Chapter 30: I am of service to you.

In the blink of an eye, the blinding blue light that was once concentrated on Terissa’s fist transferred entirely to Lucius’s body.

The magical energy, cold and suffocating, erupted outward with the violent force of a tempest, wrapping around his tall frame in a complex web of glowing blue chains.

Lucius was instantly forced to remain in a single, rigid position.

The potent mana that had just surrounded Terissa’s wrist was now crawling all over his physical form, locking his joints in place and attempting to burrow directly into his skull, forcing him to not move a single inch, or worse, rendering him unable to regain his own consciousness.

Terissa stood there in the blood-soaked clearing, her chest heaving violently as she gasped for the cold mountain air.

She kept her arm outstretched for a long while, her fingers trembling as she raised her head to look at him, needing to make absolutely sure her desperate spell had worked.

The clearing fell into a heavy, suffocating silence, broken only by the crackling hum of her blue mana clinging to the pale mercenary.

When she noticed he had not moved a single muscle or spoken a word in a while, a short, nervous laugh left her mouth. The sound was frantic, bubbling up from the absolute depths of her terror and adrenaline.

"Amazing... it... worked," she blurted out, her voice cracking under the strain.

The sheer relief washed over her so intensely that her knees buckled. She stumbled backward, her boots slipping on the wet mud, and fell clumsily onto her butt, laughing breathlessly all the while. She had actually done it. She had trapped the monster.

"Did you see that? Uhn? I have control over your master!!!" Terissa yelled, her voice bordering on hysterical as she turned her head toward the reinforced carriage.

She shouted directly at Dori, who was currently standing guard right next to where Guinevere was sitting in shock.

Terissa also cast a triumphant glare at the mindless undead monsters still lurking at the edge of the forest shadows.

"If any of you make a sudden move, I can easily command him to kill himself right now!" Terissa threatened, scrambling slightly to push herself up off the muddy ground, her confidence returning in a massive, overwhelming wave.

She fully expected the feral vampire girl to drop to her knees in despair, to beg for her master’s life, or to fly into a blind, reckless rage.

Instead, Dori simply let out a long, exhausted sigh. The red-haired vampire crossed her slender arms over her chest and slowly shook her head side to side, her crimson eyes completely devoid of any panic. She looked at the bandit leader not with fear, but with a deep, profound sense of pity.

This deeply underwhelmed reaction was not ignored by Terissa.

After all, the girl’s master was currently a helpless puppet trapped in her ultimate spell. The total lack of fear unsettled her, sending a fresh spike of anxiety straight down her spine.

When Terissa finally turned her gaze back to the center of the clearing to look at Lucius, the breath was completely knocked out of her lungs.

She was incredibly surprised to see that he was no longer staring blankly into space. His neck was turned slightly, and his glowing, vibrant crimson eyes were looking right back at her, burning with a cold, predatory amusement.

"Ah!!"

A loud, terrified scream left her mouth as she frantically scooted backward in the dirt, her hands scraping against the rough stones as she tried desperately to create a good enough distance between them.

Then came the deep, calm voice radiating from Lucius’s supposedly paralyzed body.

"You did well, for a human."

Right before her wide, trembling eyes, Lucius simply stepped forward. The heavy, glowing blue chains of mana shattered like fragile glass, dissolving into a fine mist of harmless sparks.

He broke free from her absolute control spell with terrifying ease, slowly rolling his shoulders and moving his limbs one by one, deliberately showing her that he could move every single part of his body without the slightest bit of resistance.

Complete and utter fear etched itself deeply onto Terissa’s face as she watched him brush the remaining magical residue from his dark leather coat.

"How! That is a high grade spell, you shouldn’t be able to move right now," she stammered, pointing a shaky finger at him in genuine, unadulterated fear.

Lucius stopped his casual stretching and raised his right hand, slowly clenching his pale fist as he looked right at it.

"No, your spell did work exactly as you intended," Lucius corrected her smoothly, his tone conversational and devoid of any anger.

"If anything, I am highly impressed by how you executed it. If I am to guess, it is a spell that lets you directly attack and take control of the host’s consciousness within their own body. A very strong ability if you ask me. But unfortunately, it is completely useless against someone like me, who can transfer my consciousness to multiple other places at will."

Because his soul was fundamentally linked to the Supreme System and anchored across his growing network of undead thralls, his mind was an endless, sprawling void that her human magic could never hope to contain.

Once again, Terissa gave a dry, hollow chuckle.

She did not fully understand what he meant by transferring his consciousness, but one terrifying thing was absolutely certain. Her ultimate, final trump card had completely failed her.

She was entirely out of mana, sitting defenseless in the mud before a creature that defied the very laws of reality.

"What kind of monster are you?" she whispered, her voice barely carrying over the mountain wind.

Lucius lowered his hand and kept his glowing red eyes fixed intently on her face.

"I believe this is the part where I beat you to a bloody pulp before you finally agree to serve me, yes?" Lucius asked calmly, quoting her own arrogant terms back to her.

