In the haunting realm of Romania, a mysterious Victorian city wrapped in mist cradles an ancient castle. The vast and somber fortress, marked by subtle signs of decay, bore witness to the relentless passage of time.
Within this castle, Marius Tepes - fifth candidate to the throne, stepped foot inside the grand throne room. His perfectly tailored suit the color of pitch absorbed all light, contrasting sharply with his unnaturally pale skin. Flawless white gloves adorned his hand, lending an air of formality, while bewitching blonde hair and a face delicate as a doll's made the origins of his lineage unmistakable.
With the grace of a Prince, he strode across the floor adorned in a thick red carpet intricately threaded in shimmering gold. This grandiose path began at the door's entry, stretching the entirety of its length to the far end of the room. Dominating the highest tier of the room, the majestic throne stood as a regal sentinel.
Approaching the throne, he raised his head and looked at the figure seated on it—a young man with blonde hair resting on his shoulders. Piercing red eyes exuded a readiness to feast on blood, and his fangs, perfectly befitting his status, could bite into his enemy cleanly. Yet, they possessed an alluring and bewitching quality.
The foolish king, King Tepes. Biologically his father, Yet he refused to acknowledge that title. He did not deserve that title.
"How can I help you, your highness?" Marius asked, performing a small, respectful bow.
"Marius, I am entrusting a crucial mission to you. One that is key to our faction's victory," he said, a confident smile forming on his lips. His voice projecting with authority down the entire hallway.
He already knew what the next words were going to be. Yet, he found it humorous, how in the story, he was betrayed by the son he put his faith into. And in the end, he had to join the hand of the Carmilla faction—his sworn enemies— just to fight back against his own scheme that he had failed to make true. This clown was king? He didn't deserve that seat; someone better did.
"I am entrusting you with a mission to find a way to erase the weakness of the vampires through the Sephirot Grail and empower our troops through the longinus. Once we become true immortals, we will have nothing to fear against the Carmilla faction." His eyes glistened with greed as he talked about his "master" plan, but having a Longinus amongst your army does wonders to the mind of the people around you.
As he listened to the speech with a smiling face on the surface, disgust was spinning inside his stomach; he felt repulsion just hearing his words. Not once did he mention the name of his daughter, he only talked about the holy grail. Did his daughter mean nothing to him? Being a foolish king was one thing, but being a horrible father was the lowest of lows.
"You will see results soon, your highness." Raising his head he stared straight towards the clown. In terms of appearance, he hated to admit it but he did look like him.
He wondered how his meeting with Valerie would go.
He hadn't even met Valerie yet despite his awakening in this world five months ago. He had got tied up with work, training, research and much more to spare time towards his biological sister. He never even had a sibling in his past life so he didn't know what a good brother looked like. So there was no point in playing the character of one.
"If that's all, then I would like to go meet Valerie and start with my research. I have papers I need to finish too." Looking at the watch on his left wrist, he frowned. He had wasted too much time here.
The King looked a bit stumped before he dismissed him from the throne room with a hand wave. While Marius didn't mind keeping up pleasantries he absolutely hated wasting time, one second earlier to the hospial can save someone's life. That was how significant time was even if not used to by everyone to the same level.
Meeting Valerie now and conducting research experiments with her would produce faster growth than procrastinating it till later. But if research with Valerie on her sacred gear didn't go well he may as well take her sacred gear as a back up plan. She wouldn't die from losing one of the sacred gears when she had two more. Though he would only do that as a backup plan, the sacred gear is still rightfully hers if she proves that she can wield its powers well.
Her powers would help him in creating a new king instead of that fool. "There is no way I'm becoming the king after all," he muttered to himself, that'd be more trouble than it's worth.
Heading towards Valerie's chamber, he noticed she was isolated from the others quite a bit, butut still close enough to the king for him to be alerted if something were to happen to her. They didn't want the holy grail's influence of corrupting people to spread, though he was sure it couldn't spread either way.
As he arrived, he knocked on the door and waited for a response. Though if he wanted to, he could open it without anyone caring, he had a higher status than her.
