Chapter 204: Fenrir Meeting - That Day III
The moment Ivan called out, the zombie of Lunaria stabbed her father's body with her sharp claws, a look of shock appearing in his eyes... as the screams and sounds of bloodshed filled the memory.
It became less clear, almost blurry.
Before the people watching realised... it felt like time rushed ahead...
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A dark, bloody mansion... filled with the stench of death and the mournful cries of the living.
After the assault of the Nosferatu, Hati and Silver clans, the amount of casualties caused that night exceeded two hundred on both sides.
Yet the biggest loss was the bodies inside this small... blood-soaked room.
"Alucard.... can't you save her, why don't you speak?!" Vladimir's body was covered in wounds, his face weathered, eyes dull.
The cause of his distress was the pale female locked in chains, her eyes lifeless and dull, with pale, cracked skin... it was the zombie of Lunaria. Although he contained her soul in the gemstone...
Now, her body was the prisoner of a horrific curse.
"This isn't something that even I can deal with, I am sorry," Alucard stood there with a sigh, turning around and exiting the room, only to stagger and almost collapse. The wounds sustained here dropped his power significantly.
Vladimir snarled, chasing after the ancestor... but a pair of hands grasped him, both Selina and Claudia stopping him.
"The ritual failed..." Alucard's voice sounded powerless. He gazed at the two children on the table, and now it was back to normal. The boy looked pale and sick, but neither bloodline could be sensed anymore—he seemed like a normal human. "Forgive me, Elizabeth... I failed you..."
Many died... the beautiful nekomata lay peacefully as if sleeping... her abdomen torn open, and the kitsune lay beside her. The mothers of two girls are now leaving them alone in the world.
The Silver clan killed one out of revenge, and a group of Nosferatu cultists violently murdered the other.
"We have lost too much... let us at least give them the dignity of burial." Despite her pale complexion and holding her abdomen while moving, Elizabeth tried to walk towards the bodies.
"No, rest. Your life is more important than theirs now," Ivan came from nowhere and pressed against Elizabeth's forehead. He could feel something wrong, a sense of foreboding.
Suddenly, Elizabeth staggered, collapsing to the ground... Ivan caught her at the last minute. "Eliza?!"
Vladimir, Claudia, and Selina twitched—losing their daughter didn't make them stop worrying about the already sickly Elizabeth...
It was a horrible situation... as the Fenrir clan's reinforcements arrived, they began to clean the corpses and prepared a funeral pyre for them all.
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Once again, the scene became blurry and distorted, as if Nagisa herself struggled to remember the scenes well. People came and went, and the time flowed faster like someone skipping a video to the end.
Vladimir left alone, carrying his daughter and taking Selene away from the mansion; his eyes looking at the distraught Ivan were filled with loss.
"Vlad, if you need help to achieve your goal, I will go to the ends of the world to help you." Ivan's powerful tone echoed, causing the vampire king's body to tremble... he saved his daughter's soul, and her body was now frozen.
Those words, from his oldest friend and rival somehow, might have saved his heart from collapsing.
Ivan and Nagisa remained with Elizabeth for the longest time... and by the time Nikita recovered and woke up, they took the unconscious young fox and her mother's corpse with them.
Dimitri also took a young member of the silver clan who seemed unable to attack them and instead tried to protect the children.
His name was Sulley.
A human male came to the mansion to pick up Risa, and when he saw the sleeping body of the nekomata, he broke down, his fists clenched, and left without leaving his details.
"I will find that girl in the future... and make up for our selfishness and make things right."
The dark mansion soon became empty... with only Elizabeth and Ivan remaining—all their maids, guards and staff died in the attack before they walked into the room where Nikolai slept... no matter how hard they tried to move him.
His body remained almost glued to the altar they created.
"Eliza... what does that mean?" A series of words appeared, bloody marks carved into Nikolai's chest.
It seemed to be a strange language based on Latin, telling them that they hadn't paid the blood price and that for this, the child would become theirs. Elizabeth stumbled towards the altar, barely conscious, as she read the ancient text out loud in Latin.
"In diabolus vocabo quae nos acceperunt iste puer um de pretio cruoris!" (I will call on the devil that we received this boy at the price of blood!)
However, the moment she spoke once, the mansion shook again. A dark aura spread from the altar as the book appeared once again, and Elizabeth's eyes turned black as she repeated the words several times. The translation became clearer with each repetition, and yet no one expected what came next as Elizabeth spoke and accepted to pay the blood price in his place in Latin.
