Just looking at the cities where the Menorahs moved was enough.
Not to mention Noctiluca—along with the capital, Mirkala, and the western granary regions—these were all central territories of the Lamphas Church.
In short, it was like slapping the face of the Lamphas Church.
And the Kingdom of Herodes had been swept into the mess.
If the king had known earlier that Van Drake’s remains would appear at the auction, he would’ve done anything to stop it. But his attention had been diverted elsewhere lately, so he failed to catch it in time.
‘Damn it!’
The moment the word Menorah was mentioned, the faces of the king’s close aides went pale. They began whispering anxiously.
“Right after Van Drake was brought down, the Menorah appear, leading the vampires in droves… Shouldn’t we take action? At this rate, public sentiment toward both the Lamphas Church and the royal family—who ousted Van Drake—will crash.”
“…We’ll have to contact the Lamphas Church. Emphasize that this was caused by their decision to put Van Drake’s remains up for auction, and see how they respond.”
In short, the royal family had decided to stand back and do nothing.
At the king’s indifferent attitude, one of the aides cautiously added a concern.
“But if we truly remain idle, it will affect the people’s trust in the royal family. We should send troops or take some kind of measure…”
“What could we even do?!”
The king shouted, irritated.
Did they even understand who they were dealing with? This wasn’t just any vampire—it was a Menorah!
For the past hundred years, the vampires that had appeared were low-tier ones at best, so most people couldn’t fathom how terrifying a Menorah truly was.
And it was no surprise. Even the king himself once thought the tales of high-ranking vampires were just exaggerations—until he encountered Strigon.
After facing Strigon, he felt deeply that any resistance from a mere human would be completely meaningless.
Controlling a loyal servant like a puppet was child’s play for him. Even in the dead of winter, surrounded by heavy guards as if wrapped in layers of blankets, Strigon could appear behind you in an instant, cold hands reaching for your neck.
Not only did he wield eerie and mysterious powers, but his strength was also beyond human comparison. Even if you somehow managed to kill him, he would come back to life soon after—it was a meaningless endeavor.
He wasn’t just a monster—he was a disaster, a calamity.
At least you could fight a monster. A calamity, though? You couldn’t fight it. You couldn’t even avoid it.
Sending hundreds or thousands of regular soldiers against such a high-ranking vampire would be as futile as sending ants to their deaths. From the king’s perspective, it would only mean sacrificing his private army for nothing.
‘Idiots like these are my close aides…’
To the king, their concerns sounded like the words of people with no grasp of reality.
Besides, as long as he remained Strigon’s follower, the Menorah wouldn’t openly antagonize the Kingdom of Herodes. He’d get halfway there just by sitting still. Why would he go stirring the hornet’s nest?
Of course, he couldn’t reveal to his aides that he was a follower of the Menorah.
Growing more frustrated, the king slapped his thigh and shouted.
“Just blame everything on the Lamphas Church! The vampire invasion, the downfall of Van Drake—all of it!”
“But the Church won’t stay silent. After all… it was us who suggested wiping out Van Drake.”
In response to the aide’s worry, the king smirked.
“We merely hinted to them about Van Drake’s disloyalty. It’s not our fault the Lamphas Church misunderstood our intentions and acted on their own, is it?”
“………”
While the king’s words weren’t entirely false, they weren’t the whole truth either. As his aides exchanged uneasy glances, the king continued, voice full of confidence.
“Besides, the Lamphas Church was the one who claimed that Van Drake’s power was all thanks to ancestral relics. They boldly asserted that if they just secured the relics, there’d be no need to fear vampires. If we did anything wrong, it was merely in trusting them.”
The king let out a boisterous laugh.
“They should’ve anticipated this kind of scapegoating the moment I agreed to most of their demands. If they wanted to monopolize Van Drake’s legacy, they should bear the cost.”
His logic wasn’t entirely unsound, and his aides’ faces began to relax slightly.
“Then I’ll deliver that message to the Lamphas Church.”
“Ah, but before that, we must stir up the people on our side first. It would be troublesome if the Church acts before we do.”
The king and his aides were entirely focused on escaping the current situation. Not one of them showed the slightest remorse for the countless citizens who had died.
Soon, each aide set off to do what they could to shift the burden of this crisis onto the Lamphas Church.
As a result, the fury of the people—and the wrath of Strigon—would, for now, be focused solely on the Lamphas Church. Feeling a small sense of relief, the king clicked his tongue quietly in the now eerily quiet room, as if the earlier uproar had been a lie.
But it was still too soon to be at ease.
‘Damn it… Is the Lamphas Church really searching properly for Van Drake’s surviving heir?’
When he first heard the Church’s report that a survivor had escaped, his heart had dropped.
But when they told him it was a mere child, not even of age, he breathed a sigh of relief. No matter how exceptional Van Drake may have been, a child was still just a child—surely the paladins would catch them soon.
Still, he couldn’t let Strigon find out. If Strigon discovered there was a surviving heir, he would demand that the corpse be brought to him and verified before he’d reveal the secret of immortality.
Desperate to gain that knowledge quickly, the king chose to hide the existence of the survivor from Strigon.
But that child had slipped through the Lamphas Church’s encirclement again and again, and now it was as if they had vanished into thin air.
Since then, the king had been living in constant anxiety—terrified that Strigon might find out before he could obtain the secret of eternal life. He relentlessly pressured the Church.
<When exactly do you plan on finding Van Drake’s surviving heir? Are you just sitting on your hands?>
<We’re doing everything we can… but if you’re unhappy with our efforts, why don’t you issue a nationwide bounty instead of just pressing us?>
<Don’t be ridiculous! We’ve already declared to the public that all of Van Drake has been eradicated. If we suddenly say there’s a survivor, everyone will think the king is a liar!>
Issuing a bounty would only risk letting the information leak to Strigon, so the king flatly rejected the proposal with a convenient excuse.
Naturally, searching for the survivor in secret was no easy task. Days passed, but they made no meaningful progress.
And the survivor wasn’t the only secret the king was keeping from Strigon.
The king thought of the massive tank hidden deep in his royal palace’s underground chamber.
A fetus, writhing in thick red fluid that resembled blood, floating within a transparent and towering glass chamber…
It was a homunculus.
Through relentless suspicion and eventually yielding to what seemed like a favor, Strigon had shared with the king a secret path to immortality—one that required abandoning his aging body in favor of a new vessel.
<Homunculi were originally created through alchemy to give life, but it failed because the balance between body and soul couldn’t be maintained. What you got in the end was just an empty shell. But no magic is ever truly useless. The secret to immortality lies in using that empty shell.>
The king listened with reverence, as if receiving divine revelation.
Strigon shared knowledge that no human could resist—so easily, so casually.
Like a wealthy master tossing gold coins from a heavy pouch to a starving servant, barely looking.
<I’ll teach you a spell to firmly bind your soul to the homunculus’s body. Then, once you die, your soul will transfer to that body. This way, you can live on—by repeatedly changing bodies.>
