Chapter 116: The Origin of the Bloodline

Mary Has Become a Quasi-Witch?!

Compared with the leap made by the Evil Insect Entic, everyone was surprised, but none of them found it abrupt. After all, he had long been one of the three renowned powerhouses of the Swamp Tower!

Mary’s advancement, however, astonished them all and seemed even more unbelievable.

Thus, beneath the radiance of Mary’s immense quasi-witch status, Grim’s advancement to an Advanced Apprentice was discussed mostly among the low- and mid-level apprentices. The Advanced Apprentices, who held the real power of discourse among the apprentices, kept their attention firmly fixed on the two newly emerged quasi-witches.

Overnight, the Swamp Tower was about to undergo a transformation!

As the newly appointed Apprentice Leader, Allen had originally prepared a long and impassioned speech of welcome. Yet when he stood before the sinister Entic and the ghostly Mary, he found himself overwhelmed by the cold, terrifying pressure radiating from them. His body trembled faintly, and he could not force out even a single appropriate word.

“We’re tired and need to rest. You may all leave!” Mary remained as aloof and imperious as ever.

Only when facing prey did she reveal the seductive smile that came from the depths of her heart. As for this crowd of nobodies before her, to be honest, even if they stretched out their necks and placed them right beside her mouth, she would not be bothered to bite.

Faced with such domineering subordinates, Allen’s small measure of strength was simply not worth mentioning. He tactfully stepped aside and cleared the path to the gate.

Following behind Grim, the goblin Kabi entered the Swamp Tower one careful step at a time. Six or seven bulging pouches hung diagonally from his waist, while a huge cloth sack was strapped to his back.

Given Wizard Anderson’s temperament, he clearly had no intention of wasting time on welcoming returning apprentices. Of course, if he had known beforehand that two of the tower’s apprentices had successfully advanced to quasi-witches, he might have changed his mind and appeared personally to win them over.

After all, quasi-witches were a very special group.

Once someone among them advanced by good fortune, they could instantly rise to a position comparable to his own. If the Sarubo Family learned that he had casually “wasted” a quasi-witch, the senior wizards of the family would certainly invite him to a very “pleasant” conversation.

Thus, within this isolated and self-contained private resource site, even Advanced Apprentices were objects he could trample and manipulate at will. But when it came to quasi-witches—apologies—any harm done to a quasi-witch amounted to strangling the future of a wizard family.

Conversely, if Anderson reported the two quasi-witches to the Sarubo Family, the family would surely reward him handsomely for his “achievement” in raising them. The yearly allotment of resources and materials he received from the family would inevitably increase by a considerable amount as well.

Naturally, if Entic and Mary wished to obtain further support from the Sarubo Family, they would first have to sign magical contracts with it. In exchange for the corresponding share of resources, they would pledge to serve the family for a specified number of years after becoming wizards. The longer the term of service, the greater the allocation. If they were willing to join the family outright, they could receive the family’s full support and cultivation.

Therefore, on the very night Grim and the others returned to the Swamp Tower, Entic and Mary were summoned to the fifth floor by Wizard Anderson. There, they met another official wizard from the Sarubo Family—Wizard Korgan.

Through Korgan’s introduction, the two finally gained a rough understanding of the Sarubo Family’s circumstances.

The Sarubo Family had been founded thirteen hundred years ago by the great Fourth-Rank Elemental Wizard Sarubo. At the time, Sarubo was vice-chairman of the Sandy Taryn Wizards’ Association and possessed a formidable reputation throughout the central continent. Five hundred years ago, the founder of the family had advanced in a single bound to become a Fifth-Rank Rule Wizard. From then on, he had entered the sea of stars and had never returned.

This was, in fact, the most common fate of wizard families throughout the Wizarding Continent.

Every wizard family was founded around a powerful wizard. If that wizard successfully entered the Fifth Rank, he would inevitably journey into the endless star sea, seeking out and conquering weak planes in its boundless depths. If a wizard failed to advance to the Fifth Rank, there would always come a day when his lifespan was exhausted.

A wizard family that lost the deterrence of a powerful wizard could not avoid becoming the target of covetous glances and annexation by other wizard families. Families with Fifth-Rank Wizards waging war in the outer worlds were comparatively stable. Although Fifth-Rank Wizards were forbidden from personally returning to the Wizarding World, the spoils they acquired beyond it could be continuously sent back to their families.

With the high-quality resources obtained from other planes, a family could maintain sufficient strength and continually cultivate new members to fill the void left by the departure of its strongest figures. The reason those Fifth-Rank powerhouses were willing to send their hard-won resources back to their families was likewise to ensure that the families could cultivate more wizards suited for planar warfare.

When they launched large-scale campaigns in other planes, the wizards within their families became the main force in expanding their territories and waging war abroad.

Thus, once Entic and Mary signed family contracts with the Sarubo Family, they would inevitably join the family’s planar wars after becoming wizards.

