The faint, lingering scent of cheap soap and rising steam hung heavy in the cramped apartment Lucious had rented deep within the winding streets of the capital city.
The wooden floorboards beneath the bed creaked softly whenever the wind outside rattled the shutters, a far cry from the damp, suffocating mud of the wilds.
Lucious sat calmly in the dead center of the mattress, his legs crossed comfortably beneath him while wearing nothing more than a simple, rough linen towel wrapped securely around his waist.
The last extermination quest they had taken from the guild board had dragged on far longer than anticipated. Just tracking those giant, scaled lizards through the dense underbrush had consumed nearly two full days of relentless marching.
That meant he had spent forty-eight hours coated in dried sweat, forest grime, and the metallic stench of reptilian blood without a single chance to properly wash himself.
The very second their boots had crossed back through the fortified gates of Uranik, his top priority had been immediate cleanliness. He had practically dragged Dori straight to the bathhouse the moment they arrived.
While he had come straight up to their room to unwind, she had already dressed and left to submit the severed monster parts to the guild reception and claim their hard-earned coin.
Sitting in the quiet stillness of the room, Lucious tilted his head down and shook it vigorously, sending cold droplets of water flying from the ends of his dark, damp hair to patter against the sheets and his bare shoulders.
Now that the grime of the hunt was gone, it was time to examine the true spoils of their two-day excursion. With a subtle flick of his pale wrist, he directed his focus forward and summoned the Supreme System.
At once, the ethereal blue screen flashed brightly before his glowing crimson eyes, casting a cool, unnatural light across his bare chest.
[Skills capsules.]
[50 blood points has been deducted.]
The cascading list of tiers he had unlocked back in the forest clearing fell open before him like a glowing scroll. He had not been able to properly examine or purchase the ability while surrounded by the rotting lizard carcasses, mostly because he had wanted to get out of those humid woods as soon as humanly—or rather, vampirically—possible.
But here, behind a locked wooden door with no prying eyes, he had all the time in the world to think and test his new limits.
He raised a single finger and pressed it against the floating bracket at the very top of the elemental tree.
Click!
The mechanical chime echoed sharply inside his skull as he officially purchased the first tier of the capsule.
[A core skill has been obtained.]
[Fire manipulation: All those who come towards you shall be burnt by your flame, be they of righteousness or evil.]
Lucious kept his unblinking gaze locked onto the floating screen for a few quiet moments, letting the dramatic phrasing of the system wash over him. Almost instantly, a warm, pulsing sensation surged from the core of his chest and rushed down the length of his arms.
Just like every other necrotic skill he had obtained from the system in the past, the fundamental mechanics of the magic slotted directly into his brain. He immediately understood how to breathe life into the element without the system needing to waste time doing any of the explaining.
Slowly raising his right hand up to eye level, he exhaled softly and willed the dormant energy in his veins to ignite.
Small, vibrant wisps of crimson and orange flames suddenly materialized out of thin air, dancing and coiling gracefully around his pale fingertips as he stared at the display in quiet awe.
’If I had not seen and used magic before in this world, this would sure be a massive surprise,’ he mused internally, watching the fire weave between his knuckles.
Letting the flames die out with a simple clenching of his fist, he shifted his gaze back to the remaining four locked tiers hovering on the translucent screen: Water, Lightning, Air, and the final Elemental Mastery.
A slight frown tugged at the corner of his mouth as he glanced at his depleted reserves. With the fifty-point deduction leaving him with only forty points left to his name, he realized there was simply no way he could unlock the rest of the tree right now.
Which meant only one thing. Once they settled their current affairs, he needed to go out hunting once more.
Knock!
A sudden, sharp bang against the wooden door shattered his concentration, forcing him to dismiss the blue screen with a quick swipe and turn his gaze toward the entrance.
"Master, I have come back with the rewards," a familiar female voice echoed cheerfully from the other side of the thin wood.
It was a raspy, devoted voice he recognized all too well by now.
Before Lucious could even open his mouth to give her permission to enter, the iron latch clicked upwards.
