Chapter 206: Val Is A Vampire?

The emergency sirens echoing through the ninety-story structure of The Sovereign Grand Hotel & Towers finally sputtered into an eerie mechanical silence as the master lockdown protocols ceased.

Inside the executive security monitoring hub on the 85th floor, General Manager Marcus stood before a panoramic multi-layered array of floating holographic monitors.

His expensive silk tie was ruined, unknotted and hanging loosely over his unbuttoned collar.

The collar itself was soaked through with a sickening mixture of cold sweat and nervous grease.

His hands trembled so violently that he had to brace both palms against the obsidian edge of the central operations desk to prevent his knees from giving out beneath him.

Standing at rigid military attention beside the console was the Chief Security Captain of the hotel’s remaining elite defense force.

The Captain’s white-and-gold enchanted ceremonial armor was scuffed with carbon scoring, spattered with dried arterial blood, and dented across the shoulder pauldron.

His breathing was ragged and his jaw set in a hard pale line beneath his raised visor.

"Report," Marcus managed to wheeze out. "Tell me it’s over. Tell me the building is secured..."

The Security Captain swallowed hard, tapping his gauntleted wrist-comm to cycle through the hotel’s defensive logs.

"The perimeter breach has been entirely neutralized, General Manager," the Captain reported, his voice tight with suppressed tension. "The rogue mercenary elements that managed to slip past the lower service gates during the initial lockdown have been contained. Our combined third and fourth-tier strike squads intercepted the auxiliary hitman teams on floors 60 through 75. We eliminated twelve armed hostiles and detained four critically wounded Awakened who are currently being held in the suppression cells awaiting transfer to the Isle Supercity authorities."

Marcus let out a shuddering breathless gasp, wiping his forehead with the damp ball of his ruined silk handkerchief. "Thank the ancestors... thank the heavens..."

"However..." the Captain continued, his tone dropping an octave into something cold, heavy, and deeply unsettled. "Our squads were not the ones responsible for clearing the primary infiltration team. The core strike unit... the Night-Hound mercenary cell that breached the high-security network was handled on the upper floors."

The Captain tapped a series of commands on the glass interface.

"We’ve recovered the internal black-box recordings from the isolated network nodes. You need to see this, sir."

A large high-definition holographic projection flickered to life in the center of the dark room, casting a ghostly cerulean glow over Marcus’s pale face.

The screen displayed the surveillance feed from the 77th-floor secondary control panel room.

The footage was slightly grainy due to the atmospheric interference of the raging thunderstorm outside, but the events playing out on the screen were horrifyingly crystal clear.

Marcus watched in petrified silence as Drake... a notorious veteran A-rank bounty hunter famous in the Isle City underworld for his impenetrable Steel Body Transmutation charged at Albano Shirou with full momentum.

On the screen, Shirou didn’t even flinch.

With casual, effortless grace, He drifted beneath Drake’s heavy attacks as if moving through water and then, the retaliation began.

It was a display of physical brutality so savage and so fast that the hotel’s high-speed security cameras could barely render the frames.

The silver haired man’s open palms, elbows, and fists battered Drake’s transmuted metal body into scrap iron.

Every single blow caved the solid alloy inward like a hydraulic press crushing a soda can.

The concussive force blew out the reinforced glass windows, shattered the concrete support pillars, and ended with a downward axe-kick that collapsed the entire structural deck, burying Drake six feet deep into pulverized stone.

Marcus watched, his eyes bulging until they felt like they would pop out of their sockets, as Shirou casually stepped into the crater, seized Drake’s transmuted right arm with his bare fingers, and tore it completely from the shoulder socket with a sickening wet wrench of sinew and muscle.

CRKKKKK!

On the screen, Koya reversed the severed, bone-protruding limb and impaled Drake straight through his steel-plated sternum, pinning him to the floor before calmly wiping his hands with a handkerchief.

Marcus clutched his stomach, an intense wave of nausea surging up into his throat.

His knees buckled, and he had to lean his entire upper body over the console to keep from vomiting on the carpet.

"Dear gods..." Marcus whispered, his skin turning a translucent, ghostly white. "H-He... he ripped an awakened’s arm off... with his bare hands... through solid steel transmutation..."

"That is not all, sir," the Captain said grimly, switching the camera angle to a remote server closet located five floors below the hotel’s foundation. "This was the hitman team’s technical specialist. The brain of the operation and he had bypassed our primary firewalls from an off-grid terminal."

The screen flickered. The tech specialist’s body was slumped backward in an ergonomic chair.

