Long ago, in a very distant past.

There was an era when darkness ruled the world.

A time when giants used hills as pillows to sleep, mermaids sang sitting on rocks, and half-human, half-beast magic creatures raced across the plains.

The people of the underground sang that this bountiful earth was now theirs.

The people of the underground were certain that they were the victors of this war.

It couldn’t be otherwise.

The power of the great king, the wise minister, and the eight brave generals was truly enormous.

The human nations that fought against them crumbled one by one, and the hateful enemies of heaven hid cowardly behind clouds, ignoring whether the earth burned or not.

All that remained was a small kingdom at the eastern end and the defeated soldiers gathered around it.

The people of the underground believed without a doubt that once they captured the Queen of Ashes, who dared to refuse the merciful king’s offer of surrender, and turned their nation into a wasteland, everything would be over.

It wasn’t so. It was a miscalculation. The end did not come.

The eight generals, thought to be invincible, began to be subjugated one by one.

An unbelievable miracle created by a single human knight.

The people of the underground tried everything to capture and kill the knight, but the humans protected him, clinging to their ankles even at the cost of their own lives.

Seeing the humans’ struggle, the heavenly realm also quickly intervened on earth, and more generals fell to the hands of angels.

Of course, the generals didn’t fall helplessly either.

Three of the four wings that the heavenly realm boasted of were broken, and the remaining one was also severely injured.

The knight who faced the generals became increasingly damaged, to the point where there were more parts that weren’t his original body than those that were when fighting the last general.

However, even so, the knight finally grasped victory, and the great king who lost all his generals regretfully withdrew his army.

It would have been nice if everything had ended there, but reality wasn’t so kind.

Remnants, who couldn’t return with the king, were left on the surface.

The fates of these remnants varied.

Some charged towards the land of ashes, crying for revenge.

Some belatedly returned to the underground through the path the king had opened again.

And some hid themselves on the surface, neither continuing to fight nor returning to their land.

Having tasted the abundance of the surface, they no longer wanted to live a painful life underground.

Believing that no matter how strong the knight was, his lifespan was only human, so if they bided their time, the day where they could roam free would surely come.

It was a ridiculous miscalculation.

The knight they feared was a madman who didn’t stop fighting even after changing his body into something not human, and the emerald sky was more persistent than they could imagine.

Those who challenged the land of ashes were exterminated first, followed by the people of the underground scattered across the continent.

Those who had turned away even from the last chance left by the king’s mercy were thoroughly hunted down one by one, without even a path to escape.

Once covering the entire continent, they became so scarce that their existence could only be known through documents.

The “father” who turned the “Master of the Island” into a vampire was a descendant of the extremely few survivors of such hunts, not even a handful.

He always maintained an arrogant attitude and incessantly talked about what the old war was like and how great their clan was.

The “Master of the Island” could not understand such a father at all.

If he had been a direct participant in that war, it might have been understandable, but the “Master of the Island’s” father was someone who hadn’t directly experienced that war, merely hearing stories of that time from older generation vampires.

A man who had never experienced the era of glory, never seen the king or generals, and was simply bitten by one of the poorly chosen defeated soldiers, forcibly inheriting that cursed destiny.

No matter how he tried to pretend to live an elegant life with the unique abilities of vampires, he had to abandon everything and flee at the slightest sense of the Kingdom of Heaven’s gaze. The “Master of the Island” couldn’t understand, or rather, didn’t want to understand what was so enjoyable about such a miserable life that he would boast about it as if it were something to be proud of.

It would be too pitiful to say that he needed such things as a crutch because life would be too wretched otherwise.

The father, whoever turned that father into a vampire, whoever was above them.

And the “Master of the Island’s” own situation, forced to inherit that cursed fate completely against their will.

I don’t know about the fight involving the underground, surface, and heavens. I just want to live peacefully and quietly.

That was the only wish that the “Master of the Island”, Camilla, harbored.

It was for this alone that she crossed the sea several times, nearly dying—even though she wanted to go further, she couldn’t—and hid herself on an uninhabited island, even creating a barrier.

But at this moment.

Camilla couldn’t help but feel the malice of the world.

“…So, while trying to drive out the intruders, all the main force monsters were ground up, but there were zero enemy losses. Moreover, after just poking at them while they were just playing on the beach, now they’re trying to invade the center of the island?”

At this question that was either a sigh or a lament, the evil spirits each furtively glanced around, sweating profusely.

Camilla felt a throbbing in her head.

In fact, Camilla had no intention whatsoever of giving such intense self-awareness to the evil spirits.

