Recaps

Over five years, Norton transformed the Blood Clan’s Holy City and built the towering Scarlet Tower, where he settled with his family. A month later, as Norton sat motionless on its highest floor, a terrible wind swept through the city and plunged the vampires into agony.

• Norton expanded the Holy City into a Gothic complex and had fifty thousand Third-Generation Vampires build the Scarlet Tower over five years.
• The Scarlet Tower was completed with thirty-nine floors of carvings depicting Norton’s fabricated account of vampire origins, and Norton moved in with his family.
• Norton sat on his throne at the tower’s highest floor as his body continued to shed its skin and change.
• A strengthening cold wind struck the vampires throughout the Holy City, causing them to scream and collapse in pain.
• Abraham and Elizabeth fell to the floor, convulsing and clawing at their skin as the agony overwhelmed them.

Norton completed an evolution that left him physically stronger but grotesquely changed, while his dependents advanced along with him. He concluded that his existence governed the Blood Clan and that his death would destroy every vampire.

• Abraham endured a painful transformation into a huge, wingless Vampire Lord-like creature as his body mutated alongside Norton's advancement.
• Norton awoke at the Scarlet Tower with pure-black eyes and found that his body had grown fuller but his skin was still rotting and his back was hunched.
• Norton collected the flakes of skin shedding from his body and stored them in a wooden chest for Coal Ball and Plum Blossom.
• Norton recalled that vampire evolution progressed toward becoming a true vampire like Kuba, and believed his third-tier transformation was nearing completion.
• Norton reasoned that his advancement had forced all his dependents to advance, and that his death would cause every vampire to perish.
• Norton decided to revise the vampire history books again.

Norton's advancement transformed the Blood Clan, granting its vampires new forms and abilities, while Coal Ball and Prince Plum Blossom completed their evolution into Gargoyles. As the Tower of Blood summoned the vampires, Abraham followed Elizabeth upstairs, fearing how completely their existence depended on Norton.

• Norton's advancement raised all three generations of new-style vampires by one rank, giving Abraham and Elizabeth distinct Vampire Lord forms and more human-looking disguises.
• The third-generation vampires gained the ability to reproduce, while Coal Ball and Prince Plum Blossom became Gargoyles capable of turning to stone.
• The Tower of Blood's bell summoned the Blood Clan, and vampires beneath the tower knelt as Abraham and Elizabeth flew toward its highest level in their monstrous forms.
• Abraham hurried after Elizabeth up the tower stairs and wondered whether Norton's evolution had caused the changes throughout the Blood Clan.
• Abraham feared that any future misfortune or death affecting Norton might also destroy the vampires, and worried that Norton's shifting loyalties would leave him with little standing.

Norton declared himself the Blood Clan’s creator and claimed that every vampire’s life depended on his own, establishing his absolute authority over the clan. The chapter followed the founding of the Blood Kingdom and Norton’s increasingly erratic rule, which left Abraham and Elizabeth responsible for governing while Norton pursued grand monuments and tombs.

• Norton addressed the vampires of Sesvia, claiming that he had created the Blood Clan and that his death would kill every vampire.
• Abraham realized that Norton’s power over the Blood Clan could make vampires his slaves for life.
• In 2257, Norton established the Progenitor Power Supremacy System, founded the Blood Kingdom, and set ranks and contribution-based advancement for vampires.
• Norton declared his ambition to overthrow the Church within a hundred years, arguing that its worship of God threatened the Blood Clan.
• Norton gradually withdrew from administration, leaving Abraham and Elizabeth to govern as he conscripted vampire slaves to build monuments and vast graveyards.

His Holiness Adam investigated the coordinated advancement of vampires and werewolves and feared that Norton’s influence threatened the Holy See and the divine corpse hidden behind it. In 2257, he committed himself to the war against the Boya Empire’s allies, whose leaders split over whether to invade the Papal State or negotiate peace.