His torso was largely intact, but his neck ended in a clean cauterized stump. His severed head was nowhere to be found until the Captain cycled back to the 77th-floor footage, showing the moment Koya casually rolled that very same head across the floor to mock Drake.

Marcus’s entire body began to vibrate with a cold uncontrollable chill as a deep primal terror settled into the marrow of his bones.

Why was this man so goddamn strong?

There had been no incantations and no elaborate magic circles, no signs of an elemental Crest glowing on the man’s forehead or hands ether.

Lord Albano Shirou had dismantled an entire squad of hardened, elite urban killers as if he were casually squashing bothersome flies on his way to bed.

"Captain..." Marcus rasped out, his breath shaking violently. "The... the 90th floor. What about the Imperial Penthouse? Did any of the intruders reach Lord Albano’s daughter?!"

"The 90th-floor hallway cameras were temporarily offline due to the localized EMP blast," the Captain replied, his fingers rapidly manipulating the console. "The backup auxiliary circuit just rerouted the visual feed three minutes ago so I’m bringing up the main residential corridor now."

The primary holographic screen shifted, flashing with static before locking onto a clear wide-angle feed of the luxurious, carpeted hallway directly outside the Imperial Penthouse double doors.

The moment the image stabilized, both Marcus and the Security Captain went completely rigid.

Marcus’s jaw dropped so wide it looked unhinged. The handkerchief slipped from his limp fingers, fluttering soundlessly to the floor.

Pinned flat against the white, gold-leaf marble wall directly opposite the penthouse entrance were two human corpses.

The first was the female infiltrator who had disguised herself as a maid earlier with her body limp, desiccated, and drained entirely of color.

Pinned squarely on top of her was a massive, broad-shouldered man... Jax, the leader of the Night-Hound unit as both of his forearms were missing, severed cleanly at the elbows.

Driving directly through the center of both of their chests, impaling them together like grotesque mounted butterflies against the cracked marble, was a massive six-foot spear constructed entirely out of solidified crimson blood.

The weapon wasn’t made of steel, mana-glass, or crystal.

It was a physical pillar of dark congealed blood, humming with an eerie suffocating crimson light.

Thick, viscous red liquid was slowly dripping from their punctured chests, flowing down the pristine wall and soaking into the velvet carpet, forming a vast widening pool that stretched like a grotesque red carpet straight toward Albano’s closed door.

Marcus stared at the macabre monument of death, feeling the blood in his own veins turn to slush.

A blood weapon? Solidified blood?

"Blood magic..." the Captain muttered beneath his breath, his eyes wide with horrified realization. "I’ve never heard of it before, is it a new kind of magic...?"

Marcus grabbed the Captain by the collar of his damaged armor with desperate strength.

"CLEAN IT!" Marcus screamed, his voice cracking into a shrill, hysterical pitch. "CLEAN IT RIGHT NOW! GET A HAZMAT SQUAD! GET THE PURIFICATION MAGES! GET EVERY AVAILABLE JANITORIAL CREW ON THE TOP FLOORS THIS INSTANT!"

He shook the Captain violently with spit flying from his lips.

"I want that wall scrubbed until the marble is bleached white! I want the carpet replaced! Not a single drop... not a microscopic speck... not even the faintest smell of blood must remain outside Lord Albano’s door before morning! If that man opens his door and smells blood, or if his daughter is offended by the mess, he will slaughter every single living soul in this hotel! DO YOU HEAR ME?!"

The Captain’s eyes flickered with deep fear, but his training held.

He brought his right fist hard against his chest plate in a sharp salute. "Understood, General Manager! Deploying the full environmental purification division immediately! It will be spotless in twenty minutes!"

The Captain turned on his heel and practically sprinted out of the monitoring room, barking emergency orders into his tactical comms as he went.

Marcus stood alone in the center of the dim room, his chest heaving as if he had just run a marathon.

He collapsed backward into his leather executive chair, burying his trembling face in his hands.

"Lord... please..." Marcus whimpered into his palms, praying to whatever deity might be listening. "Please don’t let that silver-haired demon decide to eat us... We gave him the rooms for free... we gave him the suites... please just let him sleep..."

BZZZZZT! BZZZZZT!

The sharp abrasive chime of an incoming encrypted transmission suddenly shattered the silence of the office.

Marcus jumped nearly six inches out of his chair, clutching his chest in terror. He looked up at his desk monitor.

The holographic notification displayed the flashing, skull-shaped sigil of the Isle Supercity Underground Bounty Registry.

It was an incoming direct call from the Administrator... the very same man who had laughed at Marcus and increased the bounty to one hundred million Crowns just an hour prior.

