In this AU, with Crombel dead the Trio and Regis didn't end up having to fight some of his minions in and on Ye Ran High School, with attendant property damage. That fight against Crombel's agents left a lot of people injured and poisoned, so Frankenstein had to ignore his own injuries from the battle against the Elders to get them patched up.
Rael showed up for his rematch with the Trio and Regis in the middle of that fight. Tao managed to weaponize Rael's 'how dare you speak to me' and Seira obsession to have him fight (and insult) Crombel's people. Here, Regis sent him off towards the main fight instead in the last chapter.
The one time Rai goes 'that's an order' at Frankenstein, it is over which of them fights a certain enemy when Frankenstein needs to be intact enough to treat patients after the battle, especially since they were in Ignes' hands. It's triage and tactics, not who gets to be the one to survive, and Frankenstein clearly knows Rai made the right call. Rai's actions (spending power) and Frankenstein's thoughts show they were both pretty damn sure Rai wasn't going to survive that fight, but although they're not happy about it, they're not going to let personal anguish paralyze them when there are lives on the line.
Frankenstein watched the others as they returned to his house from the battle. Rael first flailed and then bloomed when Rajak said that he was proud of Rael for coming to help Seira… keep the Union Elders from blowing up any more of the city and kill humans who couldn't defend themselves. That obviously wasn't the real reason he'd come, but Rael was sticking close to Rajak's side, willing to pretend to care about humans if it meant more compliments from his big brother.
That meant it would still be easy to bait him into becoming a better person. He was over five hundred years old, therefore Frankenstein's objections to the emotional manipulation of children didn't apply. He had a soul weapon, so it was vital to disarm that ticking time bomb.
Before he became another Urokai Agvain. Another offender for the Noblesse to eliminate.
Urokai Agvain was (past tense, but not long past enough to keep Master from having to clean up a mess Frankenstein had only made worse) a single-digit Union Elder with voting privileges and by process of elimination, Lagus Tradio wasn't? If Tradio wanted the Union to succeed, someone as hopeless as Urokai would not have been on the board.
That confirmed that the Union and those in its shadow weren't any kind of single enemy that could be defeated or reasoned with. Like the Agvain clan's symbol, it was a hydra, and chopping off any one head would just encourage the other ones to think that the time had finally come to put their 'allies' in their place and assume their rightful rule over the pathetic humans. No wonder the Union was allowed, no, encouragedto be so incompetent, when every single faction in it wanted to set the other factions up to fail.
As for how many clan leader-level combatants, or people who thought they were the equals of the 'young, weak' clan leaders were out there? Who the hell knew, when the Union's factions were all so determined to keep each other from knowing. The roster of elders might have been halved, but that clearly meant nothing.
Thankfully, at least the werewolf and traitor noble factions had failed to think about the fact that since soul weapons grew more powerful with each soul that joined them, the Previous Lord's plan meant that the younger clan leaders all had more power to draw on than the last generation. Except Erga Kinesis di Raskreia and Rajak Kertia, but they had something that made them much more dangerous than raw power… provided they lived long enough to learn anything.
Tradio was alive when Lukedonia was made and the nobles were forced to leave their territories and live there! He had to have seen what the Lords were truly capable of!
No, Frankenstein knew he couldn't understand people like that. Maybe Tradio just wanted that power for himself. Maybe he even simply wanted revenge, for the nobles eliminated so humanity could become independent instead of domesticated.
Speaking of confirmed fears, the Fifth Elder was a werewolf. And she still lived, because Master had told her to tell the Union that the Noblesse had returned.
He wanted to serve as a deterrent, Frankenstein knew. Keeping the powerful terrified of him was part of Cadis Etrama di Raizel's duty. The part that made him confine himself in his manor, because seeing him frightened them and he did not want to do that to them. Even though he must.
It wasn't going to stop the Union. It couldn't. There was no unified 'them' to stop – just three or more factions all aiming to reduce each other and humanity to lesser races. Or extinct ones. And at least one of those factions knew that a Noblesse's power was finite, and all of them would be overjoyed to have someone else eliminate their competition for them.
Seira had been fairly severely injured when Frankenstein arrived at the battle, but her natural healing had taken care of much of it while Frankenstein kept the Elders' attention on him. She had clearly recovered enough to hide all signs of her recent injuries as she leapt gracefully from rooftop to rooftop. Ragar and Rael hadn't exactly escaped unscathed, but Frankenstein's injuries were the worst.
