I was worried that we wouldn't be able to suggest anything that the person would prefer over what those gods had offered, but at the same time, I wouldn't know without trying. Maybe if I showing her the sheer difference in combat ability would be enough?
Then again, it also begged the question whether if the promise of death would really be enough of a deterrent, or at least quench her desire enough to accept an alternative I could give her. Things would be even worse if the gods that sent her after me were willing to keep reincarnating her over and over until she finished her job.
Well, bringing her onto our side would fix that, if it was possible.
On the other hand, if they didn't, then it was possible that they'd at least send other assassins if this one failed.
(...that would make things endless.)
When I really thought about it, I didn't see how to resolve this overall situation. Everything was a temporary fix, with varying degrees of breathing room provided by them. The only way to permanently solve things was to convince the ones sending people like that armoured woman to stop.
But my opponent was a god, or at least the closest equivalent to one I knew of. It was difficult to think that any means to face off against such beings existed to mere mortals like myself.
As weird as it was to call a vampire mortal, I could die in the end. Even if in pretty much all stories they were unaging, death was still hanging somewhere at the end of it. I could only hope that it would be pushed reasonably far back.
The three of us discussed things for a while longer, but in the end we were only able to come to the conclusion that we wouldn't know what would work without trying.
Unable to break through the deadlock, once we got cleaned up, we tried returning to the fountain room to confront the woman. Even if things didn't go well, I doubted that she would be able to stop us from running away and trying later.
But contrary to my expectation, she wasn't there. No, rather, it was obvious she wouldn't have stayed at the fountain room. I just hadn't put much thought into what to expect.
We tried looking around the vicinity on the floor, but were unable to find any trace of the woman. I doubted she would've died already, as if my attack one her in, her body would've still been around in the fountain room. And if she was in such a bad condition that she would've died to the weak monsters on this floor, then unless if she was some massive moron, she wouldn't have even tried stepping foot outside of the fountain room.
Against my expectation, we had completely lost track of the armoured woman.
I glanced at her still open status screen, but there had been no change on it. Rather, most likely, it was a snapshot from when Alicia originally used [Scan], and thus didn't reflect the changes made since. At the very least, she should've taken some damage when I hit her, no matter how well her armour protected her, she did fly pretty far.
Not being able to go forward regarding that woman, we instead chose to enjoy a quick meal. For Alicia and I, the blood of a nearby obsidian bear. It was a little bit earthy and weak tasting, but otherwise delicious. For Claret was a mana treat, and like usual she happily ate holding it in both hands like a chipmunk.
Basking in the feeling of a filled belly, even if only a little bit, I floated slowly through the air in a position reminiscent to sleeping under a tree during a picnic. Below me, Claret was still eating and I enjoyed the smile devoid of any worries she wore from the corner of my eye.
Meanwhile I scrolled through that woman's stats half-heartedly.
It really was a pretty odd looking status page. No remarkable abilities, rank one skills one after another. It made me even wonder if she even tried using anything aside from [Sword Technique]. The way her attributes leaned towards [Strength], I was inclined to think that she probably just walked up to every monster and slashed at them with her sword to lazily level up.
(Huh?)
There were two skills I had never heard of before on that woman's skill list. While it wasn't much of a surprise that there were people with skills I had never heard of, or at least couldn't remember, these particular skills stood out to me.
[Track Artifact] and [Sense Vampire].
The former was described as a skill that allowed the user to track the location of a prespecified object. The latter allowed the user to identify any vampires within sight.
While I wasn't sure what [Track Artifact] was set to find, the two felt like they were tailor made to find me. The first would allow the user to find my location, and the latter to pinpoint any vampires, even from inside a crowd.
While a quick glance through the code didn't tell me anything new about [Track Artifact], the [Sense Vampire] seemed to specifically pinpoint any vampires in sight. They were oddly pinpoint when it came to finding me.
There was one more odd thing about this. [Track Artifact] had an additional mention that it was something called a [limited skill]. Most likely it was connected to the fact that there weren't any acquisition methods in the code, much like the custom skills I had made.
While I had presumed that my Administrator Rights was the reason why I could edit skills, this suggested that there were more ways to do so.
It was a very disconcerting thought, and I hoped that it wasn't true, but I couldn't find [Track Artifact] amongst the master skill list when I had a look to make sure. [Sense Vampire] was in the list, along with a massive ton of other related skills, but the acquisition methods for all of them were pretty severe, including having intimate knowledge on the chosen group.
It was difficult to imagine that woman having spent the effort to learn that much about vampires to gain the skill legitimately. Together with [Track Artifact], the evidence that she had simply received all those skills at rank one when she was reincarnated was piling up to the point that it was almost impossible to deny.
