Chapter 642: One with the Matrix

Sam_Ellis can be very transparent in her writing. Most of the decisions she makes are often very obviously made to serve the plot and give Aurelius a way to succeed as can be expected of practically any Author.

Aurelius wasn’t strong enough to simply fight his way through the first trial, so Samantha wrote it so he could progress. And of course, when it came to destroying the Blood, she needed to write in a way for Aurelius to succeed where Viktor, who was stronger and smarter than him, had failed.

The answer lay in Aurelius being a godling who possessed Divine Energy.

Aurelius was stumped on the problem of destroying the Blood but once he mentioned Divine Energy and Conscience just stared back uncomprehending, he realized Viktor may not have actually considered every possible avenue when he was trying to destroy the Blood.

And so, Divine Energy became the foundation on which Aurelius built a destructive spell specialized for undoing the Blood at its very core.

From all that, Caius wondered just how far Viktor’s oversight towards Divine Energy had been. Sure, there was no mortal in the world who had Divine Energy during Viktor’s time but did he really never consider the possibility of Divine Energy someday becoming a little more commonplace?

Granted, he couldn’t be blamed if he never considered it. How was he to know that Aether was scheming something herself and would send her Apostle to this very world? How was he to know that a reader named Kevin would become Caius Von Helsing, find vestiges of errant Divine Energy to turn not just himself but several others into godlings?

Even a genius mind like Viktor’s couldn’t see so far into the future. Certainly not when said mind was always teetering between brilliance and total madness.

Returning his eyes to it, Caius held the Orb of Arcane Scripts with his left hand so he could reach his left hand into the Orb carefully.

As confident as he was that his Divine Energy could protect him from the enchantments that should have made him unqualified to claim the Blood, Caius had to admit this was a situation to which there was no precedent in the original canon.

Unlike Caius, Aurelius never engaged in falsehood regarding the Blood.

What if in the process of reaching into the orb, Caius’s gambit failed and his desire for the Blood became apparent to the enchantments? Things could still go very wrong.

The Orb kept Caius’s fingers out and assessed his mind once again. Paranoid like Viktor who enchanted it, the Orb wanted to be doubly sure that Caius would destroy the Blood.

Caius held still and didn’t breathe. He was aware that neither Athenodora nor Philip were breathing either. Conscience was hyperventilating with his fists clenched in anger at Caius and his own powerlessness to interfere in what was happening.

The assessment ended and Caius’s fingers slipped into the Orb. He let out a breath and smiled.

"STOP THIS!" Conscience yelled as he stepped toward Caius.

Caius ignored him and grabbed the Blood Helix in his thumb and index fingers. He remembered Aurelius described the blood as disgusting— that it roused the worst feelings within him and seemed so against how things should rightly be.

As he felt it for himself though, Caius had to disagree with that description. The Blood filled his head with grand ideas. The power it held, the complexities of its creation. There was so much to learn from it. So much to do with it.

Caius understood why it felt different to him than it did to Aurelius; It was because the Blood was a vampiric artifact— the epitome of the Domain of darkness which was the stark opposite of what Aurelius stood for as an Apostle of Aether’a Divine Light.

Caius pulled the Blood Helix out of the Orb of Arcane Scripts and raised it to eye level.

"Boy! You have no idea what you’re doing!" Conscience said, almost pleading now, "The Blood Matrix—"

"So that’s what it’s actually called," Caius said in a musing tone, "I didn’t know that. It seems... fitting."

"The Blood Matrix is a dangerous tool—" Conscience continued in an insistent tone.

"On whose authority?" Caius asked with a smirk at Conscience.

"On my creator’s," Conscience said.

"And why should I believe him?" Caius asked.

"Because... he made the damn thing?" Conscience said, exasperated that the kid was acting like he lacked common sense and couldn’t understand something so obvious without it being told to him explicitly.

"Yeah, he made it. But he was also mad, wasn’t he?" Caius asked, his eyes back to studying the Blood Matrix.

"My creator was in no better frame of mind than when he decided to seal that Blood away until it could be destroyed," Conscience said.

"So you say. I, however, say he was an unstable man whose madness finally caught up to him right before his moment of triumph. He spent centuries working on this masterpiece of his, only to discard it in his final moments? The one thing that may have cured his madness and given him peace?