Rajak and Rael. It wasn't as though Ragar and Rajak were all that much alike, appearances aside. Ragar was, well, blond (Frankenstein was certainly free to reference blond stereotypes when he was one). That song about blonds never having to think used to be far too true for nobles in general, but while Ragar was a bit spacey and genuinely seemed to believe that everything the Previous Lord did was wonderful, he wasn't actually a fool.
He'd only fallen for 'look behind you' a few times. Gejutel, on the other hand...
Rajak was as focused as the blades he summoned. While Ragar had genuinely never encountered a need to press the limits of his abilities, Rajak considered himself weak, and knew that he would have to work and think to win despite that weakness.
It was interesting to see certain of his own traits reflected in Rajak and Regis, the son and grandson of the nobles he probably should have called friends. It was proof that Gejutel and Ragar had truly respected him. Gejutel was still breathing, even though he'd clearly rather not be, but Ragar... Ragar's soul dwelled within Rael's Grandia.
Rael kept pissing off the wrong people and it was only a matter of time until one of them killed him for it. Ragar had done Frankenstein a favor by allowing him to practice keeping control over Dark Spear in combat, so he couldn't just watch it happen. Couldn't force Ragar to watch powerlessly as it happened.
Normal soul weapons improved their summoner's regeneration rate. He had Dark Spear. Well, he couldn't complain; its ability to suppress regeneration was useful when its (their) wrath had a target other than him.
It might take him a little more time than a clan leader (much less a werewolf), but he would heal, and not having any other patients meant he could take some time to recover before confronting Master.
"That little sleep would not have improved your condition," Frankenstein said, looking into Raizel's eyes after finding him on the balcony.
Nobles normally either focused on one thing at a time, or achieved effortless serenity by emptying their minds of all thoughts, which was another reason why a species with so many thousands of years to spend thinking had so little practice actually thinking. With focus, and decades, centuries, millennia of experience, anything a noble did looked like a meditation of elegant perfection.
Frankenstein wasn't there when the students had brought Master his first bowl of that noodle soup, otherwise he would have served Master something more impressive for his first meal outside Lukedonia. Still, he was sure that Rai was just as elegant then as he was the second time. Other people slurped down ramyeon, failed to think before moving and splattered broth on their uniforms. Cadis Etrama di Raizel could make watching someone eat instant noodles as spiritual an experience as watching someone who had practiced the tea ceremony for decades.
It was obvious when a noble tried to multitask. Most of them were abysmal at it, because they had no idea how. When they lived so long, they could afford to do one thing at a time, focusing on doing them correctly and elegantly over quickly. Right now, Master was trying to reassure him and do something else at the same time.
Something like using his shapeshifting powers to hide how much damage the Noblesse's ability to maintain a living body had really taken.
What humans accepted as natural aging was really accumulated damage to their DNA. Nobles didn't show signs of aging unless there was something wrong with them. Not with their borrowed DNA: that was easy to fix, or just replace. With their souls.
How Raizel looked after he'd trained Raskreia, because there was no one else who could show her how to bring out the full potential of the divided Ragnarok?
Just as Gejutel planned, and while Frankenstein could not blame Gejutel for something Master did of his own will, he was not going to forget it.
Frankenstein never wanted to see Raizel like that again. Raizel had noticed his distress, of course he had.
So the noble who gave him sanctuary that night was – had to be – repairing the cells of internal organs before he coughed up any more blood. Had to be repairing damaged pigment genes and overwriting any skin cell that lost elasticity, trying to hide that he was barely able to keep his body from falling apart.
He wouldn't call him on it. His master deserved to have his dignity, and it wasn't just Frankenstein anymore. The kids would worry. He couldn't go to school looking decrepit, either. Shapeshifting was nothing to a noble. Raizel's unhealed soul had to be bleeding several times more power per second than maintaining the appearance of health was costing him.
He still wanted to tell him to stop it, because patients shouldn't conceal their symptoms from their doctors. Frankenstein wanted to tell him that he only going to worry more if the only way he had of gauging his master's condition came from internal bleeding or the trembling hands.
Epileptic seizure. Or a stroke. There was nothing else it could possibly be. Oh, a wounded noble might stagger after being injured, but that was because the human body's regeneration didn't really include nerve cells, and a noble wouldn't learn that they needed to handle that manually until they'd been severely injured in enough battles to get it down. Well, it was Frankenstein's own fault he'd lost that advantage against one of his old sparring partners, from abusing it by going after Ragar Kertia's tendons so often… Not that Ragar hadn't deserved it – why the hell hadn't Gejutel stopped him from creating two pureblood children that close together? It was a wonder the strain hadn't made Ragar the first noble to wind up in Eternal Sleep from their equivalent of childbirth! It was a toss-up whether that would have left Rael more or less traumatized.
