The World Is Mine For The Taking

After having dinner with everyone, I decided that I’d spend the night here.

This place was completely new, so naturally, the room and the bed I used to sleep in back then were long gone without leaving anything behind. The former orphanage had been completely destroyed during the Republic’s attack, and because of that, everything that had once been part of it had disappeared along with it. There wasn’t even a single trace left of the room I used to call mine, which honestly felt a little strange after all this time.

Because of that, I naturally ended up sleeping in the same room as the other kids for the night.

"Hey, Big Brother," one of them asked while looking up at me with bright, curious eyes. "You’re really strong, aren’t you?"

It was such an innocent and straightforward question that I couldn’t really think of any reason to give him anything other than an equally honest answer.

"Well, yeah," I replied with a small smile. "I’d say I’m pretty strong."

"That’s so cool!" another child exclaimed almost immediately, his excitement spreading across the room before anyone else could even react.

"You’re the one who fought those machines back then, right, Big Bro?"

"He is! He is! I saw him myself with my own eyes!" another one quickly chimed in before I even had the chance to answer the question.

The entire room suddenly became lively with cheerful voices bouncing around from one corner to another.

Everyone seemed genuinely excited about it, talking over one another as though they had just discovered some incredible secret, even though I hadn’t really done anything just now besides answering a simple question.

"I wish I could be strong too, just like you, Big Bro."

"Yeah! I wish I could become that strong too someday."

"If I were strong enough, I’d protect everyone living here with everything I have."

Hearing those words honestly warmed my heart a little more than I expected.

They were still just kids, yet they were already thinking about protecting other people instead of only worrying about themselves. It was a surprisingly sweet thing to hear from children their age, especially considering the lives they had already been forced to live.

"But we’re all going to become priests someday," another child said after taking a moment to think about it. "I think that’s another way of protecting people too, isn’t it?"

Well, he wasn’t exactly wrong about that.

Objectively speaking, being a priest wasn’t considered one of the more impressive occupations in this world. People usually admired knights, famous adventurers, powerful mages, or influential nobles far more than members of the church.

Even so, priests were still deeply respected because of everything they contributed to the communities they served.

They didn’t just spread the words and the story of Goddess Jeanne throughout the kingdom.

They also looked after people who had nowhere else to go, offering food, shelter, guidance, and comfort to those who had been left completely alone in the world. More importantly than anything else, they took in children who had become orphans at an age where they should have been worrying about friends, and silly little adventures instead of wondering how they were going to survive another day.

Maybe...

Maybe that was exactly why so many of these kids wanted to become priests themselves someday.

They had once been saved by people wearing those robes with gentle smiles on their faces.

Now they wanted to become the ones wearing those same robes so they could save someone else in return.

Honestly, I couldn’t think of a better reason than that.

After chatting for a little while longer, the excitement in the room slowly died down, and one after another, the children gradually drifted off to sleep.

Even while sleeping, they somehow managed to stay surprisingly rowdy.

Some of them mumbled random things in their sleep, some rolled around so much that they nearly pushed the others off their beds, and one kid somehow ended up hugging another without even waking up. Watching all of it unfold was honestly kind of funny, and I had to hold back a laugh because the last thing I wanted was to wake them up again after they had finally settled down.

Thankfully, I didn’t really need much sleep these days anyway.

Rather than lying there pretending to sleep, I quietly got up from my bed, carefully slipped out of the room without making too much noise, and stepped outside to enjoy the cool night air for a little while.

I slowly lifted my head and looked up at the night sky above me.

It felt strangely peaceful despite everything that had been happening recently.

Looking at the stars scattered across the darkness, nobody would ever guess that an entire continent was currently caught in the middle of a war.

Everything around me was completely quiet.

The gentle breeze brushed against my face without a care in the world.

The sounds of insects quietly filled the silence around the orphanage.

It almost made the war feel like something that belonged to a completely different world instead of this one.

Still...

Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

The people who knew nothing about war deserved to keep living peacefully for as long as they possibly could.

Children especially shouldn’t have to understand what war truly meant or what it took away from people.

They deserved peaceful nights like this where they could laugh, sleep, and dream without fear.

That was how the world was supposed to be from the very beginning.

While those thoughts continued drifting through my mind, the front door of the orphanage slowly creaked open behind me.

A familiar figure quietly stepped outside into the cool night.

It was Alice.

She was wearing her sleepwear instead of the nun’s habit that I had grown so used to seeing her wear over the years.

Come to think of it, this might have actually been the first time I’d ever seen her dressed like this ever since we had gone our separate ways after I entered the academy.

Whenever I came back to visit, she was always dressed in her usual nun’s clothing, almost as though she never took it off.

Seeing her dressed so casually felt oddly refreshing, and somehow made her seem a little closer than usual.

"You can’t sleep?" she asked as she slowly walked over to where I was standing.

"Yeah," I answered while turning toward her with a small smile. "Looks like you can’t sleep either tonight."

She gently shook her head before letting out a quiet little sigh.

"I don’t really need much sleep anymore," she said softly. "For some reason, my body just doesn’t require as much of it as it used to."

That was honestly an interesting thing to hear coming from her.

It sounded strangely similar to my own situation these days, which immediately caught my attention.

Curious about what had changed, I quietly looked at her for a brief moment before checking the amount of life force flowing through her body.

The moment I did that, I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow in surprise.

It was enormous.

Honestly, it was far greater than what I had expected to find inside her.

Maybe that was because of the vampire blood running through her veins.

That honestly seemed like the most reasonable explanation I could think of at the moment.

"Are you okay?" she suddenly asked, breaking the silence between us.

The question caught me slightly off guard since I hadn’t expected her to ask something like that.

"Why are you asking me that all of a sudden?" I replied while looking at her.

"Well..." she began softly before taking a small breath. "You’ve been really busy lately, haven’t you?"

She slowly looked up toward the night sky for a few quiet moments before continuing.

"I’ve heard you’ve been involved in all sorts of things recently. People say you’ve been helping the Kingdom prepare its defenses in case the Republic launches another attack like the last one."

A faint smile slowly appeared on her face before she looked back at me again.

"And during that second invasion... you were the one who protected the entire kingdom by using a huge barrier, weren’t you?"

She met my eyes without looking away for even a second.

"I figured it was you."

There wasn’t even the slightest hint of doubt in her voice when she said those words.

"I can recognize your mana now."

Silence quietly settled between us for several long seconds as neither of us spoke.

Then she softly broke that silence once again.

"You’ve been carrying the responsibility of protecting the kingdom..."

Her eyes met mine once more.

"...and you’re planning to keep fighting for it too, aren’t you?"