The Reborn Witch had a nice 'Tea Time' with the Dragon Queen today
Chapter 80: The Hero Smiled as the Vampire Became a Statue

Chapter 80: The Hero Smiled as the Vampire Became a Statue

La Llorona trembled, her noble demeanor had cracked just as much as the gargoyles’ dust Yasen swept away, as she glanced up at the unknown human with extradonarily more mana than even the Dragon Queen in her true form.

"Hm...it seems too boring to just kill you, since...well, you look like you’re really the last vampire alive, huh?" A furrow marred the cute hero who planned to finish her ’completed’ genocidal record for the vampire, as she tilted her head. "Hm...ah! That’s it! How about we introduce ourselves first?! My name is Alice, and as you probably already know, I’m the one who killed your families, lovers, friends, brothers, sisters, you name it. And yours?"

"La-La Llorona..."

"Wow, so long. I would just call you La La! Is that alright, La....La?"

The last syllable trailing off was more terrifying than any howls of the actual Divine Beasts from the <Divine Realm>, as La Llorona, whose name will now be reduced to ’La La’, nodded. "I...understand."

"Understand? Hmmmmmmmmm?" Alice hummed, the word ’I understand’ gritting her dignity coming from this lowly vampire.

"...excuse me for my rudeness...I-I graciously accept the title, Mistress Alice." The noble’s manner asleep in the sovereign’s gene taught her well to listen beyond subtext, as she performed the most graceful bowing with knees on the ground, as a subject would to a Queen. Not even when she begged for the humanity to be spared, that she had now this immediate sincerety that contained zero hesitation to scar her pride.

"...Yasen, don’t you think this would now make a prettier statue now?" Alice the hero turned to the ashen-eyed Dragon with a closed, smiling eyes, like an artist would to a regular citizen in a street.

"May...be? I don’t know, d-don’t ask me..."

Translation: Don’t pull me into your sadistic nonsense; just kill the vampire already.

The smart Hero merely nodded even when understanding the nodding, glancing-away Dragon, before turning to La La. "Hey Miss La La. Do you perhaps have any question for me? Ah, if you want to ask for my hand in marriage, mine belongs to the Queen already, so no, alright?"

Who in the hell will want to be married to a monster like you? La La’s rarely found pity extended to the human who dared herself to be ’eyed’ by a literal embodiment of a walking nuke, as she gulped, a question she has been curious about. "Uh...about how you slayed my family..."

"Ah-about that, I-I am truly sorry!" A heavy tone descended upon the hero, belying the lightness of her apology as if the ’Vampires’ massacre’, as if her icy blizzards and fogs as she descended upon the entire vampire clans a Tuseday ’I-spill-the-milk-and-now-a-family-is-gone’ scenerio that would have fit perfectly as a manga title.

"I-I...I didn’t mean to do something like that, you know? Uh-they just kinda get in the way, and-yeah, who am I kidding?" Alice chuckled as she tilted her head, bloodlust oozing out like glacial sharpnels. "You just have to bundle up all too nicely together for your last charge. Do you want to know which clan screamed the loudest when I scattered them away?"

"...I have no interest, I’m afraid." A resigned nod from La La, for she already hated the vampires for not understanding her betrayal. The sympathy already dried just as the blood of her corpse she gave unto her kins that night.

"Oh, now I’m interested." Alice raised her brows, her head tilting further like an Uriel’s scale. "What do you mean by no interest? I heard from Alfina that the vampires here probably sought revenge even if they didn’t participate in the war or something? Why would you not care about your race’s extinction instead?"

So that’s it, the bowing La La narrowed her eyes. Interrogation: This human known as Alice is attempting to use a ’game’ for interrogating more information out of fear from the victim, unaware it was already ressolved by a certain duo. The sovereign didn’t bother to correct it, but rather merely told her the truth to cover up how she already knew her true intent. "I...I betrayed the noble clans, in an attempt to seek peace with humans."

"Hm, and how’s that going for you?" Alice the hero eyed the frozen statues and dusts surrounding her. Peace, this vampire claimed, as if she would believe the Earth will bend after this vampire did. Ah, come to think of it, she did almost bend the Earth once....Adrei made a pretty big fuss about it.

"Terrible, as you can see." A mocking smile crept up on La La, a sovereign reduced to a betrayer, a betrayer reduced to an avenger, and an avenger reduced to a broken toy owned by the Hero.

The toy’s thoughts drifted to the first time she bowed, how the vampires’ families, old and young, child and adult, prepared a grand feast that fed on children’s blood, and how something broke inside her back then, how her bows were answered by mere sneers and snickers.

...but La La knew. She didn’t break back then, rather it is her stubborn, unbroken arrogance for daring to think a simple solution would be to weaken her kins, unaware of the sufferings she subjected both humanity and her kins to after her ’sacrifice’.

"That’s a shame...quite rare to see a demon actually looking for peace aside from that weird scaredy-cat demon general I met." Alice stretched her limbs, a purr of satisfaction escaping for finding an interesting bedtime story. "La La. Don’t worry. I sympathise with you! Even if no one would."

