Just because Lucienne left the group didn’t mean they cut ties. Despite her moving out with the twins the next day, Camilla still saw her around often since they tended to frequent the same locations, being in the same profession and all.

The atmosphere between them wasn’t awkward at all, as if breaking the preexisting bonds between them allowed new, healthier ones to form.

Once, Camilla saw Lucienne as she was about to leave on another guild commission with Kagriss. The former templar was picking up food at a street stall early in the morning with Sariel and Ariel nowhere to be seen. Lucienne had just paid and held a little steaming bundle wrapped in large fragrant leaves of some kind and tied together with twine.

Since vampires didn’t eat the same food most other races did, it didn’t take much to realize who the food was for. As always, she waved at Lucienne with a small smile. “Good morning. Did everything go well?”

Lucienne looked quite tired and a little stressed out. On the other hand, she didn’t look unhappy, and she nodded to Camilla’s question. “It wasn’t rare for them to take new students this late into the year, so everything went smoothly. On the other hand, they have a lot to catch up on.”

“How are they doing then?”

“…decent. Not too bad.” Lucienne puffed up slightly. “Most of the knowledge was things I already know so it wasn’t too difficult for me to tutor them. What I’m missing, I can get from books. Renting is a lot cheaper than buying outright, and if we stay inside the library, we can read free of charge.”

From the sound of it, they were probably a little short on money, but that was par for course when it came to education. It didn’t surprise Camilla at all that even in the cities of the vampires, despite how great Victoria made them out to be, only a minority could afford a proper education.

Still, if Lucienne wasn’t going to ask for help, Camilla won’t offer any. She knew what she was getting into, after all. The only worry was when Lavitte’s group would return.

With a few more words exchanged, they parted again, and Camilla went her way with Kagriss following close behind. As Kagriss and Lucienne passed each other, they exchanged a short look, but neither of them made a second glance.

With the hard-earned experience they got through sweat and blood fighting with the moles, Camilla managed to convince Kagriss that the romance of adventuring was all a lie. With Kagriss on her side, they gritted their strings and loosened the drawstrings of their money pouch and bought the notes on monsters and plants from the guild. Armed with information about their enemies, their next few commissions were a breeze, in part because of preparation and in part because they began taking mainly D-rank commissions rather than taking the risk of failing a C-rank.

Not that they were afraid. Camilla was confident that even if they couldn’t win, they could still escape, but at a time like this, she preferred consistency.

After taking on five more commissions, including the two they reserved: the moonsap drinker root collection and lightning crier extermination, they decided to end their stay in Dianene. Bidding Lucienne goodbye, they continued on toward Celrantis with Lucienne’s well wishes.

Their pace was leisurely. Instead of walking on foot, both Camilla and Kagriss rode on top of Elyss’s back.

As the walls of Dianane disappeared into the distance and below the treeline, Camilla couldn’t help but look back.

“What’s wrong?” Kagriss asked.

“Forget something?”

Camilla smiled, knocking on the neck of the lion below her. “Of course not! I rarely ever forget anything, after all.” Especially after becoming an undead. “It’s just that…” She trailed off and stiffened to prevent herself from turning once more. Instincts told her that it would be the wrong thing to do.

But nothing escaped Kagriss’s eyes. Even if Camilla stopped herself, Kagriss was always watching. But Kagriss remained silent, almost too silent.

There was a moment of silence as Camilla realized that she had been caught. Over the past few weeks after parting with Lucienne, Camilla realized that Kagriss didn’t like it when she talked about the former templar. Ever since she took notice of that fact, Camilla tried to bring up Lucienne as little as possible, to the point where Lucienne once asked her if something was wrong when they met.

But there was always someone who couldn’t read the mood.

A purr came from beneath them as Elyss chuckled. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking about Lucienne?” she asked. When Camilla bit her lips in nervousness, Elyss added, “or perhaps those girls that stayed with her?”

Camilla changed her mind. Elyss could definitely read the mood, and she was doing this on purpose. Shooting a glare at the lion that the beast on the receiving end couldn’t even see, she half turned and met Kagriss’s sharp eyes.

They glowed expectantly.

After a moment of hesitation, Camilla went the easy way out and used the twins as a shield against Kagriss’s burning gaze. “I’m just worried about those two girls.”

“Oh?” came Kagriss’s reply in a flat, expressionless tone.

“Y-yeah. It’s true.”

“You certainly weren’t that concerned before.”

If Camilla were still a normal human, or even a normal vampire, her back would be drenched by now. The easy way out was only easy if she could deceive Kagriss, but obviously she couldn’t. She probably shouldn’t have lied and now her only option left was to try and salvage the situation.

Swallowing and licking her dried lips, Camilla turned away and faced back forward. “Fine… I was thinking about Lucienne,” she said in defeat. The emotions she felt from Kagriss didn’t change: a constant source of discomfort that made Camilla’s skin prickle. If anything, the emotions became stronger in the same way. She hurried on with her explanation. “Yes, I was worried about her, but not in that way,” she said.

“Which way?”

By now, Elyss had fallen silent, and even her tail had stopped moving as she walked. She was almost invisible. This whole thing was trouble that Elyss stirred up and now Camilla had to clean it up while Elyss pretended she wasn’t part of it.

