Chapter 3175: Sarifov: Children, This Is the Final Lesson_3

When Slave Master Sarifov Shadowblade finally appeared, Bertie didn’t rush forward to salute his mentor, but instead instinctively drew the Vampire Spike Sword at his waist and leveled it at him.

The sheer aggression of that movement made Sarifov halt where he stood.

These days he’d been shuttling between the Old Continent and the New, looking travel-worn and weary, and now he regarded Bertie with a strangely complex gaze—those eyes in the darkness glinting blood-red—and then the Mechanical Female Warrior at his side, already in combat mode, Plasma Flames coiling around her forearms.

It had been less than a month since the Charldo Harbor incident, yet the relationship between the three of them could already be summed up as “the things are the same, but the people are not.”

“I’m sorry.”

Sarifov spoke in a tired voice:

“I left you behind at Charldo Harbor. I’d meant to take you with me, but things shifted in subtle ways… Even for me, these twenty-odd days have felt like living through an entire century.”

“You don’t need to apologize, Mr. Morphy.”

Bertie realized he’d overreacted and withdrew the spike sword, but his tone remained tangled and conflicted:

“Maybe leaving us there was the right choice. I can more or less guess why you’ve come tonight, but I’m sorry—we’re not going back with you!”

“Because of the Blood Covenant?”

Sarifov shook his head and said:

“That thing isn’t incurable. I have a way to sever the link between you and your elder. If you’re willing to take the risk, you could even return to your original form of life.”

“No, it’s not because of the Blood Covenant.”

Bertie shook his head. He fixed his eyes on Sarifov and said hoarsely:

“It’s because of what I’ve seen, heard, and lived through these days… Once, I worshipped you. I saw you as a father—there’s nothing wrong with that, you did raise Penny and me. But not until I was reborn in a vampire’s body and went through what I did on the Ligurian Peninsula did I truly grasp what ‘Dusk’ really is. You people used the Wolf People, turned them into vanguards of chaos, exploited their savagery and slaughter to transform the entire Northern Peninsula of Liguria into a Hell of endless bones. You summoned the Daguan Fishmen and utterly crushed this land’s chance of revival, then pushed the calamity of the Merfolk over the whole Continent. I saw it with my own eyes! That mad Scholar wanted to annihilate the entire Charldo Harbor, just to fulfill his lunatic ideal. He kept saying he wanted to save Penny, yet he turned Penny into a tool of destruction. You treated Penny like your own daughter, and if not for Mr. Morphy’s intervention, we would have lost her forever. You…”

“You’re abetting the tyrant!”

“I’m a Shadow Elf, I was never meant to have any bond with ‘good people,’ but this… what Dusk is doing has already gone beyond any definition of ‘evil’—it can’t even be contained within the word ‘madness.'”

“And still, I believe you’re not like them. Even now, I can no longer stand before the Transia People and justify you with a clear conscience.”

“You’ve thrown in with a pack of lunatics. You’re trying to become one of them.”

“That’s wrong!”

“You clearly have a great ideal. You clearly want to change our race. It was you who led us and your other followers down this road. We didn’t join Dusk out of admiration for that organization. The only thing we vowed to follow forever was you—your ideal!”

“The ideal of rectifying the twisted Shadow Elves Society! The ideal of every Shadow Elf man…”

As Bertie’s scolding lashed at him, Sarifov remained silent.

He had no intention of justifying Dusk’s actions; he simply kept staring, his expression complicated, at the form Penny now wore. In those flickering electronic eyes, he couldn’t find a trace of emotion.

“You’re not planning to say anything?”

Unable to comprehend or accept it, Bertie shouted at Sarifov:

“You could break away from that organization, just like Penny and me. We could…”

“There is no second path to take, child.”

Sarifov drew his gaze back and said to Bertie in a low, heavy voice:

“I will tear down the current civilizational pattern of the Shadow Elves. I will end that stupid system. I refuse to let what happened to me happen again to you, or to any other Shadow Elf. With my own hands, I killed the man I saw as my elder brother and my chief. With my own hands, I killed the hope of the Shadow Elves.

I must forge a new hope.

Yet on my own, I cannot accomplish all of this.

You grew up as a man inside Shadow Elves Society, Bertie. You know all too well the suffering we endured within that warped environment. That shadow is too vast, like Hell itself—and when you dwell in Hell, the only one who can help you is the devil.

This isn’t a matter of simple right and wrong, Bertie. If the world could be measured by right and wrong alone, it wouldn’t have rotted to the state it’s in now.

Truth be told, hearing you so firmly refuse my invitation leaves me both heartsore and proud.

At last you’ve grown from a camel that only knows how to bow its head and obey into a lion that knows what it truly desires… As for what kind of creatures Dusk is, I knew before I ever joined them. But it doesn’t matter, because a Shadow Elf’s life is both endlessly long and brutally short.

It’s long enough for the hollow-hearted to decay into sludge in their own boredom, and short enough that an idealist can only afford to do one thing to the utmost.

So for us, choosing the direction matters far more than simply striving.

I have already chosen my road.

I must walk it to the end, either collapsing in a pool of blood or mounting the throne of the destroyer and the bringer of rebirth.

And now, it seems you two have chosen your road as well.

Then… there’s nothing more to say.”

Shadowblade stretched out his hand and grasped at the air beside him; a slender elven blade like a black fang leapt into his palm.

As that thing appeared, the dense night all around seemed to be imbued with a deeper meaning. It pulsed with Sarifov’s breath, veiling every bit of starlight.

“Swoosh.”

The blade traced a light stroke, a line of shadow slicing through space.

In the shattering, uncanny fissure that opened, Sarifov launched his charge.

He ran his hand over his face, overlaying that weathered yet handsome visage with a mask woven of shadow; even his voice sank into a grim, killing chill.

“You’ve stepped into my way, children, and from that death which changed me, I learned one vital lesson: only by surviving can you carry your chosen road forward… So this will be your final lesson.”

“You’ve already learned the cruel truth I only grasped kneeling in Truman’s blood that day.”

“Since our goals are fixed and now run opposite, then from here on—let both sides… fight for survival!”