As if you do. Both Yasen and La La glanced upon the ’kind’ smile from the hero’s look, like she wasn’t the kind of person to kick a puppy when she’s down.

"But listen. Sometimes, just sometimes..." That smile curled up into a playful smirk, before the hero’s index finger raised and hovered over her lips. "It’s simpler to just not care, you know! Ah, of course it’s cuter when you care about your so-called noble cause while scurrying away from my Blizzards like a dog, but peace? With Humans?"

That smirk warped into a grin, the index finger at the front a floodgate to hold back the sneering malice from within. "Don’t be ridiculous. You care about Peace? I care whether the next vampire head I splintered off made a nice Christmas, and I’m sure your kins think the same."

"...are you laughing at my cause? Go ahead, I have nothing more to lose." A tired chortle drummed the sovereign back and forth.

"I am, but it’s such a shame." The grin grew wider. "Your kins, you know, charged forward without looking back despite their screams. I kinda get why you’re here, all dispirited and stuff, after my tiny little genocide and all, but uh...your kins did stand up to me till the last minute, you know?! You should be as fierce as them!"

...fierce, is it? The sovereign’s eyelid sunk, just as her memory sunk back to that child, Manasseh’s last moment. Even...even as she remained alone, battered, mutiliated, sacrificed everything including her own families, skins and vampirity...she charged forward at the end, only to be greeted by a regret for a better tomorrow, the tomorrow where she would have lived peacefully with her mother.

...perhaps, that’s her answer after all? The sovereign’s eyelid raised, no longer deep into the abyss of thoughts. That’s right...in the first place, it is not selfish vengance, not crazed madness she craved, but rather simply answering to the child’s call, like a mother’s cradle to her child. Right...right...how...how could she ever forget?

For it is also a vampire child who sobbed to her how she was forced to eat her own human friend, that the sovereign was finally shook to be determined for the betrayal, not because of some noble causes for Peace or her arrogance. Just...pure, undiluted, duty. Duty for a sovereign, duty for a dreamer, duty for a foolish martyr.

And so, the Martyr stood, her red eyes sharpened as her grey hair fluttered to the wind. Her tiny figure matching the smiling Alice suggested as if they were equal, whilst Alice nodded in satisfaction.

"That’s it...struggle a bit more..."

Alice kept nodding as her other palm stretched to beckon the sovereign for her last moment. The sovereign narrowed her eyes, bloodlust and sorrows burrowing to contort her raged expression, the valiance when she used to charge against the Divine Gods now sung to her again, and the sorrowful craziness when she ripped out the human’s flesh in her last battle against humans toiled inside her, and with a roar, she lept, claws sharpend, her scowl mirroring the disciplined focus from the dragon Queen, as she performed her final dance-

Only for Alice to merely raise her staff and snuff it out with an ice blast.

Clearing away from the tremendous smoke that covered the entire land, and another pained yelp from her scaled ’mana conduitor’, Alice tilted her head as the smoked curtain revealed it: the perfect image of a desperate, last warcry, embodied within this beautiful vampire.

"Now, this is what I called perfection." A smirking grin curled up on Alice from cheek-to-cheek, as she turned to the shivering Yasen. "How do you think?"

"Uh..." Yasen glanced at the statue, claw stretched, expression contorted like a warrior’s last charge, and her feet....ugh, why must her feet be hovering over the ground like the time froze during mid-charge? This really screwed over with her sense of apetite...

"Well, Miss La La." Alice walked up to the statue, before patting the small La La’s head. "Rest well now, and feel free to be frozen forever, knowing your so-called peace with humanity will be forever out of reach."

Yet, beyond the half-frozen mind of the sovereign, even amidst the gutting, glittering consciousness of a never-ending ice cavern, a single thread of silk floated from her fingertip. The sovereign smiled in her heart. Yes...this should be the end. She didn’t expect such a loose ending, but she will cast all hope for the child that summoned her, for the child that regretted instead of spited humans at her last moment.

My child...you’re not alone. For I, the foolish Martyr, shall forever accompany you with my blood.

My child...do you know? How when the first blood moon finally fell, I was...relieved? Instead of some grand satisfaction or lingering fear, I was merely...relieved that I took the first step for my ressolve? Even if I have failed my people at the end?

Ah...my child. I plead for you. Please, find your success. Don’t follow hatred blindly, don’t lend out mercy carelessly. Allow yourself to be carried forward in your journey to seek the final...final resolution to our people’s end.

My child...Manasseh....I beg of you, so that this damn hero’s smile may finally drop at the first sign of success from a weak, daring vampire. So that one day, the vampires may be given solace for an ending finally deserving of their sacrifices...

And so, contrary to any belief, the sovereign’s end was quiet, unfulfilling, and only remained her vow with a lone red-haired vampire, a final ’mercy’ she gave to the families she once loved.

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.