• His Holiness Adam observed the Eye of Holiness dissecting captured vampires and questioned Archbishop Duoxia about the mutations that had advanced vampires across the Papal State.
• His Holiness Adam learned that werewolves had also become more intelligent, powerful, and resilient, leading him to conclude that the same force had created and advanced both races.
• His Holiness Adam feared Norton might wield the power of creation and worried that vampires could discover the divine corpse and divine blood behind the Holy See.
• His Holiness Adam prioritized suppressing the new vampires and strengthening the war effort, while seeking Norton and Abraham, who had fled to unknown regions.
• In 2257, the Boya Empire’s allied forces pushed the Papal State’s army back, then argued over whether to invade the Papal State or negotiate peace, with Yalian II opposing an invasion.

After the Papal State massacred two nations and issued an ultimatum, distrust split the allied forces into wars between their lords and royal families. The Papal State withdrew its troops, leaving Adam free to focus on the Vampires, Old Norton, and Abraham, while His Holiness Norton faced danger.

• The allied army learned that the Holy Judgment Order and three thousand Werewolves had massacred Siwaka, prompting Yalian II to order Boya's forces to withdraw.
• A second report revealed that the same forces had slaughtered Boermo's nobles, royal family, and capital, devastating the Boermo contingent and frightening the other nations.
• A Papal State envoy delivered the pope's decree demanding that each nation keep either its royal family or its lords, but not both.
• Yalian III urged the allied leaders to resist the Church's scheme, but other lords accused Boya's royal family of setting a dangerous precedent and distrust spread among the rulers.
• In 2261, the nations' lords and royal families turned on one another, while the Papal State withdrew its forces and Adam prepared to confront the Vampires, Old Norton, and Abraham.

With the Boya Empire’s allied forces distracted by internal strife, His Holiness Adam turned his attention to the vampire crisis and the growing vampire-worshipping circles in the Papal State. In 2261, he launched the Demon-Hunting Campaign, which intensified into widespread purges and trials of people accused of collaborating with vampires.

• Vampires’ population growth accelerated after their advancement allowed third-generation vampires to reproduce.
• Vampire worshippers and Blood Feast circles spread through the Papal State, attracting vampires and members of the privileged class.
• His Holiness Adam declared vampires agents of the death god Jonah and warned that those who became vampires would be condemned to Hell.
• The Holy See sent the Werewolf Legion and Holy Knights to help purge vampires, while churches offered bounties and held Masses to cleanse cities.
• His Holiness Adam produced eighteen volumes of scripture to intensify public hostility toward vampires, and the campaign led to trials and executions of innocent people.

Norton ruled the Blood Court as a lavish and ruthless monarch, forcing vampires to build monumental structures while presenting himself as compassionate. Despite his oppression, the Blood Court fostered human intellectual and technological growth, and Norton pursued his plan to erase the old vampires and destroy the Church rather than seek eternal rule.

• Norton watched fourth-generation vampires labor on a hundred-meter pyramid and leap from its top to return to work after their bodies regenerated.
• Norton lamented the slaves’ suffering, and his female chronicler recorded his words as proof of his benevolence.
• The Blood Court enforced laws against vampires killing at will and abolished human slavery, while its people gained time and resources for learning and creative work.
• Scholars praised the Blood Court’s flourishing humanistic thought and early technological progress as an Enlightenment.
• Norton continued his plan to bury the old vampires, elevate the new Blood Clan, and eliminate the Church, which he considered the old era’s sole threat.

After returning to the Blood Court’s Holy City, Norton strengthened the court by ordering a human knight force to oppose the Church and began arranging experiments in the Tower of Blood. He left Elizabeth to carry out his new orders as bats fed on his deteriorating body.

• As the Papal State’s vampire hunts and massacres intensified, Norton encouraged human culture and intellectual movements in the Blood Court to increase productivity.
• Norton ordered Grand Duke Abraham and Grand Duchess Elizabeth to establish a force of human knights, offering them reduced slave service in return for their years of service.
• Norton returned to the Tower of Blood after several years away, his body more stooped and ulcerated, and Elizabeth greeted him eagerly.
• Norton ordered Elizabeth to capture werewolves, human criminals, and animals and confine them on the Tower of Blood’s thirtieth floor.
• After Elizabeth left, bats descended from Coal Ball and Plum Blossom’s aging descendants and fed on the scraps of Norton’s skin.

Norton decided to investigate how his flesh and blood caused mutations, hoping to understand his own nature before someone else exploited it against him. He began experiments in the Scarlet Tower by feeding a piece of his skin to a human prisoner, but the chapter ended before the results appeared.