Trying to think about the Kertia's problems instead of his master's wasn't helping the desperation curled in his chest, a tightly-wound spring with nothing he could do.
It wasn't in him to accept helplessness. If he gave up when faced with the impossible, he would have been eaten by a mutant over a thousand years ago.
No. There had to be something. He already knew he needed to hurry and make seals, more of them, more powerful ones. At least bandage Raizel's wounds, staunch the blood flow, even if those wounds couldn't heal. Dark Spear would be willing to help him: they'd managed to eat much of the Eighth Elder, his soul weakened from what the Union did to make him into their weapon. If he promised Dark Spear more of the Union's monsters, he might have enough willing souls to equal the power of the cross earrings the Previous Lord made for Master with pieces of his own soul, long before Frankenstein came to Lukedonia. When he gave Master a birthday.
Leaving an Elder alive long enough for Dark Spear to finish consuming them for the sake of their vengeance was a risk, but if he could find someone with a weak soul…
"I wish to go to the school," Master told him.
It was the middle of the night, but "Yes, Master."
Raizel sat at his usual desk in the classroom, staring out the window at the empty playing fields.
Frankenstein stood there, waiting quietly for him to finish thinking. It wasn't an imposition. He was glad that Master wanted to come here. That he was being quiet and resting.
Then the Noblesse turned to him, frowning slightly. Master picked his words carefully, trying to avoid insulting the children by implying that they been inelegant despite making a deliberate mess, or noisy despite insisting on speaking to him when he had young clan leaders to rescue …and Frankenstein.
My, my. More than a thousand years old, and he still hadn't seen it all, it seemed. "Did they… did they really?"
"Ikhan wanted to watch a movie called Home Alone some time ago. It may have given them the idea." In which case it was Raizel's fault Frankenstein's things had ended up on the floor and his shirts were knotted, because the students came over to visit Raizel.
Frankenstein smiled. "Of course, he's a budding computer engineer." Or an engineer period. So no, it wasn't Master's fault he hadn't thought to veto that movie to prevent anyone from getting clever with Frankenstein's things.
They'd tried to use… Preparing the battleground in advance was a valid tactic. One he'd used himself against mutants, especially before he managed to equal their abilities, but trying to use fragile glass and porcelain to confine the Noblesse?
"No, Master," he assured him, chuckling. "I'm relieved, not angry. It's so childish of them. So innocent. It's a good sign, that they're reclaiming what was taken from them." They were starting to internalize the idea that people cared about others' feelings, otherwise they wouldn't have hatched a plan relying on it.
Soon after Master woke up, when Frankenstein was trying to gather information on where that coffin had come from and what exactly the Union knew, he'd come home to find a broken window handle on the coffee table, and his master sitting there with the dignity of someone who would make no excuses and accept no pity for their transgression, but expected a just punishment for their crime so they could regain their honor.
Frankenstein was already upset after his fight with Mary. He'd let that arrogant amateur who thought no one else could possibly be a threat to her because she was superior to humanity actually cut his sleeve. Was he that out of practice?
Then he came home to find that Master had sensed the fight and attempted to leave the house to intervene, which meant that Frankenstein was going to have to be careful, or Master would use his power rather than let Frankenstein get into a situation where he might get hurt, without the ability to call on Dark Spear. Not that Raizel was angry when Frankenstein called on Dark Spear, just sad, because he knew how much summoning Dark Spear hurt. Raizel's confusion over the newfangled door mechanism had saved some small fraction of Master's life, but that didn't mean he liked the idea of his noble being trapped in a house again.
That was why he'd encouraged Master when he opened the door by himself to leave on another day, to assure him that yes, it was alright to go outside to do things and explore. M-21's complete confusion was just icing on the cake.
With the door incomprehensible the sheltered noble must have tried the window next – after all, the handle looked about the same as the one in the manor.
…it just turned in the opposite direction from the only window handle Raizel had ever seen.
Piecing together what happened had made him look upset enough that Raizel got up and patted him on the shoulder. Thank goodness, because if Master hadn't forgotten in his concern over Frankenstein, he would have insisted that Frankenstein do something to punish him for breaking one of his things, when to Master windows were especially important things, and how was he supposed to punish Master?