"Wait a moment please," a soft voice called out from beyond the door. He could hear the sound of cupboards and drawers being closed quickly, and the sound of running through the room back and forth.
Was her room that messy, or was she hiding something?
Just as he was getting lost in his thoughts, the door burst open with a tremendous speed.. . It slammed into his head, knocking him back, and he rubbed his forehead as he felt a dull pain in his head. He forgot to take a step back from the door after knocking, too busy daydreaming to react.
She looked up at Marius, as his crimson eyes glared at her, she had a confused look before changing to a fearful expression, "I'm so sorry, are you alright Lord Marius?" An expression full of fear plastered her face. her pale skin becoming paler.
Lord Marius? Well he didn't expect to be called something like a brother either.
"I'm fine, that was my fault so do not worry." A magic circle appeared on his forehead quickly before disappearing, the small headache disappeared already.
Valerie's attention was drawn on to the magic circle, it looked like she forgot her fear already. Her eyes lighted the moment she had seen the magic circle, like she had seen one of her dreams come to fruition.
"Have you never seen magic?" Marius raised his eyebrow at her childlike reaction.
"Well I'm not allowed to go learn about magic. They said his highness has forbidden me from using it because he worries that I won't be able to handle it." Valerie's smile fell as she explained the so called "reason" for not being able to learn one of the things she desired.
Worried that she wouldn't be able to handle it? Or worried that the girl who's been continuously prejudiced against would try to take revenge if she knew how to use magic. Well he was going to teach Valerie magic whether he liked it or not, it was one of his plans either way.
"Instead of standing out here can I come in?" Marius politely asked, standing up asexplaining why he was here was going to take a while.
"Of course you can." She opened the door fully allowing him to see the interior of her room.
There were only four things in her room. A wooden cupboard, drawer, wooden desk with a chair and a bed that looked like it was meant for royals. It was king sized and had four soft pillows on it, the headboard had gold ornaments in it and there was even a footboard at the side of her bed. And with only those four things in the room there was still a massive amount of space left, as hollowness and emptiness could be felt from the room. There was no life in here.
The bed was normal for a noble, yet the others did not meet up to the standard of a regular noble. Was it because she's a half vampire? Well it was still a good bedroom for the average human, it was almost as good as his past life room.
"You can sit on my bed, the chair is not that comfortable. I don't have any snacks to serve you, sorry." A bright crimson flush formed on her face, her embarrassment was eating at her.
Vampires couldn't blush but half vampires could and when they did it stood out. And she looked quite cute, panicking with that red face.
She took a seat on the chair while he sat on her bed. He felt like he should have been sitting in the chair but it would be hard to convince her to, and it wasn't worth the effort.
"Do you know why I'm here?"
He'd rather get straight to the point than dance around and waste time. It would be faster and save her from the embarrassment she's feeling from being an inadequate host. Though she wouldn't be like this if she hadn't been convinced of her status.
"Are you doing my daily assessment today?" She said with a tense tone, while clutching the hem of her skirt.
"Daily assessment? What daily assessments?"
"The daily assessment the researchers his highness sends here. They check on my mental state so the grail does not corrode my mind too much. The tests are a bit uncomfortable.. but I don't hate them, I'm not say-"
"You won't be having any daily assessments from now on," he cut her off and declared with a strong tone.
Why was he getting so worked up? But making a child do tests that she's nervous off everyday, he could see the fear and anxiety she was hiding from him. These tests they were making her do, he'd definitely investigate them later. Whatever it was, he could tell a child should never go through that.
"Really?" Valerie's eyes widened and she asked while barely containing her excitement.
"Uh, yeah," he answered while rubbing the back of his neck.
He didn't really know how to handle a child's excitement. Guilt swelled up a little inside him for not knowing what to do, he wasn't a good brother was he. Then again he could never handle children after a certain point in his past life.
With a smile blooming on her face and much more comfortably she asked,"Why are you here then?"
"His highness has entrusted me in training you. He says you will be a great addition to our faction."
Huh, that wasn't what he was supposed to say. But it naturally rolled off his tongue, he couldn't tell her that he was told to research how to make her a super weapon. That'd be too cruel. So he had lied without realising it.
