60 The travelling girl V

As the moon continued to shine above the night sky, the young boy and the armored girl stared at each other.

The black knight tried to read the boy's expression but his face was calm and collected, making it impossible to guess what he was thinking.

She herself tried to keep a composed posture as she knew that even though she had no face, people could read her like an open book just from her gestures alone, and being seen through by a kid when you are a literal walking armor would be just too embarrassing.

"Did you say 'leader'??" she asked while trying to approach the young man, "A child like you is in charge of this whole race??"

The moment she walked two steps closer, the four vampires that were by the kid's side all jumped forward and aimed their weapons at her neck.

"Agh! What the hey?" she gasped while instinctively raising her arms.

"You would be wise not to approach me so casually..." the young boy commented, "Also, watch your words."

"What the hell, kid? Aren't you from Earth, like me? What's with all the hostility??"

The boy began to glare at her with his shiny blood-red eyes, "You think being from the same world as me gives you some kind of free-pass? If anything that makes you even more suspicious in my eyes... If it were up to me I would just keep people from that garbage planet as far away from here as possible..."

The girl stared at him in silence for a couple of seconds and stared at Lian who seemed just as speechless as her.

"I'm going to take a guess and say you don't miss home very much..."

"Home? Pfft! As if..."

"I see..." she mumbled. It was clear that there was a lot of baggage behind this boy's background so she decided to treat the situation very carefully, "Well... I can't speak for others, but I just want to make it very clear that I come here in peace!"

"So I've heard..." he commented while placing his hands behind his back and slowly circling around her, "I heard from my guard about a strange girl that came here with her pet dragon claiming that she was about to start some kind of resistance against those obnoxious beasts..."

"Pet dragon? Excuse me??" Lian complained.

"Shhh! Lily, don't interrupt him. I'll take you for a walk later" the girl whispered while trying to hold her laughter as the red-haired man glared daggers at her.

"A strange knight and a member of the dragon race..." the boy continued, "Why should we trust you, exactly?"

The girl began to think about what to say. She wasn't exactly the best at convincing people, but she knew this was something that needed to change since she didn't want to rely on Lian forever.

"I mean... I don't want to brag... But I did manage to kill two dragons..."

"Big whoop. Killing things is easy, anyone can do it. I want to know if you have any plan in mind for after that."

"A plan...?"

"Of course. Now that the dragons know there is something out there that can harm them, they will start getting more careful, more aggressive, more determined to obtain success. They will hunt you down and do everything they can to tear you into pieces and bathe the air with your screams of agony and despair until nothing left remains of your existance on the face of this planet!"

The girl looked at Lian who just shrugged in response.

"Yeah, sounds about right..." he admitted.

"Uuhh..."

The boy continued, "And now that you killed one of them, they will have their eyes set on our home! They will probably send three of five more dragons after us, all because of you!"

"Okay, now that's just not fair! If it wasn't for me, your kingdom would have been destroyed!" she complained while raising her voice.

"Maybe we would have had time to better prepare for the attack if SOMEONE wasn't distracting our guards!" the young man stated while staring at the vampire lad that was protecting the entrance of the bridge.

The girl began to feel bad at the idea she might have got the vampire that helped her in trouble with his boss, "Would you just listen to me? I'm trying to form an alliance with you against a common threat, and all you do is waste our time with pointless complaints!"

"Pointless complaints??" he repeated while glaring back at her and raising his palm.

His servants then lowered their weapons and stepped away from the girl.

"I don't know what your situation is..." he began to speak again while marching towards her, "But I have a kingdom to rule! People to protect! I can't just jump into the first crazy idea some random girl offers right after she puts all my people in danger! Especially not after seeing you lack any sense of maturity and leadership to back up her words!"

"What? Wh- What are you trying to say??"

The boy finally stopped walking after placing himself right below her, "You say you want to work together to fight the dragons... But you clearly have no idea of what you're doing... You have no plan, no followers, no strategy, no nothing... And you want me to believe in you just because you killed one of them?"

"Don't you get it? That's why we should work together! I might not have a lot of knowledge but I still have the power necessary to fight them!" she stated while glancing at Lian and the gatekeeper, "You saw what we did here today! A dragon, a human, and a vampire! We all worked together to fight a common enemy! And we won!"

"You call this a victory? A third of my kingdom was demolished!"

"But that wasn't my fault! If anything, it's you guys that did a bad job at defending yourselves!"

The kid then enlarged his eyes and slapped the girl like a mosquito, sending her flying above the grass and crashing against a large boulder.

"Would you care to re-phrase that?" the boy whispered while revealing four bat wings behind his back and hovering above her while flapping them.

"You... You can fight...?" she mumbled while staring at him while thinking why they didn't just defeat the dragon themselves with that kind of power. She recalled the boy from the gate mentioning that vampires didn't like the sun. Could it be that this race was stronger at night?