Marcus stared at the flashing icon.

The terror that had been suffocating him for the past hour suddenly twisted into a sharp, burning spike of pure vindictive rage.

Marcus reached out with a trembling finger, hovering over the red disconnect button.

"One hundred million Crowns, huh?" Marcus sneered through his gritted teeth, a vicious smirk curling over his lips. "You wanted a show, you arrogant bastard? Go count the corpses on the street..."

Marcus slammed his hand down on the red icon, rejecting the call instantly and severing the comms line entirely.

"Go fuck yourself," Marcus muttered aloud to the empty room, slumping back into his chair and staring at the ceiling, waiting for the sun to rise.

Meanwhile, inside the ultra-luxurious master bedroom of the 90th-floor Imperial Penthouse...

Val slowly drifted back into consciousness.

The first sensation that returned to her was the texture of the bedding beneath her body.

It was shockingly soft... it felt cool, smooth with a five-thousand-thread-count silk that felt like resting on a cloud.

It was a level of pure decadent luxury that an orphan from the Outer Zone slums had never experienced in her entire life.

Her eyelids fluttered open, heavy and encrusted with dried tears and sweat.

Her vision, which had been scorched into pitch-black blindness during the battle on the 80th floor, was no longer impaired.

In fact, as she blinked against the soft lighting of the room, her eyes focused with terrifying crystalline clarity.

She could see the microscopic weave of the silk duvet... she could see individual specks of dust floating lazily in the air ten feet away, hell she could perceive the faint heat radiating from the mana-lamps mounted on the walls.

Val gasped softly, her hand flying to the left side of her face.

Her skin was smooth.

The charred third-degree burns from the Captain’s lightning spear were completely gone and the jagged scar along her lower lip had faded into a faint pale line.

Even her cracked jaw and the three shattered ribs in her chest were healed, leaving not even a dull ache behind.

"What... what happened to me...?" Val whispered, her voice sounding oddly melodic, carrying a strange echo.

"Oh! You’re finally awake!"

A bright childish voice rang out from the foot of the bed.

Val’s combat instincts flared instantly.

She gasped, her body tensing like a coiled spring as she scrambled backward across the silk mattress, pressing her back flat against the heavy mahogany headboard.

Sitting cross-legged at the foot of the massive king-sized bed was Mable.

The little silver-haired girl was wearing her oversized white cartoon t-shirt, completely surrounded by a miniature fortress of silver room service platters.

She held a crystal bowl of strawberry ice cream in her left hand and a golden spoon in her right, her large glowing crimson eyes looking at Val with pure innocent delight.

On the massive wall-mounted screen across from the bed, an animated cartoon about magical fairy-dragons was playing silently on loop.

"Congratulations on waking up, Miss Hitman!" Mable beamed, waving her ice cream spoon in the air. "Papa said you were sleeping for a whole hour! I’m super glad you’re okay, because that means I officially have a new, cute maid to play with!"

Val went completely rigid, her breath catching in her throat.

’Miss Hitman? Cute maid?!’

Val ignored the girl’s cheerful chatter, her eyes darting frantically down to her own hands resting on the silk sheets.

Her breath hitched.

Her skin, which had always been a rugged sun-tanned bronze from years of brutal mercenary work in the Outer Sectors, had turned an ethereal ghostly white.

Her fingernails had hardened into sharp slightly pointed tips that gleamed like polished obsidian.

And inside her chest...

Val closed her eyes for a microsecond, focusing on her spiritual core.

What she felt terrified her to the core of her being.

Her internal mana channels, which had been narrow, stagnant, and capped at the three-liner limit had undergone a violent metamorphosis.

Her mana reserves had multiplied by at least ten times, becoming a vast reservoir of cold energy that was circulating through her veins alongside her blood.

And then... she felt the pull.

Through the massive, floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the bedroom, the pale silver light of the full moon was pouring into the penthouse.

The moment Val looked at the moon, a strange intoxicating shudder rippled straight down her spine.

The lunar light didn’t just illuminate the room... it felt like a physical nourishing warmth washing over her soul.

Her cells drank in the moonlight like a dying person drinking water in a desert. It actively accelerated her mana recovery, amplifying her strength with every passing second.

Trembling, Val reached up with her right hand with her fingertips brushing against the side of her neck.

Right over her carotid artery, her fingers found two distinct and perfectly circular puncture wounds.

The skin around the punctures was smooth, closed, and hummed with a crimson trace of absolute authority.

And as she ran her tongue nervously across her own teeth—

Her tongue caught on something sharp.

