The Reincarnated Vampire Just Wants to Enjoy Her New Life

"You know, if you don't love yourself for who you are, it's difficult for others to love you as well"

"..."

Just as I pushed the door open, Philia gave me those parting words. But after a slight pause, I simply left the orphanage, put my hat on and pulled my hood back up.

I wasn't quite sure what prompted such words from her, but I packed them to the back of my mind. Maybe I'd figure out what she meant by them later on.

The sounds of surprise and excitement reached my ears through the orphanage's walls, but rather than investigate, I simply increased the space between myself and it. While I was proud of what I had done, I didn't want to deal with the fallout.

My feet speedily took me from the orphanage, and rather than head to the main street, I turned away from it and deeper into the narrow streets. Usually people would want to see the stores and main attractions of a city they visit, but the light of the sun had mostly faded already. No such thing would still be open, and I had to find a way to kill quite a few hours until they were.

Most people would say that it was risky and stupid, but conversely, when it became so dark that most normal people would have trouble seeing anything, even most criminals would be asleep. At least, that was my presumption. It was still bright enough for me to see everything without issue, so all I could do was imagine how hard it was for the other races to see things.

Also, my presumption might've been vastly wrong, and even in this supposed oppressive darkness I was forced to imagine, they were still operating at full and I was an idiot for presuming otherwise.

If that was the case, then I would have to rely on my skills and stats, but unlike Earth, things like skills and stats were a part of your own abilities, so it was foolish to not rely on them.

I wandered around aimlessly, occasionally throwing a mana treat around or playing with the little fluffballs as they energetically flew around.

The cityscape quickly became pretty boring to look at. While the architecture was pretty different from what I was used to, seeing one wooden framed, stone and plaster walled building after the next lost it's appeal despite the small differences between each.

It wasn't like the city was that big either. My own that I grew up in had tens of millions of inhabitants. While most of it wasn't as dense as this city, some of the older parts were, and this city didn't have amazing marvels such as sky scrapers or street after street of brightly lit LED and neon lights. Though if I saw such a thing here, the sight would make me pause for a different reason.

My mind instead drifted back to a few days ago. I had preserved Alicia's soul and data inside of me. Checking the storage tank of [Soul Siphon] confirmed that there were no obvious issues as well. Her [Memory] and [Core] seemed fine, and were active, though at a reduce pace than before I extracted her from her body. If there was any deterioration to her, I couldn't tell.

But even if she was perfectly preserved, I didn't want to keep her locked up inside of me longer than I had to. If there was a way for me to give her life again, I wanted to do that as soon as I could.

Thinking about it, I had essentially three ways to do it. The first was to put her inside of a new body. Whether that was the body of someone who had already died, but with a repairable body, or the body of a non-living thing.

I didn't really like that idea, and as if to reinforce that thought, my chest felt cold, like I was physically rejecting it.

That would be a last resort. No matter what, I'd try everything else before that. The cold, heavy feeling took it's time to go away, but eventually it did.

Second, was the option of creating a brand new body for her. This was the ideal, but most likely the hardest. If possible, I preferred making her body the same as her old one, aside from maybe fixing her blindness. The thought that it would be like having her back whole made my chest feel warm and naturally brought a smile to my face. But a problem quickly came to me: I had cremated her body. There wasn't anything left to use as a base. That said, her new body didn't have the be the same as her old one.

But all I knew about making new bodies was from the little bits of scrap about the cloned sheep I had heard on the news years ago along with random bits from sci-fi movies. It wasn't even enough to use as a starting point. The alternative was to create a homunculus like in fantasy stories, but I had even less of an idea how to do that, as it wasn't based on anything in reality, and any technique of that sort that worked here would be something entirely original.

I wouldn't be able to start working on this without getting some more information first.

The third option was one I was a bit hesitant on, but less so than the first. That was to find a way for Alicia regain consciousness without the normal definition of a body. Whether that was straight up as is, or maybe with an artificially made incorporeal body like a spirit. In theory, I might have been able to get it to work with nothing but just creating a new skill, but it wasn't a real revival. Despite my personal reservations, my chest felt warm at the though.

(Maybe I'm not as against the idea as I originally thought?)

It was possible that my reservations on this idea wasn't as strong as I was making them out to be, and emotionally I was fully fine with it. It wouldn't have been a true revival, but Alicia would be able to interact with the world again, and maybe even quickly. Not only that, but I wouldn't have to encroach on potentially taboo subjects.

"Hey missy, you lost?"

