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After I ate that jerk, I obtained his memories easily. And what I learned from him was a big plot twist, the likes you could have never seen coming. Actually, I already knew a bit after I ate the aristocrats of Affnaria, but still, this just opened up more. There are a bunch of Vampires working in the shadows of these Duchies, and even the entire Kingdom, and probably many other Kingdoms. They're a remnant of the Demon King's army that separated from him after he was defeated, and they intend to control the society of humans with their might, resources, and knowledge. And they had been slowly colluding more and more, even with other aristocrats.
They had taken over the criminal organizations and even slowly controlled the Kingdom's underworld while manipulating the aristocrats. I don't know the exact names, aside from a few crucial ones I will not get to see in a while, so it is absolutely useless to talk about them because anyone would get bored of hearing about characters that won't appear soon! And… well, this one fella was part of their little group of idiots. I don't know what to think about Vampires.
In a way, they're doing this to somewhat avenge the Demon King, but they had corrupted themselves and are also going way too far, such as enslaving other demi-human races and even Majin such as Goblins. I suppose that even between the Majin Races, which includes Vampires and Goblins, there is racism. I should speak more about this with Lucifer. He should know a lot about this.
Anyways, this guy was being contracted to make these potions and had already sold a bunch of them to multiple places. They were being used as a new weapon to make the soldiers of each duchy stronger. The duchies prepared for a future confrontation between duchies, which was happening thanks to the manipulation of the Vampires, making the governors of each duchy warier of their own siblings.
Wow, this is just conspiracy after conspiracy. It has NO END. Even with all the memories of this idiot, I bet I am barely scraping the surface… damn. What is the ultimate goal of the Vampires? World domination? To become the top race in the world? I guess so? They just hate everyone and their mother in Midgard, even themselves. This guy was treated pretty unfairly by his own fellows, so I guess Vampires are the ultimate asshole race.
Usually, they call Elves the ultimate assholes, but they seem pretty chill, at least in this continent named Midgard, which is predominantly dominated by humans. But there are also other races mixed in due to its good conditions compared to the other Continents based on Norse Mythology's Realms. Maybe the elves of Niflheim are assholes?
Anyways, Emeraldine is a cutie that just deserves love, so I doubt they're as bad as they are portrayed in fiction. I noticed something… This world is pretty good at breaking tropes. I mean, it already broke the trope of goblins being a barbarian rapist race… and in the end, the true barbarian rapist was the humans all along. How interesting.
"Are you okay? Don't tell me you're sad about his death," Lucifer asked.
"Eh? Ah… No, I was impacted by the amount of info I learned by eating him and getting his memories… there's a lot of crap to take in now. I don't know if I will be capable of taking all of this head-on. There's just… Did you know that Vampires are super assholes?" I asked.
"Vampires? Assholes? What? I don't remember the Vampires being assholes. They were an honorable race that held their own families and were ruled by Progenitors. They were loyal to the Demon King and powerful warriors that protected the Kingdom… But I guess something might have happened to them after the Demon King died… I died too, so I couldn't truly tell," Lucifer gave me context like always.
"I see. Well, let's just get going for now. No point pondering on it right now," I muttered.
"Wait, there's something left to do, right?" Lucifer asked.
"Master! Master! This!"
Partner pointed me towards a glowing black orb above an altar. Oh right, the entrance of this guy's secret lab. He left the slaves inside working forever. I guess he was going to let them starve to death inside there? We might as well rush inside and save them.
"The way to open this thing is by infusing death attribute mana, which is like the key. It is so rare that not many can open this, which I guess is a good method of defense, but sadly for the vampire, I have the attribute," I muttered before touching the orb.
Suddenly a large door in the wall opened, which led downstairs into an underground dungeon-like building. We moved downstairs at a rapid pace as we found an army of skeletons greeting us. Indeed, he left them here to make sure the slaves would work until they dropped dead… What an asshole.
"Let's go, just kill them all!" I shouted as Lucifer and Partner began to massacre the skeletons without any problem.
They were all between F and E Rank, so they were nothing against us, but against ordinary people, they can quite easily kill them without much effort. So they're effective guardians to prevent any slaves from going rabid.
CLASH! BOOM! CRASH! SLASH!
We slashed through the entire army of skeletons, blowing off their skulls and splattering their bones all over the ground. And one by one, they all fell to their ultimate demise. When we were done with, we found the slaves cornered in the room, trembling in fear as they noticed our presences. I guess we looked scary, as we exuded a pretty strong death-attribute presence. We looked at them with our glowing, bloodshot eyes as I extended my dark and phantasmal hand.
"You will be fine now," I said.
Almost everyone had a heart attack as soon as they heard my spectral voice.
"GYYYAAAAHHHH!"
Many of them fell unconscious right away, and a few died on the spot.
But don't worry, I grabbed their souls in time and stuck them back into their bodies. Ah, how nice the benefits are of being a death mage.
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