Chapter 2

The night wind passed through the castle's towers, making sounds like the wailing of ghosts.

I stood before the ghostly blue anti-magic barrier, looking at Marcus's boot extended from the guard booth—stained with dark red marks—his command for me to lick it clean like a dog echoing in my ears.

"Kneel down." Seeing that I didn't move, Marcus's eyes turned sinister, his two bone-white fangs glinting coldly in the light of the illumination crystals. "What? You two-legged sheep who makes a living selling blood is going to talk to me about dignity? Your little beast doesn't want to live anymore?"

My right hand remained in my coat pocket, my fingertips gripping a metal cylinder—an extremely prohibited self-defense weapon from the black market: "High-Pressure Liquid Silver Spray."

As a human, I didn't have their perverted healing abilities and terrifying strength. But to protect Mia in this castle full of monsters, I had done my homework.

"I've already given you the money, a full ten thousand crystal coins." I didn't look at his boots, but stared directly into his pale face. "Open the barrier. Once I get the medicine inside, you can do whatever you want with me."

Hearing my words, Marcus's expression stiffened slightly. In Nosferatu Castle, no bottom-tier human had ever dared speak to a patrol officer in such a calm yet rigid tone. He wanted to see me crying, begging, crawling on the ground like a servile dog, not negotiating with him like this.

"What do you think you are to bargain with me?"

Marcus's face instantly turned ferocious. He jerked his foot back, grabbed the "key rune" that controlled the barrier from the table, and strode up to me, staring at me deadly through the viewing window's iron bars.

"You think I need your stinking money? I just wanted to see humans struggle like maggots!"

As soon as he finished speaking, he raised the crystal rune emanating blue light and, right in front of me, smashed it hard against the solid stone floor.

"Crack!"

A crisp shattering sound rang out. Marcus lifted his metal-studded boot and ground it forcefully on the rune fragments until he had completely crushed them into glittering powder.

"No—!" My pupils contracted sharply as I slammed hard against the iron bars.

With the destruction of the key, the previously quiet anti-magic barrier suddenly erupted with a piercing buzz. The ghostly blue light curtain instantly turned deep purple, its thickness doubling immediately, with countless arcane sealing runes frantically flowing across the barrier's surface.

"Castle defense system has entered maximum lockdown mode—Absolute Defense." An emotionless alchemical mechanical voice echoed above the south gate.

"Hahaha!" Marcus looked at my dramatically changed expression and let out a pathological maniacal laugh. "Now this door is completely sealed! Physical, magical, even void teleportation—everything is completely blocked! Forget about you—even if a vampire baron came, they couldn't open it! Just wait to collect that bastard's corpse!"

Rage, like rolling lava, completely broke through my rational defenses at that moment.

He never intended to let me out at all. He took my life-saving money, then personally destroyed my daughter's last hope of survival.

"You'll regret this." I gritted my teeth, my voice seeming to squeeze out from the depths of hell, my right thumb already positioned on the spray's release valve.

"Regret?" Marcus sneered, his gaze suddenly falling on my chest. When I had crashed into the iron bars earlier, my shirt collar had become disheveled, revealing half an inch of the dark red cord holding the "Empress's trump card."

This pendant was forged from deep-sea blood-veined steel, and even with just a section of cord visible, it emanated weak but extremely pure magical fluctuations.

Greed crept across Marcus's face once again. "What's a mere human like you wearing around his neck? That fluctuation... it's a high-level enchanted item? Hand it over and let me see!"

When I didn't move, Marcus stepped back and snapped his fingers: "Buck! Tim! Pin this ignorant blood bag to the ground. Rip off his necklace, then break both his legs!"

Accompanied by the tooth-aching sound of grinding bones, two [Blood Thrall Guards] over two meters tall emerged from the shadows on either side of the guard booth. Their eyes were cloudy yellow, their muscles bulging, with remnants of tonight's meal still clinging to the corners of their mouths.

They were vampires' lowest-grade servants—lacking intelligence but possessing the monstrous strength to tear apart tigers and leopards.

"Heh heh heh..." The blood thrall named Buck let out a moronic, sinister laugh. He took heavy steps, carrying a strong stench of corpses as he lunged toward me.

A hand like a fan, covered in black hair and bulging veins, reached directly for my neck, targeting the cord that symbolized the Crimson Empress.

In the instant that dirty hand was just an inch away from my trump card.

I moved.