Loot

As Edward finished speaking, the two vampires turned to ashes, leaving behind only scattered clothes, shoes, and other odds and ends on the ground. Edward hurriedly switched off the Ultraviolet Lamp. He didn't dare expose himself to such intense ultraviolet light for too long; he was afraid he'd get skin cancer.

As for why he'd said all that before the two vampires died, it wasn't because he cared about "user experience." He'd just been holding it in. As someone who'd crossed over from another world, he understood all too well the saying "the villain dies from talking too much." He also understood how those villains felt. How miserable was it to have a secret you couldn't tell anyone, bottled up inside? What was wrong with telling a few guys who were about to die? Wasn't it better to let them die knowing the truth? As for whether Edward had been showing off, he firmly denied it. Just pretend he meant it. He believed it himself, anyway.

Back to the matter at hand, Edward calmly walked over. The bow tie that had just turned into a collar guard returned to its original shape. He couldn't help marveling at how useful an Alchemist's Pocket Watch was. Thanks to its amplification, he could now shape things over a small area without using a Transmutation Circle.

He skillfully took a pair of Long Tweezers out of his Spatial Ring and picked up the clothes on the ground, giving them a shake. A Pocket Watch, a ring, and other men's accessories fell out, along with a few gold coins. He put the valuables in a small bag, ready to place it in his Spatial Ring. But no matter what he tried, he couldn't get it inside. A thought struck him, and he took one ring out of the bag.

This time, the bag went into the Spatial Ring without a hitch. Edward held the ring he'd taken out separately with the tweezers and examined it closely before exclaiming,

"I thought these so-called Vampire Counts were all penniless. Turns out they had everything right here. Now that's the kind of drop rate you'd expect from an elite monster!"

He carefully wrapped the Spatial Ring the vampires had left behind in Oil Paper and put it in his pocket. Then he gathered the vampires' clothes into another large bag, pushed open the shop door, and stepped outside.

He didn't go far, just stood by the entrance. With practiced ease, he took a Large Iron Bucket, marked with soot and scorch marks, out of his Spatial Ring and put the clothes inside. He poured in some fat he'd rendered himself, took out a Lighter, and set it alight. The flames illuminated the dark street. A guard on the city wall spotted the fire and glanced over, but assumed a resident was burning rubbish and paid it no further attention.

Just then, a skinny young man timidly emerged from the shadows and tentatively called out,

"Master Smith?"

"Ah, you're Harry's cousin, Ro... what was it again?" Edward recognized him.

"It's Lobby. Lobby Delton," the young man said carefully.

"Don't be so formal. You're Harry's brother, so you're my friend. Did you know those two guys just now?" Edward asked.

"They're vampires from Transylvania. My whole family escaped from Transylvania as blood slaves. They recognized me as soon as they arrived in White Eagle City..." Lobby explained what had happened.

"Did they do anything to you?" Edward asked after hearing him out.

"N-no... These vampires treat us like herders treat livestock. They wouldn't kill us unless they had to. They just draw some of our blood from time to time... Sir, you won't blame me, will you?" Lobby asked nervously.

"Blame you? What for? I told you not to be so formal. I think we're about the same age, so just call me Edward. If any more guys like those show up, bring them straight to me. If you can let me know ahead of time, we can agree on a code word so I'll be prepared."

Edward was starting to get hooked on killing monsters and taking their loot. He'd gone a bit overboard showing off just now and killed the two vampires too easily. They would've made excellent experimental subjects; capturing them for long-term experiments would've been the best choice. Edward was already beginning to regret it.

Edward sent the terrified Lobby on his way and told him to hurry home and let his family know he was safe. While the contents of the bucket burned, he repaired the shattered Glass Door with alchemy. Once the flames in the bucket had died out, he poured the ashes onto the dirt beside the flagstone road. The grass there ought to grow more lushly next spring.

He pulled down the rolling shutter and went back into the shop, where he found some ashes still scattered on the floor. He suddenly remembered that vampire ashes were excellent potion ingredients. Carefully, he collected them in a Test Tube, thinking that his potion-making skills weren't very good. He'd ask Alice's mother, the Great Mage Lady Kaydelin, whether she'd buy them another day.

At last, he used a Cleaning Spell to clean the Alchemy Shop, then turned and headed home in the Backyard. Now, there was a problem: the night was young, and he wasn't sleepy. What should he do next? Obviously, he had to go through the Spoils of War.

Edward entered the underground alchemy laboratory and first tossed the small bag of gold coins, gold watches, and other valuables into the Disinfectant he'd prepared. Then he carefully took out the Spatial Ring.

He wiped the ring with Alcohol. This was mainly for his own peace of mind. He thought the vampires were filthy because they stank all over, but according to the books, vampires were actually supernatural beings who cared quite a bit about cleanliness. The stench came from their body odor. Whether they carried bacteria or viruses harmful to humans was another matter.

