Seeing that Mr Welps wasn't getting any better and Fiero hadn't calmed down yet, Jia Hyson glared at the two princes, who were too busy glaring at each other in a very sexually charged manner, before fishing out his mobile phone.
Because he was assigned many responsibilities, he also had many contacts on his phone to help him. Without hesitation, he scrolls down to call Dr Romano, who is one of the vampire school doctors present, and the one that resides in this dormitory.
Due to the problem of having young vampires and teenage humans in the same building, it was considered the more medical help, the better, especially for emergencies. It could be said that the ratio of vampires to humans is much higher in the medical and security staff than in the teaching staff.
"Hello? Yes, sorry to disturb you, doctor, but we have a situation here in the library." Jia Hyson did not hide his voice, completely turning his back to ignore the two princes and survey the injured vampires. "Oh? You heard? Ah, you already have Mrs Lemmings here? That's perfect! Yes, yes, I'll do that immediately. Currently, Fiero will probably need treatment for frost burn, we have two first-year vampires with open wounds and internal trauma, but it's not too serious-"
"Speak for yourself," Edward mutters before Conner elbows him, making him groan in pain. "You fucking bitch, I was talking about your injuries!"
"Oh." Conner blinks and awkwardly scratches the back of his neck, "Thanks."
"Eat shit." Edward rolls his eyes.
"You eat shit!" Conner immediately retorts loudly.
Jia Hyson glares at the pair before focusing back on the voice through the phone. "-ah? What? Sorry, some baby chicks were chirping I didn't quite catch that."
Baby chicks Edward and Conner: ˏ₍•̀ɞ•́₎ˎˎ₍•̀ʚ•́₎ˏ cheep cheep??
"Yes. Yes. No, Mrs Lemmings should be enough here. We also have Prince Silas from Golden Rose and Prince Rigel from Eclipse. Prince Silas will need to be checked over. Not a high priority. Anything else? Probably find and contact someone familiar with how beast abilities work; Fiero still hasn't changed back. Oh, and I recommend Mr Welps keeps his memory for now. He's clearly connected one way or another, it's better he can remember to cooperate with us. Besides, he's almost eligible to find out the truth soon anyway, right?"
After a few more sentences, Dr Romano ended the call and Jia Hyson finally paid attention to the princes again. Turning his head back, he saw three eyes stare back at him. Prince Rigel's silvery eye was giving him an annoyed and aggrieved look, like a spoilt cat who had been ignored, while Prince Silas's black eyes were full of sadness and looked more like a wronged wolf kicked out of his pack. The corner of Jia Hyson's mouth twitches and he spreads his hands innocently, "Look, now neither of you has to bring anyone."
Prince Rigel and Prince Silas: …
Not one to lose face if he can help it, Prince Rigel crosses his arms and snorts, "Well, I suppose this is an acceptable decision, Alaric."
Prince Silas, in contrast, still wanted to sell misery. "Alaric.. I-"
Jia Hyson waves him away, "This is not the time; we still need to do clean up, your highness. It's important to finish things to the end unless we can pass it on to someone else with equal or more suitability for the job."
Ignoring the prince who was shooting him frustrated and yearning glances his way, Jia Hyson tidies up his rumpled clothing to the best of his abilities and strides out of the private room and into the chaotic public library space again. "Everyone," He loudly announces, "The situation has been handled. Please, everyone, come out to the front of the library desk so we can assess the extent of everyone's injuries."
All the students more or less recognised Alaric, a perk of being one of the 'School Emperors'', and given they were all from the same dormitory, they were even more familiar with his voice. Hearing the announcement, everyone obediently obeyed, coming out from their hiding places to surround Alaric.
The human hanging from the lights very impressively swung his body and jumped on a nearby bookcase before using the side of the shelf to shimmy down to the ground with great confidence. Jia Hyson felt immediately attracted. "Nice moves," he compliments with a smile before shyly looking up and down the other student, "Are you in any of the athletics clubs?"
