"Oh? Meiling, have you actually started to enjoy the sheer fun of fighting too?"
Hearing Hong Meiling's unexpected remark along the dark street, Flandre Scarlet happily hugged her arm and spoke with a bright, teasing grin.
Hong Meiling reached out and gently pinched Flandre Scarlet's soft cheek. "I am not like you at all, Second Miss. You actively crave the physical fight itself for the thrill of it, whereas I merely look at fighting as a necessary tool to solve structural problems."
After Hong Meiling finished speaking her piece, Flandre tilted her head in utter confusion, her blonde side-tail swaying. "Is there truly any real difference between those two things?"
"There is a massive, fundamental difference," Hong Meiling lectured patiently as they walked. "You fight purely for the chaotic result of the clash itself, while I only fight as a practical means to achieve a specific, peaceful goal."
Hong Meiling's heavy philosophical words made Flandre feel a bit dizzy. Results, means—how on earth did the gatekeeper's brain suddenly get so good that she was making her head spin with vocabulary?
Seeing Flandre's dazed, blank expression, Hong Meiling chuckled softly and patted her head. "Don't think too much about it. Anyway, you just need to understand that even though it looks exactly the same on the outside, our underlying reasons for throwing a punch are entirely different."
At this point, the gatekeeper paused, looking up at her modern urban surroundings. Her face carried a lingering hint of confusion and deep worry. She and Flandre had been playing around the amusement park for several hours, yet absolutely no one had come to pursue or arrest them, there were no stealthy corporate assassinations launched from the alleys, and there wasn't even a basic team of scouts tracking their movements.
Logically speaking, she and Flandre had just committed a blatant, public homicide, and in the very capital city of a major sovereign nation no less; this should be treated as an extremely serious, high-profile national crime. Under any normal parameters of civilization, the official military forces or elite squads should have arrived to lock down the block within half an hour.
But aside from that initial wave of generic Police, there had only been that lone armored hunk who tried to ambush Flandre from behind. Even after she had thoroughly beaten that iron can to death in broad daylight, the ruling structures of Kazimierz hadn't dispatched a single additional soul to hunt the two of them down. This completely defied all common sense.
If the opponent's active target wasn't the two of them... those corporate guys wouldn't be brain-dead enough to bypass them and go attack the Eldest Young Lady directly, would they?
A terrifying, catastrophic scenario suddenly occurred to Hong Meiling's mind. She immediately shook her head violently, tossing the dark thought to the absolute back of her mind. The reason for her dismissal was simple: the weather was exceptionally nice and peaceful today... right, that had to be it.
After all, if someone in this city truly wasn't thinking clearly and chose to launch an assault against the Eldest Young Lady, the clear blue sky would probably have turned pitch black or filled with freezing, suffocating red fog by now. And the neighborhood would be thoroughly accompanied by all sorts of chaotic, magical explosions. But currently, absolutely everywhere was quiet and serene, and the tourists and local crowds were still playing happily on the rollercoasters, which definitively proved one glorious thing.
The corporate leaders hadn't courted absolute death in the specific way she had just imagined. As long as they didn't foolishly provoke the Eldest Young Lady, there was still a viable chance for everything in this country to survive. Thinking of this, Hong Meiling let out a massive sigh of relief.
By the time the two returned to the hotel lounge, they saw the rest of their companions sitting at the table finishing up a late dinner.
"Why exactly are you two returning so late?"
Thanks to the intense blood connection shared between the vampire sisters, Remilia had easily sensed Flandre's approaching aura long before she even stepped through the front glass doors. But having played so late into the evening that she had almost completely missed the designated mealtime, Remilia decided she still needed to maintain her sisterly authority and criticize Flandre a bit for her lack of discipline.
"Hehehe, the grand amusement park here is super fun, Sister! There are so many cool rides and electric facilities that aren't even available in Lungmen..." Flandre eagerly pulled on Remilia's hand and spoke with immense excitement, looking completely, blissfully oblivious to the fact that the older vampire was actively preparing to scold her.
Seeing Flandre looking so purely happy and unharmed, the tiny bit of lingering irritation in Remilia's heart completely dissipated into nothingness.
"Sit down and eat your dinner then!"
"Okay!" Flandre plopped down happily into the cushioned chair right next to Remilia, turning her bright eyes toward Sakuya Izayoi, who was gracefully walking over from the kitchen carrying a fresh tray of warm food.
The next morning, after finishing a delicious breakfast, the group headed out for a brief stroll around the local neighborhood. There was still absolutely no one monitoring their path, and no official figures stepped forward to question them regarding yesterday's crushed knight.
Taking advantage of a quiet moment, Hong Meiling quietly approached Sakuya Izayoi, whispering to ask what had truly transpired behind the scenes while she was out playing.
Sakuya Izayoi recounted the political events in a low, elegant voice, detailing the movements of the local elite families. She then instructed the gatekeeper to keep a very close eye on Flandre tonight, because she and the Eldest Young Lady were officially going out to permanently resolve those lingering troubles from the previous morning.