The door creaked open a few inches, and Dori slowly peeped her head inside, strands of her wild red hair framing her pale face as she blinked continuously into the dim room to adjust her vision.
"Are you in here, Master?" she whispered softly, her crimson eyes scanning the shadows.
The moment she spotted him seated cross-legged on the bed, her cautious expression melted into a wide, radiant smile. She slipped fully into the room, gently pushing the door shut right behind her with the heel of her boot.
Moving with fluid, silent grace, she walked over to the small wooden table at the side of the room and dropped the heavy canvas sack of guild coins she had been carrying. In the exact same breath, before Lucious could even ask how much the lizard parts had fetched, she darted onto the mattress behind him and wrapped her slender arms tightly around his bare neck.
"Masterrrrrrrr~" she cried out, dragging the word out in a needy whine as she pressed her cheek against the damp hair at the nape of his neck. "Pet me, I’m tired~~".
A deeply deadpan look quickly played across Lucious’s pale face as he stared straight ahead at the wall.
"You are a vampire, Dori. Getting physically tired from a short walk is not one of your skills," he pointed out flatly, reaching up to tap the pale forearm draped across his collarbone. "And why is your arm so freezing cold?".
Dori rested her chin on his bare shoulder, tilting her head to the side as she thought about it.
"I don’t know. Isn’t that just what happens when I spend too much time walking around in the afternoon sun?" she murmured innocently, before her brow suddenly furrowed into a small, pouting frown. "Besides, when last did Master even bother to feed me his blood?".
Lucious could not help the heavy sigh that escaped his lips at her pointed comment.
In truth, she had a completely valid point; he had genuinely forgotten all about her maintenance.
Ever since the incident at Rando village, he had learned that while his True Vampire blood granted her temporary immunity to solar degradation, the protection eventually wore off. Whenever Dori spent too many consecutive days operating under the harsh daylight and his potent blood inside her veins dried up, her body temperature tended to plummet.
Running cold was always the very first warning sign that her S-rank physiology was straining and that she would probably break down soon if left unchecked.
"I guess we have been so busy grinding through all these C-rank quests that I kind of forgot to top you up," he admitted, a hint of guilt flickering beneath his stoic exterior.
However, another thought crossed his mind at her words.
In the literal blink of an eye, relying on his massive agility stat, Lucious twisted his upper body around. Before Dori could even register the sudden shift in weight, he grabbed her firmly by both wrists, lifted her light frame effortlessly off the mattress, and spun her beneath him, pinning her flat on her back against the creaking bed.
Dori let out a tiny gasp, her glowing red eyes widening in genuine surprise at the sudden, dominant maneuver, leaving her somewhat speechless as she stared up at him.
Since Lucious had no clothes on save for the loose towel around his hips, all she could see was the broad, sculpted expanse of his bare, muscular chest hovering mere inches above her face, along with his piercing crimson eyes staring right down into the depths of her soul.
Her breath hitched slightly, her pale cheeks flushing with a sudden, unnatural warmth despite the chill in her limbs.
"Master?" she squeaked out, her voice noticeably softer than before.
"Since we are on the subject, this is actually a very good time to remind you of something," Lucious said, his voice dropping into a low, authoritative rumble as he kept her wrists pinned above her head with one large hand. "Tell me, Dori... just how much blood did you drink recently without my permission?".
Dori blinked rapidly, her red eyes darting slightly to the side as she tried to look innocent.
"What are you talking about, Master? Most of the blood I drink is usually from those forest monsters we—".
Before she could finish spinning her weak excuse, Lucious raised his free hand to his mouth and suddenly bit down hard on the pad of his own thumb. His razor-sharp fang pierced the pale skin effortlessly.
He held the bleeding digit directly over her, allowing a single, heavy drop of thick crimson blood to fall through the air.
It landed with a soft splat right against her exposed skin, slipping directly down into the warm valley between her breasts, just above the neckline of her midnight-blue tunic.
