CH198

Does she seem mad to you?

<You know, it’s interesting how my species’ mating behaviours managed to be so different from yours, and yet I can still at least pick up on the fact that what you’re seeing is jealousy.>

…Alright, well whether that’s the case or not, we’re gonna put a pin in that for the moment to focus on the matter at hand.

Ben went to explain what happened shortly before Thera and Lux arrived. Meeting Mercy on the streets as she lost control to her hunger and in her need to eat having his blood drained by her, only to bring her in, explaining the situation to the queen so she could use her healing magic to regenerate his blood while the vampire drank her fill. Of course, regenerating so much blood left him rather hungry as well as his body cannibalized itself to make up for the loss, but it wasn’t much of a price to pay.

As he explained though, Thera looked more and more horrified. “You’re just letting her eat you? Why not just get an animal or something to munch on?”

Mercy was going to explain but managed to be surprised by Ben’s answer, as well as the fact that he was unusually knowledgeable about a group as small as her people on the whole.

“Vampires are a race modified from their original by an evil god of their world, so among other things they can only survive by drinking the blood of intelligent races. If they go too long without food they can lose their reason, but in general they’re just people who want to live.”

“I’m surprised you know so much about us,” She said, giving him an appraising look. “There’s only a few hundred of my kind, it’s not rare to meet someone who either hasn’t heard of our race or thought we died out.”

“I have an elf acquaintance so I just so happened to read up on the subraces while trying to figure out her age. I guess since they have one of the more interesting histories it just stuck.”

A race that originated on the second planet of a system with four habitable worlds, the elves came into being before any of the gods ruling over the other ones raised up their own species, a fact that let the evil god of the elven homeworld strike up a deal with them, not knowing they weren’t his race to use. He sold groups of them in exchange for faith and brought them to each planet where those gods modified them as they saw fit, resulting in the birth of the high elves, dark elves, and drow.

Once he’d gained all of that faith, he’d used it to curse a group of particularly pious worshipers of the elven creator god, altering them into vampires. While Ben hadn’t paid too much attention to the histories and prehistories of the various races in the world, the origin of the five elven variants was interesting enough to stick in his head all this time since.

<Six variants actually. A group was also sold to a void god who changed them into star elves, but as a void race they don’t have a presence on this world.>

What? I mean, on one hand very cool, but on the other hand there really are too many elven subspecies.

<The races unfortunate enough to be born on planets with an evil god tend to have some chaotic histories, and given how active that particular god was I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s one or two more hidden away in the universe.>

“Alright,” Thera started, getting them back on track while looking exhausted. “Then let’s find you someone else to eat, Ben has enough things biting into him already.”

“The issue with that is similar to the charm of the succubi. By biting someone I will dominate their mind, whether I intend to or not. The fact that he’s immune and understanding was a greater stroke of luck, though not to mention the flavour. I guess it’s true that the sweetest fruit is found beneath the thickest peels,” She said as she stared at his neck, licking her lips as she thought of the taste she’d gotten to experience.

“See, I told you before I’ve had to deal with all of that because I’m unusually delicious!” He told Thera, feeling unreasonably validated to hear such a thing, no matter how potentially horrifying the implications would be to himself personally, though his friend only scoffed.

“Please, if sapience is a requirement from whatever they eat then it’s probably just a result of all the weird stuff going on in your mind.”

“My mind skills don’t make me more sapient than others,” He said dismissively until he gave it a little thought. Do they?

<Originally I’d have said no, but then again I also would have said you can’t speed through leveling meditation by doing it twice at the same time because it defeats the purpose, but you’ve already proven me wrong on that so who knows?>

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Huh, well maybe I’ll have to let her have another bite the next time I level up a couple mind skills to see if that’s the case.