Chapter 26

Rosalia stood in her office, gazing out the window at the outer wall of the throne room. Without shifting her gaze, she remained still as she heard a door open behind her. "Has there been any sight of Drekem on the surface?"

"Sadly, we have not found him, nor any other connection leading to that incident."

Rosalia lets out a sigh and turns to face her maid. "What about my brother? Has he been up to anything?"

"From what I know he has sent numerous troops up to Pilantrop to find any traces leading to Drekem."

"He didn't find anything either, I'm guessing." As she sees her maid nodding, she sits down behind her bureau and starts tapping her finger on the table. While looking at the document in front of her, her mind began to wander to a different subject. "How's he faring."

"Viktor-" After a brief pause, the maid quickly caught on that Rosalia wasn't talking about her brother. "After your short sparring session with him, he hasn't left the training room."

She looked away from the document and rubbed her hands across her face. "Are you tired miss? If so, you should have told me." Rosalia noticed her maid's worried look. "I'm fine you don't have to worry about it."

"Don't even think words like that will help. Let's keep work to a minimum today and I'll prepare a bath for you right away." Rosalia smiled upon hearing what her maid said. "I'll think about it, but I still have some things to take care of."

"No, I'm going to prepare the bath right away, you better be there in twenty minutes." Upon turning around, the maid leaves the room. Rosalia, unable to say anything against her, glances back at the document.

When entering through a double door, Rosalia caught sight of her maid. "Have you found anything?"

"Commander!" Startled by Rosalia's sudden entrance, she accidentally drops a few documents. "You know there is no one around you can just-"

"No." With a shake of her head, the maid gets back upright after gathering all the items from the ground. "You're the commander here, so I should address you as such."

Rosalia let out a sigh as she glanced at the papers she was holding. "So?"

"Right." As she walked over, the maid spread out all the papers on the table. "We've done some tests. From what we found, his body had adapted quite well to the energy in the air?" Rosalia's eyes widened as she gazed at the image of a body adorned with vibrant dots. "Isn't this-"

"They are all like that." She abruptly halted her sentence upon hearing her maid's words.

"Could this be?" Rosalia left the conclusion she found inside her thoughts, knowing that what she came up with was something she had to keep to herself. "You may continue."

"His physical condition has not deteriorated, neither have the fluctuations from his brain. From all I can tell, nothing warrants classifying him as an anomaly."

"What about any of the higher powers, have you checked for any of them?"

"We have had a priest look at him, but divinity is out of the equation. The only thing that seemed weird was when I had a Luromon gazer look at him."

With a raised eyebrow, Rosalia's red eyes fixated on her maid. "What did they say?"

The peculiar woman closed her vibrant purple eyes as she placed her hands on the unconscious man's head. From her hands, energy seeped into the man's head, she held onto him for a about minute before swiftly pulling them away.

"What happened?" The maid noticed that something was wrong when she saw the woman clutching her forehead.

"Miss, do you know anything about my people's power?" Confused, the maid nodded her head, unsure of why she was being asked this. "Is there anything special about him?"

"Strange, that's the word I would use." The gazer's purple eyes shone brightly as they glanced between Samuel and the maid. "You could say our powers create a book from targets memories and we can sift through them. The thickness of the book can change based on the difference between the targets and the gazer's energy density, there are a few other factors that can play a role in deciding the memories we can see, but in a case like this, they shouldn't be paying a role. For this man, the only way I can describe it is that so many pages were ripped out of his book that everything I saw was way too sporadic for me to make sense of it."

Taking her eyes off the document Rosalia stood up and left her study.

My eyes glared at a small bowl filled with red liquid. While my eyes were focused on it, my mind screamed. 'Move, move, move!' After some time, all of it started to gather at one side of the bowl. I aspired to attempt something more challenging, so I began to shape the liquid into a spherical form. To do this, I need to concentrate intently on it.

"Are you ready for training?" The door to the training room slammed open. 

The sudden burst of sound surprised me. As a result, I lost control and the blood flowed freely inside the bowl. I glanced over my shoulder, Ron was entering the room, his face lit up with a smile.

The expression he held soured mine. "How could be so happy? Did you forget what happened?"

He looked directly at me, his mind clearly occupied with something. "Grab a sword." His cold tone gave me a bad feeling. I stood opposite him, with the sword held in front of my body, ready for when we would start. 

"Samuel, why are you so sad?" Perplexed by his words I didn't know how to explain my feelings. When I looked back at him, I saw him getting closer. "Is your heart crying?" I blocked his sword and stared into his eyes, that's when I noticed they didn't seem cold at all. "Is your want to move forward waning." Both swinging our swords, they clash against each other. "Are you furious at yourself, as you can't stop thinking about what's behind you?" Again, our swords slash through the air and stop in their tracks when they make contact. "Do you feel like the world weighs too much while your body is burning alive."

