A, a, anyways! Only use it if it's an emergency! I'll do what I can if you send me a message!"
With those parting words, I quickly made my way from the group, past the other adventurers and past the soldiers, then finally through the village gates.
Frankly speaking, it would have been nice to leave during the night, but it would've looked too odd. Nobody would do that except for an emergency.
For that matter, I was glad that nobody decided to question me about anything. Either they were too shocked from finding out the truth about the bandits' actions, or simply prioritized escorting the prisoners. Either way, if I stayed for much longer, there was a good chance that someone would have the mind to question any inconsistencies and gaps in the stories we told.
The others couldn't be held accountable for any of it, but I could, so the moment I was gone, there was nothing they could do.
(Well, aside from getting a warrant for my arrest, but that's just something future me will have to deal with.)
Though the chances of that actually happening was likely pretty low. At worst, they would only have some suspicions about me, and none of them would be tied to any actual crimes, as I hadn't committed any as far as I was aware. Nothing that would get me into trouble as long as I never saw these adventurers again, and even if I did, as long as it's been a few years they probably wouldn't bring up such an old story on suspicion alone.
I spent the day wading through waist high grass as I went straight north rather than follow any prescribed path.
Of course I had [Spirit Form] on so that nobody would spot me, along with paying attention to any presences that happened to show up nearby. That also meant that I restored my original form. Even if it was just something small, it was nice to be able to feel my fangs in my mouth, though my eyes changing colour didn't do much, it reassured me by completing the set.
My progress was painfully slow, especially knowing just how far I had to go, but I was able to distract myself by feeding Claret and the fluffballs along the way.
The little spirits started gathering around me again the moment we left that forest, and by the time we arrived at the vacant village the numbers had grown back to their usual size. There seemed to be some newcomers, but I wasn't entirely sure. It was nothing but a feeling, and really, I doubted that I was really able to tell the difference between them aside from their element.
But it was good to be around them again.
These simple, carefree beings that seemed to have almost no concept of negativity.
It would explain quite a few things regarding Claret though, I wondered a little how much of it is her being incapable of understanding and unwilling to understand the complexities of life.
That said, she was still comforting to have and made my life brighter. None of my complaints about her were serious in the first place. Everyone has their faults. Hers just happened to involve higher brain functions.
(But really, how much is it one, and how much is it the other I wonder?)
I looked at the familiar of mine, a part of me trying to eke out some sort of answer from that face of hers.
"Ehf fommfeen mm mahaha, Maf'ah?"
Claret looked at me with a puzzled expression with her cheeks stuffed with mana treat fragments.
"Eat or speak. Pick one."
She looked at me, then the half eaten mana treat in her hands, then back to me. For a moment hope rose up in my chest.
Then she went back to eating.
"..."
I was a fool for expecting more. It wasn't like she had anything pressing to say anyways.
At the very least, she knew what was important to her. Unlike me.
Difficulty came together with complexity. Though calling myself complex would have been quite narcissistic, at the very least I couldn't' call myself simple.
When night finally came, I spread my wings and took to the air.
While my pace had dramatically improved, I still didn't go all out. Not only so that all the fluffballs could keep up, but because I wanted to take things easy.
The last little while had been difficult, so it was nice to relax while floating through the air.
I might have been in a hurry, but it wasn't so much that I couldn't take a little time for myself.
It felt like I lived for moments like this, where I could throw off all cares in the world. The shackles that bound me were broken along with gravity.
Surrounded by colourful glowing orbs, I pretended I was flying amongst the stars themselves, like some stellar voyager. Claret, as she hung off of my shoulders, warmed my back as a constant reminder that I wasn't alone, even when all was quiet.
Rolling slightly to the left, my body weaved through the colourful spirit formation before they reacted a half second later and reformed up with me as best they could. But as they were lesser spirits, fixing the formation was hardly a perfect affair, many of their new positions being completely different from their previous ones.
But I could only smile at it. It was the earnestness of their attempt that was so beautiful.
I rolled back to my right and my body weaved back through the formation before it reformed once again.
(I could do this all night.)
[You look like you're having fun.]
"I am."
Maybe she can feel how my cheeks tightened in a smile? Or maybe she thought that this was a little uncharacteristic of me?
"Looking at them like this, the spirits are really pretty, aren't they?"
[They are.]
"This is a sight not many get to see, unfortunate as it is."
[I wish that everyone could see something this beautiful.]
"Huh? They can."
[Huh?]
If I could look at Alicia with a tilted head, I would've.
Instead, I looked up.
"Every time they look up during a clear night, they can see something similar."
[...You're right! I forgot!]
The lights might have been pretty tiny from this distance, but they were plentiful and well bright enough. A starry sky that you couldn't see on Earth due to all the light pollution.
No, even that aside, maybe the human eye wasn't capable of seeing just how beautiful the night sky was on this world either.
Despite the drawbacks, this was one of the so many things I was thankful for reincarnating as a vampire. I probably didn't have a single gram of regret in my body.
A quick roll to the left, then another to the right, I enjoyed the sight of the fluffballs as they happily moved about rearranging their formation however they wanted around us.
But all good things had to come to an end.
After three days of walking during the day and flying these weird formations during the night and generally avoiding civilization, we arrived at the Brokecleft Mountain Range.
I circled around the giant mountain range, searching for that presence that should've been hiding here somewhere.
There were quite a few significant presences around, though many of them were hidden to the point that I couldn't detect them without swooping down to extend the range of my detection deeper into the crevices of the jagged hills.