"Ah.. I don't like attending clubs but I do like to dabble in parkour in my free time and I used to do gymnastics in my last school." The student smiles nervously. Everyone 'wow'-ed with admiration. After all, no matter how he played it down, it is evident to all that he was very athletic and in good shape.
Jia Hyson chuckles and tilts his head thoughtfully as he gives the young man a once-over. "Hmm, it shows. You're very impressive~"
The male student blushes, flattered by the attention.
It was at this moment Prince Rigel and Prince Silas walked out of the room, purposely avoiding touching each other like they thought the other carried the plague, and immediately felt speechless. Even though they didn't like each other, their brainwaves at this time were surprisingly more or less in sync.
Fuck!
Prince Rigel: You dare flirt with someone after playing with this prince like this!? Ahhh, I'm going to fucking push you down!
Prince Silas: How could you still have the heart to look at others again? Should I still be doing more so you can see only me? Ah, I really… really can't stand it.
Feeling the intense stares, Jia Hyson clicks his tongue and retracts his ambiguous behaviour into something more professional and severe. He couldn't help but sigh internally. In the next world, he will do his best to just flirt and play around. No need to provoke these possessive types. Thinking of this, he can't help but already look forward to it.
Thankfully Dr Romano and an elderly-looking woman quickly enter the library. They wasted no time with trivial greetings as they rushed to the group of students with superhuman speed. Before the human students could react, Jia Hyson, Prince Silas, Prince Rigel and the other vampiric student had already restrained them. Jia Hyson had grabbed the athletic student from behind, and couldn't help but rub the other's chest. "Heh, you're really my type oh~" He whispers roguishly, "I hope to see you in the future."
"Ah?!" The athletic student wanted to turn around, but the old woman was already in front of him and had covered his eyes with her hand.
"You came to this library and found some gangsters in leopard print had thrashed the place." The old woman firmly says as her hand glows green. Once the light from her hand fades, she lets go, and Jia Hyson feels the weight of the unconscious young man falling onto him. Gently he puts the other down on the floor, knowing the young man would wake up soon.
The others were experiencing the same thing, restraining a student and letting their memories get altered by the elderly woman, Mrs Lemmings. Her power was memory manipulation. However, there was a time limit to the memories she could change, and she could not wipe out the memories altogether. However, this was enough to get her hired into this school, which was very eager to employ various vampires with this sort of skillset.
Mrs Lemmings was originally an Eclipse Coven member; however because of her power, she could only enter the academy if she renounced her coven and chose to join the academy wholeheartedly. In fact, many of the long-term and permanent vampiric staff were the same, making the academy almost an independent coven in itself. This was to try to minimise the politics, favouritism, and discrimination toward the students.
While most vampires would balk at this, there were always reasons why others would be willing to do this. For Mrs Lemmings, it was simply because she had a weak stomach and didn't like all the murders in the Eclipse Coven, and her ability as well was not as useful and appreciated. The Eclipse Coven preferred stronger memory-based abilities. Her ability limitations meant she could only twist the story a little bit which would leave clues, something they like not to have for obvious reasons. Therefore the benefits simply outweighed the disadvantages.
Others were also attracted to the benefits, but there was also a genuine interest in cultivating the younger generation and those who wished to promote human-vampire relations.
Because everything is working smoothly, Jia Hyson trots over to the private room Dr Romano had rushed into. Here he sees him attending to Conner and Edward while occasionally glancing at Fiero, who is still partially trapped in ice. Since he had been struggling futilely to get free for a while, the leopard vampire had quickly grown tired and quiet. After all, leopards are mainly ambush predators that rely on short bursts of energy, so it would make sense that after so much happening that Fiero would be exhausted.
Hearing Jia Hyson enter, the doctor didn't look at him but continued to focus on administering first aid and healing gels to the vampires. At the same time, he began to talk, "I couldn't find another vampire with a beast-type ability on short notice; however, I contacted one of my friends, and they've told me that there's been a drug that affects vampires and makes them temporarily lose one's wits. It's very underground and isn't fully developed, so we've only seen two or three cases now but.."
