Kiss of Undeath

John decided that he was having a good day. He got to complete his quest without any indications that Moira had known about his continued trials and tribulations, he had created Seras freakin' Victoria who now thought he was her rightful Master (whatever implications that may have had), and to top it all off, he'd gotten to take the virginity of his second little Neko Warrior, and she'd been so into it that John felt relatively certain he would be able to get her to come back for more… especially if he kept raising their stats up. His own Libido stat had already boosted his drive enough to give him confidence as a near-virgin, so he could only imagine what it would do to such feral girls.

Speaking of the girls, Maera and Mithra were still playing, but he could tell that they were very consciously edging closer. They had been for about twenty minutes - ever since the first slabs of meat John stuck on his makeshift cooking spit were done enough to really fill the air with their scent. As the pile grew higher, the Nekos grew closer, and though they seemed content to feign disinterest, John felt certain that if he waited long enough they would probably steal some. Granted, he would've given it to them anyway - it was supposed to be their food after all, for quite some time, but they had refused to come any closer than a dozen feet away no matter how hungry they probably were.

Seras, meanwhile, had slowly recovered from her near comatose state and, unlike the Nekos, seemed to almost want to edge farther away from John. She continued to bring him kindling for the fire whenever he needed it, as well as fetching more wood for the pile. That was helpful, except… it took John quite a while to cook all the meat he had, and no matter how hot he made the flames, the pile of wood only grew higher and higher, until it was taller than John - then, twice as high. By the time he had finished the last of it…

"Look, Seras, I- you can gather wood later," John said, sighing and shaking his head. Not out of disappointment, of course, but out of sheer exasperation. Seras had been so **** to avoid him she'd piled a stack of wood that was roughly semi-circular in shape, nearly fifteen feet high at its peak and almost a dozen feet around at its longest, slowly tapering off. It was enough wood to last a full week with extremely conservative use, while John had really only planned on using it for the rest of the day. He wanted Maera and Mithra to stay warm, but he wasn't sure he trusted them to keep a fire going while he was gone without hurting themselves or burning down the new forest. Maybe in a bit, after raising their stats a bit more - Maera in particular seemed to be picking up vocabulary extremely quickly, for some reason…

"A-alright, Master," Seras said, nodding her head, standing beside the wood pile with her arms still folded over her sensitive areas. She was definitely still embarrassed about the nudity, but it had only gotten worse after tasting John's blood. Calling her by her actual name seemed to be helping - and as funny as it had been for Alucard to do it, calling her "Police Girl" got boring faster than he had expected it to, especially when he didn't even have a uniform for her.

"Seras, I'm sure you have a lot of questions about everything that has happened. Ask them now, because I don't want you to be confused on anything in the future."

"Um… can you explain… everythin'?" Seras asked, raising her hand as if she were asking a question of her teacher.

John let out a long, exasperated sigh. "Alright, then. Let's clear this up - what exactly do you remember?"

"I… I remember… the Cheddar village, and everyone else gettin' eaten… and then something happened. I don't… I don't really remember what, it's all fuzzy," Seras whined shaking her head as if that would clear it. "Something shot me, an' I fell down, an' then… I woke up 'ere. I feel like there's something else, but it's like it's all gone now. You said that you called me 'ere, but where is 'ere anyway? An' 'ow did you call me? An'… 'ow did I become this?"

Seras didn't specify the "this" she spoke of, but the way that she gently bit her finger made it fairly obvious what she was referring to. It seemed that without a master to instruct her, Seras was a lot more uncertain about what she had become.

"I have some very… unique abilities," John began, hoping that it didn't sound like quite as much of a cop-out as it really was. He tried not to lie, but knew he couldn't be vague if he wanted her to trust him.

"Like what?"

"Like summoning things. I'm not sure why you specifically appeared, but when I called, you came. You were awake and alert, so you remember everything from there. Whatever happened in Cheddar must have turned you into a vampire before I brought you here. To answer the rest of your questions… 'here' is not in Cheddar, nor is it in England. In fact, it's not even on the same plane of reality. I called you to another world."

There was a long pause. Seras stared at John for a good ten seconds, and then, as if with the sound of glass breaking-

"Wh-WHAAAAAAAAAAT?!"

"That's… about what I was expecting," John thought wryly. "Oh well… best to get it off all at once like a Band-Aid, right?"

"As I recall, you were captured, near ****, and turned into a vampire. You might just be better off here, frankly." It was, again, at the very least half true. Especially considering she had been just a fictional character before now…

"T-that may be true, but…"

Seras never finished her sentence, sinking down to her knees. For a moment, she even seemed to forget about her nudity, holding her arms to comfort herself instead of covering herself. It seemed that the idea of leaving her world behind was of little comfort.

