47 - Yamada Hiero (Patreon)

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From the middle of the backseat, Ryan pointed to the right in front of his face. Yamada quickly turned at the next intersection.

"We're getting closer..." Ryan explained, and Runar quickly turned around to him from the passenger seat.

"Start pointing exactly where it's pulling you to."

Ryan quickly nodded, closing his eyes. He focused on that force inside his mind, the 'Light of Guidance', pointing into the direction that it showed him. Slowly but surely, the direction was changing, and Runar carefully looked down at the old map in his hands.

"... Alright, I think I know where we need to go," Runar muttered, pushing himself forward to let Yamada see him properly, "Take a right, a left, take the left of the fork after that, and then follow the road until the underpass."

The demon quickly nodded her head, speeding up a bit now that she didn't need to focus on Ryan's instructions directly. She drove quickly and without hesitation, weaving through the cars and pushing through the traffic lights at the last second. Usually you would call this sort of driving 'erratic', but the control that Yamada had over the car was ridiculous. Ryan thought you could only see this kind of thing in movies.

"She drives the carriage rather skilfully," Liam pointed out from right next to Ryan, squeezed into the seat behind Yamada's. Ryan turned to him with a frown.

"Did you just call this a carriage? I get the whole king thing, but at least call a car a car."

"... Carriage sounds cooler," the young vampire complained, looking out the window with a clearly bored gaze.

Not only that, but as Yamada drove further down the route that Runar had described, the faster the direction the Light of Guidance pointed to changed. They were getting close; really, really close. It didn't take long until they reached the underpass that Runar had pointed out, and Yamada came to a stop here.

"Is this it?" Runar asked, and Ryan slowly nodded his head. The 'needle' of the light was pointing right at the building that was hidden under the underpass. Ryan didn't expect to see this kind of place anywhere in the Channel. It was old and run-down; the windows were barred up like it was abandoned.

"I... guess so?" hesitantly, Ryan looked at the building. At this point, just moving his head around was noticeably changing the direction he was pointed to. His eyes moved around slightly, pulling Ryan's sight right into the windows on the third floor of the building, "It's up there, I think?"

"Alright. Yamada, drive us to a safe spot nearby," Runar signed, and just then, Ryan's stomach started rumbling loudly, "... Somewhere with a restaurant, please."

Ryan looked around outside. This area was quite familiar, it was pretty close to the Awakened Centre, "I actually know a place nearby that's pretty good... this noodle spot, the owner is an awakened Chef. It's in the upper area here, if we get up there I can find it again."

"Oh? That does sound pretty good. Drop us off around the corner, I remember there being a stairway up," Runar explained, and Yamada drove off with a quick nod. And just as Runar said, there seemed to be one of those massive escalators running up to the upper level of the Channel. Ryan, his uncle, and Liam quickly got out of the car, and Runar leaned into the window, quickly signing something to the demon. There were people around, so he didn't say it out loud, though.

Yamada nodded and quickly drove off again.

"Is she finding a parking spot?" Ryan asked, but Runar quickly shook his head.

"No, she's accompanying the people for the thing," Runar explained, trying to be vague, and Ryan looked at him with a slight frown.

"Seriously? But..."

"What, you think a deaf girl can't carry her own weight? She's strong enough to be my aide, Yamada can handle herself," Runar quickly stepped into the building in front of him, followed by an awkward Ryan. He didn't directly mean it that way, but if he was totally honest, it wasn't totally wrong either.

"So... you're sure they don't need me to find the fragment?"

Runar quickly shook his head, "They'll be fine. If it's in that building, they will find it. And just because you got through a newborn dungeon doesn't mean you can play in the big leagues just yet, alright?"

"... Fine. And I guess we can't leave him alone," Ryan pointed out, watching as Liam looked around excitedly. Ryan had at least been to larger cities a few times before, but he doubted that was the case for this boy. And even Ryan felt incredibly intimidated, so that feeling must be even greater in Liam. It was the same when they were travelling up the escalators to the upper level; Liam was gleefully looking over the edge of the moving stairway, excited to see what was at the top.

Before long, they did, and Ryan's stomach quickly guided the rest of the way. His hunger quickly made him forget what he was wearing, and that some of his scars were on full display. He just really needed to eat something.