Cursing Elyss in her mind, Camilla did her best to find a wording that won’t make Kagriss upset. In the end, she ignored the latest question and skipped right to explaining herself. Not that there was anything to explain since she really had been just worried. The kind of worry that one had for a former comrade that decided to settle down somewhere.

But even so, Kagriss had to be appeased. Camilla decided to skip over any mention of Lucienne’s name entirely and reframed the way the problem was presented.

“It’s been a few weeks since Lavitte’s group returned, right? They left the same time we went after those moles and haven’t been back since.” And because of that, Lucienne still didn’t have a party.

Camilla snuck a peek behind her to check Kagriss’s expression… She didn’t know what she was expecting, but she got caught with Kagriss staring right back at her. But thankfully, that cold look in her eyes was gone, along with that uncomfortable feeling from Kagriss’s side of the bond. In its place was a tiny hint of concern.

Concern for who? Right now, Camilla was just happy that she managed to divert Kagriss’s attention. Even Elyss seemed to have sensed the change in mood and her steps became livelier.

“You’re right. They have been gone for a while,” Kagriss said. “How many weeks has it been? Two, three?”

“Perhaps it’s just a long mission,” Elyss suggested.

“A long mission…?” Camilla frowned. “Lavitte mentioned something about investigating a mine collapse. An investigation can drag on for a while if nothing pops up, so perhaps the trail’s gone cold?” She never put much thought into it, but now that Kagriss mentioned it, Lavitte being gone for so long was a bit worrying. Still, it was beyond their power to help.

First, they would need to figure out where Lavitte went. There was no guarantee that the guild would tell them, and even if they got information from another member of the guild, there was no guarantee that it would be true.

Second, they might be penalized by the guild for interfering with a commission if it turns out that Lavitte didn’t need help. Even if they did, many hunters were prideful and some of the other parties that Lavitte temporarily banded with for this mission may be unwilling to split the prize.

And lastly, it will take a long time.

She shook her head, clearing her mind of all those calculating thoughts. As a former templar herself, it was part of her own personal values to help even strangers if they needed it, let alone acquaintances that so gladly helped her.

“Kagriss, should we turn back?” she asked.

Her question caught Kagriss off guard and Kagriss hesitated, sinking into thought. Just as Camilla was about to ask Elyss to turn back, Kagriss shook her head. As if steeling herself, that tiny bit of concern that Camilla felt through their bond disappeared.

Although Kagriss shook her head, she said nothing. The silence spoke volumes and Camilla didn’t press her.

“Very well. Let’s continue then…”

Amidst the little bit of guilt that came from Kagriss’s side of the bond, they continued on through the forest. Camilla didn’t try to convince Kagriss to change her mind.

The decision had been made after a lot of thinking on Kagriss’s part, and she had been thinking of Camilla when she made that decision. After all, Kagriss didn’t have anything she needed done. The only one among the three of them that had a mission was Camilla.

So Camilla kept silent as well.

It was a lot colder now. Fall was coming to an end and winter was setting in. She hadn’t noticed it before, but with the sky turning a solemn gray and the air becoming humid and the clouds heavy with rain and perhaps even hail for the first time that year, she realized for the first time in a way how much time had passed.

A single season. Four months since she had woken up as a zombie with vampire blood running within her, until she finally gave in to her growing instincts and became a full, yet immature, vampire.

Such a short amount of time, yet perhaps she had changed more in those four months than a whole decade of her previous life.

The first raindrops began to fall from the sky, splattering on the thin leaves of the evergreens around them. The trees were quite close together, so despite the needle-like shape of the leaves, the trees still formed a decent cover against the rain, at least for the first few minutes.

Past that, the rainwater found its way past the canopy, dripping or flowing. Even as an undead that did not fear the cold, it was still uncomfortable to move about in wet clothes.

“I’ll be back in a bit,” Camilla said, and flew up, weaving around the trees. A sense of déjà vu struck her, and she froze in midair for a moment. But before she could catch hold of that feeling it escaped, leaving her grasping fingers empty.

Shaking off her disappointment, she completed the flight, breaking out over the trees and looked up at the sky. A moment later, Kagriss joined her.

“I said I’ll be back, didn’t I?” she asked. “You didn’t have to come up too.”

“I don’t want to let you out of my sights,” Kagriss replied.

There was nothing that Camilla could say in reply to that, so she kept quiet.

The clouds were tall, like giant towers of heavy gray cotton. The sun could just barely be seen, dyeing the clouds with an orange tint over near the horizon, but the whole world had become dark.

“It doesn’t seem the range is going to stop any time soon,” she said, both out loud and in her mind for Elyss to hear. “It’s probably going to rain for the rest of the night. Do you want to take a break, Elyss? If that’s fine with you, Kagriss.”

“I’m fine with that,” Kagriss said.

This time, it was Elyss that hesitated. “Are you sure? I can keep going on. I can run all day if I pace myself.”

Camilla didn’t reply. Instead she dropped back down below the trees and caught Elyss turning back and licking her shoulder. The rain had become quite heavy and even under the trees, water was dripping down as if the forest itself was raining. In seconds, Elyss had become soaked.

Seeing them come down, Elyss stopped midlick. She looked a bit funny with her tongue out like that, staring at them with her wide amber eyes.

“Err…”

“Don’t mind us, continue,” Kagriss said sweetly, smiling. It was a half-smile and more than a little fake.

Elyss swallowed. “Let’s stay for the night then. I’ll make us a little shelter in the earth.”