"It's been three days! Uncle Vane, the young master hasn't come out for three whole days!" O'Hara shouted at the butler, Vane, hands on her hips and frustration in her voice.
Mr. Vane rubbed the bridge of his nose, looking rather troubled. These past two days, Rose O'Hara had worn down both his nerves and his ears. How did I never notice how rowdy this girl was before... he complained to himself.
"The young master eats so much! Every day, he usually eats seven or eight jin of steak and lamb chops alone, not to mention vegetables, fruit, desserts, and iced drinks... Forget him—even a normal person couldn't survive being shut away for three days without food or water!"
"Ahem, I already asked Victor about it. He just said, 'Leave him alone.' Victor goes to the basement every day, so there's no need to worry too much..." Mr. Vane continued reassuring O'Hara.
"You believe Victor?" O'Hara raised her brows, her shrill voice making Butler Vane jump.
"That muscle-bound idiot Victor, who's got no brains to go with them, doesn't know a thing! The young master still reads to me every night. He says he can't sleep if he doesn't read to me..."
"I think you're the one who can't sleep..." Butler Vane muttered under his breath, then continued trying to placate O'Hara. The butler truly wasn't worried about his young master at all. Aside from O'Hara, it seemed no one in the entire estate was concerned about James. When he thought of what had happened that night, even now, Vane still felt as if he'd woken from a nightmare.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Victor had been pushing himself even harder these past few days. It had to do with the battle that night. He was becoming increasingly aware of just how vast the gap between him and James was. He couldn't stand being weaker than James; that obsession seemed to be innate, as if it were written into his genes.
Another reason was that, ever since James entered a smaller meditation chamber three days ago and sealed the stone door, the terrifying aura and vibrations coming from inside had grown stronger. Victor knew those sounds well. He practiced the same state every day, lying face-down on the ground. James had mentioned it once, calling it Tiger-Leopard Thunder Sound—a rather awkward name.
But the intensity and force of the vibrations coming from the stone chamber were many times greater than anything Victor could produce in his own practice. There was no comparison at all.
The rhythmic sounds, like the low growls rumbling in a lion's or tiger's throat, made the entire underground training area tremble faintly. From time to time, dust and debris shook loose from the ceiling.
Several enormous lead balls filled with mercury hummed continuously. Even now, Victor couldn't manipulate the smallest mercury-filled lead ball with different parts of his body the way James could.
Crack, crack... Crack...
The grating sound of bones grinding together came from inside. Before long, it fell silent. Stranger still, Victor suddenly couldn't sense James's presence anymore.
The stone door shuddered, then slowly swung open. Perhaps because the air was circulating again, Victor caught James's scent. He narrowed his eyes and stared intently at the figure walking out.
"Ah, Victor. How many days has it been?"
James showed none of the fatigue one would expect after three days without food or water. His skin looked even better, with a lustrous sheen like polished jade. Dust and stone fragments kept drifting through the basement, yet not a speck had settled on James.
Victor ignored James's question and kept staring at him, breathing a little faster through his nose.
Seeing this, James smiled and asked casually, "What, want to fight?"
Hmph!
For the first time, Victor didn't take him up on it. He strode toward the area filled with specialized equipment and began training like a man who didn't care if he lived or died.
There were only two of them, yet they'd turned this into such a competition.
James shook his head and hurried along the underground palace's passageway. He hadn't been outside in days. Everyone must be worried.
August 1862.
The war in America had officially erupted the previous April, but things were not going well for the Union Army.
Thanks to the Mexican-American War, the Confederate army was exceptionally strong. Its soldiers were veterans, freshly blooded in battle, and its commander was the outstanding military strategist Robert E. Lee. Taking into account the disparity in strength between the two sides, he devised a strategy of using offense as defense: concentrate his forces to seek out and destroy the Union's main army, forcing the North to sign a peace treaty on Southern terms.
The North, meanwhile, was unprepared for war and adopted the so-called Anaconda Plan, spreading its forces along an 8,000-mile front. To make matters worse, McClellan, a commander sympathetic to the slaveholders, pursued passive tactics, leading the Union Army to suffer defeat after defeat.
"If things keep going like this, that bearded Lincoln is going to lose!" O'Hara said worriedly as she looked at the newspaper on James's desk.
"He's President Lincoln. Don't get in the habit of calling him that. If you ever meet him and it slips out, you'll make me look terrible." James tapped the top of O'Hara's head with the letter in his hand, then continued.
"Lincoln's goal right now is to reunify the North and South. He hasn't yet made up his mind to abolish slavery outright. He's worried that doing so would push some of the border slave states over to the Southern rebels, costing him that vital strategic region."
O'Hara listened, only half understanding. As James wrote, he continued, "But this president isn't indecisive. He'll abolish slavery. It's what the times demand."
With that, James put down his pen, sealed the letter in its envelope, and pressed it with a wax seal bearing the Howlett Family crest: a simple, old-fashioned letter H, marked with what looked like claw scratches.
"Send this letter to Washington."
O'Hara took the envelope and looked at James, who seemed to have everything under control. She giggled, her eyes full of girlish affection, then swayed out of the study in a bright red dress.
More than the Southern army, James was worried about the creature locked in the dungeon.
Hiss... Hiss... Hiss...
A ragged, emaciated figure bent over a rooster, clutching it in his arms. The rooster's claws twitched now and then. The figure's face was buried against its neck, and he made faint sucking noises as he drank.
In just a few seconds, the rooster stopped moving and dropped to the ground with a thud, joining the corpses of several other animals, such as rabbits and mice. Marcus, once a somewhat portly vampire lord, now looked like a dried-up corpse blasted out of a grave. He carefully licked a speck of blood from the corner of his mouth.
"Tell me, what else is there that I don't know? Think carefully." James sat in a chair, looking at the iron cage, whose bars were as thick as a forearm, and at the stinking vampire inside. He covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief and spoke with disgust.
"My lord! There's nothing else, truly! I've lived for over a hundred years, and I've racked my brains for everything I can remember!" Marcus scrambled at the bars. Beneath his greasy, disheveled hair, half of his ashen face showed. His eyes were blood-red, and drool kept running from the corners of his mouth. He looked like a stray dog starving to death.
After he'd been captured and locked up, Marcus had held out for a few days. He'd even taunted James, claiming that the progenitor would come and taste his blood. But the months that followed made Marcus bitterly regret being a vampire. He couldn't even kill himself.
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