(Should I prioritize on this one? It'll probably be faster than the second option and it's still much nicer than the first)

"Or, maybe you wanna have some fun?"

(But she wouldn't have a physical body. Would Alicia be happy with that?)

"Hey! I'm talking to you!"

Suddenly, a hand grabbed my arm and pushed me against a stone wall, disorienting me for a moment.

Two men were standing in front of me. From their outfits, they were obviously thugs. It looked like my presumption that even criminals wouldn't work when it was so dark was completely off.

(Or maybe it's just not as dark as I thought? Having such good natural night vision has it's own pitfalls)

"Hey! Are you deaf, or just plain stupid?"

*Bang!*

"!!!"

The man holding my arm closed in on me, slamming his other hand onto the wall beside my head.

(He's huge!)

Distracted by my own thoughts, I didn't realize just how big these two men were until one of them towered over me. I was standing with my back straight, yet I was forced to look almost straight up to see his face even though he was leaning down so he could see my face.

"Heh, now we've finally got a response. So missy, maybe you were wandering around here looking for company?"

"Ah, no. I'm fine. I've already got company"

"Oh? Well, I don't see any. Maybe they ran off and left you all alone?"

(They probably won't believe me if I mention that the fluffballs are here and looking angry)

"Ah, umm, no. I'm really fine..."

"Oh, of course you're fine now, since we're here. How about you come back to our place and spend the night? It's already dark, so it'll be hard to find your way back"

The two men further invaded my personal space. I wanted out. I wanted out really bad.

"Ah, umm...I..."

It may have been the first time someone had been so aggressive with me in this way, but I recognized it. Despite such an event not being possible in my previous life, it wasn't like I couldn't recognize this sort of thing from this angle.

He put his arm on my shoulder. The oppressive feeling the two gave off intensified. The nervousness I was feeling grew stronger, more primal.

Rather, it felt like it was threatening to turn into something else.

I didn't like this. I didn't like it at all.

Tension filled my body as the thugs' actions left me incredibly agitated.

Raising my hands to my chest, I briefly considered just shoving the two away. Only briefly, as the thought of what might came next stopped me whole. Yet my instincts were screaming at me to do something.

Fight or flight. To pick one and go at it.

And my long experiences in the dungeon was pushing me towards the former. But if I did that, I could already see the blood and pulped flesh on the walls while I was forced to hold back my hunger as the scent of fresh blood stimulated it to no end.

But for the first time I was finally around people. A lot of people. I even had some that were depending on me. And unlike before, if I were to accidentally kill them, or even worse, someone managed to make the connection that I was a vampire. And then the orphanage were suspected of being connected to me...

They couldn't resist, they couldn't run. If I did something, there was a chance that they'd suffer the consequences.

As I came to realize that, my brain managed to make the synaptic connections and it became obvious that if I let my instincts loose, things would turn out bad.

No matter how things went, there was little doubt that things would go badly for these two, but it was likely that things wouldn't end there and the damage would go further, both physically and temporally.

I was stuck. The urge to force my way out was starting to win over my ability to find a peaceful way out. The fact that the end of that road was filled with blood, potentially the blood of many if things went really badly was growing less and less important compared to the desire to use brute force.

But quickly, a blue light entered my vision. Then a green one, and a yellow one. A whole bunch of soft, glowing lights circled around my legs. The spirits that were following me were trying to encourage me.

As I raised my face, I could see more spirits trying to ram the two men in anger. Of course they were simply passing right through, but the very sight of their defiance helped to clear my mind. My chest warmed up and I was able to gather my thoughts.

"I'm fine!"

I stood my ground and glared back at the first man in the eyes.

"Huh? What the hell are you talking about? It's too late for that now."

"In fact, you'll get a slice of heaven if you come with us."

Goosebumps crawled up my arms and down my back.

"I'm not interested"

"You ain't got no choice!"

I generated a ball of compressed air between us, careful to avoid it from being too powerful. Then I released it, allowing the air to expand naturally. The winds that ensued from the rapidly released ball knocked the two men around, the closest being sent two meters away and falling onto his butt while the other barely managed to regain his balance after a few steps.

As I feared, the spell had a greater effect than I wanted, but it was too late to worry about that.

"Now you've done it!"

The still standing man tried to grab for me, but his movements were slow. Incredibly slow now that I was properly focusing my attention. I had no trouble whatsoever to simply weave in between his outstretched hands and get to his backs.

The other man had hardly even started to get back to his feet by this time.