Golems that perform set orders and guard the house. That was exactly the role she wanted from her subordinates.

But at some point, the evil spirits started distinguishing each other with names they had decided among themselves without her giving any, developing special abilities that didn’t exist initially through self-modification, and even playing something like the Four Heavenly Kings game.

It seemed the problem was mixing all sorts of miscellaneous things like alchemy and necromancy and whatnot, trying to reduce production and maintenance costs.

Still, their performance had been reliable so far, and they had made great contributions in defeating those annoying fish-people, so she had just left them be, but it had finally led to an accident.

“Haa, there’s no helping it.”

Camilla realized that she had no choice but to take action herself.

Even though she was hiding in such a secretive place, Camilla was a powerful vampire.

Superhuman strength, regeneration, bat transformation, creating minions, charm, suggestion, and so on—she had pretty much all the abilities that were said to be possessed by “legendary vampires” circulating in the world.

She hid herself and avoided conflicts with the outside not because she feared mere adventurers, but because she was wary of catching the eye of the Kingdom of Heaven and having that terrifying heavenly army descend.

I’ll just subdue them, erase their memories, and send them back.

Thinking this, she tapped the mirror on the wall with her finger.

The smooth surface of the mirror rippled like water, then reflected the appearance of the intruders.

A knight in plain armor, a black witch, a golden-haired girl, and—

“…Huh?”

Camilla rubbed her eyes for a moment.

The green-haired woman. Looking at her, an inexplicable sense of discomfort surged.

And she realized the identity of that discomfort.

The aura of a kindred, which she had never felt from others since her father was subjugated.

That was why she was dumbfounded.

“H-how, how is she fine under the sun?”

While vampires had several weaknesses, the most representative among them was the sun.

It was precisely why she chose such a yang-filled uninhabited island as her hiding place, thinking no vampire would stay in such a place—though somehow those damn fish-people had figured it out.

Camilla, too, could “temporarily” endure under the sun by drawing up mana, but it was only possible by consuming massive amounts of power.

But what about that green-haired woman?

Without any signs of struggle, without any signs of her skin burning, she was walking under the sun as if it were nothing.

Her movements were full of openings, as if she had never been involved in fighting in her life, but to Camilla, that made her seem even more suspicious.

After the great war of the past, the daily lives of vampires were always full of vigilance and self-preservation. Those who couldn’t do that died off first. No, even those who did all died except for Camilla.

In such a situation, to be fine while having such a defenseless attitude?

…Is she incredibly strong enough for that to be possible?

In Camilla’s mind, part of the “old glory” anecdotes that her father had enthusiastically talked about came to mind.

— Originally, we nobles of the night were elites serving one of the eight generals.

— That person was the noblest among all the nobles of the night, and his wisdom reached the heavens, able to perceive all things from just a small clue.

— Silver, sun, flowing water. All sorts of weaknesses originally fatal to us were meaningless before him.

— Foolish ones babble that he perished along with one of those ugly wings in the heavens, but I know. That he couldn’t have fallen so easily. He will surely be resurrected. Someday he will return to this land again with the great king, and once again lead us nobles of the night!

“…”

Camilla’s face, already not easy to describe as having a good complexion, turned even paler.

She tried hard to deny the assumption that had come to her mind.

“I-it must be a misunderstanding.”

To prove that the green-haired woman was not a vampire, she looked more clearly at the image reflected in the mirror.

Camilla’s eyes glowed strangely, beginning to read not just the outward appearance but also the essence.

Mana with a brilliant red light, like freshly spilled blood.

A supremely beautiful and majestic cup at the deepest part of that mana.

And, coexisting mixed with it, pure white holy… power?

Camilla’s thoughts stopped.

With a face like seeing an ice chunk spewing pure white cold in the middle of burning flames, she blankly opened her mouth.

“A n-noble of the night. Resurrected after obtaining holy power to take revenge on the heavens…!!”

Camilla’s body trembled.

She briefly considered escape, but no matter how she thought about it, the chances of successful escape didn’t seem very high.

No, even if she succeeded, she had nowhere else to go now.

Wait, calm down. That person clearly wasn’t interested in the center of the island at first. That means she didn’t come targeting me from the beginning.

Various strategies appeared, disappeared, and reassembled in her mind.

A resolute emotion filled Camilla’s eyes.

She vigorously rushed out of the mansion.

Exactly one minute later.

“I-I have committed rudeness by not recognizing the great one. Please have mercy…!”

At the sight of the vampire trembling and kneeling on the ground with her head bowed, question marks simultaneously appeared over the heads of the Tin Knight’s party.

***

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