• Norton reflected that his flesh and blood could introduce new genes into living creatures and decided that studying the effects could help him understand his own power.
• Norton went alone to the thirtieth floor of the Scarlet Tower, where the Blood Court had gathered human criminals and various creatures as experimental subjects.
• Norton opened a cell containing two gagged prisoners and seized one man's head as he screamed.
• Norton tore a piece of his skin and forced it into the prisoner's mouth, while the removed skin quickly grew back on his body.

After thirty years of political centralization and intellectual growth, vampires had become an open force across the Southern Continent. As Yalian II lay dying, he warned Yalian III to avoid war, guard against both the Church and vampires, and refuse immortality; he died urging his son to free the Boya Empire from the Church’s control.

• The Southern Continent’s nations centralized their rule and entered decades of cultural, intellectual, and technological development, while the Holy See and Blood Clan also grew in power.
• Yalian II lay dying in the Boya imperial capital as members of the imperial family gathered around his bed.
• Yalian II advised Yalian III to avoid war for fifty years, treat vampires as a possible ally against the Papal State but never trust them, and prevent the Church from reviving.
• Yalian III called for vampires to turn Yalian II, but Yalian II stopped him and rejected immortality, arguing that the imperial family had to lead by example and preserve the nation’s stability.
• Yalian II died after telling Yalian III to work to break free of the Church’s control.

Norton spent thirty years conducting experiments with his flesh and blood, learning how he could control mutations in living creatures. His research revealed that deeply mutated creatures such as Coal Ball and Plum Blossom could not reproduce, while uncontrolled mutations produced Lovecraftian results.

• Yalian II died of old age, prompting public debate over why he had refused to become a vampire.
• Norton continued his experiments on the thirtieth floor of the Scarlet Tower, using criminals and creatures as subjects over thirty years.
• Norton discovered that his flesh and blood caused mutations and that he could direct their forms with his thoughts.
• Norton found that deeply mutated creatures were generally unable to reproduce, while shallowly mutated parents could have offspring with the mutations he envisioned.
• Norton concluded that Coal Ball and Plum Blossom had become too deeply mutated to produce offspring, and found that mutations without a predetermined form were Lovecraftian.

Norton watched two creatures grown from his flesh and blood collapse into writhing masses that babbled about the fundamentals of life, then had Coal Ball and Plum Blossom devour them. He named the unstable, terrifying new form of life the Primordial Lifeform and remained wary of what he had created.

• A prisoner who listened too long to the babbling went mad, twisted apart, and reassembled as a living mass of flesh.
• The two masses of flesh crawled toward one another, but Coal Ball and Plum Blossom swallowed them before they could merge.
• Norton reflected that creatures grown freely from his flesh and blood mutated before collapsing into this form, unlike species whose shapes he deliberately fixed.
• Norton named the strange, malleable lifeform the Primordial Lifeform and feared its rapid assimilation and unknown nature.

After thirty years of experiments, Norton realized his body and soul might be the source of the mutations and feared he was following the path of God. He emerged from his laboratory to learn from Abraham that the Blood Clan had become the third great empire.

• Norton examined the mutated creature and concluded that his flesh and blood might cause mutations because he was the world's first aberration.
• Norton wondered whether he was the only old-era vampire and resolved to keep his blood contained and stop his experiments.
• Norton left his thirty-story laboratory after thirty years, drawing the attention of the Blood Clan in the imperial city.
• Abraham welcomed Norton and reported that the Blood Court had expanded fivefold, gathered over ten thousand human knights, and become the third great empire.

Norton took full control of the Blood Court and ordered it to focus on national development rather than seizing more territory, while Abraham privately concluded that Norton might be hiding his true nature and considered how to protect himself. Norton’s return after thirty years stirred the Southern Continent, where the public had turned him into a romanticized figure, though they still regarded vampires as vulnerable to the Church.

• Abraham reported that the Blood Court had enslaved transformed royal families and taken their territories, but the death of Yalian II had made other rulers hesitate to become vampires.
• Norton rejected a forceful expansion of the Blood Court and declared that he would lead its development and overthrow the Church.
• Abraham studied Norton's rotting, swollen body and reasoned that Norton might be an old-era vampire using New-Type Vampires as a cover, then feared that Norton would eliminate him for knowing too much.
• Norton sat alone atop his tower, drinking blood and looking out over the night sky.
• Norton's return after thirty years caused a stir as his carefully cultivated noble vampire image inspired popular fiction and vampire-themed entertainment, even as people continued to trust the Church's ability to destroy vampires.