"Really?!" She jumped up from her seat. "So can I learn magic just like you and the other nobles?!"
Marius nodded his head and said, "Of course you can."
Valerie grinned from ear to ear before staring at Marius' face for a bit. Was there something wrong with his face?
"When you smile like that you don't seem so cold, Lord Marius."
He was smiling? He wondered why, he didn't have much of a reason to smile after all. But smiling from time to time was good for his mind. But something did bother him.
"Thank you but drop the Lord. You can call me Marius."
Being called Lord Marius by the person who was meant to be his sister gave off a weird feeling. It felt lonely in a way he couldn't explain.
"I can't do such a thing. You have a higher status than me," She adamantly refused with a frown, was status embedded into her mind. So would she refer to her family by their status?
He wondered what they had taught her to condition her like that. She would probably refuse so there was no point in insisting, people's values don't change quickly. It's better to settle for a middle ground.
"To you I'm not Lord Marius anymore. It's Mr Marius since I'm your teacher first," he explained with a smug smile, finding loopholes in people's reasoning always felt good.
"Well that's true…" she softly said to herself, pondering it for a moment before responding," I understand. I look forward to the lessons Mr Marius."
Mr Marius didn't sound any better either. But he would take it over Lord anyday. Lord just felt too weird from someone blood related.
"Mr Marius has a nice ringtone to it, don't you agree?"
Marius chuckled. "Yeah, it does."
No it does not.
"So…what are we going to do for my training?"
Marius stood up, and then smiled. "Let's go to the training ground, we will begin immediately when we get there."
They began making their way to the training grounds, with saidcastle training ground being a three minute walk from Valerie's room. It gave him enough time to consider some things.
So far their meeting had gone fairly successfully but he did make a few notes on something he needed to check. Number one, what she was trying to hide from him. Number two, the assessments she had been regularly taking. Number three, whether she was speaking to him at times or not. Number four, investigate the sounds she hears from the grail
She could hear voices from the grail and talk to them, sometimes when she talked to him it felt like she was talking to someone else. And her mood was quickly shifting throughout this whole conversation more than he had expected, the souls she's hearing from talking to the grail may be the source of that.
Maybe the answer to that in the DxD ln? He had never read the series nor watched it, the only thing he could remember was how his wife used to complain the series was absolutely shit. But she was the type of person to fully read a series, and then confidently say she hates it, so she would probably do better than him if she was here right now. All his meta knowledge was second hand and from complaints about different arcs, and sometimes even plot holes, so it was random and sparse. Someone who had watched the anime would probably know more than him. The only story arcs he knew in some detail were the vampire, Kokabiel and the Azazel cup. He didn't even know the reason the vampire and Azazel cup arc had started, something about a goofy old man trying to revive something. And the Azazel cup just sounded like the average shounen tournament arc.
Anyway they had already made it to the entrance of the training ground.
"What's this?" Valerie asked, looking at the entrance of the training ground.
Marius frowned. "Magical technology, I guess they never told you huh."
The gates were double doors that had no handle, they were pure white in colour. But the handle was the ID scanner, being next to the door. Placing his hand on the it, he could feel it absorbing a tiny amount of his mana before the scanner turned green.
This technology was pretty new, after all it was his decision to incorporate it. Of course he was met with resistance from the traditionalist but implementing magical technology had helped them way more then they could complain. King Tepes decided to entrust him with the research and development of Tepes faction after his research produced results, now he wouldn't hear a word of complaint from them.
"After this I'll have to make a revaluation of what your education was like, it's been pretty disappointing so far," Marius said with disappointment, a small sigh escaped from his mouth.
Valerie flinched."I'm sorry "
It wasn't her fault, either. What the hell were they thinking raising a longinus user without training or proper education for several years. This whole faction was filled with fools, if they hadn't let their fear and prejudices of a half vampire wielding a longinus stop them from being logical they would be able to wipe out the Carmilla faction easily.
Either way he would change that.
Stepping into the training ground, he looked at the empty space, it was a room that was pure white. The floor was white, the ceiling and the rooftop too. Inside this room there was nothing but white, even the doors when viewed from the inside were white. But the size of the room from the outside didn't match the inside, from the outside it looked like a warehouse while from the inside it was three times the size of a football pitch.