Especially when the first time they met, it was because he'd invaded some noble's home and stolen one of his shirts when he was on the run from the law. It would have been rational for an ordinary person to be worried about the dangerous criminal. On the other hand, there were stories of what happened to humans who took shelter in the manor of a red-eyed 'vampire.' Disheveled clothing was usually involved, now wasn't it?
He started laughing at the memories. At how outside normal expectations they were. At how curiously endearing Cadis Etrama di Raizel was, even as clan leaders bowed before him while he stared impassively down at them.
The Previous Lord had asked him why he'd stayed with a noble for ten years when he wasn't getting anything out of it, and Frankenstein hadn't even considered the question until then. It wasn't that he felt he needed Raizel's protection, even if he was glad the strange young-looking noble had sent the clan leaders away. He'd needed to stay somewhere while he investigated the clan leaders and learned how to handle Dark Spear, and it was a huge mansion and Raizel barely went into any of it, and it was an opportunity to observe nobles in their natural habitat, which in Raizel's case was standing in front of a window? That couldn't be right…
Here he was, a vampire hunter, when nobles were the ones who started the plague, and he was more annoyed by Urokai trying to make Raizel drink his complete failure to make tea than some of the other clan leaders trying to poison Raizel's mind against him for more nefarious reasons.
The Noblesse would never change, he thought, shoulders shaking, raising a hand to cover his eyes.
He'd…
…die first.
He didn't hear Master standing up from his school desk. He didn't know he had until he felt Master's hand on his shoulder, patting it carefully, arm almost out straight in case someone being too close bothered Frankenstein.
It took him a moment before he could uncover his eyes and smile. "I'm fine, Master."
As a percentage of Frankenstein's life, he hadn't lived with Cadis Etrama di Raizel for very long. As a percentage of Master's… but thinking of that just made him realize how rare and precious his companionship must seem to Raizel. Proof that his duty as the Noblesse had been worth it? He didn't want to be a prize Raizel could only earn by throwing his life away.
Even if he couldn't find Raizel after his disappearance, the piece of his Master's soul bound to his own was still there. He'd spent most of the time blocking the link that let him sense Master even before Raizel disappeared. It was just common courtesy not to flood someone else's mind with his thoughts… and he didn't want Master to feel what Dark Spear did to him. He couldn't keep him from knowing when Dark Spear tormented him, the Noblesse could just see it looking at Frankenstein, but he couldn't let Dark Spear harm the innocent. Not when they were his responsibility.
At least the bond had still existed, and that meant that Master could not be dead, because a Noblesse's soul ceased to exist when they died. Master could have gotten his attention when he woke up in a strange city – any city would be a strange one to someone who had never seen that many people in their entire life – but Master hadn't had any idea what was going on and probably hadn't wanted to surprise Frankenstein when he might be in the middle of doing something.
Mistaking Mr. Park for an enhanced human had probably helped reassure Raizel that the place where the children were going in decently elegant uniforms had to be the right place.
"Master, do you know why I founded this school?" he asked. "The day I met you… I wanted you to live a normal life."
"I know," Raizel said, turning towards the window. Perhaps he needed the comfort of looking out a familiar window, because Frankenstein could read him well enough to know he was gathering his courage to say, "I have always appreciated everything you have done for me."
It made him smile with relief to hear that.
At first when he moved into Raizel's home he hadn't really cared what Raizel thought of a human sitting in the room with him taking notes and making tea and food and expecting him to have some of it. Later, after learning more about the Previous Lord's attempts to drag Raizel out of his manor, he'd begun to worry that his actions were just as much of an imposition and Raizel was just too… too passive, too used to letting others do what they willed, to tell him. Even if he was willing to say no to the Previous Lord.
He didn't expect gratitude for taking care of Raizel. It was what he wanted to do, but it still… he could see it there, could feel it, and he was happy. Not just to hear it, but that Raizel had made the considerable effort to find words to tell him. He was still unpracticed at speaking to others, and even if a noble's pride let him hide nervousness, Frankenstein knew that the thought of saying the wrong thing and hurting them worried his Master.
"I also wanted you to live a normal life," Raizel said, before Frankenstein could frame a reply and… that this was so important to him?
Frankenstein bowed. He would not bend his head or neck for any other (not unless it was in mockery), but his master deserved… so much more than he would ever ask for.
"I am precious to you, even though I am the Noblesse." The nobles' inquisitor, powerful and terrifying.
The way Frankenstein's power was terrifying to humans, and that fear made it so easy for the people he'd fought for to believe the Union's lies. Left them both alone among the people they lived for.
