「No no no, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You might all be fine with it, but will the other villages agree? I’m a Dhampir, you know. I’m of a different race. Will they accept such a King?」

「It will be alright; that is not a problem.」

「Yeah, if it were a human then there’d probably be some opposition, but since you’re a Dhampir, it’ll be fine.」

「… Well, even I think that it’ll probably be fine.」

The founder of Ghouls was thought to be the younger brother or sister of the founder of Vampires. A Dhampir whose blood was half-Vampire was something like a relative for Ghouls. In addition, Dhampirs were considered monsters by the Amid Empire and its nations.

And Vandalieu possessed the【Death-Attribute Charm】skill. Even Vandalieu knew that the other Ghoul villages wouldn’t be strongly opposed to him being the King.

「And you do meet the requirements to be the King, boy, in terms of your ability and achievements.」
Vandalieu had once told Zadiris that he possessed the【Strengthen Followers】skill.

「Boy, the【Strengthen Followers】skill that you mentioned to me before does exactly as its name suggests, increasing the attribute points of your followers. Your followers are your Undead, and we will be your followers as well. In other words, if you stand at the top position as King, you will strengthen all of the Ghouls that follow your command. That skill is something like a King-specific skill.」

The【Strengthen Followers】skill is something that any monster bearing the title of “King” possesses. Thanks to this skill, the group of monsters led by the King is stronger than normal and their numbers are also greater.

Though Zadiris didn’t know this, there was once a Goblin King who had obtained a level 10【Strengthen Followers】skill and his followers fought evenly against fully-armed knights, wielding only tree branches and wearing fur loincloths.

There was a reason that the Adventurers’ Guild treated the appearance of a King as a disastrous event.

「You are the one who made an effort to correct our weakness of not being able to reproduce easily, did you not? You opened up our future and helped us prosper. You have already shown success in doing so as well. If these are not the achievements of a leader, then I do not know what are.」

Vandalieu felt that Zadiris was exaggerating with her words, but difficulty with reproduction was a problem that Ghouls as a race faced, and the fact that they couldn’t increase their numbers had been a heavy restriction that prevented them from expanding.

If the other Ghouls knew that Vandalieu had a way to solve this problem, they would gladly gather to follow his command.

Having never imagined that solving the problem of the Ghouls’ declining birth rates would lead to this, Vandalieu put a hand to his forehead. Vigaro seemed happy that things had gone well. He had made Vandalieu heavily involved as he had said he would, but he was slightly immature about it.

「I understand. I will become the King.」

And so Vandalieu became the Ghoul King before even becoming an adventurer.





『Vandalieu has acquired the Title* of【Ghoul King!】』


『The level of the【Strengthen Followers】skill has increased!』

TLN*: This is “二つ名/futatsuna” which literally means “second name”; I previously translated this as “nickname” when it appeared early in the series. Now that I know what this actually is, I’m retranslating it to “Title” and applying this change to previous chapters as well.