Chapter 163
The light couldn’t be too bright since it might attract nearby monsters. What Do-Jin created was barely a faint glow, but he wasn’t worried. If he kept sending it like this, she’d see it eventually.
At most, she’d notice it within a week or so...
This place was safe, so spending a week here like this was nothing to him. There was a certain charm in watching the Floating Continent hanging in the distant sky every night and flashing his tiny signal toward the black ocean beneath it.
Hah... it’s cold as hell.
Do-Jin almost regretted not bringing some kind of communication tool along. Right as that thought crossed his mind, he saw a small dot moving in the distance. Thanks to his Silent Night, the darkness wasn’t a problem. If he used Farsight from here, he could overcome most of the distance issues too.
There’s no way she saw it this fast... right?
The dot approached so fast he didn’t even have time to finish the thought.
“Do-Jin!” Karin’s voice echoed out.
Her breathing never wavered because she didn’t breathe, and her pale skin never flushed because her blood never warmed. Even so, the smile on her face was so bright it felt human in the purest sense, making her emotions impossible to miss.
“Karin.” Do-Jin smiled back at her. “I thought it’d take you a few days to notice the signal.”
She looked so genuinely happy to see him that it naturally put him in a good mood too. It really had been a long time.
“I always space out when I’m not reading, so now I just look toward this side during that time!”
Do-Jin felt a slight weight in his chest, like an owner who’d left his dog waiting alone at home for too long. “I’ll come more often from now on.”
“Really? What brings you here this time? How long are you staying? You’re not leaving right away, right...?” Her voice wavered near the end, the worry slipping through.
Do-Jin soothed her quickly. “I’m staying for a while. I need to take a look around the Floating Continent.”
Karin beamed again.
“But first, I need to get permission from the Grand Duke.”
The Floating Continent belonged to the Grand Duke’s territory. Even when traveling on the upper surface instead of the inverted underside, his permission was mandatory.
He wouldn’t complain even if I wandered around silently, but it’s still better to show him some respect.
Karin nodded vigorously as if to say there was nothing to worry about. “Don’t worry! Father will give permission right away!”
“Then let’s go.”
Karin grabbed Do-Jin and took off. A terrifying rush of speed swallowed them. Even though she moderated her pace for his sake, the trip to the Floating Continent didn’t take long.
Karin flew under the continent, her destination the Principality that clung upside down to its underside. As they drew closer, Do-Jin felt gravity start to twist, and a moment later it flipped completely. The inverted world that unfolded before them was the Shadow Principality.
“Father! We have a visi—” Karin shouted brightly while holding Do-Jin, but she froze mid-sentence. A cloud of black mist whipped past and snatched Do-Jin away, leaving her hands suddenly empty. “Ah! Father!”
She flapped her wings in a panic after the Grand Duke stole Do-Jin from her the moment they arrived.
***
When Do-Jin opened his eyes, he found himself in the Grand Duke’s study. The Archmage really did have a unique way of kidnapping someone.
“You have arrived.” The Grand Duke, Tirund, looked Do-Jin over from head to toe. “You’ve grown fast.”
What caught the duke’s attention most was how completely Do-Jin had adapted to Silent Night, something he’d barely handled before.
“It has been a while, Your Grace.”
“To me, it feels like someone who disappeared yesterday simply reappeared today. However... my child seemed to find the waiting rather difficult.”
He had no idea what the hell he was supposed to say to that. There was no “Affinity Decreased” message popping up, so the duke clearly wasn’t angry, but Do-Jin still felt a bit guilty.
“I’m sorr—” he started apologizing out of pure reflex but was interrupted by the duke’s laugh.
“There’s nothing to apologize for. For beings like us, who endure something close to eternity, that kind of waiting is a blessing in its own way.” He glanced to the side for a moment, then went on, “If I keep you any longer, she’ll resent me. I’ll permit anything you intend to do on the Floating Continent, so stay as long as you can.”
He raised his hand as he finished speaking. Black mist rose like creeping smoke and swallowed Do-Jin whole. Before he could open his mouth to say anything, he was forcibly teleported again, and he dropped right in front of Karin.
“Ah!”
Karin had been flying down the hallway to retrieve what was taken from her when she saw Do-Jin fall from thin air. She lunged forward and caught him immediately.
“I got you back!”
Am I just an object to you guys...? Do-Jin thought, annoyed that he’d been snatched away in an instant and handed back just as fast. These damn vampires.
He clenched his teeth and steadied the nausea churning in his stomach from being tossed around like luggage.
***
Do-Jin didn’t head to the surface right away. He couldn’t bring himself to immediately jump into business when Karin had been waiting for him with that kind of devotion, so he started with a bribe.
When Do-Jin pulled out a pile of books he’d collected from the Empire’s big cities, Karin gave it one glance before letting out, “Ooooh!”
Her eyes sparkled with fierce intensity when she realized they were mostly recent publications.
