Age of Adepts

As a separate asset of the Vik Family, the Rose Manor couldn’t compare to Bloodcastle when it came to functionality and defenses.

As the two Second Grade adepts recklessly ravaged the manor, all the buildings were utterly destroyed. While the buildings on the surface collapsed and vanished in the fire, the more secretive constructions beneath the manor were also unavoidably affected.

Blood Prison!

It was one of the most common facilities in a vampire family.

The purpose of its existence was to imprison low-level vampires that had committed wrongdoings.

As vampires themselves, they inevitably knew the flaws and strengths of vampires. As such, all the facilities in a blood prison were tailored for use against vampires. At the same time, they were also more bloody and cruel than an ordinary prison!

The vampires relied on blood as a carrier of their power and required it for energy. Their abilities would be heavily discounted once they had lost more than half of their blood.

That was why blood prisons were also terrifying torture rooms, apart from their ability to imprison vampires.

The captured Mary was currently hanging on a large wooden barrel. Eight silver chains the thickness of a thumb had pierced through her shoulder blades, collarbone, ribs, wrists, and her ankles, keeping her firmly suspended in midair. As magical silver had indescribable destructiveness toward a vampire’s body, the wounds created by the silver chains would not heal on their own.

The thick and rough chains caused Mary’s wounds to be exceptionally bloody and severe. Fresh blood continued to flow from the holes in her body, dripping into the big wooden bucket below her.

The wooden bucket was large enough to fit three people of Mary’s size. Yet, it seemed like it was almost filling up to the brim as the blood continued to drop.

The ones in charge of watching over Mary in the blood prison were two Vampire Barons.

As lower vampires, they were enjoying the experience of seeing a higher class Viscountess being tortured before their eyes. They weren’t shy to express their joy with words and actions either.

Still, Mary was a spoil of war that the Second Grade Count had personally put in the prison. As such, neither of them dared take so much as a sip from the blood in the bucket, even though it was almost about to spill. Mary had on her crimson armor, red boots, and her head full of long crimson hair. Even as the silver chains tortured her into a ghastly state, her impressive figure and breathtaking beauty still stunned any who looked upon her.

She was an offshoot vampire that threatened the Count; she could not avoid the fate of extermination, regardless of how talented she might be. Leaving the blood prison alive was nigh impossible now that she had fallen into the hands of Lord Leicester.

That was why these two pseudo-adept level vampire barons regularly walked about Mary, cursing and swearing at her with the most obscene of vulgarities, while boldly gazing upon her body with their lustful eyes.

Their greatest pleasure was pulling upon those silver chains and causing them to tug on Mary’s flesh, inflicting further damage upon her and hastening the flow of blood.

Mary gritted her teeth and remained silent regardless of how they tortured her.

She had even glared at them with her crimson eyes for the first two days. However, over the past few days, the blood in her body had almost entirely dried up. Her body had weakened to the point where it was hard even to open her eyes.

Yet today, several large tremors had spread into the prison from the manor above.

The entire Rose Manor seemed to have been thrown into a grinder. The trembling houses collapsed, and the earth itself split apart. The underground blood prison was necessarily affected by this.

Several magical halos lit up on the augite walls filled with green moss and blood stains. These halos formed into a tight defensive forcefield and repelled the spells descending from above.

If it weren’t for the magical protections of the blood prison, the two vampire barons hiding within it would have already been turned to ash by Greem’s Ring of Fire.

The two vampires keeping guard over Mary didn’t know what was happening. They hastily took out their communications wand to attempt to contact their companions on the outside. Unfortunately, they got no response after multiple tries with different individuals. Even Viscount Entia, who managed the entire Rose Manor, couldn’t be reached.

Of course, they didn’t even dare consider the idea of opening the defenses of the blood prison to go out and look.

If the mysterious force could so severely damage even an advanced magical facility like the blood prison, it wasn’t hard to imagine what had happened to the buildings outside.

For the sake of their own lives, it was best to hide in here until the coast was clear.

While the two vampire barons panicked, Mary opened her crimson eyes. A murderous and sinister killing intent vaguely shone through her weak gaze.

While most of the tremors from the commotion above had been absorbed and repelled by the blood prison, the energy that had managed to get through was not a small amount of force either. At the very least, it was sufficient to loosen the wall around the chains that suspended her in the air.

Mary was extremely weak now. Her strength was inferior to a five-year-old toddler. However, an intense feeling from the bottom of her heart drove her actions. It might be her only chance of escaping!

The loosening of the silver chains allowed her body, which had been spread out, some degree of movement.

Mary endured the intense pain from the silver chains chafing her flesh and dragged her left hand toward herself. She opened her mouth and used her sharp teeth to bite off half of her wrist. That allowed her to free her left hand from the silver chains.