The books said that anyone bitten by a vampire would turn into a Walking Corpse controlled by the vampire, unless the vampire had bitten them as part of the so-called "Embrace," which was done for the sake of reproduction. So Edward was extremely cautious. Vampires drew blood from families like Lobby's—the so-called "blood slaves"—with Syringes; they didn't bite them. Incidentally, the world's first syringe had actually been invented by vampires. They hadn't invented it for injecting things, but for drawing blood. Well, he'd just learned another useless fact.

Edward tried extending his Mental Power into the ring, and it worked without a hitch. He could see everything inside. As expected, it had no anti-theft measures.

In his Previous Life, he'd read all those stories about Spatial Rings and storage artifacts that required a drop of blood to claim them, or needed the owner's spiritual imprint erased with Divine Sense before anyone else could use them. He'd always wondered: did those people think Magic Arrays were like computer programs, where you could just add a user account, DNA lock, and automatic family recognition? Did you have to hack an account or brute-force the lock just to steal one? If those Mages could do all that, they'd have ushered in the age of the internet already!

So in this life, rings with those functions were all made by Great Magisters and were near-Sub-Divine Artifacts. Only the great Families could afford them. Vampires were supernatural beings who naturally knew some magic, so they had no trouble using rings meant for Casters. That saved Edward quite a bit of trouble.

The Spatial Ring itself was the greatest prize. It had a capacity of sixty cubic meters, twice the size of the one Edward wore. Though it was still considered a medium-sized Spatial Ring, its price was several times higher.

He took the items out of the Spatial Ring. First came some gold coins. Counting those with the ones he'd tossed into the Disinfectant earlier, there were about two or three hundred. They were Gold Francs from the Franz Empire, worth a little less than Ailande's Gold Pounds, or roughly four hundred Golden Eagle Coins. Edward tossed them all into the Disinfectant to soak. Next came a good number of Magic Crystals and Magic Gems. These were the "hard currency" of this world, worth about two thousand Golden Eagle Coins. Edward was overjoyed. He thought, "Murder and arson really do make a fortune!" But he wasn't some ruthless criminal. Those two had walked right into his path, and they weren't human, so he felt no guilt at all about killing them. With this money, he could go back to living comfortably as a shut-in.

Incidentally, Magic Crystals and Magic Gems in this world could store Magic Power and be reused, like rechargeable batteries in Edward's Previous Life. According to his research, the Magic Power in this world was quite interesting: it could remain stored in crystalline substances for a long time, though different crystals stored different amounts. Once Magic Power entered a crystal, it stayed stable. It could only be drawn out or infused by guiding it with Mental Power.

Even more interestingly, the crystals and gemstones from Edward's Previous Life all had corresponding Magic Crystals and Magic Gems in this world. And the more expensive a gemstone had been in his Previous Life, the more Magic Power it could store. Diamonds held the most, followed by rubies and sapphires, and then various kinds of crystal.

Edward had once experimented with making Copper(II) sulfate pentahydrate crystals, thinking he'd found a shortcut to fortune. As it turned out, the stuff could store pitifully little Magic Power; it took about a kilogram to store one standard unit of Magic Power. What was one standard unit? Edward had defined it himself: the amount of Magic Power required to cast one standard Zero-Level Trick, the Cleaning Spell. Could you imagine a Magic Apprentice fighting while carrying dozens of kilograms of copper sulfate crystals? The sight was too awful to contemplate...

Some might ask: if Edward could make glass, wasn't glass a crystal? Actually, no. If you don't believe it, go ask Baidu. Don't blame me when you learn another useless fact...

Next came some everyday clothes and household items. Edward dumped them all into the laboratory's Incinerator and burned them.

The items that took up the most space in the ring were bottles and bottles of blood in Glass Bottles. Edward could tell that this blood was the real "hard currency" among vampires. But it took up space, and once removed, it would quickly spoil.

He wanted to refine the blood into "Redstone," like the kind in his Pocket Watch, but he didn't have the diagram for the Philosopher's Stone Transmutation Circle. Back when he'd become the Silver-Winged Magician in Ailande and investigated everywhere, he hadn't found a single clue. The Philosopher's Stone Transmutation Circle was probably kept in the collections of those "old monsters," wasn't it? If only he'd gone to Transylvania with Monica back then. He might have gotten the Redstone Transmutation Circle. (Note: The "Redstone" in an Alchemist's Pocket Watch is a weakened version of the Philosopher's Stone, as everyone who's seen Fullmetal Alchemist knows. The Redstone native to the New Continent is a mineral; that'll come up later.)

Edward steeled himself and drew a huge Transmutation Circle, placing all the blood bottles on it. The Transmutation Circle was simple: it extracted iron. When the process was done, all the blood bottles had turned into a grayish-white liquid that looked disgusting.

Fighting down his nausea, Edward flushed the "blood" down the Sewer. The sewer he'd dug ran straight to the seabed. He'd extracted the iron so that dumping the blood into the sea wouldn't draw huge numbers of sharks and cause a panic.

That left only a lone book lying inside the vampires' Spatial Ring. Edward immediately grew interested.

This chapter turned out a bit disjointed. Please bear with me; it's a transitional chapter.