Chapter 39: An unexpected encounter

The couple walked arm in arm for what seemed like hours, trudging their way through the packed crowds that plagued the twisted streets of Zepar city, wading their way through the endless oceans of fog like smoke dyed in a multitude of iridescent colours, until eventually, the noise stopped, the crowd vanished, and the street cleared. The sound of silence carried a weight no impact could hope to match, like a punch to the gut. It was unsettling, jarring, a scene that shouldn't exist amongst this rambunctious pit of sin. Arthur's now unhindered gaze scanned the desolate street. The cobbles were unstained yet uncleaned, sporting no reflection due in part to the thick layers of dust that caked each and every surface in the large expanse. Rows of houses lined the eerie locale, their presence only adding to the chilling atmosphere that dominated the street. They were unoccupied; Arthur could tell as much from a glance. Their wooden doors creaked with every passing gust of wind, sometimes splintering from the light force, while the dilapidated walls were now stained a horrible mustard yellow.

How long had they been here, unoccupied and unused, left to rot, and more importantly, why? Why were they unused? Wasn't this an opportune locale to buy a house in? From what Arthur could tell, he and Luna were now on the very precipice of intruding into the centre of Zepar city's red-light district. Surely some nobles would have jumped at the opportunity to buy property in such a place. Everything just didn't add up. It was unsettling. Arthur couldn't understand anything about this place, nor did he want to. He just wanted to go. He wanted to run, to distance himself as much as possible from this creepy area, yet, no matter how much the boy tugged at Luna's tight hold, practically begging the seductress to take another route to their destination, the fox remained steadfast in both her silence and her determination, she wouldn't move, in fact, she hadn't even registered Arthur's frantic motions.

*Step**step* The couple resumed their journey through the desolate street, their steps that previously went unheard amongst the flurry of crowded noise now echoed with painful clarity in Arthur's worrisome brain. "Um…mistress Adeline, if you don't mind me asking, why is this place…so…empty?" Arthur curiously asked; if he couldn't escape from this picturesque portrait of claustrophobic horror, then he'd at least try to get to know it.

"..." Luna responded with nought but silence. She had heard the child's inquisitive query, and she understood the question perfectly. Still, Luna chose not to answer, not out of spite but out of necessity, for she knew she wouldn't be able to give the curious boy his satisfactory answer. He would have to figure this out by himself, to uncover the root cause of the eerie atmosphere that seemed to shun the presence of any and all humans. And with that, the seductress continued her unabashed stride through the horrific street, a teasing, all-knowing smile now present on her obscured face.

They continued to walk for what Arthur assumed to be nothing more than minutes, meandering their way through the palpable silence present in the desolate area while Arthur's gaze frantically scanned the environment in search of, well, Arthur didn't know exactly what he was looking for, the cause of the silence eluded him, it could be anything, maybe there was a curse placed upon this street, perhaps someone died, if that was the case how was Arthur to know, he could only observe the physical realm of the present. The houses, despite being unoccupied and run down, seemed fine. In fact, they appeared to be better than fine. Even with the unobscured rot that presented itself to the couple with unabashed pride, the structures appeared to be in better health than what they really should be capable of. None of their windows had been shattered, their glass left to decay under the setting sun that now filled the street with a beautiful amber glow. At the same time, each and every possible entrance, despite appearing splintered and crooked from the continued thawing, showed no signs of human-caused damage, everything was natural, and maybe that was why their presence seemed more horrific to the on-edge child than if they had been tarnished by human hands. And that was when Arthur saw it, a structure that by and all right had no place in this land of sin. 'A church?'. A church, or at least it looked like it might have been a church at one point in time, the structure was now too damaged, too run down for Arthur to clearly tell.

