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Volume 5 Vampire Tea Party Epilogue Part 1

Too dumbfounded to say anything. . . . . Leticia simply stood there, with her eyes widely opened from shock.

That gesture had no honor or dignity in it, but she did not care about it in the slightest. Although she was standing upright and facing straight ahead of herself and her eyes were opened to their utmost limits, it was as if they did not reflect anything in them, and she saw nothing with them. She simply stood there, wondering exactly how many thousands of years of history that was.

That history. . . . . . . . . . was not the one filled with glory at all. Just a pitiful spectacle of never-ending humiliation and anguish. After being forced to watch it over and over again for what felt like thousand or maybe even two thousand years in a row, Leticia’s soul has finally returned to her throne back in the aerial citadel. And then she realized.

In reality, this entire Gift Game must have lasted for but a moment, a single heartbeat, because the first thing that got properly reflected in Leticia’s eyes when she regained consciousness, the appearance of Canaria, was exactly the same as it was in the moment when she finished declaring the rules of the Gift Game and snapped her fingers.

When she noticed that Leticia came back from her trip she lifted her gaze so that they could see each other face to face, but other than that, she did not utter even a single word. She simply stood there while remaining silent. When that silence between them lasted for longer than five minutes, Leticia clenched her fists in irritation and decided to speak up first, although when she finally spoke up, she realized that for some reason her voice sounded unusually shaken up, which she did not expected at all.

「. . . . . What was that just now?」

「Good heavens, do I really need to start my explanations from something like that? Was it actually your first time participating in a Gift Game based on a recollection of historical events and experiences?」

「I know what historical recollection Gift Games are, but do not dare playing dumb with me. That was not something so simple as just a recollection. The amount of time that has passed here and during the Gift Game was clearly not the same. It is almost as if this Game of yours have created a separate universe, or divided the space-time into the inner and outer universes where the flow and accumulation of time between the two did not match. . . . . . . . and that is something that a recollection-type Gift Game cannot do.」

Leticia appeared to be calm with her analysis, but in truth she expected that Canaria was not telling her everything, or that she might have even tampered with the game itself in some way. But putting the matter of truths and falsehoods aside for a moment, Leticia cannot deny that what she just went through with that Gift Game had quite an impact on her. Therefore, it is going to be better for Leticia to assume that there was something wrong not only with the contents of the Gift Game, but with that entire Gift Game in general, since there were many parts of what she saw that she found to be plain suspicious.

Since this was supposed to be a recollection-type Gift Game, its purpose would be meaningless if it was not reproducing the experiences that someone’s body and soul have gone through with perfect detail. That is because simply watching the events play out before you with just your eyes would be no different from simply storing the processed information in your brain.

Due to the very nature of the Gift Games based on the recollection of the events from the past and the techniques used to prepare and execute such Gift Games, the time of the prepared experience and the elapsed time of the Game that uses it should remain the exact same. That is because the act of causing a difference in the flow of time within the inner universe of the recollected event where the experiences are accumulated directly within the soul of the Player and the flow of time in the outer universe, that is to say, the material world from which the Player gets transported into the inner universe of the Game, violates the clause of the Game rules that prohibits the implementation of any time deviations because then the Game’s creator is running into the risk of turning the recollection-type Gift Game into a Time Paradox Gift Game.

「Therefore, I am going to ask you again: what was that Gift Game just now? What do you want to achieve by showing me that history?」

Leticia put a strong emphasis on every word of the last sentence that she spoke, and only then did Canaria looked like she understood the intentions behind her questions.

「Ahh, I see now. Even though you have seen the events through the eyes of your own sister, you still think that the Game has been tampered with and what you witnessed was some kind of forgery meant to trick you. I understand why you might feel this way. . . . . . . . . . . but unfortunately, I am afraid that I have to disappoint you. You read the contents of the Geass Roll yourself literally moments ago, remember? Then I want you to recall what was written at the very beginning of it, in the Rule Overview section: {The Gift Game that the Players will be participating in operates on the general premise that 「Everything described in the Game is a historical fact unaltered in any way, shape or form」.}. So, there you have it. That is all that there is to it.」

「Enough with this nonsense. . . .  !!!!!!」

At that moment, Leticia’s Divinity swelled up and expanded when she began to perceive Canaria as a threat that needed to be eliminated. And then, in an instant far too short for any human to react, she summoned the shadow under her feet which spread out and changed its shape into the of a Dragon that launched itself at Canaria’s neck and sunk its fangs into it, all the while the thousand spears of shadow emerged from the rest of the shadow that was sprawled out all over the floor and skewered every last inch of her body. She did not deny Leticia’s suspicions with her words, so her instincts told her that she needed to be skewered immediately, so she did that while looking at her with eyes filled with hostility and rage. But once again, that ended up achieving nothing, because the moment she took her eyes of her in order to blink, that split second was enough for Canaria’s mangled corpse to disappear without a trace, only for her to be standing right where she stood, alive and without a single scratch on her body, which infuriated Leticia even more.

If only she thought about this calmly, she would have realized that it was obvious that there was still room for consideration in Canaria’s words. If only she turned a blind eye on the matters related to time paradoxes, she would have realized that there was no doubt that the Gift Game that she just experienced was a reminiscence-based experience.

But instead of doing that, Leticia has chosen to immediately abandon such a possibility. That is right. Rather than trying to deny it, she chose to outright abandon it. Her lips turned the color of deep blue, her fingers were shaking like mad and behind all the anger, her eyes were filled with depression. But honestly, who could have blamed her for becoming like that and wanting to deny that what she just saw was real? After all, she just learned that she was the one responsible for causing the downfall of not only her precious sister, but also the entire Vampire clan. . . all because she has become the one thig that /vampires despised the most.

More than anything else, that. . . that was something that she just could not bear.

「Answer me! Answer me, and be honest about it! What are you plotting? Why did you try to deceive me?! Is it fame you are after? The fame of finally slaying The Vampire Queen after driving her to madness?! Or maybe you are just a lapdog following someone’s orders!?? Who was it?! Who sent you here!!!?」