Chapter 47 - Vampire Hunt

Elmenhilde Karnstein has been running for quite some time now. Perhaps half a year.

At first she was just running from the Vampire Princess Gwyneth Carmilla and her rapidly growing influence on the Vampire society. She was a ruthless tyrant that didn't wish for equality for male and female vampires but instead absolute subjugation and slavery. She had turned most of the men in the Tepes faction into breeding cows and slaves.

Elmenhilde couldn't stomach it at all. However she couldn't deny that Gwyneth had pushed Vampire society so much further with her actions, pure bloods like herself didn't even need to fear the sun any longer. Well for the most part, so long as they had the Carm UV Sunscreen, a sunscreen developed by Gwyneth with the help of the Nebiros Institution.

With it she was able to gain a strong foothold within Vampire society as her people could attack during the day, and the Vampires which were neutral couldn't help but join her cause for the sake of gaining such a miraculous substance. Her influence grew and grew until now, she's basically unstoppable.

Elmenhilde had been her friend since they were kids but seeing the dark path she had gone on, the young Karnstein decided to leave. Where she would go she didn't know, but anything was better than seeing her friend become a monster while being completely unable to stop it.

On her journey she had encountered a strange magical raven named Huginn that warned her of dangers and seemed to be leading her somewhere. With nothing else to go off of she felt she had nothing to lose plus she probably would have gone insane wandering around alone, having someone to talk to helped a lot.

The raven had led her all the way to a town in Japan named Kuoh Town. Unfortunately however on the way she was confronted by Vampire Hunters several times so by the time she actually reached the town she was both significantly weakened and running out of sunscreen.

She was staggering through the town when she bumped into someone causing her to fall onto the ground and almost causing the hood of her cloak to fall off. Luckily she managed to pull it on before she was too exposed to the sun. The more the sunscreen was exposed to the sun the faster it would wear off.

Looking up she saw a beautiful girl that was likely a bit younger than herself with white hair, and piercing yellow eyes. The sunlight was being blocked by her body, almost making it seem as though she had a halo of light around her body.

Elmenhilde couldn't help but blush a bit, not only because this girl definitely fit her tastes but also because based on her jacket she may not be wearing anything besides it.

"..." Cebrail stared at the girl who had bumped into her with squinted eyes. She expected the girl to apologize so she could respond appropriately with a classic "It's fine," but the blonde haired… thing… in front of her wasn't saying a word.

"It's fine." Cebrail decided to say her line anyway since she had practiced it in her head several times already, before she moved to walk around the fallen Vampire.

When she did, Elmenhilde's eyes moved to follow the defenseless looking yet cold beauty. Specifically she used her enhanced Vampire vision to stare at the bottom of her jacket.

(Ugh, I can't see! It's like schrodinger's cat. If I don't see how will I know if she's wearing anything underneath or not?!?!) Elmenhilde's thoughts went wild into a perverted direction and a plan came to her mind.

"Owww~" She groaned fakely in pain and let her body flop to the ground.

"Huh?" Cebrail stopped and stood over the Vampire in confusion, she was certain the girl in front of her was some form of supernatural being so getting hurt by such a fall should be impossible.

(Maybe she's a Devil?) Cebrail pondered crouching down while resting her hands on her knees.

Elmenhilde, seeing the opportunity cracked her eye open and focused intensely on her peripheral vision but unfortunately Cebrail was above her head meaning she'd have to move far too much and could only see Cebrail's face along with the hem of her jacket.

"Property, Full Restore." Cebaril states and instantly a barrier forms around the two. If Elmenhilde was actually injured it would have accelerated her natural healing capabilities to the max and with her being a Vampire it would be an instantaneous heal. "You're fine now, bye."

Cebrail stood up as Elmenhilde opened her eyes fully letting them bulge out of her sockets and…

"Caw! Caw!" Huginn, just as the Vampire was about to see the promised land, flew into Elmenhilde's view and alerted her.

She knew what it meant so all joking and fun was put to the side and she stood up tugging on her hood once again to make sure it was on properly before leaving in a hurry. Cebrail stared at her very much recognizing Odin's Divine Beast, but didn't know which Raven it actually was.

Putting her hands in her pockets she decided that perhaps something more annoying then she initially suspected was going on around town.

(And here I thought that I'd finally have a day off soon…) She thought with a big sigh.

Elmenhilde had developed a code system with Huginn after a narrow encounter with Vampire Hunters before. 2 caws meant that they were close and had possibly even spotted her already. Luckily she was in a rather crowded area so the Vampire Hunters were unlikely to actually attack her, not only did they have no way to just disguise an attack on a seemingly normal person in public but they also couldn't risk hurting the civilians. It was against their moral code to kill or harm humans, they only hunted "monsters" as they call them.

Elmenhilde had never liked how her kind were called monsters. She very much couldn't understand it at all. Vampires after all aren't that different from humans at all. Sure they were faster, stronger, and more agile, but you could say the same about a lion or even a panther.

