Chapter 496
Leaving from the king’s castle, the group walked off towards the tenth castle. It now rightfully belonged to Quinn, so there would be no one stopping. Leading the group was Edward. Arthur had also decided to come along with them as an escort until they had at least reached the castle door. It was just in case if there were any unexpected occurrences along the way.
As for Silver and Fex. They had broken off from the group to head back to the thirteenth castle. They both needed and wanted to have a serious conversation with their father. Everything had felt so strange since the incident withFex, and as a family together, they needed to decide on the next step of what to do.
Another thing that had crossed the thought of the group was why the mention of the Dalki attacking hadn’t come up in the meeting. Edward had explained that the vampire’s had tried to look for the Dlaki everywhere but could find no sign of him. Unaware that it was actually the strange little thing on Vorden’s shoulder.
What worked in their favour, was Edward actually didn’t know that the Dalki was part of Quinn’s group. He had assumed that the Dalki had come randomly during the fight and was a separate problem altogether. So when they asked him about it, he never tried vouching for it either. Even when they had used the influence skill to ask who was part of their plan, he did not know. So that discussion was dealt as a separate problem to the rest.
While walking to the castle, Quinn was busy racking his mind with what to do next.
’I have to stay here? But I can’t.” Quinn thought. Rather than can’t, it was more like Quinn didn’t want to stay here. He looked at the others that were behind him, Vorden, Peter, and Logan as such. Maybe before he had met them, he could just change his life as such, but to suddenly live in a new place like this, and to be a leader.
It just wasn’t something Quinn wanted to do. What Quinn wanted was to just be free, and being under the vampires, or under the humans, he didn’t feel free.
The other problem was, not just him, but the others were also meant to return to school soon. There was only a little over a week before the second year would start.
As he was deep in thought, Logan came over to his side. “Don’t worry too much,” Logan said. “If anything, our memories can be wiped. It’s not a big deal. I could always just make a video log of some sort and hide it. Just watch it back later. It won’t feel the same, but I will still have the same information either way.”
“The main problem is you, Quinn. When they spoke, there was no option for you to leave this place.” Logan said.
Logan didn’t say it, but he thought of a couple more things that perhaps could get them out of the woods as well. One of them was pretending to be vampires again, using the potion. The vampires hadn’t found out how they were able to disguise themselves. If they just needed to prove they were vampires for a short amount of time, this could work, but the problem was, if they were turned into vampires or they thought they were vampires, then they would have to stay, just like Quinn.
And Honestly, both Logan and Vorden didn’t want that.
Finally, they had arrived in front of the tenth castle. The news hadn’t been publicly announced as of yet about the new tenth leader, and they had explained to Edward that it was his duty to inform his people of this as well. However, when he looked at Quinn, he thought it would be best to leave it a while before they made such an announcement.
Quinn didn’t exactly look like the most menacing or strongest of vampires.
“Alright, I guess my journey ends here,” Arthur said.
“What are you going to do now?” Erin asked. “Will you be returning to the shelter? Is there even a way you can return to the shelter?”
“Don’t worry about that, I have my ways. Besides, unlike you guys, I am free to leave and do as I wish. It’s not like they can exactly stop me, can they?” Arthur started to laugh, and it certainly was true after seeing his strength. “But I think I will stay for a short while before leaving. There may be some clues in the castle or around here as to what exactly happened to my people.”
Arthur then walked over to Quinn and looked at him up and down.
“You are a strong one, and if you weren’t the tenth leader, I would have asked you to come join me as a punisher. You have the correct morals and traits to become a perfect punisher. When you’re done with what you need to do at the castle, then come over to see me. Perhaps there are a few things I can teach you about the shadow.”
And with that, Arthur hopped into his dark shadow and he was gone before Quinn could even give an answer.
Learning about the shadow from the strongest shadow user was certainly an offer he could not refuse. Growing his strength was at a quite a high priority at the moment. If he was to stay in the vampire settlement and Arthur was to leave soon, there would soon be others that will be targeting him.
Entering the castle, everyone had gone to choose a room to rest for a little bit. They also wanted to take a shower and such and also change their clothes if need be. It was certainly tiring for all of them, and very stressful too.
They were then later to meet in the dining room, to discuss what needed to be done. Quinn with Edward had decided to head there first and while doing so, Quinn was busy trying to think of what to do. But in the end, he realized it wasn’t his decision to make. Just like Logan had said, they had three options, and they were to choose from them.
Whatever they would choose, Quinn would respect their decision.
“Quinn, I think it is important if we take efforts in completing the Quest given by the system.” The A.I. mentioned. “If we can get you up to the rank of the vampire lord, then there will be no worries.”
There were two parts to the quest. One of them was to level up to level forty, which Quinn was a long way off this one and it didn’t look like he could really do anything to speed up this process.
As for the second part, it was to bring over ten people to his cursed family and also select two vampires as vampire knights.
Looking at Edward, he tried to wonder if he could make Edward his own vampire knight. He used to be one of the previous tenth leaders anyway, and he was strong. But as he looked at Edward and tried to activate such an option. Nothing would come up, no matter how hard he tried.
’Am I missing something, or is it because he was Vincent’s vampire knight before?’
The first two to come back and enter the dining room were Erin and Leo. The two of them had grown closer during their time training together, and Quinn was pretty happy to see them both safe.
Leo was already considered a vampire, so there was no problem with him. But Quinn did feel bad. He knew that Leo’s goal was going to try to find his master. If he was to stay in the vampire settlement, he would not be able to do such a thing.
“That’s not necessarily true.” The system replied. “Do you remember when Silver was sent out and how she had come to visit you? Leaders have more control than you think. Although Leaders are to remain in the settlement, they are able to assign vampires on doing certain tasks and such without permission from others. The rules are there so that vampires have to be careful when doing such things.”
Hearing about this, maybe Vorden and Logan would be more open to the idea of turning into vampires. Still, it felt wrong to him, and he would inform this to them before telling them. Then Quinn’s eyes had gone to Erin. Before, she had expressed to him that she wanted to turn into a vampire as well.
The main reason why she wanted to before was so she could learn a new ability for the one she had lost to Truedream.
“Although you can’t turn Edward into a vampire knight according to the system. I’m sure if you were to select Edward as a vampire knight, the council would still accept this as well.”
The question was, would the system accept that as part of completing his quest. There were a few times when Quinn thought he could cheat the system in a certain way, but it would always adapt as if it was able to tell what Quinn was thinking. It surely was an impressive thing, whoever had created it had designed it well.
When the two got close, Quinn was about to ask Erin the question. He just wanted to get it over and done with, and as Erin was one of the humans in question, she would need to select from one of the three options, anyway.
Seeing the two, Quinn naturally used his inspect skill on them both. He did this to gradually increase his inspect level, as well as wondering if it would show him some new details on both of them.
That’s when a certain option had appeared under Leo where his stats showed.
[Evolution possible]
[Please select whether you would like to turn them into a vampire knight]
Although he couldn’t turn Edward into one. The system had just given him the option to turn Leo into one.
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