After encountering the Ice Dragon, things were pretty uneventful.
If only that guy hadn't shown up at the very end.
MONKEYS!!
My personal trauma, part two.
Part one was Arava.
I still haven't forgotten the terror of those monkeys climbing up nonstop in an endless stream. And now my mortal enemy decides to make a cameo appearance.
The moment it spotted me, it charged straight for me.
Hey, hey, wait a second!
Your Status isn't even that high, so how are you breaking through the Demon King's intimidation?!
You think I have time to deal with a pain in the neck like you?!
I'm outta here!
And so, I fled from the monkey.
I thought the Demon King would just annihilate it, but he ended up running away alongside me.
When I asked him about it later, all I got back was, "That looked like a hassle."
Huh. Come to think of it, the Demon King and I might actually think alike.
And just like that, we finally crossed over the freezing mountain range.
From here on out, it's Demon race territory.
Domain governed by the Demon race instead of the Human race.
Though honestly, it doesn't look any different from Human race territory.
The vampire kid took one look at the scenery and was visibly disappointed.
I kinda get what she was picturing, but if it actually matched that vision, we'd have a real problem on our hands.
I'm sure she was imagining some kind of demon realm landscape.
As if you could find any decent living creatures in a region permanently shrouded in clouds all year round.
You couldn't even grow crops, let alone wage war against the Human race.
This is exactly why naive dreamers are such a pain.
I, on the other hand, take a much more practical approach.
What does the mature, sophisticated me look for in Demon race territory? Why, local specialty dishes that you can't find in Human race territory, of course.
Even if it looks similar at first glance, subtle differences in climate and geology must mean there are unique crops growing here.
Fufufu, just you wait, unseen delicacies. I'll taste every last one of you.
Oops, I'm drooling.
The food tour — I mean, the journey toward the Demon King's castle — continued smoothly.
Honestly, it was so similar to Human race territory that you could hardly call it eventful.
Peace is nice.
But.
There's always someone who seems to hate that kind of peaceful atmosphere.
The vampire kid.
Since entering Demon race territory, she's been disappointed by the looks of the Demon race, disappointed by the towns, and disappointed by the Monsters.
I mean, I get how she feels, but could she maybe consider the feelings of the demons she's disappointing?
It's not like they chose to be born looking indistinguishable from humans.
A person isn't defined by appearances.
What matters is what's inside.
Yeah, I really nailed that one.
Huh? That's not what this is about?
Anyway, the vampire kid seems to be starving.
She doesn't seem aware of it herself, but as she's grown, something that could only be described as a fighting instinct has been building up inside her.
I've been planning to hold off on leveling her up until she's fully matured, so the Demon King and I have been handling all the Monsters ourselves so far. But lately, the way that kid looks at Monsters is far from normal.
She watches them with the eyes of a starving beast.
Honestly, when you think about the characteristics of a vampire, you could say she really is starving.
She's a vampire, after all.
Of course she'd want to drink blood.
But the vampire kid has only ever drunk blood once.
As a True Ancestor — a born vampire — she has no need to drink blood.
But just because she doesn't need to doesn't mean she can't.
I mean, even after I became a god and no longer needed sleep, I still sleep every night.
Because it makes me happier.
Same thing with the vampire kid.
For vampires, drinking blood is the norm.
A vampire who doesn't drink blood is the abnormal one. And without realizing it, she's probably been accumulating stress all this time.
If the vampire kid didn't know she was a vampire and had never tasted blood even once, maybe it wouldn't have been such a big deal.
But she drank Mera's blood, and she remembers the taste.
You could say she developed a craving.
The moment that happened, the door to her vampire instincts should have swung wide open.
That's why, over these past few years, all that time spent without drinking blood has piled up as serious stress, and it's manifesting itself as a fighting instinct.
This is bad.
The vampire kid has gotten reasonably strong from all the training during our travels.
She could probably hold her own against most Monsters.
But still.
If I'm going to raise her, I want to aim for perfection.
That's just the kind of detail-oriented person I am.
Back in my own days, I was too busy just trying to survive to really push things to the limit.
Ideally, I'd want her to max out all of her Status-boosting Skills before we do any leveling up.
Which means releasing her fighting instinct right now wouldn't be a smart move.
So far the Demon King and I have kept it in check, but she could end up charging headlong into battle if we're not careful.
When she's in town, she seems to release some of it somewhere and stays relatively calm. But after several days of nothing but traveling, I can feel her battle aura gradually intensifying.
This isn't good.
There are two possible solutions.
One is to just let her fight.
But that's off the table.
We'll hold off on leveling her up for a while longer.
That leaves the second option.
Which is to address the root cause of her stress — the fact that she hasn't been drinking blood.
Simply put, let her drink blood.
The vampire kid has already gone from a baby to a little girl. Maybe it's time she learned to make drinking blood part of her daily routine.
In that case, we should get Mera — someone who knows the ropes — to help us turn the vampire kid into a proper, respectable vampire.