“Puhah!!”

The Class Rep and I brought our heads above the dark water’s surface.

The thick barrier of water seemed to have kept the sound of the bell from our ears.

But we could already sense a change.

Yes.

“What..? The water isn’t flowing..?”

“Sure. The flow of water seems to have stopped for some reason.”

Placing my hands on the edge of a roof was enough to tell. The incredible current had completely stopped. The calm water’s surface was more like a lake than a river.

“Of course it has,” said Erika as the zombies continued to devour her.

However, the composure never left her face.

My S older sister seemed to be an expert on the other end of the spectrum as well.

“The Upior’s one-time-only action has made everywhere within a kilometer of here into undead territory. That alone has given me between ten and twenty thousand vampires. Hm, all that setup during the day didn’t quit work, but..well, the legend about the bell does say it curses the people the same age as the Upior at death, so maybe it doesn’t work on everyone. Regardless, this gives me an?overwhelming advantage.”

“..”

“And with this many people to work with, I can move onto the next phase. Heyyyy, Ayumi-chan? If you pulled out the drain plug with a ton of hair floating in the bath, don’t you think it would clog up the drain?”

“It can’t be.”

“Vampires can’t cross running water.”

She spoke decisively.

It was like flipping over the chess board after being put in checkmate.

“But what if I have my vampire minions jump into the water until they clog up the water’s exit? Running water might be a problem, but once it stops running, it isn’t anything to worry about. Isn’t that a simple solution?”

“It can’t be!!!”

Ayumi made a split second decision.

She threw out the chance she had been aiming for. She purposefully let go of it. She jumped back toward us and landed on the top of a telephone pole that held a Weather Sphere as it poked up above the dark water. As soon as she did, countless figures burst out of the water from every direction.

They were vampires.

These were the people who had been separated by the flowing water.

It was like surrounding a small bug with an even larger cage.

The small rooftop ruled by around thirty zombies was easily retaken by a rush of hundreds of vampires. They quickly tore the zombies to pieces to punish them for disrespecting their queen.

Using her vampire minions like hair clogging a drain? She looks all soft and cuddly, but how much of a queen is my sister!?

“Onii-chan!!”

Ayumi shouted toward me, but I held the nearby Class Rep tightly in my arms as I floated in the water. I wasn’t going to let her get away from me again. If I had to keep rescuing her from my powerful older sister, I would never survive even if I could give myself multiple lives in the simulation!! And when the weird results were automatically sent back to the university and lab, those old guys would laugh at me and then the real Class Rep would smash my real face in with her real iron fist! I was going to take this secret to my grave!! ..My intention must have gotten through to my zombie little sister because she clicked her tongue and grabbed my back collar while standing on the telephone pole.

“!! Onii-chan, you Class Rep obsessed idiot!!”

“This is what I came here for!!”

“Fuguu!! Stuuuuuuuuupid Onii-chan!!”

As the Class Rep and I dangled from her arm, she hopped to the rubber boat we had used to get here.

We sank down and then bounced back up.

Ayumi had no allies around now. The unorganized swarm of zombies was being wiped out by the reorganized army of vampires.

“We need to get out of here! If she captures us here, Onee-chan won’t show any mercy! You and the Class Rep will be vampires in no time!!”

“I know that!!”

I quickly started the rubber boat’s electric motor.

“But where are we supposed to go!?”

“This really feels like the climax, doesn’t it?”

“~ ~ ~”

Ayumi rudely chewed on her thumbnail.

Meanwhile...Oh, no. They’re keeping up with us.?Several vampires were jumping from building to building in the sunken city!!

Not even the horsepower of a motorboat could outdo vampires with the power of the night. They were catching up and they would jump onto the boat before long.

“!!”

I grabbed what was loaded into the boat and threw it at them.

All I had done was remove gas from the generators at the camping grounds, fill small drink bottles with it, and then shake them to mix the gas with the air inside. Even lighting them so they exploded would not do much damage to an immortal vampire.

But vampires would die if their heart was pierced by a stake of hawthorn or ash wood.

Luckily, an outdoorsman had brought a small encyclopedia with them. I had only needed to wrap a rubber band around each small drink bottles and use that to attach the small branches used for kindling. It was the same as wrapping spare utility knife blades or barbed wire around a homemade bomb to increase its destructive power. This created a shrapnel bomb specifically for vampires!