Solemn red eyes searched his, hoping to see that Frankenstein understood, even though Raizel could touch his mind. His master was not used to being nervous. "You consented to our contract and entrusted yourself to me. It has always been an honor."
Despite the greedy and the power-hungry using it as a way to enslave humans instead of giving the humans they cared for the power to protect themselves.
"Humans are precious existences," Master said, looking around the room at Shinwoo's desk. Yuna's, Suyi's and Ikhan's. Regis and Seira's desks – Seira had wanted Regis to experience age-appropriate activities like attending class while they were in the human world for the investigation, and Regis had picked out Ye Ran for the sake of the school's uniform. "This is the place you made for me." Where he would be surrounded by children¸ whose lives were doubly precious. Raizel had to turn away, to try to hide a slight blush.
Nobles – or the nobles when Frankenstein first met them, before the Previous Lord put his plan into motion – considered allowing their emotions to be brought to someone else's attention highly intrusive and inelegant. It was a holdover from when they only had psychic abilities for communication, before humans came around with words and body language allowing people to express themselves without forcing their thoughts or emotions on someone else.
Even if Raizel was young (by the standards of Lukedonia a thousand years ago) and socially isolated before he came to the school (by any standards), he was caught between wanting Frankenstein to know that he was grateful and the lingering awareness that being grateful at people was intrusive and probably not wanted.
"There must be nobles who think it would have been better if we never evolved," Frankenstein said, mainly to change the subject and rescue Raizel from feelings of awkwardness and anxiety a noble had no idea how to handle. "Your kind aren't actually stupid. Zarga and Urokai both believed that those who were supposed to protect Lukedonia and the nobles," the Lord and the Noblesse, "were favoring us at their expense, and they weren't entirely wrong. Obviously we aren't the source of all evil in the world, but we did present a host of temptations that the nobles weren't equipped to handle."
"Humans have not changed since you were hunter-gatherers," Raizel said, looking out the window at the soccer field. "You still care for others so much, and so easily."
Frankenstein chuckled. Well, he had no one to blame for Master's sheltered opinion of human nature but himself. The school was built to be an environment that would bring out the best in people.
Raizel looked at him. "Humans died because of nobles, and you still wished to help me as soon as you sensed me." He shook his head. "You are wanted, but the danger to nobles is if we want enough to ignore the cost to our honor. To our own souls."
When it was a noble's soul that kept them alive. "When I first went there, Lukedonia was a land of ancients, and now they're all well-meaning teenagers." Adults… technically. Still open-minded and willing to learn, because they were aware of how little they knew. Any teacher knew that was the first step on the path to wisdom. He saw why the Previous Lord did it, Frankenstein had seen long ago that if nobles started thinking they would be much better off. And much more dangerous, but that wasn't a bad thing for them to be, when someone needed to save humanity from the Union, when the Union had done its best to make damn sure humanity couldn't save itself. "Your lifespans used to be… eternal. What has happened to your mortality rate, to your life expectancies…"
Raizel sighed. "You are not saying that humans should not exist." That would be silly.
"No," Frankenstein said. No.
"But you do not want to exist at the expense of others." Raizel nodded. "If we do not respect your wills, then we will not respect our own." And it took a strong will and sense of self for someone to live for millions of years without going mad or losing all motivation and going into eternal sleep. "The idea that people's wills and selves do not matter: that is what can corrode the soul and force us to go into eternal sleep before we are lost. Nobles have been tempted to keep you for themselves instead of protecting you so you may live in accordance with your wills not because you are worthless, but because you are priceless."
When Frankenstein was born, Africans were considered intelligent, well-educated and upper-class because the majority of the Africans who lived in Europe were. Then they became valuable labor because they could survive disease and tropical conditions better than any other human population on Earth, between coming from those conditions and having a healthier gene pool.
The change from 'intelligent person' to 'subhuman thing' was blindingly fast… and Frankenstein wished he had been surprised by it, but he grew up in a country that practiced serfdom. Where most of the population was considered of subhuman intelligence and therefore only good as slave labor, 'part of the land' like the game animals in the forest, there for the nobility's benefit, because of their 'bad blood.'
People weren't taught that they were inferior because they were worthless. No, they were taught they were inferior because they were worth something, and other people wanted to take it from them.
It was almost surprising that Cadis Etrama di Raizel was aware of the concept, but nobles weren't stupid, and looking into people's minds and seeing the real reasons they might do terrible things was part of his duty.
