Vandalieu was on his third day of rest, but the Undead Titans were busy at work, as if making up for all of the time that they had spent idle up until now.

「Lumberjacks cut treeeees!」(Titan)

TLN: This is a humorous use of alliteration in Japanese because "lumberjack" is 木こり/kikori, "tree" is 木/ki and "cut" is "切る/kiru". Basically there's a lot of syllables with the K sound.

『GYIIIIH!』(Ent)

Holding their axes in both hands, the Titans swung them into the trunk of a large tree. And then the tree... the Ent, the monster that the tree had transformed into, screamed.

The Titans took no notice of the Ent swinging its branches around as a final act of resistance, and in the end, the felling of the Ent was complete.

「Boss! What're we doing with this tree?」(Titan)

『Put it where we're gathering the timber! The Holy Son is resting for now!』(Titan)

「Roooger!」(Titan)

The Undead Titans cut off the Ent's smaller branches and carried these along with the trunk to the place where the timber was being gathered. These Titans had been『lumberjacks』while they were alive, and even though they were now only made of bones and rotting flesh, they worked at a brisk pace.

「We have to hurry and exterminate all of the other monsters in Talosheim!」(Titan)

「Yeah, since the Holy Son is here now!」(Titan)

『Aaah, I want to hurry and go get the salt!』(Titan)

TLN: Not sure what this salt line means.

They were working to clear the outer districts of Talosheim, which were being encroached upon by the forest of the Devil's Nests outside, and turn them back into ruins. Vandalieu, the Holy Son, had told them that he would repair the buildings of Talosheim and restore them to their original state.

『Show him how we work!』(Titan)

With the former lumberjacks leading the way, the Titans defeated the monsters attacking them to defend their territory one after another, cutting down the trees as they went.

Before the Titans discovered the tunnel leading into Duke Hartner's* territory in the Orbaume Kingdom, Talosheim had been a city-nation isolated from the outside world by the Boundary Mountain Range.

TLN*: Duke Hartner was mentioned in chapter 28, but I misread "Hartner" as "partner" in the raw when I translated that chapter so... yeah. In my defense, パートナ is partner and ハートナis Hartner; literally that little circle above the first character is the only difference and I just missed it. The sentence in chapter 28 that mentions him has been fixed now.

The royal capital's population was five thousand, and there were only three small villages with populations numbering in the hundreds. Other than capable adventurers like the【Sword King】Borkus and the Knights' Order of the Church led by the【Saint】Jeena, there were no specialized military personnel or battle technicians.

All of the soldiers, including the city guards, did those duties as their secondary occupation; they normally worked as miners or fishermen.

Upon learning this, one would think that even for a country of Titans who were born with great physical strength and sturdy bodies, their military strength was too low. But the reality was different.

All of Talosheim's industries were dependent on the Devil's Nests and Dungeons, other than its agriculture.

Lumberjacks gathered lumber by felling Ents, Treants and High Treants in Devil's Nests and Dungeons.

Fishermen hunted aquatic monsters using tridents.

Even miners would obtain metals from veins in Devil's Nests and Dungeons that were crawling with monsters, so they had to fight and defeat the monsters in their way on their own.

The vast majority of Talosheim's population of five thousand was made of capable fighters possessing battle-related skills.

Even the farmers who should have been an exception to this possessed enough fighting strength to kill any dangerous wild beasts that went after their crops with their bare hands; they were not to be laughed at.

After learning these facts about Talosheim, Vandalieu and the Ghouls wondered,「Why did the Mirg shield-nation pick a fight with a country like this?」

After all, over ninety percent of Talosheim's five thousand civilians were combatants capable of killing a soldier of the Mirg army in a single attack. Such powerful enemies would be waiting for them in a sturdy fortress of a city.

It was as clear as day that any country that attempted to capture Talosheim would suffer several times the number of losses that the Titans would.

Talosheim had few mages capable of using the Titans' unique magic as Titans possessed little affinity for the various attributes of magic, but even the Mirg shield-nation's army was largely made of knights and soldiers; they didn't have many mages either.

