Chapter 297: Persephone,The Oueen Of The Underworld.
Victor was in Kaguya"s shadow world.
He was lying on the floor while all of his Maids surrounded him as they looked at his face.
"What happened to Master?" Eve was the first to ask. She looked rather worried, a rare sight to see coming from a girl who was always stoic.
"..." Kaguya was silent, she was wondering whether or not to tell the girls.
To be honest, she didn"t know much either, but as she was always watching Victor, she had an idea of what had happened. Somehow Victor had killed Adonis, and by killing Adonis, he had "inherited" something from Adonis...
At least that was the explanation she had come up with, but she didn"t know if that was true or not.
"...." Eve narrowed her eyes when she saw Kaguya silent.
"...This is a curse." Roberta spoke in a cold tone as she looked at the black rune on Victor"s face.
"Roberta, your look is scaring me a little..." Maria commented in a light tone as she looked into Roberta"s eye"s, whose pupils had morphed into diamond shapes, like she was looking into the eyes of a reptile.
"..." Roberta looked at Maria and saw the smile on her face. Realizing that she said that to make her calm down, Roberta took a deep breath, and calmed her turbulent emotions.
Seeing that the mood became calmer, Maria continued:
"What is this curse?"
"...This is a rune used by the Greek G.o.ds, specifically the G.o.ds of The Underworld."
Staring into Victor"s face, she noticed something: "This is a high-level rune..."
"A killing curse. Looks like someone from the underworld desires my Master"s soul." Roberta"s mood began to deteriorate again.
"… Does this have any danger to my Master?" Kaguya asked.
"Of course not." Roxanne suddenly spoke up.
"..." The girls look at the red haired Dryad.
She flashed a small smile that showed all her sharp teeth:
"As long as I exist, no one can take our Master"s soul, after all, he is already mine."
"..." Some girls narrowed their eyes when they heard what Roxanne said.
"Anyway, does that mean it"s not a risk for our Master?" Kaguya spoke in a neutral tone.
"Hmm... It"s not 100% safe, after all, even though I am protecting my Master"s soul, he is still the owner of his own soul. If by any chance, he offered his soul to the G.o.d who placed the curse on him, I can"t do anything about it."
"...I see." Kaguya looked back at Victor.
"I hope Master is okay..." Bruna whispered in a low tone.
Eve and Maria nodded, they had the same worried faces Bruna was making.
...
Victor felt himself floating in empty s.p.a.ce. Slowly, he started to open his eyes and saw that he was in a totally dark place, devoid of anything he could recognise or make sense of,
A darkness that not even he, as a being of the night, could see through.
"Adonis~, you will be mine..." He felt someone hugging him from behind.
"Adonis...?"
"Noo, you"re not Adonis... Who Are You!?"
The "thing" that hugged Victor quickly pulled away and disappeared.
Despite this being his first time in this place, he was not surprised. After all, he already had the experience of being in this place.
In Adonis" memories, when Persephone"s curse became too strong, he would involuntarily be dragged into this place, a place of unforgiving and disorientating darkness.
And on the day Victor had absorbed Adonis, Persephone"s curse was at its strongest.
And Victor inherited that curse.
"Who Are You, Who-."
"Shut f.u.c.k up." Victor"s eyes flashed a blood red hue and suddenly,
FUSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
An overwhelming pillar of fire errupted out of his body, lighting up the dreary and silent void that encompa.s.sed his surroundings and driving back the darkness that seemed to be everpresent.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH." His action caused a distorted yet feminine scream to echo throughout the desolate s.p.a.ce he occupied.
Inspired by his apparent progress, Victor decided to capitalise on this convenient weakness of the unknown ent.i.ty that he"d just discovered, muttering,
"Let"s light this place up a little more."
Thus, through the power granted to him by his precious Wife, a Wife he held a great deal of guilt about currently, a sphere of fire was birthed into existance, slowly but steadily, growing in magnitude, further driving back the darkness that circ.u.mscribed him and his vision.
And in less than a few seconds, his continued actions engendered a gigantic sun that illuminated almost the entirety of the desolate s.p.a.ce.
When the light approached the furthest most reaches of his surroundings, Victor could finally see where he was.
He was atop a mountain of bodies.
Looking down at his feet, Victor"s eyes arrived at a blond haired corpse, a corpse who"s face he recognised, that of Sasha"s father.
"I see... These are the beings I"ve killed..." He looked around, and he could see some demon beasts too. He could even see the faces of beings he had never seen before.