After a loud explosion, the leaping vampires veered off course and fell into the dark water. I couldn’t tell if I had defeated them or not.

I heard gentle laughter from somewhere.

“You’re so mean..”

It was Erika.

We were running the motorboat at full speed, but we never seemed to move any further from her voice.

The voice reverberated oddly throughout the wide outdoors and pursued us indefinitely.

“You’re so mean, Satori-kun. Why do you have to hurt and defeat my vampires? You’re making your sister sad. My heart might just tear apart..”

“Wah!! I’m sorry, Erika!!”

“Don’t let her get to you, Onii-chan!! Who cares what that girl and her giant ass say!?”

“Eh heh heh. We need to talk after this is over, Ayumi-chan. Urp.”

“Oh, no. I bet you’ve turned into a bat or something to pursue us, but did you decide to bite some survivor’s neck along the way!?”

“Onee-chan has some nerve for someone who eats such tiny lunches! She can’t make a vampire without sucking a lethal amount, so half-assing it doesn’t accomplish anything!!”

We could not lose her no matter how far we fled.

We might have been safe inside a building, but there was barely anywhere like that left. Which made sense since we had flooded the entire city!

“No, there’s somewhere left, Onii-chan.”

“?”

I frowned and Ayumi turned to the Swimsuit Class Rep instead of me.

“Maxwell! ..is what I should call you, right? It’s hard to tell with the landmarks underwater, but the Hughes Real Estate building is this way, right!?”

“No. You have been temporarily granted higher privileges, but the system’s authorized user is still Amatsu Satori. According to the security policy, I must reject commands from other users.”

“Onii-chan, can I bite her a little?”

“Calm down, Ayumi. That would waste all our efforts here! And don’t be so weirdly stubborn, Maxwell! I authorize Ayumi’s command!!”

“Sure. To reach the aforementioned Hughes Real Estate Kukyou City Central Branch, continue forward four hundred meters, turn right, and continue another fifty meters. However, I believe the first floor reception desk will have been flooded.”

“..So you’ll listen to what Onii-chan says while shaking your little butt for him, will you? Maybe I should bite you for some divine punishment..”

“Ayumi. Why do you want to get to the real estate building anyway!?”

“Have you forgotten, Onii-chan?”

We created an impressive crescent moon wave as Ayumi forced the rubber boat through a tight turn while skillfully maintaining our balance.

“Vampires can’t enter people’s homes. They need the owner’s permission.”

“Oh.”

“I bet that’s a legend that came from the fear of a cult gradually spreading through a town and going door-to-door to find new members, but all that matters is that it works on Onee-chan! Look over there. That’s the sign for Hughes Real Estate!!”

The rubber boat charged toward it.

We smashed the building’s third story window and sent the rubber boat flying right onto the carpeted floor. Zombie Ayumi could not bear to wait for the boat to stop, so she jumped out and rolled.

It was dark inside, but that may have been due to the flooding. I used my smartphone’s backlight for light and shouted to Ayumi.

“Ayumi! Erika and the vampires are already here!!”

“I know that!! Um, um, there it is! This is the original document showing who owns the building. If I rewrite it real quick..”

Steel racks were filled with cardboard boxes stuffed with files. Ayumi had followed the alphabetic labels to pull out the file she wanted and then threw it onto a work table.

She crossed out a few entries with a fountain pen and wrote something else in their place.

“This building belongs to us now! Onee-chan and the vampires can’t get in without our permission!!”

“Ayumi, yelling your plan is cool and all, but why did you just stop moving?”

“I want to make the finishing blow, but I don’t have our family seal.”

“Oh, honestly!! This is a foreign company, so a signature should work just fine!!”

I snatched the pen from her and signed my own name.

At that very moment, I heard something being repelled. I looked back in surprise and saw a vampire seemingly flattened against the window. But we had broken the glass to get in through there, so there shouldn’t have been anything in its way.

Several more vampires tried to jump through, but the result was the same. The glass did not break, they could not get through even when the glass was already broken, and they could not get in through the doors.

I finally breathed a sigh of relief.

“Did we..make it?”