I turned and ran at a moderate pace, slow for my perception, but still way faster than those thugs. I quickly made the first turn and activated [Spirit Form] before stopping my feet halfway down the street. Turning around, I saw both men looking all around with puzzled expressions. Before long, they turned and left, leaving me alone with the little spirits in the narrow street.

Now that they were gone, I sat down beside a wall and pulled my legs in and wrapped my arms around my knees and rested my head on them.

I let out the breath I hadn't realized I had been holding.

(I was so stupid...)

As I buried my face into my knees, I reaffirmed the thought that having high levels and stats didn't mean immunity. In fact, they could make things even more difficult. If I had put in too much power into that air ball, those men could have died. If there were any witnesses, I'd be a wanted person.

I came to realize I wasn't prepared. I simply wasn't prepared to handle these sorts of trouble.

It was naive of me to not even consider these sorts of trouble. But I had very little knowledge about these sorts of things, so I could only worry about them happening again. Fiction only prepares you so far. Not everything goes as planned.

Expecting the unexpected is just a child's dream after all.

As I huddled by myself next to the wall, something soft and warm touched my cheek.

I raised my head and saw the fluffballs all surrounding me in worry, then one by one, they rubbed their bodies against mine. Their soft bodies were each a little different. Some were warm, some were especially soft, some were cool, some felt weighty and others were almost imperceptible. There were even ones that felt hot against my skin like scalding water, but I didn't let that sensation bother me. I could feel all their intentions, and something that little wasn't enough to detract from how my chest was feeling all warm.

"Thanks you guys. What would I do without you?"

I smiled and produced tons of mana treats, throwing them up into the air. Each of the little spirits rushed out to catch them before coming back to join the huddling.

We stayed like this until the sky started to light up again with the sun.

As the sky above lit up, I finally rose to my feet. Taking out my brush, I fixed my hair and clothes then undid [Spirit Form] after confirming that there weren't any presences that could see me aside from the little fluffballs.

I quickly made my way back through to the main street. What greeted me was the sound of morning commerce. Wagons being pulled through the streets by horses or other large animals, stores opening up and welcoming customers, people exiting the narrow side streets forming a slow trickle making their way to whatever business they had.

Even though the sun wasn't visible over the tall walls surrounding me, people had already long woken up and were on their way through the day.

Looking at the gradient of the sky, it looked like I came out on the north/south main street. A quick glance confirmed that the central plaza was towards my left, suggesting that I was on the southern side of the city.

Since it was so busy already, the adventurer's guild was most likely getting ready to open up, if they weren't already open. It was a good opportunity to make some more money.

So thus, I made my way through the main streets and quickly found the overly large building that marked the guild.

The guild was bustling with activity as people were reading and taking request planks off of the side wall and taking them to the receptionists. I wasted no time to join the group to find something to earn some quick coin as well.

The day before, I finished a D rank request without any difficulty. In fact, it was way too easy for me. D rank requests was a bit of a waste of time if something better was available. My eyes gravitated towards the area labelled C rank and my mind almost automatically filtered out requests that looked boring.

The monsters in the subjugation requests were mostly things I had seen before in the dungeon roughly in the 30s floors. If that was the case, then they wouldn't be very interesting to hunt.

As my eyes wandered from one boring looking request after the next, it stopped at one. It was a request to take down a pack of dagger porcupines. I hadn't seen them before, but from the description I read in the library, they were relatively small monsters roughly one metre long covered in blades along it's back. They mostly attacked by curling up into a ball and rolling at their targets. They were difficult to defeat due to their blade-like spines creating a natural armour. But aside from that, they had very little going for them. Their bellies were unarmoured, and they were blind when they rolled to attack.

To be frank, the only reason why it even caught my eye was due to the thought of facing a monster I hadn't seen before. Otherwise, it would look as uninteresting as the rest.

The request asked for the extermination of the entire pack as they weren't native to the area and were likely pushed out of their original environment. The request rewarded four silver plates for taking out the pack, and an additional eight once the pack was confirmed to be gone.

Squeezing between other adventurers staring at the boards, I reached above my head and grabbed the plank and made my way to the receptionist lines.

"Welcome...oh, Scarlet! How may I help you?"

The receptionist called my name even before I gave her my guild card. Looking up, it turned out to the be the same receptionist that handled everything for me the day before.

"Oh, you remember me?"

I figured that clerks never remember their clients' faces since they usually dealt with so many people every day.

"I would think a brand new adventurer who could beat the guild master in her rank exam would be hard to forget"

"Even though she caught him off guard?"