Valerie's eyes widened as she glanced around the room. "Spatial magic?"
He nodded, spatial magic was truly a wonderful thing.
But he was slightly disappointed in her too.
Countless sharp spearheads emerged from Valerie's shadow faster than she could perceive and stabbed her in her arm. She didn't cry out but merely bit her lip as her arm began to bleed, and kneeled down to the floor.
So she wouldn't cry out when she was in pain? Maybe those experiments had raised her pain tolerance.
"I said from before we entered that training immediately begins when we enter, did you forget?
"My apologies," she weakly said as she stood back up.
A faint glow appeared from her before a golden cup with ornate design appeared around her. It floated around on the right of her body before emitting a faint light, he saw the wound from his attack close up instantly.
She could have waited for it to heal but her regeneration abilities weren't as good as a regular vampire. Usually an injury like that would heal rather quickly for a vampire but there were also cases such as him where his healing magic activated faster.
"Do you know what's your mistake?"
"Um I shouldn't let my guard down against vampires since they can manipulate my shadow?" Valerie asked with slight hesitancy.
"Huh, you're a quick learner."Marius said with a smile. "This will make things a lot easier, to pass all you have to is hit me once."
Differences existed between vampires and humans but it wasn't as if dhamphirs didn't have the same abilities. They had the same abilities as a vampire to a lesser extent, but it didn't matter. If they trained hard enough their abilities could surpass vampires anyday.
So it was better to make her use those abilities like her life depended on it.
A magic circle appeared around them before disappearing. He then closed the gap between them in an instant, no matter what she did she wouldn't be able to react to his attacks. And taking an attack like this to the head would probably knock her out in an instant.
The power difference between a high-class vampire, magically boosted, and a mid-class dhampir, who's been in shelter, made it almost impossible for her to do anything here. Even though he had used a magic seal to suppress some of his powers, she still wouldn't be able to handle it.
But before the fist landed on her, Valerie's body turned into fog. The fog then spread out through the whole room before concentrating in one area. It materialized again into Valerie, but she looked quite a bit taken aback.
She was better at adapting than he thought? Her dematerialisation speed was fast but her materialization speed was quite slow. He could have taken the opportunity to fire a magic attack as she materialized from the fog.
But he wasn't going to be too harsh for the first time, he would use twenty five percent of his powers. Her fog manipulation was alright, he expected it to be worse since she wasn't much of a fighter.
"Why don't you go on the offensive?" Marius asked with a frown.
A mental problem with hurting people?
"The power difference is too big, and you can react to everything I do faster. Wasting energy won't help me," Valerie answered.
That was a good idea. But at the same time she ignored that sacred gear of hers. Her base power as a vampire was middle class but he reckoned that she would be high class as she grew older even if she didn't train. But with the sephirot grail she should be able to keep up with a high class vampire such as himself with ease.
He would have to force her to go on the attack then.
He floated in the air using flight magic, one of his arms transforming into a spider leg before spewing out several webs at Valerie's location. As his webs reached Valerie, she managed to barely dodge them by a hair's width.. Once it had landed on the floor it began to melt. The melting ability would definitely be dangerous here.
Honestly he was a bit shocked at how diverse the subset of abilities vampires are. Creating fog, manipulating shadows, being able to breed insects and bats or turn part of your body into one or fully become one. Every plant or animal he handled had a grotesque form for some reason, and maybe it was vampire DNA that made the abilities of the insect he breed different. But it was just a stereotype that he could turn only into a bat, he could also turn into a giant spider if he felt like it.
He had more energy than her and could keep going way longer than her. The only way for her to hit him while he was floating this high is for her to go on the offensive.
Valerie's grail radiated a luminous glow, summoning forth a large white rabbit bedecked in a top hat and a suit. Upright on its hind legs, the rabbit fixed Marius with an intent gaze, a subtle but palpable air of mystique emanating from its poised stature. Beside it, a petite brown fur ball emerged, perfectly rounded and surprisingly soft to the touch, harbored yellow eyes that hinted at an uncanny intelligence.
