Chapter 328: What do you think?

"They attempted to force Vampiric blood to adapt, to evolve beyond what its natural bloodline would normally allow and they used Neroth’s blood to test their theory and experiment."

"So they did use Neroth’s blood."

Lucian quickly pointed that out.

If there was documented evidence of that then... this could work in their favour.

And Aurelia knew what he was thinking, so she quickly shook her head and—

"Blood."

She pointed it out.

"They used Neroth’s Blood, not his heart. Nowhere in the documents I found have they mentioned Neroth’s Heart. It is as if they were specifically told not to do it."

"Well, Neroth’s Blood comes from his Heart, I don’t think—"

"It is different."

Aurelia shook her head.

"The connection won’t be enough for an official investigation.

They can simply say they gathered Archdemon’s blood during the battle and processed it before using it. There are a few documents explicitly mentioning that."

"What do you mean by processing the blood?"

Lucian asked curiously.

"They destroy the remaining Demonic Will, while preserving the physical and supernatural qualities of the blood."

"You can do that...?"

Lucian seemed surprised. Aurelia shrugged.

"We Vampires specialise in blood, it is our domain. There are quite a few things we can do with it."

Lucian stared at her, Aurelia continued.

"If done correctly, they can theoretically remove Neroth’s existence entirely. What remains would simply be a material and... experimenting on any form of material wasn’t against Vampire Law."

"So that means we cannot prove they kept the Heart?"

"We cannot."

"Do they... even have the Heart?"

Lucian asked curiously.

"The amount of blood they must have used for so many experiments is... huge. You cannot simply gather it, you need to squeeze it from the Heart.

Sure, they can squeeze all of it at once, an Archdemon’s Heart is practically an endless supply of blood, but they couldn’t possibly know how much blood to keep before the experiment."

"What if they stored... hundreds of thousands of litres of blood at the same time?"

"And processed all of that at the same time? It would take too much energy, not to mention there would be the problem of storing the blood. The equipment needed to keep the processed blood would attract attention.

It risks their experiment’s exposure.

They won’t do that."

"But they will say they did exactly that."

"If I request an official investigation, yes."

Aurelia nodded.

Lucian kept looking at her for a few seconds, then he asked her opinion.

"And what do you think?"

"They have the Heart."

Aurelia answered in an instant.

There was no doubt in her voice.

"The experiment couldn’t possibly have lasted as many centuries as it did if they didn’t. You cannot store hundreds of thousands of litres or possibly more of processed Archdemon’s blood for centuries and hide it from Vampires who crave blood.

Ancient Vampires who put themselves into Coffin Sleep thousands of years ago would wake up if they sensed an event like that."

"If that’s true, then their defence sounds weak, does it not? Why don’t you confront them? Or at least talk to someone with Authority about it?

You can ask them how storing this much blood did not get noticed."

"It is like what happens in the human world, if I prosecute formally, a Vampire Court will ensue, it would give them time to destroy the heart and we would not be able to prove anything."

Aurelia shook her head.

"That still won’t answer how they stored blood without anyone knowing."

"Once the Heart is destroyed, they can say anything. They can chalk it up to luck for all they care and there would be no way to prove them wrong.

Vampire Court will make a decision in House Arcelis’s favour and... House Veyr will lose quite a bit of influence.

We cannot afford that, not right now."

"Right..."

Lucian nodded.

He remembered reading about how House Veyr was in decline, sure, it was still strong, but even then, he could see why they would want to avoid causing a scene without proper proof.

Still...

"This isn’t over."

He spoke in a positive tone.

"We have made progress, significant progress."

Aurelia looked at him for a few seconds, then she nodded with a light smile.

"That is correct."

"What happened to the first subjects?"

Lucian asked.

"Most of them died."

She answered.

There wasn’t much change in her expression. The subjects’ deaths did not mean much to her, she had lived far too long and had seen far too many things for her to be affected by written mentions of deaths that happened centuries ago.

"According to the reports, the earliest subjects did show positive results. Their blood improved, showing microscopic improvements.

That made the Arcelis continue their work.

They started experimenting on any Vampires they could find, independent Vampires, criminals, purchased Vampire slaves, people whose disappearance did not matter."

"The same crowd we suspected."

"Of course."

Aurelia nodded.

They couldn’t possibly have used noble Vampires with strong connections as subjects, that would be foolish.

"Some of the subjects died within minutes, others survived the first exposure and deteriorated over days, several became feral. A few actually developed severe physical mutations and even though the ones with these mutations did not survive because the mutations were way out of their hands, it was seen positively.

Demon Blood could be used to change Vampires, they just needed to control the process."

Lucian took a deep breath.

These were... lives that were being mentioned.

Lives that the Arcelis experimented with.

Now, Lucian didn’t have a Hero Syndrome but listening to this and playing it all in his head was definitely... not his favourite.

Still, he needed to know.

He knew there was darkness in this world and he needed to dive into it eventually.

So he took in another deep breath and looked back at Aurelia.

The Vampire saw him and when she sensed he was okay, she continued.

"Arcelis adjusted the process after every failure, dosage, purification, injection methods, recovery intervals, they considered several factors, they experimented with all of them.

It wasn’t a shot in the dark, they were on the right path, at least according to them."

"What about you?"

That was when Lucian asked a strange question.

"What do you think? Were they right?"

And Aurelia...

She remained silent for a while.