"Keep the Second Young Lady's attention completely occupied so she stays inside?" Hong Meiling slapped her own forehead as a brilliant idea suddenly struck her, and she began frantically whispering a strategy directly into Sakuya Izayoi's ear.
After listening to the gatekeeper's idea, Sakuya Izayoi pondered the matter for a brief moment. While allowing the young lady to stay up late playing past her bedtime wasn't great for a structured routine, the Second Young Lady possessed incredibly sharp, supernatural senses. If they didn't utilize a thoroughly engrossing distraction, it would indeed be nearly impossible to keep her from noticing their midnight departure. Thus, the head maid offered a rare nod of agreement to the plan.
Once the group returned upstairs to their connected rooms for the night, Hong Meiling casually approached Flandre, holding up a pair of colorful controllers as she asked if she wanted to play high-energy video games together. Flandre was instantly very tempted by the offer, but she remembered she had returned late this afternoon because she was having too much fun and had almost been severely scolded. If she stayed up playing loud video games at night, would her older sister truly agree to it?
"Go ahead and play," Remilia said smoothly, stepping up to ruffle Flandre's long blonde hair with a gentle smile. "I am going to spend the evening accompanying Patchy in researching the ancient mythology and history books we brought back from the library today."
"Oh! Yay!" Seeing that Remilia had explicitly granted her permission, Flandre happily grabbed a controller and ran straight into Hong Meiling's bedroom.
Diving headfirst into the digital game, Flandre's hyperactive mind soon became completely engrossed in the flashing screen. After verifying that Flandre's total sensory attention was fully captured by the television, Remilia and Sakuya Izayoi silently vanished from the hotel room, leaving absolutely no trace behind.
Meanwhile, across the city, the atmosphere inside the Ingra Family's private estate was incredibly tense.
Upon learning the horrific news of Olmer Ingra's street death, the furious patriarch had immediately issued a supreme blood summons to his lineage. By the time evening set in, every single living individual in Kawalerielki who possessed even a single drop of Ingra Family blood had successfully arrived at the secure mansion. The relatives sat tightly packed within the grand hall, murmuring and asking each other what massive catastrophe had occurred to make the patriarch call them back under such an urgent directive, while anxiously waiting for the family head's official address.
Soon, the patriarch appeared before the assembled clan with a face completely full of deep sorrow and burning rage. He explicitly recounted the sequence of how their outstanding young Olmer had been cruelly murdered by a foreign savage in the street. Then, his voice rising with great, theatrical fervor, he declared that the noble blood of the Ingra Family could never be shed so easily, and he would force the perpetrators to pay for this insult in pure blood.
Hearing his passionate speech, the gathered relatives raised their hands one after another, loudly echoing the traditional cry for blood for blood. In their privileged view, this was Kawalerielki, the grand capital of Kazimierz, and the Ingra Family was an established, wealthy knightly noble lineage; seeking legal or underhanded revenge against some friendless tourists would be the simplest, most trivial thing in the world. To them, this sudden gathering was just a simple case of making up the numbers to show solidarity, and everyone would eventually get to divide the dead enemy's confiscated spoils. Since there was absolutely no real threat to their safety inside their own fortified estate, shouting a couple of aggressive slogans for show wouldn't hurt anyone.
At that exact moment, one of the younger cousins subconsciously glanced out the grand glass window.
The twin moons of Terra, which should have been bright, clear, and silver, had at some unknown point completely merged into a single, massive, crimson moon. It hung ominous and bleeding in the night sky like a colossal washbasin. The young man's heart skipped a beat, and he desperately wanted to share this deeply unsettling sight with his companions, but he suddenly discovered to his absolute horror that he could not open his mouth or vocalize a single sound no matter how hard he strained his throat.
While the Ingra Family head remained thoroughly flushed with excitement, actively pumping up his own people like a charismatic pyramid scheme recruiter, the heavy main doors of the grand hall were slowly, silently pushed open from the outside.
"Who goes there?!" the patriarch barked, his face darkening as he interrupted his own speech. "Today is a strictly private, closed gathering of the Ingra Family. No unauthorized persons are permitted inside this estate!"
Just as the family head's arrogant voice echoed through the hall, a crisp, terrifyingly elegant female voice drifted in from the darkness outside the doorway.
"Unauthorized? I am hardly an unauthorized person in this equation..."
Accompanied by the massive wooden doors swinging wide open, Remilia and Sakuya Izayoi stepped calmly into the light before the frozen crowd.
"Who the hell are you people?!" Seeing the distinct, midnight-black bat wings unfurled majestically behind Remilia's back, a sudden, suffocating sense of instinctual unease rose violently within the patriarch's chest. Who on earth had let a high-tier Blood Demon wander into their private sanctuary?
"Oh? You gathered your entire family lineage together today specifically to demand a bloody debt from my precious little sister," the corners of Remilia's mouth curled up beautifully to reveal two sharp, glittering little fangs as she scanned the crowded room with a polite, aristocratic smile, uttering words that made their very skin crawl. "And now you are sitting there asking who I am... don't you think that is quite a fascinating contradiction?"