Good.

[The relief at her response doesn't make his mother's next question any easier to respond to. Alucard knows he should look his mother in the eye when he responds to this. But it would mean too much moving, too much shifting of limbs, too much disturbance. This is the only place he wants to be for the next few days, as childish as it all sounds.

He wants to delay. Ask how much she really, really wants to hear any of this, but she's asking. She wants the knowledge, even if it will disappoint her.

There's no weariness in his response, but it is distant, a faint patina of guilt painted over every single word. His mother raised him so much better than this.]

There were fewer causalities than I anticipated, and I was not originally going to go through the market. I think doing so impacted that number. [He knows it did.] Other than that, it wasn't far off the mark. But I had enough time to plan.

[He wants to clarify one thing though, because those deaths did have a logic to them. At least, dumb Ţepeş man logic.]

I thought that with fewer survivors, it would be harder for any of the lies said to stick. I...have had the opposite effect, no doubt.