You're Stuck With Me Now

"What to do about this? Based on my knowledge of Vampires, I haven't heard of anything like this before, although I haven't actually met one in person until now," Astur thinks, looking down at the Vampire frothing at her mouth.

Astur has some knowledge about Vampires, but she doesn't know anything specific, having not met one in person before now. But she can see Elizabeth's health points slowly falling down so she knows the young girl is dying, but she doesn't know what to do. Without the necessary information to deal with her situation, she calls Glacia back.

"Help."

"Wait, explain what happened before asking for help," Glacia says.

"Vampire bite, Vampire dying."

"Alright, that's my fault. Explain with more detail."

"She drank my blood and now she's dying."

"Ok, I see what the problem is now. I know that you know that every month Akkre sends blood to the Vampire Queen, Mu, but did you ever ask why?" Glacia asks.

"I was never too interested in why, so no."

"From what I heard, the blood of an Infinity Wolf is toxic to Vampires. A long time ago, Queen Mu drank Akkre's blood and was pretty close to dying. But her body adapted to be able to drink Akkre's blood, but now the blood of others won't have any effect. Supposedly other Vampires have tried to drink the blood of Infinity Wolves but it was fifty-fifty on whether or not their body was able to adapt and those who didn't ended up dead. This is all second-hand information though so I don't know what else you could do other than wait and hope for the best. If anything try to keep her HP from failing to zero."

"Alright, one of the starting recipes I have is for a Health Potion. I'm gonna go synthesise some, talk to you later."

"Later," Glacia says, hanging up.

Opening her cabinet, Astur pulls out the ingredients she needs for a Health Potion, 5 pieces of Silver Blade Grass, 2 litres of Threshwood Sap, 1 litre of water, 1 Mandrake Roots, and use Supplement B to fill the cauldron. Placing all the ingredients into the cauldron, the synthesis process begins. As one of the starting recipes, the requirements to make a health potion aren't very high and the time is half the time of the Blast Balls, 1.5 hours.

With both the low difficulty and experience from her previous sober synthesis with the Blast Balls, Astur has an easier time with the Health Potion synthesis. Although an hour and a half go by, for Astur, only a few moments pass by as she fully concentrates on the synthesis process.

Left in the cauldron are five silver containers made from the fibres of the Silver Blade Grass and inside them is a blood red liquid.

[Basic Health Potion (Common)]

[Heals 249 HP over 10 seconds.]

"With my bonuses, the healing goes up to 249 from 150, not bad," Astur thinks, bringing over the new item to Elizabeth.

Over the course of the synthesis time, Elizabeth has lost around 40% of her HP. Unable to take the potion herself, Astur forces it down Elizabeth's throat. With the potion in her, the drain on Elizabeth's health begins to pick back up but as the potion wears off, the pace of her HP drain picks up again, to which Astur forces another one down her throat.

This continues until Astur runs out of potions and by then, Elizabeth's health is back up to 90%. Having run out of potions, Astur goes back to make more and as another hour and a half passes, she repeats the process of force feeding Elizabeth until runs out of potions again.

After repeating the process a couple of times, Elizabeth eventually stops losing her health as her body stabilises. Her eyes regain focus as she slowly leans up.

"What happened? And why do I feel so bloated?" Elizabeth asks.

"You drank my blood and it poisoned you," Astur says, sitting down in her chair.

"Huh!? Will I be alright!?" Elizabeth exclaims, checking her body.

"From the looks of it, you'll be fine. I put a lot of effort into saving you," Astur nods, as she leans back in her chair and opens a game on her phone.

"It doesn't look like you even broke a sweat, but nonetheless, believe I should thank you for saving me once again."

"Don't mention it, like really, because you're probably stuck with me now," Astur says, not even sparing Elizabeth a glance.

"Alright then… wait, what?"

"Exactly what I said. You probably can't drink anyone else's blood other than mine now, so you're stuck with me now."

"Excuse me? Can you explain in detail what happened?" Elizabeth asks.

"So I asked someone and it turns out, the blood of my race is toxic to Vampires and potentially fatal. But if the Vampire survives drinking it, then their body adapts to only drink the blood of the one they drank from, rendering the blood of others ineffective. So what will you do now?"

"... is it really as you said?" Elizabeth asks.

"I received this information from a friend and I haven't encountered a situation like this before so I wouldn't know with full certainty. You can try drinking the blood of the monsters in the forest to find out… shit!"

"What is it!? What's wrong!?" Elizabeth asks, startled by Asturs sudden outburst.

"My character just died in the game I was playing. You just had to distract me, didn't you," Astur says, giving Elizabeth a disappointing gaze.

"At least I can say with full certainty that your priorities are in the wrong place. And why is this my fault?"

"Because you're the one who wanted to drink my blood and got poisoned as a result, thus as the instigator it's your fault."

"But how does this relate to you dying in a game? Rather, why are you playing a game on your phone in the middle of a conversation!?"

"Fine," Astur says, putting her phone away, getting up and walking towards her ingredient cabinet, "here, a vial of blood from one of the monsters in the forest. See for yourself whether or not drinking it has an effect."

Taking the vial from Astur's hand, Elizabeth promptly drinks it. Quickly emptying the small glass vial, Elizabeth's coughs a couple of times as she finds no additional benefits to drinking the blood, aside from the somewhat disgusting taste.

Thinking back on what Astur told her, Elizabeth contemplates drinking more of Astur's blood as additional confirmation. But the only thing stopping her is that she can't figure out if Astur would be willing to save her for a third time, due to being unable to figure out just what exactly goes through her head.

As she can't decipher Astur's thoughts on her own, Elizabeth gives in and asks, "Can I drink your blood again to confirm what you said before? And if something goes wrong will you save me again?"

"Yes."

"Yes, to which question?"

"Yes," Astur says again.

"Do you mean I can drink your blood and you will save me if something goes wrong?"

"Yes," Astur says, repeating herself and extending her arm like she did when Elizabeth first drank her blood.

With Astur's confirmation, Elizabeth brings the slender wrist up to her mouth and sinks her fangs in. Unlike before, where she almost instantly blacked out, Elizabeth feels a slight burning sensation, similar to eating spicy food. Compared to the taste of the disgusting monster blood from before, Astur's blood is akin to a gourmet meal, sending Elizabeth into a euphoric state. She feels her energy surging, if Elizabeth could see the system, then she would see her resource stats like health and mana going over the cap while her other stats are also slightly increased.

"That should be enough drinking for now," Astur says, causing Elizabeth to snap back to her senses.

"Right, so I've confirmed your previous statement and instead of causing any harm, I feel even stronger than I ever have before after drinking blood. I feel absolutely great."

"Since we've gotten over this, back to my previous question, what will you do now? I recall you saying you were some heir, so do you have a place to go back to?" Astur asks.

"Er… well, I believe the term fallen royal would apply to me. We Vampires once ruled the great Kingdom of Dusk in the past and the Tepes family were its rulers, thus making me it's Princess, I suppose I would be considered the Queen now," Elizabeth says, as a look of melancholy reveals itself on her face.

"Now that you mention it, you did say you were recently orphaned. But basically, you just explained in a roundabout way that you pretty much have nowhere to go and need a place to stay, right?"

"..." Elizabeths remains silent and simply nods, feeling slightly annoyed over Astur's attitude and wording.

"I did say before, you're stuck with me now, and it looks to be true. There is an unused room upstairs, go make yourself at home, I'm gonna take a nap."