The third floor of Lichtenstein Castle.
The three humans and the vampire stepped together along the carpeted corridor.
Lanqi was leading Viscount Augustine toward the paradise of art. Both parties were delighted, the atmosphere thoroughly harmonious.
They moved through the chill hallway, the flickering lamplight casting shadows that stretched and shrank with every tremor.
The black oak doors of the master bedroom stood silent at the end of the darkness, imposing and solemn, etched with the unique hallmarks of long-passed ages.
Arriving before the doors, Viscount Augustine's eyes blazed in the dark. Though loath to appear rude before the count, he could hardly wait to step inside and feast upon those three humans.
"It has truly kept me yearning with anticipation."
Clearly, Count Palocas had already taken control of the castle and was waiting for him.
"May your opening bring auspicious fortune," Lanqi wished him.
Smiling, Viscount Augustine raised a hand and gently pushed open the heavy doors. With a low, drawn-out creak, an almost palpable oppression billowed out from within!
A strange, stale stench of chemical potions rushed into his face.
The dim light of oil lamps flickered across stone walls, glinting off dense arrays of blades and test tubes. Peculiar green alchemical potions cast faint sheens inside bottles and jars, suffusing the bedroom with an eerie aura.
In the center of the room, three masked clergymen encircled an unspeakable humanoid form upon the bed.
They had already coated Count Palocas in resin and bound him tightly in layer upon layer of linen strips.
The count had been completely transformed into a mummy. Beneath the wrappings, his ghastly pale face had long since lost all semblance of life, leaving only a pair of hollow eye sockets that looked entirely lifeless. Yet his hands still rose and trembled ceaselessly, as though attempting to prove he was still alive.
When the three clergymen noticed Viscount Augustine entering, their eyes locked onto him in an instant—like predators spotting brand-new prey!
"!??"
Standing in the doorway, Viscount Augustine felt a bone-chilling cold shoot down his spine at the scene before him, his eyes flashing with disbelief and vigilance.
The count wasn't here at all, nor was this the castle lord's bedroom. It was a terrifying laboratory.
Though Viscount Augustine did not know who the wretched fellow strapped to the grinding slab was, he was certain it was a feeble kinsman—for only the Blood Clan possessed such unending life!
Viscount Augustine reacted like lightning, his survival instincts snapping his gaze backward in an instant.
Yet at the very same moment, his vision was flooded with a blinding expanse of pure, immaculate light!
It was a world illuminated by brilliant sunlight, blazing like an infinite sea of fire, so searing it nearly melted his eyes.
"Impossible—!"
As Augustine's piercing shriek rang out, Frey, who stood not far behind him, stepped forward and seized Viscount Augustine by the wrist. Driving down on his shoulder, Frey pinned him into a joint lock and slammed him heavily to the floor with a crash that sounded like cracking stone.
A Tier 6 vampire viscount, having just broken out of a seal and still in a state of utter starvation, now exposed directly to radiant sunlight—he was as fragile as a cockroach stripped of its carapace.
"Stay still."
Keeping Viscount Augustine's head firmly pinned to the ground with one hand, Frey took the [Blood Pressure Resuscitator] that Lanqi handed him with a smile. Without the slightest mercy, Frey jammed the needle of the [Blood Pressure Resuscitator] into Viscount Augustine's back and began extracting his heart's blood.
The crimson liquid rose slowly within the cylinder, like a bloody gauge marking Viscount Augustine's fate.
"Full of sorrow yet shedding no tears, utterly exhausted yet unable to sleep, only able to endure day after night, and night after day, through endless days and nights, forever mired in the mortal coil!"
Summoned out alongside the others, the Poet of Great Love casually swiped Lanqi's sunglasses, put them over her own eyes, and, taking in the state of Count Palocas and Viscount Augustine, couldn't help but burst into song on their behalf.
"..."
Having had his sunglasses snatched, Lanqi could only keep his eyes squeezed shut.
The Poet of Great Love always loved stealing his spotlight, leaving him rather embarrassed in the moment.
Even now, he couldn't figure out why the Poet of Great Love had to be so full of personality.
"...Is it possible that their inability to shed tears or fall asleep isn't really their own doing?"
Hyperion remarked as she took off her own sunglasses and placed them on Lanqi.
She felt that seeing less of the scene before them might help her accumulate a bit more good karma.
"Thank you, Hyperion."
Lanqi thanked Hyperion first, then turned his gaze toward the three clergymen.
"Brought you another delivery."
"Who—who on earth are you people?!"
Viscount Augustine's wailing cry trembled with terror and rage.
Yet none of the humans paid him any heed.
"How should we handle this new arrival?"
"No need to turn him into that. Of course, if he refuses to cooperate, you're free to improvise."
"Let's harvest all his organs first."
"Sounds good to me."
Looking at the lively, energetic state of Count Palocas lying on the bed, Lanqi felt confident that missing a few organs wouldn't affect a vampire's normal day-to-day life.
They would just grow back anyway.
"Do you Horning scum know what you are doing?! In this Great Era of the Blood Moon, you will face the Blood Clan's unending hunt and retribution!"
Viscount Augustine's voice shook with boundless fury.
Even if he couldn't quite decipher the underworld jargon these humans were tossing around, he understood enough to know they were preparing to do something utterly depraved.
"Viscount Augustine, not long ago I heard from a vampire that in today's Horning Empire, the Blood Clan is the law itself, while human laws are merely rules of the game for worms to follow. So it's only natural that you vampires aren't very familiar with contemporary law."
Assuming the air of a seasoned attorney, Lanqi gave Viscount Augustine a crash course in the latest penal code of the Horning Empire.
"Under the laws of the Horning Empire, humans are forbidden from trafficking other humans, but there is no mention of trafficking members of the Blood Clan. Therefore, what we are conducting is a completely legitimate enterprise."
Out of personal interest after arriving in the Shadow World, Lanqi had read through the Horning Empire's legal codes. Once revised by the Blood Clan, they truly contained no such clause.
"...?!"
Viscount Augustine was struck utterly speechless.
Isn't that self-evident?!
What living creature in this world would be mad enough to traffic vampires! Why would the Blood Clan ever humiliate themselves by specifically drafting a clause that forbade trafficking their own kind?!
"I am no weakling like that creature on the bed! I am a vampire viscount! Do you know what became of that witch? She perished by my hand! Creatures of fleeting lifespans like you—even staking your lives to seal a vampire is entirely futile!"
Still fighting Frey's grip with every ounce of his strength, Viscount Augustine roared.
These humans clearly had not grasped the grave peril of crossing a true vampire viscount!
Chapter 164