"You are the only one, right?" Victor asked and Frei flinched, as the vampire seemed to be too talented in observing people. He laughed and withdrew his hand back from the folds of his garment without holding anything.

"It is as I have thought, in that case I have a mission for you."

"Me? I am not strong enough to go alone." Frei tried to protest, but felt like Victor could see right through him.

"The others will stay here in the castle to learn our ways, you on the other hand are too valuable to be left slacking off. Go and report to Gregor, he is a good teacher, the right person to be entrusted with someone like you." He glanced once more out of the window, where the blue light from before was fading out quickly and Frei got an impression that the vampire was getting nervous.

"Alright." Frei had no choice and could only agree.

"I hope you will be on your best behavior, I will keep her close, you know." Victor had a calculative smile when he turned around and left the library, leaving Frei sitting on the chair, the book he had been about to read nearly falling out of his hands.

"Damn, he knows everything." Frei bit his lip when he realized that Victor was now blackmailing him in a similar way he had originally planned to use himself. "What now?"

  He thought about it briefly, but the situation changed again the moment Victor had found out about his plan. He would surely pay attention if he tried to turn Nitarja into a full vampire, leaving him with little room to maneuver. There seemed to be only one option left, the path of mutual destruction. If he proved that he was crazy enough to kill Victor, despite being killed afterwards, he might still be able to control the situation. Naturally, for this kind of scheme to work, he had to have the ability to kill him.

"He can try to get rid of me if I am too strong, but what if I am too valuable to get rid of?" Frei knew that the only solution was to make himself stronger than Victor, but the moment he did, he had to become indisposable for his schemes to protect himself from assassination attempts.

"Let's hope that he is greedy enough." Frei sighed and stood up, he had to have his eyes open for opportunities to salvage the shaky situation.

  He had little choice but to return the book and leave the room in search of this Gregor, the walls of the narrow corridors of the castle passing around him like in a dream until he finally found one particular older lesser vampire in Victor's service, Gregor.

"Good evening, I have heard that you will accompany me during my inspection of a suspicious activity on the border. Victor would normally never send someone so young with me, you must be special." The lesser vampire seemed to be expecting him.

  From below his hood was peeking a face with sharp features, dominated by a beak-like nose, the lesser vampire was obviously not dressed for running around the castle and his clothes was stained with mud and some occasional spruce needles that were stuck in his brown hair. He looked like a scout and not one that was sitting in his tent while waiting for his shift to end.

"Yes, kind of. My name is Frei, I am pleased to meet you." Frei forced a smile and nodded slightly.

"Good, I am Gregor. The night is finally upon us, we can set off." He said and Frei looked up to see that his timing was impeccable, he arrived right when the outside activities of vampires started, no one usually ran around during the day, risking to be turned into dust.

  They stopped briefly at the armory and Frei received a long sword and some basic leather armor. He strapped it to his chest, packing some extra clothing against the sun as a precaution.

"Wait, what is the mission about? Are we going to fight?" Honestly, he did not like the idea of fighting, he gained nothing from slaying monsters except of a bit of money and some mostly useless items.

"Do not be scared, we have lost contact with two of our patrols. They are surely just slacking off, I will beat them blue if they are." Gregor laughed and pattered his shoulder.

  They headed north, along the border with the human territory. The vegetation was dense, but not to the point they had to use their swords to cut through it. Making their way through the forest, Frei felt like at the end of the world. it took them many hours to arrive near the nearest guard post and they had not met a single living soul. Frei would have been scared out of his wits if not for his improved vampire sight, but he still felt uneasy making his way through the dark forest.

"We are about to arrive at our first destination." Gregor had told him that they would be checking on all the guard posts along the way. There were some magical means to communicate, but it could not compare to being present at the site, not speaking about the fact that the guards were not particularly bright with no means to establish any kind of high level long distance communication.

  They exited the forest, setting their feet onto tall grass of a wide clearing. There was a tower in the middle, its base made of stone ending with a wooden upper portion that protected the guards inside against rain and cold wind.

"Report!" Gregor did not bother to go inside and simply shouted when they arrived at the base of the tower, but there was no answer.

"Lazy bunch, they are sleeping again!" Gregor's face was tinged red, he was irritated by the fact that foot soldiers were sleeping while he had to skulk around with Frei attached onto him doing this bothersome mission.

"They will remember this!" Gregor stepped forth and placed his hand on the wooden door, but he froze in the next second and Frei kept staring at him, not knowing what to think about his sudden inaction.

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"There is blood inside." His superior sniffed the air and his face turned grim, while he was drawing his sword silently. Frei followed behind him, trying to walk without making a sound, both of them entering the ground floor of the tower.

"Bite marks only, no traces of claws. Wolves did this." Gregor lowered himself to look closely at one of the corpses on the ground. "I knew it was strange the forest was empty, but why would they act this way? What would force monsters to gather and attack one of our guard towers?"

  Right, as this world had been designed as a game, the need of numerous enemies warranted the existence of monsters. The backstory that the game designers had used was obviously that every place had its ambient mana and with time, that mana coalesced in one point creating a monster the type of which was closely related to the type of mana, hence the place that spawned it.

  The monsters and animals appeared to be the same thing, considering his situation, Frei was glad to become a vampire. It meant that his food spawned everywhere with no need to worry about it. If not for the aspect of control, he might even have celebrated his unliving condition.