Standing defiantly in the middle of the road, acting as a fork in the path for what was to come, the building that may have previously been a place of god now looked like nothing more than a cluster of rubble and ruin. The structure lacked walls, or rather it lacked a wall, the right one to be exact, in place of which remained a cluster of collapsed mustard yellow stone, its destruction was eerie, unnatural. Buildings like this should be able to last thousands of years without repair, especially in this world of magic, yet this church had somehow fallen into disarray in what Arthur could only assume to be record time. A dilapidated roof of red tiles failed to guard the place of worship, falling halfway due in part to the crumbled right wall and allowing the building to stand its own against the ferocious elements of the night. Windows of stained glass reflected the brilliant amber light of the setting sun, obscuring their true colours, instead choosing to blend in with the falling sky. Like a chameleon, they were hiding their presence, their stories from the observant boy.

The contents of the building, however, still eluded the child despite the building's unintentional open entrance. No matter how much Arthur strained his eyes to take a peek at the monastery's contents, his gaze caught sight of nought but shadows. It was as though light dared not intrude upon the failed holy ground, leaving it to rot amongst the darkness it had let fester. The building wasn't large, not by any means, especially not for a church though many still considered it to be sizable, taking up more land than it rightfully deserved. Low walls of the same mustard yellow stone lined the outskirts of the building's underserved land in a pointless attempt to shield the church from the outside world and the wrongdoers that dared do it harm, while a rusted wrought iron fence acted in place of an entrance.

Overgrown gardens of weeds and wildflowers plagued the locale's ruinous gardens, corrupting every inch of the available land with their unneeded presence. They swarmed. They claimed all, no matter where Arthur placed his gaze, he would always be met with the ugly sight of weeds and moss, the only signs of life Arthur could detect in the abandoned place. Or at least that's what the boy assumed. After all, how could anyone, let alone a priest or even a nun live in such a dire locale? No, why would they want to live in such a place? There was no benefit to staying in such a run-down monastery, no income, no guests bearing gifts, and the placement was horrific. Why would anyone want to go to a church in this land of sin? The thought was laughable, nonsensical to the young Arthur who had come to form his own answer to the street's desolate presence.

'So this church is the reason no one wants to live here? I suppose that makes sense. The church was probably built at a time before this area became part of the red light district. Maybe at that time, this street wasn't so quiet…maybe, but even then, that doesn't make sense. The houses look like they've never been so much as touched, let alone lived in, while the dust that plagues the streets clearly portrays a history of abandonment. Urgh, just what the fuck is going on? I'm putting too much effort into uncovering a pointless mystery,' Arthur inwardly monologued, his dirty brown eyes trained upon the monastery's crumbled wall in a spaced-out manner, that was until Arthur caught sight of movement amongst the shadows.

Arthur's breaths froze, and so did his body. He was paralysed. Was he scared, frightened of the unknown figure that loomed in the darkness, wearing nothing more than the shadows as clothes? No, this feeling wasn't fear. Arthur knew fear. He had experienced that same feeling of dread a countless number of times throughout his useless life, and what he was experiencing now paled in comparison to that gut-wrenching pain. This was something different. *Ba-dump* Arthur felt his heart thump against his frail chest. Blood rushed every inch of the child's body, compelling it, urging it to move, to just do something, yet, even after experiencing his body's instinctual call to action, Arthur remained placid in his place, his gaze honed upon the spectral figure with ferocious intrigue. Arthur wanted to know, neigh, needed to know, who or what was cloaked by the thin veil of shadows.

He waited, with Luna still in tow, for what seemed like hours but, in reality, was no more than minutes. His eyes ever trained upon the entrance to the formerly desolate church, unblinking, unfazed to the world around him, they hurt, they itched. Arthur's skin crawled, yet his bloodshot eyes never closed. He wouldn't let them. He had to keep them open to witness the birth of the proper form of the shadowed figure. That was when Arthur saw it. The shadows moved once again. This time they appeared closer than ever to the young child. He could hear footsteps. They were light, dainty, that of a woman, one who moved with nothing short of ephemeral grace. Someone was here. Someone breathed amongst the lifeless decay of the abandoned building. Overwhelming intrigue once again flushed the pain-ridden mind of Arthur. A girl, a girl was here, moving amongst the rubble. This fact alone shouldn't have reasonably been enough to enrapture the mind of the curious child, yet, strangely, it was. Arthur felt something deep within him move at the thought. Arthur had captured all the targets currently in Zepar city, so then why, why did he feel the same way now that he did when he first met Charlotte, this sense of foreboding, this strange aura of mixed homeliness and dread like he was about to set out on a journey that could possibly spell his doom.