The Mirg shield-nation and the Amid Empire behind it seemed to have dispatched their troops after only looking at Talosheim's exterior appearance; they certainly hadn't done any detailed analysis on the city. As a result, though the Mirg shield-nation had been victorious, it suffered historically unprecedented losses including the loss of a magic spear that was a national treasure.

It was a foolish-sounding story, but regardless of these past events, the Undead Titans continued to clear Talosheim of non-Undead monsters.

Around this time, Vandalieu was in the ruins of the Adventurers' Guild, reading a book. The archives of the Church of Vida and the small branch of the Mages' Guild had either been set alight or plundered, but the archives of this place had been left alone. Even now, two hundred years later, there were numerous books that were still intact.

The Church had probably been burned down because of the religious reasons behind the war, and though the Mages' Guild was small, there was a chance that those of the Guild had been conducting their own research, so the archives had been plundered. But there had been no reason to destroy the archives of the Adventurers' Guild. Well, it could have simply been because the Mirg shield-nation had been forced to retreat before they were able to.

And one of the Undead Titans had told Vandalieu that there should be a book in these archives about Dhampirs.

Incidentally, there had been a Magic Item left in the Adventurers' Guild that was able to issue registration cards for those registered with the Guild, but it couldn't be activated. It seemed that only Guild personnel could use it.

If Vandalieu had been able to register himself here, he would have been able to become an adventurer while keeping his Title, skills and Mana pool hidden, but life wasn't always easy.

But investigating the details about his own race was more important.

「I can finally learn some things about myself.」(Vandalieu)

Vandalieu didn't know anything about himself other than the fact that he was born between the Subordinate Vampire Valen and the Dark Elf Darcia. He had always wanted to find out more about himself if he had the chance.

First, he wanted to find out his life expectancy so he would know how long he could be expected to live. This would allow him to plan his life out.

In the unlikely event that his life expectancy was shorter than a human's, it would be a big problem. He could extend his lifespan, using【Youth Transformation】on himself, but if Dhampirs turned out to be creatures that lived without aging and then suddenly died when they reached their thirtieth birthday, that would be problematic. It was unlikely, but Vandalieu wanted to know, just in case.

「... I can really read it.」(Vandalieu)

Vandalieu's eyes followed the text as he inhaled the scent of old paper. He learned that Dhampirs had the special characteristic of inheriting the qualities of their parents very strongly.

The pattern of inheritance apparently grew even stronger when both parents belonged to races created by Vida.

「So that means I have quite a bit of talent in unarmed fighting and archery, just like my parents.」(Vandalieu)

It was possible that Vandalieu had an aptitude for archery like Darcia and Valen's unarmed fighting techniques that relied on his claws. It was unlikely that he would be able to use spiritual magic, however, as he didn't possess an affinity for the other attributes of magic.

That would always be true unless spirits of the death-attribute, which had never existed before, suddenly started appearing. Lemures were familiars created using Vandalieu's Mana; they didn't count as spirits.

「Hmm? Could it be... I've inherited Father's resistance to the sun as well? In that case, won't I be fine making my body structure more Vampire-like by using【Bloodsucking】to drink more blood?」(Vandalieu)

Newborn Dhampirs possessed none of the weaknesses of Vampires, but repeatedly using【Bloodsucking】made their constitutions more like their Vampire parents. As a cost to the power they gained by doing so, they gained the Vampires' weaknesses as well.

However, Vandalieu's father had been a man known to be resistant to the sun. And apparently Subordinate Vampires only possessed special Vampire abilities related to the body, but they also possessed none of Vampires' other weaknesses.

This meant that Vandalieu could obtain the Vampires' power at no risk to himself.

「Alright, I'll drink lots of blood from now on.」(Vandalieu)

Up until now, he had succumbed to the temptation of drinking the blood of the monsters whenever their corpses were being drained of blood. There was no particular reason to resist this temptation, and if it led to him gaining power, there was really no reason to hesitate to drink it.

