“Do… do you want to eat some food?”
Seeing this, Aisha Hodhua seemed to understand something. When blood race folk ate, what they ate was obviously human blood.
Her face flushed red in an instant, and she stammered, “D-D-Dumb Watermelon, I don’t want to drink your blood! I buy blood packs outside. I don’t need yours.”
Blood packs were fairly common fare among the blood race.
In this world, for destitute humans, selling their blood was often a last resort. The blood they sold was processed into blood packs and sold to ordinary blood race members. Higher blood race nobles had blood servants and had no need for such things—nor did they deign to use them.
Aisha Hodhua had grown accustomed to them back in the Heavenly Key.
“Oh, alright then,” Sang replied.
Aisha Hodhua turned to leave and was just about to close the door to his room when something else seemed to occur to her. She spoke up again. “Watermelon, the fact that you’re the True Ancestor’s blood servant will never change. I have no right to lay a finger on the True Ancestor’s possessions… Oh, and one more thing. Unlike other people’s blood, you’re an Abandoned Child. Your blood is addictive. Don’t let any blood race touch it, got it?”
“Mm…”
Bang!
Gazing at the firmly shut door, Sang chuckled to himself slyly. True, the lack of nightlife was boring, but teasing the Pink-Haired Little Lolita now and then wasn’t half bad.
Truth be told, Sang didn’t harbor the kind of desires—or romantic feelings—you might imagine toward the Pink-Haired Little Lolita. He simply saw her as a little sister.
Was he treating her as a stand-in for Luna?
Probably.
…
Blood Calendar 4078, September.
Though it was the cusp between summer and autumn, the weather in the Central Hub remained sweltering. Average temperatures topped thirty degrees Celsius, and at high noon, they could easily break thirty-five. From afar, the air itself seemed to shimmer and distort in the blistering heat.
One day.
Sang received another formal letter from Central. Its contents left the young man a touch dazed: All regional lords were requested to cooperate with the July Grace proceedings.
Though it was nominally for July, the lords of various territories worked at differing speeds—some swift, some sluggish.
Especially in an unclaimed backwater like Dilelo Town (which truly had been lordless before Sang’s arrival), things had dragged all the way into September.
Well… The very mention of the Grace put Sang in a complicated mood.
Sure, some families could buy their way out of it, but for the vast majority of humans—especially those aged fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen—the Grace was a brutal ordeal. Once selected, their fate for life was sealed.
Sang was the perfect example.
Ever since arriving in Central, Sang had occasionally pondered a strange question: What would his life have been like if he hadn’t been chosen?
Haha… He’d probably have spent the rest of his days in Kaen Town…
What a shame…
Lost in these thoughts, he found himself worrying about the kids back at the Kaen Town Orphanage—especially Luna and Adolf. The two of them were only fifteen this year. They hadn’t fully passed the age of Grace yet; there was still a chance they’d be chosen this year or next. The more he thought about it, the more anxious he grew…
In fact, at that very moment, both Luna and Adolf had already been selected as special admits to the Knight Academy, exempting them from the remaining two years of Grace… But the boy far away knew nothing of this.
Right then.
It was around four in the afternoon. Sang sat alone in the courtyard of the manor, quietly reading the letter. At that moment, a little girl dressed in a black-and-white maid outfit approached of her own accord to brew him some tea. Unfortunately, she slipped up and knocked over a cup, spilling tea all over Sang’s clothes.
Before Sang could even react, she dropped straight to her knees and began kowtowing repeatedly.
“I’m sorry, Lord Count! Please don’t kill me!!!”
Sang was caught off guard. He didn’t even remember who the girl in front of him was. She looked about fifteen, with the sort of commonplace brown hair one saw everywhere. Her features and figure were utterly average. “Uh… you’re D?”
Hearing the boy’s casual tone, the girl finally eased up on the kowtowing a little—but she remained kneeling, trembling with fear. “This little girl… is B.”
Sang wasn’t the type to forget faces, but these three slave maids had been living here for over half a month now. With proper nutrition, they’d changed quite a bit in appearance. He only clearly remembered C, the one bustling about in the kitchen.
C was Sang’s savior. Thanks to her, he no longer had to worry about meals and had successfully escaped the horrors of dark cuisine.
As for the other two… well, he sometimes still mixed them up. Seeing the little maid’s forehead bloodied and battered tugged at his heart for some reason. He waved her off. “Forget it. Go get that bandaged… And from now on, no need to act like this around me. I hate blood. I hate seeing people get hurt and bleed…”
This world was bloody enough already. At least in his own home, there was no need for more of it…
As he spoke, Sang gazed at B with gentle eyes.
