For the next few days in the game, Maria went about clearing Castle Bran with her party. They cleared the Fourth and Fifth floors before making it to the final floor but Maria didn’t immediately go challenge the boss just yet. She had purposefully left a few areas of the castle uncleared so that the mobs would constantly respawn so she could use them to grind her skill proficiency EXP. Even after going up to the Fifth Floor, Maria [Magic Mastery] was only at Rank D.
She expected to at least have it at Rank B before facing the Blood Lord but it turned out that leveling the skill was extremely hard to do. The proficiency EXP required for the next rank is multiplied by a few times compared to the previous rank so Maria needed a bit more time to grind it. She was slightly annoyed by this but the [Magic Mastery] skill upon ranking up gave more than just unlocking her spells.
When she ranked it up to rank D, she had a few of her elements unlocked and in addition to that, [Magic Mastery] also gave a cooldown reduction effect for all of her spells. At Rank D, all Cooldowns for her spells were reduced by 10 percent. This was extremely significant as most of her spells already had very short cooldowns so an extra second or two shaved off of that was extremely welcomed.
If it was 10 percent at Rank D, Maria couldn’t begin to imagine what the skill would be like once it reached Rank S–the maximum rank. She wasn’t hoping for something drastic like a 90 percent cooldown reduction since that would be too broken but at the very least, Maria expected the cooldown reduction to be at 20 or 25 percent. Even 15 percent would already be pretty good since the faster her spells got off their cooldown, the quicker she could use them.
Since she wanted to grind for a bit, Maria had the rest of her party members go do their own thing. It wasn’t like the Blood Lord was going to run away or anything so everyone, except for Orh’bankhur and Alexa, went away to do their own thing.
Ash still had to explain the situation regarding his son, Henry, so he had stayed behind for a little bit to accompany Maria on her grinding session as he began explaining. A few centuries ago after his banishment, the Garm family–Ash’s family–was wiped from the Blood Continent and erased from the records of the Blood Faction at the behest of the newly crowned Blood Lord, Siegfried.
Most of the Garm family’s core members were killed while all of their branch members scattered to join other noble families or live life in seclusion and solitude once they found out that their lord had been killed. No one knew that Ash had only been banished because Siegfried was too incompetent to be able to kill. However, since he was the victor, Siegfried spread the word of his triumph and how he had killed his enemy.
Ash wasn’t there to refute the claims so naturally, they all thought that he had perished. It was why Henry was so shocked to see his father last time on the Second Floor after he tasted defeat at Maria’s hands. As it was said before, only most of the Garm family’s core members had been extinguished. There were still a few of the core members alive with one of them being Henry himself.
In order to survive, he had to forego the name Garm and marry into another vampire family–the Dracul Family. This family descended from the First Blood Lord, Vlad Dracula, who came after the Progenitor had stepped down from his ruling position and unfortunately, the two families–the Dracul family and Garm family–were at odds with each other.
The Garm family descended from the Progenitor so Ash, who was the family’s lord, was a descendent of the Vampire Progenitor, making their family the noblest of all vampire families due to their bloodline. Even with such esteem, Ash’s family never vied for the seat of the Blood Lord due to the Progenitor’s will but instead of being the Blood Lord, Ash’s family would act as the Watcher that secretly stood above and monitored the Blood Lords.
The vampires chose their own Blood Lords but if the Garm family saw that the new Blood Lord wasn’t worthy, they had the authority to remove them from their position. If the Blood Lord was unfit for his or her position, then the Garm family had to strike them down using the legendary sword Garm that the Progenitor left behind for them.
This sword had the ability to extinguish a Blood Lord’s existence from reality with a single blow if they were deemed truly unfit to rule over the vampires but there was a consequence to using it. If the Blood Lord was actually fit to rule and the Garm family’s head only wanted to wield the weapon for their own selfishness, then the wielder’s life would be extinguished instead of their target.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
It was why the previous heads of the Garm family never used the legendary sword before. They had their ambitions but they kept it to themselves and honed their judgment skills to be completely impartial and not biased at all since the consequences of betraying their Progenitor’s words were too heavy. The sword was a well-kept secret of the Garm family. Only the current head and the chosen heir of the family should have any knowledge of it but for some reason, someone other than Ash knew about the secret.