“It’s hard to say. This is Onee-chan we’re talking about. She isn’t going to take this sitting down. Let’s get somewhere where the vampires can’t see us.”

“Instead of trying something, it might be best to wait until morning when the sunlight will be on our side.”

I left the document storage room with Ayumi and the Swimsuit Class Rep. We left the rubber boat and collapsible bike there.

As a high schooler, I knew nothing about real estate buildings. The general reception areas were apparently primarily on the first and second floors, so we were in a negotiation space for elite customers. To be blunt, there were works of art and antiques sitting around and a ton of small lockable rooms, so it looked more like an entertainment space than an efficient office.

The elevators did not work, probably due to the flooding.

As we used the stairs to climb higher, the place looked more and more like it was meant for entertainment.

“Wow, what is this?”

“It’s like a private museum.”

The floor was filled with glass cases of various sizes. They contained paintings, sculptures, and contraptions from around the world. A giant carnivorous dinosaur skeleton acted as a centerpiece. The paintings and sculptures looked pretty creepy with my smartphone as our only light in the darkness, but in proper lighting, even I may have been overwhelmed and I knew next to nothing about art.

A kid like me couldn’t tell what the point of it was or how it helped with real estate deals. Some TV ads would list the names of the affiliated companies or show off a factory’s excellent skill rather than trying to get the viewers to buy anything, so was this the same kind of “adult vanity” seen in those “ads directed at the very corporation that made them”?

Whatever the reason, we were grateful.

It created a fair bit of cover and there were no windows because direct sunlight would be bad for the gallery. This area would be a black box to Erika and the vampires outside. ..Assuming they didn’t have any weird skills like clairvoyance or bat echolocation.

“Wait a second, Onii-chan. It says this section is an Eastern Europe collection.”

“Hm?”

“It’s almost all about vampires. Does Onee-chan have a fan?”

I walked over and did indeed find what looked like a vampire section. There was a giant coffin, a crown covered in jewels, and a similar staff. There was a painting of an old castle on a lake, and..ew. Based on the description, it had been made by mixing real blood into the paint.

There was also a bathtub that a medieval noble had supposedly filled with fresh blood as well as torture and execution devices thought to have been used to efficiently remove the blood. There was even a long line of hammers and old stakes. It wasn’t clear if it was really based on the vampire legends or if it was more about the entertainment of nobles who were viewed like monsters.

The Swimsuit Class Rep tilted her head.

“If we use these, could we do more efficient damage to the vampires?”

“That’s like saying you could defeat an expert in ancient martial arts if you had a flintlock gun. It might be somewhat effective, but there’s no real reason to pull out an antique. Wouldn’t it be better to make full use of our modern stuff?”

There was also a section of things related to zombies.

It was mostly documents on the cultures and customs of the Caribbean region.

“Voodoo? But the display is mostly normal suits and coats. It doesn’t seem very religious to me.”

“The religion was created more recently, so they didn’t have to use all that dated attire.”

“Hm. I thought it was all about zombies zombies zombies, but I guess there’s more to it than that.”

“The Houngan are the priests who manage all the administrative ‘customs’ and the zombies are a technique of providing punishment. People tend to focus on that since it’s more exciting, but they also have a system for making normal prayers such as for a good harvest or for rain.”

“Isn’t that a cross there?”

“Voodoo has a tendency of taking in other religions and working them into their own traditions. To think the chemicals they created would combine with a virus and create that acute version.”

As we spoke, my cellphone rang.

It was from Erika.

She was already sniffling from the very start.

“Sniff.. You’re so mean. You’re so mean, Satori-kun. How could you go have fun with everyone in your secret base while leaving your older sister out in the cold and all alone..?”

“Uuh..”

“You can’t, Onii-chan!!”

Just as I felt an ache in my chest, Ayumi kicked me in the butt. The powerful leg strength of a zombie lifted my feet from the floor and nearly took out my hips.

“Don’t feel any weird guilt about this! Tricking the owner of a house into giving them permission is a standard vampire move!!”

“But Ayumi. When you see a hungry kitten in a cardboard box out in the rain, you know it’s manipulative, but it still gets you right in the soul. It’s a cliché for a reason! Did you hear what Erika said!? Mean, fun, everyone, out in the cold, all alone. She’s too good at this. How can I abandon her after she’s pierced my heart with so many fishing hooks!?”

