The 857th Chapter: How Many Times Have I Told You Ancient Ones Not to Carve All Sorts of Nonsense into Your DNA?!

Charlemagne Morva Giovanni, Grand Duke of the Vampire Blood Dread Clan and an ancient of the Scions of Greed, had been one of Lord Pain's closest friends during the Golden Age.

Yet among the vampire ancients, the Grand Duke had kept a very low profile.

For one thing, the records described Grand Duke Charlemagne as a serious, boring man with few friends and no close lover. For another, according to Lord Pain, Charlemagne had served as an astral explorer in the Eden District during the Golden Age.

He and his people had spent long periods away on assignments in the astral realm, exploring every aspect of it. As a result, they rarely saw their brothers and sisters, which had also left the Blood Dread Clan on somewhat cool terms with the other clans.

This clan produced exceptional hunters. It was said that the reason the Thorn Clan had grown so rapidly over the past two centuries was that the Blood Dread Clan had been sent on a punitive expedition, causing the vampires' natural predators—the assassins—to disappear from their ecosystem.

Grand Duke Babro might have been a bit of a loose cannon, but the hunting instincts he'd displayed in several battles had been enough to astonish Murphy. Especially when paired with the absurd "Lucky Gun" in his hands, the man could easily inflict serious injuries on Gold-rankers despite being only Silver-ranked.

They had an astonishing talent for hunting. Now, that talent had combined with the pirate profession in a strange way, allowing Blood Dread pirates to swiftly claim the top position in the Mistsea ecosystem as soon as they emerged.

Yet the ancient memories of that supposedly serious and boring Blood Dread Grand Duke, Charlemagne, were more explosive than any Murphy had seen before.

They began with a counter-assassination after an