“You’re letting me order whatever I want… Do you even have a lot of money?”
She didn’t want to be held back to wash dishes because they couldn’t pay the bill. That would be far too humiliating for the Queen of the Bloodkin!
Amused by her reaction, Yize nodded with a grin. “Yeah, I have a ‘billion’ little bits of gold.” He placed a strange emphasis on the word “billion.”
“A little bit isn’t enough!” Vivian clearly missed the pun, reminding him seriously, “The food here isn’t as good as high-end restaurants, but it isn’t cheap either. I… I can eat a lot!”
By the end of her sentence, she looked a bit embarrassed.
“It’ll be enough to fill you up,” Yize laughed.
Only then did Vivian relax, though she remained sharp-tongued. “Hmph, if you don’t have enough money later, you’ll have to stay behind and scrub dishes to pay the debt! I… I won’t help you!”
She purposefully tilted her small chin up, putting on an “it’s none of my business” act.
Yize, however, caught something odd in her words. He asked tentatively, “Oh? You even know about scrubbing dishes to pay for a meal? Don’t tell me… you’ve done that before?”
“N-No, I haven’t!” Vivian snapped like a cat with a stepped-on tail, her face flushing again. “Don’t talk nonsense! How could I possibly fall to such a level!”
But her reaction only made Yize more certain of his guess.
After ordering, while waiting for the food, Vivian seemed to lower her guard slightly. When plate after plate of delicious food was laid on the table, her eyes visibly brightened.
Over the next thirty minutes, Yize witnessed what it meant to have the “appetite of the Bloodkin Queen.” Vivian didn’t eat crudely—it could even be called elegant—but she was incredibly efficient.
Using both hands, she moved her knife and fork with lightning speed, making the food disappear into her small mouth at an alarming rate.
Yize only ate a small portion himself, spending most of the time watching Vivian eat with an expression of wonder and amusement.
When the plates on the table were stacked three layers high, Vivian finally put down her utensils with satisfaction.
She wiped the corners of her mouth with a napkin and patted her still-flat stomach longingly. Yize couldn’t help but speak up.
“By the way… don’t you Bloodkin survive just by drinking blood?” he asked. “Why do you eat human food? And so much of it?”
Vivian gave him a look that said, ‘You’re so ignorant.’
“If it was just about ‘surviving,’ then why do you humans go through all the trouble to make food taste so good? Wouldn’t just gnawing on dry rations be enough?”
She spoke with a hint of pride. “Furthermore, I am not one of those low-level blood servants who are ruled by bloodlust and lose their minds.”
“My sense of taste is perfectly capable of distinguishing the wonderful flavors of food other than blood, okay?”
Having eaten her fill, the atmosphere softened. Yize cut to the chase, asking his biggest question. “I’m curious, why would someone… well, with your identity, come to be an adventurer?”
He really couldn’t bridge the gap between “Bloodkin Queen” and “Low-level Adventurer.”
Vivian let out a sigh, her small face showing a weariness and worldliness that didn’t match her appearance.
“What do you think?” she said grumpily. “In this continent right now, whether it’s in human territory or the territory of other races, is there anything that doesn’t cost money?”
“Lodging costs money, eating costs money, buying clothes costs money, and even gathering information costs money.”
She ticked the items off on her fingers. “I haven’t been awake for very long, and I don’t have a single clansman by my side. I’m all alone. I finally managed to find a ‘daughter’ and thought I’d finally have a companion who could earn money to support me…”
At this point, she gave Yize a resentful look. “But you stopped me and wouldn’t let me take her.”
Yize, “…”
He suddenly didn’t know what to say. A Bloodkin Queen forced to become an adventurer and work for a living because she was broke… did something go wrong with this plot?
Vivian didn’t care about his silence and asked curiously, “What about you? Why aren’t you staying in your secluded human empire? Why come all the way to Stana? And my daughter, how is she doing now?”
Mentioning Riya, a hint of genuine concern appeared in her eyes.
Yize sighed, feeling a bit helpless. “Don’t even get me started. I ran into an old schemer. That guy couldn’t beat me, so he used space magic to force a teleportation and dumped me in this godforsaken place.”
He briefly described Jellal’s appearance and methods.
