Her small, delicate tongue nervously flicked against the metallic tip of the canteen. It started with just a light, hesitant sip, but the moment the cool liquid hit her parched throat, logic vanished. She began to drink greedily, desperate to quench three hundred years of agonizing thirst.
Gulp! Gulp! Gulp!
"Slow down," Suzuki instructed smoothly. "Don't be in such a hurry. The water isn't going anywhere. If you drink too fast on a shrunken stomach, you'll just make yourself sick."
As she pulled the canteen away, gasping for air, thin streams of water ran down her chin, completely drenching the thin, ragged fabric covering her small chest. The sight was undeniably alluring, and despite his iron-clad discipline, Suzuki felt a slight, heavy stir in his lower stomach.
"S-Sorry..." the girl whispered, her cheeks flushing a delicate pink. "I-I have just never tasted such incredibly delicious water..."
The woman was deeply embarrassed, yet she was telling the absolute truth.
"Hmm..." Suzuki hummed.
He wanted to casually tell her she was exaggerating, but the reality was that he bought this premium, heavily filtered mineral water directly from Earth through his [Online Shopping] skill. It naturally tasted vastly superior to anything in this medieval, monster-infested world. More importantly, unless someone actively hiked to an untouched mountain spring, acquiring truly clean water down here was practically impossible.
"What is your name?" Suzuki asked, entirely unbothered by her praise of his groceries.
"...I don't have one anymore."
"You don't?"
"...How about you give me a new name?" The fragile vampire sat on the cold stone floor, looking up at him with wide, desperately expectant crimson eyes.
"Before we discuss a name, you should probably put on some actual clothes," Suzuki noted dryly, gesturing to her heavily torn rags.
"...Name first," she insisted, pouting slightly.
"..."
Suzuki had several retorts ready, but looking at her incredibly stubborn, deeply vulnerable expression, he let out a long sigh and gave up. He thought for a moment, rapidly thinking of the easiest solution.
"Yue."
"...Yue?" she tilted her head.
While his highly optimized intellect could easily generate a thousand elegant, culturally significant names, Suzuki felt it was better to just stick with the original plot's name. It was simple, effective, and easier for everyone else to remember later.
"It means 'Moon' in a language from my world."
"...Why 'Moon'?"
"Because..." Suzuki paused. If he just copy-pasted Nagumo's original, edgy monologue, he would feel like an absolute fraud lacking any creative vision. Still, he had to admit the name suited her aesthetic. "Because despite being trapped in this suffocating darkness for centuries, you still exude a gentle, incredibly beautiful light... just like the moon in the night sky."
"....."
Yue fell completely silent.
Suzuki shifted uncomfortably, feeling slightly weirded out by the way her crimson gaze was slowly growing incredibly intense, almost heavy with a predatory heat.
"Say something, okay? Do you like it or not?" he prompted.
"I-I like it! I love it!" Yue gasped, her face turning brilliant red as she softly muttered her new title. "Yue... it's my new name..." She looked up at him, her eyes softening into a gaze of profound, melting devotion. "Thank you... um..."
"Suzuki Tanaka. You can just call me Suzuki."
"Yeah... Suzuki..." she whispered, testing the syllables on her tongue.
"So, do you need some food before we move?" Suzuki asked, shifting back into logistics mode. "I know it's been a long time since you consumed anything. It's a miracle you're even alive, but your muscles are severely atrophied. You can barely stand. You need calories and mana before we go, or you'll just be a liability."
In the original timeline, Nagumo simply carried her. But Suzuki had a far more efficient option. He could just place Yue securely inside his [Subspace Penthouse] to rest while he cleared the rest of the dungeon.
But, is it okay? he wondered.
If Kaori and Shizuku found out he had smuggled a beautiful, naked vampire princess into their secret sanctuary, it could cause a huge trouble. Yet, Suzuki knew his girlfriends. Given their inherently kind natures—and their shared trauma of the labyrinth—they would undoubtedly sympathize with Yue's brutal history and support his decision to shelter her.
"No, I don't need to eat any food..." Yue shook her head softly, desperately not wanting to trouble the man who had just saved her.
"Are you absolutely sure? If you collapse halfway up the stairs, it will give us trouble instead. You need to consume something."
Yue hesitated, biting her lower lip. She knew his logic was flawless.
"What is it?" he pressed gently.
"...I am a vampire," Yue finally confessed, her voice dropping to a shameful whisper. "Instead of food... I need blood."
"Blood..."
Suzuki understood immediately. He looked around the cavern. Where exactly were they supposed to find fresh, clean blood in a toxic abyss? He certainly wasn't going to feed her the acidic, radioactive blue blood of the dead scorpion behind them.
"...."
Suzuki looked down at his own pristine suit. He didn't hesitate. He didn't make a grand, highly dramatic speech about sacrificing his lifeforce for her salvation. He simply sighed, unbuttoned his collar, and casually pulled his silk tie slightly to the side.
"Take what you need to walk," Suzuki ordered smoothly, tilting his neck. "But don't get greedy and drain me dry. We still have a long way ahead of us."
Yue completely froze, staring at his exposed, pulse-pounding neck in absolute disbelief.
"..."
"Hurry up," he prompted.