"You came to Lukedonia, and demanded that nobles respect the wills of humans." Raizel hesitated, glancing at him, and seemed to think better of saying something. While Regis was quick to praise people, when Frankenstein first visited Lukedonia it was only appropriate to praise someone when they performed better than could be expected of them, and Raizel was most likely worried about the risk of implying he thought little of Frankenstein.
Honestly, poor Master. He was lucky that Frankenstein had stopped taking notes on him as an important case study not long after they met – it was rather in poor taste to do that to one's host. Gejutel and Ragar were fair game – but not Regis, Seira or Rael, when despite their calendar ages and Lukedonia's age of legal adulthood, none of them were anywhere near equivalent to a human eighteen-year-old yet.
"For now, I must be the Noblesse. Once there are more humans like you, perhaps the Previous Lord's wish will come true."
No more need for the Lord to throw away their identity or the Noblesse to throw away their lives.
No more statues in front of the Sanctuary. No more dying young, even though Raizel was older than all of Lukedonia's loyal clan leaders except Gejutel now.
Frankenstein had seen the tiredness in the Previous Lord's eyes, when he said that no matter how he tried to guide the nobles, it didn't work, the Noblesse kept having to kill and die. It was not really a surprise that he was willing to go so far as to try to reboot their society, even entering Eternal Sleep himself. Because this wasn't working, and something had to happen, the nobles had to change, or else they would just keep decaying. And he was the Lord, therefore it was his duty to make a way for nobles to have a better future.
But the real reason it was happening wasn't anything the Previous Lord could control. It was because humanity was tempting and vulnerable, unable to defend itself. Lukedonia was created to try to contain the nobles, but they still had to patrol the human world, because there were always, always criminals, and people who would hide the crimes of their comrades because reporting a brother-in-arms, just for taking a human's blood and giving them power when that was what the humans wanted anyway?
"I know that it is your will, but you are trying to mingle our souls together enough I will use yours instead of mine." Raizel sighed.
Frankenstein smiled in answer. Well, it wasn't like he hadn't known he would be caught. Master had sighed because he knew it was very like Frankenstein and it wasn't like he was going to stop. A pity it wasn't likely to work, for the same reason Raizel couldn't use Ragnarok.
Frankenstein looked out the window himself for a moment. "If we can destroy the Union's monopoly on human enhancement... Deal with the traitors and restore Lukedonia's reputation of strength so the werewolves know they can't conquer humans without being smacked down by nobles." So humanity could grow strong, with no one left working to keep them weak. "If healing and lifespan enhancement can become common knowledge, if…" All the dreams he'd once had.
"Then the next Noblesse will not have to be the Noblesse, as the Previous Lord wished," Raizel said. "The humans need you, Frankenstein. And the nobles need the humans to prosper." So it was Raizel's duty to protect him, and Frankenstein needed to not die.
"My technology can be reinvented without me." Once the Union was no longer there to strangle innovation in the cradle. "Humans need the nobles to get their act together and get out of our way long enough for us to get our act together. Isn't that why Lukedonia exists?" Why Raizel existed. Not that Frankenstein cared what Lukedonia's traditions dictated. Raizel was a person, not a tool. He only tolerated Raizel spending his life as the Noblesse because it was his will; no one was forcing him into it.
Raizel sighed again, and turned to the window, because Frankenstein was a very difficult person and honestly he just gave up. A noble with mind control powers on the level of the Lord's just gave up, faced with the obstinacy of a human who gave him blood.
The flood of warmth was enough to bury the cold dread of knowing his Master's days were numbered. This was why… no, this was only one of the reasons why he adored the strange creature he had found that night.
The bond between them opened, and it would have been perfect, to know that to Raizel, it was simple fact that Frankenstein was every bit as precious and unique and worth a thousand times the trouble he could possibly ever cause… except that it also meant he felt something of how close to death his master was, even though he did his best to hide it.
It meant he felt that Cadis Etrama di Raizel loved him, and the school Frankenstein had built for him, and the children they had taken in. They made him infinitely happy, far beyond the ability of someone from a species with no language instinct, someone who had spent thousands of years speaking to another living soul perhaps every other century, to find words to express his feelings.
Frankenstein had succeeded in giving his master joy.
Therefore, Raizel would die for them. Frankenstein's desire to avert that fate warmed his master's heart, but it was not a desire he could afford to share. The nobles, the humans, the home they had here: they were precious. They must be protected.
So Cadis Etrama di Raizel had to be the Noblesse.
The only noble to ever truly die.