It might have been a good idea to investigate them someday. There might be something pretty tasty amongst all of the hidden presences.
I continued to lazily soar over the mountain range before something rose up from a narrow crevice.
Its large wings flapped vigorously as it ascended as quickly as it could. It didn't take long before it came close enough for me to confirm that the figure was what I suspected it to be.
"Hey boss!"
The dragonkin exclaimed with a bright face as he got close enough for me to hear him.
"Can you leave immediately, or do you need time to prepare?"
"I can go! We can hunt for breakfast along the way!"
That was my intent after all. I really had no reason to linger here if Magni was ready to leave.
"But still, you really are loved by the spirits huh?"
"Well, they are cute after all."
While I hadn't really seen anyone else who also had more than one or two spirits hovering around them, it couldn't have been that special to be followed by a bunch of them, could it? It was like being followed by a whole bunch of cats after all. Even if they didn't live in your home, if you fed them regularly, they would follow you.
(Also, they really are cute. Who wouldn't want to feed them if they could see these fluffballs?)
But the dragonkin just shrugged his shoulders and fell into formation below me.
The fluffballs on the other hand didn't seem to share his casual congeniality and increased their distance from him a little.
(Was being liked by the fluffballs really that rare, or do they just don't like him specifically?)
Magni was annoying and just tolerable for the most part, so it was hard to say how much things applied with only such small sample sizes.
Then again, that was only my surface impression of him. He was decently strong at least. Maybe if I was lucky, he might turn out to be not completely annoying as well in the future.
But none of that really mattered as it stood. I needed to fulfill my promise to him for now.
With a flap of our winds, we took off at a lazy pace avoiding the roads below and directly headed towards the mountain I called home.
Dawn broke the second day after meeting up with the dragonkin.
By this point, we had finally entered the forest that surrounded the mountain and had taken to walking despite being so close to home.
Well, walking was probably stretching things.
Since Dragonkin like Magni had to sleep, he was forced to sleep during the day to recover his strength the first day after flying for half a night after we first regrouped. I secured a charge boar for ourselves while he rested, its blood for me and its meat for him
He couldn't finish the whole thing, but asking for that, even with his huge size, was probably too much.
We continued our flight until the sun's rays threatened to attack us, but by then we had gotten pretty close to home.
Mangi objected to stopping when we were so close, but I had to remind him I was a vampire, and couldn't expose my wings to the sun.
That said, while he relented there, he refused to slow down more than he had to and demanded to at least keep up a decent pace.
Maybe it was because I was also looking forward to getting home quickly now that we were so close that I didn't really put up much of a fight.
Claret on the other hand grumbled a bit and suggested that she put the oversized lizard in his place, but I just patted her on the head and ignored her words.
We weaved amongst the giant trees that made up the deeper forest, avoiding the monsters that crept through such foliage. While the pace could've been considered a jog, with our stats, we were bounding over a dozen meters per step. To say that breaking Olympic records was leisurely was a surprising understatement, but a part of me wanted to return to the safety of the cave I practically grew up in on my second life.
As much as I wanted to enjoy the scenery of this forest with a slow walk, the rays of light that pierced the canopy felt more like security death rays from some spy thriller movie than something peaceful.
(Haaa...this really is annoying though...)
I wasn't sure just how many times I had thought that to myself, but being unable to sleep made one more conscious about how half the day rejected you. But more than anything, it felt like a loss, not somehow taking advantage of the daylight hours.
It was probably the primitive loss aversion of my brain. Not only did it rule a large portion of my previous human life, but it influenced my vampiric life as well.
(Well, marketers did an amazing job of taking advantage of that primitive impulse after all.)
After a while, a whole bunch of hits appeared on [Sense Presence].
They seemed to be heading towards us, so we altered course like usual to avoid them. Yet a little while later, their formation turned to intercept with us again. We tried changing paths twice more, but they altered directions to match ours both times.
While they weren't moving so fast that we couldn't out pace them if we just sped up, it did make me wonder just what it was that was chasing after us.
It was a dozen signals formed up almost like a triple diamond formation, just what was typical for jet fighter formation flying.
But they were obviously not jet fighters. They weaved between the trees with an agility that no airborne crewed vehicle from Earth could hope to come close to matching. I could do it, but I practically broke the laws of physics like they were made of dried spaghettini.
"Lets have a look at what they are."
"Okay boss."
We stopped where we were and turned towards the approaching group.
It didn't take long before the formation came within sight.
"Stop right there~!"
Came the...commanding(?) tone...
It was really hard to describe. It sounded like a child trying to throw up an authoritative voice but failing even more miserably at it than you would first expect. Like it was the child playing pretend, but doing it a bit too playfully rather than they aught to.
But maybe it was because of the source of the voice.
The figure that yelled that out to us was tiny. Really, really tiny.
Like, she could sit in the palm of my hand sort of tiny. Like so tiny she could almost ride on one of the fluffballs realistically tiny.
This...person, was distinctly humanoid aside from her size. She had bright teal hair that floofed up and back like one of those fluffy key chain decorations. She wore something akin to a technicoloured duster made of layers and layers of what I could only think were flower pedals. In her arm was a braided stick with a shiny jewel the size of a sand grain embedded near the end of the haft and had a spear head which looked like a transparent fish scale that shimmered in the light.
Not to forget, were those wings on her back reminiscent of a blue morpho. They even shimmered slightly as they flapped like the videos I saw of the real thing long ago.
(Fairies?!)
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