Yue hesitated for only a fraction of a second before three hundred years of starving vampiric instinct violently took over. She lunged forward, her soft hands gripping his lapels as she sank her small, sharp fangs directly into his jugular.
Pwick!
Slurp!
The absolute second she tasted his blood, Yue's crimson eyes snapped entirely wide open in blinding shock.
Because Suzuki hadn't just drunk the Ambrosia—he had actively used [Snatch] to permanently rewrite his cellular biology with the God Crystal's concept of immortality. His blood was no longer normal human plasma. It was liquid, divine vitality. It tasted like pure, overwhelmingly intoxicating nectar, laced with the incredibly dense, violent mana he had systematically stolen from a hundred apex predators.
It was the most overwhelmingly euphoric substance she had ever tasted.
The addiction was instantaneous and absolute.
Her frail, emaciated body began to glow a faint gold as her atrophied muscles violently rebuilt themselves at the cellular level. But she didn't stop drinking. She entirely lost herself in the blinding euphoria. Her small hands gripped his shirt with desperate, terrifying strength. She began to suck harder, her wet tongue greedily lapping over the puncture wounds. She let out soft, incredibly needy, highly lewd whimpers as she practically tried to crawl entirely into his lap, pressing her soft, trembling thighs against his hardened body, acting exactly like a starved animal entirely consumed by heat.
"..."
Suzuki possessed immense willpower, but he was still biologically male. It was impossible for him not to react to a beautiful girl aggressively whimpering and grinding against his lap.
He took a sharp, deep breath, firmly placed his large hand against her forehead, and pushed her back, physically breaking the connection.
"Alright. That's enough," he sighed, wiping a single stray drop of divine blood from his collar. Thanks to his [Ambrosia] trait, the puncture wounds on his neck instantly hissed with hot steam, healing perfectly and leaving entirely pristine skin behind. "Your mana reserves are full. Don't get greedy."
"Hhh-ah... hh-ah..."
Yue panted heavily, her chest heaving. A thin, highly erotic string of silver saliva mixed with crimson blood connected her swollen lips to his neck for a second before snapping. Her mind was completely hazy, utterly intoxicated by the euphoric high of his divine blood.
But as she dazedly looked down, her sharply enhanced vampiric senses immediately picked up on a very distinct, undeniable biological reaction pressing firmly against the fabric of his tailored trousers.
In a standard light novel, the protagonist would instantly panic, violently cover his crotch, and scream apologies about it being a massive misunderstanding.
But Suzuki just looked down, then looked back up at her deeply flushed, incredibly naughty face. He let out a long, deeply exhausted sigh and casually adjusted the hem of his suit jacket to cover himself, completely unbothered by the sheer awkwardness of the situation.
"It's a purely involuntary, physiological response to highly stimulated nerve endings and an elevated heart rate," Suzuki stated smoothly, his voice entirely flat, treating his own intense arousal like a deeply boring lecture from a medical textbook. "It's just basic biology. Don't let it go to your head. Are you capable of walking now?"
Yup. That was definitely too much talking for a guy who just got an erection in a dungeon, Suzuki thought to himself, cringing internally. But how the hell else am I supposed to casually brush that off?
"...."
Yue stared at him, utterly spellbound. He wasn't flustered. He wasn't disgusted or ashamed of his reaction to her. More importantly, he didn't view her desperate bite as a cursed, monstrous act; he viewed it merely as a required biological need.
For a vampire princess who had been treated like a horrific, world-ending abomination for three centuries, being treated with such a grounded, normal reaction was the most intoxicating thing she had ever experienced.
"Um," Yue squeaked out, her cheeks flushing a brilliant, vibrant red. "I'm... I'm fine to walk."
"Good. Let's get out of this basement," he said, turning around and walking toward the dark corridor that led deeper into the Labyrinth's core. He didn't even bother to look back to see if she was following, possessing the absolute confidence that she would never leave his side.
Yet, as they walked away from the shattered sealed room, the dynamic between them had permanently, violently shifted.
Suzuki led the way, his hands shoved casually in his pockets, using his absolute [Thermal Vision] to navigate the pitch-black hallway.
Behind him, Yue walked silently. But if someone were to look at her beautiful face in the dark, they would see that her innocent, blushing, fragile demeanor had completely vanished.
Her crimson eyes were locked onto his broad back with an intensity that bordered on absolutely terrifying. Her gaze was incredibly heavy, deeply possessive, and beautifully distorted. She slowly, methodically ran her wet tongue over her lower lip, savoring the lingering, divine sweetness of his immortal blood.
He didn't just save her. He had fed her absolute power. He accepted her monstrous nature without a single second of hesitation. And he was unequivocally strong enough that no one in this world could ever take him away from her.
Deep in Yue's fractured, traumatized mind, a dark, overwhelmingly obsessive feeling violently took root. She craved a vastly deeper, more permanent connection with this man.
He is mine now. And I am his.
For him, she would gladly surrender everything. And she would ruthlessly, brutally annihilate absolutely anyone—be it a false god, a corrupt church, or a naive childhood girlfriend—who dared to try and stand between them.
"....."
Shudder!
A sudden, violent chill ran directly down Suzuki's spine, entirely bypassing his diamond-hardened skin.
He frowned, glancing around the empty stone corridor. Why did it suddenly get so incredibly cold in here?