Humans just didn't like the fact the Vampires drank human blood. Understandable of course, but extremely unfair nonetheless. Just as Humans eat meat and vegetables to survive so must Vampires drink blood, to say Vampires are monsters for drinking blood because they wish to live is the same as calling a human a monster for eating a cow or a pig. At least that's how Elmenhilde thought of things.

"Haaa~ humans really are so annoying." Elmenhilde said aloud to herself with a sigh.

Suddenly though even with the crowd her ears picked up on something horrible. The sound of something whizzing through the air head straight towards her. Her gaze immediately went to the air above her as a wooden stake soared towards her.

Her eyes widened and she dodged by moving her body but unfortunately in such a large crowd the stake still hit something.

It impaled the woman behind Elmenhilde directly in her neck leaving her little time to even think about what happened as her body fell to the ground quickly forming a pool of blood.

"KYAAAAAA!"

"AIEEEEE!"

"AWHHHHHHH!!!"

Screams erupted from the crowd and the people began moving like a tide away from the murder, trampling over each other like merciless animals in their fear.

Elmenhilde realized that she was quickly finding herself being the extreme odd one out and quickly moved along with the crowd while gripping her hood. Stakes flew towards her from the top of a nearby building however each time they missed as she ducked into the crowd causing more and more bodies to drop.

She could tell that they knew where she was and knew that it likely wasn't just the one on the roof tops tailing her. However with so much excess noise even with her enhanced senses it was impossible to make out which of the humans were the Vampire Hunters and which of them were not. All she could do was continue using the humans around her as meat shields and find a chance to escape along the way.

"Caw! Caw!" Huginn attempted to warn Elmenhilde however it was too late as suddenly an intense pain bloomed in the girl's back causing her to stagger and nearly fall over.

A silver dagger was lodged in her back.

"HNNG!" Elmenhilde grunted through gritted teeth and realized that the crowd was now working completely to her detriment rather than advantage.

"Caw!" Huginn's voice directed her attention to a nearby alleyway and so she pushed herself through the crowd with relative ease due to her vampiric strength.

Staggering into the alley she pulled out the silver dagger and tossed it before staggering deeper into the darkness while leaving an obvious trail of blood.

Footsteps followed her and now outside of the crowd she could finally tell how many there were. Including the one on the roof making his way to her location there were three people in all, at least one female and two males behind her with the one on the roof being an unknown.

She stopped when she reached the darkest part of the alley and turned. Slowly stepping toward her with silver swords drawn and at the ready were as she suspected one woman with two men flanking her.

Elmenhilde also of course noticed the look in their eyes. It was the same look that she knew all too well, the same look she had once seen Gwyneth have before she started down her path of tyranny. It was a look of hatred. Not at one person in particular, but at the world, or in the case of the Vampire Hunters, at Vampires as a whole. It was irrational, and dangerous.

"Killing humans wildly in broad daylight? Don't you people have morals?" Elmenhilde questioned mockingly.

"That's funny coming from the person using them as meat shields." The woman in the middle responded.

"Well aren't you supposed to be better than a 'monster' like me?" Elmenhilde taunted once more while putting a small cut on the palm of her hand drawing blood.

"Grrr." One of the men growled at this comment and moved towards her with his sword.

"Wait!" The woman in the middle called out to him however it was much too late as Elmenhilde waved her hand far quicker than any Human could and by manipulating her blood and turning it into a long blade she cut off the man's head in a single attack.

The other two humans stared in shock and horror as his head hit the ground unceremoniously with his body following soon after.

Elmenhilde, attempting to take advantage of this opportunity manipulated the blood sword to attack the woman who seemed to be the leader of the group, however her plans were foiled when a wooden stake from above impaled itself into her arm breaking her concentration and causing the blood to return to its normal state.

"Hisss!" Elmenhilde hisses in pain before attempting to retreat deeper into the darkness where she had the advantage however as if guessing that she may do this the last man next to the woman tossed a small shiny ball at her.

"Watch your eyes!" The man yelled as a warning to both his female companion and the person on the building who covered their eyes instantly.

Elmenhilde, with her reaction time, also managed to do so however it barely helped at all as the shiny ball exploded into light like a flash bang. Not only did it blind her, but it had traces of holy power in it causing it to burn her skin.

Since she covered her eyes with her arms the blinding effect wasn't as bad so she could just barely see the woman running towards her with her sword raised high in the air. The woman aiming for the neck swung her sword at Elmenhilde and as her sword was just about to reach the Vampires neck the blood gushing from Elmenhilde's arm shot forward in an attempt to take the woman's leg off.

Unfortunately the woman noticed this and backed off dodging the attack at the very last second, but not before putting a deep cut into Elmenhilde's shoulder forcing her to take a few steps back as blood poured from each of her wounds.

For Vampires blood was everything and if she continued to lose so much she would become even weaker than the average human.

Fortunately for her, having seen that trouble was afoot a certain white haired girl appeared on the scene though she very much didn't want to help at all given how much work it would likely be.

Just when she was about to pick up Reginleif and head home too.

"How bothersome."