Chapter 91: Hidden Secrets
"That little bastard dared to kill her!"
"Young Lord, please calm down!"
Alistair Faust's anger seemed unstoppable after he came back from the Nexus. Two corpses who tried to stop him lay lifeless on the ground, their blood painting the basement walls. The only people who remained were Alistair and his aide Theodore.
"Theodore! Do you have any idea how much effort my father and I put into that slut?! Then she goes and dies to that mutt!"
'How did he kill her? Those filthy necromancers said her poison would kill any living creature!'
Amongst the many monster clans, one of the four great vampire royal clans dealt with the undead and carried the magic widely known as necromancy.
This clan usually avoided conflict and thus survived with the least losses during the great wars in the past. However, because of their profane magic, they caused disgust amongst their peers. Many clans were blindly hostile to the Nosferatu clan.
'Said to be one of the first bloodlines of our race, yet they deal with corpses...'
Alistair felt anger, different from his feelings regarding the Tepes princess and her bloodline. Those two flesh golems were his masterpiece, especially the female. 'To think she could survive in the human world for almost fifteen years.'
To create her, he used the corpse of the original Mari Yamamoto, who was in an unconscious state at ten and had her parents sign all rights over for a large amount of money.
For the first five years, they transformed her body using the ancient techniques of the Nosferatu family. The family replaced her blood completely with the special blood that flows through their veins. It was a strange fluid that many called undeath.
Not only did it stop them from dying, it would kill any living creature that came into contact with it for a prolonged period.
Bang!
Alistair's powerful fist smashed one of the metal containers, crushing it before he tossed it into a large furnace with dull eyes.
'Ten years of hard work. I curried favour with that foul Nosferatu woman and even promised to help her kill the Tepes princess. Yet the defective goods she helped create couldn't even kill a mere squire!'
"Young Master, we shouldn't do this... there are still more test subjects!"
Theodore was a middle-aged man who served the Faust Clan for over twenty years. He knew about the secret projects Alistair and his father had been working on, but he said nothing out of blind loyalty and faith. The man knew better than anyone else that they were not good people. However, thanks to the medicine of the Faust clan, his human daughter was still alive.
A debt he would never forget, which created the Faust clan's most important servant.
"You are right, Theodore... How is the research so far? Did those failures at least give us any ideas on how to improve and proceed?" Alistair might have a very violent and impulsive personality. Yet with his trusted friend and servant. It seemed he could calm those impulses much easier like Theo was his tranquilliser.
"We learned a lot from the corpses, but... They weren't quite successful."
"Then?"
"We need more blood, especially from the subject that the young lord wants. We need a lot of it if we want to create something similar to her, but it's difficult to get close without being discovered."
Theo sat at his desk. Despite the destroyed room, with his curly dark red hair like a bird's nest and black rim glasses, he didn't seem bothered. "Ah... but that boy you seem to hate, I forgot his name, but his blood. It seems special from watching the battles several times. It seems that boy might hold the key to success."
Alistair's eyes widened and became bloodshot, his body wrapped in a blood aura before several spears of crimson red penetrated the wall beside Theodore's head. "Don't fuck with me, Theo!"
"Ah... ah... I am sorry, but... It seems true. After testing it several times, we came to the same conclusion. The subject's blood is perfect for our research."
Alistair took a deep breath, trying to calm down and walked up to a large metallic door before pressing some buttons on a panel beside it.
"That bastard's blood? The one who stole Selene's first kiss, must we really keep him alive?!"
'How can this be? Why is it always him?! He made my father and uncle give up on my brother, doubt me... Ah... I hate him. I cannot stand that he is the one we need to succeed!' Alistair grabbed his hair, yanking at the roots, while biting his lower lip; there was no sense of nobility or beauty; like an enraged beast, he began to shout and lash out around him.
'I have to kill him, but not yet; I need his blood.'
The door opened, revealing a dark room. A girl sat at the back of the small room. Despite how calm she looked, two chains held her arms against the wall while countless metallic needs penetrated her skin, pumping a black and green fluid into her body.
Her pale skin with green throbbing veins appeared the moment the light shone into the room, revealing her naked body as she shivered from the cold air.
Her dull white hair reached to her feet, wrapped in bundles on the floor. The girl looked more like a corpse than a living being. Her eyes were full of life, an atmosphere of resistance deep inside them, almost glowing with a dark purple colour.
"So you're not dead?" Alistair's lips curled into a smile before he pointed towards the girl. A spear of blood formed from the red mist—the next moment, with the flick of his wrist, it shot towards the girl and penetrated her thigh, causing her to scream out in pain.
"Ahgu... please, I did not do anything wrong." The girl begged between screams of pain as her chains jangled, stopping her from covering the wound. Her voice sounded childish and hoarse, but her appearance didn't look any younger than twenty, even though she had been like this for over fifty years now.
Black blood oozed from the bloody hole left by his magic. What made the scene more terrifying were the dozens of small scars in the same shape filling her entire body. Despite her wound quickly healing, it seemed imperfect as there was a scar left behind, no longer the same beautiful and fair skin as before.
"Tell me, do you remember a boy who used to be your friend? His name, what was it... ah! Ivan?"
"?!"
Her reaction seemed strange, like a wild beast suddenly cornered. She lifted her lips, revealing her fangs and snarled at Alistair. "You leave that boy alone. He's not part of this!"
"Hahaha! Your mind really was destroyed because of those Nosferatu bastards~ how amusing. Does it make your heart beat faster? Do you remember your true self once again? Lady."
"I am not a Lady!" The girl shouted, trying to break the chains that held her back with all her strength, even if he cut her skin and drained her blood. She seemed to resist Alistair's words. "I have no name, so leave that boy alone! He is too weak and soft for this world!"
Alistair was unfazed, most likely because this conversation was something he enjoyed every time he met her.
An endless cycle of emotions that she would forget after ten minutes. Her memories were so distorted and broken by the past fifty years that she would repeat the same interaction she did with his father when they first met after they kidnapped her.
'She probably still thinks it's fifty years ago, this foolish woman. Hahahaha~ what would it do to her broken heart if she knew her entire clan was wiped out on that night? Ah, I want to tell her. But if she breaks, we have no one else to produce this black blood, no matter how inferior it is compared to his!'
The experiment started when the Faust family teamed up with the Nosferatu clan after discovering the unique blood of the girl, one of the strongest heirs to her tribe in hundreds of years. Black blood could almost mimic any other—however, it was imperfect, and she could only bring out half of the power of other bloodlines.
"Ah... this is poetic. Should I take a photo and let those bastards know what will happen if they dare try to make their name rise? Ah... wasn't there a werewolf that he was fond of? Should we repeat the past once again?" Alistair seemed to talk to himself—however, the image of an older man who looked almost identical to him flickered for a moment.'
The moment the figure vanished, several blood spears penetrated her again, causing her to faint. 'What a waste.'
"Young master, what about the boy?"
"Forget it. He isn't worth the effort. For now, focus on the research. There is still a chance that the girl may be useful." Alistair waved his hand, turning around as the door closed behind him. 'Well, I lied, but the duel in three weeks... Let's work on a plan.
I should contact those Nosferatu bastards. They might be interested in the bastard of the Báthory clan.'