57- First Masterpiece.

Dwelling in someone else's mind is quite chaotic because most people don't know how to organize their memories or simply don't care.

However, this also implies that there is almost no protection in place aside from the natural ones that come with every person, an instinct-driven one.

It's quite simple for me to enter said mind because I can change myself to appear friendly in their senses or just evade them..

Searching for a more active person's memory had become much easier by the end of the day, and I can now do so without people knowing or feeling it, even when they are awake.

Now all I need is a chair and to go bald...

But not everything is going well; Valerie's location is well concealed, and the couple of small fry that we caught know almost nothing about them; only one of them heard her name once, and he didn't even pay attention to it.

The knowledge about human farms was both beneficial and detrimental…

Vampires are intelligent, they huddle, and they require food to survive... It may appear that breeding and humans as a source of food is logical, but... I wasn't expecting it.

But this also means a chance of using it as a smokescreen.

I just hope that it's not too late… 

After capturing a couple more Vampires and then infiltrating the place, finding one of the farms wasn't much of a problem...

And I soon realized that Emma, Norman, and Ray had it easy in comparison… Well, kind of...

Is it a mini-village, to put it mildly, and was mostly occupied by women and children, implying that they prefer their blood over males?

The children appear to be fine, but the adults are not; they did an excellent job of acting as if everything is normal for their sake, which I greatly admire... They are thin with bite marks all over their bodies as a result of their blood being sucked as soon as their bodies make them, with some being much worse due to... things... that happened to them being in a male base faction and the farm's need for 'new blood'...

Fortunately, the children are safe, or I would start summoning eldritch creatures to play with them... Perhaps throwing Altera and having her go bad civilization for a while would be enough.

So, without alerting the vampires, the humans in there were gradually replaced with copies of them painted by me, gradually taking over the place as I sended the originals to my mindscape.

Confusion and fear overwhelmed them, but after I explained things to them, they quickly understood and cheered about their situation... At least, the majority of them did; some were simply too far gone for it...

So, after sending them to a safe location where they can later integrate with the other members of our faction, the others remained...

What are we going to do with them...

"Do you have any ideas, Shishou?" I have a few ideas, but she is far smarter and more knowledgeable than me...

"Why don't you find out what they want?" She said this without even bothering to show up.

Talk with them...

They shut down their minds to the outside world, but now I know that I can read what they're thinking and try to help a little...

The first thing I felt was their various negative emotions and desire to die, so I extracted their negative emotions and then placed them in the [Pandora's box] inside my mind alongside my own excess of emotions so they could think clearly and then made some suggestions so they could express what they wanted...

The majority of them desired a place filled with happiness where they could feel safe, while a portion of the remainder desired to simply die... They aren't a problem; they just need time to open their minds, which my mindscape will do naturally if I order it to heal theirs.

The problem is the rest of the population, the minority that is filled with pure and raw hatred for vampires crawling out of their very being...

They only want vengeance, which complicates things because I can grant their wish but... I'm not sure what the final result will look like...

…

After running through a series of made-up scenarios in their heads, questions, answers, and options for them, only five remained, and after asking them the same questions over and over to be sure... it's clear that they've decided on what I proposed to them.

They will wither away... They leave only their memories and hatred behind to become something else, something that will be used as a weapon of mass destruction and terror to the vampires..

This is what they decided to do in order to carry on with their desire for vengeance, and I left them do so because I can turn them back if they ever want to.

So... I began.

Slowly but steadily, the five people in front of me began to change into something else; they transformed into a black liquid and began to merge into a single pool of [Ink].

Their life, mind, soul, and, most importantly, hatred began to give birth to something new and twisted.

Hands and heads began to form from the pool, as if something trapped inside wanted to come out, but they quickly lost their form because they were not used to it and melted back into their liquid state, only to try again, learning how to be their new self with each mistake.

The black pool began to solidify, as if the water had solidified into mud after each mistake, and then into something more... alive.

All that remained was a giant round monster made of black flesh, and they began to crawl out of it, trying to break free from the fleshi chains amidst yells, shouts, cries, and sounds resembling words that couldn't be understood since they made no sense, but the brutality and ferocity in their movements, as well as their eagerness to carry out their life's purpose, were clear for me

Consume! Consume them as they consumed us!

Their voices weren't clear in my head, but their intent was... but I had to stop them so the process could continue.

On one of the room's walls, the frame of a painting appeared, leaving only the feeling of an unfinished work for whoever sees it.

Everything in it was missing something, whether it was the frame or the contents within it; it was simple and unremarkable, but I didn't have much time to think about it because I was focused on the black mass in front of me.

I waited until the black monstrocity absorbed the frame like a sponge, changing it to match its own nature.

But I didn't care about the details on the frame; I was more concerned with the contents of the painting, just as Shishou was when she appeared beside me and we both stared into the painting in curiosity and awe.

"Congratulations… This should be your first masterpiece. It only lacks a proper name to be finished."

The painting came to life. More so than many of my previous ones because there is something inside of it, five things to be exact, living inside.

A vertical line divided the painting into five sections, each of which contained a girl... Sometimes like a girl, sometimes a child, a mother, or even an elderly grandmother...

It's changing, they're living the lives they want, peaceful and in a warm environment... Of course, there is some bitterness and tragedy here and there, but each of the five is living in their own world... but the frame of the painting is filled with their horrors given form in the form of burned flesh melded together in a tangled mess that wraps around the painting, claws and screaming faces that exude suffering, but looking at it made the one looking feel only one thing .

You can feel its wrath, how every apandage in the frame wants to tear apart someone in particular... Regardless of how much you move them, all of their eyes are looking in the same direction...

Romania.

"It will be known as... [The Painting That Hates] "

As if the last piece of the puzzle was placed, the painting reacted to it, engraving the name upon the frame following the name of its maker.

*Roar*

The painting became enthralled as soon as the name was mentioned, roaring, yelling, and screaming as it expressed its desire to consume their sworn enemies.

Meanwhile, Ahm resisted the urge to exclaim, 'It's ALIVE!' Because it would be disrespectful, and Scahach stared at him in wonder with a smile on her face…

Who doesn't love to see their close ones grow?