"Even then it's still an impressive feat. At the very least, it's the first time I've personally seen it"

I suppose that was true. Most people who went through an examination would've done so with someone lower rank than the guild master, and he looked like one who got to the position through working up as a former adventurer rather than from the back end. Then again, I could be completely wrong, but from the skills I saw, I would've had no idea how a macho bunny man like him could've gone up the ranks by pushing pens.

"...I guess"

I presented both the plank and my card, trying to change the subject.

"Dagger porcupines? I don't think they'll be much of a problem for you, but still, be careful. Adventurers generally only get careless once after all"

"I'll try"

It was a good saying.

She quickly went through obviously practised motions to register the request for me.

"Umm, but this last bit..."

"Oh yea, I suppose nobody would've told you about it yet. The second reward will only be payed out once another group is sent out to confirm that you've indeed taken out the entire group. They've been trained to identify the traces of monsters, so they'll be able to tell if any of the pack you take out managed to escape"

"I see...and I guess I'd have to come back in a few days to get the reward?"

"Nope. The guild can also hold on to your money, so the reward would be put into a personal account. You can even use this account to have us hold on to any money you don't want to carry around, and can be retrieved from any guild building, though they will need time to confirm your account, so try to visit the guild in any new town or city a day in advance before you need to withdraw any money"

"Huh, thanks"

That was a pretty nice feature for sure.

"The guild can also hold items for you if needed, though in that case there's a rental fee and you can only pick it up at the location you stored it at unless if you're willing to pay for a transportation fee"

"That's...pretty nice"

"Isn't it?"

It really was.

I got my things back and left the building. According to the request, the target monsters were last seen in the north east in the rocky areas bordering the open plains. Following that, I made my way through the main street and out the northern gates.

Grasslands greeted me like at the eastern gates, but I could see a forest to the west, though it was at a distance. Picking up the pace, I moved from a jog to a decently quick sprint as I passed travellers and other adventurers, cutting through the tall grass keeping an eye out for the rocky area the subjugation targets were spotted at.

At a running pace that definitely felt more suitable for a bicycle or even a scooter rather than on foot, it didn't take long for me to find what I was looking for. As the tall grass thinned out and the soft dirt became more packed and grew more rocky, I saw what looked like giant porcupines in the distance.

Like the monster manual stated, most of them were roughly a metre long, though there were a decent number that were smaller. Their wide, almost hemispherical bodies were covered in spines, but unlike Earth's porcupines, the spines were flat like blades rather than thick and round like needles. But aside from those two features, they really did just look like normal porcupines I've seen in pictures.

[Sense Presence] detected 14 monsters in the area and others further away. The distance that was put between this group and all the other hits was large enough that I could presume that they were something else entirely.

In conjunction with my skill, I managed to visually confirm all 14 monsters.

I put my hands on to the ground and spread my mana through the packed dirt towards the group. As my mana passed underneath the dagger porcupine pack, they quickly stopped nomming on the local flora and their knife-like spines stood on end. Their small heads looked back and forth, alert to a foreign presence, but unsure where it was.

Before they could curl up and mess up my perfect chance, I converted my outstretched mana with [Terranian Magic] and stone spikes rose up from the ground, simultaneously impaling the entire pack at once. Just as I aimed, the spikes went right through each of their heads, snuffing out all traces of their lives in an instant.

When I confirmed that the closest 14 hits on [Sense Presence] had all disappeared, I erased the magic, causing the spikes to dissipate into unaspected mana and float away.

As the little spirits chased after the trailing wisps of mana, I grabbed the closest corpse and sucked out it's blood. Even without my fangs, I was able to drink the blood without issue as long as there was a proper exit wound, though not being able to feel the thick fluids flowing through the unique vampire organs in the roof of my mouth made feeding less satisfying.

A lot of the taste was lost as well. Not only do vampires drink through an exclusive organ but also taste with it. My tongue could only tell that I was drinking blood. Much of the nuances to it's quality was lost by drinking this way, though I suppose I could drink poor tasting blood this way, I'd rather avoid drinking such a thing. The nutritional value would probably be pretty low as well.

I did the same with the next two, then lifted the remaining monster corpses up using my telekinesis spell one by one to drain them of their blood. As I could only lift one at a time with magic, I lifted two more by the tail with my hands. But only being able to drain three monsters of their blood at a time, it took quite a while to empty all of them.

It wasn't so bad the day before as there weren't that many monsters, but this time there were 14. The process was annoying and time consuming, but I had to do it so I could feed on my prey while it wouldn't look suspicious if I had hunted more than I could eat due to the guild's request.