Especially when she had the skill [Local Language] like I did. Looking at Claret, she didn't have that skill, and I couldn't remember Alicia having it either. While I hadn't used [Scan] on that many people, that woman was the only person I had ever seen with the skill aside from myself.
But if I had to pick, [Track Artifact] was quite a troubling skill to see. While I didn't know exactly what it was that she used to track me, considering how she stated that some sort of detection she was using was horribly unreliable and only worked for a bit here and there, it was possible to extrapolate a few possibilities.
Or rather, there really was only one if it wasn't a problem with the skill itself, but the target it was tracking.
If it was capable of tracking me myself, then there was no reason why it would've suddenly stopped working when she got close to me. It wasn't like this was some sort of game where the long range sensor couldn't track something when the target got within a certain distance.
Being unreliable was one thing, it was another if it didn't work most of the time for no apparent reason. I doubted whoever sent that assassin would've half-assed the detection skill they gave her to the point that it rarely worked at all.
Most likely, it was something which was difficult to meet its detection requirement, and only by unforeseen circumstances. If it detected me directly, then while it did make sense to a certain degree if it simply didn't work while I was inside a dungeon, that didn't make much sense once the fact that she found out which floor I was on so easily. That could've been hand waved if she figured out I was inside the dungeon and had been checking all the fountain rooms she had access to, but the chances of me being at any one of them rather than exploring the floor itself was slim.
It would've been far better to have just waited outside for me to show up, than risk not finding me inside and loosing my location not knowing when I came out.
Wile I could've just sat in this dungeon for months on end screwing over that plan, until I learned that she even existed, I had no reason to, and she shouldn't have had reason to think otherwise either. There was no reason to stay inside the dungeon for more than a few days at a time unless if you were hiding inside of it.
(...my own home being an exception.)
Coming that far in my reasoning, it was obvious what it was that she was tracking if being inside or out of a special space was the reason why she had trouble tracking it, and that was the printout that I took, recording my reincarnation.
It was something that didn't come from this world, and hence would've been entirely unique. While there was a risk that I would've destroyed or discarded it, it might've been possible to track its remains, and if she found out where I was born in this world, it would've been a great place to start to track me.
If I presumed that it couldn't be tracked while inside of my magic bag, then that would solve all the questions I had regarding how she found me.
If my theory was right, then as long as I kept the sheet inside of my bag, she couldn't use the skill to track me, and if that was the case, then I could simply fly far away, and she would never be able to find me. In theory.
But this was my life I was gambling with, and there was no guarantee that even if I did that, the ones that sent her wouldn't send more assassins, and maybe with better ways to find me, like by searching for all vampire traces.
That was something I wanted to avoid altogether. If they started slaughtering vampires trying to find me, then my cowardice would've been responsible for those deaths, even if it was indirectly. I might've been able to happily ignore such things if I wasn't aware, but the moment I thought of that possibility, if something like it did end up happening my guilt would crush me.
I didn't have any choice but to deal with this in a way that didn't cause collateral damage.
The question was, if I did allow myself to be tracked, would that woman actually show up?
I could only hope that she didn't already realize that I was too strong to beat. I needed to make sure that she no longer would try to kill me first, even if she were to die and reincarnate once more.
When I looked up from thinking, Claret was looking at me from the side. It seemed like she had long since finished eating and was standing by for me.
"Are you done eating Claret?"
"Yes Master. It was very delicious as always."
"There there."
I pat the dark spirit on the head as she happily hugged my waist. Despite how she was like just an hour before, the change in mood was pretty surprising. It was as if she had the memory of a goldfish.
"Regarding that woman from earlier..."
Before I could say any more, Claret's arms tightened around me and she buried her face into my chest.
"...so, have either of you come up with any ideas as to what we can do to convince her to quit her mission?"
<I haven't.>
Instead of answering verbally, the dark spirit simply shook her head before burying her face in between my mounds even further.
"Haaa. I haven't either. I've only got short term solutions, and that'll only make things more difficult in the long run."
"We need to track her down and kill her then!"
Suddenly, Claret's face popped out from below. There was clear hate in those eyes of hers once again. It seemed rather than a goldfish memory, she simply went from one emotional extreme to the next. Not like I ever really thought her memory was bad. As biased as they were, the stories she told was proof alone that she had a pretty good memory.
The way she was often at the extreme ends of her emotions made me worry about what was wrong with her hormones, until I remembered that blood probably didn't flow through her veins in the first place.
Considering the wounds she took before when I was fighting that hydra, there was a surprisingly little amount of bleeding compared to the wounds she had sustained. Even when she hugged me like this, I couldn't feel any sort of heartbeat from her chest.
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