If he became able to fight with his claws like his father, his mother would probably be happy as well.

「And the main thing, the lifespan is... dependent on the race of the parent that isn't a Vampire?」(Vandalieu)

That was what had been written. The way Dhampirs lived varied greatly depending on their parents, and their lifespans also varied depending on the race of the non-Vampire parent.

If the parent was a human with a lifespan of 100 years, the Dhampir would live between 300 to 500 years; if the parent was a Dwarf with a lifespan of 200 years, the Dhampir would live between 600 to 1000 years; if the parent was an Elf with a lifespan of 500 years, the Dhampir would live between 1500 to 2000 years.

As a general rule, it seemed to be between three and five times the lifespan of the non-Vampire parent's race.

Incidentally, all of these values had been deduced by researchers of the distant past who had used life-attribute magic to investigate multiple Dhampir specimens. The information's authenticity was a little questionable. However, it seemed that Vandalieu would be able to live for a long time... as long as he wasn't killed.

「Now that I think about it, how long do Dark Elves live?」(Vandalieu)

Vandalieu wanted to ask Darcia, but she was currently asleep inside her bone fragment. He wandered around the archives, wondering if there might be a book written about Dark Elves, and fortunately he happened to find the book he was looking for.

About a third of it had been rendered unreadable by mold, but he was able to find out the piece of information that he wanted.

『Dark Elves were born as a race that the goddess Vida hoped would be stronger than Elves, so all of their abilities are superior to those of Elves. As such, their lifespans are long; they can live for a thousand years in contrast to the five-hundred-year lifespan of Elves.』

... At worst, Vandalieu would live three thousand years; at best, five thousand. As long as he survived, he could becoming a living witness to history.

「A length of time longer than the entire Christian Era... I can't imagine it.」(Vandalieu)

His sense of time was just as it had been when he was a human, so he imagined that it could even become difficult to live for so long. At the very least, it seemed that it would be some time before he lived through the fourth lifetime promised to him by Rodcorte.

「I wonder what that god was thinking when he reincarnated me as a Dhampir? Well, he cursed me so that I would commit suicide in despair; I'm sure he didn't think about things like lifespans.」(Vandalieu)

In fact, if he hadn't been able to use death-attribute magic, he would have been finished the moment Darcia died. He wouldn't have had to even go as far as to commit suicide; he would have simply starved to death.

Even in the book, it had been written that the majority of Dhampirs died long before they reached the end of their lifespan. Considering that, Vandalieu could understand why he had been reincarnated as a Dhampir.

「Now then, I wonder if there's a book about adventurers?」(Vandalieu)

The Talosheim branch of the Adventurers' Guild was supposedly set up here by the Orbaume Kingdom's Adventurers' Guild, so the systems used by the Talosheim branch should be mostly the same.

The documents here were from two hundred years ago, but since many races like Dwarves and Titans lived for over two hundred years, things should be mostly the same other than some minor details... If the systems had changed drastically in the past two hundred years, Vandalieu would just have to consider himself unfortunate.

「Here it is... It seems to be mostly the same as the Mirg shield-nation's Guild.」(Vandalieu)

The systems and rules weren't much different from what he had heard from Kachia and spirits of the adventurers that he had killed. It seemed that Guilds were the same even when they were in different countries.

There were two differences. The first was the treatment of the races created by Vida, and the other was regarding the training school for adventurers.

In the Orbaume Kingdom's Adventurers' Guild, some of the races created by Vida, such as Dark Elves and Titans, were treated as people. However, the races created when Vida procreated with monsters such as Lamias, Scylla, Arachne, Devils, Oni and, notably, Vampires – were generally considered monsters.

This was because these races often harmed humans or had long histories of conflict against human countries.

However, some friendly clans of these races also existed, and it was forbidden to harm members of clans that the nation had declared to be allied clans.

