Book 5: Volume 5 Chapter 1, Differences Between Races

Translator: Kazumi

Editor: Silavin

 

After returning from the Smith Kingdom, Peach wasted no time reporting her pregnancy to everyone in the Management Floor.

 

It hadn’t been fully confirmed yet, but the examination at the village had made the likelihood close to certain. Collete was absent. She was, after all, still at the Elf Village. However, the rest greeted the news with unmistakable warmth and celebration.

 

In the midst of it all, Kousuke’s gaze drifted to Schrein, and his expression carried a half-formed look that he hadn’t meant to let show.

 

Schrein caught it.

 

“Kousuke. You don’t think I’m troubled about being last, do you?”

 

“What? No… no.”

 

His reply came out a half-beat off. Schrein tilted her head, studying him.

 

“Really? Your face tells a different story.”

 

“It does?”

 

Kousuke instinctively brought his hand to his mouth, as though that might retroactively correct his expression.

 

Schrein watched him for a moment, then smiled.

 

“I was lying.”

 

A beat passed before Kousuke managed to lower his hand.

 

“Since we’ve wandered into the topic,” Schrein continued, composing herself, “I should tell you that Vampires don’t attach the same weight to procreation that Humans tend to.”

 

“Is that so?”

 

“Yes. There are ways for us to grow our numbers that don’t involve sexual reproduction. And beyond that, our longevity changes our mindset on it.”

 

She said it simply, as a matter of fact. Procreation, in its most basic sense, was about increasing one’s Family. But Vampires had another path to accomplish that end.

 

Through the act of bloodsucking, they could create others of their kind, and those created beings sometimes manifested greater power than their originators. Thus, the urgency toward reproduction was, for Vampires, less acute.

 

Kousuke turned this over quietly.

 

“So then… what about you, Schrein? Were you born, or—”

 

“Born. To a Mother and a Father.” She paused. “More or less.”

 

Schrein had been summoned by Mitsuki but her origin was a natural birth between two Vampires. Beings born that way were sometimes called Pure-Bloods, though within Vampire society that distinction carried little weight.

 

Bloodline purity simply was not a central value among her people, who had evolved to incorporate the strength of other Races through their very nature. It might have seemed contradictory, but perhaps that was exactly the point. Vampires had become what they were by having the bloodline reaching outward, not inward.

 

Kousuke nodded slowly, then paused.

 

“Wait. But didn’t Schrein also work toward the possibility of having children? Along with the others, when things were uncertain?”

 

That had been an earlier period, when Kousuke had become a Living God and it was unclear whether he could have children at all. Schrein had earnestly thrown herself into researching, and in her own way, working toward the possibility of evolution.

 

“Of course,” Schrein said, without missing a beat. “Knowing that it’s *possible* someday is entirely different from knowing it isn’t. The first is reassuring. The second just sits there.”

 

“Is that really all?”

 

“That really is all.”

 

She laughed softly at his continued puzzlement.

 

Floria had been listening from nearby. She approached, settling beside Kousuke as Schrein’s quiet laughter faded.

 

“I had a position to uphold, which made me feel I should have children sooner rather than later,” Floria said. “But if that hadn’t been the case… I’m not sure I would have had them as quickly.”

 

Kousuke looked at her, slightly surprised.

 

“Really?”

 

“Yes. I don’t know if it’s because I became a High Human, but the urgency I felt when I was still fully Human has lessened a lot.”

 

“I feel the same way,” Sylvia said from across the room, stepping into the conversation.

 

“—Not that I have any objection to… doing it…” she added quickly, color rising in her face.

 

Floria smiled at that.

 

“Well. I can afford to reflect on it now because I already have children, and they’re grown. At the time, I simply felt what I felt.”

 

“Yes,” Sylvia agreed, her expression drifting somewhere nostalgic. “I think you’re right.”

 

“I wonder if there’s a specific reason,” Kousuke said.

 

“There might be. But does it matter at this point?”

 

Both of them already had children. Whatever had shaped their feelings then couldn’t be undone now, and chasing the answer would have been an exercise in circles. Kousuke accepted this with a nod, and Sylvia beside him seemed to be reminiscing somewhere further back in memory.

 

“My awareness of what I was becoming was still low at the time,” Sylvia said. “I think I was still carrying a lot of what I’d felt as a Human.”

 

“That’s true. And in my case, there was the role of Queen as well.” Floria’s voice was soft with remembrance. “It made certain things feel more urgent than perhaps they actually were.”

 

“Hmm, but Mom—” Miya’s voice drifted over. “Didn’t you say something to me once about wanting another child?”

 

“That was then. This is now.”

 

Whatever impulse had produced those words, Floria answered without flinching right now. Miya studied her Mother’s face for a moment with mild skepticism, then seemed to decide the matter was not worth pressing, before something else occurred to her.

 

“Actually, what about me? Does any of this apply to me?”

 

“That would be something only you can know,” Floria said.

 

Miya was quiet for a moment.

 

“…So my general lack of interest in marriage is a Race thing, after all.”

 

“No,” Floria said evenly. “That’s just Miya being Miya.”

 

“That’s awful of you to say!”

 

The laughter that followed spread easily through the room.

 

After a while, Sylvia looked at Miya with something more measured in her expression.

 

“Given how unique your circumstances are, if you’re ever curious about it, I could ask around on your behalf.”

 

The implication of who she would ask required no elaboration.

 

Miya shook her head.

 

“No, it’s fine. I’m not desperate to know.”

 

“All right, then.”

 

Sylvia let it go without pressure. She had glanced once toward Towa, and what she had seen there had been enough. Whatever Miya’s feelings were on the subject of romance, they were clearly not the problem. There was no need to push.

 

Miya, for her own part, made the same quiet calculation and arrived at the same conclusion.

 

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The conversation about each Race’s relationship to children and lineage might have continued, but it was interrupted by the sound of hurried footsteps and a familiar voice at the door.

 

It was Sheryl.

 

“Kousuke-sama! Collete has gone into labor!”

 

“What—?” He straightened immediately. “Really?”

 

“Yes!”

 

The timing was, in every way, remarkable. Kousuke’s expression moved through surprise and joy in quick succession.

 

He was not permitted to be present. Collete had made her wishes clear that he was welcome to visit the Elf Village, but once labor began, he was to keep his distance, just as he had with Floria and Sylvia before her.

 

So he waited, as he had waited then, restless and quietly helpless in the way that waiting gnawed at him.

 

About twenty hours after Sheryl’s initial report, she returned.

 

Collete had given birth safely. The babies were a pair of twins: a boy and a girl.

 

Kousuke set out for the Elf Village almost before the sentence was finished.

 

By the time he arrived, things had settled. Collete was resting, both infants held in her arms, her expression carrying an exhausted and luminous happiness that he recognized immediately.

 

For Kousuke, this was his sixth time. And yet, as with every time before it, the feeling that moved through him when he saw her like that all seemed new.

 

“You did well.” He praised.