"Ego Elizabeth De Clarium Báthory parum volat nobis tibi cruentis!"
"I, Elizabeth De Clarium Báthory, vow to deliver to you my own flesh and blood!"
Suddenly, her body spasmed, and she spat out a mouthful of blood before falling limp, her arm dropping over Nikolai's body protectively.
"My sweet Nikolai..." Her words trailed off into nothingness.
"NO! What have you done? Eliza? Wake up, Eliza!"
"Forgive me... but If this continues, our child will not survive... Ivan..."
He didn't hear it. All his strength had left him. No more...
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The images slowly faded away into darkness, leaving people feeling helpless. The scene faded, whether because of the lack of memories of the two women or because Elizabeth felt this was enough.
Silence filled the small room, the tea on the table now cold... and stale. Still, even if they wanted to drink something to clear their throats, not a single person dared move—only Nikita, who let out a sudden yawn.
'That is what happened... it feels that many things felt blurry, Is it because only Nagisa and Mother's memories were pooled together?'
Nikolai thought this usage of Nagisa's illusion art was amazing, but when he saw her nose oozing with blood and her pale face, it dawned on him just how much strain this small series of memories placed on her.
It seemed the actual length of the memory was far longer than an hour or even two.
"Phew... are you alright children, that might have seemed a little heavy for you, now we can answer any questions you might have." Nagisa's mature voice filled the room, like the comforting scene of a grandma who just told a story to her grandchildren, who awaited a cookie or some sweet candy as a reward.
But this situation wasn't so nice.
"That girl on the altar with me... and Luna... what happened?" Nikolai's question made Selene's body freeze for a moment while Kumiko gazed at him with shining eyes. She already knew part of that tale.
"That girl, Lunaria, I heard that Vladimir sealed her in the Eternal Frost palace though what their clan calls it, I do not know, keeping her body and mind frozen for the past seventeen years. As for... her soul, I do not know, but the girl on the altar... just in time."
"Nikolai, this girl is Kumiko, the one you asked about." Nagisa sighed, gently placing a hand on Kumiko's head while looking apologetically toward Eliza.
"I am sorry for breaking my promise, sister."
[It's fine... I was selfish and didn't want him to remember anything. That's all...]
"What do you mean, mother?"
[After the accident, you forget everything, from Selene to that horrific night, so I asked... begged them to remain at a distance before passing away... I even made your father move to that horrible apartment.]
Elizabeth looked at Nikolai with apologetic eyes. But his gaze remained warm, although his expression fell a little after hearing what she said.
"Sister... do not blame yourself—because we underestimated the greed of the new heir... you lost everything."
"What do you mean?" Nikolai asked, wondering why, after all that happened, they all still felt regretful towards his mother and father.
[Nikolai...]
"Because... that night, with the help of the Hati and Silver clans. The Nosferatu family wiped out the Báthory and Volkov clans, leaving few survivors. At the time, we wondered how they had learned about the secret pathways and magical defences."
[But because they already captured Anastasia at the time... and broke her mind using that foul serum they tried to use on Nikolai!]
Elizabeth screamed at that name, causing everyone to look shocked—Nikolai never saw his mother scream or shout before. He could feel her rage as her purple body became blood-red and crackled with energy.
That serum would have broken his mind if not for the black blood inside him fighting back so fiercely.
'Or is it that blood they are seeking?'
Several hours passed as Nikolai and the others quietly asked questions about how the ritual failed and what happened to Alucard and Mikaela.
This knowledge increased Nikolai's realisation that the old man probably felt regret about that night and wanted to make him wake up...If Nikolai had known these facts sooner, would he have been so reckless?
Because of the huge amount of information, Nikolai decided to mull over what he learned the next time he was alone. With this knowledge, he could now answer the questions left in his mind regarding the past.
A short time passed, and Nikolai decided to discuss these memories in more detail with Selene, Nikita, and Risa in private.
"Oh... Mother Nagisa, Mom... do you know how the tower exists in the Nexus... and the lower levels are corrupted?"
[I do...]
"Yes, is there something wrong?"
Nikolai gazed around the table—although he didn't know Kumiko well. She seemed involved in this, just like him... the strange blood inside her made his evil god blood calm.
"When I helped a human as a mercenary in the north... there was a set of caves where some wraiths had made it their home." Nikolai took a deep breath before closing his eyes and continuing.
"However... the corruption was present in those caves."
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