"But if Fiero has been injected with it, it not only means that we will start to see more of these cases but also that someone related to the drug is in the academy right now." Jia Hyson's face turns solemn. Because he realised something from the doctor's words.
This… is the plot of the second book.
When Jessica Fang enters St Lailah's Academy, the main plot revived around the surrounding tensions between humans and vampires, with vampires going feral and attacking the humans and humans fighting and discriminating against vampires. Later it's discovered the vampires were going feral due to a drug being injected or consumed by them, causing them to lose control and return to a more 'primal' and monstrous state.
At first, the protagonists determine the Eclipse Coven is behind this. However, while the Eclipse Coven advocates against human-vampire diplomacy, they are still firmly pro-vampire and hold more value to preserving and reinstating the greatness of the vampire legacy.
Meaning if they were in charge of this scheme, they would just kill the humans in the academy themselves or take them hostage. There was no benefit to developing a poison that would become a weakness to vampires, nor would producing a drug that made them lose control with minimal benefits be something they were interested in either. Other than possibly as their own secret weapon to use against other vampires in self-defence. But if that was the case, they certainly wouldn't be spreading that around.
They were selfish killers that wanted vampire supremacy, disdaining humans. Still, at the same time, they didn't necessarily hate humans either. Just disliked them intensely and felt they didn't know their place. Not to mention, while their morality was lower than average, if they had reached the point of doing this sort of brain-dead thing so openly, there was no way the Eclipse Coven could still stand so prominently in the vampire society.
Even the Golden Rose Coven did not take any significant actions against them until the third book, where they went off to revive the old vampire god to bring back the era of vampire supremacy. Plus, in total fairness, they really just sacrificed Prince Rigel in that. And, if we think about that, Jia Hyson is confident that this could actually be considered a win all around.
Prince Rigel: '…' I'm suddenly brimming with an inexplicable rage.
Of course, if it was just that, then the build-up in the third book would not be good, so it was written they still needed royal blood from different covens to complete the ritual. But to do this, they just kidnapped those princes to extract some fresh blood for the day, so it wasn't that bad in retrospect. The process, anyway. The goal was pretty bad.
With this logic, it was then found out that humans from certain affluent and political families were the ones using this drug to create havoc and fear in order to justify harming vampires while also trying to enslave and train them to do their own bidding. A very typical 'the good guys were the bad guys in the end' trope.
This sort of plot is relatively cliche in Jia Hyson's original world, but it is still popular to use. Jia Hyson isn't sure about the world the Author God wrote from, but given that the main dislike toward the story revolved around how the author handled a single character, it can be assumed that the overall storytelling was actually received quite well. After all, you can't have a book with bad reviews if no one was attracted enough to the story to review it.
Plus, the world's consciousness wouldn't pick stories without any popularity to reproduce in their world, otherwise there was no point. Of course, Bebe had also explained there was still a pecking order, so the ones who can't afford to snatch away bestsellers, or the younger world consciousness with little connections and experience, usually can only gamble with what they pick, choosing ongoing stories with growing popularity trends.
However, while he admits the story itself is written fairly well, enough that as long as the problematic character choice is removed, he is confident the story can be considered very popular among the target audience, there were still objectively some significant flaws and plot holes in the writing. For example, the mystery behind who developed the drug, how they could achieve this, and the hinted existence of a traitor among the vampires, were all unanswered questions that can only be filled in by the logic provided by the world's consciousness.
If Jia Hyson can find the cause and effect there, it could help give the plot a bit more depth and provide a more well thought out, solid story.
In his opinion, there may be readers who are idiots out there that are only mindlessly consuming the story, but the majority who will read will be enthusiastic and thoughtful. They may not be able to tell exactly how much thought goes into a plot, but they can definitely sense when an author doesn't care enough to think it through. It's like how a hundred drivers wouldn't notice the time and effort when driving on a smoothly paved road, but a thousand will certainly complain once they start driving on a bumpy one.