“New books are wonderful, but I’m even more curious about you, Do-Jin. Could you tell me what kinds of adventures you had in the Central Continent while you were away?”
They spent time talking about everything that had happened. Do-Jin went over his experiences again, polishing and adjusting the details where he needed to. He talked about the Tower of Trials and the three spirits, the adventure he shared with the middle-aged dwarf, and the battle where he fought alongside everyone against the monstrous baby. Every time a story ended, Karin reacted with awe, sympathy, joy, or excitement. She took particular interest in the story about the girl who had wandered the forest while dead.
“W-what happened to her? What do we do? No matter how much I think about it, I can’t imagine a happy ending! The masked girl, the wolf, the deer... they’re all far too tragic...” Karin stared at him with anxious, trembling eyes as she waited for the ending.
Do-Jin spoke with a regretful look in his eyes. “When I opened my eyes, the Watcher was gone. It had completely faded away. The wolf spirit and the deer spirit were dying too.”
“No!”
Karin hit the floor in despair, crying out in frustration, and the entire floor boomed. If the castle weren’t reinforced by the Grand Duke’s magic, a normal building would’ve had a clean hole punched straight through it.
“It felt pretty damn awful. Both spirits died, and I ended up alone, so I started digging graves. One for the Watcher who saved me and vanished, and more for the other kids who’d been in the same situation as that girl.”
Karin showed him exactly what the eyes of a completely devastated person looked like. Her reactions were so good that it was almost entertaining to keep talking. Her expressions shifted so wildly that he actually started feeling bad for bullying her with the depressing parts.
“But then, just when I finished the graves and turned to leave, a little wolf spirit was born. The Watcher found her way back as a spirit.”
Karin clapped both hands over her mouth. “Is that true? You’re not making it up because you thought I’d cry, right?”
“Why the hell would I make that up?”
Do-Jin quietly called for the protagonist of the story. The wolf spirit, who’d been dozing, woke up and appeared.
Anemone, who had been about to happily run to Do-Jin, recoiled. A pale white woman stood there staring at her with trembling, emotional eyes. That alone was enough to spook her.
I don’t like this...
The undead naturally clashed with spirits. She didn’t know what Karin was exactly, but whatever she was radiated a nasty kind of energy, and Anemone instinctively stepped back.
“Ah! I’m sorry! Spirits must hate us!” Karin apologized on reflex and backed up in a hurry.
“Anemone, she’s the one I told you about.”
The one you told me about before? Anemone sifted through her memories of past conversations with Do-Jin. They’d talked a lot, but there were only so many white, ominous, undead-vibe girls that fit this description.
“Are you... Karin?” Anemone tilted her head as she asked, and Karin’s head bobbed up and down at hyper-speed.
Ever since hearing about the vampire girl, Anemone had wanted to meet her at least once. Even though they were completely different in many ways, she still felt a strange kinship. As someone who had existed while technically dead, she understood parts of Karin’s existence.
A vampire and a spirit shouldn’t have matched at all, yet the two shared a surprising number of similarities. Even in completely different worlds, they both knew what it meant to live with “immortality” and “isolation.”
“Do you drink human blood?”
Karin answered brightly. “No! Elders can live just fine without human blood!”
“Then you’re not a vampire.”
“I can drink it!”
“Humans can drink blood too,” Anemone argued.
“It’s a little different. I gain power when I drink the blood of humans, or well... other beings.”
Somehow the two of them had slipped into a conversation so naturally that Do-Jin found it hard to butt in. Seeing them warm up to each other made him feel oddly pleased. He’d hoped Karin and Anemone would get along.
Karin leaned forward, curious. “Then Anemone, are you completely linked with Do-Jin?”
Anemone nodded. “It’s the kind of contract where a spirit chooses a partner and stays with them until the moment they die.”
Karin’s eyes sparkled. “I’m jealous.”
Anemone puffed up with pride at Karin’s reaction, letting out a smug hum.
Karin clasped her hands together. “It’s a shame. It’d be wonderful if vampires had contracts like that too.”
Anemone tilted her head. “What kind of contracts do vampires have?”
Karin sighed with a bitter smile. “They’re built entirely on a master-servant structure. The one above controls every aspect of the one below. It’s complete servitude. They even control emotions. Once the contract is made, the one below becomes nothing more than a puppet.”
Anemone shivered. “That’s scary.”
“Yes. Vampires are terrifying beings.” Karin nodded.
She smiled sadly, almost like she was mocking herself. Anemone reached over and tapped her shoulder lightly, as if to comfort her.
“But you’re not scary. I’m a spirit, and I don’t feel weird around you at all. You felt a bit... off at first, but not in a bad way, and definitely not now.”
Karin brightened right away. “I’ve been trying really hard to become a vampire who isn’t scary to anyone.”
Do-Jin let out a short, dry laugh. He remembered the way Karin had once tried to act like some terrifying monster, only to break character in a few seconds. At least the two of them genuinely looked like they’d become good friends.