The Vampire Empress.
Chapter 39. The Royal Demon Capital (1/3).
 
After a little while of dressing, the door soon opened as familiar footsteps entered my ears whilst I was drying my hair. I turned towards the direction of the footsteps with a smile, “Thanks for lending me the bath, it was quite nice…”
 
“Glad to hear about that. I just finished telling the others about your situation and as expected, the little girl was quite worried but for now, there isn’t anything we can do but hide you here for a while until the situation dies down…” Helesta who was dressed in a beautiful white gown that didn’t match her race spoke.
 
It has been at least two days since the incident where I had done a gigantic massacre that even I don’t really know what to feel about. The massacre was too large that rumors spread around the town and even kingdom about what had happened, but Helesta made sure that there was no trace of me being mentioned a single bit and covered the situation up with a single honorable adventurer managing to defeat all of them at the wits of his life.
 
“Imagine the nightmare the humans would feel once they realize that what they had summoned was not a human but a vampire and not a normal one at that,” she laughed while sitting on the bed that I slept on a while back.
 
The reason why I’ve been stuck in this palace is exactly that reason. Many people were suspicious of me after that incident, but the others quickly told them that I went out for a business trip here to avoid suspicion, and paired with Helesta’s confirmation, people accepted it.
 
I heard from Helesta herself that vampires aren’t actually accepted very well by human society and if it were to be made known that I wasn’t among the humans then it would practically be a crisis for me. I couldn’t do anything about it as well but wait until a week passes by where I can say that my stay here ends.
 
‘Not that I hate staying here… the food is absolutely the best and the comfort plus luxury here is haven…’ a bitter smile rose on my lips.  
 
Her kingdom was not something that can be underestimated as well, you could sense powerful creatures roaming around this place every moment and each part of the palace just showed how insanely rich this kingdom is.
 
“Are you bored here?” Helesta asked as I looked at her and nodded.
 
It was indeed getting boring staying here since back on the town, I was cluttered with paperwork and jobs in general but here, I feel like a child being spoiled to death. There wasn’t anything that I could help with even basic chores as there was a truckload of servants here.
 
“Don’t you think it is hard managing a kingdom of this magnitude sometimes?” I asked while standing up from the vanity chair before she smiled wryly.
 
“You are right, sometimes managing this place is quite a pain but there isn’t anything I could do about it as it is my responsibility to take care of this land. They trust me as their queen, in return, I give them peace and comfort,” she said before looking up as she reached her hand up towards the ceiling, “It’s not that I hate this responsibility as well, it allows me to shield the people I care about, after all.”
 
“I am curious as to who these people you care about are,” I sat down beside her as she looked at me as if I was some kind of rock which I couldn’t understand and simply shrugged it off.
 
Though speaking logically, I do kind of understand what she is saying but at a lower scale. I was the town’s leader and whatever choice I made was where the town would float towards. A wrong decision of mine would lead to its collapse and possibly the death of everyone and a good decision of mine would lead it to prosperity.
 
It’s a heavy responsibility. You have to understand how to decide for the “community” and not for “yourself”, just imagine the scale of it when you are someone like Helesta who is a Queen and also the guardian of this continent. The scale of your decision grows, so does the weight of the responsibility that you carry.
 
“Don’t you ever think about giving up?” I asked before she nodded.
 
“A lot of times actually. There have been many times where I thought to myself about how living is too exhausting, how time simply feels too slow. There have even been times where I thought about twisting the planet’s time itself, but I understood it was impossible,” she showed a bitter laugh, “For someone who lives a long time like me, everything slowly becomes a boring past time…”
 
I feel like I understood what kind of a person Helesta is from her words, a simple person who lived under a heavy burden for years. Thinking about it made me feel a bit odd inside. Was it guilt or was it pity? I couldn’t understand what I was feeling but I understood that all she needed was a little hug and so I hugged her a bit.
 
“You truly are a strong person, Helesta. I admire people like that,” a smile rose on my lips before a sudden cough came from the door which snapped both of us to reality as we separated from one another, embarrassed.
 
Standing at the door was a maid with sheep horns, she looked quite human if it wasn’t for her horns. Albeit her chest is a bit… too much but overall, she looked quite normal.
 
“Milady and dear guest, breakfast is prepared. As per request, the breakfast today consists of a mix of vegetables and meat. The drinks for today are non-alcoholic wine from the special grapes of the palace gardens and water,” the maid spoke before bowing down as she left.
 
It was how the maids of this palace moved around, they didn’t escort us or wait for us but rather they move ahead of time instead since they all understood that Helesta didn’t want to be escorted around wherever she goes.
 
“Ehem… let’s go eat breakfast first, shall we?” she suggested before adding, “I have something to show to you after breakfast, it might give you some breakthrough with your current powers. Are you intrigued?”
 
“Who wouldn’t?” I stood up with a laugh before reaching a hand towards her while leaving a little joke, “It’d better be something worthwhile otherwise I’m leaving this palace once and for all.”
 
“You know you can’t leave from here even if you wanted to, you could try but you’d soon realize how much of a pain it is to run away from here towards another kingdom because of how isolated and large this place is,” she laughed back which turned my laughter into a bitter smile as I remembered the map of this continent which showed a bright and gigantic empty land surrounding this place.
 
The Demon Kingdom, despite being surrounded by empty land is actually very abundant mainly because of one thing. It’s the fact that they have all the resources that they want to get because of the large land that was allocated to them, and no one can contest them because of another thing, their raw power.
 
It’s basically like the Dutch or Spanish Empire in the past, way too overpowered to exist but like anything strong, they can always fall which is what Helesta is always cautious about from what I can tell of her expressions.
 
“Aya, are you still there? You didn’t die from hunger, right?!” she teased while waving her hand in front of me with a mocking smile on her face.
 
I flicked her forehead before running away as I said, “You are the one who would die of hunger, you damned demon!” as I turned around and left a ‘blehhhh!’ before the two of us played a little cat and mice towards the dining room, leaving the entire palace in utter silence once again…