For Jia Hyson, it is not too difficult to string together various ways to fill in a plot hole as long as he has enough information. And with this knowledge, he can more or less use it to try to determine how the world's consciousness had done it as well. At the very least, it will help give a solid direction for what to look for.
The biggest thing is that the drug, which should only have appeared a few years later, was here now, and the effects seem more or less in line with what was described. This indicates the drug is fairly complete unless Fiero shows any significant discrepancies in the aftermath, which means the drug development is faster than in the original story. As the biggest catalyst, Jia Hyson knew it must have been something he had inadvertently changed or met that caused a butterfly effect to produce this result.
However, Jia Hyson felt that he really had yet to do too much, well, too much that could influence the plot to this extent. As Alaric, he had taken up more duties, straightened up a few crooked areas, and generally helped quite a bit in maintaining law and order.
However, while these actions might stimulate the people behind the drug to try to speed up their experiments, it would hardly help the cause. Drug trials are long processes, and rather than a lack of effort, many of these developments rely on breakthroughs and luck. In fact, rushing can even hurt the process. Therefore it was more likely Jia Hyson had influenced a person and indirectly had done something.
However, this is trickier to pinpoint, not only because of the sheer number of people Jia Hyson has interacted with but also because coincidences may play an even more decisive role here than before, which meant a lot of prediction and guesswork.
For now, it's best to do a tentative process of elimination, removing acquaintances he only chats to. Then, it's good to remove the majority of the younger generation of the Golden Rose Coven, both because they were pretty isolated and had little opportunity to get in touch with any enemy vampires and because they simply did not have enough influence or sway to alter anything of this level of importance. The most suspicious points were the princes, the nobles who were politically against humans and the royal family, and the nobles' spouses.
Of course, while they are suspicious, this suspicion is actually not so much. The covens are not blind and understand that when people marry into another coven, it is impossible to completely sever their relationship with their origins. Therefore there is a series of checks and balances where those that marry must undergo a background check, have their family and friends go through an interview and hold at least three letters of recommendation so they have people to hold accountable for their actions.
While it sounds incredibly strict and rigorous, this was a community with powers and intrigue. Security cameras can be avoided, and hidden abilities can cause catastrophes. They simply couldn't afford to be lax. With these procedures, the chances of problematic vampire identities entering the coven through marriage are much lower. Not to mention, these sorts of secret drug development plots had the scientists practically live in the laboratory for fear they would leak secrets or blow their cover.
To be honest, it's not that Jia Hyson had blind faith in the system, but vampires had lived so long to the point their five generations overlapped all over each other. Under the premise of selfishness alone, many older vampires have generally chosen not to look at short-term profits in favour of long-term planning. They had no intention of just throwing their problems to the next generation because- they were also alive in the next generation! And the generation after!
Of course, that didn't mean there still weren't problems, such as the ingrained biases from their youth having trouble changing as society as a whole redevelops the concepts of morality. Still, at least for these sorts of systems, they were considered archaic but well-founded and well-established. Traitors or vampires with poor psychological quality but high IQ may be quite challenging to find if they're by themselves, but those that form a group are actually relatively easy to pick out, thanks to this. And even now, with an improved understanding of psychology, and a higher appreciation for mental health, the former was also slowly finding it more difficult to hide away.
While it wasn't the only way, probably the easiest way to hide anything large-scale was if you were an essential part of the judicial system itself…
While Jia Hyson's mind was thinking quickly, Doctor Romano, who was injecting a fourth tranquilliser needle into the still struggling and growling Fiero, tsks loudly. "If Garth was sent here as promised, this would be much simpler. Unfortunately, he's still wrapped up in that human experiment problem. Alaric, I hear you're good friends with him. Do you know if they're close to cracking it?"