A weird choice of demons to create, but he was fascinated by what abilities it had. Demons were different from devils, they were more monster-like and evil. But there was something unique about demons, each demon had a strange and unique ability.
A number of bats also spawned from Valerie's hands, so she was going to create bats instead of turning into one?
The rabbit bounced from the ground all the way to him, closing the gap in an instant before launching a kick at him.
Dashing a web at the rabbit it twisted it's body in mid air before using one of the bats as a launch pad to propel itself even higher. Smart, he had to admit.
The rabbit kicked at him but he raided his spider claw blocking the attack. Weak, was his thought as it only had the power of a low class.
The neck on his hair rose as his instinct screamed at him to move. But before he could listen to it the rabbit swelled up like it was a baloon being pumped up before violently exploding with it's organ dashing everywhere, the explosion size was comparable to a missle.
The smoke blinded his vision and all he could see was ashes. His body had several 3rd degree burns, and his right arm was broken. The barrier he made didn't cover him in time, but it did protect him slightly.
So the rabbit had used it's life force to do the damage of a high class attack?
Several green magic circles with ancient romanian letters appeared around him. It took him only a few minutes to patch himself up, but his healing magic didn't restore his stamina. Something he'd have a fix.
The smoke disappeared and he saw Valerie on the floor still, with a few bats in the air that weren't close to the explosion.
"Not a scratch?!" Valerie exclaimed with her mouth agape.
Well she didn't see his healing from the initial attack. But either way he doesn't know if Valerie was smart for pulling off that attack or if he was an idiot for underestimating her too much.
He didn't think she'd have it in her to create an animal that'd blow itself up. She wasn't so kind as she appeared.
He wanted to see how much more she had up her sleeves.
"Is that it?"
"That was my best attempt," she said as she frowned.
Maybe he had been expecting too much. She wasn't a combat genius from a shounen manga or something. Either way she did good.
His spider claw reverted back to his hand and he had descended down from the sky. Landing on the floor he looked at the state of his clothes, it was a mess. His upper body was completely bare, while the only thing remaining was his trousers with slight rips.
He never bothered to put any good magic enhancement on his clothes since these weren't his combat clothes.
He scanned his surroundings as he noticed something odd, where was-
"Got you!" a voice called out from behind him before a punch landed on his head.
Falling onto the floor, he laid down on the ground. He was stumped .
Valerie was over him with a cheeky grin, he looked across the room but there another Valerie stood. The most odd thing was that there was two holy grails. Two holy grails?
No, that holy grail was.
"Damn, I feel like an idiot," he said before letting out a loud chuckle.
His little sister was a combat genius, he had been had twice in the short time span. There was no excuse he had like using fifty percent of his power, she was doing combat for the first time as well without any prior training experience.
"I got scared, you know? How do you survive an explosion like that with no damage?" Valerie frowned whilst sitting down on the floor beside him.
"Trade secret," Marius answered with a sly smile.
"No fair but don't you think my master plan was amazing." Valerie smiled with a proud look.
"Was the first plan meant to fail?"
"No, I really thought that the demon exploding would kill you. But I made a back up plan just in case. I'll proudly explain," Valerie said.
No he had already gotten how it happened but this seemed to make her more confident and loosen up. So he would just let her.
"When the smoke explosion happened I used the grail to create another me. Then I used that demon to take the appearance of my grail. And I put my holy grail away and disguised myself with the preexisting bats I made. If the first plan failed I still had the second plan."
Well…her first plan did succeed. But she didn't see him using healing magic, well he wouldn't tell her.
Though that was also interesting to find out. Even if her grail disappeared any creation she had made with her grail would not disappear. For a moment he had thought she found out about the other two grails inside her body.
So she had a gift for combat and was good at planning. She hadn't even learned magic yet. He was excited to see how much more she could do.
Marius stood up. "Let's get out of here. I need a change of clothes."
Valerie followed him as he walked out of the training ground. "Where are we going now?"
"To my research laboratory."
He needed to record Valerie's development. What were her strong points, flaws, areas of improvements and much more. He also needed to write a letter back to his master.
He smiled."You'll see something interesting there."