Legendary Vampire in the Apocalypse
Chapter 27: My Majesty

Chapter 27: My Majesty

Dion faintly grimaced through the process of summoning Anastasia. Her figure, manifested and formed from the darkness pooling from the summoning circle, was unlike anything that he had ever seen before.

And in the state that his body was in, so heightened and grown somewhat revelrous once more from drinking blood to replenish himself, felt the only natural heat of appreciation rush through him.

Be that as it may, Dion had faintly grimaced because summoning her had taken over eighty percent, even closer to ninety, of all the mana that he had within his body.

’No wonder I couldn’t even get the summoning circle to maintain itself in the first place earlier.’

With his new understanding, Dion could now compare that when he had woken up earlier in the day, at best he had something between fifteen to nothing percent left of mana within himself.

In that state, it was surprising to him now that he could have even made the summoning circle appear, and somewhat take shape.

Anastasia was a tall, elegant woman, standing at 182cm tall with a mature and noble appearance. She had long, white hair that fell past her waist, with the upper portion of her hair neatly arranged, while the rest hung freely down her back.

She wore a long, elegant dress with fabric stretching up to wrap closely around her neck, with subtle embroidery in silver and white running through it. The dress had an open shoulder design leaving some part of her shoulder exposed, and a part of her back as well.

Seated over the dining table chair that he had turned towards the empty space in the living room, Dion watched the woman, so elegantly gorgeous, lower herself to a knee before him, one of her hands, with its unnaturally black nails resting over her heart.

"It is an honour to be the first to congratulate you on your renascence."

’Renascence?’ Dion silently wondered to himself, and then a shiver of realisation came to him. He thought back to his final moments of playing the game, ’She seriously heard me...’

The last of all things that he had expected was that she would seriously possess the capacity to remember things that he had typed into his character’s text-to-speech.

Wasn’t this taking this miraculousness of everything to even higher degrees? He had only spoken about meeting her in another life just to sound edgy and imperial!

That being said, a part of him had been distracted even despite these thoughts.

The euphony to her voice was amazing, and through it, she sounded... overjoyed, to him. There felt as if there was a relief to her as well, and an excitement.

"There is no need to kneel, Anastasia. We aren’t strangers," he eventually said.

For a few moments, she had lingered where she had been, and then she rose. The faintest, so easy to miss as if the slightest brush of wind, caressed the slight smile adorning her countenance.

"Thank you," was what she muttered.

"How are you feeling? The last time I saw you... I was not in the best condition to be asking anything about you. Has being summoned affected you in any way negatively?"

"Not at all," She shook her head faintly, her hands rising briefly to gesture at her figure. Then, as she settled faintly, he watched as she paused for those few moments before continuing, "I should rather, once more, offer my profuse gratitude, My Lord."

This time, she did not kneel; however, Anastasia gave such a graceful bow, though brief, and she soothed, "It is by your grace that I have been granted the opportunity for rebirth."

Dion remained silent a moment, his brows furrowing faintly inside himself, though he kept his expression still on the outside.

’Rebirth? Just what the hell has the Akashic Record system glitching done alongside the Hanging Garden of Babylon?’

As much as she was his vassal, she remained a foreign entity, someone that should have only been an NPC for his character that was an Emperor. He couldn’t be showing someone like her his confusions, lest she ask him questions that he did not have answers to.

The thought had only lingered briefly because he knew there would not be any answers that he would be able to get immediately for such mysteries.

With that, as Anastasia lifted her torso once more, and he only hummed faintly, nodding that little bit.

He could only be pretentious and fake his understanding and calm for now! He had to fake it till he made it!

"Tell me something, Anastasia. I summoned you to ask about something very important to me."

Dion began, and the woman’s bearing sank all of the levity that he had seen her possess, the importance of his question taking precedence over everything else.

"What happened the night you were summoned? My condition was too poor for my awareness to have me remember everything that had happened after I did what I did to you."

For several seconds, the woman did not say anything, and he felt as if she had been surprised for that moment.

She had been so surprised that she had hesitated to immediately speak, her lips parting, and her pale skin betrayed the faintest blush over her neck.

Her chest rose a little more than it had this whole time, then she began.

"You had informed me of your current residence’s location, and given me the key. I took you home, and upon arrival I bathed you and rested you over your bed. Considering the state that this world had been reduced to, I decided to remain by your side as you slept for as long as I could as you underwent your renaissance. Only once I sensed your mana had fallen dangerously low had I given in and dispelled my summoning."

Dion thought silently for several seconds after that, as there were a few important things she had mentioned.

Immediately, he buried the embarrassment that he felt within himself from hearing that she had bathed him under the confirmation that the energy he was using is indeed mana and there wasn’t some other strange word for it, leaving the mention of mana in the system meaning something entirely different on its own.

Then, there were the ideas of his renaissance and her mentioning that she dispelled her own summoning rather than him completely running out of mana and the authority dispelling itself.

’Does this mean that she might also have some agency in the choice of whether to answer my summons or not as well? Moreover, this would mean that she should have unsummoned herself a lot closer to the time before I had woken up than I initially thought.’

Taken by these thoughts, Dion hadn’t quite been able to control his facial expression, and thus his brows furrowed a little, while his gaze remained unfocused.

In those moments, at the sight of his seemingly frustrated expression, Anastasia’s hands, hidden largely behind some of her dress, clenched faintly, and so did her jaw.

At the same time, Dion’s thoughts continued, ’This should have also meant that maintaining her presence takes less mana than I’ve been thinking. But that doesn’t make sense because...’

Feeling within himself, at the rate that maintaining her presence was draining his mana, he would hardly be able to keep her here for more than an hour or two at best, and that was in the case where he didn’t use any mana himself.

His attention refocused on her, and by this point, the woman had returned herself to a complete calm.

But then much of that went out the window, her eyes widening, as she watched his expression fall darker.

Her words had replayed in his mind multiple times, and with each replay that went on, a shiver ran through his head, his own raptures shrivelling with each word.

The fog of the important detail that he had felt he had been forgetting all of this time was dragged out of the depths of his unconsciousness.

And so, his voice low and almost growling, he demanded to know:

"Anastasia, why did you not do what I asked of you?"