"Blood is the bargaining chip for Vampires..." Victor finally understood one of the meanings of these words.
By absorbing the fruit that Roxanne had given him, he became "responsible" for all these beings... For all these souls.
"...hateful...hateful light..."
"..." Victor looked down, and saw a woman with long black hair covering the entirety of her face with her hands as if the light he was producing would burn away at her retinas. She was acting as though she hadn"t seen sunlight, or any form of light for that matter, for a very long time.
Realizing that she was being watched, the woman slowly began to disappear, only to reappear where the sunlight had yet to reach.
"Hmm... She ran away." Victor made a bored face, deciding to look over at the bodies he was stepping on.
"Who are you!?"
"The one who f.u.c.ked your mother." Victor rolled his eyes, he wasn"t obligated to say his name to this woman.
"…Eh?" The voice didn"t expect that answer.
The world around them began to shake, as if a high magnitude earthquake was occuring. It seemed as though the woman was angry.
Victor ignored the woman. He could tell he couldn"t harm her here, that the scream from earlier was simply the scream of a person who hadn"t seen sunlight for a long time.
She was not damaged.
The woman couldn"t harm him here, and neither could he harm her.
This was the "middle ground" of the two beings. Persephone used this s.p.a.ce to seduce the people she placed her curse on and make the person willingly surrender their soul to the G.o.ddess.
Something very similar to the inner world that Victor had, with the only difference being that this place was on the "outside".
If Victor"s red world was his personal world,
This current world was a combination of the meeting of Persephone"s soul, and Victor"s soul.
A shared place.
Normally, beings would not be conscious in this place, they would feel as if they were dreaming.
Only people who had strong souls could stay awake within this "domain", but even those people would feel weak after a while.
But who was Victor?
He was an irregularity, a being whose existence defied common sense. The word "Monster" was created exclusively for people like him.
He had so many souls inside him that it was a simple enough action to stay awake inside this place.
And Persephone could see all these souls. From the woman"s perspective, when she looked at Victor, she saw a completely dark being with red eyes, which contained thousands of souls struggling to get out of its body.
The sight frankly scared her, she had never seen such a being before.
"…Y-You monster, just how many souls do you have inside yourself?"
"..." Victor ignored the woman, opting to look around, stopping on the corpse of a surpisingly large demonic beast.
With a simple leap, he climbed on top of it"s corspe and sat down, resting his face on his left hand, and looked ahead with a bored look.
"...Why don"t you show yourself? I want to see the face of the G.o.ddess who has caused me so much trouble recently."
"Huh? I didn"t do anything to you, and I don"t even remember meeting you!"
"Oh?" Victor raised his eyebrow, "So you don"t remember this face?"
Slowly, his long black hair began to lighten to a bright white, his face began to change, and soon Adonis" appearance was shown to the woman.
A long white haired Adonis was sitting in front of her.
"A-Adonis..." Her voice was shocked, obsessive, and loving.
Victor touched his face, and slowly his face started to return to normal.
"...You..." Her tone became darker and distorted.
"What you do with him!?"
"What did you do to my Adonis!?"
Her demonic voice shook the whole place, she was clearly annoyed.
But that didn"t affect Victor.
He looked into the darkness with disdain:
"Wrong question, G.o.ddess of the Underworld."
"..."
His smile grew a little, and he said:
"The correct question is, what did Adonis do to keep a Thot like you from getting her dirty hands on his soul?"
"T-Thot-..." Her voice came out, sounding quite disbelieving. She had never been called by such a bad word before.
"He was so worried that his soul would fall into your filthy hands, that he willingly offered to be my sacrifice."
"Wha-…"
"He did all this to get away from you... He offered his soul to one of the worst beings in existence." His eyes glowed blood red.
"Lies! He wouldn"t do that, he loved me-." She stopped talking when she felt the world around her shake.
Quake, Quake, Quake.
Behind the sun, a giant being appeared. He was so colossal that only his eyes were seen, the deep blood red eyes that looked like he could see through everything about Persephone.
"He offered his soul to me." A big smile full of sharp teeth appeared on the giant being.
"This...this-..." She couldn"t form coherent words, she fell to the floor, sitting up and looked up at the sky in shock.
"You asked who I was..." Victor had at some point appeared in front of the woman.
"I"ll tell you..." Victor"s eyes slowly began to return to their original color, the violet color with neon undertones
. ..." She opened her eyes wide when she saw Victor"s eyes.
"I was the being who inherited all the burdens from the man known as Adonis."
"The man who inherited his blessing, and his curse..."
"Alucard."