Chapter 90: A Vampire is Helping Me

I wasn’t tense about someone approaching. Anyone else would be, for sure. They’d have to look for a place to hide, or a really good excuse.

Me? I just hopped into my pocket dimension, disappearing completely in less than a second. At least I wasn’t stupid enough to forget to lock the door before going in.

Even from inside my pocket dimension, I heard and saw someone using a key to open the door. My heart was racing, not out of fear, but out of anxiety to see who was coming in.

When I saw the lovely face walk in, I couldn’t believe it. It was Joyce, the maid who had been quite nice to me, even coming to my cabin a few times to drink. She didn’t look like the type. Was she really a killer?

Joyce walked into the room, looking around with a frown.

"Was I hearing things?" she muttered.

A few moments after she entered, Robert showed up, out of breath from running as fast as he could.

"What are you doing here?" Robert asked, his gaze scanning the room, afraid that she might have found me.

Joyce turned to face him.

"I heard some noises and decided to check it out," Joyce said. "Is there a problem?"

There was no problem, really. But Robert had been making sure everyone stayed outside so no one would get in my way, and Joyce was doing exactly that.

"How did you get in? This isn’t your room," he said.

It belonged to someone named Chris, who I first thought was a man, but Robert had written that it was her nickname.

"It’s my friend’s, Christina’s. She gave me a spare key in case I ever needed it. I had to come and check if anyone was here. There were noises coming from inside, Robert, and Christina is outside with the others."

I heard everything, not sure whether she was telling the truth. Either way, it made things difficult for me.

Christina could be the killer, considering the same aura I found in the forest was inside her room. But someone else could have entered her room, the real killer. Now, with Joyce having a spare key, it could be her, or anyone who stole that key from her...

And that’s without considering that the killer might be able to get in without a key, or that the room might have been unlocked...

Basically, I had no fucking clue who the killer was, but it had entered Christina’s room. That had to count for something.

I just stood there, watching and listening, until Joyce finally left with Robert, heading back outside to the others.

I left my pocket dimension and started searching the room again, trying to find anything weird, something more than the mana trace. Nothing.

The last room had nothing either, so basically I only had the mana trace to work with. But there was something weird about it.

First, the mana trace was inside Christina’s room, but not on the door. If the killer had come in through the door, there would be something there, even if it was just a slim trace.

Which could only mean the killer was using another entrance, but which one? That was the real question.

I headed back to Christina’s room and stood still, scanning it, trying to spot anything.

Bob, who had been quite silent the whole time, left the pocket dimension on his own. He jumped around the room, bouncing from the floor to the bed and back.

I thought he’d come to help me, but he had other reasons.

"The vampire says he can help you, if you give him more blood to heal the rest of his wounds."

That vampire? Help me? Sure, he’d given some decent information after Balthazar and I tortured him, but how could he possibly help me? He was pretty weak back then, losing to me, and way weaker now that I had gotten stronger.

Still, I entered my pocket dimension and visited the dungeon where he was trapped. The vampire was in the same position as always, though he looked much better after the blood I’d given him.

His eyes had recovered, and so had his limbs. The man was finally whole.

That superior act he had back when we first fought was gone. In fact, he was looking at me like I was his master or some shit.

"My name is Gary, sir. Please, let me be your lackey. I’ll do anything to help you, starting with your current problem."

"How the hell do you know about my problem?" I asked.

Usually, only I could see and hear the outside while inside the pocket dimension. Well, Bob could too, but he was a primordial slime, a powerful creature. If the vampire wanted to see or hear anything from in there, I had to allow it.

"My senses are really good, sir," he said. "Even if you try to block everything, I can still pick up a few things, so I know the general situation."

That was quite surprising, honestly. The vampire was stronger than I thought. At least his senses were good. Couldn’t say the same for the rest.

"And how can you help me?"

"I firmly believe the killer had to get some blood on him when he killed those people in the mansion. Maybe on the weapon, clothes or boots. If he came into the room you’re searching right now, even a tiny drop would be enough for me to find it."

Well, if there was one thing a vampire could find, it was blood. I decided to give Gary a shot and see if he’d be useful.

"I’ll kill you in the most painful way possible if you try anything funny."

Gary lowered his head. "As you wish."

I took off his cuffs and pulled both of us out of the pocket dimension. Once inside the room, Gary got to work.

"There’s blood in here, for sure," Gary said.

I just watched as he scanned the room. The first blood he found was... on Christina’s panties. She might have been on her period and not noticed the drop.

Gary turned to face me with the panties in his hand. "This isn’t the blood I was talking about. There’s something else, just wait."

He kept searching, and then, something. Gary actually found something useful, something I had missed.

Crouching, Gary said, "There’s a drop of blood, almost impossible to see, on this floor tile. There must be a secret passage here."

I walked over and pushed the tile with my hand, and sure enough, it was fake. I pulled it up, revealing a lever. When I pulled that, Christina’s wardrobe slid aside, revealing a staircase leading down.

"Told ya," Gary said, proud of his find. "Will you pay me in blood? I really need it."

"We can talk about it later. Let’s explore this place first. Wanna come?"

Gary nodded. We both entered the secret passage, going down a few steps before reaching a dark tunnel that kept sloping down. Walking through it wasn’t easy. We had to keep a hand on the walls for balance.

"Who do you think the killer is?" Gary asked me.

"No idea, honestly. But Christina is definitely a suspect, having a secret passage inside her room, though she’s not the one who built this mansion. This place has been here for far longer, and others had used the same room before."

"Agreed, sir. I don’t think she’s the killer. She just unfortunately lives in the room with the passage. But what if she knows? What if she’s working with the killer? That could be the case."

I had yet to adjust to the fact that the vampire I’d almost killed and tortured was working with me, even talking like a normal person. That torture had definitely changed him, or he was just faking it. Either way, at least I wasn’t alone in that damn place.

We kept going down, finally reaching a dungeon. A labyrinth of stone hallways leading to who knows where. But the atmosphere there was heavy.

"There’s a lot of blood in this place. I can smell it," Gary pointed out. "I think there are corpses in here."

Corpses. Great. I let Gary lead, since he was the one who could sense blood from far away. My senses were better than his overall, but when it came to blood, he still beat me.

We turned a few times, reaching an open area that looked like it came straight out of a horror movie.

I saw lots of hooks, with bodies hanging from them. Some looked freshly killed, while others looked older, more putrid. The smell was really, really bad.

I covered my nose and stared at one of the fresh bodies. It was the maid who had died first.

"Why is this body here?" I said.

Something was off about that place. In fact, something was off about that fucking whole mansion.

It was weird to think that, maybe, Gary was the person I could trust the most...