As he spoke, Yize suddenly realized something, and his brow furrowed. “Wait, you said you don’t have any clansmen with you?”
“Then what are the massive Bloodkin armies currently invading the Aolai Empire? And those guys calling themselves the ‘Blood Pillars’?”
Vivian looked completely blank and shook her head. “I don’t know! Since I woke up, the only other member of my race should be my daughter.”
She tilted her head and thought for a moment before adding, “Oh, right. When I first met you, I had only just awakened. It was because I felt a faint, weak presence in that area near the Raymond Territory—something similar to my race but different—that I went to check it out. But before I could figure out what was going on, I was beaten up by a guy like you who didn’t even ask questions…”
She curled her lip, clearly still holding a grudge over that encounter. “After that, I never went near that area again.”
She would never admit that she was mostly too afraid of being beaten again to get close.
“However…” Vivian’s red eyes narrowed slightly, showing a flicker of interest. “Based on your description, those ‘Bloodkin’ attacking you really do sound like my kin… but not exactly the same.”
“I can’t be sure yet. Logically, aside from me and my daughter, there shouldn’t be any other pureblood Bloodkin alive in this era…” As one of the oldest purebloods, she had an instinctive sense for the state of her race.
Yize gave her a brief rundown of the scale of the Bloodkin army, the existence of the Ten Pillars, and the “Blood Awakening” ability they displayed.
After listening, Vivian’s elegant brows knitted together. “Blood Pillars? Blood Awakening?”
“I’ve never heard of those names or abilities.”
“It sounds like a method of using some external force to forcibly trigger the potential of the bloodline… and in such large numbers… that’s not right.” Her face became serious. “I have to see them with my own eyes to be certain of what they are.”
Yize’s heart skipped a beat! That’s right! The person in front of him was the Bloodkin Queen!
Even if she claimed she wasn’t good at space magic, an old monster who had lived for countless years had to have some trump card, right? Maybe she had a way to perform ultra-long-distance teleportation?
He immediately suggested, “Then there’s no time to lose. Shall we go now? Come back to the Aolai Empire with me. You can see your daughter and check out those so-called ‘kin’ of yours.”
Vivian nodded readily. “Mhm, let’s go. I do miss my daughter, and I want to see where those guys came from.”
Yize looked at her with anticipation, waiting for her to cast some world-shaking, ancient Bloodkin teleportation secret art.
Several seconds passed. Vivian didn’t move.
Half a minute passed. Vivian was still standing there, looking back at him with the same confused expression.
Yize couldn’t take it anymore and asked tentatively, “Um… aren’t you going to use space magic? What are you waiting for?”
Vivian looked even more confused. “Space magic? I don’t know any! I was waiting for you to cast a spell and take me with you!”
Yize was completely stunned. “You… you’re a Bloodkin Queen and you don’t know space magic?! Then how did you get from the Aolai Empire all the way to Stana?” This was a distance of tens of thousands of miles!
Vivian looked at him as if he were an idiot. “I spent over a month running… I mean, walking here! I figured I’d travel the continent and see how the world has changed over hundreds of years.”
She spoke with total conviction. “Besides, the advantage of our Bloodkin lies in our powerful physical bodies. We aren’t good at that flashy space magic. What’s so strange about that?”
Yize was silent for two seconds before murmuring, “But your physical strength… seems pretty average too.”
Vivian, “…”
She opened her mouth to argue but found she had nothing to say. In front of this monster of a human, her prideful physical strength was indeed nothing to brag about.
She became angry from embarrassment, her red eyes glaring at Yize. “Fine, fine! I’m just not good at space magic! Are you going or not? Stop wasting time and use your space magic to take me!”
Looking at her, Yize suddenly laughed, though it was a laugh filled with helplessness and absurdity. He spread his hands, mimicking Vivian’s tone from a moment ago.
“What a coincidence. It seems my specialty is also just physical strength. That kind of long-distance space teleportation magic… I don’t know it either.”
Vivian, “…” Now it was her turn to be speechless.
The two of them stared at each other in the corner of the tavern, lost for words.
Yize’s gaze inadvertently swept over the Iron Rank adventurer identification plate at Vivian’s waist, identical to his own. He twitched the corner of his mouth.
It looked like he really had to be an adventurer.
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