No one should’ve known about this secret but Siegfried somehow found out about it which was why he took action against the Garm family on the pretense that he was only trying to eliminate his competition though it was widely known to all that the Garm family never participated or interfered with the Blood Lord succession race.
Siegfried was merely scared of the prospect that his head could be lopped off by another person if said person deemed him to be unworthy of the Blood Lord’s seat. This paranoia of his led to him massacring the family of his best friend and banishing his only true confidant into another realm.
Henry had to run away from the crazed, new Blood Lord and the only way to do that was to ‘replace’ his bloodline with another so his only safe bet was the Dracul family because, at the time, the Dracul’s next-generation Heiress was madly in love with him despite their respective families not condoning their relationship.
It was like the vampire’s version of the love story between Romeo and Juliet except the ending was a bit off as Romeo got the girl despite having committed suicide–in a way–since he had to relinquish his Garm Bloodline in favor of the Dracul Bloodline.
In Ash’s eyes, his son was dead and the person standing next to him was just a husk of what his son used to be as he was no longer part of the Garm family but the Dracul family instead. Although it was rather joyous that his son did get the girl he wanted in the end, it was still a pity, however, because his only heir was now ‘dead’ and there would be no new generation to continue his family’s bloodline.
For all Ash knew, he was the only remaining member of his Garm family that was still alive. However, that was until a few days ago before Henry told him that his mother–Ash’s bride–was actually still alive.
“Wait, what?”
“That’s right…my previous bride is still alive and apparently, she’s being locked somewhere in this castle.”
“...Then we have to save her,” Maria quickly said.
Ash nodded at her words but there was a forlorn expression on his face, “Yes, but I’ve checked everywhere already. All the floors we’ve passed through, even the dungeons, and yet I still can’t find her.”
“Wait, did you say dungeons?”
“Yes, my Queen. There’s a level below the Ground level which is where the dungeons are located.”
“...Did you clear out all the monsters there?” Maria asked with a gloomy look on her face.
“Y-Yes, my Queen…” Ash hesitantly answered.
Maria only sighed before brushing it off while saying, “Never mind, it’s fine. You were frantically looking for your wife after all–but wait a minute. Didn’t you take Carmilla as your new bride already?”
“About that…well, she also knew about my wife still being alive and she gave me a clue that she’s probably being held in the Blood Lord’s Throne Hall or Private Chambers,” Ash said with a tremble in his voice.
Even though she didn’t see it, Maria could tell that Ash was completely furious and was desperately doing everything in his power to hold it all back in.
“...Let me finish my preparations, Ash. After I’m done, we’ll go and wreck that dumb bastard upstairs.”
“Yes…my Queen.”
Maria was appalled to hear that Blood Lord Siegfried kept Ash’s wife as his trophy after he defeated him. Now that was just wrong in so many ways but thinking about all the centuries that Ash’s wife must’ve suffered under the treacherous hands of the current Blood Lord, Maria shuddered just thinking about it.
It was a well-known fact that after taking the throne as the new Blood Lord, Siegfried had only spent a few months governing the Blood Faction before he started secluding himself on the highest floor of the castle, never going back out.
Centuries had passed since then but no one ever saw the Blood Lord since the day he started his seclusion. Thinking about what he might have been doing was sickening so Maria had to make it certain that Ash would get his revenge.
“Even though this piece of news is important, how come Carmilla kept it from you, Ash?”
“I…I’m not sure… After I found out from Henry, I confronted her about it which made her tell me about her possible location, she left the castle as soon as you let us do what we wanted,” Ash replied.
Maria scratched her head and said, “Go after her. No matter what, she’s still your bride. Even though she kept it from you, I’m sure there was a good reason behind it.”
“...I’ll leave now then, my Queen.”
“Just go. Make sure to resolve everything before I’m finished up here. Hopefully, this shouldn’t take too long,” Maria said as she continued her grinding without letting up at all despite having a serious conversation with her subordinate.
Ash and Henry bowed before disappearing in a puff of black smoke, leaving behind Maria, Orh’bankhur, and Alexa.
“You guys, help me gather the mobs in one place. Let’s speedrun through this grinding session!”
“Yes, Queen.”
“Okay, Big Sis!”