Chapter 693 - 693: [693] : You Don't Know You Were Wrong—You Know You're About to Die

"Gasper?? How did you get out here??"

The sudden appearance of the cardboard-box vampire stunned the entire room.

Rias most of all.

Just last night, Gasper had tearfully begged for the day off. Rias had agreed, reasoning that tonight's negotiations were primarily between the vampires and Heaven anyway. Devils and Fallen Angels were essentially observers.

And with Bokue physically present, even a full-scale vampire invasion would amount to nothing more than target practice for one hand.

Yet here Gasper was, bursting in of her own accord.

More remarkably, the vampire girl completely ignored Rias—the "President" she revered above all others—and turned directly to Elmenhilde.

"Answer me! Is it true? Valerie can't have a Longinus! I know for a fact she wasn't born with a Sacred Gear!"

"I'm not lying. It's the truth."

Elmenhilde turned her doll-perfect face toward the cardboard box on the floor, inside which a girl had apparently sprinted all the way from the storage room without remembering to take the box off first.

"Sacred Gears don't always manifest at birth. They can awaken later, triggered by certain events. You should know that. Valerie is no exception. Our intelligence suggests she awakened her ability in recent years."

"Incidentally, meeting you was one of my objectives tonight. When I arrived and didn't see you, I was actually a little worried about how to broach this subject with Lord Keikain."

Elmenhilde's pale lips drew into a smile that carried no warmth.

"I know who you are, Gasper Vladi. A hybrid born into House Vladi of the Tepes Faction... though that's the polite way to put it. The names they actually called you in that house were a thousand times worse."

"But precisely because of that, you spent years locked away in a castle alongside Valerie. The two of you supported each other through that time. In those years you'd rather forget, she was your only anchor. Am I wrong?"

"..."

Gasper went silent.

The box hid her expression, but the light in the eyes visible through the cutout holes dimmed sharply. Elmenhilde's words had struck the deepest, ugliest corner of her memory.

Into the silence, Griselda spoke.

"For a species that claims to despise hybrids so thoroughly, you certainly have no qualms about the behavior that creates them. Abducting humans, using them for pleasure, then discarding the children born from those unions. If it were up to me, I'd ask you to stop 'mingling' with humans for sport entirely."

The young nun's expression remained gentle. Her tone and word choice were anything but.

The naked hostility drew a soft laugh from Elmenhilde, who covered her mouth with one hand.

"My sincere apologies. But hunting humans is simply what we are."

"So basically just rednecks with better wardrobes."

Bokue yawned.

Elmenhilde blinked. "Rednecks? I assure you, the reason we dress so conservatively is to avoid sun damage, not because we're embarrassed about our necks."

"Not the literal kind."

Bokue wagged his finger.

"Rednecks are rural Southern Americans. Isolated communities, farms so far apart you can drive sixty miles without seeing another house. Generations of living in that bubble turns people strange. Eventually it's not just the wife anymore. It's the daughters. The granddaughters. The family tree stops branching and starts looping."

"Consider yourselves lucky your old-guard purebloods aren't based on my island. I wouldn't even wait for your two factions to fight each other. I'd personally drag every last one of you to the ocean floor."

There was zero venom in his delivery. He was simply stating a fact the way someone might note that water was wet.

Elmenhilde took no visible offense. Perhaps because she understood she had no right to.

She inclined her head politely.

"Naturally. I'm fully aware of the laws governing this island and have no intention of causing any incidents here."

"Good."

Bokue reached down, lifted the still-boxed Gasper off the floor, and set her on his lap.

"By the way, your little speech just now gave away something you probably didn't want me to notice."

"Oh? And what would that be?"

Elmenhilde raised an eyebrow with genuine curiosity.

Bokue paused for a beat.

"The real reason the Carmilla Faction is suddenly desperate for peace talks. It's not because you had some moral awakening. It's because the Tepes Faction now has someone with a Longinus powerful enough to tip the scales, and you're losing."

"Meanwhile, the Church has never stopped hunting vampires for your habit of preying on humans. External pressure plus internal collapse. The Carmilla Faction is running out of road."

A short, amused exhale.

"Put simply: you don't know you were wrong. You know you're about to die."

"..."

Elmenhilde didn't respond immediately.

She sat with that final sentence for three, four seconds, her crimson eyes flickering with something unreadable. Then the smile returned.

"You're absolutely correct, Lord Keikain. That is precisely the situation."

Hm?

Now it was Bokue's turn to be surprised.

He'd expected at least a token display of pureblood pride. Some reflexive denial. A deflection. Instead, she'd conceded the point without resistance.

"There's no reason to pretend otherwise."

As if reading his thoughts, Elmenhilde shook her head with a rueful smile.

"The Carmilla Faction is on the losing side. Continuing down this path leads only to annihilation. So we must secure a ceasefire with the Church, whatever the cost."

She paused.

"As I mentioned at the door—even if that cost is becoming Lord Keikain's personal slave."

"Shameless..."

Rias muttered under her breath.

What kind of logic was "I'll agree to a ceasefire with the Church as long as I also get to be Bokue's slave"? That was having your cake and eating it too. With both hands. While asking for seconds.

"Being my slave doesn't help you. I'm not affiliated with the Church."

Bokue pointed at the opposite sofa.

"You'd need to make that offer to Griselda."

"I'll pass."

Griselda's refusal was instantaneous.

"Setting aside the impossibility of engaging in that with a filthy vampire, my orientation alone wouldn't permit anything between two women."

"This conversation took a very strange turn very quickly..."

Azazel, who'd been silent for a while, pressed his fingers to his temples.

"So can we get to the point? What Longinus did the Tepes Faction actually produce that's strong enough to break the balance?"

"The Longinus in question is—the Sephiroth Graal."

"The— a Holy Grail??"

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