Norton’s public works and policies strengthened the Blood Court, while Yalian III rapidly reformed the Boya Empire and sought foreign partners. As both powers developed, the conservative Holy Lord Empire stagnated and appeared headed for decline.

• Norton conscripted vampires to build roads and dams, clear dangerous regions, and support the Blood Court’s development.
• Norton encouraged human creativity and competition for vampire status, and his rule earned him a reputation as a sage ruler.
• Yalian III reformed the Boya Empire, promoted education and commerce, and organized campaigns against monsters, beasts, and bandits.
• Yalian III pursued trade with smaller nations and attempted to establish a cooperative relationship with the Blood Court.
• The Blood Court and Boya Empire developed rapidly, while the Holy Lord Empire fell further behind by closing its borders and clinging to old ways.

Norton reflected on the Blood Clan’s stagnation and his own selfish rule, then rewrote his thoughts into a grand tale of selfless heroism. He continued using his bedroom in the Scarlet Tower as bait, hoping the Church would send Holy Knights for him to fight.

• Norton concluded that vampire society was stagnant and would eventually decay, while human society kept renewing itself.
• Norton reflected that his rule had caused deaths and oppression, then crossed out his self-critical writing and recast himself as a selfless savior.
• Norton slept in a room filled with holy symbols that made his location detectable to the Church’s Holy Judgment Order.
• Norton hoped the Church would send Holy Knights to the Scarlet Tower and believed he could defeat five hundred of them.

Aging Pope Adam tested his confidant Edward as a possible successor, and Edward proposed ruthless ways to destroy the Papal State’s enemies and purge its Vampires. Adam promoted Edward to Archbishop but privately judged him unfit for the papacy, while Edward left determined to seize both the papal throne and the Holy Judgment Order.

• Pope Adam asked Edward whether the Church’s scriptures and Adam’s actions were true and right.
• Edward proposed killing enemy leaders and armies, then using Vampires’ spread as a pretext to purge them and reduce the Papal State’s population.
• Adam praised Edward’s answer and ordered him to prepare to succeed Archbishop Rod.
• After Edward left, Adam judged him too rash and narrow-minded for the papacy, though fit to become an archbishop.
• Edward hid his ambition from Adam and resolved to claim the papal throne and the Holy Judgment Order.

His Holiness Adam prepared to renew the war against the Vampire Empire, believing Norton’s death could destroy the new-type vampires but ruling out a direct strike because Norton was too difficult to reach. He planned to expand the Church’s presence gradually and suppress vampire growth before his life ended.

• His Holiness Adam reflected on his advanced age and the threat posed by the flourishing Vampire Empire.
• Adam described how forced labor and production policies had strengthened the Papal State during the Demon-Hunting Campaign.
• Adam reviewed espionage reports claiming that Norton’s advancement drove the development of all vampires and that his death could kill them all.
• Adam decided not to send the Holy Judgment Order or Werewolf Legion after Norton because either force could be destroyed.
• Adam ordered a gradual advance into vampire territory, spreading religious symbols and building churches to restrict the vampires’ expansion.
• Adam regretted that Duoxia had become a vampire and could not succeed him as a loyal ruler of the Church.

The Papal State conquered half of Kate with a campaign that won over the poor through aid, land, and Church missions. Alarmed by Adam’s growing support, Norton resolved to meet with the Boya Empire’s emperor and unite against the Church.

• Adam sent Church knights, soldiers, and werewolves into Kate, where they took fifteen cities in three months.
• The Church aided the cities’ residents, distributed land to poor believers, and spread its faith, gaining widespread support.
• Yalian III summoned Norton to the Boya Empire to discuss an alliance, while Kate’s royal family fled north and other duchies sought protection.
• Norton recognized Adam’s tactics as a threat because they won popular support and made the Papal State stronger with each conquest.
• Norton ordered preparations to travel to the Boya Empire and proposed joining forces to destroy the Holy See.