「... Hmm, even though they're enemies with the Amid Empire, the way they treat the races created by Vida isn't the exact opposite, huh.」(Vandalieu)

Considering the fact that the Orbaume Kingdom had been trading commercially with Talosheim, it was difficult to imagine that the goddess Vida was thought of in a very negative way. And the Orbaume Kingdom's relationships with each of the other races may have changed in the last two thousand years.

For now, Vandalieu decided that he would ask about these things once he entered human society.

「The next thing is regarding the adventurers' training school... I never imagined that I'd be going back to school in another world.」(Vandalieu)

In the Orbaume Kingdom's Guilds, there were educational institutions that trained adventurers, though such institutions didn't exist in the Adventurers' Guild of the Amid Empire and its nations.

That was because the Orbaume Kingdom had more adventurers, and also more Devil's Nests and Dungeons where adventurers worked.

Of course, the fact that being an adventurer came with occupational hazards was the same in the Orbaume Kingdom. If an inexperienced adventurer went on a reckless adventure and died, the responsibility wasn't on the country or the Guild.

People who became adventurers were people with great confidence in their abilities or those who were very poor... Orphans, those who had lost their jobs while still young or the third or fourth sons of farming or merchant families who had no chance of succeeding the family business, those kinds of people. Though this was cruel to say, they were such people that society would not suffer a great loss if they died.

However, in the distant past, a vast majority of newly-registered adventurers died within a year of registration, and many retired before reaching D-class or higher.

It would be problematic if the Adventurers' Guild was to build up a negative reputation due to these statistics and the number of capable adventurers stopped increasing. If the poor saw no hope in becoming adventurers and decided to turn to crime instead, that would also cause great problems for the nation.

In addition to this, if there weren't enough people to thin the monster populations in the Devil's Nests, not only would there be a shortage of valuable monster materials, but the monster populations could even overflow, jeopardizing the nation's safety.

And so the nation provided funds for adventurers' training schools to be established. The idea was to teach them at least a certain level of knowledge, train their fighting abilities and thus reduce the rate of casualties among new adventurers.

This experiment was a great success; the rate of newly-registered adventurers dying within a year of their registration dropped by eighty percent and the ratio of adventurers making it to D-class and above increased several times over.

In addition, the nation was able to use exceptional adventurers as special escorts and privately-employed mages; only good had come out of the establishment of these training schools.

After reading this far, Vandalieu looked up from the book.

「I guess I'm a bad person for thinking that this bit sounds suspicious.」(Vandalieu)

He could understand the rate of adventurers dying within a year of their registration decreasing, but what about the rate of adventurers dying within the second year? Just how much had the ratio of adventurers reaching D-class or above increased by?

In the first place, why were there no specific numbers given in the information?

「Well, whatever.」(Vandalieu)

The reason Vandalieu wanted to become an adventurer wasn't because of his ideals or because it was just his dream. It was merely the simplest way to secure himself a position in society, and he could even earn money by doing what he had been doing up until now... Hunting monsters and bandits.

Most importantly, it was the occupation that most easily allowed him to make a name for himself.

And so Vandalieu ignored the dark side of the Adventurers' Guild that he was starting to see, and lowered his gaze once more to read what had been written about the adventurers' training school system.

The schools were credit-based, and one could attend between one and three years. As long as one earned the minimum number of credits and had the headmaster's permission, he or she could graduate at any time.

There weren't any particular requirements to enroll at the schools; only the entrance fees and tuition fees needed to be paid. There was even a deferred payment system for those who couldn't pay these fees in advance where they would pay the fees off after graduating.

And the most important thing for Vandalieu was how the school system dealt with minors.

『However, minors cannot advance to F-class or above if they have not graduated from an adventurer training school.』

In the Adventurers' Guild, adventurers were separated into eight classes based on their abilities and past achievements. The lowest, G-class, were newcomers who possessed only their registration cards; the only requests they could accept were non-combat-related requests in the city... what would be referred to as manual labor in Japan. Even the pay was