Chapter 22.5

Half an hour later.

As the late-night clock pointed to one in the morning, a bedroom in Lichtenstein Castle felt particularly warm.

The brown solid wood floor, the antique carpet, and the luxurious textiles all exuded a comfortable, homely fragrance under the light. On this cold, late autumn mountaintop, their very presence provided an intangible warmth to the room.

In the bedroom, the atmosphere between Lancelot Hyperion and the priestess Stissella was no longer as hostile as before. Now, they seemed like classmates on a trip, casually chatting.

Once you truly accepted Lancelot as a friend, you could clearly feel the reassuring aura he possessed.

After talking with Lancelot, Stissella felt as if her future was bright.

It was as if she had truly been reborn.

Perhaps this was the divine efficacy of her accidental vow to the Goddess of Fate that afternoon.

And Lancelot was the angel sent by the Goddess to redeem her.

"It's getting late. Let's call it a night."

Lancelot closed his notebook, clipped the pen to the cover, picked up the book, and acted like a teacher leaving after class.

The specifics regarding the Resurrection Church could be slowly discussed with Stissella over the next few days.

Hyperion was also very aware of her role as a teaching assistant, ready to leave with Lancelot at any time.

She noticed a hint of reluctance on Stissella's face when she heard Lancelot say that their conversation was ending for the day.

When brainwashing is done with sincerity and kindness, it looks like winning people over with virtue. But if winning people over with virtue is full of ulterior motives, it's actually brainwashing.

If you say he's doing good, he looks like he's committing a crime. But if you say he's committing a crime, he hasn't actually broken the law.

Never mind, he can't change in this lifetime.

Hyperion had always been a quiet girl.

"By the way, Stissella, what are your bloodline ability and mission objective as the traitor in this Shadow World?"

Lancelot stood up, pushed the chair back under the desk, and asked.

This was the last question he cared about.

"Please look at me."

Instead of directly answering the question, the priestess Stissella began to change her appearance. She grew slightly taller, gradually transforming into the likeness of Princess Alexia.

Hyperion stared at Stissella in amazement, discovering that she looked exactly like Princess Alexia!

"My Blood Lord, Count Sebernar's, ability, [Blood Mimicry], allows me to perfectly disguise myself as a target I have touched, and it will remain until I actively dispel it," Stissella explained to the two. Even her voice had completely transformed to sound exactly like Princess Alexia.

Because she was already familiar with Princess Alexia, even her tone perfectly imitated the princess.

If one hadn't personally witnessed Stissella using her bloodline ability to transform, even Lancelot wouldn't have been able to distinguish that the person before him was a fake Princess Alexia.

"..."

Lancelot was silent for a moment.

This ability, which didn't seem to provide any combat enhancements, was actually the most powerful vampire ability he had ever seen.

It had an uncapped upper limit in any situation outside of direct combat.

As the vampires gradually revived in the real world, they could devour the Kreutzer Empire at an unimaginable speed. During this process, Count Sebernar was probably constantly replacing the identities of the empire's upper echelons.

In the end, perhaps even the empire's emperor would be replaced by Count Sebernar.

After understanding Stissella's bloodline ability, Hyperion felt a chill run down her spine.

Thinking about it carefully, in the context of this Shadow World, according to the normal process, or the real story progression in the original history, if the holder of [Blood Frenzy] started killing on the first night, the identity of the deceased could be replaced by [Blood Mimicry]. From the second day onwards, the difficulty of deduction for the challengers would increase countless times. Over the next four days, everything would be a mix of truth and lies, and all would be suspicion, becoming increasingly cruel and gradually leading to a game of extreme mental and psychological warfare!

Hyperion couldn't help but feel grateful that Lancelot and Frey, this pair of sleeping dragons and phoenixes, had ended the game in half a day.

They had directly changed the nature of this Shadow World.