I listened to his words as I tried to keep up with him, but with every sentence he spoke, it seemed to get harder. "Do you feel weak? That you have lost all purpose. That your head never stops spinning! That everything you stand for is crumbling around you, and that the image of that day never leaves your mind! Do you feel lost with yourself!?"

His words lingered in my mind as I looked up at him. Our eyes locked with each other and I could tell he wasn't happy nor was he sad; They conveyed one emotion at an extreme furiousness to its purest form.

"I'm sorry that wasn't the usual me." Ron regained his composure and offered me assistance. Back on two feet, I looked at him once more. "I should be apologizing." Having felt his burst of emotions; I could tell my original thoughts were hypocritical.

"How's the training going?" I turned to see Ron looking at the bowl, the gemstone, and the open book next to it. "It's been going quite well; I can control it somewhat well, but I need to be fully focused on it."

"Oh, that's quite fast." He nodded approvingly, indicating his satisfaction with my progress. "Is it that impressive?"

"Not really a child of around five can do this. But for being a turned and having only trained for a single day, you should show a bit of pride."

"Why is it better because of me being a turned?"

"It has to do with the controlling of blood being natural to vampires. People like you don't have that innate ability. So, you have to use mana in the air to get the same result as us."

"Mana?" When he heard my words, Ron glanced between the gemstone on the ground and me. "Samuel, have you and Valentine-?" It seemed Ron wanted to say more, but he stopped himself. "have I and Valentine done what?"

"Nothing, we'll start with physical training; so start running." I didn't know what he wanted to say, but an answer wasn't going to magically appear. So, I did what he asked me and started jogging around the room. I lifted my left arm and stared at it as my mind began to wander.

The sensation of a nail scraping against my arm made me want to scream. "Leaving yourself this open against a vampire is lethal." When I glanced backward, I caught sight of Rosalia, whose hands resembled claws and whose red eyes shimmered intensely.

"If you want to help me, you'll need to get stronger. Right now, you're nothing but an ant that can be crushed at any moment. So, you'll have to adapt to your new circumstances and overcome them or." While she was speaking, blood gushed out from the wound she had inflicted. All of it moves through the air and dances to Rosalia's tune. "you'll die."

With my strength being seeped away, I fell to my knees. She walks towards me and tosses a book to the side. "I have shown you a hill you'll have to climb, now try to reach for the top."

With that said, the blood flowed back inside of my body and the wound closed. When she left the room, I was left alone inside. I stared at the book for a second before grabbing it with both my hands. "I'll try to reach it, no, I have to."

It hadn't been long since I left that arena and my head was still filled with thoughts and emotions, I still had a hard time coming to terms with some of them, but I knew what I currently was and had to do.

"Samuel, stop daydreaming. I'm not here to watch you fast walk, pick up the pace." Ron sounded annoyed as he shouted at me. 

"Oh, sorry. I'll be present-minded from now on."

With a dark sky above, a man with red eyes looked out the window of an old decrepit factory. "It's about time we get this started." The gray-skinned man shook his head, as he fiddled with a corpse that hung up by thin strings. "Patients, patients, in due time you will get what you want. Oh, so great, king."

His red eyes glowed as he glanced to his left. "The longer we wait, the more time we give them to prepare."

"Don't worry, you know that there is nobody who would love for this show to start, but." He smiled while looking at the man with red eyes. "There just seems to still be one tiny problem I need to take care of."

"What could that b-" His body throbs with pain as it slams into the metal wall, and is held tightly by scraps of cloth and chunks of flesh. "What's the meaning of this!" Pinned to the wall the red-eyed man tried to break free, but nothing worked he couldn't exert even a portion of his powers "How?"

The gray-skinned man caused the red-eyed man's uneasiness to intensify as he revealed an object from behind his back. "You, what's your connection to Extorch!"

"You don't have to be scared, I have nothing to do with the vampire hunters."

"Then why?"

"What, You think I didn't know you were going to stab me in the back." The man with red eyes reacts with surprise upon hearing what he said. "What are you talking about, I helped you start this, do not try to slip out of your promise."

"Ha haha" As he looked at the man with red eyes, a dirty grin spread across his face. He draws nearer and firmly takes hold of the man's chin. "Don't look at me like that I never forgot about that, even if you were planning to betray me, I will make your wish come through my little puppet ha hahaha hahahahaha." All his movements were unsettling to the eye. It could creep you out enough to make you forget he looked human.

"You bastard-" The red-eyed man's words were cut short by the cloth and flesh that consumed him.

The entire factory was filled with the reverberating sound of strings snapping as he looked out the window. Humanoid creatures, if they could even be called that, fell to the ground. "I've been waiting so long to see you burn for me once more, and that moment is getting oh so close."

With a swift turn, he ventures into the darkness. "May destruction take this world."