She then turned to bite her right hand. Once both hands had been freed, she only needed to rest for a while and her badly damaged hands, hanging by a thread of a skin and some tendons, would return to normal.

The vampire’s powerful regenerative powers were on full display now that the silver chains no longer bound her hands and she was no longer losing blood.

Then, Mary used both her hands to break her shoulder blades, break her collarbone, and slowly extract the silver chains from within her body.

This process was undoubtedly no less painful than the cruelest and most bloody of tortures in the world. Mary gritted her teeth and pulled through it without a single sound.

Once she had pulled the last silver chain out of her body, Mary’s disrupted and severed flow of blood energy immediately began to circulate once more. The energy flowed through her entire body; the comfortable and pleasing feeling caused her to moan slightly in bliss.

The two vampire barons turned their heads upon hearing this sound, only to see a free female vampire that had broken free from the bounds of her silver chains.

”Quick, get at her… she’s just broken free. She hasn’t recovered any of her strength yet; we still have a chance…” The more veteran of the two vampires couldn’t help but exclaim.

Two agile figures immediately lunged at Mary.

Mary raised her pretty face and laughed sinisterly. Her whole body suddenly dropped as she plunged herself into the bucket of blood beneath.

Ripples spread through the bucket as Mary instantly submerged herself beneath the blood.

The next second, an overwhelming surge of blood energy erupted in the blood prison!

The two vampires were caught mid-lunge, and blood splashed fully across their entire bodies.

If this had been any normal circumstance in the past, blood that contained the victim’s life force would be a sacred healing item that would be most beneficial to the adepts. Today, the blood seemed to have taken on a life of its own. Not only were the vampires incapable of absorbing the blood, but the blood was also even destroying their bodies. There was a stinging pain from where they had been splashed.

The two low-grade vampires stopped in their tracks. They lowered their heads to look at their bodies and were shocked to find the blood to be alive.

The blood on them seemed to have a mind of its own. It gathered into clusters of blood and then started transforming, lashing out with fine thorns and piercing their skin.

The clusters of blood were like tiny blood monsters, continually creating new wounds on the vampire barons. These clusters of blood could even dig into their skin and start ravaging the insides of their bodies, destroying everything that it came across.

The bucket of blood exploded with a resounding boom while the two vampire barons howled in agony.

A tall, slender figure with large wings behind her back rose from the blood mist in the room. She reared her head and let out a battle cry.

Once Mary had let out all the accumulated rage with that unrestrained shout, she folded her wings, and the mist of blood in the blood prison immediately went back into her body like birds returning to their nest.

Not only had all the blood in the bucket been absorbed back into her body, but the blood of the two vampire barons poured out of their bodies like a collapsed dam and were absorbed by Mary.

Soon, the two utterly withered corpses fell to the ground. Their skin was wrinkled, like tree bark from an ancient tree; not one bit of moisture remained in them. Their life force had also flowed into Mary’s body as their last drop of blood was taken from them.

Having dealt with these two small fry, Mary extended her wings. Her body turned into a comet shrouded in a mist of blood and blasted through the ceiling above the prison. She beat her wings and slowly took to the skies amidst the sea of fire around her.

Her sudden appearance instantly attracted the attention of the two battling Second Grades.

Vampire Adept Count Leicester and Fire Adept Greem betrayed utterly different expressions upon seeing Mary.

Shock and surprise!

Count Leicester’s expression turned quickly. His silhouette flashed, and he lunged towards Mary. He shouted as he charged at the female vampire.

”Come here!”

A crimson rune appeared on Leicester’s forehead, and Mary felt her consciousness go dim. Her body started flying toward the vampire against her will.

However, at that second, a massive halo of fire broke out between Mary and Leicester.

Greem perfectly timed his Fire Teleportation and stopped Mary while obstructing Leicester with his own body.

Mary had to grit her teeth and use all her strength to restrain herself from attacking Greem.

An irresistible strength within the vampire bloodline that coursed through her body was calling toward her, seducing her. It Wanted her to submit beneath the feet of the great Master Leicester and use all of her body and mind to serve her master.

However, this bloodline instinct came into severe conflict with her own will. She let out a moan and collapsed limply into Greem’s embrace.

Mary might have recovered most of her powers from absorbing her blood, but there were still traces of torture left on her body.

Greem scanned with his Spirit and instantly got a comprehensive idea of her condition. Sympathy and pain swelled inside him.

”Well done. Very well done,” Greem stared at Leicester, his eyes cold and chilling, ”I will leave things here for today. We can discuss the rest at a later date.”

Leicester stepped forward in midair and replied with the same chilling tone, ”Do you think you can escape punishment because you saved her? Hmph! Don’t look down upon the power of the Vik Family. Next time, it might be you begging me to forgive the crimes you have committed today.”

Greem couldn’t be bothered to exchange another word. He stepped back and vanished with Mary in a blazing pillar of fire.