Chapter 13 - Letters

　　"Found the vampire!"

　　After a short time, a Knight of the Close Guard came to the Lord's bedroom and reported to Baldwin.

　　"Really, take me there!"

　　Baldwin was immediately about to go out, but Edmund pulled his brother back, "Don't you go! Who will protect Lone if you go?"

　　"I told my subordinates to stay, they are one in a million vampire hunters."

　　"No way! I trust only Baldwin!"

　　Baldwin, who was quite helpless at this general bewilderment of his brother's pampering, said, "Then brother will come down and change his clothes and go over with him."

　　"No, Lone is too scared and weak in the knees to walk."

　　The end result is that Baldwin carries his brother on his back and goes down from the lord's room to the scene where the vampire was found.

　　It was the castle's stables, now surrounded by hunters and knights of the close guard.

　　The group of lads saw the antics of the Guildmaster carrying the Lord on his back, and wanted to laugh but dared not, so they could only desperately hold it in.

　　"Brother what have you put on your hands that makes my neck sticky." Baldwin complained as well.

　　"It's an expensive perfume imported from the Western Continent, can't you smell the aroma of lilac and cardamom?"

　　Baldwin shook his head helplessly before carrying his brother into the crowd.

　　Only a large hole was smashed through the roof of the stable, and a fat, pale, black body lay on the ground below.

　　Judging by the poisonous form of pale black silver on the corpse, the guy had obviously been hacked to death by a silver sword.

　　"It was still in bat demon form when we found it, but it was down to one breath, and the guys rushed up and cut it down with their silver swords, and then it changed back to human form." A vampire hunter said.

　　"If it isn't Lassie, the lone cook. He's actually a vampire?!" The Lord Lord, who was lying on his brother's back, looked at the pale black body on the ground and let out a strange cry.

　　Baldwin was speechless for a moment, this cook he also knew, and had personally eaten his cooking, how come this guy suddenly became a vampire.

　　"No wonder he flew this way after we found him, but doesn't he usually live in the castle? Why would he appear outside in a townhouse?"

　　"What townhouse?"

　　"We found him in a townhouse on Ruby Street. Brother, has he acted in any suspicious manner in the last six months?"

　　"I don't know, you'll have to ask Bianmi, the head chef, about Lassie."

　　So Baldwin sent a squire to call Bianmi, the castle's head cook, over.

　　While waiting for the head chef, Edmund suddenly muttered:

　　"By the way, you were talking about townhouses, Lone remembered, it seems that some servants have told the tale that Lacy made a fortune and purchased a townhouse in the city."

　　"That would be the house, which Lassie uses as her hiding place."

　　As he was talking, a tall, skinny fellow came running up to him, the castle's head cook, Bianmi.

　　"Laci's recent suspicious behavior? Let's see, uh, nothing seems suspicious."

　　"There's no way there's no suspicious behavior, most humans who are turned into vampires flee to places where vampires live, and Lacy not only didn't run away, he purchased the townhouse and lurked around, he's definitely plotting something."

　　Baldwin thought to himself that Lacy might even be related to Collins.

　　But at this point he hadn't told his brother about Collins' transformation into a vampire baron, and rotted the idea away.

　　"If I really want to talk about suspicious behavior, it was probably last month when the kitchen killed the cows, and La West wanted to bleed the cows, and argued with me, and we all know that beef tastes better without blood."

　　"More than likely he was trying to release the blood to secretly drink it himself, it seems that animal blood can quench a vampire's thirst slightly. Anything else suspicious?"

　　Lassie had already proved he was a vampire with his own dead body, and this kind of boring suspicion didn't really help.

　　Baldwin was mainly interested in finding out if there were any more of Lacy's companions in town.

　　"And... And .... Right! He likes to sleep in during the day these days, and he's pushing his breakfast and lunch errands to the other cooks. "

　　"None of that matters, has he had any contact with anyone suspicious lately?"

　　"Doesn't ring a bell, but he's been going to church a lot more lately."

　　"The church? What's a vampire doing in a church?"

　　That's when Edward reminded beside him, "Master, could it be related to that heretical Inquisitor from the other day."

　　"Yeah, that makes sense."

　　"What Inquisitor of Heresy?" The old knight asked from the sidelines.

　　Having vampires mixed in with the Heretic Inquisitors was not something to be glorified, so the Church blocked news about it.

　　"Nothing, one of the vampires Kayne killed a few days ago was connected to the church, but the clergymen are going to deal with it internally on their own and won't let us interfere."

　　The church was unwilling to make a big deal out of it, and only launched an internal investigation and cleansing, about the results of the investigation, naturally, they would not take the initiative to tell Baldwin and the others.

　　"Involving that group of gods... The clergy are a pain in the ass!" Baldwin grumbled, almost impulsively uttering the ungodly word "clergy".