"Mhmm.. unfortunately, no. But I think the lead has gone cold, so they're close to giving up." Jia Hyson sighs with a trace of irritation and expectation that he didn't even notice he held.
Mr Garth really did want to come to visit him, but in the end, he wasn't a prince, and he wasn't a person with a high enough status or poor enough work ethic to be able to ignore the responsibilities given to him. This is the reality most people, vampires and humans, had to face, and Jia Hyson understood that. Besides, this was a case of human experimentation and other illegal things, but it was a noble reason nonetheless. He wasn't a kind person, but he wasn't completely heartless and selfish to be dissatisfied by this turn of events.
The human experimentation case though.. to bring it up may just be a coincidence but..
Jia Hyson's eyes flash as a name he hadn't thought about in a long time comes to mind.
Could it be… him?
….
"Is that enough?" A handsome young punk with shockingly styled hair, dyed blonde at the front and bloody bright red at the back, glares irritatedly at his arm.
There, a needle was injected into himself, connecting to a pump that was extracting his blood. What was even more alarming was the amount of blood that had been filled in the container, around half a litre already.
"Yes, this will do just fine." Count Vericus nods at the nurse, who quickly begins to pull out the needle and carefully wipe the delinquent looking young man's arm with an alcohol wipe. Soon though, the small wound closed up, already healing in seconds. "Thank you for your help again."
The punk sneers, hopping out of the chair and rubbing his sore arm. Even with vampiric healing, the pain could not disappear so soon. Besides, the amount of blood he lost was the maximum a person could really afford to lose without any major side effects.
It could be said the Count was ruthless but measured, and his thanks were merely for politeness. The teenager didn't know why he bothered. They had long understood each other anyway.
Seeing his blood be carted away, he felt regret and unease for the nth time.
"Speaking of help.." Count Vericus smiles kindly like a doting father. It made the punk have goosebumps. This sort of gentleness is too fake compared to… Anyway, he really doesn't understand how blind his sister is to be seduced by such a man. Even if he was astoundingly handsome, in the younger man's eyes, it can't help but feel greasy. "Even though it was difficult since you've been such a good child, I pulled some connections and got you into St Lailah's Academy despite it being halfway through the year."
The older vampire sighs and shakes his head softly and helplessly, "Even if I admit you're a special case, it doesn't change the fact people will doubt your self-control as a turned vampire. Not to mention you'll be a year younger than everyone else. I'm worried for you." Count Vericus reaches out to the young punk's shoulder dotingly, "To be honest, I don't see what the rush is. With my status as the head of law enforcement, even if you're just a turned vampire, as my young brother-in-law, you are eligible to enter the school next year."
Kylan Laframboise's silver eyes flash red for a second before it immediately recedes. Clicking his tongue and shrugging off the Count's hand like a petulant and rebellious teenager, he walks away. "Don't think too deeply." He says as he steps up the stairs, only turning around after he opens the hidden passage door, light reflecting off his handsome and fiercely beautiful features, "I just want to meet someone."
Jasmine, I'm finally coming.
...
..
Little Theatre:
Kylan: I'm finally back. (,,• w •,,)
Silas: Fuck. ಠ_ಠ
Rigel: Double fuck. ( º言º)
...
Today's MTL story recc is She Quit the Airbag, I believe it's same author as Good Dad System and Good Mother System ,,owo,,. Also The Female Supporting Role Shows Out is another recc, both are strong female lead QTs, some arcs have romance, some don't, and it's all separate MLs unrelated to each other. The Female Supporting Role Shows Out has some arcs properly translated if you want to check but.... the number of ads on that site really sent me into an aneurysm like bruh sometimes they had invisible pop up ads ON THE NEXT CHAPTER BUTTON?? Fucking bullshit (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻
1 day open for server link owo- https://discord.gg/gZhsGvEy
I feel bad for all these sporadic updates so imma occasionally drop the link so you can scold me there ig ah~