When Night Fell and Sleep Came

"Wrong."

Li Lin interrupted Fina's chanting without ceremony.

"Don't focus on the runes themselves. Focus on how it all flows together... Rhyme. Do you understand rhyme?"

"Ah, sorry! I'll try again!"

"I think she ought to practice tongue twisters first."

Angela stretched, bored out of her mind, and snapped her fan open before waving it behind her. Mina appeared behind her and flew back as if struck by a heavy blow, even the dagger in her hand sent flying. Angela, having just fended off an attack, seemed not to react at all and continued watching Fina's training with interest. Angela herself couldn't learn this kind of orthodox mage instruction. She had pestered Li Lin to teach her before, and he had indeed done his utmost, but unfortunately, the magic learned by the Vampire Species seemed different from the magic of their world and was incompatible with it. In the end, they had no choice but to give up.

"That's true."

Li Lin shook his head as he watched Fina standing before the fire, struggling to chant a spell. The three most fundamental elements for a mage were not powerful magical talent or unparalleled intelligence. What mattered most were three things-precise gestures, practiced and clear chanting, and clear judgment. Fina did fairly well on the first and third points, but had made no progress at all on the second. She had hidden behind her sister since she was little and rarely interacted with others. When she first met Li Lin, she had blushed even when speaking to him face-to-face. But she obviously couldn't chant spells like that. This was also why mages tended to be sharp-tongued. They didn't necessarily speak that way to deceive others; maintaining a fluent speaking pace was often an important basic lesson for a mage.

"You'd better start by practicing that tongue twister."

Li Lin shook his head, setting aside the idea of continuing her training for the time being. It wasn't that he had never taught mages before, but most of them had already become full-fledged mages. He had rarely paid attention to novice apprentices like her, and given his status and position, it would have been difficult for him to do so.

"The greater the recognition, the more easily it leads a person to despair."

Those were the words of one Arcane Mage, and they were also a consensus among the Arcane Mages. By tacit agreement, they never encouraged or paid attention to any apprentice still in training. Given their status and position, such attention would only put greater pressure on the recipient. Long ago, there had been an apprentice who, despite coming from a poor family, displayed extraordinary magical talent. An Arcane Mage happened to visit the academy, noticed the apprentice by chance, and took the trouble to offer him a few words of encouragement. The apprentice did work hard, becoming a full-fledged mage in just a few days and even starting toward the intermediate rank. But at that point, all sorts of rumors began to circulate, saying that he had advanced so quickly only because an Arcane Mage had taken a liking to him. No matter how brilliantly the apprentice completed his tasks or how he tried to change others' opinions of him, it was no use. In the end, disillusioned and despairing, the promising mage chose suicide. He couldn't bear having everything he had fought to earn through his own ability treated as a matter of course. The incident deeply affected the Arcane Mages, and none of them paid attention to apprentices again. On Earth, Li Lin had learned an idiom about pulling up seedlings to help them grow. Perhaps it referred to a situation like this.

"Eat grapes without spitting out the grape skins, don't eat gra-ow!"

A difficult road lay ahead.

Li Lin sat by the fire and poked at the raging flames. On the other side, Angela sat on a rock, gently waving the folding fan in her hand. Every now and then, she tapped it forward or backward, and Mina went flying in every direction like a kite with its string cut. If she were still human, that probably would have been enough to kill her dozens of times over.

"But you aren't human."

Angela snapped her fan shut, a faint red light flickering in her eyes.

"Remember, vampires are a noble species, not fragile humans. Don't use that cowardly fighting style and waste time protecting places you don't need to protect!"

Li Lin had seen Angela fight before. Her style was simple and direct; whenever she struck, the result was death or injury. Like an archer or a sniper from that world, she aimed to kill with a single blow. If she couldn't land it, she immediately retreated in silence and never got caught in a drawn-out fight. Once she had gathered her strength again, she launched another thunderous strike and then withdrew once more. Such a fighting style was hard to imagine for a vampire. After all, aside from decapitation and damage to the heart, vampires feared virtually no injuries, so by rights they should have excelled at drawn-out battles.

What Angela was teaching now, however, was the normal vampire fighting style, not the one she used.

