Vampires of Port Collins (Seeking Investment!)

Salomon knew some novel magic, but none of it was particularly useful. This was common knowledge at Kamar-Taj.

The apprentices at the Himalayas headquarters would sometimes see Salomon sitting in midair on some invisible floating object, a bedsheet in his hands as howling winds blew past him. Whenever this happened, Salomon would wave the sheet in his hands and let the gale push him forward until he crashed into a wall.

Sometimes, they could also see Baron Mordo chasing after Salomon. Every time, Mordo looked utterly furious, but no matter how he waved his staff, he could never catch Salomon as he drifted through Kamar-Taj under his wind sail. Mordo was somewhat dissatisfied with Salomon's fixation on those inconspicuous spells. In his view, Salomon ought to take advantage of his youth to learn more powerful magic so that he could be useful on the battlefields against the Outer Dimensions someday. But when Baron Mordo voiced his opinion to the Sorcerer Supreme, The Venerable One said that it was Salomon's own choice. Kamar-Taj would not interfere with how each person chose their magic. If Salomon had chosen to learn those spells simply because he found them interesting, then The Venerable One would not interfere either.

A spell that could not be used in a fight was not a good spell. This mindset was everywhere in Kamar-Taj, and Mordo was no exception. Thus, Mordo wanted at every moment to correct Salomon's "mistaken ideas." He tried to set Salomon "back on the right path" and turn him into a "useful sorcerer." But whenever he was about to catch Salomon, Salomon could always duck into the Mirror Dimension at top speed, leaving no one able to find him.

Salomon was naturally rather impatient with Mordo's inexplicable persistence. In his view, there was no such thing as useless magic, only useless sorcerers. Any seemingly insignificant spell could have a tremendous effect. Even during training at Kamar-Taj, he could use the magic of the Torruel Crystal Wall System and the Vishanti tradition to fight many opponents alone—though, of course, his training opponents were all low-level apprentices. If it had been Cassilius or Mordo, they would never have given Salomon time to chant a spell.

"I had not intended to send you out to travel so early, Salomon." The Venerable One poured a large spoonful of honey into Salomon's tea. Salomon had never dared praise Master Gu Yi's tastes. Every dessert The Venerable One ate was cloyingly sweet; whether it was orange soda or tea, a spoonful of honey was indispensable. Still, Salomon obediently drank the tea, so sweet that its tea flavor was completely drowned out. Before The Venerable One, he always behaved like a well-behaved child.

"I don't want to travel either." Salomon pursed his lips and muttered, "Isn't staying at Kamar-Taj nice enough? There's even the internet..."

Master Gu Yi seemed not to hear Salomon's protest and poured herself a cup of tea. "I have a task for you," The Venerable One said. "A task that only you can carry out alone. The King is now an attendant at the Hong Kong Sanctum. He has neither the time for this nor any reason to know about it. I want you to search for a book. The most recent clue concerning it dates back two hundred years."

"What book?" Salomon asked curiously. He assumed that the book The Venerable One wanted must be a very important grimoire.

"That book is extremely dangerous," The Venerable One said. "This will be a long task, and I do not expect you to find it immediately. The last clue I traced was from two hundred and thirty-seven years ago, when a witch used her magic to turn a human into a Vampire. And all magic capable of creating Vampires originated from the Darkhold. The Book of Vishanti is that book's perfect counter; every spell in that book has a corresponding counterspell in the Book of Vishanti."

The Venerable One lifted her teacup, took a sip of the sweet tea, and continued, "Your destination is Port Collins, Maine. Don't worry. I'll arrange your leave with Athena."

"Cough, cough, cough! Cough, cough, cough!" Salomon struggled free from the dense branches tangled around him. Covered in grass and leaves, he crawled and rolled out of the bushes, looking utterly bedraggled. He looked around, and only after confirming that no one was nearby did he let out a breath of relief and use a small trick to clean the dirt and fallen leaves from himself. His portal had not been positioned precisely, but that was not his fault. He had determined the location using only a map and Kamar-Taj's Planetary Defense System. Falling into the bushes had not been his intention.

Before coming to Port Collins, Salomon had looked into the local legends. One needed to do their homework before facing any enemy; that was the most important principle taught by the sorcerers in those memories, and Salomon followed it.

According to the legends, more than two hundred years ago, Barnabas Collins, master of the Collins family—the prominent local family and fishing industry giant—had been a Vampire. As a result, the enraged locals sealed him in a coffin. Like witch burnings and the Salem Witch Trials, it was something done by those fanatical Puritans. Even now, outsiders would occasionally bring it up to mock the place. But according to the clues provided by The Venerable One, there really had once been a Vampire in Port Collins. Therefore, Salomon concluded that the Vampire was most likely Barnabas Collins.

Yet Salomon found it difficult to believe.

Even the weakest Vampire was not something ordinary people could subdue. But the witch mentioned by The Venerable One put him on guard. His goal was to find that witch. Since she had been able to curse someone into becoming a Vampire, she must have encountered the Darkhold—or, at the very least, knowledge related to the Darkhold. Salomon had also heard that the Collins family's manor had caught fire in 1972, and that the present Collingwood Manor had been rebuilt and restored afterward. This aroused his suspicions.

So instead of rashly heading to Collingwood Manor to investigate, Salomon first came to the local library to search for information.

Many major events had also occurred in Port Collins in 1972. For example, eleven workers' bodies had been discovered in the woods beside Highway 9. The incident caused a tremendous uproar at the time, and local media reported the details extensively. Salomon found the old news report amid stacks of newspapers. According to the report, all the workers' throats had been bitten apart. The police believed it had been the work of a serial killer, and a black coffin had also been dug up at a construction site beside Highway 9.

At the sight of the bloody photographs in the old newspaper, Salomon's heartbeat quickened involuntarily. The shadows in the library's corners seemed to gather in his mind. As he continued flipping through the old newspapers, he found another report. That same year, an explosion had occurred at a Collins family cannery. The newspaper then described, in a teasing tone, the tangled love and hatred between Angie, mistress of Angel Bay and another local fishing tycoon, and the Collins family, as well as Angelique Bouchard's disappearance after the fire at Collingwood Manor.

Soon after, it was as if everyone had forgotten that Angelique Bouchard had disappeared at Collingwood Manor. The newspapers no longer reported any information about the woman. All subsequent articles stated one fact: Angelique Bouchard had disappeared from her own home.

The more Salomon thought about it, the more wrong it felt. He hurriedly began searching through older newspapers.

Though the ink was black and white, the blurred photographs could not conceal the woman's exquisite beauty and captivating charm. When Angelique Bouchard's mother had just passed away, her shoulder-length, lightly curled blonde hair and dark red lips had won her a great deal of support. Her ruthless business methods were exactly like her mother's. She even controlled more than ninety-five percent of the ships in the Big Beach District, while the Collins family could only pick at the scraps and could not even afford to maintain a vast manor.

After spending a long time and going to great lengths, using spells such as Charm Person, Salomon finally found portraits of the Bouchard family in the library's collection of musty old papers. Yet no male member of the family had left behind a portrait, and there had always been public debate over who Angelique Bouchard's father was.

Although their hair colors differed, Salomon recognized at once that Angelique Bouchard's face was not the slightest bit different from those of her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.

This was the witch!

Where was she now?

P.S.: Please invest!

Good morning.