All Lucius needed to do was take a single, slow step forward. The heavy crunch of his boot against the dirt was the only trigger she needed.

The absolute certainty of her impending death shattered her pride completely.

The very next second, Terissa scrambled from her seat in the mud directly onto her knees. She bowed her upper body forward, pressing her forehead flush against the damp earth, utterly submitting to the monster standing over her.

"I yield! I give up!" she screamed, her voice cracking with desperate, raw panic. "Even if I were to fight right now, I have absolutely no way of defeating you. I can see that clearly now. So please, spare my miserable life. I accept your offer to serve you. I will be your slave, your concubine, your wife, whatever it is you wish, just please do not kill me!"

Lucius kept the exact same cold, calculated look on his handsome face, entirely unmoved by her frantic begging. He had planned for this exact outcome from the moment he read her memories.

[Target has agreed to be your slave.]

[The God mark has been activated on target.]

Lucius watched in quiet fascination as the ethereal blue brackets faded, replaced immediately by a brilliant, warm crimson light that erupted from the center of Terissa’s chest.

The dark, necrotic insignia of the vampire god physically burned itself deep into the pale skin of her collarbone.

Gradually, right before the eyes of everyone in the clearing, Terissa slowly began to change.

Her messy, dirt-stained hair grew noticeably longer, flowing down her back in rich, dark waves that practically shimmered in the fading sunlight. Her human eyes lost their standard color, bleeding rapidly into a vibrant, glowing shade of crimson.

The magical transformation swept through her entire physical form, altering her biology at a cellular level. Her body grew slimmer, shedding the hard, rough calluses of her bandit life.

Her waist cinched tight, her hips flared subtly, and her breasts swelled to perfectly complement her newly enhanced, dangerously beautiful curves.

Even more striking was her skin, which purged all the grime and scars of her past, settling into the same flawless, porcelain pale complexion that Lucius and Dori shared.

Terissa gasped loudly, her hands flying over her own body as she immediately found it to be incredibly strange. She could not comprehend how everything about her seemed completely different in a matter of mere seconds.

The heavy exhaustion in her muscles was entirely gone, replaced by a violent, humming surge of raw, physical power.

Other than her overly increased senses, which now allowed her to hear the frantic heartbeats of the humans hiding inside the carriage, she developed something far more profound.

A deep, intoxicating sense of absolute servitude blossomed within the core of her mind, directed entirely toward the tall man standing before her.

It was a warm, overwhelming desire to submit. There was almost no doubt in her newly formed vampire mind that if he simply told her to put her life on the line and die for him right now, she would do so with a smile, without a single hesitation.

"What did you do to me?" she voiced out loud, her tone no longer fearful, but thick with awe and confusion as she slowly raised her head from the dirt to look up at Lucius.

Before Lucius even thought to respond to her question, his crimson eyes shifted slightly to read the new system prompt that appeared right beside her beautiful face.

[Name: Terissa.]

[Race: Vampire.]

[Class: Shadow Commander.]

[Talent: S rank.]

[Blessing: Vampire God.]

’Oh?’

Just like when he had first seen Dori’s stats back in the forest, he was quite impressed by the readout. To think that a human bandit leader would instantly awaken an S-ranked talent the moment she received his divine blessing was a testament to the absolute power of his growing faction.

Her specific class as a Shadow Commander perfectly suited the leadership role he needed her to play.

He smiled a bit, a genuine curve of his lips that sent a wild flutter directly through Terissa’s chest.

"You have become one of mine," he says to her, his deep voice wrapping around her like a warm blanket. He took the final step forward and stretched out his pale, bare hand for her to hold.

Terissa hesitated for a short while.

She remained on her knees, looking down at her own trembling hand. She could physically feel the strange, ancient energy moving rapidly through every single vein in her body, rewriting her humanity into something dark and eternal.

She did not fully understand it. Why would a being of such supreme power choose her, a wanted criminal hiding in the mountains, to grant such incredible, divine gifts to? Especially considering she was someone he was just meeting for the very first time today.

The weirder part was the emotional shift. From the exact moment the strange, burning mark appeared on her collarbone and her sharp fangs descended over her lower lip, her vision had sharpened beautifully.

Her entire life’s purpose, which used to be struggling in the mud to feed a starving camp, suddenly seemed to shift entirely toward riding around the world and pleasing this man.

She could inherently understand everything he wanted without him needing to speak.

It was like an immediate, soul-deep connection that clicked perfectly into place, making it seem like she had known him intimately for hundreds of years. The bond was heavy, possessive, and deeply intoxicating.

Which was exactly why, even in this current situation, surrounded by the slaughtered bodies of her former crew, she found that her body simply could not deny him that hand.

"I am of service to you, my Lord," Terissa replied, her voice dropping into a soft, devoted purr.

She reached up, her soft, pale fingers wrapping tightly around his, grabbing him by the hand so he could pull her up from the mud and into her new eternal life.