"Haahh…" Arteria sighed for the nth time as she sipped her morning coffee. "Don't know shit, and I never will, eh?" She softly muttered.

Annoyingly enough, these words had been resounding inside her head since last night.

Talking of last night, it had been pretty wild for her.

After a seemingly normal party to celebrate Samur creating a new World Record, she was forced to follow him to his room because she did not want to face Noelle's wrath.

It was not like she was weaker than Noelle. In fact, when it came to an actual head-on battle, Arteria would win.

But unlike barbarian societies, relationships in the New Dawn Guild were not always about pure strength.

She simply could not bear to see disappointment, perhaps even hatred, in Noelle's eyes.

She could not lose this family.

Anyway, the moment she saw the heart Samur was talking about, her world suddenly flipped upside down.

The thing in front of her was anything but a normal heart.

Her own heart thundered inside her chest as it became reckless. After all, she could feel a certain aura of familiarity emanating from the heart that Samur had apparently developed in his room.

How could this be possible?

It was almost as if she was reuniting with an old friend- no, a long lost relative.

And as if that wasn't strange enough, it seemed the heart was responding to the turmoil raging within her.

Arteria felt that the heart was happy to see her, as if it had been waiting to meet her all its life. It was imploring her to accept it in her bosom (figuratively and literally).

There was a certain connection between them. That heart clearly couldn't say anything or make any expressions to portray its emotional state; it was a goddamn heart, after all.

However, Arteria could clearly feel everything. It felt like she was actually conversing with a real person.

She really felt that the heart was family.

The situation did not make any sense, but she decided that she could not let herself part with that heart because she knew that if she did, she would regret it for the rest of her life.

So against all odds, she actually agreed to get that heart transplant surgery, and against all odds, Samur actually resisted.

They did end up going through it, however.

But a small problem arose. It seemed that getting a new heart brought other undesirable side effects, namely, she could no longer be a pure-blooded Ancient Vampire.

Being a vampire, specifically, being the last remaining member of the once almighty Nahaja family, while being a bit sad, was also her pride and joy.

Somewhere in her heart, she still believed that she was continuing her family. Perhaps she could even continue her bloodline.

As it turned out, however, she was now going to lose her pride. And along with that, the Nahaja family would finally go extinct from this world, never to return.

And that's because she was going to turn into a fucking Dragon Vampire Shadowlord Hybrid. It did come with its perks, of course, but if given the option, she would have chosen to stay a Vampire.

Samur asked her not to make a big deal out of it, but that was impossible for her.

How could she stay calm when she was going to lose the very basis of her identity?

What infuriated her more was that Samur didn't inform him of these changes beforehand. Had he done so, she could have at least prepared her heart.

Well, former heart, to be more precise.

They ended up having an argument over this. She said some things which hurt Samur's pride (this dumbass couldn't be more wrong, of course), he snapped and said something related to Vafferan.

Now, for Arteria, the New Dawn Guild was her family. And after losing her original one, she had gotten a bit overprotective when it came to her family members.

And even though Samur was now part of that family, they hadn't spent enough time together to form any kind of bond. Yet he had the audacity to insult her precious family member.

Arteria knew the things Vafferan had gone through and the sacrifices she had to make to get out of that hell. Even if Vafferan tried to hide it, Arteria knew that what the former did still haunted her.

And Samur insulted that.

So, as if she was the elder sister of a bald-headed protagonist from a certain racing movie franchise, she snapped.

And boy oh boy, did she snap hard.

And in her rage, she ended up saying some pretty insensitive things to him.

Samur, being the no-bullshit madlad he was, decided to just yeet on out of there. But before he did, he said those words: 'You don't know shit about me, and you never will. You have no idea what I can and cannot understand'.

And while Samur had said that simply because he wanted to make her clean his room, those lines had hit her harder than an abusive step father hit his 7-year-old boy with a belt for spilling his beer.

When her anger cooled down, the depth of her sins finally dawned on her. Samur was right about everything.

Not only had she misinterpreted his statement, she had also unjustly lashed out on him.

She forgot that even though he seemed so mature on the outside, Samur was still just a 12-year-old boy who had been living in an abusive household until recently.