Gregor inspected all three bodies on the ground floor, all of them were humans killed by wolves. Despite being a vampire castle, the Waldorf Castle had many humans serving it and most guard posts along the border were manned by humans.

"Go check the lookout above, some cowards may be hiding there." Gregor nodded in the direction of a ladder and Frei began to climb swiftly up its wooden rungs. Soon, Frei's head peeked above the wooden floor of the next level of the tower and he remained motionless, stupefied by what he saw.

  In a circle around his head stood silent furry bodies of wolves, they stared at him for a second with their yellow eyes, remaining still like waiting for a command. Frei immediately let go of the rung he held and let his body fall back to the ground floor.

"Ambush!" He shouted even before his feet hit the aged wood down below and could only hear the jaws of the wolves above him closed audibly, biting at empty air where his head had been just a moment ago.

  The soles of Frei's boots crashed against the wooden surface and he glanced above to see one of the wolves fearlessly hurling itself down at him followed by the others in a short order.

"I would have been fucked like a little bitch right this moment, but guess what, I am a casual playa!! " Frei thought and began performing a quick sequence of crazy wushu moves that he had seen in some movies that were probably not even Chinese, while the wolves literally rained on his head.

"Hold on!" Gregor probably mistook him for a really competent fighter and his image blurred, as he had used some kind of a shadow movement ability and positioned himself to stand back to back with Frei, apparently expecting him to deal with roughly half of the wolves.

It was an insane battle.

Gregor's sword kept flashing, his limbs vanished from time to time in shadows that gathered around him.

Wolves rained down while biting, totally ignoring how a wolf should behave.

Frei flapped, circled and swirled his hands around him, looking like someone desperately trying to score the first place in a kung fu casting for a low budget movie. He had even forgotten to take out his sword.

"Won't you use your weapon?" Gregor asked when they had a brief moment of respite, reminding Frei of his blunder. He definitely had seen too many kung fu movies as a kid, he had to act his age and place next time.

But he obviously could not tell Gregor.

"There is but a few of them." He said and Gregor lifted his eyebrows, looking at him with respect.

"I see, your style is . . . different, yet the results speak loud and clear. Now I see why Victor have assigned you to me, but I am afraid that my expertise is not enough to teach you combat." He looked at him like he was reevaluating his abilities. "A few survival tricks will be all I can teach a seasoned fighter like you."

"Ah, I will look forward to your guidance." Only now Frei looked around him and saw a few dozen wolves strewn all around them, many of them killed by blunt blows of his hands. They were similar to the wolves he hunted before, but a pack of them was apparently not a joke even for Gregor, or he just acted like it, because there was not a single wound on his body.

"They have no magic tools on them, nor any other means of control. Do you perhaps have an idea why the wolves acted like this?" Gregor asked him, most likely because of his view on Frei shifted considerably.

"I have no idea, there is nothing on the floor above us, the three men had to come down when the fight broke out." Frei shook his head, while looking at all the corpses around them.

"This mission might be more troublesome than I have expected. Come, let's head to the next guard post." Gregor did not tarry and they left the tower quickly.

* * * *

  A figure veiled in a black coat stood at the top of one of the Waldorf Castle's towers, his blood red hair flowing down along his garment, the piercing eyes of the same color gazing into the distance, beyond the town of Waldorf, in the direction of a steep mountain range, the center of the human territory. The place where far among the high peaks dwelt the most fierce among the enemies of his race, angels and their divine city of Tyr'Adriael.

Count Waldhaiss turned around and looked at a vampire standing beside him.

"What do you think Victor? Will the tides of our servants grow into new heights, or will it be our enemies who will benefit?" The Count spoke, his voice deep and calm.

"I have observed changes indeed. I have discovered some extraordinary individuals, their talent that should be given at birth with no subsequent changes seems to change. As I groom them, they are able to learn more and more advanced spells. The change is not large, but I can see it accumulate with time."

"Yes, this is troubling indeed, but it can play into our hands." The Count's eyes focused back into the distance. "We have more time to learn given our unlimited age and our control over lesser vampires is absolute. The humans and angels on the other hand . . ."

The Count left his sentence unfinished and a wide smile appeared on his face.

"If such individuals appear everywhere, it is only a matter of time before power inevitably shifts in their favor. The territories of angels, humans and others will be in turmoil as the old leadership will be unable to suppress the new force."

"We just need to ensure that we are the ones to control the greatest number of the new gifted people. We need to act at once and swiftly organize expeditions into other territories, this my old friend, will be your new task. Pretend to be helping the established authorities with the newly appearing rebels and snatch the gifted for our cause." The count's voice now contained a hint of aggression, reflecting his future plans of conquest.

"Of course My Lord, I will be prudent when dealing with this important task." Victor bowed slightly and walked away, leaving the Count alone atop of the windy tower. He knew that the Count probably assigned this goal to every vampire, as its importance was paramount and a moment had come when the vampire race had its unique chance, as its ability of control through blood provided them with the means to utilize the new force, instead of dreading their potential. Briefly, he remembered one individual over whom he had no direct control, but what could one person accomplish? Besides, he held his one weakness fast in his hands.

He looked at the courtyard from above while he walked along the castle's fortifications, he noticed a few of his subordinates training in melee combat and among them a single individual with long white hair and a snowy tail, he had to laugh.

Yes, he had nothing to fear, all loose ends had been taken care of.