Don’t you think it’s all too convenient?" Caius asked.

"I—" Conscience paused, looking stumped for a second.

Caius continued.

"Don’t you think it’s far more likely that the dead that tortured him realized they would be exorcised by the Blood and doubled their efforts to drive Viktor over the edge? Convincing him to burn his very life-force in one last grand and fruitless attempt at maintaining peace and ending suffering?"

"It wasn’t fruitless..." Conscience shook his head.

"It will be once I make this Blood Matrix my own," Caius said gently,

"Viktor lives on through you. You carry his memories, his emotions. You are practically him. And you will now be forced to watch as your life’s work is claimed by one who isn’t you.

Face it, you died for nothing. The dead that tormented you for millennia, won."

"Enough of this nonsense!" Philip said and turned to Conscience, "We need to stop him. Surely, there’s something you can do!"

Conscience didn’t respond. As Caius said, Conscience can’t evolve. He can’t learn and grow. But, as a carrier of Viktor’s emotions, Conscience can have his imitation of a mental state thrown into disarray as was now happening as he thought on Caius’s words.

Was that truly it?

Was his— Viktor’s final hours just a victory lap for the dead?

"Useless," Philip swore and then turned to Athenodora, "Come on, Dora. Help me."

"He’s still protected. There’s nothing I can do," Athenodora said with a shrug and a gesture at the outline of Arcane Scripts still around Caius.

"We can break through it—" Philip insisted.

"If we could, you already would have," Athenodora said.

"But if you helped— really helped..." Philip said and trailed off suggestively with his eyes on Athenodora’s tattooed arms.

"Even if I empty my reservoir, and call on powers you think I have—"

"Powers I know you have," Philip cut in to say.

"— it still won’t work," Athenodora completed her sentence with a light smile.

"We won’t know unless you try," Philip pleaded.

"I know so I don’t see the need to try," Athenodora insisted with a shrug and then looked over at Caius as she let out a sigh,

"He won."

Caius felt her eyes on him but he didn’t glance over at her. Viktor’s enchantments were very thorough but as Caius had proven, they weren’t without exploits. The true might of Athenodora’s magic had never quite been clear in [To Kill A Demon Lord...]. Her battle against Caius’s father, Lucian Von Helsing—in which she died—had been offscreen.

Still, there were enough context clues;

Despite the lack of a Coven and a penchant for traveling alone, none of the nobles ever dreamed of ambushing her. And Caius himself had witnessed her taking down a Vampire Lord, Anton Orlock, and his hundreds of Vampires without a single scratch to her perfect skin.

If there was an exploit that could strip Caius of the Arcane scripts’ protection, Athenodora could likely find it. It was only a question of how weak her curse had made her and how willing she was to actually stop Caius.

So Caius tried not to think about it. Even if Athenodora could stop him, it couldn’t be instantaneous so he had better get a move on with the Blood Matrix.

Caius brought the Blood Helix towards his chest, holding it right above his heart. There was no manual on how to integrate the Blood. And that was why Caius had spent minutes studying the Blood Helix through the Orb.

He knew now it was actually an intuitive process. Once close enough to his heart, the Blood Helix seized the chance for a host. Viktor had contingencies to stop this from happening to himself but Caius did not. Which was fine since he didn’t want to stop it.

The Blood Helix wove through the protective field of the Arcane scripts around Caius’s body, went right through the pores in the fabric of his shirt, and began to dig into his chest.

"Ack!" Caius groaned.

It was like a hundred needles stabbing at his heart. He felt the Blood Helix go from his heart to the vampiric blood circulating in his body. And through the Blood—which for every true vampire holds the essence of their magical and physical might—the Blood Matrix became one with Caius’s very essence as a being.

As the stabbing ache of needles ended, Caius could feel himself become one with the Blood Matrix. He also felt the entire dimension tremble at the same time that the outline of Arcane scripts vanished from around him. Leaving him vulnerable.

"Alright, you fucker," Philip growled, "I’ll just rip it out of you!"

Before Philip’s words had even left his lips, he had crossed the space between himself and Caius and thrust out his clawed hand, ripping a hole right through Caius’s chest and out his back, dislodging his heart from his body.