Of course, she couldn't be far from the truth, but there was no one here to correct her.

So, like a mother whose son had run away from home after a fight (Samur might call this bullshit but that's basically what this whole situation was), she worriedly waited for him in his room.

Of course, he didn't come back because he had already anticipated her actions.

The sun rose yet he hadn't returned. Just when her concern crossed the threshold and turned into fear and she decided to look for him herself, someone knocked on the door.

With a sigh of relief, she opened it but only found Clementine. Before she could feel disappointed, the latter told her that Samur had sent her to call her to the dining area.

A bit nervous, she went there only to learn that was his trick to make her leave his room.

And now, locked out of his room, exhausted and famished, she decided to have her breakfast before apologising to him.

'Well, he was right about feeling hungry,' she sighed again as she looked at the piles of plates on the table before her.

She should probably apologise to the chef for overworking her.

After all, she had come down for a small breakfast but ended up having a family sized dinner.

So, she really hoped that Samur was right and she wouldn't get fat.

"Ely is crying in the kitchen, you know?" Suddenly, Neia appeared and took a seat opposite her.

"…I'll talk to Azell about giving her a good bonus this month."

"You should," Neia giggled.

"Yeah," Arteria finished her coffee and took out a pack of cigars.

"You started smoking again? Since when?"

"From right now, actually," Arteria clipped the end, lit it and took two or three puffs.

She had promised to quit smoking, but she really needed one today.

"So, did something happen?" Neia asked.

'Sharp as always,' Arteria lamented.

"Not really."

"Why don't you take a look around you?"

"Hmm?" Arteria complied and looked around, only to find that all the tables around her were empty. "Wait, where is everyone?"

It was breakfast time, so the cafeteria should be packed full. Yet there was not a single person on the tables close to hers.

"The air around you is so depressing that no one wants to approach you."

"Seriously?"

Were Samur's words really weighing on her that much?

"So, what happened?" Neia asked while looking straight into Arteria's eyes, as if reaching for the very depths of her soul.

"N-nothing," caught off guard by this sudden attack, she averted her gaze while puffing out a smoke to hide.

But she could still feel Neia's gaze boring into her, as if commanding her to reveal everything she was hiding.

Neia was really insightful when it came to matters like these, and Arteria's pathetic resistance had always been pretty useless against her probing gaze.

"Alright, fine, I'll tell you!" The vampire- correction, the Dragon-Vampire-Shadowlord Hybrid finally cracked under the pressure.

"Good," Neia smiled.

"…It's nothing much. I just had a small fight with Samur," Arteria sighed.

"…" That combination of 'Samur' and 'fight' almost gave Neia PTSD, but she held on. "Small enough to make you smoke, right?"

Arteria quickly glanced at her cigar after realising her mistake, "Well, it might be more than a small argument."

"What happened?" Neia asked, a bit nervously.

She knew that arguments with Samur never ended well.

"At the beginning it was just a small quarrel, until he insulted Vafferan."

"Ahhh," Neia slowly nodded. "So, you snapped."

"Yeah," Arteria meekly responded.

"Let me guess. Then Samur said something which has been weighing on your mind since then."

Even though he was a wee little child, he was really good at attacking right where it hurt.

"How did you know?" Arteria's eyes widened.

"Well, why else would you be sitting here, sighing and smoking?"

"I can't argue with that," she smiled wryly. "I think I should apologise to him."

"Should you? Didn't he insult Vafferan?"

"That's the point. He actually didn't. It was just a misunderstanding on my part," Arteria let out a heavy sigh.

"Then yes, you should definitely apologise."

"I'll do so after this. I hope he will forgive me."

Arteria didn't reveal that she was still gathering the courage to face him.

"Well, he probably wouldn't even remember what you did to him."

"Haha, I wish."

"No, no, I'm serious. It's possible that Samur has already forgotten everything that happened last night. That's just the type of guy he is."

"I doubt that. He seemed really angry when he left."

"Angry? Him?" Neia scowled.

A guy who showed absolutely no reaction when she beat him when he was crippled and left him alone in a forest full of monsters was angry at a small argument?

Something was wrong.