"The traitor's mission objective 1 is to identify the werewolf and the witch. Mission objective 2 is to obtain fresh blood from the werewolf and the witch, no more than three hours old, and then go to the secret chamber beneath the castle's wine cellar to remove the seal on 'Augustine, the long-lost vampire viscount,' and subdue and enslave him as an experimental subject. By doing so, I can cleanse the mark of a vampire thrall from myself and escape the Blood Lord's control, but once this mission is completed, I will also lose the right to use the Blood Lord's ability."

Stissella continued to confess everything in detail.

At the same time.

The mission information panel visible to Lancelot and Hyperion, as the challengers, also began to update.

But the Shadow World seemed to lag for a moment.

Because the challengers' [Mission Objective 2] should have been deciphered and deduced along with the progress of the Shadow World, rather than having the traitor willingly explain everything in one breath through conversion.

Gradually, key changes appeared on the mission panel.

[Mission Objective 2: Explore the secrets and dangers hidden in the castle – Intelligence completion unlocked]

[Stage 1: Challengers, please protect the werewolf and the witch and prevent the traitor from解除 (jiechu) removing the seal on Viscount Augustine.]

[Stage 2: If the seal on Viscount Augustine is broken, resealing him will return to Stage 1.]

[Stage 3: If Viscount Augustine is under the control of the traitor when the Shadow World's time limit expires, the mission objective will fail.]

At this point.

The challenger side could finally understand the original appearance of the Shadow World's story background.

Many years before the Holy Hall Banquet, Viscount Augustine had been sealed here by the combined efforts of the witch and the werewolf.

Many years later, the owner of this castle, High Priest Caligula, summoned twelve anti-vampire cult members to this cliffside castle for a gathering in this late autumn season.

However, two of the twelve were vampire thralls harboring ambitions. They learned from elsewhere about the secret beneath this castle, as well as the presence of a witch and a werewolf in the church.

They didn't want to continue to submit to the vampires, nor did they want to be enemies with them, so they wanted to解除 (jiechu) remove the seal on Viscount Augustine here, and then control him,解除 (jiechu) remove the Blood Lord's mark, and even further study the mysteries of the vampires.

The fledgling anti-vampire church was thus subjected to a devastating blow.

"Alas, it seems that the prototype of this Shadow World is actually a tragedy," Lancelot said with a sigh, turning off the semi-transparent Shadow World information interface. In that era when magic cards didn't exist and even the humans' magical writing hadn't matured, the Holy Hall Villain Banquet should have been a rather tragic and forgotten historical fragment. It was impossible to know how many people would survive in the end, or who, between the church members and the traitors, had won. However, it certainly wouldn't have been as easy as it was for them.

"I never thought that the biggest obstacle to resisting vampires in this era would actually be humans themselves," Hyperion said with a complex expression.

Absurd laws, a dark and hopeless existence of being raised like livestock, a power that even the demons dared not confront. It was hard to imagine what price humans would have to pay to resist these immortal, fully-fledged vampires. However, even though it was already a path of certain death, there was still absurd infighting.

"I don't know how humans won in the end. The story will have to be left for the remaining two Blood Moon Calamity Worlds. As long as this Shadow World can achieve an SSS rating, we can continue to enter the Blood Moon Calamity era series of Shadow Worlds."

However, Lancelot didn't feel too much emotion.

As an ecologist rather than a historian, his job was to conduct on-site investigations and improve the problems that vampires might bring.

He belonged to the practical school.

He carefully looked at the contents of Mission Objective 2 again.

Then, he thoughtfully asked Hyperion, "As long as we don't let the traitor control Viscount Augustine, then we win this Shadow World, right?"

"...That's right," Hyperion confirmed after reading it.

Although she didn't know what Lancelot meant by asking her this question.

But she gradually had a bad feeling.

She felt that Lancelot's crazy period tonight might not have ended, but had only just begun!

So.

Just as Hyperion's heart rate gradually accelerated, she heard Lancelot tell her—

"In other words, it's okay for us, the challengers, to control Viscount Augustine, right?"

Lancelot straightened his suit, still so sunny, and very confident in his strict logic.

(End of this chapter)