"The vampire race is one of the most powerful species amongst all factions. Of course I can fight! The only reason I kept myself concealed was because we didn't want to give away information to the dragons that they should be worried about us!"

The girl felt like she was going through a Deja Vu. That was exactly what the people from the human village said when she asked them to help her out.

The girl stood up and began to shout at the kid, "You let your people die, just so the dragon wouldn't know about your true strength? Are you crazy?? If you can fight them, why aren't you fighting them??"

"Quiet!! You might have nothing to lose but the rest of us actually need to think before we just pick fights that might result in the deaths of hundreds!"

"Oh! But it's alright if some of you still die anyway? What kind of logic is that? It's bad if one hundred vampires die, but ten or twenty isn't so bad??"

The boy raised his leg and stomped the girl onto the ground, shoving her into a crater.

"I told you to stay quiet! You're just an outsider! You don't get to criticize how I defend my people! The lives we lost today were unfortunate, but even more if not all will perish if the dragon race starts to come after us with full intent to end us! It's better to just let them take a few of us now and properly build up our power to fight another day!"

"Take a few of us? Build up power??" the girl repeated while trying to stand one more time, "You... You're treating this as if it was a game??"

The boy stared at her in silence.

The knight clenched her fist, "You... You idiot!! You have any idea of what you're doing?? You're treating people's lives as if they were a joke!!"

"I'm doing what's best for my people!"

"Oh, sure! For the ones that survive, maybe! But what about those that die for your plan?"

"You think you can win a war by avoiding any losses? Are you five? What kind of war is that where no one dies?? For any lives we lose, ten more get to live just because we follow my strategy!"

The girl couldn't look at the boy any longer and instead stared at his followers, "And you guys are okay with all this? You are okay with the way he treats you? The way he treats your people?"

The five vampires stared back at her. None of them were showing any signs of uncertainty in their eyes.

"You don't know what you're talking about kid..." one of them began to speak, an old man with long white hair carrying a spear, "Before he arrived, many of us would try to blindly fight against the dragons and end up losing many of our numbers in pointless battles."

"Ever since we chose to follow a different strategy..." this time a woman with short hair and carrying a sword spoke, "We managed to maintain the damage to a minimum. It might not seem perfect, but it is working."

"it's just as they say..." their king began to speak once more, "If you have a problem with our method, you're more than free to leave!"

"But..." the armored girl stuttered, "What about the game? When the dragons come, they will-"

"When the time comes, we will face them on our own way!"

The small bat that was resting on top of the boy's head then began to fly towards his palm and started to glow with intense red light.

The girl looked away for a moment from how bright it was and once she looked again, the tiny bat was gone, and instead, the boy was holding a small dagger.

"As the king of the vampire race, I deny permission for either of you! Should you ever return in here and meddle with our business once again, I shall see it as a declaration of war from the human race and consider your faction as an enemy! Now, begone, and never return!"

"What!? You cant do that? I'm not the leader of the human race! I don't speak for them! You can just attack them because I tried to talk to you!" the girl protested.

"Hmpf! Maybe this way you will finally get it... When you try to start something, you need to think about all the responsibilities that your shoulders will carry. To think a mere peasant would try to lecture a king on how to rule... You're clearly too naive for your own good."

"But-"

"Leave! Now!" the boy ordered while assuming a battle stance, "Or face the consequences!"

The more she looked at him, the more she felt like nothing she said would help her situation.

There was truth in what Allen said. He was a king, and she wasn't. She had no right to tell them how they should operate when she herself was never in charge of leading anyone.

"You won't even try to hear my case?" she asked one last time.

"Why should I bother? Who exactly are you to deserve my attention and consideration? You're just a human guest."

"I see..." she mumbled before giving one last look at the five vampires as well as the vampire kingdom she never even got to enter, "I'm sorry for the trouble... I wish you luck with the dragons..."

After biding her farewell, she glanced at Lian Garen and gestured that they were leaving.

"Well... That was fun!" the red dragon commented, "See you kids around!"

He simply waved at them and followed after the black knight. It was easy to tell from her silence that she wasn't expecting to get rejected so firmly.

"Next time, you should let me do the talking..." he mumbled while scratching the back of his neck as if he wasn't surprised at all by that outcome.

"No... He's right..."

"How so?"

"I'm a nobody... Who the heck am I to tell them they should listen to me?" she commented, "I have to do something... Something that will make people want to listen to me!"

"Oho! Interesting!" he laughed, "So killing a dragon and saving a city wasn't enough? What exactly do you plan on doing them?"

"I... I don't know... I'll think of something..."

"Oh..." Lian smiled at her, "I'm looking forward to it!"