. After several seconds, the door opened and Mother’s personal lady’s maid, a tall, serious, raven-haired woman whom I suspected had some elven ancestry looked at me, then stepped back while opening the door further to admit me. I followed her into Mother’s sitting room, where Terese seated me in an upholstered chair. She then lightly knocked upon the study …

So, that happened… I don’t remember going home. The butler had driven the second carriage home after delivering me, so I must have ridden back with Mother. I imagine I would remember something if we had conversed, so she must have left me to my thoughts. Either that, or I didn’t respond when she did try to talk to me. …

“I’m terrible at magic, Your Highness,” I explained. “The only things I can do are the automatic spells that come from my vampiric nature. I only use my blade while fighting. The enemy simply didn’t do well defending against me.” Aerial melée fighters are rare, after all. An aerial melée fighter with the training of a knight? I might be …

It turned out, my audience wasn’t a debriefing at all, it was a dinner date. I was dragged by the princess into her private chamber along with her two friends until we were called to come to the dining room. I don’t blame Uncle Owen– I mean, the King– from wanting to lavish rewards on me. His daughter had been …

I was shocked, surprised, confused… look, the princess of my country had just wrapped her arms around me, and her tears were dropping on my shoulder. I claim every right to the empty-minded befuddlement it put me in. Deciding it couldn’t possibly be a breach of etiquette, because I defy anyone to show me the established etiquette for what to …

. I rode to the palace in the mansion’s second carriage. The mansion’s primary carriage was already at the Palace with Mother, of course, so Carson, Mother’s butler, drove me instead of the usual chauffeur. That, for me was a blessing. The primary carriage always carried three or four footmen, because it was fully decorated in Pendor’s livery. The second …

With Tiana Full Battle Mode no longer active, I was beginning to go back into the funk I had been in since leaving the Hero’s Party. Arken sent regular reports to the Palace, so they knew all the details, but I had a duty to report my failure in person. My mother has a small house in the capital… small …

I noticed that the riderless wyverns were following the bandit gang home. They flew as a flock. That being the case, I figured I could just attack the riders and rescue the girls after the riders were dead. Three heads later, one of the bandits got the bright idea to drop the girl mid-air and hope I went after her …

This close to the capital, I knew it couldn’t be foreign troops or demons. It could only be one thing. I needed to drop off my sack. Looking around quickly, I spotted a watchtower along the road leading to the road I had been following, and quickly descended to it. After dodging an arbalest bolt while letting out a very …

. The folk belief was that a sharpened piece of ash through the heart would kill my kind. Well, if you could manage it, most anything driven through someone’s heart would kill them, right? We learned that a pair of village kids had followed us when we went out to face the beast on the hilltop it had chosen for …