"Holy shit! It can't be this exciting, can it?"
"Isn't this just getting exactly what you wished for? You want milk, and your mother shows up! You miss your family, and your uncle comes to visit!"
"I've gotta shout this out loud: this feels amazing!"
This inscription, this black coffin with a blood-red cross, represented a lunatic!
A lunatic who was practically immortal!
Alucard!
The vampire who was revered as the King of the Dark Night and Lord of the Heteromorphs, the undisputed king of his kind, was named Alucard!
Turn his name around, and you got the legendary vampire, Dracula!
But there were far too many spin-off stories about Count Dracula, and countless works featured him. Without some special marker, even Wang Zhen couldn't guess where this came from.
Since the Golden Blind Box had produced a coffin engraved with the classic inscription, and one with such distinctive personal flair, there could only be one work it represented!
The legendary cult anime, Hellsing (commonly known as Hellsing: The Royal Order of Protestant Knights).
If this had been some other version of Count Dracula, Wang Zhen wouldn't have been so excited. The reason he was so thrilled about Alucard was that Hellsing was his favorite, and Alucard, the Vampire King, had an extraordinarily unique ability.
And that ability was precisely what Wang Zhen wanted most right now!
Immortality!
Although Alucard was still some way from true immortality, for Wang Zhen, this was already among the best abilities he could obtain at this stage.
That was why Wang Zhen was so excited! He immediately summoned the coffin, which felt strangely familiar, out of his mental space.
When he opened the coffin, he found an ornate golden cup inside, filled to the brim with scarlet blood that gave off an alluring fragrance.
For some reason, the moment Wang Zhen saw the blood in the Golden Cup, he was drawn to it. As the enticingly sweet scent entered his nose, a thought suddenly surfaced in his mind...
"Drink it!"
"Bird of Hermes, devour its own wings to control its own mind!"
"No!"
In a daze, Wang Zhen slowly reached both hands toward the Golden Cup in the coffin. Just as he was about to pick it up, his muddled consciousness... suddenly snapped awake!
Wang Zhen broke out in a cold sweat, unaware that a faint golden glow had just flashed across the projection of the Gate of Truth deep within his consciousness!
"Fuck! I almost got myself into trouble!" Once his mind cleared, Wang Zhen was filled with lingering fear!
Although Alucard had been so independent and so cool in the anime that Wang Zhen had forgotten he was the King of the Dark Night, Lord of the Heteromorphs, the Vampire King who had personally summoned an army of the dead to attack London!
He wasn't some lovelorn vampire who pined over lost love. He was a true heteromorph. Nearly immortal, he treated everything in the human world as a game to while away the boredom. In his eyes, the lives of ordinary people meant nothing. Whether they lived or died, they were just one drop in the scarlet Dead River!
If Wang Zhen had succumbed to the allure of the blood and drunk it, he could still have gained the ability to defy death thanks to his cheat, but the power he wielded would have been nowhere near as great!
That was because, although Hellsing was a cult anime, its core message was actually quite passionate and uplifting.
First, only humans could defeat Alucard.
Second, the Bird of Hermes devoured its own wings to control its own mind. In other words, only by mastering one's own mind could one master great power.
It was by living up to the second principle that Alucard's bloodline had become the King of the Dark Night and Lord of the Heteromorphs.
If Wang Zhen hadn't regained control of his consciousness just now, and had let the remnants of Alucard's will in the blood tempt him into drinking it, he never would have become a Vampire King like Alucard, capable of commanding millions of lives!
Luckily, the projection of the Gate of Truth in Wang Zhen's mental space had given him a jolt at the critical moment and brought his mind back to its senses.
With his mind clear, Wang Zhen didn't hesitate for a moment. He picked up the ornate Golden Cup and drained the blood inside!
Both men had drunk blood, but one had been tempted by Alucard, while the other had done so of his own free will!
That was the true secret behind the immense power of Alucard's vampire bloodline!
Before he could even feel the process of turning into a vampire, Wang Zhen toppled headfirst into the black coffin in front of him. Then the lid of the coffin, black with a blood-red cross, was moved by some invisible hands and sealed shut.
After that, scarlet blood seeped from the cross on the lid, filling in every groove of the inscription, "Bird of Hermes, devour its own wings to control its own mind."
The moment the inscription was completely covered in blood, a thick, viscous glow of blood, so dense it seemed to flow, enveloped the coffin.
If Alucard had personally turned him, the process naturally wouldn't have been so complicated. As long as he confirmed she was a virgin, he could turn someone like Seras Victoria into a vampire in no time.
But Wang Zhen was a cheater. Although he had obtained Alucard's Blood, the process of turning him into a vampire and transforming his consciousness naturally had to be handled by his omnipotent cheat, which came up with a special cheat-exclusive version!
Fortunately, the Good Luck cheat was powerful. Unlike those flashy cheats that just closed their eyes and opened them again to complete the entire transformation, this unconventional one had created a transformation ritual that was neither here nor there, but certainly looked impressive!
If you asked whether all this hassle was really necessary...
It would answer without the slightest hesitation: no. But life needed a little ceremony!
As the thick, viscous glow of blood faded at a speed visible to the naked eye, the coffin lid silently opened once more. Wang Zhen stood up inside, then stepped straight out of the coffin!
"Why don't I feel any different?" Wang Zhen looked at his hands. Their skin showed no unusual changes; it was still fair, smooth, and perfectly proportioned. They were practically made for hand modeling.
Then Wang Zhen reached over to touch his canine teeth. This time, he finally noticed something was off. His canines had become unusually sharp and a little longer than before.
After all, he was a cheater—one with a Good Luck cheat, at that. So he didn't need to drink the blood Captain Bernadotte gave her, like Seras Victoria did, before finally completing the turning ritual and becoming a vampire.
It was only then that Seras Victoria officially became Alucard's vampire offspring and gained the ability known as the Dead River.
Wang Zhen didn't need to go through all that trouble!
When he opened the Golden Blind Box gifted to him by the Good Luck cheat and got the Black Coffin, then took the Golden Cup from it and, of his own free will, drank the cupful of Alucard's Blood, he had become a vampire of Alucard's bloodline, cleanly and efficiently!
Next, Wang Zhen activated the Dead River ability!
Before you continue