Maids VS Apocalypse

"C’mon! Just a peek!"

"I would rather not."

"Why not? I will even let you drink some of my blood!"

"That is prohibited by my contract."

"Then why don’t you just show me!!"

"I would rather not."

Sitting a short distance away, Mark watched as a petite girl pestered a taller one in a maid’s uniform to show her something. The sight was a little adorable and he would’ve enjoyed it at any other time. Right now, however, he wasn’t in the mood for any of that.

The maid happened to glance in his direction, and as if a switch had been flipped, her eyes turned icier than before, sending chills rolling over his body.

The distaste she directed toward him was painful on the physical level, but there was nothing he could do to make it go away.

"Cheer up, Newbie!" A hand smacked his back forcing it to straighten. "Being gloomy won’t fix anything!"

Mark remained static for a brief moment before the depression slumped his shoulders once more.

"Just leave me be." He grumbled.

"C’mon, Alex," Franco walked over with a cigarette between the index and middle finger of his right hand. "The kid messed up big time. Read the mood a little."

He took a puff and blew the white smoke in the air. Mark appreciated him stepping in, but their blonde companion didn’t seem to get the idea.

"He already apologized, right?"

"Apologies don’t make problems go away," Franco replied.

Mark heaved a sigh and turned his sight to the tear in space a few meters away.

A new day had arrived and so it was time to resume his work on sealing the Dimensional Rifts.

Even though he wasn’t in the mood to do much of anything and just wanted to shut himself somewhere dark, the clock was ticking and inaction wasn’t something they could afford.

Ramsay had something to take care of so he left with big belly Ben. The remaining members of Squad Four tagged along, however, which only made things even worse for Mark who wanted to be left on his own.

If he had been alone he would’ve blasted some metal into his ears and focused on the job. However, one of the things he despised the most was being forced to take his earbuds off, and with the blonde one consistently trying to start conversations, it was for the best if he didn’t put them on from the start.

After wandering around for a couple of hours they ended up in a park somewhere on the eastern side of the city. Things were quiet for the most part so they just relaxed as they waited for the drones to do their work.

"Seriously though, you’re in far worse shape than I imagined." Franco sat on the adjacent bench, continuing to smoke as he talked. "I know she’s one of the finest women around, but... you have only known her for a couple days, right? Don’t tell me you’re the kind who falls in love easily."

"I... don’t think so?" Mark struggled to answer the question. "I mean, she is cute and all, but... I wouldn’t say I’m in love with her..."

It wasn’t love, that much he was entirely sure of. All of his troubles came from the hormones raging in his teenage body, and though anyone his age would have made the mistake of thinking it was love, Mark knew it was nothing nothing as noble as that.

’Damn it...’ he hung his head and gritted. ’Why am I like this?’

Mark couldn’t take what happened the previous night out of his mind despite all his efforts.

The delicate figure on his lap. The soft bosom pressed against his chest. The silky hair that brushed his cheek. The soft breaths that tickled his neck. The fangs buried into his skin.

The overwhelming desire that consumed him back then.

All of it remained vivid in his memory, and even as the hours came and passed, Mark still couldn’t shake the wish to go through it all over again.

’Damn it...’

He wouldn’t have minded if it was love that sprouted from that fleeting interaction.

The lap pillow had brought him as close as one could get to falling for the maid, so much so that he made an attempt at flirting and wasn’t discouraged when it failed.

What came after that wasn’t love, however. It was nothing but unadulterated lust. It was the desire to consume the woman in his arms and nothing more.

He didn’t care who she was, nor did he care how she felt about the act. All he wanted was to ravage her body and relish the sensation of using it to satisfy himself.

He didn’t blame Lara for reacting the way she did and almost blasting him through the roof. If anything, he believed it was his punishment for losing control and almost doing the unthinkable, and the hate he received was well deserved.

The guilt was eating at him through the entire night, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, his heart had to go thumping every time his mind recalled what happened, leaving him disgusted by the complicated emotions raging in his chest.

’Guess it’s not funny when you’re the one making the mistake...’

An incident such as that would have been nothing more than a funny scene in most fictional works; the MC making a move on the heroine who then reacts violently to his approach.

Such happenings were a staple in the media he consumed, but even though he enjoyed the cliche trope, being at the center of one didn’t feel too pleasant.

’I seriously should stop thinking of it like that...’

The matter was a serious one and treating it like it was fiction added to the disgust he felt about himself. If it wasn’t for his System issuing him a warning at the very last moment, he might have gone on to commit one of the worst atrocities known to mankind. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

’Can’t believe it actually worked when I needed it to...’

From the looks of it, Alex wasn’t too convinced by the new guy’s response. Furrowing his brows, he tilted his head and gave him a confused look.

"You sure about that? You remind me of Ben when he first got rejected."

Mark ignored the question at first, but then he turned to look at his blonde squadmate, completely baffled.

"You’re radiating depression," Franco explained. "You look like someone who has been drinking for days."

Mark turned to the Italian next then looked down at himself.

"Do I look that bad?" He asked.

"Yup."

’Well, I guess it makes sense...’

He came too close to death’s door way too many times in a single week. He was only human, after all, and even though everyone praised his Mind as one of the strongest out there, going through so many terrible experiences in such a short time was bound to affect him negatively.

"Seriously though," Leaning on the back of the bench, Alex looked at the two girls standing a short distance away. "To think she was a vampire all along."

"Dhampir." Franco corrected him. "Though I guess she’s more vampire than human."

Following the incident was a painful lecture about consent and not taking advantage of women, but once the Peace Keepers heard Mark’s recounting of what happened they suddenly became more understanding of his situation.

Ramsay spent a good fifteen minutes laughing before explaining that it was only natural for a nineteen-year-old virgin to do what he did.

A vampire’s bite was a sexual act equivalent to doing the deed itself. Their fangs could trigger a surge of intense arousal, and if unprepared, anyone who is bitten could lose themselves to that sensation, turning into beasts whose only desire is to mate with the one biting them.

Mark had already speculated that much so what shocked him the most about the Sergeant’s explanation was that he spoke as if the whole thing was a documented phenomenon.

Turns out vampires were real, and so were dhampirs. The Peace Keepers had already confirmed that Lara -her vessel, to be more accurate- was almost identical to the dhampirs from certain worlds.

Natalie had ordered them to keep that a secret from him, though. One of the higher-ups of an interdimensional organization went so far just to prank him. Mark swore that he would make her pay one day.

Whatever the case, the existence of vampires and other fictional races was shocking, to say the least.

Since most people knew what a vampire was, Mark didn’t see the need to go into detail about what a human-vampire hybrid is. That made him curious about where his System got the necessary information to create a vessel based on the fictional race, but turns out dhampirs already existed and the LRGS used them as a template from the beginning.

Lara herself had no idea about the effects her bite had and when she learned about it shame overwhelmed her to the point that her whole face remained red for hours, or so he heard from their new companions.

Unfortunately for him, Mark didn’t get to see her in that state. By the time she returned to his side, only a cold glare met him every time he dared to look in her direction.