Norton prepared the Blood Court for war against the Papal State and reached an alliance with the Boya Empire, then traveled to its capital to protect the imperial family. The crowd mocked and speculated about the vampire progenitor until an enormous palace emerged from the darkness as his arrival.

• Norton ordered the Blood Court to prepare for all-out war against the Papal State.
• Norton and Yalian III agreed that Boya soldiers would fight on the front lines while vampire knights guarded the flanks and handled logistics.
• Norton arranged to protect the Boya imperial family with Abraham, Elizabeth, Coal Ball, Plum Blossom, and five thousand second-tier vampire knights.
• In autumn, Norton's convoy set out from the Holy City for the Boya Empire's capital.
• The Boya capital's crowds argued over Norton's appearance and complained as they waited for him to arrive.
• A scout announced Norton's arrival, and a massive palace emerged at the end of the dark road.

Norton, the Blood Clan progenitor, arrived at the Boya Empire’s capital in a terrifying procession, shocking Yalian III and his court. Yalian III saw Norton for the first time and realized the messenger’s description of him had been false.

• More than five hundred third-generation vampires hauled the Blood Court’s enormous palace through the capital as vampire knights and two batlike monsters accompanied it.
• Yalian III awaited Norton at the imperial palace with ministers and imperial relatives, while Zuoge assured him the Blood Clan posed little threat.
• The Blood Court’s procession appeared, and its scale left Yalian III and his court stunned.
• The palace stopped at the entrance, and its roof opened to reveal Norton seated on a towering throne.
• Yalian III saw Norton’s pale, fanged appearance and wondered why his messenger had described him as an old man.

Norton arrived at the Boya Empire’s capital in a palace that crushed a path through the city, then met Yalian III, who sought friendly relations with the Blood Court. During a banquet held in Norton’s honor, the empire quietly prepared to test him through the displaced king of Kate.

• Norton rode into the capital on a palace dragged by five hundred Third-Generation Vampires, flattening buildings and alarming the residents.
• Yalian III welcomed Norton respectfully and proposed an agreement of close relations between the Boya Empire and the Blood Court.
• Norton’s palace blocked the imperial palace’s main gates as Yalian III led him to the state banquet and seated him beside the emperor.
• The Boya Empire served young maidens to offer their blood, while Norton sensed hidden religious tokens, portraits of God, and silver swords around the banquet.
• Yalian III signaled Prime Minister Zuoge as the banquet peaked, setting the stage for the king of Kate to test Norton.

At a Boya Empire banquet, King Rosen insulted Progenitor Norton, prompting Elizabeth to kill him in front of the assembled royals. Yalian III ordered the guards to stand down and began plotting to exploit the killing, unaware that Norton had already positioned his forces near the palace.

• King Rosen accepted Yalian III's arrangements to provoke Norton in exchange for the promised return of Kate's lost territory.
• Prime Minister Zuoge praised Norton, and Rosen smashed his glass before publicly insulting the Blood Progenitor and blaming vampires for Kate's occupation.
• Elizabeth transformed and beheaded Rosen, then drank from his severed neck as the palace erupted in shock.
• Yalian III ordered the knights to stand down and declared that Rosen had brought the death upon himself.
• Yalian III resolved to use the incident to spread fear of vampires and purge the Blood Clan once the Church's forces were depleted.

Norton ended negotiations with Yalian III and attacked the Boya Empire’s imperial palace, while Abraham and the batlike monsters fought the emperor’s guards. The chapter ended as five hundred Third-Generation Vampires pushed Norton's palace into the imperial palace and Blood Clan knights surrounded it.

• Norton declared that he would take command of the Boya Empire’s forces against the Papal State, then hurled Yalian III’s gold throne into a squad of knights.
• Abraham transformed into a batlike monster and attacked the guards surrounding Norton, while Yalian III fled and called for religious tokens to be used against the vampires.
• Two batlike monsters seized Yalian III, and the holiness of the religious tokens turned them into stone gargoyles as they held him.
• Norton deliberately dodged silver swords and fought the knights, leading Abraham to question whether Norton’s weaknesses and limited speed were an act.
• Five hundred Third-Generation Vampires pushed Norton's palace through the imperial palace entrance as Blood Clan knights surrounded the palace.