Two elongated needle-thin canine fangs were resting against her lower lip.

Val’s eyes went wide with pure panic. "No... no, no, no... My body... What did he do to me?!"

Mable took another slow, happy bite of her strawberry ice cream, swinging her legs off the edge of the mattress.

"Papa bit you, silly," Mable explained casually, as if talking about the weather. "He turned you into a Vampire! Personally, I think turning people into Vampires is kinda boring. Personally, I would like a lot of dragons to fly around with! Dragons are way bigger and cooler! But Papa says he doesn’t know how to turn people into dragons yet, so you get to be a bloodsucker instead."

"A... a Vampire...?" Val’s mind completely stalled, the words echoing in her skull like a death knell.

Vampires were legendary creatures of novels.

They weren’t just standard Awakened... they were immortal, blood-drinking predators capable of slaughtering entire armies and that silver-haired man... Albano Shirou... was a literal Vampire Lord?

CREAK!

The frosted glass door connecting the master bedroom to the adjoining luxury mana-spa smoothly slid open.

A thick cloud of warm lavender-scented steam billowed out into the cool bedroom.

Stepping through the mist was Koya.

He was wearing a plush heavy black silk bathrobe tied loosely at his waist, exposing a portion of his broad chiseled chest.

His wet silver hair was swept back from his forehead with droplets of water glistening on his pale skin and tracing the defined contours of his collarbones.

His crimson eyes, glowing softly in the dim light of the bedroom, locked onto Val with a calm lazy familiarity.

He held a small white towel in his hands, gently drying the back of his neck as he let out a long relaxed sigh.

"Ah... you’re finally awake," Koya said smoothly, his voice a deep, quiet baritone. "I was beginning to think your body was going to reject the bloodline catalyst."

The moment Koya’s voice reached her ears, Val’s survival instincts overridden by the primal terror of the night’s events completely hijacked her rational mind.

"STAY BACK!" Val shrieked.

Her right hand shot forward, her fingers splaying wide.

ZRRRRRRRRR!

Driven by pure unthinking panic, Val unleashed her signature ability.

Tens of thousands of hyper-condensed crimson filaments erupted from her fingertips, shooting across the master bedroom toward Koya’s chest like a cluster of high-velocity steel needles.

The instant the threads left her hands, Val’s jaw dropped in shock.

The attack was nothing like her previous technique!

The threads were at least three times thicker, gleaming with a deep ruby-like translucence, and humming with a terrifying high-frequency sonic vibration that shredded the air.

They were blisteringly fast... traveling at more than triple the velocity she had ever achieved in her life!

Furthermore, she felt an instinctual urge in the back of her mind telling her that she could coat the threads in boiling acidic blood if she simply willed it.

The crimson web closed the distance in less than a microsecond, aiming to impale Koya through the chest, throat, and eyes but Koya didn’t raise an arm.

He simply looked at her.

"Stop," Koya commanded quietly.

FREEZE!

The word didn’t travel as sound... it detonated inside Val’s very soul like a divine decree.

Val’s body seized violently.

Every single muscle, nerve, and bone in her frame locked into place as if she had been dipped in liquid nitrogen.

She couldn’t move her arm, she couldn’t blink her eyes and she couldn’t even draw a breath into her lungs.

The blood in her veins literally stopped circulating, answering to Koya’s will rather than her own heart.

And hovering mere inches from Koya’s face, the entire storm of tens of thousands of crimson razor threads stopped completely dead in mid-air.

The monomolecular filaments hung suspended in the room, trembling faintly against an invisible wall of authority.

Koya slowly lowered his towel, stepping forward with bare feet on the plush carpet.

He approached the suspended web of threads, reaching out with his right index finger to lightly tap one of the razor-sharp crimson lines.

PING!

The thread vibrated with a clear chime.

Koya tilted his head, his crimson eyes analyzing the dense mana structure woven into the blood-filament.

"Fascinating..." Koya murmured softly, a genuinely impressed smirk touching the corner of his lips. "The tensile strength is remarkable. The bloodline fusion bonded your mana directly to your newly awakened Vampire body. It’s lighter, significantly more durable, and capable of holding an internal charge."

He looked past the threads, locking his eyes directly onto Val’s petrified paralyzed face.

"Congratulations," Koya said calmly. "The bloodline evolution was so potent that it completely shattered the bottleneck in your spiritual core... You’re no longer a three-liner trash mercenary stuck in the mud, Val. You have officially broken through the threshold and awakened a genuine Blue Crest."

Val’s eyes bulged with pure shock beneath her paralyzed expression.

’A... a Blue Crest?!’