"I don't know why you specifically were summoned… but I know about who you are. Perhaps your situation and the timing of it was why you were summoned. You have no family. What friends you had were on the ****, and they all died at Cheddar. You became a vampire, a creature of the night separate from the life you once led. Regardless of which world you live in, your previous life is gone. You have no ties left to it - why not start over here?"

"You make it sound so easy…" Seras said, brushing one of her shoulders. "Either way, it's all gone… but that doesn't make it any easier…"

John strode forward and grabbed Seras by the arm, lifting her up only somewhat gently. John did his best to meet her gaze with all the intensity he could muster. It must have worked - her hands stayed at her sides, and her downcast eyes immediately met his own with a mix of surprise and fear. Maera and Mithra paused nearby, obviously having noticed the sudden silence and halting in their playing as John grimaced at her.

"It doesn't matter if it's easy. This is how things are. We can't change what happened before, only what happens to us in the future. You survived many things to arrive here and have shown an iron will. A new life may have been **** upon you, Seras… but you have the chance here to make it a wonderful place or a miserable prison. Only you can grasp your fate from here."

John held her cheek with one hand, making sure she didn't look away. Her deep blue eyes with their mesmerizing black circles resonated against his own, an emotion he wasn't familiar with bursting out of them. Reverence. Of course, piled on that were several layers of doubt, but it was progress. Maybe. John wasn't entirely sure how he felt about how much faith she looked like she suddenly had in him.

"A-alright, Master! I understand… I think."

"Good girl," John said, lowering his hand from her cheek. "Now… this was the last of the meat, so that should be enough food for a week for them."

John had been storing the meat in his inventory, but now he simply pulled the makeshift spit off of the fire and tossed it to where Mithra and Maera were sitting, having given up on playing since he had his words with Seras. The two Nekos looked between John and the offered meat for only an instant before lunging forward, hastily tearing into the meat with little regard to the stick beneath. John was thankful he'd done his best to prep it as a spit or they might have lodged stray pieces of bark in their gums with how aggressively they tore into it.

"Now to figure out how to store this."

John had only one idea for how to keep this much meat good for a long time. Well, one viable idea anyway; he could've smoked it, if he had any idea how to begin such a process safely. No, there was only one thing he could do now - he had to make a second inventory. As bizarre as it would've sounded a few weeks ago, John was counting on Minecraft now to make his life infinitely easier. That was what he needed - a chest that kept things organized, easily accessible, and didn't let them rot or spoil.

John approached the wood pile, and immediately a menu came up with what he had in mind. It even had the emblem of the Minecraft chest, though he hoped it wouldn't actually look like that.

Abyssal Chest
Stores up to 1,000 lbs. of material. Shares the same qualities as the Gamer's inventory in all other aspects.
Durability: 1,000 / 1,000
Requirements: 20 units of wood [50 available in selected pile] Mana Cost: 25

John smiled, glancing at the icon one more time before he pressed the Accept button. Thankfully, what appeared in front of him was much more like the classical image of a chest than the Minecraft version. It was simple, a rectangular base with a half-circle lid, no lock, no mechanism at all in fact. John tapped on it and the lid flew open, opening up an inventory that was almost identical to his own. John grinned and rapidly transferred every scrap of meat he had over, eager to be rid of it, and-

Quest Completed: "Of Love and Logistics"!
Reward: +1000 XP, +$500, +1 Level of World Shift.

Skill Leveled Up!
World Shift Level 2: Transfers John between the new world and the old world. Mana Cost: 0, Cannot be used in combat. Can take up to 8 people at a time. Cooldown: 8 hours.

John blinked a few times. That was quite an improvement! With a cooldown like that, now he could get to and from his home easily when he was supposed to be asleep. He wouldn't even have to skip school! Or if he did, he could at least get some real use out of it and still be home for dinner.

But when John closed the window, he realized that the message about his skill leveling up had covered part of the quest rewards. And what he saw underneath that skill message caused his eyes to widen.

"…Hellsing quotes," John breathed, eyeing the rewards closely. "Kind of." Those were some serious choices, and the gravity surrounding them, the effort put into the choice, made him really wish he fully understood his own powers, or at least that he could read the entire talent tree before making his decision.

"M-master?"

"What?" John said, barely moving his eyes toward Seras. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was happy to hear her still calling him that, even after he told her so much of the truth, but that was a distant voice.

"Can I ask you… one more question?"

"Go ahead."

"W-what are those things that keep appearin' in front of you?"

John's entire body froze.