Just from the mere sight and the intoxicating, divine scent of his pure blood hitting her skin, Dori’s breath caught in her throat. Her pupils dilated instantly, her eyes glowing a blinding, vibrant shade of neon red as her chest heaved, her lungs and veins already aching with a desperate, feral eagerness to have that liquid inside her.
Of course, she was not stupid; she knew that if her master was purposefully teasing her by letting it drip onto her chest instead of giving it to her mouth directly, he was actively trying to teach her a harsh lesson over something she had done.
And judging from the dead-serious look etched across his handsome face, she knew she was not getting out of this easily.
"M-maybe if you give me just a single drop on my tongue, Master, it will help refresh my memory?" she stammered out.
So she says, Lucious thought dryly, watching her squirm beneath his weight.
He let out a second, quieter sigh.
"If you keep sneaking around and taking my blood without my explicit permission, you know exactly what kind of punishment will happen, do you not?" he warned coldly.
The threat of his displeasure instantly shattered her last line of defense. Her shoulders slumped against the sheets, and her lower lip trembled slightly.
"I’m sorry," she confessed in a rush. "It was really late a few nights ago, and you were fast asleep after the sewer quest, and I was so thirsty I just couldn’t help myself! I only licked a tiny scratch on your arm, it never happened again after that, I promise!".
A subordinate vampire could never truly lie when directly interrogated by their creator and master. It was one of the absolute, unbreakable biological rules that came with belonging to such a nocturnal species, enforced heavily by the God Mark burned into her collarbone.
And Lucious knew this dynamic all too well; after all, back in his former life on Earth, he had consumed a massive boatload of trashy vampire novels and lore.
Seeing that she had come clean, the stern tension in his jaw relaxed just a fraction.
"Very well. Since you are being honest, you have earned this," Lucious murmured, releasing the tight grip he had on her wrists.
As he slowly began to lower his bleeding thumb toward her parted lips, Dori’s tenuous patience finally snapped completely.
With a needy whimper, she reached up, grabbing his thick wrist with both of her cold hands, and practically shoved his bleeding thumb straight into her warm mouth.
For a brief, striking moment, Lucious could only stare down as an expression of pure, unadulterated ecstasy washed completely over her pale face.
Her eyelids fluttered shut, long lashes resting against her flushed cheeks as she sealed her soft lips tightly around his digit.
Driven entirely by instinct and overwhelming pleasure, she lifted her legs from the mattress and wrapped them firmly around his bare waist, locking her ankles together at the small of his back to pull him flush against her.
She kept sucking on his thumb with a frantic, rhythmic desperation, her warm tongue swirling around the small puncture wound as she tried to draw out every single drop of divine blood she possibly could.
Thin strings of saliva mixed with pale red dripped slightly from the corner of her mouth, accompanied by a series of muffled, needy moans that vibrated straight through his hand and up his arm.
If Lucious did not know any better about how the blood bond functioned, he would have easily guessed she was lost in the throes of pure, shameless lust right then and there.
Not that he could truly understand the sensation from her perspective, since, for starters, this euphoric high was something she claimed only a Blood Kin could feel when drinking from the source.
However, the physical reaction on his end was becoming noticeably harder to ignore.
Before he even knew it, Dori had begun shifting her weight beneath him, unconsciously arching her back and moving her hips closer to his crotch. Through the thin, practically nonexistent barrier of his bath towel, he could feel the soft curve of her thighs and her butt rubbing with increasing friction against his somewhat erect manhood, her body seeking heat and closeness as the blood warmed her veins.
Lucious’s breath hitched slightly, his hand tightening on the bedsheet beside her head as the lines between a routine feeding and something far more intimate began to rapidly blur.
However, right before the rising heat in the room could actually push them past that point of no return, Dori suddenly froze.
The muffled moans died in her throat. Her eyelids snapped wide open, the hazy, euphoric glaze instantly vanishing as she looked straight up at him with razor-sharp clarity.
"Master, they are here again," she uttered in a remarkably calm, measured tone, though the deeply angry, murderous expression that