Ryan looked around and tried to find the spot, and then, there it was; the dingy, small, hole-in-the-wall noodle restaurant that didn't seem to fit into this area whatsoever.

"... This is it?" Liam asked, almost disappointed to see their destination, "It doesn't look like the food will be any good."

"Oh, how would you know?" Ryan scoffed, quickly pushing open the door. Like before, it was fairly empty, and the seats at the counter right in front of the chef were empty. Once the four-armed man saw Ryan, he raised his brows surprised.

"Spirit Kid! Ryan, was it?"

"Yup, that's me! Chantora, right?"

The chef quickly nodded his head with a smile, "What can I do ya for?"

"Alright, take the biggest bowl you can, get me the thickest noodles, a bunch of meat, and the oiliest broth you have," Ryan immediately said, and Chantora laughed.

"Hungry, ey?"

"You can say that again. He eats like a Wyrm," Runar pointed out, grinning at Ryan, knowing that he couldn't deny it right now.

Runar waited for Liam to sit down next to Ryan, and then sat down next to Liam, before Chantora raised his brow while glancing toward the man in front of him, "You his pops?"

With a scoff, Runar shook his head, "No, I'm his uncle. I mean, I'm his, though," he added, ruffling Liam's hair. The vampire looked up disgruntledly. This was situation as far as the public was concerned; Liam had been adopted by Runar.

This was done so that he could be the boy's guardian under any circumstance without any sort of outside interference. Of course, in the system, Liam's species was marked as 'unknown' until now until vampires were added to the current 'International Intelligent Species Registry'. It was easy enough for the Aglecard family to make that sort of thing happen, apparently. It still seemed insane to Ryan, but that's what it was.

"What do ya two wanna eat?" Chantora asked, and Runar quickly replied.

"Your recommendation for me. But Liam doesn't eat."

The aktorione frowned, "Excuse me?"

Runar's eyes widened as he shook his head quickly, "Oh, no, no, it's not like that. He's a vampire, he doesn't eat."

Ryan immediately froze up, slowly turning his head toward his uncle. Liam seemed similarly confused, and the same could be said ten times over for Chantora. The chef quickly repeated himself, "... Excuse me?"

"As I said, he's a vampire. They can't really digest most things," Runar explained, pushing his hand into the bag that he carried with him, pulling out one of the small opaque bottles filled with artificial blood, "I've got something for him here, though, so it's not like he'll go hungry."

"I don't think that's a funny joke... vampires ain't jokin' matter, ya know?"

"Well, yeah, of course they're not. But we decided that it's better for Liam not to hide himself any more. There's this company that we got in contact with, they're working on this artificial blood that vampires can live off."

Chantora looked at Ryan confused, "Are you... is he serious?"

Ryan sighed loudly, nodding his head. He definitely didn't expect Runar to just come out with it like that, but it made sense. This was the whole reason for Liam to even be here in the first place. He would go to school as a vampire. He would make friends as a vampire. Liam would live his life openly. As a vampire. This young kid was the pilot flame for the light that would guide all vampires into the open. It was a lot of pressure to put on a kid, but Ryan knew that the family thought about this well. Or rather, he hoped. He looked back at Chantora, slowly nodding his head.

"Yeah, he's serious. Liam's a vampire," Ryan confirmed, feeling a bit nervous about just saying it like that. He knew that some of the other customers could hear as well.

"... Well, lookit that," Chantora let out. It was clearly something hard to believe. Rather, the idea that vampires actually existed was somewhat shady in the first place. You heard about incidents like that every once in a while, where a corpse's blood was drained, so people quickly started talking about that being because of vampires. But you never knew if that was actually a vampire or just some other kind of maniac serial killer.

Ryan actually wasn't sure exactly how Runar was planning on convincing others that Liam was a vampire without a shadow of a doubt. Usually you would expect that to be something a kid Liam's age came up with for fun, especially considering that he already did that whole 'King' cosplay thing. But he figured there was a plan for that in place already.

All the whilst this short conversation was going on, even through that almost deafening silence that had spread through the shop, Chantora had never stopped moving his arms to continue cooking. So, soon, both Ryan and Runar had their bowls of noodles in front of them, as Runar gave a bottle of artificial blood to Liam.

"So..." Chantora finally said, looking back at Ryan, "Did ya end up goin' to that dungeon?"