　　Now that the clues point to the church, things get complicated.

　　"Come on, take this fat bastard's body with you and let's go to that townhouse and look for any more clues." Baldwin could only hope for what this vampire left behind before he died.

　　"Don't! Baldwin, who will protect Lone if you go!"

　　"Well, brother, isn't this vampire dead?"

　　"But since we found one, maybe there are other vampires hiding in the castle."

　　"It is indeed a possibility, so I'll tell you what, I can get the Sister to come and help, have her personally probe the souls of the guards and servants in the castle to see if there are any more vampires lurking about."

　　"Good! That's a good idea!"

　　"Uh, is it necessary to go through all that trouble?" Edward said, "Wouldn't it be easier to get a bucket of holy water from the guild and have everyone in the castle take a sip or wash their hands, and vampires burn when they come in contact with holy water, right?"

　　Baldwin tapped his head, "Yes, and there's no need to labor the Sisters, so let's do it."

　　With that said he sent a hunter to take the castle's servants back to the guild to fetch the holy water, which dismissed the timid and fearful Edmund.

　　Then their group folded back into the townhouse on Ruby Street with the vampire's body.

　　The townhouse was barely furnished, with a large coffin in the bedroom, and the hunters found a dark red dress next to it.

　　"This would be the woman's dress."

　　"It's really hard on that cook too, can he fit into this skirt with such a tight waist?"

　　The crowd roared with laughter while Edward muttered inwardly.

　　He recalled the bar owner's eyewitness testimony that such a fat man wearing a woman's dress should have made a deep impression, so why did the owner not mention anything about the characteristic of "obesity"?

　　That's when Baldwin interrupted his thoughts, "Okay, stop laughing, all move and look for any other clues."

　　However there were really no clues to be found in the empty townhouse.

　　"Is there a trap or a secret door or something?" Edward said.

　　The words reminded everyone, and the hunters then began to tap on the walls with the hilts of their swords, trying to find the secret door.

　　"It doesn't sound the same here as it does elsewhere." Evely said suddenly.

　　She said, pointing to a patch of ground next to the coffin.

　　Baldwin tapped on that floor, and a thud came out, while tapping on the floor next to it was a plopping, dull sound.

　　"Dig this place up."

　　The hunters then grabbed their tools and hammered and chiseled away, knocking awkwardly for half a day before realizing that there was a movable cover under this floorboard that could be opened by gently rubbing it.

　　When it opened, it was a small storage space with a small box inside.

　　"It's locked, it's not easy to get."

　　"Look for a key or something on Lassie's person."

　　A few hunters who didn't mind the dirty work then dug around in Laci's body, however, after half a day of searching there was no luck.

　　"Can you smash it?"

　　"Why don't we let Kayne try." The scene when the door was opened earlier was still fresh in the group's minds.

　　So the box was passed to Edward, to which your son was dumbfounded, "It's just a coincidence that the door was opened, I'm not some kind of lock-picking machine ...."

　　I didn't realize that when he took the case and pulled it with his hand, the lid clicked open.

　　"All right, your nickname from now on will be 'The Lockpicking Machine'." Baldwin joked.

　　Everyone roared with laughter again as Edward, a little depressed, opened the box and took out the contents one by one.

　　Inside was a jeweled dagger, a small bag of money, and a few letters.

　　There wasn't a lot of money, just a few dozen Constantine gold coins, and the dagger was worth something.

　　Baldwin and the old knight each took an epistle, opened it and read it.

　　However, the letters were written in secret script and appeared to both men to be strangely ghostly.

　　Only one was written in plain language, but the names of the people in it used code names.

　　The codenames were simple, referring to four people using the first four letters of this world's language, which in Edward's eyes could be referred to as ABCD.

　　The letter is from B to A. It mentions that C of the Joy Night Empire doesn't seem to intend to take A and B in, but it seems that a big shot, D, has recently appeared in Constantine, and B suggests that A find a way to reach out to this D, which is a much thicker thigh than C.

　　"I can't believe there's a vampire from the Joy Night Empire involved."

　　Baldwin didn't want to deal with "civilized" vampires if at all possible.

　　Not because those vampires practiced their own set of commandments and wouldn't just attack humans.

　　Simply because, they are too powerful.

　　Let's not talk about the rumored existence of a large number of Count, Marquis, Duke, and Prince level vampires in the Vermilion Night Empire. The current Queen of Night alone was already an existence that was enough to shake the entire world.

　　There is an unspoken rule in the vampire hunter industry that they only hunt wild vampires without masters, and try not to mess with the vampires of the Joo Nights Empire.

　　This rule was all bought and paid for by the blood and tears of hunters who had messed with the Jounin Empire.