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“Vampires are really tricky…” Sighed Julia. “To think they can have so many things, how can we possibly fight their organization? And they’re even resentful! Probably they saw how I was slowly stopping their underground activities and attempted to murder me.” Julia seemed very tired, sitting over a seat, and asking a butler for some tea. “bring me some tea, Hector.”
“Very well my lady. With aromatic herbs?” He asked.
“Yes, I want to get this stench of dead vampire.” Sighed Julia..
“Understood. Do you desire some cookies with it? recently we received a few new pastries as well.” Said Hector.
“That would be good…” Said Julia while nodding like a spoiled girl, Hector seems to be a butler that had been sticking with her for a long time.
“Oh! May everyone want to continue this meeting upstairs now that I remember? Eating down here would be annoying, the stench won’t go away in various days, drinking tea and eating here would be displeasing.” The Butler was very considerate, and he convinced us to quickly walk upstairs from this crummy underground room, sitting around a small circular table, he quickly brought aromatic tea that soothed the heart and the mind, alongside a few cakes, cheesecake, and cookies.
It was so good! There were three types of cheesecake, with strawberry sauce on top and raw cream cheese, baked cheesecake that was very puffy and tasty, with chocolate coverture, and then there was fruit cheesecake kuchen, a combination of kuchen and cheesecake cream with a lot of varied and colorful fruits on top.
There were also chocolate cookies, some had jam on top, and they all looked so pretty, and to boot, there were pieces of chiffon cake as well as chocolate cake. Oh my god, this is the life of a true noble! Eating tasty and colorful pastries with some tea in a finely crafted teacup, wow! I think I can get used to this life, hehe.
Anyways, as we enjoyed teatime while the sun slowly fell from the horizon, we began to discuss the pain in the ass that Vampires were, Emiliano seemed to be sticking with us, we might see him more in the future as he is an important figure in the duchy as a Court Mage, an assistant magician of Julia, his life magic can come in handy, he has several spells that Emeraldine doesn’t have. Emeraldine herself specializes more in Nature and Light than Life Magic after all.
Nature can sometimes have spells similar to Life magic, it can also heal and do other things, but it cannot be as specializing as Life Magic by itself, so Emiliano is a pretty good asset. Nonetheless, the topic of conversation was now… how deep were the damn Vampires.
As Julia learned more from what I’ve told to her, she grew more and more worried, she was almost assassinated some time ago already by a very strong Vampire that could had possibly slain all his knights if it wasn’t because my ghost snake wasn’t there to poison him and use my eyes on him to fuck him over.
And now, she learned that they got Necromancy at their side, amazing alchemists, the power of the Fragment of Evil for some reason and are most likely colluding with other nobles from different duchies. They are a massive organization of the underground, and the biggest threat of this entire Kingdom, if not the entire Continent of Midgard, but we have our own problems to take care of so we can’t worry about the other Kingdoms, that’s more late-game content.
“Vampires are… way too powerful! What do we even doooo? Uaaaagggh! …Sip.” Julia cried, before calming down and then sipping some tea, sighing and then calming down. I guess she really wanted to scream that.
“They are powerful but not without weaknesses. We have slain a couple of them already. We know that they can get defeated with enough teamwork.” I said. “You can leave the work to us, but… your knights, they’re way too weak, and there might be the case where we’ll need their assistance too.”
“R-Right…” Sighed Julia. “I am happy you’re so reliable, Marie, and the rest…” Sighed Julia once more. “But you mean my knights? Yeah they’re trash.”
Julia was talking more honestly with us now, she really relaxed very quickly. I guess after being shocked so many times her tongue got loosen and she started to talk from the depths of her soul.
“The average level of my Knights is around Level 25, most of them are Nobles, and some very talented commoner guards that became knights. They are supposedly strong! Some of them are born with innate Skills and the noble bloodlines provide high level caps, but the dungeon and the forest are too dangerous, training the newbies to gain EXP is always dangerous, and they often come back with many wounds and some even dead, it is a lot of sacrifices I have to put in resources to raise them into being stronger…” Sighed Julia.
“Hm, I guess we’ll also have to do some babysitting, helping them level up by beating the monsters so they can kill them together to gain EXP. Hahh, that takes me back.” I sighed. I remember those times I do that with my people so they can level up. Even when we arrived at the demon kingdom’s ruins, I still help them get EXP through giving them kills.
“Babysitting? Oh! Right! A-Are you willing to help them level up by letting them leech EXP from your kills, Marie?!” Asked Julia, smiling happily as her eyes shone brightly.
“Nah, I am making them do the entire kill! You know? I used to cut down the arms and legs of bandits we caught enslaving people, and then I made the slaves kill them by stabbing them, all the dozens of slaves got a little stab, so everyone gained EXP! You gotta abuse the system, Julia!” I said.
“E-Eeh? I-I see…” Muttered Julia, feeling frightened by just what I had said rather casually, oops.
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