With a smug grin, Ryan quickly nodded, "Yup, even managed to level up a bit."

"Oh, did ya?" Chantora raised his brow curiously.

"Yup. Though now, I guess I should focus a bit more on training," Ryan pointed out as he held a spoonful of broth to his mouth to give it a try, his empty stomach almost reaching out to pull the whole bowl into him right away. After giving the broth a try, he held himself back for just a moment from fully digging in, "That reminds me... a chef's most important stat is dexterity, right?"

"Dexterity 'n Perception," Chantora nodded.

"Do you have any tips on training dexterity more effectively?"

 ---

---

---

The door's lock was picked carefully. Despite being an outwardly abandoned building, the lock was in far too good a condition; it had recently been replaced. Once the door was opened, the five cloaked figures in front of Yamada got moving. Stepping into the darkness of the space, their bodies basically melted away. Once she couldn't see any part of them anymore, Yamada herself stepped into the building.

She walked down the central hallway of what seemed to be an old block of flats. One after another, the doors beside her opened up, revealing one of the cloaked figures. Each of them was giving Yamada an 'okay' sign, so they moved on. She climbed up the stairs to the next floor. Usually, the stairs should continue up more, but they were demolished. Maybe there was another set of stairs on the other end of the hallway. As Yamada walked through the hallway, the hair on the back of her neck stood up.

She stopped walking, pulling back just so slightly as a hail of bullets shot through the old wooden door. She glanced at where exactly the bullets hit the wall on the other side of the door, and then reached into the inner pocket of her jacket. What Yamada pulled out was a black handgun. However, before she even held it out properly, yellow runic patterns appeared on the metal, letting off arching crackles of electricity. Her eyes gave off a similar glow as Yamada aimed the gun at the wall. Or rather, she aimed at what was beyond the wall as a small magic circle appeared in front of the barrel.

And then, she pulled the trigger. As Yamada felt the recoil travelling through her arm, she watched the remnants of her yellow magic on the untouched wall disappear. The next moment, the vibrations of someone falling to the ground were telling Yamada it was time to get started. She stepped in front of the hole-covered door. Looking through it, she could see three people in Bluesky-brand assault gear, carrying automatic weapons created by the company as well.

One of those three was already on the ground as Yamada's bullet passed clean through their head. Seeing their comrade fall down without them even being able to see the shooter, the other two were taken aback and distracted for long enough to let Yamada shoot into the heads of the other two as well.

They also immediately fell to the ground, without a single mark being left on their helmets. The five cloaked people immediately appeared, two of them standing by Yamada's side as the other three pulled away the bodies of the gunmen, tying them up and gagging them so they couldn't make any noise when they woke up later. However, these three weren't the only people to be weary of in here. The two cloaked figures by Yamada's side quickly informed her of the sound of people coming down the hallway, so she quickly nodded her head.

She reached into her jacket's other inner pocket, pulling out a practically identical handgun to the one she used just now. Magic circles appeared in front of the guns' barrels, as Yamada pulled the trigger on the left gun first, shooting the one in her right gun just a second later. The first bullet shot through the air through the now open flat door, seeming to slow to a crawl in the middle of the hallway. The bullet was frozen mid-air, as if held in place by that yellow mana.

And then, the first bullet from the second gun hit it at a slight angle, making the second bullet ricochet off the first. And the third, fourth, and fifth bullets did the same, as did all the others that were shot until Yamada was satisfied. She looked at the figure next to her, and they quickly gave her another 'okay' sign. With a light smile, Yamada stepped back out into the hallway, catching the stationary bullet as it fell to the ground. Turning to her right, she saw six more gunmen unconscious on the ground. One of them was even carrying a bulletproof riot-shield, but that didn't really help against Yamada's bullets.

She carefully stepped over them as the cloaked figures got to work, tying the rest of the gunmen up to make sure they couldn't cause any trouble if they woke up before everything was over. And it was just as Yamada had thought; there was another set of stairs here at the end of the hallway, though it clearly hadn't been here originally. It was just added to make it harder for people to get up the floors.

Now on the second floor above ground level, Yamada looked around. Her intuition was telling her that there were more people in each of these old flats. With a smile on her face, Yamada took a few more steps forward. Just because she had work to do didn't mean she couldn't enjoy herself.

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