Seconds passed in eerie silence. Arthur dared not breathe. He dared not move in fear of scaring off the elusive creature that seemed so skittish of the golden light that rained upon the abandoned monastery with no remorse, dyeing every inch of the forgotten place with its brilliant golden glow. Like a scared rabbit, the figure gently poked a covered hand out into the glorious radiance of eve. It was like she was testing the water to a boiling hot bath, gauging the ambient light with little more than her obscured hand, which she promptly withdrew. No movements occurred from either party within the following seconds. Even Luna by Arthur's side dared not urge the boy on, not when he was so seemingly captivated by the church's ephemeral scenery. Luna just remained there, uncaring to the portrait-like visage that would enrapture even the most indifferent of men. Her eyes only caught sight of Arthur. His expression of unabashed intrigue was the only thing she cared about.

Arthur's face was pink, not out of embarrassment from Luna's sensual glare that seemed to bore into every cell of the child's exposed body but out of lack of oxygen. Arthur hadn't taken so much as a single breath throughout the entire encounter. He was foolish, dumb, childish even. He had been too focused on the spectral figure cloaked in darkness, too enraptured by the infinite possibilities the girl seemed to hold to care about his own well-being, a fact that was now biting him in the back as Arthur struggled to hold back a ferocious gasp. His head felt light while his gaze appeared clouded. He was on the verge of consciousness, teetering on the edge. His charming face was now purple. He had to breathe. This wasn't something Arthur could hold back any longer. His lungs burnt, they hurt, everything hurt, every cell, every pore on the child's barely clothed body screamed out in pain. The blood in Arthur's body felt like scalding hot water as it traversed through the maze-like routes that all led to his heart, yet even this pain didn't manage to discourage the enraptured child. Arthur refused his body's call to action, for the figure began to move once again.

First came a foot, a simple step cloaked in scarlet, emerged from the obscured land of darkness to greet the golden twilight. *Bathump* Arthur's heart once again skipped a languid beat, not out of ecstasy, joy or even lust like in the cases of Vienna and Luna but out of captivated fascination. He was invested in this figure, in this strange sensation of beginning that plagued the young child's slowly fracturing mind.

Then came a hand, gently swaying in the non-existent breeze. Its mannerisms were a mix of grace and clumsiness, a paradoxical motion that would usually capture the eye of Arthur. However, the child spared the movement no heed. Arthur couldn't have cared less about the paradoxical act. His mind was too captivated by the crimson colour that stained the figure's attire to care. Nobody wore crimson. It wasn't outlawed or anything, nor was it a designated colour of royalty. No, it wasn't a crime to wear that blasphemous colour. It was more like a sin. It carried negative connotations, stories of death, deceit and betrayal, for many would wear crimson on those harrowing days to mask the colour of blood against their royal garb. It would be an understatement to say it had no place on these holy grounds. It was outright banned. No monastery in the Abraham empire was allowed to sport that horrific traitorous colour. No god shared allegiance with the shade, at least none that the empire recognised nor knew about. It was nothing more than the disgusting, vile colour of blood, and yet, here was a girl draped in a dress of pure crimson.

At any other time, alarm bells would have sounded in the invested child's mind, warning him of what was to come, begging him to distance himself from the foreboding calamity, so then, why was it that Arthur heard nothing more than the slow, methodical desperate beats of his failing heart.

Perhaps it was fate that Arthur had met Luna and Sephra today, that Luna had dragged him to this silent street to this particular place of harrowing destruction. Maybe this was all some pre-planned meeting devised by the gods. Every thought that passed through the young boy's entranced mind, every motion he performed, there was always a chance they had directed him to act as such. Was Arthur nothing more than a marionette, forced to dance to the tune of the gods, or was he something else? Had he broken free of their elaborate planning, was this their attempt to kill him? To stop him while they still had a chance. Whatever it was mattered not to the stunned Arthur, who wasn't even aware of his current lapse in both judgement and character, for he had finally seen it, the figure behind the shadow, and what he saw left him speechless.