According to Wizard Korgan, the Sarubo Family currently had no Fourth-Rank Wizards. It possessed only one Third-Rank Wizard, one Second-Rank Wizard, and seven First-Rank official wizards. Within the territory governed by Sandy Taryn, such strength could only be considered average.

The Sarubo Family’s headquarters was located in Federnan City, two thousand six hundred miles from this place. The Swamp Tower was merely one of the family’s four large-scale resource sites, and Wizard Anderson guarded it year-round.

After briefly explaining the family’s situation, Wizard Korgan began asking the two about their choices. Did they wish to exchange a period of service for a resource quota, or were they willing to join the family and receive its full support?

Unexpectedly, Entic chose to join the family, while Mary chose ten years of service.

If a shorter term had been available, Mary would have chosen it gladly. This was the decision she and Grim had discussed beforehand. Unfortunately, ten years was the shortest term Korgan was willing to offer.

The two soon left their magical marks on the contracts prepared by Wizard Korgan. From that moment on, their identities and status were entirely different from those of ordinary apprentices.

Different choices naturally brought different treatment.

After Entic made his decision, Korgan immediately issued him a family insignia and ordered him to move to the fourth floor as soon as possible. Ordinary apprentices could not set foot in that area at all. Mary was also permitted to reside on the fourth floor, but she had to pay two magic crystals per day for the privilege.

The reason was that the residences on the fourth floor allowed the concentration of certain elemental particles to be adjusted artificially. This greatly benefited meditation and brought about a subtle transformation of the body. As a hired outsider, however, Mary was clearly not entitled to the benefits enjoyed by members of the family.

After Wizard Korgan departed, Mary engaged in a lengthy discussion with Wizard Anderson. Through a process of bargaining, the two sides reached a fair exchange that satisfied them both.

Mary paid with a large barrel of fresh blood. In return, she obtained the right for Grim to move to the fourth floor as well. Mary also promised that if she truly advanced to wizardhood, she would never seek revenge against Anderson. She would even provide another wizard-grade blood sample to aid Anderson in completing his research.

Strictly speaking, Anderson’s experiments on Mary were an undisclosed study of bloodlines. Mary could only be said to have been fortunate: she had finally survived the agonizing bloodline transformation that could make a person wish for death, and had luckily become a variant vampire.

She was called a variant vampire because the vampire bloodline obtained by Wizard Anderson was itself impure and of dubious origin. At Grim’s repeated urging, Mary had therefore taken the initiative to express her willingness to let go of her former hatred—but only on the condition that she receive some information and samples concerning the origin of her own bloodline.

Thus, both sides were delighted, having obtained what they most desperately wanted.

Mary staggered back to Grim’s residence, tossed the items in her hands to him, and collapsed face-first onto the bed, falling into a deep sleep. She had lost far too much blood. Even with her constitution, she needed a long sleep to recover.

After settling Mary in, Grim finally sat calmly before the wooden table and carefully examined the small vial of reagent in front of him.

It was a glass tube about the thickness of a finger and not very long. Holding it up for close inspection, he could see only a single drop of blood at the bottom, nearly dried out.

Wizard Anderson was, in truth, merely a half-trained bloodline researcher. By sheer chance, he had encountered a vampire deeply hidden within human society during an incident involving hauntings in a territory governed by the Sarubo Family.

Three family wizards had joined forces, yet they had still been unable to defeat and capture the powerful vampire. In the end, it was only through the personal intervention of a Second-Rank Wizard from the family that the creature was driven away from the family’s territory. While searching the mysterious ancient castle where the vampire had lived in seclusion, Wizard Anderson unexpectedly discovered a tube of highly purified vampire blood.

Clearly, the fleeing vampire had also been conducting some kind of bloodline research.

Anderson secretly concealed this spoils of war, then hid himself in the remote Swamp Tower and silently carried out related experiments into vampire mutation.

Unfortunately, most of his previous experiments had ended in failure. Every creature injected with vampire blood had suffered genetic collapse and died without exception. Vampire blood possessed an extremely domineering genetic nature even among bloodline creatures. Any other bloodline that attempted to merge with it could only become nourishment for it; harmonious coexistence was impossible.

At first, Anderson believed that the creatures he had selected as test subjects were simply too frail to withstand the violent bloodline transformation. He therefore used his authority to begin carrying out blood experiments on the tower’s apprentices, little by little.

Three Intermediate Apprentices were injected with samples of the vampire’s source blood, but Mary was the only one to survive. She consequently became the key to his subsequent research.

There was no meaning in keeping vampires in captivity for study. Vampires purified and refined their own bloodlines by continually consuming the blood of the strong. That was why Anderson had released Mary, hoping that she could complete the purification of her bloodline through her own evolution.

It had to be said that his judgment had been correct. At least for now, Mary’s progress had far exceeded his expectations. Through experiments and analysis of the old and new vampire blood, his research into vampire mutation would presumably advance another step.

Thus, with new experimental material in hand, Wizard Anderson had generously handed over a little of the source blood. Unfortunately, that small amount had clearly nearly reached the limit of its storage life and was about to lose all genetic activity.