CHAPTER 144: THE MAGE AND HER VAMPIRE LOVER

With conversations of the Acheron Empire takeover ordered to cease, Arlette got back to what she had been told was never important to be discussed at the Council; ’Ophiuchus’.

Caius simply leaned back in his chair as she began to speak of the inner workings of the criminal organization that even he did not know. She made references to them as she asked for the ways to contact the various Vampires placed in charge of every base.

There were devices used to pull all those leaders into a conference and after a single sentence from Caius to reiterate what he had already made clear minutes ago, the Base Leaders all deferred to Arlette.

Even as Caius watched on silently without giving an input, this was likely the most important part of his acquisition of the Leopold Vampire Coven. ’Ophiuchus’ had always been the arm the Coven used to achieve goals they could not set out to do themselves. And now, it would become his arm.

There were so many obscure legacies all over the World whose location he knew thanks to the original story. Ordinarily, he would never have been able to seek them out until he was done with Lochxen and had advanced a few more Magic Circles.

But, now he had an entire network of Mercenaries he could elicit to do his bidding and handle all that grunt work.

And he knew just the legacy to start with.

After Arlette was done with what had started to look like an Orientation and was about to dismiss the Base Leaders she was in conference with, Caius finally leaned forward and cleared his throat to call her attention.

"One moment," he called. The eyes of most of the Base leaders had never left his face throughout the conference so he already had their attention.

He flicked his wrist and then remembered he didn’t have on his Storage Ring having left it behind in Arlette’s office at Lochxen.

He looked at Kerwin,

"I need to write," he said.

Kerwin’s artificially youthful face blanked and then, he retrieved Writing Utensils from his Storage Ring that he used magic to pass gently to Caius.

And then Caius began to write. Everyone in the Hall simply watched but after a while, Arlette leaned closer to peek at his writing and it was in a language everyone here understood but it still confused her. Like she couldn’t quite place what the context of it all was.

It was an entire passage of [To Kill A Demon Lord...]. Slightly paraphrased of course. Caius removed the names of the Characters that had been involved in that passage and made it come off more like a poem than an excerpt.

Caius held it up when he was done, gave it a once over and decided it was good enough before handing it to Arlette.

"Here," he said.

"What is it?"

Caius smiled lightly and launched into a tale.

"There was once a Mage who fell in love with a Vampire. So much so that she wished for him to feed only from her. When he went out to hunt and returned to their simple hovel, they would have an argument about how he was ’cheating’ on her."

The Vampires in the Hall, both on the conference screen and seated at the Council all sniggered like they found that amusing.

Caius continued,

"The Mage argued that her Vampire Lover’s Evolution Trigger was ’Happiness’. He was quite literally going out, making others happy to enjoy their blood like what she gave him was not enough.

The Vampire argued that her Blood could never BE enough. Even if he drained the Mage and killed her, he would only be left wanting more.

They had tried Blood replenishing potions and while that might increase the quantity of her blood and have him feed on her for much longer, the Evolutionary charge he’d get from it would always remain fairly the same."

The Vampires all nodded here, knowing that to be true. Even Arlette knew it. If it weren’t true, ’Ophiuchus’ blood-draining operation would not have required continuous acquisition of victims. They would simply get one set, strap them down, and milk them continuously while feeding them Blood Replenishing Potions to recover all that had been drained.

Once blood-replenishing potions enter a human/humanoid, it stills the production of Evolutionary charge within them, keeping it at the level it had been before they drank the potion.

Caius continued.

"But the Mage refused to give up and set out on years of study and research to ’fix’ the issues with Blood Replenishing Potions. She failed and then realized she was looking for solutions in the wrong place.

There was already a way to increase how much Evolutionary charge a person had; Through increasing Magical Enlightenment. After all, the stronger a person became, the stronger their blood and the more it contributed to a Vampire’s Evolution.

But Magical Enlightenment takes Decades if quick and Centuries if slow. She needed something quicker.

And that led to the creation of ’Allegra’s Manuscript’. Named after herself. It increases the Evolutionary charge in the Blood. With it, Allegra hoped she’d be able to keep her Vampire Lover to herself."

There was a few seconds of silence.

"Did it work?" Roxanne Leopold asked then, curious for the end of the story.

"Hmm? Oh, no it didn’t work. Turns out it was only partly about getting enough Blood. Her Vampire Lover was a Sexual deviant who loved going at his victims, making them happy with illusion-induced pleasures before draining them of their Blood. He liked Allegra enough to never go as far as to kill her but he was never going to stop seeking out more.

Allegra eventually killed him in a jealous rage for his ’infidelity’," Caius said lightly.

"Tragic," Roxanne said, "Just goes to show. Humans can never understand us."

The Vampires in the Hall—seated at the Council or on the Conference screen—all nodded.

Caius found it funny that the moral of the story was not that the Vampire Lover was a greedy asshole that wasn’t content even though his Lover did so much to be enough for him and was instead about how humans could never get that Vampires would always want more.

But it wasn’t even just about the Vampires who just heard the story.

In [To Kill A Demon Lord...], when Aurelius stumbled upon Allegra’s legacy and looted it, he learned of her tale from an apparition she left behind and he told her she was the one at fault for wanting loyalty/fidelity from a Vampire.

Arlette cocked her head to the side and placed a hand on Caius’s arm, looking amused.

"Don’t worry. I’m not going to kill you. Despite your infidelities," she said.

Caius patted her hand.

"It never even crossed my mind."

He wasn’t lying. If she was going to be upset he had other sexual partners he was/was planning on feeding on, she’d have already been.

But he *had* found it interesting the similarities between Allegra and Arlette. Both were feeding the Vampire Lovers with their Blood. Just taking varying approaches to it. It was why he even bothered with telling the story even though he could have just said he wanted the Manuscript and be done with the topic.

"So this...?" Arlette said, holding up the notes Caius had penned down.

"That is the location of Allegra’s Legacy. It still requires some decoding as a lot of what I’ve written there are clues to be interpreted. But I know it can be done.

In any case, I want that legacy found and brought, in its entirety, to me."

The eyes of the Vampires were glowing and why wouldn’t they? A Manuscript that could help them cheat the limited Evolutionary charge in their victims was well worth an expedition to acquire.

But there was a reason Caius wanted everything within the Legacy brought to him.

’Allegra’s Manuscript’ is only one of the many treasures in the Dead Mage’s Legacy. For one—and likely the most important besides the Manuscript—there was the treasure that had led Aurelius to ’stumbling’ up on the Legacy in the first place; Vestiges of Divinity.

Arlette looked down at the notes and smiled lightly.

"I’ll put the best men on it," she said and turned her attention to the conference screen to do just that.