After watching Mina get sent flying again and again for a while, Li Lin sighed in boredom and turned his gaze back to the fire before him.

The memory he had obtained from the magic rune had left him somewhat downcast.

The memory embedded in the magic rune was extremely clear. The caster had only finished drawing half of it when she suddenly turned around and hurried away, her face stricken with shock. Li Lin remembered it clearly: that had been the moment a thousand years ago when, just before his death, he had used all his strength to cast the Undead Barrier-three hours after the peak on the third day of the ninth month in the Year of the Dark Sun.

Many people had wondered how those who knew them would react if they learned of their death. Such a thought might be interesting, but it wasn't really that enjoyable. The moment Li Lin entered the memory, nearly all of the magic rune's owner's emotions flooded into the depths of his heart like a tide: grief, anger, self-reproach, shock, disbelief, and profound pain.

Li Lin had never seen that person display such emotions so openly.

And in the end, that person had left. That was a good thing; it meant she could at least still move freely. But that also made her very difficult to find. Although some divination spells could be used to find missing people and things, Li Lin had never liked letting the future lead him by the nose. Besides, those things were so powerful that even the elves and the God of Dwarves couldn't find them. Spending the effort now would be pointless. He could only rely on his own experience and memories to search slowly.

"Master, what are you thinking about?"

A soft sensation in his arms and a clear, sweet voice by his ear came at the same time. Li Lin came back to himself and gently stroked Angela's head while patting the little hand she was reaching between his legs.

"Let's skip it today. I'm not in the mood."

"You seem troubled?"

Although Angela was somewhat unhappy at losing her evening entertainment, a puzzled expression soon appeared on her face, and she began to show concern for her master.

"I was just thinking back on some things from the past."

Li Lin glanced at the sisters sitting on the other side of the fire. Angela had obviously played with Mina until she was nearly falling apart, and judging by Fina's condition, if she didn't stop and rest, she might well bite through her tongue...

"Well... I suppose what I mean is, when I happened to discover that someone I knew had emotions she had never shown in front of me, and that it was because of my death, it didn't feel good."

"Melancholy and uncertainty, is that it?"

Angela narrowed her eyes slightly.

"I don't quite understand what you mean, Master, but I can understand how you feel. If I died and came back to see you holding my corpse and weeping, that would feel rather strange. If you could spend every night making merry with those sisters, I could leave without any lingering worries instead."

"That's something we'll only know after you die..."

Li Lin gave a wry smile and shook his head.

"But then again, you're already dead."

He stroked the little girl's hair, pointing out the flaw in what she had said.

Vampires were naturally dead.

"That's not right, Master."

Hearing Li Lin say that, Angela's eyes darted about, and a strange smile appeared on her face.

"By your reasoning, I'm already dead, but you've done it with me so many times. What do they call that again... Not only a lolicon, but a necrophile too?"

"I never said it was a bad thing. Besides, what people call common sense doesn't stand up to scrutiny either. At least my sexual orientation is normal; I'm not interested in men's corpses."

Li Lin accepted Angela's veiled sarcasm with complete composure.

"Besides, it does feel very good, and that's enough, isn't it?"

"Mm... that's true."

Arcane Mages were very broad-minded in their affections... or rather, mages themselves were. As long as the woman had a human form, they didn't care about her species. Whether she was a devil from Hell, an angel from the Divine Realm, one of the various elemental creatures of the Elemental Plane, undead, or an elf, as long as she was pleasing to the eye and acceptable, there was nothing more to say. It was precisely this good attitude that allowed Arcane Mages to conduct transactions with all manner of gods without a hitch. Otherwise, if one happened to make a deal with an undead lord and he sent a beautiful female ghost as payment in the middle of the night, would the mage give up on it just because one was alive and the other dead? Arcane Mages didn't work for free. Besides, ghosts were better than humans-at least there was no need to worry about an illegitimate child showing up someday to claim a share of the inheritance.

A good attitude and a broad-minded capacity for love were the true secrets to enjoying life...

While Li Lin and Angela were chatting, Angela suddenly raised her head and looked toward the woods not far away, frowning slightly.

"Some annoying things are coming our way."