I wouldn't have minded so much if I could just collect this blood, but all my jars were full and making more wouldn't solve the issue, only delay it.

Well, spilt blood only seemed wasteful because I was a vampire. To the other races, it was just as much unwanted as intestines.

If I couldn't drink it all, then maybe weaponizing blood would be a useful alternative? Then there would be a good reason to carry a lot of it. Blood magic was a thing in a lot of fantasy stories involving vampires, but I hadn't seen any hints regarding it. The closest thing was using other magic to manipulate blood, but that wasn't very efficient at all.

(I should probably take a look at the skills database to see if I could find an equivalent)

Eventually, I was finished draining all the dagger porcupines and I made my way back to the city.

Showing my guild card and request plank to the guard, I was waved in without trouble like usual, and I made my way through the city back to the guild building. By the time I got there, the sun had barely crested above in the sky.

The inside of the building was pretty barren. The only ones here were the usual staff not occupied with other duties and adventurers wasting time waiting for something.

"Hey"

"Oh, you're back quick. Was the request that easy for you?"

"It was"

I nodded to the receptionist lady I had just gotten the request registered with.

"Could you give me the proof along with the request plank and your card?"

I nodded and pulled out the right ear I had removed from each of the monsters as proof and placed them on the counter along with the plank and my card.

"Alright. I've confirmed it. 14 dagger porcupines. Are you sure you didn't push yourself on this? You were awfully quick"

"I'm fine. I just hit them all at once. It took more time to remove the blood"

"I see. I suppose that if you used something similar to that spell during the exam, it would've ended pretty fast"

It was different, but close enough I supposed.

"Well, here's your reward. And if you brought back the bodies, they'll take it at the materials counter like before. Dagger porcupines are worth a decent amount intact"

"Thanks"

I nodded and palmed the coins and my card before heading over to the counter further down.

"Umm...excuse me..."

The man looked like he was about to doze off again.

"Oh, hey. Ah, you again. You've got something good for me today as well?"

Well, I hoped that he'd consider it something good at least. If for nothing else than making my wallet happy.

Rather than saying anything, I pulled out the first of the monsters I brought back.

"Oh, a dagger porcupine. Very nice, and virtually everything's intact. How many do you have?"

"14, but some are a bit smaller"

"That's fine. Even the young ones are worth quite the penny. Did you know we use the spines to make throwing daggers?"

"Really?"

"Yup. They're strong and sharp. You don't need to do much processing to make them into weapons, but they're better than cheap ones made by a blacksmith. The longer spines are even used to make swords, though they aren't very durable, they make excellent backup weapons and don't rust"

I nodded. That really did sound useful. Just a glance told you that they were very sharp, and the fact that they were already perfectly formed blades meant that you only needed to cut them down to size then add a handle. Quick and easy quality knives. In addition, as a backup weapon, the fact that they didn't rust meant that they were easy to keep and their low durability wasn't much of an issue since they wouldn't be used very often in the first place.

Those spines would sell well no matter how many were brought onto the market.

As I was admiring the use of those annoying looking spines, the man called over some more workers like yesterday and took away the monster corpses as I took them out from my bag. This time they were able to take one per, but because they were so many, they were forced to make quite a few trips.

"Alright, for 14 dagger porcupines, here ya go. I'm looking forward to seeing what you bring next time"

The man gave me a big grin as he handed me my money. There were three gold coins and eight silver plates in my hands.

"This?!"

"Ah, those were fine specimens. None of the spines were broken at all and the meat was all there. Not even the skin on the belly was harmed. It's hard to make even a copper coin more than that without capturing them alive, and that's not something you can do with more than one or two at a time"

"But...this much?"

I was shocked. It was the first time I saw a gold coin and I got three of them at once. It wasn't so much of a surprise that the monster bodies were worth more than the request, especially with the high rating the man gave them, but this felt like overkill.

"You know, normally these sorts of requests are done as a party, but you're a soloer, right? I've heard from the others. Your strength is pretty insane for a newbie. If you got yourself good party, you'd be an A rank in no time. Well, even solo I bet you'd be able to climb up to B rank without much issue"

I didn't know how to feel about that. There seemed to be a lot of prestige attached to high ranks like that, but frankly I didn't really care about such a thing. I just wanted enough money so that I wouldn't have to worry about it when I needed it.

I didn't want to be famous, and there wasn't any use of me becoming rich. I was pretty happy living on my own in my dungeon, and I intended on returning to that some day.

For now, I accepted the coins and secured it in my magic bag. Rather than worrying about not having enough money, I was starting to get worried about having too much.