In that moment, B felt warmth in this world for the very first time. Her face reddened, but she didn’t dare slack off in the slightest. Grateful beyond words, she said, “Yes, this little girl understands.”
…
B had long forgotten the events of her early childhood. She didn’t know her original name or her exact age. She only vaguely recalled that, as a child, her family couldn’t afford food. To feed her brother, her parents sold her to a human trafficker. She couldn’t even remember how many years ago that had been.
Ever since she could understand things, she’d been with the trafficker. She’d met plenty of other kids with similar plights, kids without names. Some were sold off before she could get to know them well; others died from illness. After all, traffickers wouldn’t waste money on treatment.
Only she kept surviving.
She had nothing to her name but her sheer tenacity.
On one hand, her looks weren’t striking. On the other, she worked diligently. The trafficker figured she wasn’t worth much and wouldn’t fetch a good price, so he simply kept her around to work.
Though she was only just becoming aware back then, she had already despaired of this wretched world—and held no hope for her own future. She only wished her death, when it came, wouldn’t hurt too much.
Her daily labors were grueling yet straightforward. Each day began with waking in the woodshed or storeroom, then rushing to the dungeon to clean up after the slaves’ excrement. The work was disgusting, but one grew accustomed to it. The one thing she could never get used to was the envious stares from the slaves—why did she get to stay out here? Why wasn’t she locked up or sold off?
B didn’t really understand why the slaves envied her.
Whether inside or out, it was all the same—hell.
After cleaning up the excrement in the mornings, she had to feed the slaves food and water. If she spotted a corpse or a gravely ill slave, she had to notify the master at once. Otherwise, a rotting body amid the slaves could spark a plague. If that led to heavy losses and cut into profits, she’d pay the price herself.
Once feeding was done, B had to clean the master’s residence. Yes, she could only clean with the utmost caution. Whether it was the slave master or other humans, they all bullied her—verbally scorning her at best, beating her outright at worst.
Though life was harsh, B survived into her teens (or so; she wasn’t sure of her age).
Until, one day about a year ago—a morning no different from any other. B woke in the stables, feeling a slight ache in her lower abdomen and a sticky sensation down below. When she looked, what she saw stunned her: blood. Her lower body was covered in it.
Innocent and clueless, B told the slave master about it. He was a lecherous middle-aged man. He eyed her with naked lust, squeezed her waist, patted her rear, and said approvingly, “Good, good. The little peach is ripe… Come to my room tomorrow night. I’ll reward you with some food.”
At the time… the naive B had no idea what awaited her. The next night, she obediently went to the slave master’s room…
In the end, the slave master extended his lustful hands toward her.
When B was pinned to the bed, the young girl seemed to grasp something from his leering gaze. In her struggle, she grabbed a pair of scissors and stabbed him.
She preserved her innocence that way, but the furious slave master beat her savagely, leaving her barely human. He originally meant to chop her up and feed her to the dogs, but being the greedy sort, he thought better of it and decided to sell her off for some cash instead.
There were so many things B couldn’t understand—why did everyone fear the blood race, when humans were far more terrifying?
After that.
B was transported from a city called Rita to Slave Street in the Central Hub and put up for sale.
Rita was a bustling trade city over a hundred kilometers west of the Central Hub, under the Montgomery Family’s domain—and their headquarters to boot.
The epicenter of the slave trade!
Not long ago, B had been locked in a cage on a shelf for months. Her price was low—just a few silver coins—but even so, no one bought her. She wasn’t exactly pretty, but she wasn’t ugly either. The problem was chronic malnutrition; she looked utterly unappealing.
Blood race folk disdained her blood. Humans had no use for a servant like her.
The slave owner had laid down the ultimatum: if she wasn’t sold by the end of the month, she’d be turned into a renewable mobile blood bank. They’d drain a pack of her blood every week to sell off, until she finally dropped dead.
However.
In the days that followed, even after slashing the price, she still failed to find a buyer.
Just as she was sinking into despair, a human youth appeared, flanked by several Blood Clan maids. He wasn’t particularly handsome, carrying himself with a lazy, nonchalant air, yet a faint gentleness shone through. He glanced her way and uttered the words she would never forget.
“Sigh, it’s all that deadbeat Shika’s fault. Buying werewolf slaves for him wiped out the budget. Oh… this slave’s dirt cheap. I’ll take her!”
Mm.
Yes.
Even such hilariously absurd words rang like music to her ears.
In that moment, the person she was most grateful for was Sang—followed closely by that deadbeat named Shika.
