all around the world randomly, those vampires are in cahoots with the undead, it’s been like this for many years now.” She said while holding her forehead in frustration.
‘Appeared? That’s exactly what happened back at the forest as well..’ Michael thought with suspicion and waited for her to elaborate.
“All vampires are fundamentally the same, however, some are born and raised under.. different circumstances, those being among the undead or demons tend to be evil.”
As Michael noticed she was starting to gloss over the appearing part, he interjected “Could you tell me more about what you mean by appearing?”
Lily looked back at him with slight confusion “You don’t know who the Lost are?” Her tone indicated clear suspicion.
‘No clue..’ Michael couldn’t help but express some discomfort, Amanda warned him against telling others about his world.
And it seemed like pretty common knowledge if she was reacting like this.
“I.. forgot?” Michael said with a straight face as no excuse came to mind.
“…” Lily was speechless but decided to explain anyway.
“The Lost are those who suddenly appear out of nowhere, that is the only thing known about them, hence why it’s random, no one knows why that was happening…”
“One moment they aren’t there, and the next they are, you can immediately feel them if you have your mana perception extended around you, but sometimes they can bypass it.”
“Though for a vampire to be lost… is certainly unusual, along with the undead at that..” She contemplated out loud while Michael was simply paying attention to her.
But she simply began repeating the words, trying to make sense of them, yet to him, it looked odd.
‘Has she gone crazy?’ Michael thought with a raised eyebrow.
As he saw that her stupor was not going away, he decided to simply introduce Orin, Lily did not seem like a bad person, at least not that he could tell.
Michael got her attention and recalled how he found Orin and what happened after that, mentioning roughly where he found the vampire as well.
“Yeah it’s no problem… here” She handed him a piece of paper to sign.
‘Hmm..? Oh right’ Michael understood that Orin was most likely illiterate, so he wrote down all of the information about him that he knew and handed the paper back to her.
Lily didn’t even give it a glance as she put it back on the shelf behind her and looked back at Michael.
“I will be staying here for quite some time, if you need anything, don’t hesitate to visit.”
‘Hmm.. the conversation was pretty simple, though I expected to get a bit more out of it..’ Michael sighed inwardly and patted Orin’s head before heading out with Astraea.
Just before he exited, Lily spoke up “Michael, friendly advice coming from a fellow vampire, but watch your back in this city, some might not be as reasonable as I was.”
“I’ll keep that in mind..” Michael gave Orin one last glance and finally left.
His destination, the adventurer’s guild.