The figure didn't wear a dress of crimson. She wore a habit. She was a woman of god, a god. The cloak draped over her relatively tall figure with space to spare. Folds of the cloth fell underneath her obscured feet, capturing and tangling her with every step. Her dress was monochrome. There was no white to free the girl, who judging by her height, could be no older than Iris from the endless crimson. A hood of the same shade stretched over the girl's head, obscuring her face with a mask of shadow. Her movements that Arthur previously observed and called ephemeral now appeared clumsy. She tripped. She fell over the slightest of motions. Yet, her hood remained firm in its place like a guardian angel shielding whatever lay underneath from any unwanted observers, a fact that mattered little to the paralysed Arthur, whose face was now a deep shade of purple. Translucent veins appeared on the boy's bloated face as he resisted the urge to gasp, his mind was stunned, and his body was frozen. Arthur couldn't think, nor could he comment on the situation. He knew that habit. Of course he did. There was only one person in the entire game who wore such a bold dress.

The first enemy, the first roadblock in your way.

'Carmilla!' Arthur inwardly screamed, breaking free from his temporary state of paralysis while his body finally gave into the urge to breathe.

*Gasp* Arthur's shrill attempt at life echoed across the empty street with unmatched clarity, bouncing off every wall, every surface. It was heard everywhere, and likewise, everyone heard it.

"Wha-" The girl Arthur identified as Carmilla jumped, her gaze that had been previously directed at a patch of rather beautiful wildflowers now drawn to the looming figures that stood by the wrought iron gate. She was scared, like a startled rabbit. Her heart thumped in her chest. She had never seen so much as a fly in the lifeless street, and now, she was presented with two overwhelmingly sensual figures. She couldn't take it. Every hair on her body stood on end while her legs instinctively trembled. She had to run. She knew that much, and who was she to say no to her instincts? With one shaky step after another, the panicked figure of Carmilla turned away from the couple before bolting into a full-on sprint and retreating back into the shadows, she was gone, yet that didn't matter to the frozen Arthur's whose eyes were focused elsewhere, upon an illusory translucent blue screen.

{ -10 Love (Carmilla)}

{Name: Carmilla

Age: 12

Sex: Female

Race: Hu!@*

Rank: mana gathering stage 7

Titles: #@$#&*($, ##$%*(%#, The crimson nun,

Bloodline: ??????? (Unawakened)

Charm: 7/10

Talent: 7/10

Love: -10? (She's scared of you)

Description: A nun who occupies an abandoned church, her habit is forbidden, yet she seems unaware of the taboo. She serves the priest who took her in when she woke up on the street. Her parents don't know where she is.

Difficulty: Impossible ( No matter what actions the host takes, all roads lead to inevitable demise, please, don't try and seduce her)}

Arthur's face flushed white, his stomach churched, he wanted to throw up. Why? He didn't know why. Perhaps it was the system's harrowing message of absolute nihility, its dry taunt that seemed to throw the child into a pit of despair, 'impossible,' Arthur hollowly chuckled, 'impossible, impossible, impossible, I've never seen that before, never, not once throughout my entire play through of the gate to Avalon was there ever a heroine the game deemed to be impossible to acquire, after all the whole appeal of the game revolved around the seemingly endless targets one could acquire…what's going on,' Arthur helplessly stammered his eyes having lost the gleam that comes with life. He didn't like this, not one bit. The system's absolute denial frustrated him to no end. Was this because he was weak? If he was stronger, would Carmilla go from impossible to possible? Arthur would never know. The system wouldn't answer him. It couldn't. It had been warned against such actions. It had to remain silent, a bystander to the train wreck that was now destined to occur. The destined end of the boy named Arthur.