“Then hang up! She can’t shake your resolve if she can’t access you. Hurry up and hang up on that girl and her giant boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs!!”

Then I heard a rustling sound over the phone.

It sounded like cloth?

“Um, what are you doing, Erika?”

“Oh, it’s feeling a little hot, so I’m just stripping. Why?”

“Bfff!?”

“Oh, no!!” shouted Ayumi, but our sister continued speaking.

“As you know, I’m a clean freak, so I can’t stand being all sweaty. Oh, but if you want to see, Satori-kun, you have your smartphone, right? Let’s call a truce so I can deliver a live show right to you. Aren’t you curious where I start when I wipe myself down with a wet tissue?”

“Eh? Really!? Let’s do that!!”

“You..” Ayumi went pale. “You idioooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot!!”

Immediately afterwards, I heard glass shattering on a different floor.

Eh? Wait, ehhh!?

“Thank you very much for permission to come in, Satori-kun☆ Eh heh heh.”

“What? I didn’t give you that. Weren’t you talking about using my smartphone..?”

“You perverted Onii-chan!! She said she would deliver a live show right to you. She never said anything about a video or transmitting it! If she meant she was going to go right to you and strip there, then you gave her permission to come in!!”

“Vahh!!”

It was too late. I could hear the rushed footsteps approaching us. I could only take this seriously.

“Ayumi, Maxwell. Let’s try to fix this.”

“We need to have a talk when this is all over, Onii-chan!!”

“I am relieved you are back to being your usual worthless self. Your behavior had been a little too ‘cool’ since the destruction of the dam, so I had been analyzing it to discover what kind of error it was. Fortunately, my worries were unfounded.”

“If we need to have a talk with anyone, it’s Erika! How could she bait me like that? And if she used that promise to get in here, I’m definitely making her go through with it afterwards!! Where does that clean freak of a sister start when washing herself? Gulp..!?”

“Bff!? Eh?” said Erika over the phone. “Wait, Satori-kun! Ehh!?”

At any rate, our safe zone was gone. We could not wait around until morning with all these vampires coming in.

“I guess we’ll have to get back to the boat.”

“Yeah, but how!? The vampires are pouring in and there are no people here to make zombies out of! We’ll be overwhelmed with both quantity and quality at this rate!!”

It was true that a vampire would not die if we hit it with a stick or stabbed it with a knife.

And unlike zombies, they were intelligent. They could work together to cut off our escape and they could search each room one by one. Hiding under a desk or behind a trashcan would not save us.

But..

“If they’re intelligent, we can use a method that wouldn’t work against zombies.”

“Onii-chan..?”

“We can trick the vampires. While zombies will rush in to bite you on instinct, the ability to think should create an opening in the vampires.”

It might be due to an image campaign, but the fact remains that very few heroes actually face monsters in single combat.

Unlike people’s standard image of a hero, they often win through deception.

In Japan’s case, Yamata-no-Orochi was defeated while drunk. In Norse Mythology, Thor, the great thunder god, disguised himself as the goddess Freyja to take back Mjolnir.

Many were mentioned in this text, but the stories of heroes slaying monsters are truly fascinating. They often display the culture’s characteristics and their taboos.

For example, they do not like a deceptive enemy, but their own deception is acceptable.

For example, how deceptive can a hero be before he becomes a coward?

For example, what kind of deceptive tactics can be justified when used to subjugate an enemy?

Looking at those factors can show you the customs and culture of that region. It resurrects the scent and atmosphere of that time period far better than visiting a hundred ruins or reading a thousand documents. It is truly the most any historian could ask for.

But make no mistake.

These deceptive tactics and acts of subjugation are being viewed in hindsight. Only after much planning and countless coincidences did they snatch victory by pure chance.

No one in the world can be fully deceived.

But very few people do not grow angry when they realize they have been deceived.

What if you are faced with a monster that cannot be defeated by standard methods?

What if you use deceptive methods to overcome that gap?

And what if you still fail to win?

You can easily expect to receive a penalty far harsher than losing while using the standard methods. After all, when someone is enraged over being deceived, the words mercy and leniency vanish from their vocabularies.