'And what the hell is going on with her status? You didn't break in the last 6 months, did you?' Arthur rhetorically asked in a vain attempt to relieve his current situation with a failed attempt at anger. He couldn't force himself to be mad at the system's glitchy UI. It wasn't the system's fault, but instead, his. It wasn't an autonomous activation like that with Charlotte or Vienna. Arthur had used {Scan} to identify Carmilla. He was the reason behind the buggy interface, his {Scan} was picking up on something it wasn't yet powerful enough to perceive. 'Still, I can't help but wonder what's going on with Carmilla's status. It's glitching all over the place, or rather, it isn't glitching; it's just that my scan doesn't know what's going on with her, though through this lack of perception, I can gather some key information about her, like the fact she isn't fully human….' Arthur inwardly monologued, his eyes having regained their rather lack-lustre gleam.

This information would usually stun a man. To find out that someone they assumed to be human wasn't was a distressing scenario, enough to make one lose sleep, though, in Carmilla's case, Arthur merely took the information with a grain of salt. He knew as much. Of course he did. Arthur had met her, fought her when she stopped being human, when she was possessed by something greater. The woman known as Carmilla that stood before Arthur today was in the midst of losing herself to a greater being, a god, well, a false god.

A broad grin began to surface on Arthur's enchanting face, its purpose unknown to the sole woman who observed it. His thoughts were weird. She knew as much. Arthur was the only boy Luna couldn't read. His body wasn't propelled by any evident lust like all the other men she had so unfortunately encountered, nor was it moved by heroism like the boy made it out to be. Luna could feel it. When Arthur fought that man, his heart wasn't in the right place; it wasn't some altruistic act, nor did he wear the smile of a hero. Something much, much more fundamental and simplistic moved the boy forward though Luna was at a loss as to what it was. 'Just what are you thinking about right now, Arthur~' Luna sensually purred with clouded eyes as Arthur's smile only seemed to brighten.

'This is good~ she hasn't fully transitioned yet. I still have time,' Arthur inwardly commented, his gaze ever focused on the desolate monastery. 'I can save her…no, I don't want to save her. I'm not some altruistic hero. I just want her to run away. If I can help her escape her fate, then I won't have to deal with the first villain of the game and the repercussions her actions bring. I can fuck up the protagonist's school life before it even begins by taking away his first and most crucial act of heroism…though the system's comment, well, what does it mean? I know I'll die if I try to seduce her. Still, I'm not going to try and seduce her. I don't want to make her fall for me. All I want is to help her escape, to be nothing more than a friend. Surely that won't trigger the system's mournful prediction,' Arthur continued, his expression shifting from one of hopeful, bold happiness to one of mania. He wasn't in his right mind. He wasn't paying attention to the system's warning. This wasn't the fault of the gods. It was Arthur's. Without the system's affirmation, Arthur was playing the ignorant fool. He would be solely responsible for treading the path that leads to his imminent demise. Him and his sickly, selfish, obsessive personality.

"Are you done staring off into space?" Luna's sultry whisper pressed against the boy's exposed ears which promptly flushed a brilliant shade of red, snapping him out of his dazed state and returning him to reality. For a moment, Arthur's eyes appeared to be dead, lacking any semblance of life. They scared her. Luna felt her heart give an annoying jolt of disagreement. She didn't like it, yet, by the time she decided to voice her opinions on the matter, they had already returned to their usual captivating state. 'Am I imagining things,' Luna dazedly thought. Perhaps she was tired; yes, that had to be it. Staying up like this wasn't a good thing for the usually nocturnal mistress. Vienna's meeting had thrown her through a loop. She had been anxious, having not managed to catch even a wink of sleep the day of the meeting, and to add to that anxiousness was the child she now held against her side, which she would be sheltering for the coming month.

"Huh, oh yeah!" Arthur cheered his previously skittish aura, now nowhere to be found, as he took the lead on his clueless march towards the scarlet woman. 'Still, to think that Carmilla was in Zepar city, I suppose transmigrators' luck really does exist,' Arthur inwardly commented. You see, prior to his meeting with the incarnation of his future demise, Carmilla's place of existence was unknown to him. Her backstory didn't really exist in the gate to Avalon with the little anyone knew about the elusive woman pertaining to the events that unfolded with the summoning and subsequent demise of the original Carmilla's consciousness and soul, the date of which still eluded the child, Arthur was walking into a complete unknown. Yet, his expression reflected not anxiousness but rather unparalleled excitement, despite knowing only a fraction of the hell that was in store for him.